“All right,” my father said suddenly and pressed a cool palm against my forehead.
I saw his eyes, heard rushing water and then felt fine. I ran my fingers up and down my inner arms and felt the broken skin, the sting of ripped open scabs instead of the itch inside my veins.
“Thank you.”
“You had some questions,” he said, cocking his head to the side. “I can’t tell you why Lewis locked you away from him any more than why I can tell you why he didn’t finish the blood bond at once. He knows of the inevitability more than most. He is most experienced with bloodwork. I can tell you that your soul must have been splintered, most of it taken away somewhere else while a spark was left behind to keep you alive. When you had Lewis’s soul, you had his fury, but not his Wild traits. He had your leaning ability but not your Wild traits. It seems that Wild souls are more difficult to transfer, or perhaps lend more stability… at this point it’s all conjecture.”
“But you think that we’re soul mates?”
“Oh, yes,” he said, nodding his head. “He isn’t an anonymous Hotblood any more than you are an ordinary girl. You are his match in every way.”
I shook my head. “I can’t kill, he can.”
“He’s been trained to kill. Your soul has been protected, kept pure and untainted. If you worked at it, you could become a truly destructive force.”
I stared at him. “Thanks, dad. I always wanted to know my full potential.” I shook my head. “Thanks for muting the blood bond. It’s nice to know that leaning is useful for something.”
I turned to leave, needing space to be alone to explore the strangely numb place in my heart where the ache had been, like a missing tooth.
“I’m fine,” I said to Satan where he waited beneath the chandelier in the entry, a lit cigar dangling from his mouth.
“Satan, are those filthy cigars really necessary?” my mother asked, but her eyes were on me. “What did he do?” she asked, but low enough I could pretend not to hear her.
I stopped and faced them. “I have my own soul. Dad helped me to feel less attached to Lewis.”
“He leaned you?”
“I asked him to help me,” I said, defending him in spite of what he’d done to me. I couldn’t help it. “I have homework to do,” I said then passed the two Wilds to go up the stairs, down the hall and into the room filled with mellow color I’d brought with me from my father’s house. I used to think that my mother loved Devlin more than me, but the more time I spent around her, the less simple everything became. Like the way she felt about my father, loving him, hating him, needing him, hating to need him. My soul understood more subtleties than the fury. I saw in my father something dangerous, something that didn’t necessarily hold to the rules of common decency and ethics that he should have. He had his own code of conduct, but it contained intricacies that I could not follow.
In my room I stared at the ugly brown pot on my desk filled with wilted orange flowers. What had I been thinking when I picked this as my still life? I should have asked my father, master painter, to help me figure out how to fix my awful watercolor. I picked up my sketch, comparing it to the murky painting. The drawing wasn’t terrible. I ran my finger around the side of the picture and heard Lewis’s warm, low voice. I like this line. It’s intentional.
I dropped the sketch, ignoring the pain when the hardbound sketchbook hit my toes. I shook my head to get rid of thoughts of Lewis. I could cope with this. I would find ways to deal with it. I hadn’t gone to the trouble to survive ten years without a soul to turn listless and wan over some guy, no matter how fascinating I found him.
I had to find a focus, something to keep me busy, something important. I closed my eyes tightly and thought about Snowy, about Osmond and Valerie. I forced myself to wonder if Snowy and Smoke were ever going to go on a date, but thinking about their relationship sent a twinge of jealousy through me. Instead I thought of Ash. He’d been there at the end, his hand on my shoulder as I rode home in the back seat of my brother’s car, Valerie and Jackson in the front, Valerie managing to keep her smug to herself, or maybe Ash had leaned her. Now he didn’t look so good. Cools sometimes didn’t feel tied enough to this world and their souls eventually abandoned their bodies to become part of whatever. Cools were all soul and emotion.
I’d ask my dad the next time I saw him what I could do to help tie Ash to this world. I tried to disconnect, to keep a level of separation between myself and the world, but I couldn’t. I was the opposite of not tied to this world. I was too tied to it, to someone in it, tied in a way that made living without him something of a pain.
I got up from the desk then wrapped a blanket around me before collapsing on the window seat. I leaned my head against the glass, feeling the cold against my skin, cold that spread through me, helping me forget.
After a night full of bad dreams, I had a headache as I traveled the halls of school, the stone walls holding onto the cold no matter how the heaters blew. I felt stuffy at lunch as I set my tray down carefully beside Snowy, trying to ignore the look she gave me.
“So,” she began and I tried really hard to keep the sigh from escaping.
If I felt it, maybe she felt it too. With bleak snowy weather, me feeling cranky wasn’t going to make anything better.
“So,” I said with false cheer. “Are you going to ask Smoke to the Valentine’s dance? If you’re not then I know who I’m asking.”
“What?” She got all bug eyed at the idea of me taking Smoke to the dance, then her eyes narrowed and she shook her head at me. “Nice try. You can’t ask a boy to the Valentine’s dance. Have you given Osmond an answer about the date yet?”
I was tempted to put my head down into my lukewarm mashed potatoes but courageously resisted the urge. “I wish you would stop fixing me up with him. I’m perfectly capable of having a social life all by myself.”
“It’s theoretically impossible to have a social life all by yourself. Come on. It’s no big deal for you to go out to a movie with your good friend Osmond. You agreed to do it before everything went down.”
“Why do you want me to go on a date? I’m not normal, and I’m not going to be normal however many normal guys I date.”
Snowy tossed her hair and said airily. “Normal? Osmond is definitely above average.”
I couldn’t help but smile little bit. “Yeah, Osmond is great, but I’m not supposed to date people who aren’t sanctioned by my family.”
Snowy rolled her eyes dramatically. “Oh yeah, and you’re so good at following the rules. When are you going to bust out and do something crazy? I kind of miss the old you.”
“Yeah. Me getting people killed was so way cool. Osmond has scars from the burns,” I said quietly. I felt a rush of guilt for risking my friends to rescue…
“He has scars from all kinds of things, and he wasn’t nearly as badly burned as Lewis,” she said ignoring my flinch when she said his name. “Ask your mother if she minds if you date Osmond, and if she says no, then you can give the whole, ‘my mommy won’t let me’ speech, but otherwise you have to give the real reason you don’t want to date him.”
I scowled at her. I wanted to say something mean and cruel about how long it had taken for her to admit she liked Smoke, about how she hadn’t exactly bounced back after Devlin died, but instead I bit my lip until I tasted blood. That was unfortunate because the taste of blood made me sick.
I shoved away from the table and headed for the restroom. I ignored the looks people gave me, mostly pity, irritatingly enough. I wasn’t sure about the stories going around, but they had something to do with me getting dumped and being depressed about it. That wasn’t true at all. I was the one who told Lewis I never wanted to see him again. Go girl power, I thought right before I puked in the school’s old leaky toilet.
After I got home, I forced myself to find my mother right away, before I found something more important to do like stare at the sky outside my window.
“Mom, Osmond asked me on a date.
Is that okay?” I felt like an idiot as I said the words. I was old enough to date who I wanted, but ever since my uncle Stephen died protecting me I felt like I owed a debt— the kind of debt you just can’t repay.
She stared at me, and a slight smile flickered around her mouth before it disappeared. “You’re asking my permission?”
I sighed and started peeling an orange. It gave me something to do so I wouldn’t have to look at her. “Jackson told me that I couldn’t date people without sanction from the House. I don’t want to mess up again.”
“Satan,” she called in a raised voice. After a few heavy seconds Satan’s slouchy hatted head appeared in the doorway. “Sit down, please.”
Satan grumbled as he made his way to the table. His shirtsleeves were rolled up and I could see the tattoos circling his wrists. “What’s going on?” He asked pulling out a cigar.
My mother’s hand darted out and snatched the cigar from his mouth. “When were you going to inform my daughter that she had no duty towards the House?” Her voice was soft and purring but it made my arm hairs rise. I could feel the anger in her, smoldering barely under the surface. I almost expected lightning to strike.
Satan shrugged uncomfortably eying the cigar. “It didn’t come up.”
My mother’s fist tightened on the cigar then she dropped the wilted sad mess on the table. “Why don’t you tell my daughter why she has no duty towards the House, and why don’t you sound convincing?” she asked leaning back in her chair with her long sleeve covered arms crossing her chest.
Satan inhaled deeply, looked mournfully at the cigar and then shrugged slapping his huge hands on the table. “When your dad went with us to take out Bliss, he worked out some kind of agreement to keep you and your mother out of the House.”
My mother snorted at this. “Some kind of agreement? Which was…”
“Alex is taking the temporary place of Stephen until Jackson can grow into the position, or until the position is filled some other way, or until Alex takes over the entire house and makes us all arborists,” Satan finished with a growl. “This wasn’t my idea, Helen. You know perfectly well that I’d rather eat all my hats than see a Cool take the place as Son of the house, but times are changing. Apparently.” He pulled out another cigar and glared at my mother.
She gave him a bland smile and shook her head. “Was that so hard, Satan?” She turned to me and said gently, “You may date anyone you like. If you like him.” She cocked her head then shook it slightly. “Osmond is a very good friend.” She stood up, and that was that, except that my dad had gone against his personal ethics to save me from my mother’s House.
“Where is dad?” I asked, but I knew he’d already left.
I looked at Satan, but he was studying the smoke that hung in a cloud around him instead of moving towards the window. I waved my hands in front of my face to clear the smell of burning but he didn’t seem to notice. I felt the headache crowding behind my eyes and needed to get out.
I grabbed a coat, slipped through the door then walked down the sidewalk beneath the streetlights, sliding on the ice and hard packed snow. I shivered and zipped my coat up higher. I walked aimlessly trying to sort things out in my head. Something stirred inside of my chest when I thought of my dad working for Slide. I clenched my teeth trying to understand why I felt like this, like I wanted to rip something apart, like I wanted to do something drastic and stupid and violent.
The streetlight above me began humming, the squeal sounding louder and louder until with a crackling pop it exploded. I ducked and covered my head with my hands then felt a burning line across my knuckles. I straightened shakily, looking down at the streak of blood already staining the cuff of my coat. I pulled out the shard of glass, took a deep breath then walked home.
It couldn’t be a coincidence. I’d felt that way, that building emotion and then the light bulb had exploded. Could I do that? Lean inanimate objects until they felt how I felt?
After another less than restful night, I drifted through school waiting until after the very last bell to corner Osmond.
“Osmond, when do you want to go to the movie?” I asked, the words spilling out of my mouth as quickly as possible. I’d caught him after school at his locker, and I tried not to notice the people looking in my direction. Osmond shot me a grin, and I wanted to flinch at the white scar across his forehead. It had been a miracle that no one had died.
“I’ll pick you up tonight at seven. Do you need a ride home now?”
I shook my head and smiled while I backed away from him. “See you then.”
I rode home with Snowy and felt a slight satisfaction at not telling her about the date. She’d been bothering me for so long, not telling seemed like the only revenge I could think of. It was almost a relief to think of going out with Osmond. I liked Osmond. Maybe if I liked him enough I would stop feeling sick about everything else.
How did Lewis’s arms look? Was he scraping his veins raw? I had to know. I had to talk to him. Of course, I had no way to find him. I stood in my bedroom in front of the mirror wondering if I should put on the knife harness Satan had given me for Christmas. It went around my thigh and was the kind of thing that I wouldn’t have thought about much as a Hotblood, but now it was weird. I couldn’t hunt and track and fight with zero fear.
I stared at myself in the mirror, the eyes that were somehow both my dad’s silvery pale blue, and my mother’s dark blue nearly black, the hair that still had highlights from the summer that made the brown look alive and healthy. I looked nice. When I smiled I didn’t look like I wanted to eat someone. I missed the scary Hotblood. I shook my hair back and left the knife where it was. I needed to forget about all the things I wasn’t and couldn’t be.
On the date, I stood beside Osmond in line for the popcorn and felt my stomach clench. I couldn’t remember ever being in a movie theater and there was something about the dim lights and the popcorn machine that made me nervous. Maybe it was Osmond who was wearing a nice button down shirt and a jacket, wearing cologne I could smell. I guess he matched me in my carefully selected dress but it made me wonder where the guy was who I’d known all my life.
“So… do you have the internship with the architect in the city lined up yet?” I asked as a younger couple with some rebellious piercings that would have looked mild anywhere other than Sanders bumped us.
“It’s been lined up for years. How are your art classes going?” He gave me a half smile that made a dimple in his cheek. The dimple made me smile back at him.
“Great! It’s amazing to see how much there is to learn.” My smile was weak and forced but I held onto it.
“Give it some time,” he said encouragingly. “Do you want popcorn?”
Before I knew it we were sitting close to the back of the movie theater with popcorn between us.
“That guy makes a lousy villain,” Osmond whispered.
“What is he wearing?” I asked, and he gave me a smile I could only see dimly in the reflected light.
I eventually relaxed back into my chair and let myself be amused by the story of a guy and girl who were chased around by some ridiculously badly acted villains until the point where the guy’s injured and the girl’s telling him she loves him. There’s so much blood, and the smell is overwhelming and intoxicating, and nothing else in the world is like it, and it’s everywhere, on her hands, smeared down her dress, and she’s kissing him, begging him to live, begging him to stay with her, telling him she loves him and can’t live without him until someone starts yelling, something about danger. The woman has to leave him, has to…
The screen went black right before Osmond pulled me to my feet and half carried half pushed me down the aisle towards the nearest exit. People shouted and pushed while the thick smoke came from everywhere. I coughed and stumbled but Osmond had his arm around my shoulder and he blocked everyone in our path, gently of course. I leaned against him and put my face in his shirt, glad for the smell of the cologne that blocked out the smoke, kept
me from smelling the blood that was probably only in my head.
We burst through the side doors into the alley where groups of people were standing around talking excitedly, pointing at the movie theater. I looked down and studied the bricks beneath my feet as Osmond took me away quickly down the alley, holding me steady as we walked over ice so I didn’t fall on my face.
We made it to the curb where he’d left his truck parked letting the sound of people fade behind us, the cold air and brisk wind sweeping away any traces of smoke. Osmond buckled me in when my shaky hands wouldn’t do it then was soon in his seat turning on the truck with the heater on full blast. I hunched as small as I could get with my hands over the heater.
He drove around town aimlessly. I still felt shaky, like I’d been in an accident and barely walked away, leaving a wreck behind. Osmond reached over and took one of my hands in his. His hand was warm, comfortable, but I had to resist the urge to jerk away from him.
“Do you want to talk about it?” Osmond asked after a long silence stretched out as dark and bleak as the night outside the window.
“About what?” I asked.
“Did you see Valerie in the alley?” he asked.
I shook my head and shivered.
“She looked at you like… I don’t know. She looked like you were responsible for it.”
My head snapped up and I stared at Osmond. He looked back at me with a slight frown on his warm face and I pulled my hand out of his grip.
“I haven’t talked to Valerie since school started after Christmas break.”
“I could feel the energy coming off you,” Osmond said quietly. “You were watching the movie but I watched you. Something happened in that theater that only you saw, and it upset you enough that…” he trailed off.
“You think I burned down the theater?”
He studied the road for a minute without saying anything. “I don’t know what happened; that’s why I’m asking you.”
“How should I know? I don’t know anything! I don’t know why I still haven’t figured anything out! I don’t know who I am, or what I want, or what’s going to happen, and I certainly don’t know why you wanted to take me on a date. I don’t know why I have to smell blood in a movie theater, or why I…” I faltered and didn’t ask why I hurt so much for someone I didn’t really know.
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