I Am Never Alone

by Campbell, Jamie

  What had I done?

  What had he done?

  “Jet!”

  My sudden scream snapped his attention back to me. “I taught him a lesson. He’ll never come near you again. I promise nobody is going to hurt you.”

  “So you didn’t kill him?” The fact I even needed to ask that question was proof of just how far into the depths of despair the city had sunk.

  “No, I didn’t,” Jet replied defensively. “Did you really think I went to kill him?”

  I shrugged. “I thought, perhaps. Maybe. I don’t know. I was scared. I still am. You can’t do this, Jet. People hurt people, it’s a fact of life. The city is dangerous, of course I’m going to come to harm sometimes. We all are.”

  “Not you.” He said the words so quietly I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to hear them or not.

  He wasn’t going to manipulate me with pretty words again. I couldn’t be placated so easily. “You can’t fight violence with violence. I don’t want you taking on my battles for me. This had nothing to do with you. They were my bruises, my fear. You had no right-”

  I couldn’t have this conversation. I didn’t want to have it. If I kept going I would say something I might have regretted later. As much I needed to be away from Jet and be done with him, I needed him to help me with the spirits. Their need was greater than my own.

  So I threw up my hands in frustration and stormed off instead. Or at least I tried to storm off. More accurately, I limped away and winced with each heavy step.

  “Everly, wait,” Jet said as he caught up with me at the end of the block. His hand rested gently on my back, slowing my pace. “I’m not going to apologize for protecting you.”

  “God, that’s not even what I’m upset about.” I looked to the sky myself, trying to keep the tears at bay. I was about two seconds away from cracking and I did not want to do that. I would rather have done anything but cry in front of him right then. “I’m upset because you completely disregarded what I wanted and took off. You went all alpha male without even thinking. That kind of action gets people killed, it could have gotten you killed.”

  He stood there, chewing on his bottom lip, like he was a little boy. There was no trace of the Jet I had seen earlier, the one who had wanted to murder someone. He looked so much younger than he normally did.

  Like a boy, scared.

  But I knew how dangerous he really was.

  There was nothing more he could say that I wanted to hear so I started moving again. This time, he didn’t catch up to me. Although I could feel his eyes on my back until I turned the corner at the end of the street.

  Oliver appeared shortly after, walking the rest of the way to the apartment with me while he listened to me vent. And I vented the entire way.

  The apartment was a welcome relief, giving me the opportunity to block out the rest of the city and pretend nothing else existed. I had Oliver, that’s all I needed.

  I found some food and stood in the kitchen while it heated. “Tell me I was wrong about being mad with him,” I challenged Oliver, who had spent most of the journey nodding along with whatever I said.

  “You weren’t wrong. Except…”

  “What?”

  “I’m kind of really glad he’s so protective of you.” He held up a shushing finger just as I was about to protest. “I know you don’t like it and you don’t want to need protection, but surely having someone looking out for you can’t be a bad thing.”

  “But he-”

  “I know, I know, he should have listened to you before he acted.” Oliver knew me too well. He let out a resigned sigh. “Ev, I might be leaving soon, we both know it’s coming. The thought of someone being here to look out for you when I’m not, it makes me feel a whole lot better about the entire thing.”

  All the anger seeped away. The reminder of Oliver’s approaching goodbye was enough to snap me back to reality and make everything else pale in comparison.

  Jet didn’t matter.

  Oliver did.

  I turned off the camping stove and started eating, forcing myself to savor every bite so it wasn’t gone too soon. Oliver sat on the floor, studying me the whole time.

  Finally, I settled next to him. “Are you scared? About leaving, I mean.”

  “Not really,” Oliver replied. It seemed so surreal talking about his crossing over when it felt like we were still the same kids we had always been. Like maybe he would laugh and tell me he was joking about the whole thing one day.

  “Do you believe in Heaven?”

  He nodded gently. “If Hell exists, then there must be a Heaven, right? I think there’s only good things on the other side waiting for all of us. At least I know my parents will be there.”

  “So will mine.”

  “And everyone else’s. I’ll be fine, in good company.”

  “I can’t imagine a world without you in it,” I said, feeling a lump forming in my throat. There was going to be no way to stop the tears this time. Still, I wiped them away quickly, not allowing them to linger.

  “I’ll still be with you, Ev. I’m never going to leave you completely.”

  “If you say you’ll always be in my heart, I’m going to vanquish you right now,” I joked, earning a real laugh from Oliver.

  “That is what I was going to say but I’ll keep it to myself now,” he confessed. “But, you know, it’s still kind of true.”

  It was.

  But I would never have admitted to it.

  I did, however, admit something else. “I’m going to find it really hard without you being here.”

  “I know.”

  “I understand you have to leave, though. I really do.”

  His face settled into one of sadness, his eyes as mournful as I’d ever seen them. “I wish it were different and I…”

  “Were still alive?” I finished for him. Words between us were superfluous sometimes. We knew what the other was feeling and thinking without having to express it out loud.

  “Yeah,” he confirmed.

  But he did die. He was killed and his life was taken from him by some nameless boy who would never comprehend exactly what he had done to us.

  To Oliver.

  To me.

  There was nothing more either of us could say. We settled into silence and mulled over life without each other. I dreaded the moment when it would be a reality.

  Sometime in the night I fell asleep. I almost wanted to stay awake just so I could savor the moments with Oliver while I could but sleep won over in the end. He might not need to sleep, but I certainly did.

  I blinked my eyes open in the early hours of the morning. The sun wasn’t completely up so I still should have been able to enjoy the numbness sleep brought. At least for a while longer.

  But something had woken me. Through my hazy mind, I tried to recall what had pulled me awake. It had been a noise. Not from Oliver, he was as still as a corpse.

  It was a noise outside the door.

  I froze in fear, again wondering how many people could possibly have a key to the apartment. Jet could have given them out like candy for all I knew.

  “Did you hear that?” I whispered. Oliver’s eyebrows knitted together as his head tilted to one side to listen.

  He put a finger to his lips to shush me, even though he could have said the words and nobody else besides me would have heard him. I guessed some habits were hard to break.

  Oliver stood and hovered at the door.

  Before he stuck his head right through.

  The sight of Oliver’s body with no head was disturbing to say the least. But definitely not the most disturbing thing I had seen in the past year. Which was a concern in and of itself.

  His ability to walk through walls was also handy.

  Oliver popped back into the apartment. “There’s nobody out there but someone’s left a book on the doorstep.”

  “A book?”

  He shrugged. I pulled open the door and looked for myself. Sure enough, a thick book with red leather b
inding sat on the unfinished concrete stoop.

  I picked it up and shut the door again in one swift move. All the locks clicked back into place. Whoever had left it might not have stuck around but that didn’t mean they had left the building. It also didn’t mean they wouldn’t come back.

  “It’s an old book on witchcraft,” I muttered, intrigued. Who the hell would leave a book on witchcraft on my doorstep? Surely it was a bit odd even for someone’s idea of a practical joke.

  One of the pages was bent over itself. I opened the book to smooth it back and the word demon caught my eye. I pushed the book open all the way and lay the heavy weight on the kitchen counter. Oliver was reading over my shoulder within seconds.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  It took me a few moments to work it out. “It’s instructions on how to use the power of Hell to vanquish a demon.”

  “That’s interesting.”

  “It’s what we’ve been looking for. We didn’t know if we’d be able to vanquish Kostucha before, but if we could somehow use the power of Hell, it just might work.”

  “Is that something you really should be dealing with?” Oliver asked, his face full of concern. Even with all the pain and suffering of the spirits, he still wanted to make sure I was safe. It made my heart swell even further.

  “Probably not,” I admitted. “But it might end up being safer than going after the demon without any supernatural backup. Even if we have to work with Hell to do it.”

  “It still sounds risky.”

  “Everything has risks. All our options do, and even then, they aren’t really options.”

  “Maybe we need more options then.”

  I read through the page again. Three times, for it to really sink in. I could do this. I could follow the instructions and they could easily be adapted to modern times.

  “It’s exactly what we need,” I said under my breath, almost in disbelief. The instructions were perfect for getting rid of Kostucha. So perfect they could only have come from one person.

  Jet.

  And there was only one place he could have got it.

  The library.

  He had stolen the book from the secret room in the library. He would have risked his life and limbs to get it out past the librarian. It wouldn’t surprise me if he now was missing a limb.

  Why had he done that?

  It would have taken him forever to go through all those books alone. And to find exactly what we needed? He didn’t have to go to all that trouble for the spirits, for the demon, for me.

  It didn’t mean I wasn’t still angry with him, though.

  The way Jet had reacted when he discovered my bruises was ridiculous. He had been pigheaded, careless, and relentless. He should have listened to me before running off and risked getting himself killed in the process.

  One book left on my doorstep could not atone for that.

  I had to keep reminding myself.

  Because I was at risk of easily forgetting.

  I stowed the book underneath my blanket, hoping nobody would choose today to ransack my apartment. They probably wouldn’t want a stupid old book anyway but there was no logic to some people these days.

  Another day curled up in the apartment sulking was not something I wanted to do so I left as soon as daylight cleared. My first stop was the shelter.

  When Violet had mentioned my sister a few days ago, she had stirred my ache to find her. She was never far from my thoughts but I wondered if the shelter was somewhere she might go from time to time.

  I also wanted to see how they were going for supplies. I couldn’t do much to help but I could at least keep an eye on the place and pass on any relevant information.

  If I planned on speaking to Jet again, that is.

  I needed him to help vanquish Kostucha, but if I could do it without his help, I was willing to give it a try. I just didn’t need his kind of drama.

  The shelter was just as busy as it always was, if not more so. More and more kids were taking refuge in the old school hall and nobody seemed particularly healthy or happy. The few conversations I picked up as a walked through were terse words, sounding more like arguments than pleasantries. If the food situation didn’t kill us all, we’d probably do it to each other before too long.

  Even with Jet’s so-called protection I felt vulnerable. We all were.

  The line for food was out the door, wrapping around the building like a protective barrier. I worked my way up along it, earning some scathing looks from those that thought I was trying to cut the line.

  In every face I passed, I looked for Faith.

  Nobody even resembled her.

  Finally, I made it to the counter and found the same girl who had supplied me with bandages a few days earlier. She recognized me straight away. “Need more bandages?”

  “No, thanks, I’m still good,” I replied. It was difficult to keep rotating just the two pairs of bandages but I wasn’t going to take any more away from others who might need them. “I was wondering how your supply store was going? Do you still have enough food to give out?”

  “They’re fine.” The grumpy voice didn’t come from the girl but the guy further behind the counter. One who I had previously taken no notice of.

  Now, looking closer, I could place the voice with a face.

  Jet.

  Of course.

  “I didn’t see you there,” I said awkwardly. The girl gave me a kind smile and picked up the box she just emptied, leaving us to our poor excuse of a conversation with an apologetic look.

  Jet turned and stared at me, his intense eyes drilling into me with an unreadable expression. A deep gash blazed a red line across his forehead. He still had all his limbs so I guess the librarian took it easy on him.

  He placed a plaster over his gash. It wasn’t nearly big enough to cover it. It was going to hurt like a bitch when he pulled it off. I winced just thinking about it.

  “Thank you for the book,” I said quietly when it didn’t seem like he was going to say anything further.

  “What book?” he asked.

  “You know what book. Nobody else would have gone to that much trouble for me.”

  His eyes finally left mine. It was a relief, like I had just been released from his scrutiny. I couldn’t think straight when he looked at me like that.

  Nor could I move.

  “It wasn’t much trouble,” he replied.

  “Yeah, right. And that cut wasn’t from the librarian, right? You ran into a door or something?”

  His hand reflectively went to his forehead, rubbing around the gash. It covered half his head, it must have hurt like crazy when it happened. It probably still hurt now a few hours later.

  Jet’s face finally relaxed, all the wrinkles smoothed out again, reminding me he wasn’t much older than myself. “She was so pissed when she saw that I was taking the book.”

  “She could have killed you.”

  He shook his head. “Nah, she’s not that bad. All bark and no bite.”

  “Except her fingernails.”

  “Yeah, maybe,” he replied, a grin spreading across his lips. He might have been acting nonchalant about it now, but I would bet everything I had it wasn’t so easy at the time. He wouldn’t have been able to see the librarian like I could, he wouldn’t have even known where to run to get away from her.

  All the anger I had tried to hold onto for him seeped away. Going back in the night to research alone was actually really sweet. Stupid, but sweet. The whole thing would have been the opposite of fun.

  “Well, thank you,” I said. “I appreciate it.”

  “I’d do anything for you.”

  Yeah, right. Anything except listen.

  “So do you think it will work? Harnessing the power of Hell to vanquish Kostucha?” I asked eagerly. After all, he must have thought it noteworthy to bring the book all the way to my apartment just so I could read it.

  “I think it’s the closest thing we have to a shot.”

  “
I think so, too.” I risked a smile, it didn’t hurt.

  “I’m on my way back to the tunnels, want to walk with me and we’ll talk further?”

  I did. We needed to settle a few things about the actual act of harnessing the power. If we could nut those details out, we could actually do the ritual.

  We left the shelter and started the walk back to the underground. It was starting to get a familiar and well worn pathway. Never would I have thought that was possible not so long ago.

  Jet slid his arm around my waist as we stepped onto the snow covered streets.

  “What are you doing?” I asked. Just because I was walking with him, didn’t mean we had something between us. He was taking some liberties.

  “I’m making sure it’s clear to everyone watching that you are with me,” Jet replied matter-of-factly. His grip didn’t lessen. “Unless you’d like to risk being attacked again? I can drop my arm if you’d like.”

  “No, that’s okay.”

  I let him leave his hand there. Even though I still didn’t like everyone thinking I somehow belonged to him. Like we were a couple or something.

  We weren’t.

  We never would be.

  Oliver, however, apparently found it hilarious as he walked alongside me. “Don’t give me that look, Ev.”

  I scowled at him.

  “Come on, it’s funny,” he continued, knowing full well that I couldn’t reply without sounding like a crazy person talking to myself.

  I hated the fact I was the only one who could see him sometimes.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Jet’s hand felt heavy around my waist. It somehow added to my warmth even though I was wearing my coat and his hand rested on the outside of it. Even through the material I could feel his touch like it was directly on my skin.

  And I didn’t even want to think about what that might mean.

  I couldn’t let Oliver keep taunting me any longer. “Will you quit it?”

  “Quit what?” Jet and Oliver asked at the same time.

  “Not you, Jet.”

  “What?” Oliver asked so innocently. Like he hadn’t just spent the past five minutes comparing me to an object that Jet had stamped as his all over.