Death, and the Girl He Loves

by Darynda Jones

  I knew that look. There was no getting past this. Until I gave it a try, there’d be no living with her. “Fine,” I said, letting exasperation filter into my voice.

  “What?” Kenya asked.

  Cameron had settled onto the window seat and Jared sat on the floor beside me, scrolling through the pictures on my phone, his shoulder against my knee.

  “She doesn’t know?” Brooklyn asked me.

  Glitch spoke up then, happy to fill her in. “Lor can go into pictures and see what happened when they were being taken. It’s part of her superpowers.”

  Superpowers. If only.

  “Wow. Okay,” Kenya said, folding her arms across her chest. “That’s cool.”

  “But I can’t go into drawings.”

  “No,” Brooklyn said, folding her arms across her chest as well, “you don’t know that. Try.”

  After rolling my eyes so far back into my head, I almost fell backwards, I refocused on the drawing I’d done. It was disproportionate. The eyes too wide-set. The nose not quite centered. “I don’t think this will work.”

  “You didn’t think the other would work either. Concentrate.”

  I scanned the room. Brooke and Glitch looked on expectantly. Kenya curiously. And Jared humorously. Even Cameron seemed interested. “There’s way too much pressure. You guys have to stop looking at me. I can’t do this if you’re looking at me.”

  Suddenly every gaze in the room had someplace else to be. It was silly. And it didn’t help. I would never be able to do this. My shoulders sagged in defeat until Jared looked up at me and winked, his dark eyes sparkling with mirth. That one gesture, that one act of kindness, made me feel like I could do anything. Or at least give it my best shot.

  I filled my lungs to capacity and laid my fingers across the page. Let them slide along the image. I focused on the primitive lines and the adolescent shading, and relaxed my body so it could fall through space and time. Not expecting much, I flinched when I felt something tremble beneath my touch. It surprised me and I snapped my hand back.

  Thankfully, my guests were still minding their own business. Brooke was examining her nails. Kenya was cleaning hers with her switchblade. Glitch was playing Asteroids on my computer. Cameron was playing with his shoelaces and Jared was back to scrolling through my pictures.

  I stared at the image again. The drawing was so rudimentary, surely I couldn’t do something like go into it. Not in the same way I could a picture. I’d been going into them for weeks now, looking into a time past, seeing what was happening when the picture was taken, swimming through the moments it captured, but that was different. It was a photograph, a true copy of reality. This was nothing more than scribbles on paper.

  “Well?” Brooke asked, her impatience shining through.

  I tossed the drawing onto my desk. “Nothing. Just as I thought.”

  “Well, darn,” she said, biting a nail to the quick. “This plan sucks.”

  “What plan?” I asked.

  “Exactly.”

  THE WARM FUZZIES

  I listened to the sound of my best friends breathing as they slept. I could tell everyone was unconscious except Cameron. He sat at the window seat, looking into the darkness.

  Since it was just us, I decided to look through the journal my grandmother Olivia had taken from the nephilim again. Just as before, I saw nothing to indicate it was anything more than an ordinary sketchbook. It was full of drawings, mostly abstracts of people or still lifes. Some I could make out. Some I couldn’t.

  “You don’t sleep much, do you?” I asked Cameron.

  “Not really,” he said, refusing to look my way.

  “Well, I can’t sleep, either. I’m going to get some water. Want anything?”

  “Nope.”

  I wrestled my sheets down and climbed out of bed. He was sitting close to Brooke. Her bed was right by the window, so he had little choice, but in the moonlight, I could see his hand resting on her pillow, mere inches from her head as she slept. His thumb stroked a lock of her dark hair absently. He had pretty much everyone in town fooled, but not me. He had genuine feelings for Brooke. Probably had them for a long time. And it was me he was mad at, not her.

  I tiptoed past Glitch, who was in his usual sleeping bag, and stepped right up to Cameron so I could whisper to him. He finally spared me a glance that was full of anger. Just as I thought.

  I leaned in and he leaned back to get away from me.

  “Not this time,” I said. I leaned in farther and gave him a kiss on the cheek.

  The next look he gave me almost made me laugh out loud. Confusion with a healthy side of horror had taken over.

  I grinned and said, “Thank you for being everything that you are.”

  “I’m still mad at you.”

  “Exactly. Now get over it and tell Brooke how you feel.”

  He turned away. “She knows how I feel.”

  But he didn’t see what I saw. He didn’t realize that this was about as real as it was going to get. We were all about to die, and this little tiff between the two of them was an utterly useless waste of time.

  I took his face into my hands and drew his gaze back to mine. “No matter what happens,” I said, fighting back the emotion that suddenly took hold, “I appreciate everything that you’ve done for me. And for Brooke.”

  “Yeah, no problem,” he said, wary.

  “Cameron, I love you. And, if you ever want to make out with me, you know like after school tomorrow, just let me know.”

  “Lorelei McAlister!”

  I startled and turned toward Brooklyn, who had bolted upright on her bed. Her breathing had quickened when I stepped over and I knew she was awake. How could I let my last fleeting chances to punk her go to waste? We didn’t have much time left, and I’d wasted a lot of that time in Maine with no one to harass. I had to get the jabs in while I could.

  “What?” I asked, blinking in innocence. “You clearly don’t want to make out with him. And, you know—” I gestured toward his general physique. “—he’s kind of hot in a weird, nephilim sort of way.”

  Brooke bit down, fighting her natural instinct to sharpen her claws on human flesh, and slammed a fist into her pillow before throwing herself back onto it. “It’s not going to work.”

  “Brooklyn Prather. You act like I had ulterior motives for putting the moves on your man. Don’t you know me at all?”

  “Yes.” She pulled the covers up and crossed her arms over them. “That’s exactly why it’s not going to work.”

  I shrugged at Cameron, who sat glaring at me. It gave me the warm fuzzies, knowing I could frazzle my friends so. As I headed downstairs for a glass of water, I wondered what I could do to Glitch. His fear of turtles came to mind. Where would one find a turtle in New Mexico in the middle of winter?

  I contemplated that as I started down the stairs and heard voices coming from the kitchen. It was well past my grandparents’ bedtime, and I had every intention of telling them that until I realized the voices were not theirs.

  “I’m just wondering what your role in all this is.”

  I stopped to listen. Eavesdropping was an ugly job, but someone had to do it.

  “I wonder that myself sometimes.”

  Jared. Mac was talking to Jared. I inched down another step. The guy had ears like a wolf. Jared, not Mac.

  “I mean, you aren’t in any of the prophecies,” Mac said.

  “Neither are you,” Jared countered.

  A soft laugh filtered up to me. “You got me there, Your Grace.”

  I loved it when they called Jared, a true prince of heaven, Your Grace. He, however, did not.

  “Jared’s fine.”

  Yes, he was.

  “Jared it is, but I still wonder about how you play into all of this.”

  “I was sent,” Jared said. “That’s all I know, but you can think of me as a defensive guardsman, here to tackle the obstacles that get in Lorelei’s way.”

  “But you were initially sent
to take her.” Mac’s voice hardened. It wasn’t Jared’s fault his job title was the Angel of Death. People took that stuff so personally.

  “I was, yes, but I knew something didn’t fit. I knew what she was the moment I saw her.”

  “And what was that?”

  “The last prophet,” he said, matter-of-fact. “A direct descendant of Arabeth. And I knew what she was destined to do.”

  “So you disobeyed your orders? You saved her instead of taking her?” Mac asked him.

  “Yes. I disobeyed my orders. Why would the only person purported to save the world from a supernatural war be killed before she could accomplish such a feat? It wasn’t right.”

  After a long pause, Mac said, “I didn’t think you guys could do that.”

  “We can’t.”

  “Well, I’m grateful either way. It’s just—”

  The voices stopped just when I was getting into the conversation. I eased closer, straining to hear every syllable.

  “It’s just you look at her with … something else.”

  I could almost hear the smile in Jared’s voice when he answered. “That’s because I feel something else. I’m in love with her.”

  I froze. Jared was in love? Jared was in love with me? I let my lids drift shut and reveled in the sound of those words.

  When Mac didn’t respond, Jared continued. “If it makes you feel better, we’ve been together for centuries.”

  My lids flew open. What did he mean by that?

  “I’m not sure I understand.”

  Intrigued, I leaned closer still, easing over as far as I could until my foot slipped off the step.

  Looking back, I couldn’t say that I fell head over heels down the stairs, but it sure felt like it. My foot landed at an angle on the next step and then the rest of the staircase came up to meet me, one step after another until I crashed on the kitchen floor. Thankfully, I was in capri pj’s and not a nightgown. It could have been so much worse.

  “Lorelei!” Mac called. He jumped up to help me, but nothing was more bruised than my pride. Heat rose up my neck and over my face as Mac picked me up and brushed me off.

  Jared grinned from behind him. “Been there long?”

  I gritted my teeth. He’d heard me. Freaking wolf.

  “No,” I said, my brows squishing together. “I just came downstairs.”

  “You did indeed,” he said before winking at me. For a potential boyfriend, he didn’t seem very concerned about my well-being.

  In fact, he’d been pretty calm since I got back. Too calm, maybe. Like he knew something we didn’t.

  “You okay, Pix?” Mac asked.

  I gave him my attention, loving the sound of my nickname on his voice. “I’m okay. Thanks.”

  Mac led me to a chair beside Jared. They’d been sitting at our tiny kitchen table. Mac was drinking coffee while Jared sipped on an orange soda. That would be my influence. I took the can from him and took a sip myself.

  “So, what were you guys talking about?”

  “You,” Jared said without missing a beat.

  “Yes, Jared was just telling me how long you two have known each other.”

  “A few months,” he said to Mac before challenging me with his eyes. I could hardly argue about what I’d just heard without giving away the fact that I was indeed eavesdropping.

  “Yep.” I offered a congenial nod. “A few months.”

  In all honesty, I could have named the exact days, hours, and minutes since our first meeting in the halls of Riley High, but that seemed unnecessary.

  With my sudden appearance, the conversation took on a whole new direction. Clearly Mac didn’t want to question Jared’s intentions in front of me. But I sure wanted him to. What were his intentions? What would happen to him when we were all dead and buried? Could I still see him? Could we date in heaven?

  So many questions, so little time.

  Mac seemed hesitant to leave us alone, so after about half an hour of idle chitchat that included things like the forming of the earth and stars and that whole book of Revelations thing, my lids started to droop.

  “Bedtime,” Jared said to me.

  I snapped back to attention. “I’m fine.”

  “You’re falling asleep at the table.”

  I rubbed my eyes. “No, I’m not.”

  “You’re drooling,” he added.

  My hand shot to my mouth before I could stop it. I pressed my lips together. “I am not. I’m perfectly awake.”

  The skeptical grin he bestowed upon me was a thing of absolute beauty. I stilled and took it in before he said, “How about I take you upstairs.”

  “Um,” Mac said, interrupting, “how about I take you upstairs?”

  Jared laughed, the sound deep and husky. “Fair enough. Wait, what’s that?” he asked, pointing toward the back of the house.

  Mac turned to look, just as I did, but as I did so, Jared turned and put his mouth on mine so quickly, so softly, the kiss was only a brush of our lips before he pulled back and refocused on the back of the house again.

  “What?” Mac asked.

  My chest filled with such joy, such elation, that containing it when Mac turned back to us was like trying to block out the sun. But I did my best. I frowned and said, “I don’t see anything, either.” I even furrowed my brows as I looked past them. “Then again, I’m not a supernatural being.”

  * * *

  I kissed Mac good night for the second time that night, closed the door to my bedroom, turned, and ran right into Jared. When I sucked in a startled breath, he covered my mouth with his hand and put an index finger over his lips to quiet me, gesturing with a nod of his head toward a departing Mac.

  After waiting a moment for my paternal grandfather to get down the stairs, I pulled his hand from my mouth and looked up at the handsome boy standing before me. He did that. Appeared out of nowhere. I liked that about him.

  He grinned and slid a lock of my hair through his fingers.

  “You seem so different,” I said. “So, I don’t know, at ease with all this.”

  He rubbed the lock of hair over his mouth. “I’ve learned what it’s like to live without you these past weeks. It’s not a lesson I wish to repeat.”

  “Me neither, I can assure you, but that still doesn’t explain why you suddenly seem to be taking all this really well.”

  “Humans are unpredictable,” he said, walking backwards toward my bed and pulling me with him.

  “I could’ve told you that.”

  “All this time I was worried about how we were going to do this. What was going to happen to the world? How could we possibly win?”

  “I’ve had similar thoughts. Quite a few, in fact.”

  “But that’s just it. I don’t have to worry about it. Humans are unpredictable. Prophecies are not. So even though you believe with all your heart you’re going to fail, failure—” He looked up in thought. “How do they say it in the movies?” After a second, he fixed a mirthful grin on me. “Failure is not an option.”

  “Been watching a lot of movies lately?”

  He sat on my bed and literally pulled me into a straddling position onto his lap. I laughed and wrapped my arms around his wide shoulders. He felt heavenly. So much like a regular boy. Only with superpowers. And the ability to kill people with a touch.

  “How is failure not an option?” I asked after settling in. “Because it feels pretty optional right now.”

  “It’s written.” He pulled me closer so he could nuzzle my neck. Goose bumps raced across my skin and I looked around, worried about our audience. “And they’re asleep,” he added.

  He would know. I relaxed and reveled in the feel of him in my arms. I’d yearned for this moment for so long, I had to force myself to believe it was real.

  “Thanks for coming to see me,” he mumbled from the crook of my neck. His warm breath fanned over my collarbone.

  “Coming to see you?”

  “Mmm, the day I came for Elliot Davis.”
/>   He was referring to my visits, my delving inside the picture I had of him from the ’70s.

  I leaned back and gazed at him in astonishment. “You knew I would leave Riley’s Switch. You knew I’d be gone, didn’t you? I mean, I went inside the picture only recently, but for you it must have happened over forty years ago.”

  “It did, yes. And I did.” His brows furrowed. “It’s weird how things happen. How I’ve known you for only a microsecond in the grand scheme of things and yet forever.” He looked down at me. “I’ve known you for a very, very long time. Even longer than you think.”

  “Is that what you meant when you told Mac we’ve been seeing each other for centuries?”

  “It’s related, yes.”

  I pressed my lips together in thought. “I don’t understand.”

  But I’d lost him. He developed a sudden myopic interest in my wrist. Of all things. He took hold of it, lifted it to his mouth, grazed his teeth along the underneath. My pulse quickened in response.

  “They weren’t kidding when they said you’d be the most powerful prophet of them all.”

  I fought to stay alert, but his full mouth pressed against the inside of my wrist was just so—“Wait, they said that? Who are they?”

  “The prophets that came before you. Even Arabeth’s daughter, the one from your direct line, Lara Beth, prophesied that you, the last prophet, would be the most powerful of them all. And she was right. The more you learn, the more the past changes.”

  “What past?” I straightened. “Our past?”

  “Yes.” He trailed tiny kisses up the underside of my arm to the tender flesh inside my elbow, causing the most exquisite quakes to lace through my body and down my spine. “And because of that, we’ve known each other for a very, very long time.”

  “But how? I still don’t understand.”

  “You will. When the time comes, you’ll understand everything. There are things you have yet to discover about yourself. Powers you have yet to unleash.”

  “Like the power to resist you?” I asked, finding pleasure in his explorations, his touch, and the sound of his voice.

  He laughed softly from behind a kiss at the crook of my elbow. “I hope not.”