Chapter 29 #2
sister—your sister who was dead an entire year before I met you—drew me.”
“Define ‘reasonable.’” He tried to flash her his cheeky grin, but he could not hide the wild panic in his eyes. It was the
look of someone caught in a lie.
A big, terrible lie.
“I want to know the truth.”
“I don’t think you do.”
“Jack.”
“Okay. We’re doing this.” He dragged his hands over his face. “Rose drew that a long time ago.”
“How long?”
“Very long.” His throat bobbed. “As in 1875.”
Seven years ago. Not trusting her legs, Emmy lowered herself onto the edge of the bed. In 1875 she’d been eleven years old.
“I don’t understand. Why would she draw this?”
“Her conjury was no crystal ball. She couldn’t ask questions of it, or even find reason to what she drew most of the time.
Except when she held the relic. And we all know how well that turned out. Though I’ve always wondered, if she’d tried it again, knowing what to expect—”
“Jack.”
“Right. Okay.” He blew out his breath. “Rose called her prophecies ‘little pivots.’ She thought she drew moments when the
course of our lives would shift. Maybe we would receive crucial news. Maybe we would make up our mind about something. Either
way, our lives would pivot.”
“But there’s nothing important about this moment. We were just laughing because we’d nearly died, and you looked so ridiculous—”
She saw it then, layered between his wince and his nervous smile. The same caught expression Caleb had made, only moments earlier, when she’d brought up Jimmy.
“Don’t,” Emmy warned, rising to her feet.
“You said you wanted the truth.”
“Don’t.”
He cut off her path to the door. “I know you don’t want to hear this, but I think I might be . . . a little bit in love with
you?”
She squeezed her eyes shut, blocking out the uncharacteristic hope in his face.
“And my nosy sister drew the exact moment I realized it.”
“You hardly even knew me!” Her heart beat erratically against its cage, the sudden burst of oxygen dizzying. “When this happened,
I’d been living at Mistfield for what—two weeks? Three? And other than your harassing me about my magic, we rarely spoke!”
“I was thirteen when she drew you. Thirteen,” he repeated, following her as she escaped toward the hearth, “with a mother
I’d killed at birth and a father who held it against me. Rose and Caleb were in their own world, with no space for me. Most
of the time, I was with Oliver, who hardly even tolerated me. But there was a girl out there who would one day touch my face
like I wasn’t bad luck personified. Like I mattered.”
She heard the gentle rustling of paper as he lifted the drawing from the portfolio, but Emmy kept her back turned. He did
not love her. He couldn’t.
“I was desperate to meet you. As soon as I came of age, I attended every single ball, charmed and ordinary, searching every
stranger’s face. Rose and Caleb teased me to no end, but I couldn’t find you. Not until you climbed onstage at the debutante
ball, five years later.”
“Don’t,” she rasped, ignoring his gentle hand on her shoulder. It was hard enough keeping her strength without thinking of
that cursed ball.
“You were so beautiful,” he whispered. “So earnest in your pursuit of conjury. And so fiery, too, tossing your gold at the triumvirate’s feet—at my father’s feet, as if you cared little for his pomp and circumstance. And the way you searched the crowd for your father . . .”
Emmy stayed very still, lest her chest crack open.
“But they accused you of fraud.”
She blinked, long and slow.
“I hated myself for it later, that I didn’t fight for you when they dragged you away.”
As he fell quiet, Emmy tried to recall a boy with gray eyes that awful night. It was too much.
“You said to me once that I did not question things, and you were right.” Shame laced his quiet words. “My father said you’d
have due process, and I believed him. It was Rose who insisted we do more to help you. She was the one who thought to attend
your father’s funeral.”
Emmy could bear it no longer; she whipped toward him. “If I was so important to you, why didn’t you tell me? Why did you aggravate
me every chance you had?”
“Because I was supposed to die, and you were never supposed to find out any of this!”
“How honorable,” she said dryly.
“That’s not what I meant.” Eyes closed, he dug his fingertips into his forehead. “I found you on the worst night of your life.
And I was thrown into the penitentiary on the worst night of my life. Finally, I was near you, but I couldn’t see you, or hear you, or help either of us. . . . My sister was dead. Her morbid
prophecies were coming true, and quickly.”
He opened his eyes, his expression pained. “Unlike you, I had hope. I had Rose’s drawings. But believing in them also meant
accepting I was going to die soon.”
She was back at Grimsbane now. Alone in her cell, while he was alone in his.
“You did not need to fall in love,” he said quietly, “only to grieve again. But you needed your conjury back. You needed to
stoke that self-righteous fury that burns in your heart, the one that compels you to fight against injustice. For your father.
For yourself. In those first few weeks at Mistfield, the only time you looked alive was when you were angry. So, yes. I stoked
the embers of your fury. And it worked.”
They stared at each other, and Emmy tried to absorb this new Jack. One who had known about her for seven years. “So while
you were in Grimsbane, you knew we would both be free one day in order for that”—she nodded toward the drawing—“to come true.”
“I didn’t know if it’d be days or weeks or years. It all depended on my getting my conjury back, and Caleb and Jimmy making
arrangements. But I spoke to you through the walls.” He turned away, crimson flooding his cheeks. “I yelled for you to hold
on. And when my conjury started to return, I ignited the walls with my pitiful flame, pretending I was keeping you warm. My
obsession became my madness: taking care of you, pretending you could hear me.”
Her favorite wall, the one that was slightly warmer than the rest. The voice she’d thought she hallucinated: Hold on, just a little longer, hold on . . .
“This isn’t how I wanted to tell you.” He raked his fingers through his hair. “I had a whole speech planned, but I can’t remember
a damn word.”
She saw his pain. Felt his need. It was tragic, really, because if they’d met before the debutante ball—when she was naive
enough to believe in love—she would have been swept off her feet by Jack. A prophesied romance between a girl from Five Points
and the son of a rich, magical family? Grace would have swooned over it, too.
But Grace had taught Emmy an important lesson, one she could not afford to forget: love was a lie.
“I think I understand.” She kept her voice gentle. “At a time when you were very alone, your sister predicted you’d meet a
girl. And that girl became a fantasy—”
“No.” He shook his head adamantly, coming closer. “No, that’s not what I meant—”
“You don’t love me, Jack. It takes years to fall in love. Not months.”
“Then I’ll tell you again in as many years as you’d like.” He grinned. “Two? Three?”
“You love the girl from the drawing.” Emmy could hardly stand that laughing, carefree version of herself. It was too much
of a tease, a glimpse at what life might have been. “And I think you know it, deep down. That’s why you kept this from me.”
“I was afraid you’d run for the hills! Especially when you saw all the other girls she’d drawn me with.” Seeing her confusion,
he added, “You didn’t see the other girls?”
She’d already known that Rose had drawn him with several lovers, so it should not have hurt. It should not have twisted like
a fucking knife that someone else was destined to matter to him. But by now, Emmy was well-versed in choking down her feelings.
With renewed vigor, he turned the pages of the portfolio, thumbing through prophecy after prophecy. “This is another reason
I stayed away from you in those first few weeks. Well, this and the fact that my family was dead and I was searching for the
antidote to grief in the bottom of a wine bottle.”
“Maybe your future is with one of these other girls,” she forced herself to say.
“Unlikely.” He kept thumbing through his sister’s prophecies.
“Maybe one of them is destined to be your wife,” Emmy continued, her voice strained. “Someone who loves the Society, and the fuss and frill of balls, and—”
“Here she is.” With a triumphant smile, Jack set the portfolio in front of her.
Hesitantly, Emmy glanced down at the drawing.
It was her. Not her, but Winnie Fairchild, her wide emerald eyes locked on Jack’s. He cupped her chin, his face full of determination. Adoration.
The room began to spin.
It was just before he’d confronted Oliver. When she’d transformed him to Jack.
No wonder she’d rendered him speechless when he’d returned from the city, seeing her Winnie face for the first time. It wasn’t
that he was awestruck; he’d recognized her.
She gripped the bedpost to keep herself upright.
“Ready for the next one?”
There was Jack, with a half-dressed brunette buried against his neck. His shirt was only half buttoned, his eyes squeezed
shut. Though her face was hidden against him, it was her, when she’d been wearing that inhibition-lowering bangle.
He flipped to the next, and Jack was locked in a passionate embrace with a blonde girl. His back was against a brick wall,
her hands tangled in his hair as they kissed with a tenderness that made Emmy want to strangle him for making her look at
this terrible—
Her hand flew to her mouth. The lovers were in an alleyway, just as she and Jack had been earlier today. The blonde girl—that
was the disguise she’d used.
She must have made a pained noise, for he pulled her against him.
How weak she was, letting him hold her. How weak, burying her head against his chest, listening to the reassuring thump thump thump of his heart.
“You have transformed me more than you intended,” he breathed against her hair. “I’m still not worthy of you, but I’m trying, Emmy, I swear it.”
She shook her head against his chest, refusing to look at him while he was so earnest.
“You’ve called me obsessed, but it’s worse than that. It frightens me, the things I’d do to keep you safe. I’d kill for you,
Emmy.” His thumb trailed her lips, his gaze so piercing, her eyes fluttered closed. “I’d set the world on fire just to keep
you warm. And I’ll never let anything bad happen to you again. I swear it.”
His nose grazed hers, and she could have melted from longing. All she had to do was turn mere millimeters, and his waiting
lips would find hers. Never before had she been so torn. He was the only person who understood what it was like to hurt the
way she hurt. To lose the way she’d lost. She’d begun to rely on him so slowly, so thoroughly, she hadn’t realized what she
was doing until it was too late.
He meant his words now. But if she lost him—if he turned against her like Grace had—she’d never piece herself back together.
She needed him. And that was precisely the problem.
Gently, she untangled herself from his embrace. “I’m sorry, Jack, but I just—can’t.”
“No more cliff jumping, I swear it.” He took her hands, those gray eyes pleading. “No more burning holes in your walls, and
making jokes at inopportune times, and—”
“Whoever gets your heart will be one lucky girl.” She gave his hands a final squeeze. “But that girl isn’t me.”
He flinched as if she’d struck him. “You mean that.”
“I’m saving you a lot of trouble.” Her voice was calm now, her resolve growing as she let go of him.
Jack absorbed her words as he searched her face. She hated seeing him so devastated, but what choice did she have?
“Tomorrow, we’ll face Grace.” Her name alone made Emmy feel more certain that she was, in fact, doing the right thing.
“And if we ruin her, you’ll go back to being Jack Fontaine, with no prophecies hanging over your head.
You’ll fall in love with someone new, and she’ll move into Mistfield, and you’ll forget all about those drawings. ” And me, she nearly added.
“I’d rather go to hell than share Mistfield with someone else.”
“Jack—”
“I’d rather rot in Grimsbane. It’d be a picnic in comparison.” Pushing up his sleeves, he glanced around the room, looking
unsteady for once.
And she hated it.
He walked stiffly back to the hole he’d burned, and Emmy racked her brain for the words to set things right between them.
“About tomorrow . . .”
“Don’t worry, Vallillo. You’ve just given me a whole new reason to hate Grace Montgomery.” His smile was forced, his eyes
once again shuttered. “Sleep well. It all ends tomorrow, one way or the other.”
There was so much more to say, wasn’t there? But Emmy only nodded and, once he was safely on the other side, healed the wall
for what felt like the last time.