Chapter Thirty-Eight Stop Meshing With Me
His words gut me, and I want to ask him if he means them. And if he does, why is he always running in the opposite direction? Except there’s a part of me that’s afraid just bringing it up will send him running again. And I don’t want this to end. Not yet. Not when he feels so good—so right—pressed against me.
And not when, just for a moment, I can have a dream that doesn’t turn into a nightmare.
But too soon Jude’s pulling away, his eyes focused on something in the distance.
“What is it?” I ask. And that’s when it hits me—not only is the pain from the venom gone, but my senses are back to normal, too.
“Mozart’s back and your aunt Claudia’s with her.”
“How’d she find her so quickly?”
He shrugs as he tosses me my still-sodden shirt. “There’s not a lot she can’t do when she puts her mind to it.”
I can’t help shuddering as I shake out my shirt. The last thing I want to do right now is put it back on—it’s clammy, bloody, and torn to hell from the damn monster attacks. Just holding it feels gross. But since I also don’t want to explain to my aunt why my shirt is off in a gentleman’s company, I start to shrug the disgusting thing on anyway.
But Jude must notice my distaste because he pulls it away, then hands me his shirt before yanking his hoodie back over his head.
I take his shirt without argument—partly because it’s a much better alternative to my very gross uniform shirt and partly because it smells like him. If he has to let me go, at least it feels a little like he’s still got his arms around me. I even duck my head and let the honey-and-leather-and-cardamom scent of him fill my nose as I put it on, then sigh quietly as it slips into place.
Jude turns to me with raised brows. “You okay over there?”
“Okay is a relative term,” I answer.
“Fair.” He inclines his head. “But it’s better than fine.”
I grin. “I guess it is at that. Jude—”
I break off as my aunt calls my name.
She and Mozart are full-on running across the quad, and I know it’s because she’s worried about me.
“I’m okay,” I call back, moving to head her off.
She careens to a stop in front of me. “Let me see your eyes!”
“They’re okay. I’m okay,” I reiterate. “Jude helped me.”
“Jude?” She glances toward him, eyes wide. “What did he do?”
I start to explain, but this time he’s the one to cut me off. “I didn’t really do much. I think she managed to fight it off on her own.”
I shoot him a what-the-hell look, but he studiously refuses to meet my gaze. Figuring there must be some reason he doesn’t want to tell my aunt what actually happened, I keep my mouth shut. For now.
But at some point, he’s going to have to explain all of this to me. And I mean all.
“Hmm.” My aunt glances back and forth between us with narrowed eyes.
And I get it. Jude and I may not have talked much—or at all—these past few years, but for most of our lives, the two of us and Carolina were inseparable. That means we covered for each other a lot. And as Carolina’s mother, she’s heard more than her fair share of ridiculous stories and even more ridiculous excuses.
In the end, she doesn’t call us on it, though. Instead, she just opens her bright-red medical bag and says, “I still want to check you over, make sure you’re okay. I’m sorry it took me so long to get here. You’re the third unmeshing we’ve had today because of that darn power surge. I was dealing with them, and that’s why I missed your text.” I don’t bother to argue about the checkup—unlike my mother, Aunt Claudia rarely forces her will on anyone…unless their health is involved. Then she becomes downright pugilistic.
“There were other unmeshings?” I ask, because I really want to know what causes them.
“Yes.” She pulls out her light and checks my eyes. “A dragon and a mermaid. They’re okay, but it was touch and go for a few minutes.” She taps my chin. “Open up. I want to see your throat.”
“I really am all right,” I tell her, even as I do what she says.
“We’ll see about that.” She takes out her stethoscope to listen to my heart.
I turn to share my amusement with Jude, only to find him walking back up the admin building steps. “Where are you going?” I ask.
“To finish up inside.” He sounds surprised that I didn’t figure it out.
“You should take someone with you. It’s dangerous—”
This time he doesn’t bother to answer. He just rolls his eyes.
And for a second, I’m not staring at seventeen-year-old Jude at all. I’m staring at fourteen-year-old Jude. Still tall, still beautiful, but a lot leaner and less filled out than now. His face is as somber as ever, but his eyes aren’t as guarded. And maybe the biggest tip-off is he’s wearing the old chukkas he gave up sophomore year. Not that I go out of my way to notice what Jude wears, but it was hard to miss when he traded them in for a pair of Tom Ford Chelsea boots.
“Hey—” I call out, totally confused. But then I blink and fourteen-year-old Jude is gone. And in his place is the guy who just saved my life.
“What’s wrong, Clementine?” Aunt Claudia asks intently. “What did you see?”
But I just shake my head—if I tell her, I’ll probably end up in the infirmary for the rest of the night. “Nothing. I’m just worried about him.”
“Don’t be,” Aunt Claudia tells me as she looks into my ears, which have magically stopped hurting along with the rest of me. “He’ll be fine.”
There it is again, my family’s pervasive, soul deep belief that Jude can handle the monsters—and he did, at least with the ones I saw. Not to mention the fact that his tattoos just did whatever they did to save me.
Is that it? Do they somehow keep him safe? And if so, how? And what are they exactly?
“You are in remarkably good shape considering everything you’ve been through,” Aunt Claudia announces a few minutes later, after giving me a thorough check. “Mozart said you’d also gone a couple rounds with one of the menagerie monsters, but I see no evidence of that. Jude must have been with you.”
I start to tell her he wasn’t but then decide there’s no point. It will only upset her. Plus, it’s obvious no one in my family has any intention of telling me what’s really going on with Jude and his powers. Just one more Calder Academy secret, apparently.
I wish I knew more about oneiroi, but Jude is the only one I’ve ever met. I’ve tried looking them up several times over the years, including the summer before freshman year when I was falling for him and wanted to know everything I could about him. But none of the information I found about the oneiroi sounded like Jude at all. When the internet failed me, I even went to our spooky, not-so-well-kept library. But the only book I found that mentioned the oneiroi only had a couple pages. Most of the information was super obvious, and again, what wasn’t didn’t sound like him.
“I do, however, suggest you go back to the dorm, get your dinner, and rest,” Aunt Claudia says as she starts packing up her bag. “Shifting burns a lot of calories, and it takes a lot out of you—especially when something goes wrong.”
“Is it normal for something to go wrong?” I ask the question that’s been bothering me from the beginning. “Or is it just me?”
The thought that maybe my inexperience caused the unmeshing has been gnawing at me. This shift nearly killed me—and a few other students as well, apparently—which only makes it more obvious that Calder Academy has to do something about this mess. They can’t just let students leave here to figure this shit out alone. Is there any wonder so many former students die in accidents?
I had Mozart, Luis, and Simon to explain things to me and Jude to help me through it—Serena had no one. And neither did any of the other unlucky ones.
Tears bloom behind my eyes at the thought of Serena going through something like what I just went through. No, she wasn’t a shifter, but I’m sure at some point, she knew something was wrong, just like I did. And just like me, she didn’t know how to fix it. Only there was no one to help her figure it out. She was all alone.
Rage wells up inside me, but I swallow it down. When this storm is over, when we’ve made it through, I’m going to talk to my mother again. I’m going to make her listen. Because no one deserves to die the way I almost just did, especially when they’re lonely and terrified and broken all to hell.
“Oh, darling, there’s nothing wrong with you.” Aunt Claudia puts a soft hand on my cheek. “We had all kinds of problems with students when the power surge happened. It messed with the system we use to keep your magic safe and contained. Things went wonky for a lot of the students, not just with unmeshing. A few vampires got stuck in fading mode, a banshee screamed her entire cottage down, and several of the witches spelled themselves invisible. We couldn’t even find them to help change them back. Thankfully it’s over for now, and we should be off the island before anything like that happens again.”
“You don’t think we need to worry about tonight?” The last thing I want is to somehow end up unmeshed again. Even knowing Jude can fix me doesn’t negate the pain that comes with it.
“I really don’t. Uncle Christopher is working on the security system now, making sure it doesn’t fail again.”
I choose to believe her because I really don’t have another choice.
Before I can say anything else, Eva and Luis come running up behind me. “Mozart DM’d us. She said you’re okay.” Eva turns to Aunt Claudia. “Is she okay?”
My aunt smiles indulgently. “She’s fine. But I suggested she get some food.” She glances around. “Actually, I suggest all of you get something to eat. You’ve been working hard, and that little mishap can’t have been easy on any of you.”
I follow her gaze back toward the admin building and realize that everyone has made it back.
“Go on ahead,” Remy calls before continuing to board up a window with Simon. “We’ll be done soon!”
Izzy quirks her brows at me before leaning against the building and going back to filing her nails.
When Mozart asks if she’s planning on helping, she just shrugs. “I already did my job. This one’s all yours.”
As if to prove it, she starts sauntering back toward the dorms. Not surprisingly, no one tries to stop her. Not even my aunt.
Instead, she snaps her bag shut and tells me, “All right, then. I’m going to head back over to the gym. We have several students there who still need medical attention after the unfortunate incident.”
We watch my aunt walk away, then Eva turns to me and studies my face. “No bullshit,” she says. “We left here and I thought you were dying. Now there’s not a scratch on you. What gives?”
My stomach chooses that moment to rumble loudly. That granola bar is long gone.
Luis makes a face. “Fine, we’ll head back to the dorm. But I expect every detail on the way. So start talking. Now.”