Chapter Seventeen
SEVENTEEN
“AH! DAMN IT!” HE GROWLS, flinging his hand from my face. Still, his touch leaves me gasping for breath, overwhelmed by a puzzling sensation. Like ice through my veins.
I whirl to meet cold, green eyes.
“Malachi.”
He stares down at me with suspicion, and I regard him with the same. We’re two predators encountering each other in the wild.
My heartbeat still hasn’t stabilized from the terror in the woods, and the silence between us only reminds me of how alone we are. I do not find the same comfort from his presence that I did before. Craning my neck, I continue searching for the hooded men. Where did they go?
“Hey,” I say, spreading my arms out wide. “What the fuck?”
“Wait—” he pleads. His words are hushed, strained as he holds out his hands, his eyes darting around. “What happened to you? I heard screaming—”
My shoulders stiffen.
“—and then all of a sudden you came running out of the woods?”
I run my hands over my curls in frustration, unsure how to explain what I just saw. What I just read.
“Those people, there was—did you see them? The hooded men? Their robes? They… are you—”
“What?” he asks, his eyebrows yanking together harshly. “Hooded men?”
“Ugh!” I groan. “The men! The hooded men! With the robes and the lanterns? Looking spooky like the headless horseman is about to clomp his way through campus.”
“Oh, you mean the Midnight March? It’s just that stupid tradition they were talking about earlier. Students put on these old, sweaty robes and walk around campus while the counselor tells a story about the school’s founding. It’s a whole thing…,” he trails off, noting the confusion on my face.
His next words are deathly quiet. “But that’s not what you were really running from though, is it?”
Once, he would have been the first person I wanted to tell.
He was the one who read fantasy novels, who believed in ghosts and dragons and vampires and werewolves.
He was the one who indulged everything that’s fundamentally strange about me, even though neither of our families thought our friendship was a good idea.
I search for that boy now, in the reflection of stars in his darkened eyes, and sigh.
During the gangly, awkward summer between sixth and seventh grade, I’d taken to copying what I’d seen from Gigi through the fog-shrouded glass of the greenhouse.
Circles of stones and feathers, plucked flower petals and a crystal bowl full of water, a mortar and pestle dusted with ground something or other.
At twelve years old I still wanted to play, I wanted to escape the intense feelings of being a preteen, of wondering if liking girls as much as I liked boys made me a freak.
I wanted to be more than almost thirteen.
Kai never, not once, made me feel weird for that.
“Pass me the willow bark,” I called, hand outstretched as I stared intently at the circle of foraged lizard bones and overripe berries.
Silently he placed the bark into my hands.
“Okay,” I mumbled, adjusting my knees in the dirt. “I think next we probably need something like…” I looked all around, trying to imagine what Gigi would do.
“Well, what’s the circle even for?” Lucas called from somewhere in the trees.
“It’s a summoning circle.” I’d seen something about them on TV. “It’s gonna help me find my dad.”
They both were quiet for a moment.
“I thought you didn’t want him to come back?” Kai asked, an uneasy sadness in his eyes.
“Yeah, well, maybe if he comes back, my mom will stop being such a bitch all the time.” It wasn’t fair, but neither was the way she looked at me. Like I was a ghost, too.
His neck flushed red like it did when he was holding in something he really wanted to say, but I pretended not to notice.
“This is stupid,” I whined, flopping onto my butt. “It’s not gonna work anyway.”
“You don’t know that,” Kai muttered, his expression distant.
Suddenly he leaned forward. “I’ve got it!”
“What?”
“Well, in books, whenever someone wants to find someone using magic, they always use an object that belonged to that person.”
Embarrassment made my eyes water, but I bit my lip to stop it.
“I don’t have anything of my dad’s.”
He scooted closer to me, using his arms and left leg to drag the prosthesis behind him before grasping my face between his palms, his eyes boring into my own.
“That’s not true,” he whispered, his hand snaking up to push a curl back from my face. His fingers crept farther, toward the crown of my head.
“What are you doing—” I asked before yelping and scrambling backward.
Between his fingers was a single coiled strand of chestnut-brown hair.
“You’re a part of him,” Kai said matter-of-factly. “More than any old piece of junk he might have left behind.”
I narrowed my eyes.
“N-Not that you-you’re a piece of junk… I just mean—”
“I know, it’s fine,” I snapped, and took the strand of hair from his hand.
Lucas stood at the edge of the creek, leaning against the tree he climbed out of as he watched us, a curious glint in his eyes.
Together we placed the hair within the circle and held hands. I don’t remember exactly what we said, ’cause in the end, the circle didn’t work. But I knew, without a doubt, that my secret hopes and most fanciful dreams were safe with Kai.
But not anymore.
Now, he feels like a stranger. And I don’t trust strangers.
“I—” I say, shaking off the memory. “It’s nothing.”
He pinches his bottom lip between his forefinger and thumb. “Didn’t seem like nothin’,” he drawls.
The way he’s looking at me is much too intimate. Like he can see the scatter of thoughts blasting through my head. Like he’s peeling back all the layers of armor I’ve built thanks to him.
It’s still late August, but the moon is at its peak, and the breeze is suddenly frigid against my still-damp clothes. I cover my chest with my arms and pump my knees, squirming under his scrutiny.
I’m certain he can see the gooseflesh sprouting across my skin from the way his eyes rake down my body.
He sighs in a frustrated sort of way before shrugging off his jacket and wrapping it around my shoulders.
His scent is overwhelming. I try not to breathe him in as I slide my arms through the sleeves and let them fall past my hands and cover my fingers. “Thanks…” I’m not sure what to say.
“What kind of outfit is that anyway?” he grunts, gesturing to my pajama shorts and thin top.
“I didn’t know about the… you know,” I say, flicking my thumb toward the litter left behind by Invocation Night.
He glances at the fountain. “It’s late,” he mutters, and I nod, stepping back to put some space between us.
He regards me carefully, like I might spook and run away.
As the silence lingers, heat burns the tips of my ears.
Without speaking, I turn and begin walking back to my dorm.
“Why did you come here?” he asks, voice rough.
I stop, and he approaches me, slow and deliberate. Predatorily. Until we’re so close, our toes touch.
“What?”
His hand smooths against my hair, his fingers barely grazing the side of my face.
They leave a trail of tingles that travel all the way down my spine.
The streetlamp behind him illuminates us like a spotlight, and I watch as his pupils blow wide at the brush of our skin.
Gently, he prods under my left eye where the branch caught, and I flinch when the intensity of his touch becomes too much.
He snatches his hand back, hissing through his teeth.
I’m equally disgusted by the way my body reacts to him. It really didn’t get the memo.
Snarling, he leans down until our eyes are level. “I said, why did you come here?”
“I’m not sure that’s any of your business, actually.” It seems like a stupid question coming from him anyway, as if he wouldn’t know that his uncle was the one to recommend me for the scholarship.
“Gigi is dead,” he murmurs. It’s blunt. But it’s a statement full of more than words could ever say, because he knows better than anyone else, besides my mother, what this has done to me.
Pain, white hot through my chest. “Yes,” I whisper. “She’s dead. Of course she’s dead. You were at the funeral. What does that have to do with anything?”
I wait for him to say the words they all say, but they never come. It’s peculiar how the platitudes feel hollow when they’re from anyone else, but with him, I’m left wanting.
“You’re here because of her. You want to feel closer to her.
Do the things she did.” He circles me, his arms crossing as he speaks.
He stops when he’s behind me and sweeps my wet curls from over my shoulder.
His words slither into my ear like a threat.
“But you’re also here for revenge. To punish her for leaving you. ”
My nails carve into my palms as I tense.
How dare he put into words the thing I haven’t been able to acknowledge myself; tease out the part of me that wants to remain hidden, that isn’t as virtuous as I want to believe.
“What are you even talking about? You sound insane. Of course Gigi dying has something to do with me being here. Of course I want to feel closer to her! What the hell does it matter?” I turn until we’re face-to-face again.
His reddening neck and the tick of his jaw betray his silence.
“Spit it out,” I push.
“It matters,” he sneers, “because you shouldn’t be here.”
I cackle in surprise, but it’s humorless. “Oh yeah? Why not?”
“Because.” He glares. “You don’t belong.”
He knows what he’s doing. He knows that his words are echoing inside me. You don’t belong. You don’t belong.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” My voice is louder and more hurt than I’d want, but his words cut deep. The warmth spreading in my chest has a focal point. My fingers raise to the golden pendant.