Chapter 28 #2
I steel myself, folding the most vulnerable parts of myself away, and then turn to face Carter. “All right, you want to talk? Fine. How long?” The question bursts out of my throat, like a bomb with a smoldering fuse that’s finally reached the powder.
He hesitates, a rare moment of uncertainty. “I don’t know what you’re—”
“How long have you been lying to me?” I ask, biting off each word. “When did you find out who I am? What I am?”
Understanding dawns on his face simultaneously with regret and guilt, a blended sunrise of emotion in shades of blood red.
And with it, I have my answer. It takes my breath away, and I rock back on my heels, as if the revelation came with a physical blow.
“Oh,” I say in a too-small voice. “Oh shit. You knew the whole time. You … you came to Beecher knowing?” I can’t help myself from ending with an uplift, a question. Because it just sounds so impossible.
His jaw works. “I was sent here, yes. But Jocasta, I—”
“So it was all a lie. From the moment I met you at that party all the way until…” The lump in my throat, humiliation and hurt, makes it hard to speak, but I force myself to continue.
“… until today.” My face is aflame with the memory of being naked under his touch, only now my imagination supplies him with an expression of either utter boredom or calculated triumph. Nausea rolls over me.
“No, no!” Carter steps closer to me, hand out as if to grasp my arm in reassurance. But wisely, he stops before he touches me.
“That’s what I’m trying to tell you.” He draws in a deep breath. “I was sent here to keep tabs on Death’s daughter. Jocasta. But you have no social media accounts and the picture I was given was … outdated.”
In spite of myself, I grimace, wondering exactly how bad that photo must have been. I went through a pixie cut phase in high school that did me no favors.
Tires screech somewhere nearby, and we both turn toward campus, bracing ourselves for Nova to come screaming out of the darkness or something. But everything remains quiet.
“I had no idea that you, Jo, who I met that night was the same person,” he continues.
“Not until class, when you took attendance,” I say slowly, pieces clicking. That was the shock on his face. Not just that we had hooked up the night before and I was a student in his class, but that I was the enemy. The target.
He nods with relief. “Exactly.”
“So, what, then you just decided to carry on?” I demand. “Seeing what information you could get out of me by creating a forbidden romance?” I hate that something so stupid, so basic college girl, actually worked. It’s humiliating.
“I was trying to stay away from you,” he says in a tight voice on the verge of a shout.
I raise my eyebrows.
He sighs, starting to scrub a hand over his face before remembering the remains of the pepper spray.
“I didn’t say I was successful. I needed to stay close enough that he wouldn’t send someone else, endangering you.
But not so close that I…” He swallows hard.
“That I gave in. I’m not … I couldn’t let myself… ”
“Why?” I ask, hugging myself with my arms tight across my chest. “Why not just barrel right in there, balls deep, write down everything I mumble in my sleep?”
Carter closes his eyes in a pained expression.
“It wasn’t like that. I…” He opens his eyes, meeting mine with a fierceness that gives me a stab of hope, in spite of everything.
“Everything I told you today is true. I am in love with you. It would be so much easier if I weren’t.
It scares the shit out of me, being that vulnerable. ”
I stare at him in disbelief. “Am I supposed to feel sorry for you? Is that what this is about?”
“No! Of course not. I’m just trying to…” He stops, raking a hand through his hair in frustration. “I’m not explaining this well.”
“Then don’t. I don’t think there’s any explanation that’s going to change this.” I turn and start to walk away.
“Jocasta, I know you’re not going to believe me, and I don’t blame you for that. But this had nothing to do with you.”
I keep walking. “Sure, it was only lying and manipulating me, that has nothing to do with me.”
“My father died when I was eleven,” Carter says. “He was in prison.”
That’s enough of a non sequitur to stop me in my tracks. “Your father. He was…” I prompt.
Carter sighs. “Yes, he was … like I am.”
“Spawn,” I supply, turning slowly back toward him.
Carter makes a face at the word but nods. “He couldn’t control his appetite. Didn’t want to, I think was probably more the issue. He was drunk all the time and starting fights, including one at the only baseball game he ever came to.”
I can picture an elementary-age Carter, blond with sunburned cheeks under a baseball hat and that stoic blankness on his face as his father raged in the bleachers. And in spite of everything, my heart aches for that little boy.
“There was a riot. In prison.” Carter clears his throat, though his voice is even and bland, reciting the facts. “He survived being shanked over a dozen times.”
Well, yeah, because we’re not immortal but we’re tougher than the average human. Unfortunately, in this case.
“But then suddenly he died the next day. ‘Internal bleeding’ was the official cause. But it never made sense because the infirmary said he was improving.”
“War sent someone to take him out,” I guess.
“I didn’t find that out until years later, but yes.” He stuffs his hands into his coat pockets. “When I turned sixteen, I started struggling with the same … symptoms. Fighting, drinking, looking for the thrill that only violence can bring. I hated myself. But then War came for me.”
The naked gratitude on his face is hard to see.
“War is my sire but he also took me in. Taught me who I was and how to control myself. I owe him. I wanted to prove to him that I wasn’t like the others.”
Like his father, he means.
“So you volunteered to spy on me for War?” I demand. “In repayment?”
To his credit, he doesn’t argue. “I was already in school, so I was a good choice. And when he asked, I said yes. The chance to help him against one of our enemies—”
“Yep, War and Death, big archrivals. Always trying to one-up each other. In one pointless competition after another.” Destroying the world in one place or another in the process. “So, what, are you one of those Children of Ares people?”
His lip curls in disdain. “They are fanatics. War has no connection to their organization beyond the obvious.”
“Oh yeah, because that makes everything okay,” I mutter.
“I was just doing my job, trying to prove myself worthy,” Carter argues. “And in the beginning, it was easy. Reporting in, trying to stay away from you, remembering my loyalties.” He watches me for a second too long before looking away.
I force a snort. “But, oh, let me guess, I’m so special. You just couldn’t stay away.”
“You’re mocking me,” he says harshly, closing the distance between us. I hold my ground; I’m not afraid of him. “But it’s true. I never realized I could choose. That I could be spawn”—again, his mouth turns down at the word—“and still me.” His voice softens. “Until I met you.”
I don’t know why that makes my eyes sting with tears. But it does. I try to hide the resulting sniffle. “What did War want you to do? What was the grand scheme?”
He stares at a point in the distance, refusing eye contact. His cheeks hold bright spots of color. “Nothing, at first. Just watching you.”
“Did you tell him? About…” I want to make light of the situation.
Did you tell him about your predilection for short skirts and empty study lounges?
Your need to make me come in every building on campus, except my dorm room?
But that turns it into something cheap and empty and I can’t quite make myself do it. “About us?” I finish finally.
He dips his head in shame. “I did.”
It’s nothing less than I was expecting, but it still makes me want to throw up.
“Everything changed, though, when Death announced you as a successor,” Carter says. “And then Devon showed up. I tried to find him at the other hotels and send him away.” He grimaces.
I stiffen. “When you said you were at Dr. Stephens’s office.” The voices in the background on the phone that day, the toddler having a meltdown. Carter was at a hotel, not at work. “The attacks that Chessa was talking about? That was you?”
But before he can answer, more puzzle pieces snap into place, hindsight providing the perspective I had no idea I was missing at the time.
“Wait a minute, wait. That’s why. That’s why you came to Happy’s on Friday night in the first place.
” I gulp down air, trying to swallow the pain.
“Why you wanted to be friends.” Anger floods through me suddenly, and I charge at him. “You said you missed me. You said—”
“I did. I do.” This time, he does grab me, locking his hands on my shoulders, holding me in place but with a gentleness that makes me want to scream at him. “I was just supposed to encourage you to keep living your life, refusing Death’s plan. And you were already doing that, so—”
I tear myself away from him. “So no harm no foul? It’s still manipulation. A lie.” My voice cracks on the last word. It is a huge horrible lie that is eating its way through my soul and my ability to keep myself from crying.
“Any more than the lie you’ve been living, pretending to be human?” Carter asks. He doesn’t sound defensive or like he’s trying to justify his behavior. Just tired and matter-of-fact.
It’s not at all the same. Except I can’t articulate how and that somehow makes it worse.
My jaw clenched, I jab a finger at him. “Fuck. You.”
I want to storm off, get in the van and leave him and this entire miserable moment behind. Bury it in my past like I’ve tried with every other huge mistake I’ve made.