Chapter 18
EVER
We return from the music store—by foot this time. Lock after lock slides open on the other side of the door to my room. Kaleida pulls the door open, a massive smile on her face, bright beneath her brown skin and freckles. “A lock stone would be so much easier.”
I twist each deadbolt back into place and kick off my boots.
Then socks—pure habit. Dawn spills through the broken window, a cool light revealing the awkward mash-up of bodies lounging on my bed.
Milo is sprawled on his back, hair wet as if he’d just bathed and eyes fixed on the ceiling.
He inhales a roll of teva. Sitting beside his legs, Sypher holds a box of cereal in his lap, shoveling fistfuls into his mouth, and at his side—
“Who the fuck is that?” Eli asks.
I nearly lose my balance. “Maverick J., what are you doing here?” I haven’t seen him for years, not since the last time he walked out of here reeking of boring sex and take-out food and never came back.
“Oh, Sypher found him on the way back here. We took a wrong turn. He was circling these orange cone things alone in the dark,” Kaleida explains.
“Hey Ever, it’s been a while,” Maverick J.
says, swishing silky black hair out of his fair-skinned face.
He’s matured since I last saw him. Rugged and firmer, less of a stomach, a more pronounced jaw.
But he’s still wearing that damn orange construction vest. At least he has a shirt underneath. This can’t be.
Eli’s knife is already against his throat before I’ve had a chance to accept reality.
Sypher throws himself across Maverick J.’s lap in a less than graceful move and shoves Eli. “Don’t hurt Mav. He’s not dangerous.”
He’s really not.
Eli conceals the shock on his face within a second and pulls away slowly. “He’s Wendell’s replacement?”
Milo keeps toking on the teva roll despite the scuffle, a smile in his glassy eyes.
“Mav?” I ask, still recovering from seeing his face and not quite prepared for Sypher’s reaction. He calls him Mav? They just met.
“He almost got hit by one of those speeding metal carriages,” Milo says, handing the roll to Eli and arranging his hands beneath his head.
“A car,” I offer.
“Yeah. He could barely function from the elixir. It seems to be getting worse in the hours since we got here.” Milo gently kicks Sypher’s belly. “This guy didn’t want to leave him out there, so we brought him back here and gave him the antidote.”
These damn men. “So you brought him back here like a lost dog?”
“What’s a dog?” Milo asks.
I can’t even process the reality behind his question. How could two realms become so different in only two hundred years?
Eli turns around to me. Invisible fingers walk down my neck and back. I swallow the taste of blood as if trained to accept it. “Did you fuck this guy?” he asks.
“It was years ago,” Maverick J. says, throwing his hands up in a claim of innocence. “I’m sure I’m not the only one.”
How are they possibly discussing my past fucks right now?
Eli knocks Maverick J. back, banging his head into the wall, then plants his knee in his lap.
“Do you want to die?” I ask, tapping my rings and wondering why I’m not more concerned for his life. He would be in a puddle of blood right now if it weren’t for Sypher.
Maverick J. squeals in pain, loud and high-pitched. The sound transforms into a long groan that makes me want to reach for my crotch in sympathy.
Eli drags in a deep lungful of teva, taking his time releasing it in a purple puff before speaking.
“You touch her, and I’ll skewer your balls with my knife and roast them over a fire before replacing your eyes with them.
” Eli lifts his knee and stabs his knife through the crotch of Maverick J.
’s jeans, pinning the fabric to my mattress.
Sypher gasps and looks away. Milo smiles.
“Yes, sir.” Maverick J. nods violently, beads of sweat forming on his forehead, his face pale. “I don’t want to touch her. I swear.”
“Good answer, Mav,” Milo croons, calm as ever. He sits up, tucking his legs close and tossing his arms around his knees. “We need to talk about the elixir.”
“You going to tell me about the dead guy in the corner first?” Eli cocks his head to the side and holds the teva roll out for me.
I swing my head around the room, and sure enough, a body is tossed in the far corner opposite the bed. “What happened?” I grab the roll from him, avoiding the touch of our fingers.
Milo rubs his palms together, his tranquil demeanor shifting to one of burden. “He’s not the only one. We found eight others earlier. This one happened to be at the bottom of the staircase.”
My temples approach bursting. “And you decided to invite his corpse inside?”
Eli retrieves his knife, sheathing it again as he returns to my side. “Dead from what?”
Apparently Eli’s question is more pressing since Milo ignores mine altogether.
“The elixir. It’s too strong. This other guy we saw was cutting some sort of food and just kept going.
He cut his arm into slices until he passed out.
We couldn’t get to him in time. And a woman with strange points on the bottom of her shoes walked right in front of one of those car things.
They’re killing themselves. The new elixir was never supposed to be used on Hollows.
It was supposed to be for Vaile, and only for medical emergencies.
I never would have created it if I knew. This is all my fault.”
I can hardly breathe. What if I were only another Calderan mindlessly killing myself? I’m not close to anyone here, but they’re my people. My past. I don’t want to see it fall apart more than it already has. But I don’t blame Milo.
Kaleida sighs, her voice gentle. “You were doing your job.”
“And now people are dying,” Milo counters.
Sypher’s brows fold inward. “This has to stop. We can’t keep dumping the elixir into the falls. It will kill all the Hollows.”
Is he trying to make up for wanting me and every other Hollow dead?
I suppose seeing the effect of the elixir speaks louder than anything else.
I won’t complain when I agree. “And we need Calderans. We can’t fix the magic cycle without them.
They’re the missing part that’s causing magic to die.
” I let loose a cloud of purple smoke. Eli’s hand is already waiting for the roll.
“How do we stop them?” Kaleida bunches up the belly of her shirt in nervous fists. “Every Vaile in Sonnet works in some way to make sure the elixir is produced and delivered to the Calderan water supply without fail.”
“We have to tell them what’s happening here in Caldera,” Sypher says, fiddling with his jumpsuit buttons.
Milo pushes up from my bed and paces, stepping over books and movies and blood stains.
“What are we going to say? That we kidnapped the Centress, killed her guards and want to reunite Vaile with the Hollows they hate and fear? What’s actually going to make other Vaile care enough to stop?
” He lifts the roll from between Eli’s fingers.
“The teva.” I squint, staring at the knife hole in the mattress as I let the thoughts knock around my head.
“Here.” Milo waves the roll in front of my face.
“No,” Sypher says. “She means the teva core used for the elixir. We have to destroy it, not only the sacks of elixir, but the plants. Every field.”
I glance at Sypher, assessing his tight mouth and half scowl. That’s exactly what I meant.
Milo’s eyes take over his face. “Destroy all the teva plants? I don’t think I like this plan.”
“It’s just a drug,” Sypher says.
“Not for me. I don’t know how else to live.” The blue of Milo’s eyes deepens. He looks straight at me. “Don’t you ever not want to feel for a while?”
Yes.
“You have to feel. It’s the only way to know each day is worth it,” Kaleida says sternly, then swaps back to her planning tone with a tug on her tiny curls and a furrowed brow. “Now, how do we destroy all of them? Someone could create a secret stash.”
“Exactly.” Milo points his thumb at his chest. “Me.”
“That would be bad. We can’t keep a single one,” Kaleida insists. “It’s too risky,”
“I know,” Milo admits softly.
“You can keep some rolls,” Eli says. “Those can’t be replanted.”
“Deal.” He grins. “How do we get rid of them?”
I pluck the roll from between Milo’s fingers. “We burn them.” It won’t be the first problem I’ve solved with fire.
Maverick J. looks around the room, stopping on the corpse. “What exactly is teva?”
In between questions from Maverick J. and a couple of naps, we spend the entire day discussing Calderans’ deteriorating state and Vaile’s stance, eventually devising a plan to gather supplies and destroy the teva fields.
And I’m not part of it.
So it’s dangerous. Vaile are still hunting for us in Sonnet, and I have no idea how to throw a punch, much less defend myself in an attack.
But I’m not staying here under Eli’s watch like he wants, with people dying all around me.
And I’m not letting Kelter go to a rebel god’s underground hideout alone.
I can’t ignore that he’s hurting, that he’s suddenly taken on the memories of every man Eli has ever been.
He must be a mess, and all I’ve done is push him away.
I can’t explain it, but I need to see him.
I grab a change of clothes and head to the bathroom now that everyone is crowded around the tiny screen watching the movie I put on, their bellies full of stale cereal—all the potatoes were finished before Eli and I got back.
Their jaws still haven’t closed from the second I switched the television on.
Except Eli’s. He’s not interested in that.
His eyes never seem to leave me. Which is why my only chance to sneak out is while he’s asleep.
I lock the bathroom door and lean against it, breathing. I hate being alone, stuck with my own mind. I’m always behind on meals and sleep and baths, but the quiet moments around them are the hardest.
The bathtub faucet drips, each drop echoing through the almost bare room, occasionally perfectly timed with the flickering light going pitch dark.
The showerhead above is wrapped in half a roll of yellow caution tape, a little something I stole from Maverick J.
years back. I turn on the tub water, the roaring rush a relief.
I don’t have a curtain or doors around the tub, no cabinets or mirror, no fan. But the opposite wall is covered from floor to ceiling with an intricate colored map of the Calderan forest. I couldn’t tolerate the emptiness a blank wall brought out in me, the thoughts it let wander.
I’d drag a stool from the coffee shop up the stairs at night so I could reach the top of the wall, a paper map tucked into my back pocket for reference and a marker behind each ear.
I stare at the exact location where a sack went over my head.
And my life changed. I’m not sure what symbol I’d put. Maybe a sack or a cart. Maybe a heart.
I finally look away, unable to stand the opposing emotions it stirs up, and a flash of the color cream steals every thought. I reach for the tiny note resting on the edge of the sink, the sight of it spurring shallow, anxious breaths.
My hands quake. I unfold each edge at an obscene pace, so slowly I must be going backward in time. I take in each word like a moment I want to commit to memory.
Never,
I’m always up for a chase when it comes to you.
Eli
A chase? I slip off my pants and underwear and sit on the edge of the tub, big enough for four of me. The note rests on the tub’s ledge, mocking me with its cryptic content.
The water level rises like the uncertainty in me.
Being back in my own bathroom brings a sense of security, as though I might not be tortured or stabbed, as though disasters don’t loom and there’s not a dead man on my bedroom floor.
But I can’t enjoy the luxury of this illusion with Kelter out there on his own.
Too many memories lurk within these walls, a year’s worth of nights together.
As much as I try to expel every thought of him, he marches back, trampling all efforts.
I pull my shirt over my head and toss it to the floor. It’s been so damn long since I had a real bath. My neck tingles with anticipation and—no, not that. It’s Eli’s dark aura.