Chapter 16
Golden light passes through the white petal pinched between my thumb and index finger.
Narcissus.
Like the flower on the inside of my forearm. The one I misidentified before letting the tattoo artist ink it onto my skin.
I smile, thinking about Cary tracing its shape with his finger. The soft kiss he pressed to it while in his bed. The way he called it sacred.
I’ve been doing this for minutes…hours? The sun is up, but time is suspended. Frozen in a snow globe, waiting for someone to shake it up. Every thought in my brain is murky, blurred. As if nothing before yesterday ever happened.
Cary is the only crisp thing I can focus on.
The apartment is strangely quiet. No noise from the kitchen, no Max yelling at appliances. Just me, sighing dreamily.
Oh, and Diana. She’s busy cleaning herself in a corner of my bedroom.
I twist the velvety soft petal a second longer. Wishing it could make Cary appear again. Take me back to Aides.
A buzzing noise bursts my daydream. I find my phone on the floor. When I read the screen, my eyebrows scrunch.
It’s a FaceTime call.
“Mom?”
“Auggie!” She’s breathless, eyes wild. The background behind her is hard to make out. But she’s somewhere outside. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah. Why wouldn’t I be?”
“Where are you?”
“At”—I almost say home but stop short—“my apartment.”
“Why aren’t you here?”
“Here?” Confusion drags my lips into a frown. In her video, I see bright green grass. Chunks of gray I don’t recognize. “Are you at the greenhouse?”
“No. Why would I be there today?”
Because you’re always there sits unsaid on my tongue.
I pinch the bridge of my nose. A throb begins just behind my temples. It hurts to think. “Mom, what’s wrong?”
Surprise flashes over her face. Then anguish. “Auggie, are you serious? We were supposed to meet an hour ago.”
Her words confuse me more. After an exasperated breath, I say, “We weren’t—”
A series of messages cuts me off. One by one, notifications drop down on my screen. All from Max.
Where ARE YOU???
Your mom is worried I’m worried WTF August?!
are you OK? upset? is it because of the anniversary?
I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU’RE NOT HERE
The ache spreads through my skull. I can’t make sense of anything Max texts. Why would I be upset? What anniversary? My parents got married in the summer.
“Auggie.”
My mom’s voice rips me from the depths of fog. My breaths come fast, harsh. I stare at the screen.
In a calm voice, she says, “Focus.”
I can’t. The haze thickens. “What the hell is happening, Mom?”
“August.” Her eyes command me to look at her. “Do you know what today is?”
I force myself to think. “Sunday.”
“No.” She exhales, losing patience. “The date. What anniversary is today?”
“It’s—” I blink away the sting behind my eyes. “Today is—”
“The day of the accident,” Mom finishes for me.
Her words blow through me like the wind. The phone almost slides from my weak grip. Suddenly, the fog fades. Reality seeps in, giving the memories root:
Driving through a sleepy neighborhood. Tom Petty’s gruff voice. The flash of another car’s headlights. Glass shattering into a million stars. The hospital.
Standing over London’s dead body.
Gasping, I jolt to my feet. Mom’s voice reaches me, tinny and distant. “Auggie, stay with me.”
“I forgot,” I wheeze out, shivering.
It’s the anniversary. I was supposed to meet my mom and Max at the cemetery. We were going to visit his grave together.
Today’s the day London died, and I forgot.
Mom’s still talking. But my ears are crowded with white noise. The thud of my heart slamming into my sternum.
Two years have passed. There hasn’t been a single day when he wasn’t on my mind. His beachy brown hair. Weird smile. The light behind his green eyes. How he liked his coffee. That moment he was wrenched away from me.
Now it feels like chunks of him are missing. Floated away on the tide.
The thump grows louder. It’s not in my chest. It’s the front door.
I’m not sure how I get there so fast. Or when I drop my phone. Guilt and nausea churn relentlessly in my stomach as I grip the knob.
Cary is on the other side.
Swallowing roughly, I say, “I forgot.”
“I know.”
“No. I forgot him.” My entire body trembles. “I couldn’t remember that today was…is. Today is the anniversary of the car accident.”
Mouth flattened in a grim line, Cary says, “August, I know. You forgot because of me.”
“Because of you?”
His face is serious. Closed off like the boy I met in Viva Catalina’s. Not the one who held me in the greenhouse. Who pressed delicate kisses to my cheek in his bed.
“You”—the words stick to my throat—“did this.”
He walks inside, fingers flexing at his sides.
Absently, I close the door. I don’t want to ask my next question. It comes out anyway.
“How?”
Cary’s brow pinches. “Lethe. The water I use to bring you back. It is for souls, not mortals. It takes your memories, so you forget what you left behind. That is how souls move on.”
“It takes m-memories?” I stammer.
His eyes lower before he nods.
I tug at my curls. That doesn’t make sense. We’ve gone through those waters more than once. Nothing changed before. I haven’t forgotten anything else.
Except…I did.
Lake, the girl Max was dating. And Hal. I couldn’t remember how I got the day off from work. Or what today was.
Anger spreads like an unattended flame. My hands turn to fists. “You knew this would happen,” I bite out.
“No, not at first. I swear. You were the first mortal—”
“I don’t care,” I snap. “That’s all I have left of him. Memories. And you took them from me. Without asking. Without telling me!”
His dark eyes follow as I pace the room. He doesn’t say anything. Offers no explanation or apology.
My eyes squeeze shut, disgusted. Every moment I was with him, he was gentle and careful. Even when his tone was cool and distant. He stood between me and Cerby. Took me to the Meadows. He played music for me. Let me inside his world.
And I let him in mine.
Bitterness burns like acid on my tongue. “You could’ve told me. At any point. When we were—” My voice cracks. I’m not going to cry in front of him again. “You could’ve told me the truth. The whole truth.”
I blink my eyes open. Gold coils around his irises. A snake ready to strike.
“Just like you could have told me the real reason you kept coming back to Aides.”
The surprise knocks the air from me. “What?”
“All of your questions,” he says, venom in his voice. “If I remember every soul. Where they go. Asking me to take you to Elysium. If Death can bring back the dead.”
He moves closer. Every soft line I saw in his face yesterday hardens.
“I thought you came back for me,” he growls. “Until yesterday. When you finally talked about him. London, the boy you love.”
“Don’t,” I warn through clenched teeth. “Don’t say his name.”
Hollow eyes meet mine. “You want to see him again. You wanted me to take you to him.”
I don’t answer him. Absently, my fingers twist around the blue-and-yellow bracelet on my wrist, yanking.
“You have made your entire existence about him,” Cary says. A fact so cold, my skin stings.
“Don’t pretend you know me.”
He laughs indignantly. “Oh, how could I not? You let his death stop your life. His wants destroyed your needs. You have been given time that so many are not. What have you done with it, August? Nothing.”
I surge toward him. Stand tall beneath his gilded glare.
“What do you know about loss, Cary? You’re a Deathless. You have power. You’re immortal.” Rage thunders in my every word. “You collect souls and leave behind the ashes. You’re clueless about what it’s like after you’re gone.”
“My role is to—”
“Fuck your role,” I seethe, eyes wet. I tug harder on the string around my wrist. “I didn’t ask for this. To constantly feel this pain. To never know how to be okay again. To look at you and—”
He waits silently.
But whatever words I have disappear. I look down. There’s a limp thread of blue and yellow in my hand, snapped where it was once tied around my wrist.
I broke London’s bracelet. Now it’s another part of him I won’t have anymore.
My eyes lift. “Of course I want to see him. Talk to him. But you’ll never understand why.”
His gaze runs over me. The gold recedes. All that’s left is something I can’t quite name.
Because I’ve never truly seen it on him.
“Yes, you are right. I was a fool.” He steps around me. “I have nothing but moments. In this realm and mine.”
I blink, clutching the bracelet.
His eyes turn glassy, somber. “I can never stay. Or belong.” He stills, holding his breath. On his next exhale, he says, “Who wants that? Who could ever love the ferrier of souls?”
My lips part. Nothing comes out. It doesn’t need to.
“No one,” he whispers.
The raw sadness on his face slams into me like a fist.
This is who he is. Why he keeps a distance. Never allows anyone in. But it’s no excuse to lie to me. To steal one of the only things I have left.
At the door, he commands, “Never look for me again, August Clarke. Do not return to Aides. Until it is your time.”
The door closes.
London’s bracelet slips from my fingers. I fall to my knees and try my best not to throw up.
“Order fifteen for Adib!”
I nudge sluggishly through Viva Catalina’s door. It’s slow inside. Customers here and there. The Sunday-evening dinner crowd hasn’t arrived yet.
I’m twenty-three minutes late, my previous record shattered. No one notices. Junie and Tonia are busy in the kitchen. Kennedy takes orders at a table of four. I don’t see Angela anywhere.
A clatter of metal catches my attention. Max stands behind the front counter, so surprised, she dropped a handful of silverware.
“What are you doing here?”
I hoist my drawstring bag higher on my shoulders. “What does it look like? I have a shift.”
She bristles at my tone. “Are you serious?”
I give her a blank stare.
“Auggie, this is ridiculous. Today is—”
“I know what today is,” I grunt while beelining through the kitchen toward the employee restroom. Max’s stomping footsteps follow.
“So that’s it?”
“Pretty much,” I say, hiding the exhaustion weighing me down.
“Did you at least talk to your mom?”