Chapter 15 #3
“Girlfriend,” Alice sighed. “Counterpart, if we’re to believe the papers.” She turned to Baylee. “Did you hear he’s teaching this year?”
“First years,” Baylee sighed romantically. “They’re so lucky.”
The room spun, something heavy sank in my gut, and I had to will myself to breathe. Leland never mentioned a girlfriend. He’d said he wasn’t available. He had that V tattoo, and I basically figured. But hearing it? I don’t know why I cared. Why my blood did.
I hobbled my thoughts together. Stop thinking about Leland. He works for Jaxan. He can’t be trusted. He has, very possibly, the most beautiful arms I’ve ever seen. Not to mention his face. His jawline. The soft knits he wears.
I must have been standing there too long because Alice’s throat cleared.
Withdrawals — had to get rid of them.
“Do you sell moonale?” I asked, tipping my chin to the mahogany pub-style bar in the back.
“Usually. But to you, I can’t. I need this job. And — ” She let out a sigh of reluctance. “My dad said the Echelons are hoping you deteriorate sooner rather than later. That’s why they forbid it.”
At least she looked sorry about it.
“Oh,” I said, my fingers closing over the gold in my hand. “No, it’s okay. I get it.”
Baylee punched Alice in the arm. “She said it was for the Truth-Teller.”
Alice eyed the door nervously, biting her lip. “I still can’t sell anything to you. But if the Truth-Teller really needs a Counterpart text, then the person shopping for the Truth-Teller might want to look over there. Tell him we don’t do to-go cups of moonale.”
“Thanks.” The corner of my mouth lifted subtly in acknowledgment. “I’ll be quick.”
Over in the area Alice indicated, my eyes snagged on a text called Countering Your Counterpart.
Then I saw it was written by the Echelon Helen Blackburn and left it, picking up Forcing the Bond instead.
I don’t know what then compelled me to walk to the front of the shop, pausing at the magazines in the display window.
If this were the human realm, I might have stood there longer and flipped through the pages.
But this was Everden, and Alice was clearing her throat from behind the checkout counter to hurry me along.
I quickly grabbed a magazine and hid it under the Counterpart text.
I wasn’t going to steal it. I just wanted to be slightly less obvious about needing it for research, which was the only reason I wanted it.
I had to learn more about Leland, The Most Eligible Bachelor in Everden.
About his gold, his influence, anything that would make him less appealing. Anything to give my blood some peace.
A loud crash sounded from behind the checkout counter as the shipment of pens Alice had been sorting scattered across the ground. Baylee was furiously tying and untying her ponytail. I placed my items gently on the counter to check out, but Alice was focused on the glass door.
“It’s the Truth-Teller,” she said, barely breathing, “holding Vyra’s hand.” She turned to Baylee in disbelief, her cheeks flushed with warmth. “The Truth-Teller holds hands?”
My blood hissed, scalding me with Leviathan-sized waves pounding at my skin. My neck was sweating. So were my hands.
Don’t look, Ember.
Do not. Look.
“Oh, Goddess,” Baylee said. “Now they’re kissing. They’re — ” Her whole upper half leaned over the checkout counter. “Really kissing.”
I felt that, if I looked, it would happen.
The final moment. The moment I deteriorated.
My last shred of sanity eviscerated over thirsting for his power.
I felt him. I felt him from the other side of the brick wall.
Felt him with someone else. Vyra, his girlfriend, the most eligible bachelorette in Everden.
I looked.
I shouldn’t have done it. I knew it wasn’t rational. That this was all a function of our magic. His hands were on her hips, sliding up her sides. And, of course, Vyra Lennox was beautiful. She looked better in person than she did on her magazine cover.
I scooped up the text with the magazine beneath it. The pain in my blood was too much, and the furious, disembodied feeling from last night had returned. I knew I couldn’t stay in Briary’s. I was wrath churning up a raging fire with rolling smoke. I needed air or the Sundering Sea.
Leland let go of Vyra, and the second they split off in opposite directions, I darted out of the shop.
“Hey! You have to pay for that!” Alice shouted after me, but I didn’t stop.
I made a sharp left turn toward Anjelika Stork’s, and right into Vyra. Heart pounding, I tried to hurry past her. But I — I guess the part of me that wasn’t me wanted to know who his girlfriend was.
Long, voluptuous waves of shiny brown hair bounced down to her tiny waist. She was perfect, slender, with curves suited to her proportions. Her lips were glossed and shiny, and her luminous skin was the same shade of tan as Leland’s.
As I was frozen there, the Counterpart text Vanished from my hands, uncovering the magazine with Leland’s face on it.
Before I could hide it, Vyra’s eyes flashed at the sight. She squared her shoulders, standing directly in front of me to block my path to Anjelika’s. I heard Leland’s easy footsteps jogging up behind me and winced. Cringing, even as my spine tingled, because my blood liked him near.
Vyra snatched the magazine from me.
I tried to slip past her, but a spiked fence shot up around me, and I was trapped. I gagged into my arm at the scent of her spelltracks, iron wrapped in artificial sugar.
“I am so done with Leland’s groupies,” she said.
“You do know he hates all of you, don’t you?
” She flapped the magazine open so it parted on a glossy page, and I glimpsed dark blue before she snapped it closed again.
“Will you be hanging the poster of him in your bedroom? Pinning it to your vision board? Taping it to a doll?”
Rivers of lava raged through my veins, and I breathed out steam. I frantically looked at Leland. “Can you take down the fence, please?”
Since the Blessing, I’d often felt on the verge of something dangerous. But this was worse than a verge. It was happening. Actually happening, and I couldn’t run from it because I was trapped. Vyra shook her head at me, her long lashes flicking to the side, unimpressed.
“I didn’t get it for the poster,” I tried. “I only wanted to learn about — ”
The fence came down, and in the same instant, everything went pitch black. Somehow, I could see, but it didn’t sound like anyone else could.
I ran, darting around Vyra, sprinting for the narrow alley from earlier. I felt Leland follow but refused to slow down as people in the street were shouting, I can’t see! I can’t see!
I pushed past them. Running was good. Running helped.
I skidded into the alley, my breath ragged as I ducked behind the dumpster and dropped to the ground. I curled my arms around my legs and tucked my head. I had to hide from him.
With a loud scrape, heavy steel slotted into place, closing in the alley with an eight-foot-high roof and doorless walls.
I stayed huddled, listening to Leland’s approach as lanterns were fixed to the walls at even intervals.
I heard a match strike, and the opaque darkness lifted, the makeshift room glowing warmly with flickering, orange flames.
Why Leland had followed me was a mystery, until I looked down and spied what he must have seen. What he’d been trying to hide, the reason he’d cast Pitch Black over me.
I was not there. Not in matter or mass or solidity.
I was ghostlike, either leaving this world or trying to hold on — I couldn’t tell.
But I was only there vaguely, flickering like a bulb about to burn out, one second translucent, the next I disappeared.
I reached for the dumpster and my hand went straight through it.
This wasn’t in any texts. There was Invisibility — for Enchantresses — but when witches went invisible, they retained their forms. The spell only prevented them from being seen. Shadows could pass through walls like dark clouds of smoke, but not invisibly. This was . . .
I was fading, becoming more and more transparent with every passing moment. I heard gasps of breath — my own — though I was sure I wasn’t breathing. There was no air in this alley or my lungs.
Then a cool breeze of pine settled before me, and it was Leland, calmly saying my name.
Ember.
Ember.
Ember.
Over and over, as if trying to wake me up or call me back to him.
In a moment of translucence, I looked at him. “What is this?” I asked. “Why is this happening?”
“You’re etherizing,” he said. “How the Goddess transitions from her corporeal form to ether. I have an idea how to stop it, but — ” He crouched and held out his hand. “You need to take this.”