Chapter 16 #4
“As soon as you tell me something.” He got up, gently placing the new flask in my hand. I waited, standing, already drinking. “What’s your favorite color, Em?”
Em?
I looked at him, the moment stretching. Stretching longer as I savored what I was seeing. I was aware this needed to end. But I couldn’t end it. I’d gotten lost in the navy ring around his hazel irises.
“Navy,” I said without realizing.
Leland Vanished the ivory couch, and in its place a navy-blue dumpster appeared. Because of course. I’d been mesmerized by his eyes, but to him, it was nothing.
“You asked me my favorite color to make me a dumpster?”
Leland took down the steel walls, letting the daylight in. “Looks better, doesn’t it?”
I scowled at him.
* * *
What Leland failed to mention in the alley was that Skye wasn’t meeting me at Helen’s; she was moving in.
Since Jaxan destroyed the letterbox and flask, I wasn’t allowed to live alone anymore, and while I wasn’t sure how Skye — an Unselected witch — could help, I figured the alternative was Leland, and that was . . . no.
Worse, Skye declared I couldn’t sleep on the couch.
She moved into Ash’s room, leaving me with Helen’s.
I said I’d sleep on the floor, but Skye got too much enjoyment out of bossing Leland around, telling him how to furnish it while I made dinner for us.
But Leland left before I finished making the pasta, perhaps taking a cue from my body language.
I hadn’t looked at him since we left the alley.
There hadn’t been any burning since I came back from vapor, but another hour alone with Leland wasn’t something I wanted to relive.
The tap on the shoulder, the pads of his fingertips, whatever that lingering look meant — it had all given me shivery sensations that were far too confusing.
Imaginary, yet it felt real — too real — every time he rejected me.
My blood wasn’t capable of handling it. I needed those magic suppressants.
Magic suppressants would block my withdrawals.
Magic suppressants, and I wouldn’t feel this way about him tomorrow.
After dinner, Skye emptied my hefting satchel in the dining area, and a pile as high as the table spilled into Ash’s doorway.
Half I recognized as the stuff she’d thrown at me.
The other half was the entire lingerie department of Anjelika Stork’s.
Satin, strings, lace. I approached the pile and pulled out the first thing my hand touched, then held it up in the air for her.
“Skye.” I dangled the shiny black bra for emphasis. “Why is this latex?”
She found the matching boy shorts and unfolded them with a grin.
“Skye!”
“Well, it was less weird to just buy all of it,” she said defensively. “Plus, it might help you pass your classes. You seem like you’ll be needing advantages.”
I aimed the dominatrix bra at her face but missed.
“Thank me when you are top of your class.”
I did not indulge her with a response.
She began to separate things into smaller piles, her face animating at the task.
I helped her fold, trying not to think about the mountain of laundry I’d left in my bedroom in the human realm.
I’d left a mess, dirty blending with clean, and who knew when I’d be back to take care of it. If I’d be back to take care of it.
I looked up to find Skye staring angrily at my hands and realized it was because I’d stopped folding.
“We need to put this away before bed,” she said.
No sleeping on the couch.
Fold the biggest laundry pile known to man.
“You’re very bossy,” I said.
“Yes. Well. You need it.”
“I was doing fine on my own.”
“Your eyes are dead. You don’t smile. Half the time I talk to you, you aren’t listening.
Your face is always very sad. You’ve been sleeping on the couch with your protein bar wrappers.
So, like . . . why are you giving up? Are you depressed?
Or is sucking all the life out of a room how you do happy? ”
I set aside the jeans I’d been folding. “No,” I said quietly.
“That’s not how I do happy.” And it definitely wasn’t how I wanted to make everyone feel around me.
“I just . . . I don’t sleep well. I don’t have friends in this realm.
I’m a half witch. I miss my dad, my home, myself.
” Myself before the blood feelings. “And yes. There are times I want to give up, but not in a final way. And I don’t go out of my way to, but . . .”
But Leland was right. I don’t always protect myself. I stop taking care of things because why does it matter?
“But . . . ?” Skye prompted.
“But I’m fine,” I said. “It’s life. Mine’s not that bad.”
“Everyone’s life is bad.” She swept a cluster of thongs toward me so she didn’t have to sort through them. “Most of us killed our moms, so that is a fun thing we all deal with.”
There was the problem.
Why I said I was fine. Why I said nothing. I knew people had it worse. I knew I was sad because I lost Ash, and everyone else at school had mothers, and my dad was someone I had to take care of, but Gray had lost his parents. I knew that.
“I didn’t say it to make you feel bad,” Skye said. “I said it because you act like you’re not allowed to be sad, but we all are, and we all have to learn to express our needs and ask for support. That is the part you’re not doing.”
“Because I don’t need anything,” I said, my hands busy folding.
“You are turning off, closing your eyes, hiding. And I say this lovingly because, like — I get it — I’ve been there.
But this isn’t what I ordered. Ash said you were funny.
She said you did silly voices. She said you used to put your hair in eight pigtails and pretend to be a gorgon.
You were obsessed with your tiny ceramic pig collection, and one year, for winter solstice, you asked for a wall mount for your stick sword. A literal tree limb.”
None of that was a question, so I kept folding.
“So, like,” Skye went on, “where is that person?”
“You met me this morning,” I said flatly.
“And I am never wrong.”
“You said you weren’t friends with Ash,” I pointed out.
“I’m not,” Skye said. “Ash spills her guts to everyone.”
Well, that’s not true, I thought, but said nothing.
“You’re allowed to want to fix it,” said Skye.
“You don’t have to accept that this is what it is.
Like, I don’t know.” She gave me a sharp look, very different from the reserved contemplation I frequently got from Leland.
“The shit with your mom? Her whole campaign against you being here, the Anti-Human Initiative which she didn’t do with Ash? Don’t you want to know why?”
Her organized piles looked so much better than mine, better than they looked in the store.
“No,” I said.
“Well, Ash did. She was trying to find you answers before she left, and you should probably think about finishing it for her. Maybe, in the process, you’ll learn why it hurts and what will help you heal that.”
My gaze flicked to a tattoo on Skye’s ribcage of Nova and a mermaid extinguishing a wildfire.
My heart was ready for this conversation to end.
I scooped up a pile of folded clothes, carried them to Helen’s bedroom, and stuffed them in the tall dresser Created by Leland.
For the rest of the night, I expected Skye to burst in with more jabs of wisdom, but she left me alone.
I stared at the ceiling, trying to reconcile the way Ash’s letters had stopped with the fact that she’d been searching for answers, if Skye were to be believed. And I did believe her. That was my sister, quietly invested.
There were a few things I knew. Helen wanted me hated. Why else start the Anti-Human Initiative days after my arrival? Plus, she never wanted me in Everden to begin with. But Jaxan, based on the Dark Deal he’d made with Leland, did want me in Everden. At least until Selection.
I rolled over, twisting in sheets.
If Ash was looking into it, she must’ve been at least a little worried about Helen getting her way. Maybe that explained why Jaxan said Ash worked with him like Leland did. Maybe Skye was right. Maybe I did need to understand the reason for Helen’s rejection. If not for me but for Ash and Leland.