Chapter 20 Whitney
Whitney
Apparently dying and coming back really wears you out.
Shortly after dinner, I pass out and sleep for almost thirty-six hours. Xolotl sits by my bedside the entire time, and when I finally wake up and see his gorgeous face smiling down at me, I shriek.
I can smell myself, and it’s not good.
Once I’ve showered, I discover he’s still waiting for me.
“Don’t you have anything you need to do?” I ask.
“No.” He shrugs. “I’m unemployed now.”
I laugh, at first. Then I realize he’s not kidding. “Well, that’s fine. You have lots of things to learn about humanity and being mortal, so we can do a little studying.” I wiggle my eyebrows. “You know, Netflix and chill.”
His furrowed brow tells me he has no idea what that means.
“Come with me.” I grab his hand, and it occurs to me belatedly.
“Why don’t you smell?” I study his clothes, but it’s impossible to know whether he’s changed at all.
He always wears all black. His dark, almost black hair isn’t greasy, though.
It falls around his face, almost to his shoulders in the same way it always has.
“I showered—your mom told me I had to.” He scrunches his nose. “The way humans are forced to clean themselves is tedious, but most things about having a mother are pretty nice.”
Great, he’s like a preteen boy with his showering habits. He has to be told to clean himself. That’s okay. There’s bound to be an adjustment period when you move from immortal to mortal, right?
When I plonk down on the sofa, he sits next to me, and then he scootches even closer. “You learn fast,” I say.
He drops an arm over my shoulders. “I was worried something might be wrong, but Alexei has quite a bit of experience with healing humans and he said you were fine, just tired.”
“You threatened to kill him if he was wrong, didn’t you?”
“He definitely did—it was really funny, actually.” Izzy hops over the back of the sofa and sits down. “Speaking of, we’re heading back to Russia soon. I have a wedding to plan and a war to prevent, since your boyfriend’s brother insists on gallivanting around and stirring things up.”
Xolotl laughs. “Understood. Best of luck.”
“You know Leonid’s the Czar of Russia?” I ask.
“We covered some stuff while you were sleeping,” he says.
“I’ll miss you,” I say. “Fly safe.”
“Wow, that’s it?” Izzy’s eyes widen and her head tilts. “Okay.”
I climb over Xolotl and bear-hug her. “I’m going to miss you so much.” I fake cry on her shoulder. “Please, please be safe!”
“Better.” Izzy pats my back. “A little better.”
Apparently while crawling over Xolotl, I hit the remote, but it didn’t go to Netflix. It went to—shudder—the news. But once I realize what they’re saying, I freeze.
“—seem to be forming along the expected party lines as the battle rages over how to handle the California rebellion and the ongoing upheaval on the west side of the United States. The entire western region is bracing for impending war, and the nearby states are implementing checks along the state lines. Things have become even more complicated given the unstable situation with the fault lines in California. Starting with the Green Valley fault, and moving from that system to the Vaca fault system, earthquakes have been almost constant during the past week. By most estimates, nearly half of the residents of California have fled to stay with relatives in other states, leaving in spite of the efforts of Nevada, Oregon, and Arizona to keep refugees from fleeing through their boundaries. The mass evacuations have, of course, caused major problems in the grid, the roadways, and the local infrastructure from top to bottom.”
I whip around. “Why didn’t anyone tell me about this?”
“And what are you planning to do?” Izzy asks.
“Mr. Fabulous started all that, and now we’re in the middle of a full-blown coup started by some lunatic general.
Barrera something.” She shakes her head.
“I’m sure it’ll settle down eventually, and if part of California falls into the Pacific, is it really a big loss? ”
I can’t believe what she’s saying. “Izzy Brooks.” I shoot off the sofa and shut off the television. I can’t watch any more.
“We should go see him,” Xolotl says. “Maybe we can fix some of it.”
“Maybe?” I stare into his face. “This isn’t a normal date activity, stabilizing tectonic plates and suppressing coups.” My hands start to shake. “Plus, you aren’t who you were when you started all that.” It’s my fault, too.
He stands. “I kind of assumed, but it’s a mess I made, and while I generally believe that the world will be a better place for enduring this sort of turmoil, your brother Gabe has taught me a few things in the last day and a half.”
“This should be good,” Izzy says.
“If the person you like is upset, you’re supposed to do anything and everything you can to fix it.
In this case, I’m quite sure I can stabilize the fault lines.
I’m not as sure about my success at pulling back the military—Barrera will only respond to force, and my ability to absorb weapons may no longer exist.”
“No.” I sit down again and pull him back down next to me. “It’s too dangerous. You’re not even bulletproof anymore. What if they start lobbing missiles at you again?” I shake my head. “No way.”
“At least the fault lines,” Izzy says. “You could let him clean that up. I asked Aleksandr if he could help, and he said that’s waaaaay beyond his paygrade.”
“It would be,” Xolotl says. “Though Baba Yaga might be able to help.”
“She’s gone back to Latvia,” Izzy says. “Or maybe Russia. Who knows?”
“Well then, it’s just us.” I huff. “And we’re supposed to be dating, because you retired.” I feel like crying. “But instead, we’re what?”
“Stabilizing the west coast?” Izzy asks. “That sounds like a fun couple’s activity.”
I stand up again, just so I can shove her.
“Hey, we’ve got our hands full out in Russia, too, and there’s an actual horseman working against us.” Izzy points at her bags, and I realize Leonid’s security team has arrived, and they’re pulling up stakes for real.
Man, I’ve been awake for one second, and it’s like everything is just raining down on me. “I didn’t realize you meant that you were leaving right this second.”
“Leonid’s really struggling being here instead of there,” she says. “He promised we could stay until you woke up, but. . .”
“So you were a little nervous that she was sleeping for so long.” Xolotl’s standing now, and he’s annoyed, too. “You lied to me.”
“Not at all,” Izzy says. “Leonid and Alexei weren’t worried, but I was. She’s my sister. My only sister.” She hugs me again.
I find my eyes welling with tears when she steps back. “Be safe out there, with that stupid horseman running amok.”
“You too, stabilizing California and stuff.” She blows me a kiss, and then they walk out the door.
“I better pack a bag,” I say. “It’ll be really neat traveling with stuff—and presumably you won’t short out my phone anymore?”
Xolotl shrugs. “Honestly, I’m not sure.”
I roll my eyes. “You need to get a job, if you plan to melt my phone on the regular.”
“A job.” He looks genuinely worried. “What kind of job could I get?”
I drop a hand on his arm. “Don’t stress. There are loads of jobs out there, and I need to find one, too.”
“So you’re also unemployed and pathetic?” His eyebrows rise.
I nod slowly. “Sorry to burst your bubble, but if you’re secretly a gold-digger, you went for the wrong human.
” I whip out the phone Mom left by my bed with a note, and I log in to my bank account.
“I have exactly nine-thousand, two hundred and six dollars to my name, and it’s all right here. ” I swivel the phone around.
“That seems like a lot of dollars,” he says.
“It’s not,” Gabe says, strolling past. “I have like four times that.”
“You still have a college fund,” I say. “That doesn’t count. I earned this nine grand myself.”
“Siblings are always a little obnoxious, it seems,” Xolotl says, “but as siblings go, I’ve found that I quite like yours.”
“But how are you going to get to California?” Gabe asks. “They’ve grounded all the flights. The only way out is by car, and people have been fleeing for days. I doubt anyone’s going the other direction.”
“I might still be able to portal,” Xolotl says.
That seems like too much to hope for. “Your portalling came from your dark magic, yes?”
He shrugs. “I’m not sure. All I had was dark magic, so I didn’t pay any attention to how I did things.”
“Plus, he still has that, yo.” Gabe tosses his hand up, fingers in a fist.
When Xolotl fist-bumps him, I swear I almost lose my mind. “No. None of that with the thousands-of-years-old death deity.” I wave Gabe away. “I need to pack.”
“Good luck with that.” He winks at Xolotl. “I’ve never seen her pack light.”
I hit him with a sofa pillow before he ducks down the hall.
“You better pick that up, young lady.” Mom emerges from her room. “Did I miss Izzy?”
When I glance outside, the cars are just disappearing.
“You could catch her, I bet,” I say.
Mom shrugs. “It’s fine. We said goodbye about three times—every time we thought you were waking up, she’d start crying.”
Great. She was using my long recovery as an excuse to spend more time with Mom. I should’ve known.
“You should pack.” Xolotl tosses his hand down the hall to my room.
Mom moves to block me. “You can’t go to California. It’s too dangerous.”
“We have to, Mom.”
“We do.” Xolotl looks apologetic. “I’ll keep her safe.”
“Don’t take this wrong, young man, because you look like you mean very well, but I don’t trust that you’re powerful enough to keep her safe from the mess you made, not anymore.”
Xolotl blinks. “I’m hardly a young man. I’m thousands of years older than you.”
“No.” Mom folds her arms. “You were born two days ago by my reckoning, the day you became mortal. You’re a newborn human, and you aren’t taking my precious daughter anywhere.”