Chapter Sixteen
Darcy
It’s still dark as I walk toward the bar, just me and the clouds hanging low in the sky, blocking out the stars and casting everything in shadows. It’s quiet at this hour. Time, holding its breath.
It makes me feel like a Reaper. While everyone sleeps, I am the shadow that creeps through the dark.
I turn the corner, and a puddle of warm, golden light spills over the sidewalk. The bar light is out, but the lantern at the edge of the docks is not. Gabriel stands in the center of its halo, his back against the lamppost, two cups of something balanced in one hand, a cigarette in the other.
He straightens when he sees me, watching as I walk down the street toward him. His attention feels like a weight. Like a hook in the center of me, dragging me closer.
This thing with Gabriel doesn’t feel like part of a deal anymore. Not to me, anyway. Not since he threaded his fingers through my hair and put his mouth on my skin. Not since I saw those scars carved into his chest.
He was right. I was avoiding him. When I woke up tangled in bedsheets that smelled like him, I thought putting some space between us might be a good thing.
But now, walking toward him with his hair still mussed from sleep and a cigarette hanging out of his mouth, I’m not sure that space did much of anything at all.
My magic perks up in interest, prickling just beneath my skin. Pins and needles, like I’ve moved for the first time in hours. I push back against it, trying to force it behind the locked door where I keep it. Aelia’s warning is still fresh in my mind.
I followed your magic, she said. That means someone else can, too.
I have no interest in any other immortal beings entering the town, so I’ve been keeping it under lock and key. No magic. For any reason.
It’s been harder than I thought.
“You made it,” Gabriel calls.
I like that he’s been waiting for me. I like that he asked me to come.
I like that when I showed up at the bar last night, he was eager to see me.
I had been afraid that I’d get the sharp-edged version of Gabriel again, instead of the soft one he allowed himself to be when plied with enough wine to take down an elephant.
I bite the inside of my cheek, trying to hold back my smile. “I said I’d be here.”
He offers me the coffee cups, but I shake my head and reach for his cigarette instead. A smile hooks his mouth as I bring it to my lips.
“You could buy your own, you know.”
I take a long inhale, smoke burning at the back of my throat. It’s all in my head, I know, but I swear I can taste him when I breathe out again. “I like stealing yours better.”
“Why am I not surprised?” He grabs the cigarette from my mouth and takes another quick pull, before flicking it off to the side. He snaps his fingers, and the butt disappears from the asphalt, a single dandelion easing up between the cracks instead.
I arch an eyebrow. Gabriel shrugs. “I don’t like to litter.” His gaze turns assessing, those blue eyes of his shadowed in the early morning light. “You try.”
“Try what?”
“Make it a flower. Or, I don’t know. A bramble. Whatever you want.”
I shake my head. “I told you. My magic doesn’t work like that.”
And my magic isn’t my biggest fan since I started suppressing it. I’m afraid if I snapped my fingers, the whole block might go up in flames.
Gabriel brings one of the coffee cups to his mouth. “Your magic works however you want it to.”
“Says the thousand-year-old, all-powerful Guardian.”
Gabriel’s answering laugh is low and rough. I sigh. One little glamour wouldn’t hurt, would it? Aelia said she’d help cover my tracks. I doubt anyone is looking for me anyway.
I stare down at the dandelion. I try to imagine another, identical, right next to it. I snap my fingers the same way Gabriel did, and for a moment, nothing happens. Then his dandelion shrivels up, the stem bending, the yellow bloom turning a sickly-looking brown.
I frown. “Whoops.”
Gabriel’s face softens. “Maybe next time,” he says gently.
But I can’t stop staring at the dead flower. At the way my magic sucked the life from it, even when I did my best to try something different. It feels like an overly obvious omen. One I shouldn’t ignore.
“Ready to go?” Gabriel asks.
I look away from the flower. “You still haven’t told me where we’re going.”
He holds out my cup, and this time I take it. “Guess you’ll just have to trust me.”
“Are we stealing this boat?”
“No, we are not stealing this boat. I asked permission.” He steps off the dock and into the small skiff that’s tied to the post, maintaining his balance despite the aggressive way it rocks back and forth. “It belongs to Nate. Not that the man should own a boat. He can’t even swim.”
Guilt pricks at the back of my neck. Nate.
I still haven’t told Gabriel that he’s the man from my vision.
The one that I’ve come here to claim. I’ve seen him around town this week, but I’ve been doing my best to stay out of his way.
It’s silly, but I feel like my proximity might usher his death closer.
I need more time.
Gabriel holds out his hand, and I take it, stepping carefully from the dock.
It rocks under our combined weight, and I immediately sit on the small bench in the middle, right behind the captain’s chair.
Gabriel unties the rope and busies himself with starting the engine while I study the small fishing box tucked neatly under the lip of the boat.
There are stickers all over it. One that’s round with pale blue waves that reads ocmd.
Another of a small pine tree that reads lovelight.
Bits and pieces of Nate’s life on a tiny box shoved in the corner of a boat.
A life that could very well be coming to an end.
I curl my hands into fists.
No, I tell myself. No. This time will be different.
I’m going to save him.
I can be different, too.
Gabriel drops into the chair in front of me and turns to glance over his shoulder. “Ready?”
I nod. Gabriel watches me for another moment, then shifts, gripping the throttle. He eases us out of the dock, the low rumble of the engine cutting through the quiet of early morning.
“Sunrise is in about forty-five minutes,” Gabriel tells me over his shoulder. “We should be able to make it.”
Make what? I want to ask, but he lurches us forward, and any questions I have are stolen by the wind and the water.
Salty air whips at my cheeks as we pick up speed, heading out of the inlet.
If Gabriel wanted somewhere to dump my body, this would be a great place to do it.
It feels boundless out here. Slate-gray water beneath us.
Inky blue above. A deep, muddled orange just starting to tease at the horizon.
But I don’t think Gabriel means me any harm. Not today. He keeps glancing at me over his shoulder, his face in profile, his hair curling at the nape of his neck and behind his ear. He points somewhere in front of us, and I lean forward, bracing myself on his shoulder to see.
“Over there,” he yells, and when he turns his head, his nose brushes the shell of my ear. I shiver, and it has nothing to do with the wind. “That’s where we’re going.”
I see it. A lighthouse on a small outcropping of rocks in the middle of the water. A bright burst of red, surrounded on every side by shifting gray waves. It looks small, but it looms larger the closer we get.
Gabriel guides us easily through the metal beams that hold it up, pulling up to a small dock tucked between the rocks.
“Come,” he says, hopping out. “We don’t have much time.”
He hefts me onto the dock and keeps my hand in his as we wind our way around the base of the lighthouse, climbing the metal frame-work that serpentines beneath.
I follow him up a rickety ladder and then across a narrow porch that circles the entirety of the exterior.
We’re moving so quickly I’m barely able to catalog the details.
The white-flecked paint and the forest-green shutters.
How up here like this, surrounded by water and sky, it feels like we might float straight into the horizon.
“This way,” Gabriel urges, his hand tightening around mine. “A little bit farther.”
I follow him without hesitation as he pushes through a door he apparently doesn’t need a key for, through a small room with a wrought-iron stove and two faded blue armchairs, up another narrow staircase until we’re at the top where the light circles around and around.
Gabriel drags me through another door and it’s—
It’s beautiful. Color everywhere. The boat ride here was static black and white, shadows and grayscale, but now the world is waking up.
Deep purple melts into cotton candy pink.
Tangerine orange. Buttercup yellow. A kaleidoscope explodes above our heads, reflecting against the sparkling water below.
“Over there,” Gabriel says, right against my ear. I tilt my head and follow where he’s pointing. Four small fishing boats bob together on the incoming tide, silhouetted black against the rising sun.
“What am I looking at?” I ask.
“You were right. Even out here, they gather. They’re drawn together. They’re not alone.”
I suck in a sharp breath. I remember every word of our conversation on Gabriel’s living room floor, but I wasn’t sure he did. I turn to look at him, leaning with his forearms braced on the railing.
“Is that why you brought me here?” I ask.
His face angles toward mine. His eyes are dark, dark blue, and his smile is lopsided, one of his sharp incisors flashing briefly. “Wanted you to know that you’re not alone, either.”
I have to look back out over the water. Tears blur my vision and everything turns into watercolors, the sky bleeding into the bay. My magic isn’t the only thing I’ve been keeping buried. My fledging feelings for Gabriel take flight, fluttering beneath my rib cage like ten thousand butterflies.
He listened to me. He remembered. He brought me here.
I’m not alone.
“Gabriel,” I whisper.
He hums, his face still turned toward the sun.