Arise (36 page)

“It’s closing again,” she breathed happily.

“Yeah,” I agreed as the boardwalk became more solid around me. “And you’re in what looks like the very last patch of netherworld. So—”

“So let’s speed this up,” she finished, before digging one sharp elbow into Alex’s ribs. He grunted from the blow and immediately released her so that he could clutch at his chest. Gaby took advantage of his moment of weakness to wrench away from him and scramble toward me.

She reached out one hand, ready for me to tug her to safety, when a shout made both of us pause.

“Gabrielle!”

Both of our heads whipped around toward the voice. From the corner of my eye, I saw Gaby’s smile blossom when her brother crested the top of the footbridge, which was now fully visible.

Almost involuntarily, she swung her arm around, reaching for Felix instead of me.

And in that moment Alex pounced.

He wrapped one arm around her shoulders and tangled the other in her hair. With vicious force, he yanked her back into a diminishing shadow, which was folding in on itself so rapidly that they almost didn’t fit into it.

Felix and I screamed at the same time, and I could hear his feet pounding the pavement as I dove forward.

But we were both too late.

As the murky portal constricted, I caught one last glimpse of Alex’s twisted smile and Gaby’s bright, horrified eyes. Then the dark patch closed entirely, lingering as a shadow for just a heartbeat before disappearing in the wind.

After that, everything was silent.

Only one sound disturbed the wharf: the ring of a nearby church bell, chiming twelve times and then echoing hollowly across the water.

Even when the bell stopped ringing, my hand still hung in the air, clawing at nothing.

After who knows how long, I slowly turned my head. Felix crouched beside me, his hand also grasping the void. He dropped his arm first, letting his palm smack loudly on the concrete. When I lowered my hand and placed it next to his, he kept his eyes downcast.

“How much did you see?” I whispered.

Felix shook his head like he was trying to clear it. “Just the end. Just the part where she …”

He trailed off, and I nodded. “So … you
do
know.”

“I know.”

We fell silent again. Like him, I turned to stare at the ground, where I absently studied the cracks and imperfections in the concrete. Finally, I stirred.

“How did you know?” I asked him. “Where to find us, I mean?”

“Joshua,” he stated flatly.

That answer surprised me. I frowned and glanced back up at Felix. He looked up, too; and when his electric blue eyes met mine, I felt a pang in my stomach. His eyes were so much like Gaby’s.

“Joshua?” I repeated.

Felix sighed and ran one hand over his face before explaining.

“His family was eating at Antoine’s when Gaby called him about … his grandmother, I think? After he got the call, Joshua freaked. He got up to leave and accidentally ran into me on his way out. I guess I look—
looked
—enough like Gaby to send up a red flag, because he confronted me. I convinced him that Gaby and I hadn’t exorcised you, and then we decided to go find his cousins—apparently they’d gotten permission to skip dinner to go to some ‘party,’ which turned out to be … this. I guess we’re lucky his sister told him where they were really going, even if she didn’t tell him what they were really
doing
. Anyway, we saw his cousins first, on the other side of the bridge. Joshua had just made it across when he disappeared into this weird shadow. And then … well, you know the rest.”

He finished weakly, hanging his head again. I didn’t press him to tell me more, and he didn’t ask me to detail the things he’d missed while waiting for us to reappear.

Which is why his next question surprised me so much.

“It was Kade, wasn’t it?”

Gnawing on my lip, I nodded again, albeit more hesitantly this time. “His real name was Alexander Etienne. He was a Seer. And insane.”

“No surprise there,” Felix muttered.

The corner of my mouth lifted into what was probably a harsh smile.

“Well, you’ll be happy to know that she killed him. Even if he did take her, she at least got the chance to exact
some
revenge.”

Felix continued to stare at the ground. “Was it … a painful death? For Kade?”

“Looked like it, yeah.”

“Good,” Felix growled.

It was the first real emotion he’d shown. But his fierce expression disappeared almost as quickly as it had arrived—replaced once more by a blank mask. As I watched him recompose himself, I heard murmurs behind us coming from the direction of the Seers. I craned my head, looking over Felix’s shoulder at the base of the footbridge.

The first pair of eyes I caught were Joshua’s. Before I could read the thoughts in them, they darted away, toward Jillian. I followed his gaze and saw her struggling to help Annabel to her feet. Although Annabel looked rough, Jillian looked rougher—dirty and exhausted and bloody. Next to them, Hayley and Drew helped each other stand. Once all of them were upright, they turned unsteadily to face me.

I stared back at them blankly, until I realized: they were looking to me for instruction. For guidance.

I shook my head, mystified. Could these people make
any
decisions without a leader?

“Go home,” I told them softly, knowing that they could probably hear me across this short distance. “Go home now.”

Accepting my command without question, Annabel nodded. Then she pulled away from Jillian to join Hayley and Drew in propping up one another. Without a second glance at me, Annabel wrapped her arms around the other two Seers and they hobbled off together, disappearing over the footbridge and back into the Quarter.

Jillian waited until they’d vanished to stumble over to her brother. She kept her head bowed—either exhausted or contrite, I couldn’t tell.

At first Joshua gave her a cold glare as she approached. But once she’d made it within arm’s length, he pulled her in for a brief but fierce hug. After that, the two of them looked back at Felix and me.

“What do you want to do, Amelia?” Joshua asked quietly.

I glanced at Felix, then at Jillian, and then, finally, at Joshua. So softly I almost couldn’t hear myself, I said:

“I want to go home.”

Chapter

THIRTY-ONE

T
he four of us moved quickly down Decatur, trying to avoid the large crowds pouring out of midnight mass at the cathedral by Jackson Square. Once we reached the Lower Pontalba, Joshua and Jillian waited outside while Felix led me into the building.

Together, Felix and I walked in silence up the dark stairwell, down the narrow hallway leading to the apartment, and into the living room. There he clicked on a few lamps and then wordlessly signaled me to follow him out of the room.

When we passed the slipcovered couch—the place where Gaby had told me what I’d become—a hard lump formed in my throat. I tried to swallow it away as we moved toward Gaby’s bedroom.

Inside, the room already felt colder. Emptier. I flipped on the overhead light and leaned against one of the bedposts while Felix crossed over to the closet. He opened the doors and, even from here, I could see the top of the clothing pile on the floor. It was disorienting. To think that I’d stood here with Gaby only this morning—it felt like an entire lifetime ago.

After a few minutes the closet light went dark and Felix stepped out of it, carrying a brown-and-gold-checked overnight bag.

“Here,” he said roughly, handing it to me. “Gaby would want you to stay fashionable. Besides, I don’t think a few items of clothing and some shoes are going to make much difference.”

I took the bag from him without protest, but in the few seconds when it touched both our hands, I hesitated.

“I can stay,” I said softly, “if you want.”

For a moment, emotion glimmered in Felix’s eyes: sadness, regret, assent, uncertainty. Too much for someone to handle all at once. He closed his eyes, shutting those thoughts off from me, and shook his head.

“I’m not staying here, either. I only lived in this place to make Gaby happy. Now that she’s really … Now I think I’ll take my buddies up on their offer to be their fourth roommate. Anyway, it’s safer to just get out of this apartment, right?”

“Right,” I said with a humorless laugh. “Getting arrested for squatting would be—”

“The perfect end to a great couple of years,” he finished, giving me a smile that seemed far more broken than bitter. We fell silent again, neither of us sure how to follow that statement.

Finally, I nodded in the direction of the disastrous closet. “So, should we clean this place up?”

“Nah, don’t worry about it. I’ll pick everything up before I leave. You should just go ahead and get back to the Mayhews.”

“But, Felix, this is a lot for one person to clean—”

“Don’t worry about it,” he interrupted quickly, shaking his head. “Besides, I think I just need some … time. Alone.”

I didn’t imagine the crack in his voice when he said the word “alone.” I didn’t want to think about why that word had a particular significance to him now. I tucked my bottom lip between my teeth, nodded, and said, “I understand.”

Without thinking, I reached out to give Felix’s hand a comforting squeeze. But I withdrew before we made that numb noncontact again. After all, he didn’t need a reminder of the barrier between us—a barrier that existed because of his sister’s magic.

Magic that didn’t exist anymore. Not in this world.

Shouldering the overnight bag, I stepped aside so that Felix could lead me into the hallway. I tossed one last glance at the bedroom before he shut off the light, plunging it into darkness and out of my life forever.

Again, Felix and I remained silent as he walked me to the entrance of the apartment; but when we reached the front door, I paused.

He looked away from me, ducked his head, and began fumbling in his coat pockets. He pulled out a wadded-up restaurant receipt and a pen emblazoned with the word “Antoine’s.” Using his hand as a flat surface, Felix scribbled something on the back of the receipt and then handed it to me.

“My cell phone number,” he explained. “In case you ever need to reach me.”

“Thanks,” I said, tucking the paper into my own pocket. Then I lowered my head, frowning as I studied the rounded toes of my boots. Finally, I looked up, caught Felix’s gaze, and held it.

“Just so you know,” I whispered, “in the end she was my friend.”

Felix nodded, answering me in a heavy, raw voice.

“Just so you know, you were her friend too.”

After that there was nothing more to say.

Felix pulled back the door for me, keeping it open so I’d have some light while I descended the stairs. At the bottom of the stairwell, I took a final glance up at him. But I couldn’t see anything except a tiny glow of light high above me.

I sighed quietly and then pushed open the door that led outside. I rejoined the Mayhews and, without saying a word to one another, we moved in unison back out to Decatur.

On our walk to Ursulines, Joshua stayed on my right side. I tried not to look at him, since I had no idea what I would say or do once I did. Jillian walked on my left, and from that vantage point I could see the nasty cut where Alex hit her with the gun. It looked painful, jagging its way along her temple and into her hairline. A gory mess still covered her cheek. Jillian hadn’t wiped it clean, probably because she just couldn’t seem to stop apologizing to me.

Most of our exchanges started with her proclaiming “I didn’t mean for anyone to get hurt.” Then I answered with a quiet “I know.”

Or Jillian tried the following route: “All I wanted was for my brother to be happier. To live his life like a normal guy.”

To that, I again answered, “I know.”

During these brief conversations, Joshua stayed quiet, even when I quickly explained my new state of being. Every now and then he would point out a less-crowded path along the sidewalk, where late-night revelers stumbled along singing Christmas carols and toasting each other from plastic cups. Otherwise, Joshua remained completely silent. He only spoke once we’d turned onto the much quieter Ursulines Avenue.