Surrender (22 page)

She crunched again. “Are you sure it's
his
powers that are going to get stolen?”

“What do you mean?”

“He's super-good at taking powers now, Em. That's part of what the Asarum does. What if he wants to take yours?” When I didn't answer, she said, “Don't pretend it never occurred to you.”

I shrugged. “He wouldn't do that, not without asking me. He just wouldn't.” I didn't mention my vision on the football field.

“Not before he started taking the herb. He's changed, Emma. Maybe he doesn't feel the same anymore.”

“I don't know what he's planning, he won't tell me. But I do know he loves me, and I'll never stop loving him.”

“How do you know that?” Natalie asked. “How can you be so sure? You're seventeen, Emma; you've only been together for a few months. What if he isn't
the one
?”

I grew silent as we crossed the street toward school, the soft snow falling all around us.

Natalie stopped and looked at the sky, the snowflakes dotting her face. “I'm asking because … I think I'm really in love with Lukas.”

“Oh, Natalie.” I hugged her. “I'm sorry.”

“No,” she said, pulling back from me. “That's just it. I do love him, but I don't think it's forever. Love's weird that way, you know?”

“Yeah,” I agreed, but for different reasons. “Love's weird.”

What I didn't say was that I didn't know why—maybe it was “destiny,” or maybe it was something stronger and more ordinary—but I knew Bennett and I were
forever
.
Now I just had to figure out if I could live with taking all his powers. Or, if Natalie was right, with him taking mine.

We found Harry at the gates, buttoned up in his long black wool coat, brooding at his Droid. He looked up as we approached. “Natalie,
vos es decorus
.
^b
Emma, you look like your dog died.” He frowned. “Would it come back as a ghost?”

“I don't have a dog,” I said repressively.

“In theory?” he asked.

“In theory,” I answered, “this conversation sucks.”

“Ignore her,” Natalie told him. “She's grumpy about the never-ending saga of her and Bennett.”

“
Natalie!
” I said. Did she have to share everything?

“What?” she asked. “Is that a secret?”

“No.” I sighed. “I just want this to be over.”

“You mean the thing with Bennett,” Harry said slyly, no doubt trying to get a rise out of me.

“No. I mean Neos.” It was true—it was time for me to end it, whatever it meant for me and Bennett. I'd allowed it to go on far too long.

In Latin class, I made a list of all the places we hadn't searched yet—or hadn't searched well enough. I actually wrote it in Latin, so if questioned by Mr. Z, I could say I was running vocab. Except in the end, the list looked more or less like: everywhere.

I planned to do a little brainstorming during Advanced Bio, trying to narrow down the location from the other direction—who'd brought the ashes to Thatcher, and where would they have put them? But thoughts about what I was going to do to Neos when I did find him kept creeping in. Yeah, I wanted this to be over, but the final confrontation was bound to be ugly and bloody—I wasn't sure I was ready for that.

And today's assignment didn't help: dissecting a sheep's heart.

Really
? I said to the universe.
I'm trying to track down a ghostly killer and you're tossing me a sheep's heart?

In typical Thatcher fashion, the bio lab looked more like a high-tech kitchen than a high school science classroom. There were four counters made of stainless steel with square sinks cut into them, and I stood at one with my three lab partners, waiting for one of the guys to start cutting.

Instead, they both stood there making dumb jokes while the other girl nibbled her lower lip.

“Oh, give me the knife,” I said.

I took the scalpel, eyed the worksheet, and made the incision. Not nearly as bad as a wraith—the sheep's heart didn't ooze black oil or leap up from the table to attack me. My partners took notes as I made the cuts and peeled back the flaps of flesh. When we got to the center, even the other girl was totally hooked.

“Wow,” she said. “It's almost beautiful.”

But I stepped back, dropping the scalpel in the sink.
Because the cold, dead flesh suddenly reminded me of Neos, of tearing his tongue from his mouth to get the jade amulet. What kind of person does that? The same kind of person who coldly cuts into a sheep's heart? I used to care. I used to worry about killing ghosts. Now I hardly even noticed, and I sliced into a sheep's heart like slicing a loaf of bread.

“I'm done,” I said, and scrubbed my hands in the sink. Then I kept scrubbing, trying to wash away something deeper than the traces of sheep's heart.

One of the guys watching me said, “Who would've thought the old man had so much blood in him?”

My heartbeat spiked. This kid knew about Neos? Was he possessed? I spun on him and hissed, “
What
did you say?”

He stepped back in alarm. “Nothing! Nothing, it's a quote from
Macbeth
.”

I exhaled. “Shakespeare?”

“Yeah, you were scrubbing your hands like Lady Macbeth after she forces her husband to kill the king. Chill out. It was only a joke.”

I ignored him and wrote down my observations, but he was right. I was on edge. Even more than usual. I felt something coming, something cold and hard and big as a freight train, hurtling toward us from the darkness.

I stared at the scalpel in the bottom of the sink. Was I going to have to cut into Neos's heart before this all ended? How much blood would there be then?

There is a moment before a major storm when the world grows eerily quiet. Birds stop chirping, dogs quit barking, and families huddle in their houses. Conversations are hushed, and even the wind seems to slacken and wait.

There'd been no more possessions at school, no more outbursts at home. Natalie and Lukas were rebuilding a friendship. The Sterns were distant but kind. Bennett was nowhere, and even Harry and Sara were uncharacteristically quiet.

But with a storm, you know exactly where it's coming from. Clouds form, the wind lashes, and the sky goes gray—but no matter how hard I looked, I couldn't see Neos's attack coming.

So I lived my life. Went to class, searched the school grounds, and one night, alone in my room, called my mom again to ask her to come for Parents' Night.

“How's it going with the ashes?” was the first thing she asked.

“It's not,” I said, hopping onto my bed. “The school's so old, there are too many hiding spots. For all we know, they're in a locker. Harry and Sara have been going to all the lounges, flirting and browbeating kids into letting them poke around, but there's still like three hundred to go—and that's just lockers.”

“You don't sound hopeful,” she said.

“We're not going to find the ashes,” I told her. “Not before Neos comes.”

“You feel it, too? The Knell is on high alert. Things are crazy here. Dad's going through Rachel's things, and he's not having a great time.”

“What's wrong?”

“Nothing serious. Just reading things he'd rather not, and feeling guilty he wasn't there for her. He's hoping to find out why she's helping Neos. She helped him even before that wraith possessed her, you know. But why?”

“She loved him, isn't that enough?” I asked.

“No, Emma,” Mom said. “It's not.”

I sensed a lesson coming on, probably about Bennett, so I said, “I'm doing a presentation in Trig. For Parents' Night on Friday.”

“Good. We'll be there.”

“You will?” I couldn't keep the surprise out of my voice.

“Simon thinks whatever Neos is planning is going to happen in Echo Point. We're all coming up. We'll get there as soon as we can on Friday.”

I was silent, trying not to let it bug me that they were
really coming because of Neos. Was it too much to ask that they act like normal parents for once? Although, I supposed they were trying to protect me, which
was
more important than solving a math problem in front of an audience.

My father muttered in the background and the phone thumped as my mother put her hand over it. But I still heard her muffled voice say, “No, I didn't forget … I know it's important … Fine. Then
you
tell her.”

The phone clattered, and my dad came on the line. “Your mother has something to tell you,” he said, and handed the phone back, with three random beeps, accidentally pressing buttons.

God
. How hard was it to use a telephone? They were like cavemen at an ATM.

More scrambling, and my mother was back. “You know Simon's been researching the ashes? He's developed a theory. The ashes will increase Neos's strength and help him possess you.”

“So, he'll be even stronger. Well, that's good news.” I was terrified at the idea of Neos having more power.

“The good part is that Simon thinks the ashes will become noticeable to you a few minutes before Neos uses them. He can't hide them while he's preparing to use them. So once you feel the ashes, get them immediately.”

“But no pressure, right?”

“Let's just hope it doesn't happen before we get there.”

…

After hanging up with my mom, I crawled back to bed and stared at my homework for a while, but the words just swum around on the page. I thought about talking to Natalie or even Mrs. Stern, but what I really wanted was to break things. I went downstairs to spar with the Rake, but he didn't show, even though I waved my sword back and forth in the ballroom.

Instead, I replaced the sword and stomped into the billiard room and started whizzing balls around the pool table, making them smack into each other.

After a while, Natalie came and stood in the doorway. “You look like you've got a personal grudge against the fourteen ball.”

“What's the fourteen ball ever done for me?” I smashed the three into it.

She stopped one of the balls from bouncing off the table. “Is this about Bennett?”

“No, it's about Neos. I just want this to be over.”

She nodded. “Did Lukas tell you Simon called yesterday?”

“No. What'd he want?” To tell me I couldn't help Bennett? I creamed the fourteen with the yellow ball.

“To know if you've been feeling … what's the word he used?”

“Scared? Anxious? Panicked? Tense?
Emo
?”

“Foreboding!” she said, spinning the one ball across the table. “A sense of foreboding. Who talks like that?”

“Only Simon.”

“Well … have you?”

“Yeah,” I told her. “Whatever's coming, it's coming soon—and it's big.”

The next two days crept past. Lukas never told me about Simon's call, I think because he didn't want to add to the feeling of growing dread. He and Natalie weren't polite or bickering anymore, both distracted by the gathering storm. Celeste was more formal and subdued than usual, Anatole bristled at everyone who stepped into his kitchen, and Mrs. Stern came across even more remote and chilly.

At school, Max searched the archives alone—Edmund had stopped appearing, and I didn't have the heart to summon him. Kylee was still acting timid and injured, and the ghost jocks were even more outrageously annoying—trying to cover their underlying nervousness, I thought.

Harry and Sara couldn't
feel
anything wrong, but they took their cues from us, and searched the student lounges with a wariness that I'd never seen from either of them. Britta was as sneering and mean as ever, completely unchanged, and I wanted to kiss her.

I managed to restrain myself.

After dinner on Friday, I changed into my gray boatneck sweater, red pashmina, black miniskirt, thick tights, and my favorite boots, and stepped into the hall.