C
HAPTER
39
C
olin had texted me an address and a room number. Luc brought us Between in the hotel parking lot, the ground wet from a icy rain. I bent over, battling nausea.
Luc grabbed my elbow as I started across the parking lot, devastation etched into his face. “Let me explain.”
I yanked away, so dizzy I ended up on my hands and knees on the pavement, gravel biting into my skin. “Don’t touch me. Ever again. Ever.”
“Mouse.
Please.
” He took a step toward me and I scuttled back, gulping down cold air to calm myself. Only when my fingers were numb did I get up, leaning against the concrete base of a light pole.
“Please what? Please overlook the fact you sold me out?” I shook my head. “You didn’t have to use Constance. You didn’t need the Covenant. The magic is killing me. That’s all the incentive I needed. But you kept it a secret. You chased after me, you manipulated me, you made me care about you ... and it was all a lie.”
“No!” he said. “Not the part about us, anyway.”
“Really? You mean it? Do you
promise,
Luc? Cross your heart?” I could hear the waspish tone of my words. I tried to tell myself that in saving me today he’d gone against his family, his people, all the traditions he’d been raised with. Maybe he was just as caught as I was, tangled in lines of magic and fate and duty and love, making it impossible to move. I almost felt sympathy for him.
Then I remembered what he’d told me once:
Doesn’t matter who you love or what you’re scared of. If there’s one person in the world you can trust, it’s the person you’re bound to
. My compassion shriveled up and blew away like old leaves.
“The prophecy said you’d be okay. I believed it. I thought if you could fix the magic, you’d be okay.” His voice echoed across the parking lot, broken and lost.
I turned, slowly. The rain was coming down harder now, beading on the leather of his coat. The drops stung my cheeks, and I shook my head. “You think the magic defines me, the way you let it define you. But I’m more than a prophecy. I’m not just the Vessel, even if you can’t see it. So I will do what I have to, and then I’ll go back to my world. You won’t have to choose between us again, Luc. It won’t be an option.”
“Mouse ...”
I didn’t wait to hear his response.
I pounded on the door, trembling as the rain trickled down my neck. I heard Colin’s feet hit the floor, the scrabbling of the chain, and then the door was open. I stepped away from the cold, into the warmth and the light. Colin pulled me inside, kicking the door shut behind me, shutting Luc out.
“Hey,” I said stupidly.
“Hey.” He steered me toward the lamp, inspecting me in the yellowish light. “You’re back.”
I pushed past him, shedding my coat, my scarf, my gloves like a trail of breadcrumbs. On the counter stood a familiar green bottle of Jameson, a half inch of whiskey still in the squat motel glass.
“Mo?”
I poured another two fingers, my hands stiff. Before Colin could cross the room and take my prize away, I swallowed half of it, feeling the fire streak through my throat and chest.
“What the hell happened?” He snatched the glass from me.
“Nothing. Everything. I fucked up.” My eyes watered. Hard to tell if it was from the whiskey or the admission, and I didn’t care. “Give me back my drink.”
“Technically, it was my drink.”
“Whatever.” I spun around and grabbed another glass.
“Ease up.” Very gently, he tugged the bottle out of my grip, setting it on the table. “Are you hurt?”
I thumped into the desk chair. “Not anymore.”
“Luc healed you.”
He healed me and broke me all over again. I wondered if a person could only be mended so many times, if they ever reached a point where they were more cracks and chips than they were wholeness, and what became of them. “I’m fine.”
“Yeah. You want to talk about it?”
“Not even remotely.”
He took a swallow of whiskey. “Is it over? Are you done with them?”
“I’m not ever going to be done with them. When World War Three comes, the only things left on the planet will be cockroaches and Twinkies and Arcs telling me to save the freaking world.”
His eyes were dark and worried, but he let me ramble on.
“How do you manage?” I asked. “How can you stand knowing you’re going to spend your entire life tethered to something ... to someone ... even if you don’t want to? Doesn’t it make you mad? Don’t you ever want your own life?”
“This is my life. I made the choices that brought me here. Now I do the best I can with what I have. Doesn’t stop me from wanting more sometimes.” He turned the glass in his hand, looking at the amber liquid like it had the answer. “The Arcs won’t let you go?”
“They need me. And they’ve got the power.” Understanding crossed his face like a shadow. Wordlessly, he passed me the glass.
“So,” I said, after the whiskey hit my bloodstream and bolstered my courage, “we had a deal.”
“We did?” He sat on the edge of the bed, elbows on knees, casual unless you looked at him closely.
“I promised to come back. Which”—I stood, made a sweeping gesture like I was on display—“I did.”
The corner of his mouth twitched. “I see.”
He did. He had that slow, hungry look, the one that stripped away all my secrets and defenses, more potent than any alcohol.
I eased across the room, sat across from him on the bed. “Time to pay up.”
“You don’t want to stay here,” he said. “You’ve wanted New York forever.”
“If I stayed,” I insisted, “what would happen?”
“Depends.” He touched the hem of my sweater.
“On what?”
“If you plan to keep throwing yourself at me.”
I shoved at his shoulder and he looked up, eyes full of laughter and desire. “I’m not a saint, you know.”
“I am so glad to hear it.” I leaned in and kissed him, hard. His hands clenched on my waist, and I sank into the delicious familiar sensation, the taste of whiskey and Colin mingling on my tongue.
When we came up for air, I said, as reasonably as I could, “I have not been throwing myself at you.”
He sat back, fighting a smile. “You walked in, downed two shots, offered to stay in Chicago, and kissed me. How else should I interpret that?”
It was a rhetorical question, but I couldn’t help answering in my head. Colin was solid, and strong, and I wanted him so much it was devouring me. But I’d done exactly what he said—came into the room hurt and angry and wanting something to make the pain go away.
“I’m not complaining,” he said, running his hand from my neck to my fingertips, kissing me carefully.
“You should be.”
He studied me. “Should I?”
“Here’s the thing,” I said. “There’s so much in my head right now, and lots of it is bad. And I think if we slept together, you could make the awfulness go away.”
He started to speak, and I pressed a finger to his lips. “But I don’t want to mix them up, because later, all of the bad stuff will still be there, and whatever we did ... I couldn’t separate them.”
“You were thinking we should sleep together.”
“But now I don’t,” I clarified.
He tucked his hands behind his head and stared at the popcorn ceiling. I pulled my knees to my chest and waited.
“I think about you,” he said. “About us. I keep looking for a way to make it all work, but it’s complicated. More than you realize.”
Tess, he meant. I busied my hands tracing the pattern on the comforter as he continued. “I wish I could sleep with you and keep it casual, but I don’t have it in me. You matter too much. I don’t want it to be something you take lightly, or do because you’re angry or feel unsure. I don’t want any room for regret.”
I flushed. He wasn’t stupid. He’d known something was wrong the minute I stepped into the room. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. I want to be the one to make things better. Just not like that. Not tonight, anyway.” He laced his fingers with mine. “Tell me how to make it better.”
I stretched out next to him, my head on his chest, sighing as his arms came around me. “This is pretty much perfect.”
C
HAPTER
40
A
harsh, jangling noise woke me a few hours later. Before I could do more than lift my head, Colin rolled over me to reach for his phone, putting a finger to his lips.
The red glow of the clock said 3:30
AM
, and no light peeked through the ugly floral drapes. Colin sat up, and I curled myself around him, trying to steal his warmth. Gently, he eased away, shaking his head. I tuned into the conversation, but his one-word responses gave nothing away.
Finally, he ended the call and tossed the phone aside. In the darkness, all I could see was the shape of his back—shoulders slumped, head bowed—and I burrowed back under the covers, as if I could hide from what he was going to say.
“We need to go home,” he said. When he flicked the wall lamp on, his expression filled me with a familiar sickening dread. It was the look people got when they were about to cleave your life into “before” and “after.” I
hated
that look.
“What happened?”
“Everyone’s okay.”
I started looking for my shoes. “Tell me.”
He found my coat and scarf on the floor and handed them to me. I watched the play of his muscles, sinewy as he pulled on his waffle-knit shirt. He didn’t move with Luc’s fluid, prowling grace, but he was beautiful nevertheless. I forced myself to pause and savor the moment, because whatever was waiting on the other end of that phone call was going to ruin it. I slipped my feet into my ballet flats and carefully wrapped the scarf around my neck. “Well?”
“Everyone’s okay,” he said again, watching me with that same inky, steady gaze. “Your mom wanted you to know that.”
I exhaled slowly. Not Mom, then. That’s what mattered. Not my mom.
“There was a fire,” he said. “At The Slice.”
“How bad?” The room seemed to tilt, the garish colors of the drapes swirling together. He sat down, drawing me into his lap, and I rested my head against the broad plane of his chest. “It’s gone, isn’t it?” She’d sacrificed everything for the restaurant—everything—and now it was gone. My throat tightened and I shoved away the sadness, looking for anger instead.
“Morgan’s has some smoke and water damage. They’ll reopen soon.”
“But not The Slice.”
He leaned his forehead against mine. “We should go.” “It wasn’t an accident, was it? Ekomov did this?”
He lifted a shoulder. “It went up pretty fast.”
“Why The Slice?”
“Billy has eyes on the house. If they want to send a message, the restaurant is the next best place.”
I stood, and he took my hand. “I guess my dad will have to wait.”
“Guess so.” He helped me into my coat, packed up the room, and ushered me outside. Overnight, the rain had turned to snow, already an inch deep. The sky was heavy with the promise of more to come, all the stars blotted out. Before and after, I told myself. And the night we’d spent here was a moment suspended out of time.
At Colin’s insistence, I tried to sleep, my head on his shoulder as he pointed the truck north.
“This changes things, doesn’t it?” I asked, an hour into the drive. The gears in my head were turning. “Billy wants me home for something.”
“Probably. My instinct would be to keep you out of town for a while.”
Why would you send someone you loved into danger? Luc’s face flashed in my mind. Because they had something you needed, something you couldn’t take by force. Something they could do that no one else could. What did I have that Billy wanted? That made Marco Forelli take notice of a high school girl?
I pressed closer to Colin, breathing in the scent of him, trying to call up the sense of comfort I’d felt last night. As we approached the city, the snow and rush-hour traffic forced us to inch along. At the turn for my street, I shook my head, touching his sleeve. “The Slice,” I said.
“I’m supposed to take you home.”
“I have to see it. Please.”
The building was a shell—the sour smell of ashes and smoke were thicker than the patchy snow blanketing the rubble. Even now, firefighters were picking their way through the remains, making sure everything was out. Emergency vehicles lined the street, blue and red lights swirling over the jagged holes that used to be our front windows. Cameramen from local TV news jockeyed for the best angle, the one that would show the most damage. They could have saved themselves the effort. There was no way to avoid seeing what had become of The Slice. Even the retro plastic sign over the front was melted to an unrecognizable lump.
I jumped out of the truck before Colin killed the engine, slipping on the dirty, sooty piles of snow, soaking my feet.
“Miss,” said one of the officers, “you can’t go in there.”
“That’s my family’s restaurant!”
“It’s not safe,” he said firmly, blocking me as I tried to dart around him.
I scanned the crowd for my uncle and found him surveying the entire scene, his expression as icy as the wind whipping down the street.
“Uncle Billy?”
“Mo? Donnelly was supposed to take you home.”
“I made him bring me here.”
He nodded absently, never taking his eyes off the swarm of activity before us.
“How’s Mom?” I asked.
“Heartbroken,” he snapped. “Her life’s work reduced to cinders. How do you think she is?”
“I’m sorry,” I said, not certain what I was apologizing for.
He exhaled noisily and turned up the collar of his overcoat. “It’s me who should say that, darling girl. I wasn’t prepared for this. For things to go quite this far.”
“Colin says it was the Russians.”
“Who else would do something like this?” He shook his head. “They can’t be allowed to get away with it.”
I watched the smoldering remains, the way the snow turned to gray slurry as it drifted onto what had been my second home. The counter where I’d done homework, the kitchen where I’d learned to crimp a pie crust, the regulars I’d seen so often growing up that they were extended family. Gone.
Billy turned to me, his thin, wrinkled cheeks reddened by the cold. He must have watched all night. “Now do you believe me? They’re dangerous.”
“I know.”
“Will you help, then? Look at what they’ve taken from us. Will you help us take it back?”
I nodded, and his smile was like a benediction. “Good girl. Have Donnelly take you home now.”
Down the street, Colin leaned against a bus shelter, hands jammed in his pockets, taking it all in. As I picked my way around piles of slush and pools of dirty water, every step seemed harder than the last. My feet were clumsy and half-frozen. I buried my face in his jacket, and the tears I’d been fighting were impossible to hold back.
By the time I stopped crying, my hair was soaked with melting snow and my nose was running like crazy. His jacket was wet, too, the canvas rough against my cheek. “You’re shaking,” he said. I would have argued, but my teeth were clacking too hard for speech.
We started to walk toward the truck when someone called my name.
“Mo! Hold up!” The voice behind me was familiar. I turned, squinting, and saw Nick Petros, the reporter from my Journalism class. He was wearing a battered blue parka with the hood pulled up against the cold, a steno notebook in his gloved hand. Judging from the ruddy, wind-chapped look of his cheeks, he’d been here as long as my uncle.
“I’d like to ask you a few questions,” he said.
“No comment,” I said.
He took a step back as Colin plowed past him, keeping me tucked under one arm.
“We’ll talk later,” he called.
I didn’t doubt he meant it.