The Spirit Keeper (27 page)

“At least I’ll get to see Caleb again,” said Adrian. 

“And Jasmine,” Shyla said, making a disgruntled face.

I knew I should be curious about these strangers they were talking about, but I had more important things to worry over. I snagged a ginger snap from the plate in the middle of the table and shoved the entire thing in my mouth, chewing angrily. The more I focused on trying not to cry, the more I could feel myself giving in to the overwhelming urge. My chin began to quiver, and I put my hands over my face so no one would see it crumpling. But despite my best efforts, the tears came.

Adrian patted my thigh a little awkwardly, obviously unsure what to make of my tears or how best to comfort me. “It’s okay. Don’t worry.”

“Yeah,” Shyla chimed in. “Really, it’ll be okay. You’ll get used to being Spirit Keeper, and soon the magic will become second nature. You’ll even find out that it’s actually pretty cool. Kind of.”

“It’s
not
cool,” I choked out between sobs. I lifted my head and, through my tears, searched Meg’s face for any sign of hope. But Meg, who was looking down at her folded hands, apparently had no hope to give.

“Why can’t I just have a normal life?” I threw off Adrian’s hand and scrambled to my feet.

“You should have let me die when you had the chance!” I said. “It would have saved everyone a lot of trouble.”

I yanked open the nightstand drawer, violently ripping it from its track so that the entire contents spilled to the floor in a clatter of plastic CD cases, sticky candy wrappers, nubby pencils ends, and various other  miscellaneous crap. I clenched my teeth in exasperation and dropped to my knees to poke through the mess.

“Where
are
you?” I muttered to the pile of clutter.

I finally found the iPod I’d been searching for, but then it took forever to untangle the knotted ear buds. At last, I flopped down on the bed and plugged my ears. I closed my eyes and ramped up the volume, willing the music to transport me from my current reality to one in which I was just plain old Sarah again.

It wasn’t a current song, and yet it was one of my favorites. The artist was singing about being fifteen and the new kid in school, and it seemed like only yesterday I’d been that person, too. At the time it had been the worst thing ever, aside from half my family being wiped out in a blaze.

But now I knew better.

What I was now—
a freak of nature, an anomaly, an outcast, a one-of-a-kind hybrid of good and evil—
eclipsed everything that I had once thought was wrong with my life. Katie and the Double Ds would be the least of my problems come senior year. To top it off, I’d been keeping this monumental secret from my best friend while also trying to figure out my relationship with Adrian. How much more insane could my life get? There was no way I could even possibly begin to contemplate having the power to control the elements.  

I laughed out loud, but it was not a happy sound. It was the kind of sound crazy people in the movies make right before they snap. I grabbed a stuffed bear holding a plush heart between its paws with “I Love You Beary Much” stitched in white. Priscilla had given it to me this past Valentine’s Day, and we’d both joked that at least we’d always have each other. But now I had Adrian, too, and all the problems that went with discovering who I really was.

I tossed the bear overhead, higher and higher until it hit the ceiling with a dull thud before arching back and falling out of reach at the foot of the bed. I sighed dramatically, forcing my breath out between my lips, and rolled to my stomach where I lay sprawled with my arms dangling off the edge of the mattress.

A thought came to me suddenly, as though someone had just walloped me upside the head. I sat up, yanking the buds free and tossing them aside. Then I crossed the room to the door and opened it a few inches.

Holding my breath so I could hear above the sound of my own anxious breathing, I strained to listen to what was going on in the other room. I exhaled softly as the din of voices and clatter of dishes being washed in the sink drifted from the kitchen, but I didn’t wait to unravel the threads of conversation. Instead, I closed the door and turned the lock.

Fingers trembling, I placed a sheet of paper on the edge of my desk. I took a step back and concentrated on conjuring a breeze to blow it off, having no clue if the power came solely from my mind, or if it suddenly shot out from the tips of my fingers. But if I was able to call up my powers on the first try, wind seemed a whole heck of a lot safer than fire.

“Come on,” I said as I held out my hand. I pursed my lips tighter and thrust out my hand again and again. But no matter how much I focused on the paper, nothing happened. Not even a slight ruffle.

I swiped the paper off the desk, sending it fluttering to the floor. “Figures.”

There was a knock at the door, and I took a deep breath. “Who is it?”

“It’s Adrian.”

I opened the door with a slight cringe, feeling a delayed sense of embarrassment for the way I’d acted earlier. “Hey,” I said.

“Are you okay?”

I shrugged and rolled my eyes. “Yeah. I mean, I will be. I suppose I really have no choice in the matter, right? I just need some time to let it all sink in.”

I opened my mouth to say something more but closed it, remembering the first part of the Conditional Blessing. The fate of our relationship had been pretty much set in stone, and I couldn’t help the blush that crept up my neck and into my cheeks.

“I have to go now,” Adrian said.

“Already?” 

My stomach, or maybe it was my heart, tightened at the thought of him leaving. All I knew was that I couldn’t stand the idea of being separated from him now, not when we had so much to talk about. Not when we had days of being apart to make up for. I could have kicked myself for spending the last half hour moping in my room when I could have been spending it with him.

“Just so you know, I’m going with Shyla back to Gran’s house for a few days. We’ve got some family stuff we need to, uh, sort out.” The corners of his mouth turned down in apprehension, and I realized then it wasn’t just my life that had changed.

“I’ll be close by if you need anything or, you know, just want to talk,” he said. “Here’s the number where you can reach me.” He pressed a folded piece of paper into the palm of my hand and closed my fingers around it. But instead of letting go, he brought my hand to his lips and kissed it.

“Call whenever you want, day or night,” he said. “That’s my private cell, so it doesn’t matter.”

There was a long moment of silence as we stared into each other’s eyes, and all I could think about was how much I wanted him to kiss me, to pick up right where we had left off the other day at the creek before Shyla interrupted us and everything changed forever.

As if reading my mind, he bent down and grazed my cheek with his lips. Then he pulled me close, wrapping his arms around me. I closed my eyes, reveling in the warmth of his hands as they pressed against my back, molding me to him. This was where I wanted to be, for as long as our forever might last. I knew there would never be another guy for me.

“I’m really glad you’re okay,” he whispered into my neck.

“If you hadn’t convinced your sister to come back, I’d probably be dead right now.”

He pulled away and looked down at me. “She had already made up her mind, Sarah. I didn’t have to convince her of anything. But still, I couldn’t sit around and do nothing. I couldn’t watch you die. You are the most important person in my life now.”

I craned my face to his and inhaled the scent of his skin, faintly musky and very guy-like. I closed my eyes and trembled under the weight of the emotions coursing through my body. “When will I see you again?”

“Tomorrow,” he said. “I promise.”

There came the sound of a throat being cleared, and we both turned to find Shyla hanging back with just her head poking around the corner. “Gran’s waiting. She says to come on.”

“Will I see you tomorrow, too?” I said, wondering if she’d overheard our plans to meet and thinking it rude not to invite her, too, in case she had.

But the truth of the matter was I wasn’t sure I wanted to see Shyla again so soon. She might have saved my life, but she’d given me a whole other set of problems to deal with. Still, I knew I didn’t have a choice in the matter. I was now bound to Shyla and the tribe just as surely as I was bound to Adrian. I understood it, but I didn’t like it.

“We can go to the creek,” I suggested, squaring my shoulders.

“Are you sure you want to go back there?” Adrian said.

“Yeah . . . maybe that’s not such a good idea,” Shyla said, coming fully into view. She lowered her eyes and shifted from one foot to the other. “It’s just that, you know. I don’t want it to bring back any bad memories or anything.”

“It’s okay,” I said. “If we’re going to do this, we have to make a fresh start of it.”

“Then it’s settled,” Adrian said, bending his head to kiss the top of mine.

“What will you tell your dad about going to stay at your Gran’s? What do you think he’ll do?”

“I’ll stop by my house to pick up a few things,” he said, “but I have nothing to say to him. As far as I’m concerned, he’s the source of all this trouble.”

“I’ll wait for you outside,” Shyla said to Adrian, squeezing his arm and giving me a faint smile before walking away.

“Don’t worry,” he said to me once we were alone again. “I’m going to talk to Gran and see if she can convince the Council to step in and do something about him. But I swear to you, Sarah, he’s not going to hurt you. I won’t let him.”

“Maybe we should call the police and get a restraining order.”

“I don’t know exactly how those things work,” Adrian said, “but I don’t think he’s technically done anything to warrant one. And anyway, a piece of paper is not going to stop him. When he gets an idea—” He broke off when he saw the expression on my face. “Don’t worry.”

He smiled then and started to laugh.

“What’s so funny?” I said, looking up at him.

“We’ve known each other not even a month,” he said. “When we first met, did you think we’d end up right here?”

I laughed, too. “Well, I had
hoped
, but I never imagined this.”

Adrian smiled again and leaned down to kiss me. The feel of his lips on mine set my skin on fire. And if his arms hadn’t already been wrapped around my waist, I might have collapsed to the floor. He moved his hands to my face and pulled back so he could look me in the eyes.

“In case you didn’t know, Sarah, I love you.”

The blood thumping in my ears was like a raging river, and I was certain Adrian could hear the frantic beating of my heart. “I love you, too,” I said, feeling the truth of it in every molecule of my body.

“You don’t know the power you have over me,” he said, his eyes half-closed. “It’s insane. If it’s not magic, I don’t know what is.”

I laughed at that. “There’s no magic involved. It’s the same power you have over me.”

Imogene’s snow-white head popped around the corner just then. “All right, you two lovebirds. It’s time for us to go.”

Adrian opened his eyes, looking slightly embarrassed that his grandmother had caught us in such an intimate moment. He stared at me with a longing that mirrored my own before leaning in and whispering in my ear, “This is going to be the longest night of my life.”

“Mine, too,” I whispered back.