Taking advantage of the fact that Rebecca and Jeremiah were now talking, I leaned in closer to Joshua. “Sorry. I guess I lose the ability if I don’t concentrate hard enough.”
He moved his lips to my ear and whispered, “We can touch again?”
I nodded, focusing on his face as I let my cheek brush his. “Yes, we can. And I have a lot of other things to tell you, too.”
Looking a little stunned, Joshua sank back into his chair and arched an eyebrow. Later, I mouthed, once more taking his hand and folding it into mine on the tabletop. By now, Jillian had joined us at the breakfast table, so she easily noticed our touch. She raised her eyebrows as well, but thankfully, she chose not to comment yet. Instead, she let the surprise go out of her eyes before she looked back up at her parents.
“Mom, Dad, do you guys mind if the three of us just get out of here for a while? You know, for a break.”
Rebecca turned away from Jeremiah, who she was comforting, and gave her daughter a distracted wave.
“Go ahead. Your dad and I need to meet with the funeral director this afternoon, anyway. I think some folks from Ruth’s church are bringing food by later, so you two will be on your own for dinner. And unfortunately, I’ve got to go into the shop tonight to start sorting orders from the florist. Prom season really was the worst possible time for this to happen.”
The three of us at the table froze. Then, after a long pause, we exchanged worried glances. Prom. With all the death and demons and decisions, we’d completely forgotten about it. Not that any of us had planned on going. Well, maybe Jillian and Scott wanted to go together, but Joshua and I hadn’t even discussed it.
Without thinking, I glanced at the calendar on a nearby wall and then suppressed a gasp. Saturday of this week had a big star drawn on it, just below the word “prom” and a few inches below the date. Which just happened to be April 29.
The day before my birthday. I hadn’t even noticed that, before now.
But apparently Joshua had. He caught me looking and gave my hand a firm squeeze. I shook my head, trying to rid it of that terrible coincidence. Trying not to think about what I would have to do, the day before my birthday; trying not to think about the fact that this birthday would be the first I’d spent conscious since my death . . . and I probably wouldn’t even be on earth to experience it.
I smiled weakly at Joshua as we slid from our chairs to follow Jillian out of the kitchen. Once outside, I had to resist the impulse to spill everything right there on the back porch. I kept quiet, even after we piled into Jillian’s car and she drove us someplace relatively safe to talk. I could have kissed her when she took the turnoff to Robber’s Cave Park. I’d had some of my happiest memories there, and it seemed like the perfect place to regroup.
Jillian parked a little ways away from Joshua’s and my picnic table, where we’d shared our first real conversation. The three of us got out of the car, but instead of moving to the table, Jillian guided us to a nearby swing set. We each took a seat and, for several minutes, just swept our feet in the dirt below, moving our swings a few inches back and forth. Eventually, I broke the silence.
“So . . . we’re all going to prom this Saturday. Sort of.”
Joshua shot me a surprised look, but Jillian cackled. “Are you freaking kidding me? After everything we’ve just been through, you expect us to tolerate frilly dresses and bad DJs?”
“We won’t actually be attending the prom,” I replied evenly. “We’ll just be stopping by the school, before our next showdown with the demons, to get our newest recruits.”
“Our newest recruits.” Joshua repeated my phrase flatly, like a statement instead of a question. “You and I are going on our first—and possibly last—real date . . . for recruits.”
I smiled. “And for the bad DJ. Obviously.”
In spite of himself, Joshua grinned back faintly. Jillian, however, still hadn’t bought it. “Wait, wait, wait,” she interjected. “Let me get this straight: you want to recruit non-Seers to try and do something that several experienced covens just failed at?”
“Not just any non-Seers.” I held up one finger in a sort of aha motion. “Your closest friends.”
“What?” she nearly shrieked. “You want my friends to know what you are? What I am? Are you crazy? After that, I’d be a pariah!”
Joshua shot a glare at his little sister. “Aside from that self-serving comment, Jillian makes a good point . . . sort of. We let non-Seers in on this secret, and we’re going to put them at risk.”
I shook my head sadly. “Don’t you see? They’re already at risk. No matter what I do, no matter where I go, the darkness will keep claiming the people of Wilburton. And I think we all know that the attacks are going to stop being so random. The demons know about the people I love, and they’ll have fun destroying them, even after I’m gone. Worse, they targeted you last night, Joshua.”
“Okay, maybe that’s true,” Jillian said. “Maybe Joshua is about to become Public Enemy Number Two. But how would playing demon slayer help my friends?”
“Because if your friends join us on Saturday night, then at least they’ll be more aware.”
“Of what?” she snapped.
I let out a short, frustrated puff of air. “Of the fact that I’m probably screwed anyway, therefore you and yours are next on the kill list. That’s just the damn cycle, Jillian. And I’m not going to let what happened to Serena and Gaby happen to Scott and O’Reilly and . . . hell, even Kaylen. Not without preparing them for what’s coming their way. So I think it’s unbelievably selfish of you to do otherwise, just to protect your stupid reputation.”
I answered more harshly than I’d intended, as evidenced by the fact that tears started to well up in Jillian’s eyes. Immediately, I regretted my tone, but I didn’t regret the words—Jillian needed to hear the truth.
She sniffed once and then quickly looked away, probably so that we wouldn’t see her cry. Joshua’s and my eyes caught, and held. I thought that he might be angry with me for chastising his sister about a plan in which he didn’t even believe. But I could see that that wasn’t the case. Joshua obviously agreed with me on one thing: whatever happened this Saturday, Jillian needed to start thinking about other people. Unless, of course, she wanted them killed and turned into mindless shadow puppets.
Joshua watched me for a while, studying me. And slowly, I saw him figure out what was really going on in my head. I wanted to cover every possible scenario, because—one way or another—I wouldn’t be here next Sunday. Realizing this, Joshua leaned forward and wrapped his hand around mine on the swing’s chain.
“Amelia, what happened last night, after we left you?”
Still holding on to the chain, I let my fingers slip through Joshua’s until our hands were entwined. Then, as I had promised I would always do, I told him all about my discussion with Melissa. I didn’t mince words. As plainly as possible, I explained to him that, whether the darkness captured me or the light finally allowed me to join it, I couldn’t stay here in the living world with him. That was the awful punch line of our love story: until he died and joined me on one side or the other, we wouldn’t be together after Saturday.
By now, Jillian had rejoined the conversation, albeit silently. Like Joshua, she stared at me with a dawning kind of horror. But unlike her brother, she wasn’t too stricken to interrupt me, just as I finished.
“That’s not fair,” she insisted, wiping angrily at the fresh set of tears that had sprung up in her eyes. “They can’t do this to you.”
Seeing those tears, I came to my own realization: against all odds, Jillian Mayhew cared about me; she might even have considered me her friend. I glanced between her and her brother, and then smiled softly.
“If it makes you guys feel better, I haven’t completely decided what I want to do yet. But I do know one thing: no matter where I go, I want your friends safe, and I want you safer.”
Neither of them replied, at least not verbally. Instead, Joshua untangled our
fingers and stood up from his swing. Then he moved in front of me and held out one hand for me to take. I did so, allowing him to pull me up from my swing as well. When he turned and began tugging me gently toward Jillian’s car, I gave him some resistance so that he would pause.
“Where are we going?” I asked, sharing a frown with Jillian as she joined us.
With a quiet sigh, Joshua turned back around to face me. “I guess we’re going home to plan our next attack.”
Chapter
TWENTY
It had been almost four days since Joshua and Jillian had agreed to enlist their friends in our fight, but Joshua still hadn’t touched me. Not once. He had plenty of incentive: we were finally able to touch again, we had less than one week together, and he obviously needed something to distract him from the grief of losing Ruth. Yet Joshua wouldn’t so much as let his arm brush mine when we sat next to each other, eating leftover sympathy casseroles at his dining table.
Granted, he and I hadn’t been able to spend much time alone together since Sunday. Between school, the Wednesday-night baseball game he couldn’t get out of, and the family’s frantic preparations for what promised to be a hugely attended funeral, we hardly had time to share three words, much less a kiss. Still, I knew Joshua well enough to recognize when I was on the receiving end of a cold shoulder.
I’d been patient—quiet even, considering the fact that I might only have a few more days to speak freely. But by Thursday afternoon, I’d finally had enough. Joshua had just arrived home from baseball practice—something he couldn’t avoid, even for family reasons, if he wanted to earn a college scholarship this spring. Jillian and I were sitting at the breakfast table, discussing how best to break the news to her friends that they were possible demon bait.
When Joshua breezed past us with a brief, noncommittal hello, I pushed away from the table and stormed up the stairs after him. Once I caught up to him at the top of the landing, I tapped firmly on his shoulder and mentally prepared my tirade. Joshua paused, one hand on the doorknob to his bedroom, and then turned slowly around to show me his irritated scowl.
“May I help you?” he asked flatly.
I sputtered for a second, confused. Then, without warning, I reached around him, opened his door, and yanked him into the bedroom with me. Using the back of my foot, I slammed the door shut behind us.
“What are you doing?” I demanded.
Still wearing that annoyed scowl, Joshua folded his arms across his chest. “I don’t know what you mean, Amelia.”
“Of course you do!” I threw my hands in the air in exasperation. “You’ve been avoiding me ever since we all came back from Robber’s Cave.”
“I’ve been busy.”
He shrugged, as if that was explanation enough for ignoring the girl you supposedly loved, during what might be your last week on earth together. For a second I blanched, fighting the wave of nausea that threatened to overwhelm me. So many feelings rushed through me: sadness, fury, loss, disbelief. Finally, all I could do was shrug, too.
“I understand.”
I let my head fall so that I couldn’t see his eyes anymore. Then I turned away from him and reopened his bedroom door. Before I could cross the threshold, however, Joshua’s hand shot past my shoulder and landed flat against the door. He didn’t slam it like I had, but instead waited until I’d let go of the knob to push it softly shut.
For an endless, fraught moment, we both held our positions: him, propped against the door by his palm; me, facing it because I couldn’t bring myself to look at him again. Eventually, I mustered enough courage to turn back around. My knees nearly buckled at what I saw in his face.
Joshua wasn’t crying, but his tired eyes were redder than I’d ever seen them. His mouth had twisted in its attempt to hold back his emotions—a battle that I could tell it would soon lose. Apparently, his crisis of faith had finally resolved itself, in the worst possible way. My beautiful, sunny Joshua had been breaking for weeks, and now the break was complete.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered shakily. “I’m . . . I’m not as good at dealing with loss as you are. And I . . .” Here he paused to draw an unsteady breath. “I’m not ready to lose you. I’m just not. I just . . . can’t.”
At the last word, his shoulders slumped forward and he seemed to fold in on himself. I should have said something comforting, or tried to convince him that he wouldn’t lose me. In other words, I should have lied.
Instead, I focused every part of myself upon Joshua and then threw myself against him. Within the span of a few seconds we went from standing apart to falling together onto his bed. I kissed him until I couldn’t breathe—until he kissed me back just as fiercely. I wrapped one of my legs around his hip and spun with him across the bed, tangling myself in his sheets and in his arms.
In between our kisses, I whispered feverishly, “I love you, I love you.” He panted the words back to me, running his hands through my long hair and using it to tug me gently to him again. Other than those whispers, we didn’t speak, and we didn’t have to. Both of us felt the same need to consume each other, to breathe each other’s breath until one of us stopped breathing altogether.
Joshua paused, midkiss, and then pulled away slightly. By this point he’d positioned himself over me and now he looked down on me with so much tenderness that I felt the fissure in my heart crackle and expand. With one hand on my hip and the other cupped softly around the back of my neck, Joshua leaned in close to my ear.
“Please,” he whispered. “Please.”
I knew what he was asking, and it wasn’t for me to make love to him; it was for me to stay—to find some way to stay here, in this world, with him. Unfortunately, that was the one request I had no power to fulfill.
In lieu of an answer, I slipped my hands beneath his shirt and, in one swift motion, tugged it over his head. He didn’t try to stop me but instead moved his hands beneath my shirt as well. After he’d positioned his fingers along my hemline, he hesitated, clearly asking me for permission. I gave him a quick but fierce peck on the lips, and he nodded in acknowledgment. Then he slid my shirt off slowly, so that the silk brushed deliciously along my stomach and arms.
Once he’d done that, however, he surprised me by catching my gaze fully and holding it.
“I love you,” he said simply.
I smiled and traced his lower lip with my forefinger. “I love you, Joshua. And I always will.”
He returned my smile, and then returned his mouth to mine. This is it, I thought. This is finally it.
My heart began to knock loudly against my ribs. So loudly that I thought my heart sounded like someone knocking on a wooden door. Exactly like it, in fact.
“Joshua?” Rebecca’s voice called from the other side of the closed door. “Joshua, are you doing homework?”
Damn, I thought. Damn, damn, damn.
With no small amount of reluctance either, Joshua pulled his lips from mine to answer, “Uh . . . yeah, Mom. Just . . . finishing up some Anatomy.”
I had to clap my hand over my mouth to keep from giggling. Even though we’d been interrupted, I somehow felt lighter, happier. Strange, how his touch could do that to me: reconnect me to him in away that I doubted would ever break again. No matter what happened this weekend.
“Well, when you get to a stopping place,” Rebecca continued, “can you come downstairs? A few of our guests arrived early, and I’d like you to say hello.”
My stomach did a little flip. I knew that I would see the young Seers in just a few minutes, and that I would need to be ready to brief them on our plans. But even though I knew what I needed to say, I hadn’t entirely prepared myself to actually see them. Particularly after how our first meeting had ended.
“I’ll be down in a minute,” Joshua called out to his mom, rolling away from me with a final brush of fingertips across my bare stomach. Despite my worries, I smiled, luxuriating in the touch for another few seconds before joining him off the bed.
While he dug aro
und on the floor for our clothes, I couldn’t help but stare at him hungrily. Joshua bent back up, caught me looking, and grinned. He held my shirt out for me and, when I reached for it, he pulled it back slightly so that I had to stretch to grab it. I laughed and took it easily from his hands.
We began to slip our shirts back on, but neither of us could stop peeking at each other. Still laughing, Joshua yanked his shirt into place and then wrapped me in a playful hug as I finished with my clothing.
“Hey,” I teased, “if you keep doing this, I won’t be able to fix my haystack hair.”
“You’re beautiful, even with bed head,” he whispered into the nape of my neck, and I shivered happily. Then I pulled away so that I really could put myself back together. Once we both looked somewhat presentable, I placed my hand in his and let him lead me out of the bedroom and down the hallway.
I had a fleeting moment of worry that his mother would notice we’d come downstairs together, and rightly suspect what we’d been up to. But when we crossed through the archway leading into the kitchen, an entirely new set of worries replaced that one.
The three young Seers I’d met this Christmas in New Orleans were sprawled across the Mayhews’ kitchen like they owned the place, all but ignoring their older relatives. Drew and Hayley were practically slobbering over each other at the breakfast table, near a disgusted Jillian and Scott; and Annabel looked cool and collected as she leaned against the kitchen island.
None of their behavior was particularly unnerving. But my mouth dropped open when I saw the person leaning against the island with Annabel. Actually, I saw his eyes first—a clear, gorgeous blue, offset by his smooth coffee-and-cream skin. He caught my shocked stare and flashed me a wide grin.
“Hey, Amelia,” he drawled.
“Felix!” I cried out joyfully.