I slid him a suspicious glance.
“Did I say ‘make’? I meant to say I bought them at a bakery on the way over here.”
“I figured. I mean, how would you have the time to bake? And you live in a dorm room, right? Do you even have a kitchen?”
“I have matches and a mug warmer.”
“Rebel.”
“And with a cause, too. Just stick with me, kid. I’m going places.”
I shook my head at the joke and pulled out another piece of brownie, trying to avoid splattering my jeans with a snowfall of powdered sugar.
For nearly an hour, we sat on the blanket in the grass, and ate our lunch. We joked. We laughed. We talked about our hometowns and the people we went to school with.
For nearly an hour, we pretended to be teenagers who had nothing more to do on a weekend than finish up homework, spend the night at a girlfriend’s house, or figure out what to wear to class on Monday morning.
We just . . . were.
And the more we sat in the grass on that beautiful fall day, the more we laughed.
Every time Jason laughed, his nose crinkled up.
Every time Jason laughed, my heart tugged a little.
If I wasn’t careful, I was gonna fall for this boy.
And yet something was . . . weird. Maybe it was the fact that I’d seen Sebastian. Maybe it was the fact that I’d seen Jason in wolf form. Maybe he was just tired. But there was something in his eyes. Something darker than I’d seen before. Scout had said once that the summer had been long, that the Adepts were tired.
Maybe fighting the good fight was wearing on him, as well.
But I pushed the thought aside. There would be enough worry when darkness fell again. For now the sun was enough.
When lunch was done, the trash was tossed and the blanket was packed away again. Taking my hand in his, Jason led me toward our “appointment” on the other side of the river. As we crossed the bridge, I walked beside the railing, my eyes on the water beneath us.
“They dye it green for St. Patrick’s Day, you know.”
“Yeah, I saw that on TV once. It’s cool that it runs right through downtown.”
On the other side of the bridge, we took a set of steps down to a small riverside dock. I looked over at him. “What are you up to?”
“We’re taking a ride,” he said, then gestured to his right. I glanced out across the river, where a longish boat topped with dozens of chairs was gliding toward us.
“River tour,” he added. “We’re going to take a little trip.”
“I see. Thanks for keeping me posted.”
“Anytime, Lily. Anytime.”
When the boat pulled up, we waited while the passengers stepped off; then Jason handed the captain two tickets. We took seats beside each other at the front of the boat, and when the coast was clear, the captain motored us into the river. We headed away from the lake, deeper into the forest of steel and concrete. I stared up as the towers drew nearer, growing larger. Some looked like pointy pinnacles of glass. Others were round, like giant sugar canisters.
“They call them the corncobs,” Jason said, pointing to those twin, curvy towers that were full of parked cars.
“They look like it,” I agreed, neck stretched upward as I watched them pass.
“Here, lean back against me,” he whispered, rearranging himself so that his body supported mine. I leaned back, my head against his chest. He wrapped his arms around me, and we floated down the Chicago River, the world around us. For the first time in a long while, I felt safe. Secure, like even if the world was full of ghosts and monsters and evil motivations, they couldn’t get to me. Not now. Not while we floated on inky blue water, the riveted steel of bridges above us, orangey red against the bright blue sky.
“I was thinking about the Sneak,” he whispered. “I think we should go together.”
My stomach felt like tiny birds had taken flight, and I was glad he couldn’t see the silly grin on my face. “Yeah,” I said. “That sounds good.”
He squeezed me tighter. “Life is good.”
For once, in that moment, it simply was.
But moments like that don’t last forever, do they?
We were back on land, walking toward St. Sophia’s when he pulled me toward the alley and the garden of thorns. I figured he wanted a quiet place to talk. I hadn’t expected him to unbutton his shirt. Blushing, I looked away, but I got enough of a view to see that he had the body of an athlete.
“You can look,” he said with a chuckle. “I need to show you something.”
I glanced back, my eyebrow arched suspiciously.
He held up two fingers. “Completely PG. I promise.”
I looked . . . then gaped. Across his chest were three foot-long scratches. They were well-healed now, three ripples of pinkish skin, the scars of an attack.
Instinctively, I reached out my hand to touch him, before curling my fingers back into a fist. “What happened?”
“Initiation,” he said.
I wasn’t sure if he meant it was a badge of honor for joining the werewolves, or it was a mark of how he’d become one. But then I remembered that he’d told me being a wolf was hereditary.
“When a wolf is old enough, he or she spends a night on a kind of journey. Like a vision quest. He—I—went into the woods. Some of the night is gone—the hours passed, but I don’t remember what I did. Some of it I remember, but a lot of those memories are just random sounds and images.”
“What sounds and images do you remember?”
He shook his head. “I’m sworn to secrecy.”
“Seriously?”
His expression was grim. “It’s one of the rules. My parents don’t even know what went on. Just me and”—he looked down at the scars on his chest—“me and the wolf who did this.”
“Initiation,” I repeated. “That seems kinda harsh.”
“You’re thinking like a human. Think about puppies. They learn by play fighting, biting, clawing. That’s different from the way humans learn.” He shrugged. “Same goes for werewolves. The world is a violent place.”
“Did you”—I paused, trying to figure out how to ask the question—“did you learn anything while you were out there? Have a vision, I mean? See part of your future or whatever?”
“I guess you could say I understood what it meant to be who I am.” His eyes seemed to cloud, like whatever he’d learned, he wasn’t thrilled about it.
“Is it magic?” I wondered. “I mean, they call you an Adept, and you’re a member of Enclave Three . . .”
His expression darkened. “I’m an Adept because I’m something else, something other, and something powerful. Not because I have a talent.” He looked away. I could tell that something was bothering him—something about being a werewolf—but I still wasn’t sure what it was.
What had he wanted to show me? The scars?
“What is it?” I asked.
“I need to tell you something. And it may mean something to you. It might not—but I need to tell you.”
My stomach rolled. Scout had tried to warn me about Jason; she hadn’t been specific, though. Now I wondered if I was about to get all the gory details. Did he have a girlfriend? Was he a Reaper in disguise? Had he seen me talking to Sebastian? I gnawed the edge of my lip. “Okay. Go ahead.”
“It’s a curse,” he said.
We were quiet for a moment.
“I don’t know what you mean about a ‘curse.’ ”
He shook his head, and he wouldn’t make eye contact. “It means it’s not a gift, or magic. I’m not some kind of romantic mutant. I’m not a superhero.” He looked up at me, and his eyes shifted in color—from sky blue to chartreuse—just like those of an animal in the night. His voice dropped, became a little growlier.
“There was an ancient king named Lycaon. He was cruel to gods and men alike, and he was punished by both. The gods punished him by turning him into a wolf—but only halfway. So he wasn’t really a wolf, and he wasn’t really a man. He
had to live in between the two worlds, never really a part of either. Humans punished him for that.”
I reached out and took his hand, slipping my fingers into his. “So that’s where it all started?”
Jason nodded. “With Lycaon and his sons. They were my ancestors and the cause of it all. I bear the curse every day, Lily, of someone else’s guilt.”
“You told me you ran away when you found out you were a wolf. Is that why you left?”
“Part of it, yeah.” He looked up and away, out toward the city.
He was quiet a long time.
“Why do I get the sense you’re not telling me all of it?”
It took a minute for him to look back again, and when he did, there was sadness in his eyes. “I like you, Lily.”
I looked away, expecting the worst.
“I’m not human,” he finally said. “I know you saw me transform, but it’s not a full moon. If you’re there, you’ll get hurt.”
“Hurt?”
“As the moon grows larger, my control gets weaker. I can be around friends, at least until the moon is full. That’s when we run.”
“Friends?”
His eyes shifted from blue to green and back again, and my heart tripped in time. “I have feelings for you, Lily. I shouldn’t. Not when I could put you at risk. There will be a girl. A wolf my parents will choose for me.”
My head began to spin.
“That’s the real curse,” he said. “Not the fact that I transform, not even the fact that I lose control when the moon is full. The curse is the loneliness. The separation. Never really being anything except a wolf, because being something else—being human—puts everyone else at risk.”
We were quiet for a moment.
“I need you to say something.”
“I don’t know what to say. I don’t know what you want me to say.”
He dropped his forehead onto mine. “Tell me it doesn’t matter.”
I blinked back tears, but what could I say to this boy? This boy with the spring blue eyes? “I guess the lesson I’ve learned over the last few weeks is that life is rarely what we think it’s going to be. So you do the best you can. Right?”
“Does that mean we’re still on for Sneak?”
I was quiet for a minute, considering my options. Best-case scenario, we just spent time together and didn’t waste time worrying about the future.
Worst-case scenario? I fell for a boy I couldn’t have, and lost my heart completely.
But I wasn’t even sixteen yet, and the future was a long way off. With all the crazy in the world—especially in my world—why not enjoy it, right?
“Yeah,” I finally said. “We can go to Sneak.”
With a victorious groan, he pulled me tightly into his arms, his body smelling of sunlight and springy cologne. “I knew there was a reason I liked you.”
We held hands as we walked back to St. Sophia’s, but we didn’t speak a word. He stopped in front of the gate and embraced me again, then dropped his head to press a kiss to my lips.
After he left, I glanced back at the school. I wasn’t ready to head back inside. I looked out over the city again and spied the familiar orange moon of a coffee-house down the street.
“There’s nothing a little overpriced latte can’t fix,” I quietly said, then headed back down Erie toward Michigan Avenue, trying to clear my head.
He was cursed.
Let me repeat that. He was cursed. And when the full moon came, if I was around, he’d rather rip me into shreds than kiss me. It did tend to discourage dating humans, I guessed.
Why did stuff like this have to happen just when things were looking so promising? When I was starting to like a boy with blue eyes who, at least until a few minutes ago, hadn’t been trying to kill me. There was a pretty big nasty in the closet, and the burden fell on me to deal with it. What was I supposed to do? Tell him it didn’t matter?
Or worse—lie to him? Tell him we’d find a solution that thousands of years—and probably thousands of wolves—hadn’t revealed.
Tears stung at the corners of my eyes.
I crossed the street at the light. I’d dealt with getting dropped off in Chicago, with firespell, with a best friend with a magical secret, with constant doubts about my parents.
This was the straw that broke the Adept’s back.
It might be time to skip the latte and go straight for the triple hot chocolate.
“We keep running into each other.”
I glanced up. Sebastian stood in front the coffee-house, orange paper cup in hand. He wore jeans and a dark blue fleece jacket that almost perfectly matched the color of his eyes.
I swiped at the tear that had slipped down my cheek as casually as possible. “I assume it’s not a coincidence you’re a block from St. Sophia’s?”
Frowning, he held up his cup of coffee. “It is, actually. My parents have a condo.” He gestured toward the tower above the coffee place. “I was visiting.”
It took me a second to remember that Reapers, whatever their motivations, were people, too. With parents and condos and lives beyond evening battles.
But still . . . “We aren’t going to be friends, you know.”
His eyes seemed to darken. “I didn’t expect that we were.”
“Good.”
“Friendship is a lot simpler than what we are.”
I looked over at him. “We are not anything.”
“Then why are you still standing here?”
I looked away.
“The world isn’t black and white, Lily. Ambivalence rules the day.”
I looked up at him. “Meaning what?”
“Meaning what I’ve been telling you. Meaning things are rarely as simple as they seem. Sometimes you don’t figure out how the story is supposed to end until you’ve read it.”
“And what are you supposed to do until you get to the end?”
He looked out over the city, pride in his features. He was undeniably handsome—dark hair, dark brows, dark eyes. He had the bones of a fallen angel—and apparently the same wickedness. But he had helped me, had given me undeniably helpful information. “You’re supposed to do the best you can with what you’ve got. Or you’re supposed to get it.” He looked down at me. “There’s no fault in that, Lily. That’s what life’s about.”
But that was where he was wrong.
“No,” I said. “That’s not what this is about. Not this.” I cupped my palms together, closed my eyes, and blew into my hands. When I opened them again, the spark was there, the tiny star of pure green power.
I looked up at him and saw the surprise in his face. I guess he hadn’t expected me to catch on so quickly.
“This isn’t a weapon. This isn’t a strategy. It’s the thing that holds the universe together. The stuff that keeps us moving. You want me to doubt my friends. You want me to doubt what they do, the battle they fight.”
I opened my palms and let the spark free. For a moment, I watched the spark flitter and float, then mouthed the words “come back.” The spark spiraled in the air, and then with a slow, arcing descent, landed on my palm again.
When I spoke again, my voice was quiet. “I’m not sure why you’re talking to me. And I’m not sure I trust you. But I do know right from wrong. I don’t need a boy or a girl or an Adept or a Reaper to tell me that. You try to drown people in the sea of their own misery.” I swallowed. “And we try to bring them back.”
“It’s never that simple.”
“It is that simple,” I said, eyes on the spark, which floated—as if waiting for a command—just above my palm. “We may not have magic for very long. But this isn’t a force for destruction.”
I looked up at Sebastian, expecting to see disdain or disagreement in his expression. But instead, there was something soft in his eyes.
He looked down at his clenched palm, and then opened it. In his curled fingers sat his own small spark. Suddenly, it jumped out to meet mine, the attraction of opposite forces. Like long-sep
arated lovers, the sparks entangled, then rose into the air and floated through the currents across Erie Avenue.
“So that you don’t forget the world isn’t black or white,” he said. “It’s gray. And someone tells you otherwise, they’re lying.” He reached out, and with a finger, brushed a lock of hair from my face. “You deserve more than lying.”
And then he turned and walked away.
I stood there for a moment imagining the world—the city—spinning on an axis around me.
What if it wasn’t so easy to pick out good from bad?
How were you supposed to know who the bad guys were?
I looked across the street at the Portman Electric building, and let my gaze take in hearty brick and simple landscaping . . . and the letters of the Sterling Research Foundation sign.
More important, how do you know who the good guys are?
As I crossed the street and walked down the block, I found a tour group standing in front of the convent’s stone gate. The tour leader wore a long black coat and a black top hat, a stuffed raven perched on his shoulder. He stood atop the stone wall, arms outstretched, his voice booming across the sunlight. The tourists kept looking between him and the convent—back and forth—like they weren’t quite sure what to believe. I stopped a few feet away to listen in.
“And in 1901,” he said, “the convent was the sight of a mysterious disappearance. The door to a room shared by four of the nuns rattled in the howling winter wind, so it was locked every evening when the nuns retired for their rest. But the lock was on the outside of the door, so once the nuns went to sleep, they stayed in the room until they were released the next morning.
“One evening, Sister Bernadette went to sleep with her sisters. They said good night to each other, said an evening prayer, and fell asleep. But when the other sisters awoke the next morning, Sister Bernadette was nowhere to be found! Her bedsheets were tousled—and still warm. But the bed was empty—and the door was still locked from the outside! Sister Bernadette had disappeared in the night, and she was never seen again.”
The tourists offered sounds of interest, then began snapping pictures of the convent.