by V. E. Schwab
“You don’t understand,” he said. “I’m trying to protect people.”
She smiled behind her coffee. It wasn’t a happy smile. “Which people?”
“The normal ones.”
Serena scoffed.
“The natural ones,” pressed Eli. “ExtraOrdinaries shouldn’t exist. They haven’t just been given a second chance, they’ve been given a weapon and no manual. No rules. Their very existence is criminal. They aren’t whole.”
The thin smile fell from Serena’s red lips. “What do you mean?”
“I mean that when a person revives as an EO, not all of them comes back. Things are missing.” Even Eli, blessed as he was, knew that he was missing pieces. “Important things like empathy and balance and fear and consequence. Those things that might temper their abilities, they’re missing. Tell me I’m wrong. Tell me you feel all those things the way you did before.”
Serena leaned forward, setting her coffee on a stack of books. She didn’t contradict him. Instead, she said, “And what is your ability, Eli Ever?”
“What makes you think I have one?” He spat the words out as quickly as he could, filling the need to speak. It was such a small victory, countering like that, but he knew she registered it. And then her smile sharpened.
“Tell me your power,” she said.
This time he answered. “I heal.”
She laughed, loud enough that one or two students glanced over from tables across the patio. “No wonder you have a wicked sense of entitlement.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, your gift doesn’t impact anyone else. It’s reflexive. So in your mind you’re not a threat. But the rest of us are.” Serena tapped the stack of books, and Eli could make out psychology titles mingled in with the English books. “Am I close?”
Eli wasn’t sure he liked Serena very much. He wanted to tell her about his covenant, but instead he asked, “How did you know I’m an EO?”
“Everything about you,” she said, sliding her sunglasses back on, “is chock full of self-loathing. I’m not judging. I know the feeling.” Her watch gave a small beep, and she dragged herself to her feet. Even that simple motion was lovely and fluid, like water. “You know, maybe I should let you kill me. Because you’re right. Even though we come back, something stays dead. Lost. We forget something of who we were. It’s scary and wonderful and monstrous.”
She looked so sad in that moment, ringed with afternoon light, and Eli had to resist the urge to go to her. Something fluttered in him. She reminded him of Angie, or rather, how he had felt around Angie before everything had changed. Before he had changed. Ten years of staring across the chasm at the things he’d lost, and now, looking at this girl, it was like the chasm was shrinking, the gap pulling closed until his fingers could almost—almost—skim the other side. He wanted to be close to her, wanted to make her happy, wanted to reach across the rift and remember—he bit down again until he tasted blood to clear his mind. He knew the feelings weren’t his, not entirely, not naturally. There was no going back. He was the way he was for a reason. A purpose. And this girl, this monster, had a dangerous, complicated gift. It wasn’t a simple compulsion. It was an attraction. A want to please. A need to please. They were her feelings filtering through him, not his own.
“We’re all monsters,” she said, taking up her books. “But so are you.”
Eli was only half listening, but still the words began to trickle through him, and he pushed them violently away before they could settle in his mind. He got to his feet, but she was already turning away.
“You can’t kill me today,” she called back. “I’m late for class.”
* * *
ELI sat on a bench outside the psychology building, his head tipped back. It was a beautiful day, cloudy but not gray, cold but not bitter, and the breeze that tugged at his collar and wove through his hair kept him alert. His mind was clear again, now that Serena was gone, and he knew he had a problem. He needed to kill the girl without seeing her, without hearing her. If she were unconscious, he mused, then he might be able to—
“Aren’t you picturesque.” The voice was cool and warm at once. Serena clutched her books to her chest and looked down at him. “What were you thinking about?” she asked.
“Killing you,” he said. It was almost freeing, not being able to lie.
Serena shook her head slowly and sighed. “Walk me to my next class.”
He stood.
“Tell me,” she said, weaving her arm through his. “At the party last night, how were you going to kill me?”
Eli watched the clouds. “Drug you and push you out the window.”
“That’s cold,” she said.
Eli shrugged. “But believable. Kids get drunk at parties. After discretion, their balance is the next thing to go. They fall. Sometimes out of windows.”
“So,” she said, leaning against him. Her hair tickled his cheek. “Do you have a cape?”
“Are you mocking me?”
“More of a mask type, then.”
“What are you getting at?” he asked as they reached her next building.
“You’re the hero…,” she said, finding his eyes, “… of your own story, anyway.” She started up the steps. “Will I see you again? Do you have me penciled in for a redo sometime this week? I just want to know, so I can bring my mace. Put up a fight at least, for realism’s sake.”
Serena was the strangest girl Eli had ever met. He told her so. She smiled, and went inside.
* * *
SERENA’S eyes brightened when she saw him again the next day.
Eli was waiting on the building steps in the late afternoon with a cup of coffee in each hand. The dusk smelled like dead leaves and far-off fires; his breath escaped in small clouds as he held one of the coffees out to her, and she took it and slipped her arm through his again.
“My hero,” she said, and Eli smiled at the inside joke. In nearly ten years he hadn’t let anyone close. Certainly not an EO. Yet here he was, walking through the twilight with one. And he liked it. He tried to remind himself that the sensation was false, projected, tried to convince himself that this was research, that he was only trying to understand her gift, and how best to eliminate her, even as her let her guide him down the steps and away from the campus.
“So you protect the innocent world from the big bad EOs,” she said as they made their way, arm in arm. “How do you find them?”
“I have a system.” As they walked, he explained to her his method. The careful narrowing down of targets based on Lyne’s three steps. The periods of observation.
“Sounds tedious,” she said.
“It is.”
“And then when you find them, you just kill them?” Her steps slowed. “No questions? No trial? No assessment of whether they’re a danger or a threat?”
“I used to talk to them. Not anymore.”
“What gives you the right to play judge and jury and executioner?”
“God.” He hadn’t wanted to say the word, hadn’t wanted to give this strange girl the power of knowing his beliefs, of twisting and bending them to her own.
She pursed her lips, the word hanging in the air between them, but she didn’t mock him.
“How do you kill them?” she asked eventually.
“It depends on their ability,” he said. “Default is a gun, but if there’s a concern regarding metal, or explosives, or the setup, I have to find another method. Like with you. You’re young and you’d probably be missed, which would be messy, and that therefore ruled out a crime. I needed to make it look like an accident.”
They turned onto a side street lined with small apartment buildings and houses.
“What’s the strangest way you’ve ever killed someone?”
Eli thought about it. “Bear trap.”
Serena cringed. “No details necessary.”
A few minutes passed in silence as they walked.
“How long have you been doing this?” asked Seren
a.
“Ten years.”
“No way,” she said, squinting at him. “How old are you?”
Eli smiled. “How old do I look?”
They reached her apartment and stopped.
“Twenty. Maybe twenty-one.”
“Well, I guess I’m technically thirty-two. But I’ve looked this way for ten years.”
“Part of that whole healing thing?”
Eli nodded. “Regeneration.”
“Show me,” said Serena.
“How?” asked Eli.
Her eyes glittered. “Do you have a weapon on you?”
Eli hesitated a moment, then withdrew a Glock from his coat.
“Give it to me,” said Serena. Eli handed it over, but he had the self-possession to frown as he did it. Serena stepped away from him and took aim.
“Wait,” said Eli. He looked around. “Maybe not out here, in the street? Let’s go inside.”
Serena considered him for a long moment, then smiled, and led him in.
X
THIS AFTERNOON
THE ESQUIRE HOTEL
“VICTOR sent you a message,” said Serena, brushing her fingers over Sydney’s stick figure in the drawing. There was a fleck of brownish red on the corner of the paper, and she wondered whose blood it was. “Are you going to send one back?”
She watched as the answer climbed up Eli’s throat. “I don’t know how,” he said under his breath.
“He’s here in the city,” she said.
“So are millions of other people, Serena,” growled Eli.
“And they’re all on your side,” she said. “Or they can be.” She took Eli’s hand, drew him up from the chair. Her hands slid around his back, pulled him close until his forehead rested against hers. “Let me help you.”
She watched his jaw clench. Eli couldn’t resist her, not really, but he was trying. She could see the strain in his eyes, in the space between his brows, as he fought the compulsion. Every time she asked a question. Every time she gave a small order. There was a pause, as if Eli were trying to reprocess the command, twist it until it was his. As if he could take back his will. He couldn’t, but she loved to see him try. It gave her something to hold on to. She took it in, savored his resistance. And then, for his sake, she forced him to bend.
“Eli,” she said, her voice, even and unmovable. “Let me help you.”
“How?” he asked.
Her fingers slipped into his front pocket, and drew out his phone. “Call Detective Stell. Tell him we need a meeting with the Merit PD. All of them.” Victor wasn’t the only one in the city. Sydney was here, too. Find one, and they would find the other—the drawing told them as much. Eli stared down at his phone.
“It’s too public,” he said, fingers punching in the numbers even as he struggled to think. “It makes us too public. I haven’t made it this long by standing in spotlights.”
“It’s the only way to flush them out. Besides, you shouldn’t worry. You’re the hero now, remember?”
He laughed drily, but didn’t say no again.
“Do you want a mask?” she teased, pulling the glasses from her hair and sliding them back onto his face. “Or will these do?”
Eli ran his thumb over his phone, hesitating for one last moment. And then he connected the call.
XI
LAST FALL
UNIVERSITY OF MERIT
SERENA Clarke lived alone. Eli could tell from the moment they walked in, when she slipped her shoes off by the door. The place was clean, calm, and unified. It had one cohesive taste, and Serena didn’t look around for anyone before turning on him and raising the gun.
“Hold up,” said Eli, shrugging his coat off. “This is my favorite. I’d rather not have holes in it.” He took a small cylinder from the pocket, and tossed it to her.
“Do you actually know how to use a gun?” he asked.
Serena nodded as she screwed the silencer on. “Years of crime dramas. And I found my father’s Colt once, and taught myself. Cans in the woods, and all that.”
“Are you a decent shot?” Eli unbuttoned his shirt and took that off, too, draping it over the entry table with his coat. Serena gave him an appreciative head-to-toe-and-back look, and then she pulled the trigger. He gasped and staggered backward, red blossoming against his shoulder. The pain was brief and bright, the bullet passing straight through and lodging in the wall behind him. He watched Serena’s eyes widen as the wound instantly began to close, his skin knitting back together. She gave a slow clap, the gun still in her grip. Eli rubbed his shoulder, and met her eyes.
“Happy now?” he grumbled.
“Don’t be so sour,” she said, setting the gun on the table.
“Just because I heal,” he said, reaching past her for his shirt, “doesn’t mean that didn’t hurt.”
Serena caught his arm in one hand and his face in the other, and held his gaze. Eli felt himself falling in. “Want me to kiss it?” she asked, brushing her lips against his. “Will that make it better?”
There it was again, in his chest, that strange flutter, like want, dusty and a decade old but there. Maybe it was a trick. Maybe this feeling—this simple, mortal ache—wasn’t coming from him. But maybe it was. Maybe it could be. He nodded once, just enough to bring their lips together, and then she turned and led him toward to the bedroom.
“Don’t kill me tonight,” she added as she led him into the dark. And he never even thought of it.
* * *
SERENA and Eli were lying together in a tangle of sheets. They faced each other, and she ran her fingers down his cheek, his throat, his chest. Her hand seemed fascinated with the place where she’d shot him, now only smooth skin shining in the near dark of the room. Her hand wandered, then, over his ribs and around his back, and came to rest on the web of old scars there. She drew in a small breath.
“They’re from before,” he said softly. “Nothing leaves marks anymore.” Her lips parted, but before she could ask what happened, he added, “Please. Don’t ask.”
And she didn’t. Instead, she drew her hand back to his unscarred chest and let it rest over his heart.
“Where will you go, after you kill me?”
“I don’t know,” he said honestly. “I’ll have to start again.”
“Will you sleep with that one, too?” she asked, and Eli laughed.
“Seduction is hardly part of my method.”
“Well, then, I feel special.”
“You are.” It came out in a whisper. And it was true. Special. Different. Fascinating. Dangerous. Her hand slid back to the bed, and he thought perhaps she’d fallen asleep. He enjoyed watching her this way, knowing he could kill her, but not wanting to. It made him feel like he was in control again. Or closer to it. Being with Serena felt like a dream, an interlude. It made Eli feel human again. It made him forget.
“There must be an easier way,” she wondered sleepily. “To find them … if you could access the right networks…”
“If only,” he whispered. And then they slept.
* * *
THE sun streamed in but the room was cool. Eli shivered, and sat up. The bed was empty beside him. He found his pants, and spent several minutes searching for his shirt before he remembered he’d left it by the front door, and padded out into the apartment. Serena was gone. His gun was still on the table, and he tucked it into the back of his pants and went into the kitchen to make coffee.
Eli was fascinated by kitchens. By the way people ordered their lives, the cabinets they used, the places they kept food, and the food they choose to keep. He’d spent the last decade studying people, and it was amazing how much could be gleaned from their homes. Their bedrooms, and bathrooms, and closets, of course, but also their kitchens. Serena’s coffee was in the lowest cabinet over the counter, just beside the sink, which meant she drank a lot of it. A small black, two-to-four-cup coffeemaker sat tucked along the tile backsplash, another clue she lived alone. The apartment was far too nice for an underclassman,
one of those lottery-only wins, and Eli wondered absently as he pulled out a filter if she’d used her talents to get this, too.
He found the coffee cups to the left of the sink, and tapped the coffeemaker, eager for it to brew. As soon as it did, he filled his cup and took a long sip. Now that he was alone, his mind was making its way faithfully back to the topic of how he was going to eliminate Serena, when the front door opened and she walked in, flanked by two men. One was a police officer, and the other was Detective Stell. Eli’s heart lurched in his chest, but he managed a careful smile over his mug as he leaned against the counter to hide the gun in the back of his pants.
“Good morning,” he said.
“Morning…,” said Stell, and Eli watched confusion spread through his features beneath a glazed calm, which Eli quickly recognized as Serena’s doing. It had been nearly ten years, during which the Lockland case had gone stone cold, and during which Eli had constantly thought of Stell, casting backward glances to see if he would follow. Stell hadn’t, but he clearly recognized him now. (How could he not? Eli was a photograph, unchanging.) Yet neither he nor the officer reached for their weapons, so that was promising. Eli looked to Serena, who was beaming.
“I have a present for you,” she said, gesturing to the men.
“You really shouldn’t have,” said Eli slowly.
“This is Officer Frederick Dane, and his boss, Detective Stell.”
“Mr. Cardale,” said Stell.
“I go by Ever now.”
“You two know each other?” asked Serena.
“Detective Stell was on Victor’s case,” offered Eli. “Back at Lockland.”
Serena’s eyes widened in recognition. Eli had told her about that day. He’d left out most of the details, and now, staring at the only man who’d ever even had reason to suspect him of foul play, potentially of ExtraOrdinary play, he wished he’d given her the entire truth.
“It’s been some time,” said Stell. “And yet you haven’t changed, Mr. Card … Ever. Not at all—”
“What brings you to Merit?” cut in Eli.
“I transferred a few months ago.”
