by Jen Klein
Sky released my hand, looking bewildered. “I don’t understand.”
“You didn’t come here for me,” I said, the hurt washing up and over me like it had late the night before when I’d made the realization. “You came for a dream of me.”
“But the dream was real. We are meant for each other. Your happiest futures all lead to me.” Lines appeared around his eyes and he looked sad. Confused. “Jillian, we are supposed to be together. It’s fate, like I’ve been telling you all along.”
“Sky . . .” I paused, swallowing back the lump in my throat. This was even harder than I’d thought it would be, and I had thought it would be epically hard. “You don’t know me.”
“Yes I do!”
“No, you know information that you found online, and we had a couple days of succubus hunting together, and you want to protect me so you can save the world, because for some unfathomable reason, I matter or—”
“Of course you matter.”
“—or at least my missing sister thinks I do. That’s not knowing me.”
“I’m getting to know you,” Sky argued. “It’s what I said I wanted at the very beginning. Knowing you, really knowing you . . . that part will come.”
“I agree.”
“You do?” His green eyes looked hopeful, and my heart clenched, aching with the pain of losing him. But it was better than losing myself into him.
“That’s why we can’t rush it. You want to save the world, right?”
“Right.”
“Then let’s do that first. Let’s find Rosemary. Let’s figure out what the obituary meant. Let’s make sure it doesn’t come true. Let’s find the bridge and burn it like my mom said, so the armies can’t cross over. Let’s do all that stuff together.” I was so intent on making him understand that I didn’t realize I had caught his hand again until his hard, smooth fingers were sliding between my own. When I spoke again, my voice trembled. “You were right, Sky. You were right the whole time. There are bigger, scarier things out there, and now we are two of the very few people in the world who know they exist. That has to come first.”
Sky’s gaze danced across my face for a moment before he slowly nodded. “You’re saying fate can wait.”
“I’m saying kissing can wait.”
The part I didn’t say out loud was that it was still about trust. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust Sky Ramsey to be truthful. For all of Corabelle’s dark delusions, she had been right about one thing: the human heart was the weakest part of us. Sky cared about me because the dream had told him that he had to care about me. But until he came to me in his own way, on his own terms, it didn’t mean what it should mean. It didn’t count the same way. It didn’t really count at all.
“We can still hang out together,” I told him. “Just no—”
“No kissing.” He completed the sentence with a rueful smile.
“Right.” I reached into the side pocket of my backpack and pulled out the email I had printed the night before. “Besides, kissing takes time. We’re not going to have enough minutes in the day for a bunch of time-wasting kissing.”
Sky eyed the paper. “Why?”
“Because we got a new case.”
Sky’s eyes darted back up to mine. “We?”
“Yeah.” I waggled my eyebrows at him. “Unless you’re not interested in being a part of Umbra. Unless you don’t want to work with me.”
He made a grab for the paper, but I held it behind my back. “Hold on. I need to hear you say it.”
“It.”
“So funny.” I shook my head at him. “No, really. Repeat after me: I, Sky Ramsey, do solemnly swear to partner with Jillian on all things Umbra.”
“I, Sky Ramsey, do solemnly swear to partner with Jillian on all things Umbra even though I still want to kiss her.”
I made a face at him and kept going. “And to always tell her the truth about everything, past and present.”
“And to always tell her the truth about everything, past and present . . .” Sky leaned close to me. “And future.”
“Good point. Also I promise to do whatever she says at all times and in all—”
“In your dreams,” said Sky, nudging me.
“Hey, you’re the one with the dreams,” I told him with a return nudge. We sat there for a moment, grinning at each other, and then I brandished the paper. “So don’t you want to hear about our new case?”
“Let me guess. Is it another succubus?”
“Better.”
“Better than a succubus?” Sky considered. “A vampire? Ghost? Troll?” I shook my head after each guess. “An orc?”
“Please. There’s no such thing as an orc.”
“Give me a hint.”
“Remember the week we just had.”
I watched him contemplate and fought back the desire to touch his streaked blond hair. There would be time for that after we knew each other better. “Think hard heads,” I said. “Anger issues.”
“Asterions . . .” Sky said slowly. “We do know there are at least two of them hanging around Los Angeles.”
“Bingo.”
Sky reached out again, and this time, I let him take the paper from me. I watched his eyes move back and forth across it before widening and lifting to meet my own. “Jillian,” he said in a whisper. “This isn’t a case about a descendant of Asterion.”
“I know.” I felt the smile blossom across my face, all at once exhilarated and fascinated and—to be one hundred percent honest—a little bit scared. “It’s a case request from one.”
We stared at each other for a moment, and then Sky grabbed my hand with his own and pumped it vigorously. “Let’s do it.”
“All right, partner.”
At lunchtime, as usual, I spotted Norbert sitting in the cafeteria with his new freshmen buddies. We waved at each other and I headed outside. But I’d made a resolution. For the first time ever, I wasn’t going to lose myself in the horde of screen-obsessed students on the front lawn or eat lunch alone on the hood of my car.
I was going to seek someone out.
Laura was leaning against a magnolia tree on the edge of campus—not far from the bird-poop bench where it had all started—when I plopped down beside her. “Okay to sit here?”
Laura looked startled. More than startled. She jerked upright with a little squeal, nearly knocking over her carton of chocolate milk.
“Sorry,” she whispered. “I wasn’t expecting anyone.”
“So I can sit here?”
She blinked, and then nodded. “Yes. Yes, of course you can. Please, have a seat.”
It seemed rude to mention that I had already done so. And I was no longer going to be rude. At least, not if I could help it. I dug my spork into the cafeteria manicotti and held it up for a moment, letting it cool. “Did I miss anything important in class yesterday?”
Laura paused, waiting for a catch. I watched it slowly dawn on her that there wasn’t one. I was just trying to be a normal girl talking to another normal girl.
“Not really,” she said. “Except Henry got in trouble for talking dirty. Something about Helen of Troy and a swan.”
“Sorry I missed that.” I popped the bite into my mouth and grinned through the tomato and starch and cheese.
She laughed. “Also, Mr. Lowe is going to have us team up on an epic hero project. Do you want to be in my group?”
“Yeah.” I swallowed my bite and nodded at the same time. “I’m in.”
“Great,” said Laura. “I’ll email you the notes.”
And just like that, I had a friend.
The rest of the day was uneventful—in the good way—and that afternoon, I drove to the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power to pay my electric bill. After everything I’d been through, it felt like an accomplishment.
When I go
t back to my father’s house—my house—and unlocked the front door, I hesitated a moment. This was the place where my sister had taken her first breaths. Where my mother had taken her last. This was a place of secrets and of regrets and, hopefully, of new beginnings and questions answered.
I reached in and slid my hand up the wall next to the door, turning on the lights. Then I did something I hadn’t done in months and months.
I went inside and yanked up the window shades.
Sunlight flooded in, banishing the shadows and washing the room in gold. Maybe I only had six months to live, or maybe ahead of me lay years and years of life. Either way, I had learned a very important lesson.
The world didn’t have to be so dark.
Epilogue
I told Norbert and Sky not to come over to my father’s house until noon on Saturday, so everyone could have a chance to sleep in and recover from everything we’d been through. It was a good plan, except that I woke up at the same time I did on weekdays. That’s why I went over early, and why I was all alone, digging through my father’s stuff in the living room, when it happened.
I had just opened a battered leather satchel and found an empty folder labeled bridge when the voice interrupted my search. It was a voice that said my name. A familiar voice that immediately soaked me in rage, in longing, in regret. I looked up at the figure standing in the doorway, and even though I knew—I knew—I should throw things, scream, run away . . .
. . . old habits die hard. As I had learned over and over and over that week, the head knows better but the heart betrays.
So instead of shrieking or fleeing, I did the exact opposite. I rose to my feet, and I ran straight toward the man standing in the doorway. I flung my arms around him, tears spilling, not knowing what the words would be until after they’d tumbled from my mouth.
“Daddy, you came home.”
Acknowledgments
Here’s the thing: when there’s a sex demon in your book, you simply cannot dedicate that book to your children. Or your parents. Or even to your husband because it’s just weird, and readers might wonder about your personal life. You CAN, however, dedicate it to the people with whom you once TALKED about sex. The ones who have known you in the most unique way, in the way that has its own language, its own history, its own angels and demons; a way that spans childhood to adulthood. Especially if the book also features—besides sex demons—a protagonist who really, really wants to know her sister. And if you’re already lucky enough—in REAL LIFE—to really, really know your three very smart, very cool, very awesome sisters . . .
That’s why the dedication. Because I have the smartest, coolest, most awesome sisters.
And also because—sex demon.
*
Now for some gratitude.
Because I’m a debut author and we are known to have long lists of acknowledgments, I might as well milk it because THE FIRST BOOK ONLY HAPPENS ONCE. Therefore, thank you so very much to the following horde of people:
My indefatigable, passionate, dedicated, all-the-good-adjectives book agent: Lisa Gallagher. I could not ask for a better partner. I’m consistently thrilled and amazed and happily startled by how this works. To a zillion more . . .
The biggest of wet sloppy thanks to Dan Ehrenhaft who took a half-written, raw, messy pile of words and guided it into a story that makes me proud. Working with him was a privilege and a joy, especially those times when one of us got extra excited and went all SHOUTY-CAPS in an email. I am wildly grateful to have been found by him.
Everyone on the Soho Teen dream team who helped this become a real, live book: Bronwen Hruska, Meredith Barnes, Janine Agro, Rachel Kowal, and Amara Hoshijo.
Jennifer Pooley for being an actual fairy godmother. Champagne o’clock!
Nina Berry who was willing to read all the chapters as fast as I could write when I was under a deadline, and who also was not afraid to say the things that needed to be said.
Elise Allen for explaining how it works in Book-Landia.
Nicole Maggi, Lizzie Andrews, Anne Van, Romina Russell, Will Frank—for being the first to read and rip apart.
David Furr who made me feel pretty when he took my headshots.
Wendi Gu at Sanford J. Greenburger Associates for her early read and enthusiasm.
Kelly Trussell, Sally Schultheiss, Brendalyn Richard, Hillary Felder, Laurie Peebler, and all the other friends who help just because I ask. Because we are parents, home owners, women—and sometimes we need an extra person to watch the kids or feed the dogs or just listen. And especially Melanie Snell who is the heart and soul of my freaking village.
Ed Pilkington—for long ago telling me what I didn’t yet believe: that I was a writer—and to Michael Stokes for showing me how.
The writing and support staff of Grey’s Anatomy, season 11. Guys—you teach me every day and inspire me more than you know. Seriously, all of you. You have no idea. You’re all wonderful writers and—so much more importantly—beautiful humans.
Matt Horwitz, Rina Brannen, Tom Collier—-who are so supportive and loving when I take a little time to follow my heart into a book. I seriously don’t know how I lucked into the best screenwriting reps in the world.
And mostly—Josh. Jake. Sam. For all the best parts of life and love.
