The Eighth Day

by Salerni, Dianne K.

  Jax came out the front door carrying a plate with another plate covering it like a lid. He grinned when he saw her. “There you are. I was just going to ring your doorbell.”

  Of course he was. As if she were a Normal neighbor.

  “I hope you like hamburgers.” Jax put the covered plate on the table, muttering under his breath, “I hope you really like hamburgers, considering how they turned out.”

  “I can’t stay,” she said apologetically. She really shouldn’t. “I just wanted to see your telescope.”

  “Do you like it?” Jax glanced toward the telescope, set up on a tripod and aimed at the purpling sky. “Got it for my birthday last year. But you have to stay for dinner. I bought all this stuff.” He opened up a plastic cooler and lifted items out. “I got buns. Ketchup and mustard. A ready-made salad. And look, there’s cheesecake for dessert.” He showed her a cream-colored confection in a transparent plastic container. “Girls like cheesecake, right?”

  Did they? Evangeline had no idea what other girls liked, but she had never tasted cheesecake. It looked very tempting.

  Jax must have seen her resolve wavering, because he grinned with more confidence. “And I made hamburgers from scratch. I know you’d never guess, but it was my first time.” He whisked the cover off the plate with a flourish, revealing shriveled meat slabs. They resembled the round plastic disks Mrs. Unger put under the feet of her furniture. One of them was still smoking. Evangeline burst out with a laugh and then looked at Jax guiltily.

  But he was laughing too. “I didn’t think they’d catch fire so easily. I almost burned the kitchen down.”

  “I saw,” she said.

  Jax stabbed a fork into one of the burgers and held it up for her to see. “C’mon, Evangeline. You know you want one.”

  Suddenly she dissolved into giggles. She hadn’t realized how much she missed hearing her name said aloud by someone else. Encouraged by her reaction, Jax hammed it up, poking the burgers and assuring her that even if they were charred, the salad was unharmed. “Unless you want the salad burned,” he offered. “I can run it back inside and stir-fry it for you.”

  It wasn’t that funny, but she had a sudden memory of her brother Elliot clowning around to make her laugh, and when Jax pulled a chair out from the table, she sat down without further objection. He asked what she wanted on her burger, and she had to admit she’d never eaten one.

  Jax looked startled, but covered it by acting as if this were a good thing. “If I’d known that, I would’ve pretended they were supposed to turn out like this.” He put a blackened disk on a bread roll and squirted ketchup and mustard all over it. “Before we eat,” he said, taking a more serious tone, “I have something to tell you. I’m not part of Riley’s clan. I don’t know why that matters, but I don’t want you to think I’m tricking you.”

  “It’s okay. I trust you.” Even if Jax didn’t owe any loyalty to the Pendragons, Evangeline knew he didn’t mean her any harm. And speaking of Riley, she might as well ask. “Will he be back soon?” It made her anxious, just thinking he might show up. She didn’t know whether he would order her to get away from Jax and go back inside the house—or pull up a chair and join them.

  Or which would be worse.

  “Not before midnight,” Jax said, scraping salad onto her plate. “He’s on a date with Deidre. She’s—”

  “The black-haired girl with all the guns and the flashy car,” Evangeline guessed.

  “Oh, you’ve seen her. She—”

  “What are you going to look at with your telescope?” Evangeline interrupted. She didn’t want to hear any more about where Pendragon was or whom he was with. She got up and walked over to peer into the lens. “I don’t see anything.”

  “It’s not focused yet. I’m waiting for it to get darker. The sky is a weird color on Grunsday, and last week I thought the moon and stars looked strange.”

  “What’s Grunsday?”

  “A stupid name for today.” Jax waved at Evangeline’s plate. “Ta-da!”

  Evangeline returned to the table and sat down for her first meal with another human being in five years. The burger turned out to be crusty on the outside and red and juicy on the inside. She devoured the entire thing and asked for another. Jax gaped at her. “You’re kidding.”

  “It’s delicious,” Evangeline said with feeling. It was nothing like the leftovers in the back of the refrigerator and the canned goods she scavenged from Mrs. Unger’s cabinets. She never dared take much, and none of it was ever satisfying.

  The sky darkened while they ate and talked about neutral things. She asked Jax about school, and he told her all about his classes and his dismal grades. She understood some of what he said, but she and her siblings had never been to a school, and as Jax talked, her attention wandered.

  Adelina would be about Jax’s age now. Evangeline had no idea where the Taliesins had hidden her spitfire little sister, but she knew wherever Addie was, she was probably driving her guardians up the wall. Elliot would be twelve, and Evangeline hoped he was still as sweet and funny as he was when he was seven.

  When Jax finished telling her about school, she dared to ask him a favor. “The next time you go to the library for Mrs. Unger . . .”

  Jax grinned. “You mean for you.”

  “Okay, for me. Can you get—” She paused, not wanting to give her thoughts away. “Can you get me books on local history and geography?” Photographs, names of places, a general feel for available means of transportation—that’s what she wanted.

  She held her breath, thinking her request practically screamed escape plan, but Jax didn’t seem suspicious. He said, “Whatever you want,” and turned in his seat to look at the moon rising over the housetops. “It looks blurry. I know Grunsday is separated from the rest of time, but there are physical rules here, right?”

  Evangeline shrugged. She knew from the books she read that Normals relied on science to tell them how the universe behaved. She just didn’t understand why they failed to notice science didn’t make any sense.

  “Why are there no animals on Grunsday?” Jax asked.

  “There are animals, just not a lot where we live. Insects and vermin, mostly.”

  “You mean like rats?”

  “Some rats—and other things that go where you don’t want them to.” It wasn’t her place to teach him this, but if no one else had, she couldn’t see the harm in it. “The original Eighth Day Spell included some portion of the animals on the British Isles. They didn’t want the Kin to starve, you see. I suppose descendants of those animals still live there, on the eighth day, but very few of them would’ve come to America by boat, as the Kin did. I wish—”

  His eyes searched her face when she stopped talking. “What?”

  She didn’t know why she wanted to confess something so personal. Maybe because it gave her a thrill to hand over a tiny piece of herself to someone else. “One of the things I’ve always wanted,” she said, “is to pet a cat. Or a dog. I don’t care which, although I’ve heard that cats purr.” She watched his mouth turn down and his forehead crumple, and she felt very foolish. “I didn’t say that so you’d feel sorry for me.”

  “I’m not,” he answered. “I’m trying to think of a way to get you a cat.”

  “You can’t.”

  “We’ll see.” He stood. “Let’s set up the telescope.”

  The telescope required a lot of dial turning and knob twiddling. Evangeline stayed out of his way. She sliced the cheesecake, which was as creamy and sweet as it looked. They ate off paper plates while taking turns viewing the moon through the lens.

  “See! I told you,” Jax said excitedly. “Everything’s blurred. It looks like a picture taken from a moving car.”

  Evangeline wouldn’t know anything about that, but she nodded as if she understood.

  The stars didn’t satisfy Jax either. “There’s something wrong with their light,” he said. “They remind me of bulbs left on over Grunsday. Let’s try looking at a planet.
”

  Mars was a dot in the sky not very different from the stars, but it greatly agitated Jax. “It’s not red,” he kept saying. “It should be red. Everything in the sky is wrong.”

  “So you’re saying even the stars aren’t as beautiful as they’re supposed to be on this day.” Evangeline drew back from the lens to find Jax looking at her with pity again and felt embarrassed for complaining. “Thank you for dinner and for letting me look through your telescope,” she said, trying to regain a little dignity. “I should go back inside.” It was late.

  Jax held up a finger. “No, wait. Let me show you what the sky is supposed to look like.” He ran into the house and returned with a large book. “This is my science textbook. There are some pictures of galaxies and nebulas in here.”

  They held the book together, leafing through the pages, and because it was dark, Jax grabbed a candle from the table and held it close. Evangeline was amazed by the brilliant colors of what looked like splashes of paint and fire. “Is this what you usually see in your telescope?”

  “Well, not my telescope. The Hubble Space Telescope took these.”

  She looked up from the book. “There are telescopes in space?”

  “Yeah, and probes that take pictures—” The candlelight flared.

  “Jax!” she yelled. He’d somehow managed to ignite the pages of his book. They jumped apart, and Jax dropped the book. Unfortunately, he also dropped the candle on top of it.

  “Oh, crap!” Jax stomped on the fire with one foot. He smothered the flames, but one of the pages smoldered and smoked, so he grabbed a water glass from the table and poured that over top, which ended the smoldering but further damaged the book. “My teacher’s going to kill me!” He looked up at her and laughed, apparently unconcerned about his imminent demise, and Evangeline laughed with him.

  Until she felt the world lurch in a familiar way.

  There was a fraction of a second for her to register horror and realize she’d done something very stupid and dangerous.

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

  ..................................................................

  20

  SHE MUST THINK I’m an idiot or a pyromaniac. Jax looked up from his ruined textbook. “My teacher’s going to kill me.” At least she was laughing, and Jax was happy that he’d provided entertainment if nothing else.

  Then fear flashed across her face.

  And she was gone.

  Between one blink of the eye and the next, she totally vanished. “Evangeline!” Jax yelled, reaching out as if—as if, what? He could pull her back?

  He looked at the sky. Even with his naked eyes he could make out the craters on the moon. Down the street, the pit bull started barking.

  It was 12:01 a.m. on Thursday, and Evangeline was stuck outside—invisible, unreachable, and vulnerable for an entire week.

  Jax circled the spot where she’d been standing. Oh boy. This was worse than the time he’d left a window in his dad’s car open overnight and it had rained inside. Still, nothing could happen to her, right? Unless a meteor fell from the sky and blasted this spot into a crater, she’d be fine. Jax scanned the skies nervously. Nah, that’s impossible. Or at least unlikely.

  He just needed to meet her here next Wednesday at midnight and make sure she got safely back inside her house.

  Jax awoke in the morning feeling guilty for having gone to bed while his new friend was still outside, even if there was nothing he could do about it and she wasn’t really there anyway. But he also felt angry. She’d never eaten a hamburger? She’d heard that cats purr? That was wrong on so many levels.

  And then he felt guilty again, because when he left to go live with Naomi, who was going to talk to her?

  He had that on his mind when he went downstairs for breakfast, which was probably why Riley’s voice made him jump two inches in the air.

  “What’d you do? Set fire to the stove?”

  Jax peeked into the living room. Riley lay sprawled across the sofa, wearing the same clothes from last night. Jax wasn’t sure if he’d just come in, or if he’d been sleeping on the sofa for hours.

  “I had an accident cooking some burgers,” Jax said. “I’ll clean it up.”

  Riley sat up. “Did you eat alone or did you have company?”

  “I had company,” Jax admitted.

  “What’d you talk about?”

  “None of your business.”

  Riley stood up. “It is my business. Her safety is my responsibility.”

  Somehow Jax doubted that was why he was asking. “We talked about how I burned the food.”

  “What else?”

  “She explained why there aren’t many animals on Grunsday. And we looked in my telescope.”

  “Telescope?” Riley repeated.

  “Well, the moon and the stars look different, but she didn’t know why.”

  “Anything else?”

  Jax didn’t dare tell him he’d kept her out too late and gotten her trapped on the lawn between Grunsdays. “I gave her your message,” he said. “Told her I wasn’t part of your clan. She said it didn’t matter.” Then he exhaled in exasperation. “You knew when you left last night I was going to try and talk to her. If you didn’t want me to, why didn’t you just order me not to?”

  “That would’ve been cruel. She’s been alone a long time. If she wanted to talk to someone, I wasn’t going to deprive her of the chance.” Riley frowned. “I guess she thinks you’re clueless and harmless.”

  Jax realized Riley was trying to justify to himself why Evangeline wouldn’t talk to him. “Maybe she thinks you’re scary-looking,” Jax shot back. Riley snorted and turned around, headed for the stairs. But for just a second, Jax thought he might have actually hurt Riley’s feelings.

  Over Thursday, Friday, and the weekend, Jax worked on Melinda’s concentration assignments more than his schoolwork and once or twice tried his inquisition on A.J. “Cut that out,” A.J. growled, flicking through channels on the remote control. “You won’t catch me by surprise again.”

  He even attempted it on Riley once and got laughed at. “Nice try, squirt.”

  There was no repetition of the time A.J. coughed up his PIN number or Melinda had to cover her mouth to keep from blurting out the Pendragon name. You’re stronger when you really want to know, Melinda typed in an email chat when he confessed he was worried about getting weaker. I’ve noticed if you don’t really care it’s not hard to fend you off.

  She cautioned Jax not to use his magic at school, but where else was he going to do it? He only saw Melinda on Grunsdays, the day she could meet him without her family present. And trying to force Melinda to tell him her favorite television show was pointless.

  The problem was using his magic on his classmates without getting caught. By Tuesday, he thought he’d figured out a way and was anxious to give it a try.

  So when he passed Giana’s seat in science class and she whispered her undertone-but-meant-to-be-heard “Freak,” he had no patience for it. He turned and shoved his face into hers.

  “Back off. All I ever did was talk to you.” Jax dialed back his talent to what he imagined as a trickle and asked, “Do you think you’re better than everybody else?”

  “Yes,” Giana whispered, then recoiled in her seat. Kacey gasped, and other students who heard Giana gave her an offended glare.

  “You’re not,” Jax assured her.

  “Dude!” Billy looked impressed as Jax sat down.

  Jax crossed his arms. “I was tired of her crap.”

  While his teacher was reviewing for finals that day, he wrote in his notebook and pushed it toward Billy.

  Ask her to narrow down the formulas we need to memorize.

  Billy gave him a look that said She’s not going to tell us that.

  “Trust me,” Jax murmured.

  Billy raised his hand. “Miss Cassidy? Can you narrow down the formulas we need to memorize?”


  Miss Cassidy gave Billy the same look Billy had given Jax, but then Jax called out, “Yeah, Miss Cassidy. Which formulas do we really need to know?”

  The teacher rattled off three formulas, then frowned and blinked repeatedly. The other students started scribbling in their notebooks. Miss Cassidy glared at both Billy and Jax, uncertain which boy to be annoyed at, and tried to cover her mistake by naming a few more. Billy gaped at Jax, and Jax grinned.

  He tried it again in English class and also in math. When he followed up on a question asked by someone else, he got the answer he wanted, and the teachers didn’t seem to pinpoint Jax as the reason they were blurting out information. He congratulated himself on his brilliance.

  After the last bell, Jax was at his locker when someone shoved him from behind. “Hey!” he yelped.

  A hulk from the senior high loomed over him. “You know who I am?”

  “No idea,” Jax said, but his heart sped up. The guy was accompanied by three others, just as big and just as mean looking, all wearing football jerseys.

  “I’m Enzo Leone,” the boy snarled. “You been bothering my sister? How’d you like a bloody nose?”

  Oh, crap. His revenge on Giana this morning was going to get him beat up. Enzo snatched up a fistful of Jax’s shirt, and Jax grabbed the boy’s arm to hold him off. It was like trying to wrap his fingers around a log, but instantly Jax experienced the same buzz of magic he’d felt when his talent led him to the encyclopedia at Melinda’s house. “What’re you afraid of, Enzo?” he asked, the idea popping into his head.

  “What?” Enzo let go of Jax’s shirt and tried to yank his arm away.

  Jax hung on. According to Melinda, touching his victim was another thing that enhanced his magic. “What’s your deepest, darkest secret?”

  “I wet the bed till I was eleven.” Enzo’s eyes goggled.

  Jax almost gasped in surprise—not at Enzo’s secret, but at the realization that he could use his talent for defense. “How often did you wet the bed, Enzo?”