Supernaturally (Paranormalcy)

by Kiersten White

  I thought of Lend and what we talked about so many times, arguing over his dad’s methods versus IPCA’s. There were no absolutes. You couldn’t put things into neat little categories of “good” or “bad.” Uber-vamp was bad. Arianna was good. But they were both vampires. Regardless of what some faeries were doing (and I couldn’t argue that the Dark Queen didn’t deserve hell), that didn’t mean they were all irredeemable.

  I looked at Jack, his cherub face twisted with eagerness and rage. He was letting his hatred of the faeries destroy him, the same way Vivian had let her bitterness at the world destroy her. I wouldn’t give the faeries that victory. Whatever else happened in my life, it was still my life, and no one—not Reth, not Jack—was going to force me to become someone I didn’t recognize.

  “I can’t,” I said softly, wanting to let Jack down easy. “It’s wrong. Faeries are awful, but I’m not their judge. Maybe if I knew how to send them home, but I’m not going to banish them to hell for being what they are.”

  “What are you saying?” Jack’s voice was low, trembling. There was no trace of his disarming smile now.

  “I can’t do this. Those places—I can feel them, and I can’t do it, can’t send anything there.”

  I jumped, startled as Jack burst into a sharp laugh. “You can’t? You can’t? I’ve been living in hell for the last thirteen years, and you’re balking over sending these demons where they belong?” He squeezed my hand so hard it hurt. “I’m afraid that’s not acceptable. Not after all the work I put into getting you here.”

  I’d never thought to be afraid of Jack, silly, cartwheeling Jack, but staring into his eyes, I knew that paranormals weren’t the only monsters in the world. “Can we go somewhere and talk about this?”

  “No, we can’t go somewhere and talk about this.” He imitated my voice, sneering. “Do you know how long it took me to figure this out? To steal the faeries’ lore books, ingratiate myself at IPCA, convince Raquel to pull you back in? How many missions I had to screw up, how many problems I had to create until she was desperate enough to call you? And do you have any idea, any idea at all, how hard it is to track down a sylph?”

  “You were—that was you?” Things started clicking into place—terrifying things. That night at the Center, the faerie hadn’t been after me. She had been after Jack for stealing her books. Reth really hadn’t been behind any of the attacks.

  “Finding the fossegrim was a little easier, but I nearly drowned explaining what I wanted him to do. And still you barely took anything! Then we lucked into finding the vampire. You had more than enough time to drain him in Sweden, but no, you tell him to run away, so I had to drag him unconscious through the Paths on Halloween. Don’t even get me started on Fehl. I wait my whole bloody life for a faerie name, then use my only named command to have her hurt you without killing you, and what do you do? Banish her! Heaven and hell, Evie, you’re worthless!”

  I stared at him, shocked. “This whole time. You’ve been manipulating me, trying to make me—How could you?”

  “For all the good it did me!” His face burned with hatred. “Open the gate. Now.”

  “I won’t!”

  He lightened his grip on my hand and I felt a fresh surge of panic. “Jack, I—”

  “What was that you told me about your personal hell? Lost in the Paths forever?”

  Tears spilled out of my eyes. “Please.”

  “Open the gate.”

  “Please take me home. Please.”

  His dimpled smile, evil in its innocence, snapped back into place. “You don’t have a home. But fair is fair. You won’t send the faeries to hell, I’ll leave you in yours.”

  “No!” I screamed, trying to grab his hand with both of mine, gasping from the pain in my broken arm. He slipped from my grasp effortlessly and flashed me one final grin before stepping backward into the darkness away from me.

  And then I was alone.

  Hello, Hell

  I was alone.

  I was alone in the Faerie Paths.

  Once the connection was broken, you could never find the other person. Ever. Again. And no one would be able to find me in the infinite blank darkness. All the times I’d woken up, panicked and sweating from this nightmare, and now . . .

  Oh, please, please let this be a nightmare.

  I looked frantically around. Maybe I could find Jack again. Maybe what I’d heard about the Paths was a lie, just another thing Raquel told me so that I wouldn’t mess around on transports. “Jack?” I called, my voice ringing through the silence almost scarier than the silence itself. Because once my voice stopped without an echo, snuffed out like a light, the silence felt even heavier, a palpable weight on my shoulders.

  I had options. There had to be options. The door! We were right by the door to the Faerie Realms. I put my hand out, shaking and desperate, feeling for it. The only thing I sensed were tendrils of the gates to chaos—hell—those swirling, evil places Jack had wanted me to send the faeries.

  What if I tried to open a door and opened a gate, instead?

  Oh, bleep, I was in hell and my only options for getting out of it were hells, too.

  It would be okay. Someone would help me. Someone had to help me.

  “Reth!” I was suddenly desperate for the sight of his golden face. “Lorethan!” I screamed, knowing it wouldn’t work, but hoping maybe, somehow, he still kept tabs on his old name.

  He would come for me. He told me himself: he always knew where I was. He’d know, and he’d come. I just had to wait.

  Hadn’t it been long enough?

  Surely this was enough time for him to find me.

  I counted to one thousand, timing my breaths to the numbers.

  Two thousand.

  Three thousand.

  I was going to die.

  Four thousand.

  I was going to die, here in the silent dark, by myself.

  Five thousand.

  And no one would ever know, and no one would care.

  Six thousand—where the holy crap are you, Reth? Where are you?

  He wasn’t coming. My breath came quicker, my heart pulsing too fast in my chest, trying to pound its way out of my body. I took a step, then another, then another and another and another, running, but there was no wind in my hair, no sense of movement other than my feet that kept going and going and going

  nowhere.

  There was nowhere to go. I was the only thing that existed here. I looked down and was hit with a wave of vertigo. How did I know I was standing on anything? What if I was falling, had been falling this whole time, would fall here in the darkness for all eternity?

  I sank down, curling into fetal position. Everything was deadened, numbed. Even my broken arm barely hurt anymore. I couldn’t feel anything around me as I wondered what would kill me first. Thirst? Starvation? Finally finding the bottom of this abyss? Or what if I never died at all—what if I just lay here in the dark forever?

  My chest was tight, too tight, my heartbeat an actual pain. Maybe I would die of a heart attack.

  I was going to die.

  I was going to die, and I’d never see Lend again. He’d never know what happened to me. I’d never get to tell him sorry, or how much I loved him and would always love him, even if I had to leave him. And Raquel, Arianna, David, even Vivian and Carlee—I’d left them all without a word of explanation. I’d been so desperate to find out who I was, find my place in the world, I’d lied to and left behind the people who loved me and were willing to give me a place no matter who or what I was.

  Now poor Vivian would be forever alone in her dreams. Maybe before I died I would sleep, and visit her one last time. I’d like that.

  I could picture Lend with David and Arianna, worrying. Lend’s face—I hated myself for what this would do to him, what I’d already done to him. How could I have been so selfish, lied to him for so long? He deserved the chance to make up his own mind, but I’d taken it away from him by hiding the truth, like so many people had hidden
it from me. And, sure, he hadn’t chosen me, wouldn’t choose me, but it was his choice. At least for the time we’d had I’d been happier than I’d ever been the rest of my life.

  And I’d had a locker. That was something, too.

  I took a deep, shuddering breath, trying to calm my heart rate. If I was going to die, I wanted it to be peaceful, at least. I would lie here and die as I thought of Lend, Raquel, Arianna, and David. Slipping into oblivion filled with my love for them wasn’t a bad way to go.

  I smiled, remembering the time Arianna cussed out Reth and got thrown into a tree for her efforts. Too bad we’d never find out whether Cheyenne and Landon ended up together. I hoped for Arianna’s sake they did. She’d had enough disappointment in her life and death as it was.

  David and his ridiculous faith in everyone around him, his undying love for a paranormal that would never, could never, love him back the same way. He wasn’t stupid or naive. Loving someone completely like that was far braver than I’d ever given him credit for.

  Raquel. Her soft Spanish accent and her infinite arsenal of sighs. I wondered which one she’d use when I never came back. I didn’t wonder if she’d be sad. I knew that now, knew I was as much a daughter to her as she was a mother to me. And if we were both screwed up, well, the more I saw of normal life, the more I realized that was typical.

  And Lend. My Lend. All I had to do was think of his face. That would be enough to sustain me in the emptiness, had always made me feel like I wasn’t empty. I’d never been empty with Lend.

  My heart calmed down, the pain replaced by something new: a strange sort of gentle tugging, like I was the needle in a compass. The more I thought about the people I loved—especially Lend—the stronger it got. I wanted him. I wanted to be with him more than anything in the whole world.

  I stood, too scared to think about what I was doing, too scared to hope. I followed the sensation, thinking of Lend. What it felt like to hold his hand. Watching him draw. Those precious times when he got to be nothing but himself around me. The way he laughed. The look he got in his eyes when he was about to say something he knew was clever. The way he looked at me while I talked, like I was all he had ever wanted in the entire world.

  I closed my eyes, walking forward with my good hand up, smiling as I followed this feeling. I held on to my image of Lend, surrounded by Arianna, Raquel, and David. That image felt like a place, felt like what I’d always imagined home would feel like. The dead air in front of me stirred, solidified, and I tripped and tumbled out of the darkness and straight into Lend.

  My Lend.

  And then he was holding me, and I was crying, and Raquel and David and Arianna were there, too. Lend stroked my hair, repeating the same thing over and over.

  “It’s okay, you’re home. You’re home.”

  And for the first time in my life, I knew it was true.

  Meet Me in the Middle

  Honestly, you little brat,” Arianna said, carefully putting the finishing touches on my splint, “if I’d known you were going to be so high maintenance, I wouldn’t have agreed to be your roommate.”

  I smiled, my teeth gritted against the pain. “I love you, too, Ar.”

  “And you’re an idiot, by the way. If you had let me talk to you, I would have explained that I took the liberty of putting together applications for you to American University and George Washington University, both of which are a quick train trip away from Georgetown.”

  “You—what?”

  “And if those don’t work out, I’m more than willing to use my vampire tricks on an admissions officer. Just because I can’t have a life doesn’t mean I’m going to let you be so stupid about yours. You can thank me later.”

  I stared, shocked. I didn’t know what to say. I’d been so set on Georgetown, I’d never been willing to think of other options. I was beyond touched that Arianna had been watching out for me like that.

  Of course, being close to Lend might not matter anymore.

  “Are you sure you don’t want to go to the hospital right now?” Raquel’s eyes were still tight with worry. She’d come immediately to David’s house when Jack told her I was gone. They sat now, shoulder to shoulder.

  “It can wait until tomorrow.”

  Raquel heaved a why must you be so stubborn sigh, then shook her head. “I can’t believe it about Jack. We’ll be on the lookout for him; if we catch him, the iron cells will hold him. The little demon can’t make doors there. Speaking of which, I’m still not sure how you got out of the Paths alone.”

  “I don’t know. Reth and Jack both said you had to have a sense of the place you wanted to go, have a connection to it. For Reth it was names; for Jack it was seeing it before. For me it was—” I blushed, looking over at Lend, who sat next to me, but not touching-me-next-to-me. “Well, it was you. All of you. Once I focused on memories of you, I sort of felt my way here.”

  Arianna looked confused. Admittedly they had a lot to take in, between the whole Jack-is-a-psychopath-who-wanted-me-to-destroy-a-species thing, and also the turns-out-I’m-less-human-than-we-thought thing. Lend stayed silent the whole time, which made me increasingly nervous. Was he going to be awkward around me now? I still loved him, I always would, and I’d do whatever he wanted with our relationship, but this whole not-touching-not-talking thing was gonna have to end.

  Okay, so maybe I wasn’t quite ready to let him go.

  Okay, I’d probably never be ready to let him go.

  Arianna frowned. “But when you were stuck in the Paths, why didn’t you call that one faerie, your father? Didn’t Reth tell you his name?”

  My jaw dropped. “Bleep. Wow. It didn’t even cross my mind.” I couldn’t believe how stupid I was, ready to rot and die on the paths when I knew a faerie name other than homicidal Fehl’s. But that meant something, too. When it came down to it, I didn’t even think of my “father” or where I came from. I thought of the people I had, the people who meant something to me.

  So that whole faerie parentage thing? Screw it. Knowing where I came from didn’t change who I was. My stupid father could rot in the Faerie Realms for the rest of eternity. He was nothing to me.

  And I most definitely wasnot nothing.

  Too bad I couldn’t have figured that out before destroying my relationship with the love of my life. I had messed everything up, so fixated on trying to create my ideal of a life and so paranoid about losing Lend and being hurt that I sabotaged myself. I looked over at Lend, wishing he’d do something, say something.

  As if in answer, he stood and held out his hand. “Can we go for a walk?”

  “Sure!” I let him help me up, unsure whether or not I could keep holding his hand. But he didn’t let go as he led me outside and down the path toward the pond. He stopped abruptly halfway there.

  “I can’t—” His face twisted somewhere between anger and sadness. “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me. Why?”

  I couldn’t stand to look at his face, so I studied the blanket of dead leaves on the ground. “You’re the most important person in my life, the best thing that’s ever happened to me. And I kind of hate that, how much I love you. Because I’ve been left a lot in my life, and loving you meant that it’d happen again. The thought of watching you drift away, become someone like your mom who couldn’t love me anymore—it’s easier to get it over with sooner. It won’t kill me now, I don’t think, but it might later. And I’m sorry, I should have told you, but I thought if you didn’t know we could make it work somehow. You always made me feel warm, forget the emptiness. It was selfish, and it wasn’t fair of me. Everyone deserves to know what they are.”

  “Evie—you—GAH!” Lend shouted, and I looked up at him, surprised. He had both hands clenched into fists and was staring up at the sky. After a few seconds he looked back at me, all the anger gone from his face. “I’m not an immortal.”

  “But I saw—”

  “I know what you saw, and I’m sure you were right, but being immortal doesn’t make me an immort
al. Don’t treat me like I’m my mom. She’s always been that way—she can’t be any other way. She doesn’t grow, she doesn’t change. Are you saying that I’m the same?”

  “Of course not!”

  “Then don’t act like I have no choice! I’ve never wanted that life, that world. And I know I’ll have to decide what to do someday, but bleep, Evie, I’m eighteen! I don’t have to face forever for a long time yet.”

  “But you will, eventually.”

  He rolled his eyes. “You act like I’m gonna pack my bags and jump in the nearest river next week. Which would be a terrible idea because I have a huge paper due. That isn’t my world. This is. And I’m going to live out my life the way I want to. Which is by getting a degree, and making leaps and strides in cryptozoology, and having kids, and being ridiculously conventional aside from helping take care of paranormal creatures and being able to shape-shift. And I am going to do all that, every minute of it, with the girl that I love, who is going to promise to always be truthful with me about everything from now on so that I can actually be there for her.”

  I blinked back tears. This was exactly what I wanted to hear, what I hadn’t dared hope I would hear. But he didn’t know. How could he be sure? “What if you change your mind? I don’t even know how long I’m going to live.”

  He stepped forward to close the distance between us as he rested his forehead against mine. “The only life I want is one with you. I don’t understand this gap you see between us, but can’t you meet me somewhere in the middle?”

  “The middle of what?”

  “I don’t know, the middle of tomorrow and forever, the middle of life and death, the middle of normal and paranormal. Where we’ve always been.”

  I bit my lip, nodding against his forehead. “There’s a place for us there, right?”

  “Always.” He put his lips to mine, sealing our own little spot in the world. Together.