“Why didn’t you tell me you were shot?” Rosalie’s eyes were overflowing with tears.
“I told you, I didn’t know. I didn’t… there was just so much going on…”
“Let’s get you out of here.” There was a lump forming in her throat. “I’m not going to lose you, too. Especially not in a damn bathroom stall.” She was struggling to breathe now.
Unable to form words, Elijah allowed her to guide him from the bathroom stall. He was on his feet for only a moment before he felt his knees give way. Rosalie wasn’t strong enough to hold him up and slipped down to the floor with him. “I want to see what’s in the box, Rosalie…”
“When you’re safe, when—”
He grabbed her by the arm, shaking his head. “We both know that’s not going to happen.” He had to steel himself to sound braver than he actually was. “I want to see what’s in the box. I want to see what I’m dying for.”
“You’re not going to die, Elijah. You’re not.” Her tears were trickling like tiny rivers down her face as she pulled her cell phone from her purse. Elijah knocked it from her grasp before she could dial and spoke to her in a harsh whisper:
“I want to see what’s in the box, Rosalie.”
“I can’t, I need to stop the bleeding!” Shaking her head, she placed her hands over his right side. There was so much blood that she couldn’t really tell where the injury was. She pushed hard, her breath hitching. She could hardly see as her eyes burned, blurry with tears. The way that his body clenched and tightened in pain where she pushed almost made her draw her hands back. But it was all she could think of to do.
“Please…I need to know…I need to see it…”
“It needs pressure. The wound needs pressure. I have to keep the pressure.”
The world was falling away from him. It slipped through his grasp as he tried to reach for it. When he struggled to find purchase on his very being, he felt himself moving further away. Where once there had been pain with Rosalie’s hands on his side, now there was nothing. He felt warm and light, like he was floating. Even though she was there in his vision, he found himself wanting to simply relax and stare up at the ceiling. It was easier.
“Elijah! Stay with me. Elijah, please! I can’t lose you, too. Not you!” One of her hands moved from his side to his face. Blood smeared across his skin, but she didn’t care. Hardly able to contain her sobs, she leaned close to him and pressed her mouth into his. She whispered to him, telling him that she loved him and that she was sorry. She kissed him, softly at first. Then harder when he didn’t respond. Her other hand came up, cupping the other side of his face as she felt his body grow still.
Drawing back, she looked into his eyes. Her heart dropped in her chest, and the sobs she had been holding within her pushed across the barriers of her mind. They came without mercy, wracking through her body to the point where she felt as though she was suffocating. She clutched him tightly between her hands, begging him to come back to her between barely taken breaths.
Chapter Twenty-one
“Elijah, please. Please come back. Oh gods, Elijah…” Rosalie’s fingers clenched into his bloodied shirt, and her face pressed into his neck.
“Hey, is everything okay in there?”
A voice from the other side of the bathroom door had her head snapping up. A gasp left her lips, and she reluctantly tore herself away from Elijah. Swallowing, her stomach sick with knots, she half crawled to the door before pulling herself up. She found she was barely able to stand, her muscles shaking to the point where they were useless. “Everything’s fine,” she called back to the voice with more confidence than she felt. “We’re just practicing for a play we’re doing at the university this weekend.”
“Okay…”
With worried eyes, Rosalie turned the deadbolt and locked the bathroom door from the inside. As she turned back to look at the scene, bile rose in her throat. New tears flooded her eyes and cascaded down her cheeks. Elijah was laying there on his back, and his blue eyes—so beautiful and clear—stared up at the ceiling. He looked so peaceful, in a strange and lifeless kind of way. There was a pallor to his skin, and the blood painted all over him was stark contrast. Just beyond his head, outside the range of blood and still in the bathroom stall, was the box. It sat there so innocently, the beautiful lines of its shape casting an intricate shadow across the floor beside it.
The box, Rosalie thought. He wanted to see it. I should at least give him that.
Reaching up, she wiped tears from her eyes. The smell of blood and puke were prominent in the bathroom, but none of that mattered as much as Elijah’s last request. She only wished she hadn’t been out of her mind with terror when he had asked. Letting out a deep breath, she moved numbly over to the box and crouched beside it. Neither of them had opened the box since they had stolen it from Morgan’s Magic Shop. Pulling the key from one of her pockets, she slowly inserted it into the hole. “Can’t turn back now,” she whispered. With a nod of her head, she turned the key until it made a sharp click. The hinges creaked as she lifted the lid up.
Inside, the box was lined in royal blue velvet. The amulet was there, nestled amongst its chain and glimmering with its own inner light. Without truly understanding what she was doing—or why she was doing it—Rosalie lifted the beautiful stone from the box. With a hard swallow, she turned toward Elijah’s body and took one of his cold hands. As she chewed on her lower lip, her breath hitching in misery, she placed the amulet and the chain in his palm.
Moments later, a thin gold band of light began to arc around Elijah’s wrist. With a gasp, Rosalie shifted backwards and away from it, one of her hands moving to her chest. As she watched, the band expanded and began to spiral its way around his arm. By the time it reached his shoulder, heat was emanating from his body. The light lifted and swirled, spreading across his form and sinking into his mouth, ears, eyes, and nostrils.
It glowed a brilliant gold, casting the bathroom in its potent light. Before Rosalie’s eyes, the blood that had soaked into Elijah’s clothes and spread across the floor was receding back into his body. Her jaw dropped, and for a moment she almost reached for the pendant in a panic.
That was when the groan rose from his lips. It was low and short and full of pain. “Elijah?” Her voice was high pitched with anxiety, and she quickly grabbed his face between her hands. “Elijah?!”
“Rosalie?” His voice was strained, barely there at all.
“Holy shit, Elijah?!” This had to be some kind of trick. It had to be! There was no way anyone could come back from the dead, not like this! It was a hallucination. Yes, that was it. She was in such a panicked state that she was imagining things. Elijah wasn’t blinking his eyes at her. His chest wasn’t moving. He wasn’t doing anything. He was dead.
“What happened?”
“You…” She swallowed hard, feeling like she was going to throw up. Her heart was pounding so hard in her chest that she thought it was going to sputter and die at any moment. “Elijah, you… you died.”
“I… did?”
“Yes!” Without thinking, she lunged for him, wrapping her arms around his body as tightly as she could. Her sobs were now ones of happiness, and her arms clutched at him. She was terrified that if she loosened her grip, even a little bit, that he would be lost to her again. “Oh my god, I can’t believe this. You’re…the pendant…it… where is the pendant?” With wide eyes, Rosalie drew back and grabbed Elijah’s hand. It was empty. Letting out sounds of confusion, she leaned over his form and grabbed his other hand. It was also empty. “I don’t understand. It’s gone.”
“The pendant? Rosalie, what are you talking about?” There was pain in Elijah’s voice as he started to sit up.
“It…” Blinking, she grabbed his shirt and lifted it up before he could do anything. One of her hands slid across his right side, feeling for any anomalies. His skin was smooth and unblemished aside from the numerous scars that were still a mystery to her. “It’s like you were never even shot,�
�� she whispered. “I don’t understand.”
Elijah’s brow drew together as his mind raced. “Maybe, in the end, the vision wasn’t meant to be a warning.”
“What do you mean?” She was still clinging to him, her heart thundering against his chest.
“What if it meant to bring us together instead? I’ve ‘died’ twice. I can’t get rid of you no matter how hard I try. And we always seem to, against all the odds, figure out how to get out of complete shit alive. How else do you explain it?”
“I guess…I guess you can’t.” Licking her lips, Rosalie looked down for a moment. Her face grew slightly pale, and she slowly moved her hand out from under Elijah’s shirt. “You never told me about the scars.” As he sat up, she glanced downward again. His eyes caught sight of his left hand, and with a gasp she reached out and grabbed it. “Elijah, look!” Lips parting, she gently traced the lines as they appeared. Flowing and smooth, a circular design etched itself painlessly into Elijah’s skin. Pale gold, the pendant’s ‘signature’—the magic that had been bestowed upon it before it had chosen Elijah—was simple, yet beautiful.
“How did…what is this?” Rosalie’s question about the scars that littered his body was momentarily forgotten as he stared at the design that had simply appeared on the palm of his hand.
“The pendant…it just sunk into your flesh when I put it in your hand. I have no idea where it went! Maybe, though, it stays with you forever now.”
“Maybe.” Looking unconvinced, he opened and closed his hand. Then he reached out and placed his hands over Rosalie’s shoulders, as though to steady her. “The scars you asked me about. They don’t really matter in the end. I got them as a child. My father was constantly trying to save me against a mother who beat me because she believed I had ‘stolen her life’. In the end, she killed him and I was entered into the foster system.”
After a swallow, he nodded to himself. “I didn’t have anywhere to go once I was 18, so I hit the streets and the metaphysical became my life. The idea of magic and of reading the future—of helping people—appealed to me. But I was just a kid with no education. It was all that I had to offer.” A smile came to his mouth. “And then I met Ang at a soul kitchen one day. Because of her, I came to know you. I’ll always love her. She gave me the best thing that could have happened to me.”
Rosalie could hardly breathe as she listened to Elijah’s words. He hadn’t opened up to her this much since she had first laid eyes on him, and she was afraid that if she moved, spoke, or blinked that she would wake up from an incredible dream. “What’s that?” she finally made herself ask.
“You, Rosalie. She gave me you.”
Palm of Destiny Page 11
