A punch in the throat would’ve hurt less.
“A few months ago, you were madly in love with Cruz, and now it’s Kajika.”
I was so angry that I got off the bench and went to stand as far away as possible from Ace. If I hadn’t been waiting for Gregor to tweak the damn lock, I would’ve fled.
“Have you considered that you might be attracted to him because of all the time you’ve been spending together?”
I was horrified by what my brother thought of me.
Cat burst back into the boathouse then, a piece of folded paper flapping in her hand. One glance between Ace and me had her eyes narrowing. “What just happened in here?”
“Nothing,” Ace grumbled, scraping a hand over his hair that he kept shorn close to his scalp.
“Uh-huh.” She splayed the hand not clutching the paper on her hip. “Spill. Now.”
“Cat, it’s between Lily and me.” He grabbed the paper from her.
“It’s about Kajika isn’t it?”
Ace’s sulky silence confirmed it loudly.
Cat sighed, her hand slipping off her jutting hip. “Ace, relationships are between two people, not three, not four. Lily’s never gotten involved in ours. We owe her the same respect. Kajika is loyal and strong, and cares for her and—”
Ace got to his feet and punched a locker, denting the metal.
“Ace!” Cat chided him.
“He is irresponsible and dangerous. Have you ever seen him without his fucking rowan wood arrows? If he cared for Lily, he’d fucking trust her enough not to carry weapons that could kill her.”
“He doesn’t carry them to use them on her.”
My brother’s blue eyes flared with heat. Heat and anger. So much anger. Cat didn’t deserve to be on the end of that look. He was being unfair. That look knocked him off the pedestal I’d always placed him on.
Instead of backing down, Cat’s voice turned icy. “You’re scared for her life and under a lot of stress, and you want to protect her. But keeping her away from someone she wants to be with—someone who wants to be with her—that’s just selfish, Ace. Selfish and… Not. Your. Decision.”
Ace laughed, a brittle laugh that scattered goose bumps over my arms and made Cat’s eyes slant further. “Whatever. It’s not like women are known for being reasonable. You just invited a band of fucking delinquents to visit us in Neverra.”
Cat whipped her head back. “Because telling them they can never go would do our relations so much good?” she snapped. “Go home, Ace. Go home, and calm down, and when you’re ready to apologize for being a jerk, you can come back here.”
Ace stood so straight it looked like he’d grown a few inches. He turned toward the portal and pressed his palm against it. His stamp flashed, and then his body was sopped up by the magical door.
The fight had thinned the oxygen from the air. Every breath I pulled did little to expand my shrunken lungs. Cat’s black eyes shimmered like the top of the lake crashing outside the boathouse. I walked up to her and hugged her. Her body stayed stiff, and for a moment, I was terrified that she was angry with me, but then she snorted.
“Unreasonable?” Her gush of breath tickled my earlobe. “Men.”
After I pulled away from her, I signed, You’ll forgive him, right?
She wiped her eyes on her sleeve and smiled. “This isn’t our first fight, Lily, and it won’t be our last.” She bit her curved lip. “But he’s going to have to grovel a hell of a lot to get out of this one. Unreasonable?” she said again, shaking her head.
The lightness of her tone perked up my sullen mood. Sorry.
“For what?”
For causing your fight.
“Are you kidding? You have nothing to be sorry about. Ace is worried out of his mind, and that’s going to color everything that concerns you. But that’s because he adores you. Remember that if he ever tries to tell you what to do.”
She was right, and yet the pain of Ace’s ban remained as fresh and raw as the new skin girdling my wrists.
Gold light erupted from the locker. Cat and I held our breaths, waiting for a body to emerge, but none appeared.
Minutes passed and still no one came back out. The air turned so frigid that I began to shiver. Cat rubbed my arms, and then she stood and walked over to the portal.
“If this is going to take much longer, then we should wait at home. You’re freezing and probably tired as hell.” She placed her hand on the locker, and her stamp flared. “I’ll go see what’s the hold-up and come right back, okay?”
I nodded.
She laid her palm flat against the portal, but it didn’t swallow her up. Frowning, she lifted her hand and pressed it again. Nothing.
“It’s…it’s not working.” As she pulled her hand back, horror painted her face a spectral shade of white. “They must’ve changed the lock.”
She spun toward me, the W on the top of her hand glowing as wildly as her unusable portal stamp, and even though she remained uncharacteristically pale, her dread faded. She pulled me off the bench and all but squashed my fingers against the portal.
My stamp lit up. Heart walloping my ribs, I inhaled and waited for the familiar tug.
But there was no tug.
The portal remained as hard as a mirror.
They’d locked us both out and locked themselves inside.
21
Absence
“We’re not freaking out,” Cat said, but anxiety coated her tone. “They’re probably just tinkering with the combination, trying to align it with your mark.”
My body felt filled with drugs—weightless, numb, and yet so incredibly heavy. I tried moving, but I couldn’t even lift the soles of my boots.
What if they’d locked the portals forever because of my stupid, warped stamp? My brother needed Cat; she needed him. As though her heart were suspended outside her body, I heard it tear. She tried to appear strong for a couple more seconds, rambling on about how this was just a hiccup, but then she stopped talking and stared at the unyielding portal the same way she’d gawked at Kajika’s body rising from his rose petal grave.
In absolute terror.
I’d been there; I remembered. I’d seen other hunters rise from their magical slumber since, and yet Kajika’s awakening had remained the most vivid and momentous. Perhaps because it was the first I’d witnessed. Or perhaps because I’d been frightened by the magic that had come into play, but also awed by it…by him, the warrior with whorls of captive dust.
“I’m sure it’s going to be okay,” Cat said. She removed the hand she’d kept on my wrist and rubbed her clammy palm against her sweater. “They’ll be back in the morning.”
But what if they weren’t? What if it took months for them to reconfigure the lock? What if Gregor had done this on purpose? What if the acorn—
“I’ll run us home. Get on my back.”
Although I wanted to object, tell her I’d rather walk or fly, I didn’t put up a fight. I climbed onto her back, and she rushed through the gray, snowy darkness toward the cemetery. Once we arrived, she set me down. My legs were so numb they barely carried me up the porch and through the door.
The lights were off, but the TV was on. Cat’s dad was lying on the couch, moving images splashing light over his face.
When he saw us, he jumped to his feet. “Lily, you’re home!”
He hugged me, but I stayed so rigid, he stepped back and took me in, and then he took in his daughter. “Why do you girls look like someone died?”
“What?” Cat’s voice was so strident it made both of Derek’s eyebrows jot up.
“Did someone die?”
Cat swallowed. “No. No.” She was still squeaking.
“Then what’s wrong? Because something’s wrong…”
“My dress might not be ready in time for the wedding,” Cat blurted out.
“That’s what’s troubling you? It’s only a dress. We can go tomorrow to the mall and buy you a new dress. Or to Detroit. Or wherever you buy fancy we
dding gowns.”
Cat kept up the charade. “But I wanted that one.” Either she was protecting Derek, or thinking about the wedding and the dress kept her from breaking apart.
Derek smiled and shook his head. “You shouldn’t lend such importance to a dress, honey. I know it’s your big day and everything, and I remember how important it was for your mother. But take it from someone who’s been there, done that…it’ll be perfect. Because a wedding isn’t about wearing a beautiful dress, it’s about marrying the right person, and you’ve got the right person.”
Tears streamed down Cat’s cheeks as the full force of what had happened hit her. Derek tucked her into his arms. I gulped down the giant lump that had started forming in my throat in the boathouse and stepped around them toward my bedroom.
“Oh, Lily, Kajika stopped by earlier to drop off your suitcase,” Derek said over the top of Cat’s head. “Did you have a fun trip?”
I stared at him as though he’d asked if I were having my period. When his forehead scrunched, I gave him a paltry thumbs-up and entered my bedroom, closing the door gently behind me. For a long moment, I didn’t move. I just stared at my suitcase, the last forty-eight hours spooling through my mind.
The golden flare of the portal haunted me. I walked over to the suitcase. As I unzipped it, I thought of the man whose boat sank.
I had to pay him back.
I removed my clothes from the suitcase and put the clean ones back into my closet and the dirty ones into my hamper, and then I stored my suitcase inside the little walk-in closet in the corner. I was about to crawl into bed when I noticed a little shopping bag on my nightstand. I picked it up and fished out a box. A new cell phone and a new chip.
Had Kajika gotten me a new phone?
I walked toward my window and looked out. Snow fell but more softly, like powdered sugar through a sieve. I scanned the woods, looking for the hunter, but he wasn’t there. He was probably at home. I pressed my palm against the glass pane and watched as fog formed around my fingers.
I went through the motions after that—brushed my teeth, pulled on leggings and a long-sleeved t-shirt, then slid the chip into my new phone. I was about to send Kajika a message to thank him, when I realized he must have a new phone number, too.
Tomorrow.
I’d go see him tomorrow.
My lids shut, but sleep didn’t come. I couldn’t turn off the reel of nightmarish memories. They played out over and over. I wondered if other faeries had been locked out. How terrified they would be when their portal stamps didn’t take them home.
My door squeaked open. I hadn’t drawn the drapes closed, so moonlight fell over my visitor, illuminating her puffy eyes and pallor.
“I can’t sleep,” Cat croaked.
I patted my bed, and she slid beneath the comforter.
“What if they don’t come back?”
I slotted my fingers through hers and squeezed.
“I made him leave.”
Silence settled over us like drifting snow.
“What if those were my last words to him?”
Another long stretch of silence.
At some point I must’ve fallen asleep because when I awoke, the pillow Cat had slept on was cold. Bleak light stretched over my bedroom. I got up and padded to the kitchen. It was empty. I went upstairs, the steps squeaking beneath my bare feet. Cat’s door was open and her bed made. She was gone. I suspected I knew where she’d gone—back to the boathouse.
I returned to my bedroom and got dressed. My shearling boots were gone and so was my favorite leather jacket, both ruined by the lake, but thankfully I had other boots and other coats. I belted my oatmeal cashmere jacket, slipped my new phone into my pocket, and then left.
Cat’s car was parked in front of the house, but her footsteps were stamped in the snow. At some point, the trail thinned—the imprints of her boots too few and far between to follow. She must’ve been sprinting. It took me twenty minutes to reach the boathouse. She wasn’t there, but fresh snow littered the floor so she must’ve come, unless another faerie had come through here.
I pressed my hand against the back of locker number four, and my stamp flared, but the portal stayed hard and unyielding.
I retraced my footsteps, about to head into the forest toward Kajika’s house, when I spotted movement in Astra’s. I went there.
Cat wasn’t sitting at one of the communal tables.
“Lily!” Cassidy squealed. “Where did you disappear to? I tried calling you, like, a million times.”
I signed, Lost my phone.
“Oh, no! How? Where?”
I pointed to the lake.
“That sucks.”
I took out my new one and sent her a message from my retrieved contacts. Lily’s new number. And then I typed: Did Cat come by this morning?
“Nope. You’re my very first customer. You want anything to drink?”
I nodded.
“Your usual?”
I nodded. As she steamed soy milk, I took a seat at a table and phoned Cat. It went to voicemail. I sent her a message mentioning this was my new number and to call me back. Since no one else came in, Cass sat with me and filled me in on Faith and baby Remo, showing me a thousand pictures of Remo from every angle imaginable. At some point, Faith came in, pushing a bulky stroller. My heart, which had felt as clunky as a piece of corroded steel, lightened.
I lifted Remo from the stroller and clutched him possessively against my chest. My anxiety faded as I watched his tiny lips stretch into a yawn that turned into the sweetest whimper. Although I didn’t want to hand him over to his mother, I did. She tucked him under her sweater, where he squirmed before becoming blissfully still. When he was done suckling and had passed out into a milk-induced coma, she handed him over. I held him all morning, marveling at how absolutely exquisite he was.
“Lily, is it me or is your palm glowing?” Faith asked after she’d deposited a cinnamon bun in front of a customer.
I sucked in a breath and tucked Remo closer, but Faith leaned over to have a better view of my hand, her auburn eyebrows mashing up over her eyes. I didn’t think she could see faerie light, but her father was Gregor—a pure fae—and her mother had been half-fae. I cast my gaze toward Cassidy, who was laughing at something a customer had said. Could she also see faerie light?
Faith plucked my index finger off the baby blanket. Thankfully my hand had stopped glowing.
“I seriously need more sleep.” She yawned and returned to the counter to help Cass out with the lunch crowd—mostly high school students who’d come for a sandwich or a slice of homemade quiche.
Remo opened his little eyes and fixed them on me. They were as penetrating as his grandfather’s. His grandfather who wanted to bring his family to Neverra. Last night, I’d accused him of messing with the lock. Only now, gazing into his grandson’s face, did I realize how unfair that was.
Remo closed his eyes, oblivious to the entire world. How I envied his peacefulness, his lack of worries, his absence of fear. As I slicked a silken cowlick down, my palm glowed again. What was Kajika doing? Working out? Had he heard about the portals? Had Cat called him? I checked my phone, expecting an answer to my text message, but Cat hadn’t answered me. Had she even seen my message?
The light in my palm extinguished before returning and then shutting off again, the sequence as quick as hummingbird wings. I stood up so abruptly, a cry burst from Remo’s mouth. Placing an apologetic kiss against his wrinkled forehead, I set him down in the stroller.
Faith was already coming toward us, wiping her hands on her apron. “What happened?”
I speared my glowing hand through my coat to conceal the glow. With my other hand, I grabbed my phone and typed: I promised Derek I would go grocery shopping with him.
She bent over the stroller and shushed her little boy by drawing circles over his brow. “Will you come back later?”
I nodded.
“Or you and Cat can come over tonight, and we can do a gir
l’s dinner.” Faith bit her lip. “Unless you have other plans.”
I’d love to come. Let me check with Cat once she gets home. I’ll text you.
Even though my hand was still ensconced in my coat jacket, heat prickled my skin, followed by the most chilling cold. I concentrated on Kajika’s location.
The cauliflower lake.
The small house.
He was home.
Then why was he in mortal danger?
As soon as I penetrated the outskirt of the forest, I soared off the spongy layer of pine cones and deadened twigs. In my haste, I’d forgotten about my pitiful attempt to tread air the night before. Just as it happened when I’d torn myself out of Cruz’s arms, gravity tugged at my heels and flung me to the ground.
Snow hadn’t penetrated the dense foliage, and I hit the earth with a dull thud. I sprang to my feet and dusted myself off, taking off at a rapid run down the trail that led away from the beach toward Kajika’s house. I focused wholly on not tripping so as not to dwell on my inability to fly.
On what it meant…
My palm flickered, stealing my attention away from my trajectory. A branch slapped my cheek so hard it startled me to a stop. I nursed my throbbing cheek, but then I thought of Kajika and took off again. More branches whipped me, and I winced from their assault, but I didn’t slow, not even when my lungs felt close to collapsing.
I was used to walking. I wasn’t one of those faeries who kept their feet bare of shoes because they didn’t want to tread the same ground as the calidum, but I wasn’t used to the strain of running.
It took me almost fifteen minutes to reach Kajika’s house. In the silver gloom of the afternoon, it seemed empty of life, and yet there was life somewhere in there. A heart beating too fast or too slowly.
I knocked on the front door, tossing my silent voice to warn him of my presence. I waited for an answer, but one never came. Hesitantly I walked toward his bedroom window, keeping my eyes lowered in case—
I swallowed, the memory thickening my saliva.
I knuckled the window, still not daring to look in. Kajika, if you want me to leave, just grunt.
Raging Rival Hearts Page 14
