“Wasn’t it part of the plan that you kill your Siren to experience the pain Maximillian went through?”
“I think it got tweaked in the translation through the decades,” Taylin says. “Like that game ‘telephone’ my cousins used to force me to play.”
“They taught their children what to look for and who they were supposed to protect. They became organized teachers of magic and history,” Matt continues.
“A frickin’ skewed history,” Taylin adds with a more normal sneer.
Taylin turns my arm over and runs a fingertip over the bruises. “We need to find Luke. Do you know where he is?”
“Outside the stadium.”
“Shit,” Taylin curses softly and pushes my hair away from my neck, ducking to look closer.
“Did he…are you really okay?” Matt asks. “You look… uh…ravished?” he says the word as if he’s not sure that’s the right one to use.
I touch the edge of my lips. They feel swollen. I pull my hair close around my neck to hide whatever marks are there. “He…kissed me. He wasn’t completely in control.”
Taylin shakes her head and eyes Matt. She looks at me. “You’re damn lucky to still be walking right now.”
“Tay, not helpful,” Matt says. “Can you get her a soda or something?”
Taylin pops a tab and places an icy can in my hand. She wraps my other hand around it as if to make sure I’m not going to drop it. Diet Coke—not my preferred, but right now it’s heaven. I guzzle down the icy burn of carbonation. “Thanks.” I wipe my hand across my mouth and look at my rapt audience. “Really, I’m okay.”
“Well, hell, I’m not,” Taylin says. “Maybe you’re in shock. Maybe I’m in shock.”
Cheers erupt as the Blizzards score. Red hats fly through the air.
Matt stands to see the score. “Hat trick for Walline.”
“Everyone’s distracted. I’d say it’s time to get out of here,” Taylin suggests.
We walk casually through the milling people. I scan the sea of faces. No Eric. No Luke. “What about Luke?” I ask.
“He’ll find his way home when he gets hungry,” Matt says with a chuckle. He places his arm over my shoulder. It’s not weird at all, brotherly, really.
Taylin walks in front of us through the parking lot, her head scanning side to side. The light from the closest overhead lamp illuminates dents the shape of fingertips in the roof of her car. “Bloody frickin’ hell!”
“Umm…it could be worse,” I say. “I sort of thought he would rip it off. So the fact that it’s still intact–”
“And not punched out from the inside,” Matt adds.
“—is a good thing,” I finish.
Taylin huffs and yanks open her door. It squeaks a bit as the metal of the frame scrapes. She ducks in and my eyes shift toward the shadowy loading dock. Is he still there? Can he see us? One note from my lips and I’d know.
Matt steers me toward the back seat and covers my head as he ducks me in like a cop. His face leans in as he buckles my seatbelt. I let him because I’m just too tired to push his hands away. The stress of the night has left me flat, dull.
“He’s trying very hard, Jule.”
I look up into Matt’s pinched face and nod. “I witnessed it firsthand tonight.”
Matt smiles, but there is no happiness in his eyes. “He’s sorry, you know.” His fingers graze my arm where my jacket hides the bruises.
“I know.”
His lips disappear inside his tight smile, and he shuts the door to climb into the front passenger seat. Taylin leaves her lights off as we exit, just in case the police are watching the lot.
We turn out onto the road and a red Camry follows. “Taylin,” I start to say.
“I see him,” she says, her voice small.
Matt shifts in his seat. “Don’t worry, Tay. He won’t do anything tonight. It’s three against one.”
Eric follows us to my home and passes slowly as we pull into the drive. Cheery, normal light spills from the windows of the house. Taylin tosses me a scarf. “Tie this on for now, and keep your jacket on.” She pulls a hairbrush out of her glove compartment. “Here. Just smooth it out a bit. It should be enough to get you upstairs.”
“Thanks.”
Matt walks me up the steps, his gaze searching the shadows the whole time. I’m not sure who he’s looking for. I don’t ask. “Thanks, Matt.” I shiver. Where would I be right now if Matt and Taylin hadn’t fought to tug me away from Eric?
“Get inside. Get some rest. We’ll figure something out tomorrow.”
I nod and turn the knob.
“Julietta?” Mom calls as I walk in.
“Yeah, it’s me. Matt wasn’t feeling good, so we all came home early. My stomach’s a little queasy, too, so I’m heading to bed.”
Mom walks out of the kitchen holding a glass of milk. Her eyes narrow. “You look exhausted, honey.”
It’s not hard to fake a yawn behind my hand, and I let my hair drop in front of my face. “Yeah, I’m going up.”
Dad yells goodnight as I walk out of the entryway. “Night, Dad!” I yell back.
My room is dark when I turn the knob and walk in. Prickles dance up my back. Did Mom shut my door? It’s an ancient house, so the electrical plugs are not in practical places. My light switch is wired to my clock radio so I cross the black and gray shadows to where my lamp waits on the far side of my bed. I sit on the edge in the dark, my fingers clenched into the hyper-soft, fur-like throw across the mattress.
“Hello?” I say into the sharp silence and click on the light. It’s a really good thing that I’m already sitting, or I probably would have fallen on my butt. Luke stands in the corner, hands stuffed into the pockets of his jeans. His head is tipped forward, eyes closed.
“Luke!” I whisper-shout and stand up. Only his lips move.
“I am so sorry, Jule.” I stop, the backs of my knees falling against the bed at his tone. “I…” he swallows. “How bad… did I hurt you?” His words burn as if a slowly scorching agony sits within him. I can almost smell the smoke.
I step closer. The short sleeves of his T-shirt are pulled up enough to show smooth, tanned skin, no coiling tattoos. I touch his shoulder with one hand and he flinches. He shakes his head, and the toussled waves of his hair brush around his jaw.
“I’m fine. Really.”
He opens his dark eyes. Pain like I’ve never seen before is reflected in them. Aren’t the eyes a mirror of the soul? “I hurt you.”
“Barely.”
Luke’s hand hesitates, but then brushes my hair behind my shoulder. He gently tugs Taylin’s scarf from around my neck. I watch his face pinch and his jaw clamp shut as the soft material pools at my feet. I have yet to see the marks he left there. I don’t need to; I can see them in his tortured expression. His large hands work my jacket off my shoulders to join the scarf. His fingers trail along the skin of my upper arms. He shakes his head slightly and looks up into my eyes. “I will never forgive myself.”
“God, Luke,” I plead, “you stopped yourself from attacking me.”
“What do you call this?”
I try to smile, but my lips twitch instead. “Unchecked passion.” My little joke falls flat with the small pile of clothes on the floor.
Luke’s hand rakes through his hair, making it stand out in gorgeous disarray like a model on the cover of GQ. He rubs his face as if trying to wash off the nightmare he’s living. I feel so helpless. My heart aches for him and all I want to do is throw myself in his arms. But it might only make things harder on him.
“I don’t know what to do, what to say,” I murmur. I stand as close to him as I can without touching.
His tormented eyes focus on mine. “Tell me…that you hate me. Tell me to go away and never touch you again. Call me a monster.”
His words slice through me with more brutal force than my fear in the dark alley at the stadium. There, I could have lost my life. Here I could live, but be in agony forever. Which is
crueler?
“Please,” he says. “Tell me. Make me leave you.”
I sigh and step up until my body is touching his. My decision is made. It really was from the start. I’m in this with my whole self. No running away. That possibility deserted me when a pile of lilacs fell out of my locker, when a towel was left on my porch, when Mica chewed little tidbits of chicken, tail wagging. When Luke Whitmore smiled at me.
I feel his stiff, sculpted muscles beneath my hand as I place it over his heart. I lean in slowly and kiss the edge of his jaw. “I hate you,” I whisper. My fingers thread through his hair to curve around behind his ear with a feather-light caress. I step up on my tiptoes and kiss the corner of his mouth. “Go away.” I grasp his warm hand and move it around to rest at the top of my back jeans pocket. “Don’t touch me again.” I cup his face and kiss the small indent in his chin. “You are a monster.” I lean into him and guide his face down. I force him to stare into my eyes. “All. Complete. Lies.”
Luke exhales, shuts his eyes and leans his forehead into mine. His arms engulf me. We hold each other until I feel his tight body loosen. I relish this moment, committing it to memory. A moment without the curse.
After long minutes, he draws back slightly but doesn’t release me. His eyes dip to my neck again. “If I could, I would erase every mark, remove it from your soft skin, extract it from your memory.” He bends his head and gingerly kisses along my neck. I stand still, barely breathing. Luke turns my arm slowly and feathers kisses along the fingerprints there.
“No.” He looks up at me with questions in his sad eyes. I try to explain. “The marks show me…how hard you fought against the curse to keep me alive.” I shake my head just a bit. “I won’t let you steal those memories from me.”
Luke’s eyes close as he groans, pulling me against him, enveloping me completely. It is as if I’ve crawled inside him, warm and snug and, as crazy as it sounds…safe.
I hear Mom and Dad locking up downstairs. “I’d better go,” he says and relaxes his hold.
“Wait.” My eyes widen as the night’s insanity floods back into my Luke-saturated mind. “Eric tracked me down at the stadium.” Luke’s eyes harden. “He has this ring. Matt and Taylin saw it. They said that he’s a guardian.”
Luke’s jaw tightens. His eyes narrow. “What happened?”
“Eric tried to take me away from the game. He said he wanted to take me home. Taylin saw his ring and freaked out a little. Eric warned Matt that if anything happened to me he’d,” I swallow, “kill you all…slowly.”
“Did he hurt you?”
I shake my head no, hoping there aren’t any marks on my wrist where we played tug of war. Luke paces to the window and glances out. “So, he knows we’re the cursed,” he says more to himself than to me. “I should have known. It’s only been two lives since we’ve seen a guardian.”
“I think…” my mind whirls around the details that I haven’t had time to consider, “I think Eric’s been watching me all my life. I’m a Siren, right?”
Luke stares at me. “He’s been waiting for you to draw one of us with your voice.”
“And now he’s going to try to kill you,” I whisper.
“I’m surprised he hasn’t already.”
My heart picks up to a gallop. “God, Luke! What are we going to do?” The answer lies in the air between us, a wall that begins to form as I remember Taylin’s face, her panic, their hatred of the guards who killed them so viciously. “No, Luke,” I whisper. “You’re not a killer.”
“I need to talk to Mathias and Tay,” he says. “They could be in danger.”
I nod but hate to see him turn away. He opens my window and gracefully steps out onto the roof. “Luke, be careful.” I stick my head out the window. He kisses me quickly and runs his thumb along my cheek.
“I love you, Jule.” His eyes flash briefly with an eerie internal light, but he turns before I can focus on it. In a soundless leap, he lands with a gentle thud on the front lawn. The porch light illuminates his bare arms. Black serpents wrap around sculpted biceps. He runs, away from me. He doesn’t look back.
17
“Distrust and caution are the parents of security.”
~Benjamin Franklin
“Is Carly sick?” Mom asks the next morning when I grab my book bag, ready to head out early for the bus. I have a lavender turtleneck sweater on to hide the trail of hickeys and bruises along my neck and arms. I plan to fake being sick to get out of putting on my gym uniform. All I need is for Richard Ashe to call my mom about the marks.
“I don’t think so, but she isn’t driving me this morning.” As I think about Carly, my stomach twists like a kite whose string is caught in a tree. So much has happened since yesterday, when she deposited me on Luke’s front lawn. Carly feels miles away, farther even than when we moved down here without her. I didn’t try to call her again last night. If she’d answered I don’t know what I would have said.
Mom looks closer at me. “You two are fighting.” She points back and forth between my eyes. “Your eyes look glassy. Either you’re sick,” she plants a kiss on my forehead, then shakes her head, “or you are upset and trying to pretend you’re not.”
Part of me is relieved that my normal, extremely perceptive mom is back. The rest of me is annoyed that she can read me so easily. “Yeah, she’s mad.”
Mom nods and glances out the window. “Maybe she’s ready to talk about it.”
I follow her gaze to the driveway, where Carly sits staring straight ahead over her steering wheel.
I slide into the familiar passenger seat and close the door. Carly doesn’t say anything so I don’t, either. She pulls out of the driveway. We ride in silence. At the one traffic light between home and school I glance at her. Carly’s face is pinched, her features so different that she looks almost like a stranger. Then I notice a tear snaking down her cheek.
“Carly, I’m sorry.”
She looks at me and the pain in her eyes makes me nauseous. “Mom was at her garden club meeting and Dad was at the school working on football plays last night. Eric was home but left. So…” she takes a big breath. “I started hunting around the den, pulling out books and stuff.” She pauses so long, I wonder if she’ll continue. The car behind us honks to let us know the light is green. Carly’s foot hits the gas, jerking us forward. She pulls awkwardly over to the side of the road. Her hands grip the steering wheel so tight that her knuckles blanch white. She stares out over them. “When I pulled out one of the books on a higher shelf, the bookcase moved.” She turns to look at me. “There is a secret closet.”
“Did you go in?” I whisper.
She shakes her head. “No. I was,” her voice dips, “too creeped out. I kept thinking that Eric was going to walk in and catch me. But I could see lots of pictures and something that looked like a family tree.” She breathes in and out through her nose. “And, yeah, most of the pictures looked like they were of you and your mom.”
I blink several times, sighing. Mom isn’t insane. Relief pours over me like a waterfall, bringing tears almost to the surface. I squeeze Carly’s hand. “There might be an explanation.”
Tears roll down Carly’s cheeks. “Apart from my brother being a crazed stalker?”
I tip my head side to side. “Yeah.” Is being a guardian an excuse for stalking? I don’t know if my information will make Carly feel better, but at least she’ll know the truth.
“Eric is something called a guardian.”
“A guardian? That doesn’t sound bad.” She sniffs and wipes at her nose.
“Well, that depends on your perspective.”
“Did you get this from them?”
Of course she’s talking about Luke, Matt, and Taylin. I nod. “But also from Eric, last night.”
“Shit,” she curses softly. “What happened last night?”
I fill her in on the confrontation with Eric.
“Where was Luke?” she asks.
“Outside, trying to get himself u
nder control after I sang.”
“So, you did sing in front of all those people?” Carly sounds slightly awed.
“You were watching?”
“Eric turned on the game and we heard you announced. We watched you walk up to the microphone and then the channel went out.”
“Taylin, Matt, and Luke knocked out the satellites so I wouldn’t entrance the whole frickin’ world.”
Carly rolls her eyes. “God, Jule, you’re like a lethal weapon. If you’re not careful, some government is going to kidnap you.”
“Luke’s curse is making it worse. It makes sense that my voice would paralyze anyone who could help me while Luke goes crazy and tears me apart.”
“Shit,” Carly says again, but at least she doesn’t sound so sad. “So Eric’s just trying to protect you?”
I shrug. “I don’t know, but that makes sense. But I’m worried he’s going to try to kill Luke.”
Carly shakes her head. “I can’t see Eric killing someone. He doesn’t hunt or watch boxing or anything like that. How would he kill him, anyway? Luke’s, like, superhuman right now.”
“Luke said that he could still be killed if shot in the wrong place.”
“How the hell did Eric find out about all this?” Carly wonders out loud. “Am I a descendant of those killer guards, too, then?”
“I don’t know. Maybe he found out about it at State, a fraternity or something.”
“So there could be more guardians around?”
I nod slowly. “Maybe not here, but I think it’s a pretty organized group if Eric has a book on it.”
“They might try to kill Matt,” Carly breathes. “And Taylin.”
I think of the panic in Taylin’s eyes, how small and scared she looked. “Maybe if we talk to Eric,” I suggest, “he’ll help us break the curse instead.”
“I should talk to him, Jule.”
“Yeah, I don’t think Luke will let me near him.”
Carly pauses and her eyes widen. “You don’t think that Luke would…that they would hurt him, do you?”
I open my mouth but the denial is anchored to my tongue. “They were all murdered pretty brutally by guardians.” My voice is low, choppy.
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