“What’s this?” Graham demands.
“Does Karl know?” Jonah asks me, ignoring Graham.
I shake my head. Just once.
“Jonah,” Graham tries again, “I won’t tell. I swear.”
“I know,” the love of my life says. “My brother is excellent at what he does.”
Jonah’s presence in my math class is a fluke. It turns out he’s a freaking genius when it comes to math, unlike me, who still struggles desperately over each question.
“You’re in here why?” I ask as he perches on my desk before class starts.
“It was the only class of yours I could get into. See how I suffer for love?”
I laugh. “You are my new official tutor, Mr. Whitecomb.”
“I’ll try my best.” He pretends to sigh. “But I’ve seen how easily distracted you are whenever you’re doing math.”
“It’s sort of hard to concentrate when there’s a super-hot guy sitting nearby,” I grin.
But then, from behind us, several of the girls who have long fancied themselves in love with him begin talking about us. How it’s obvious I’m flirting with Jonah, and how disgusting it is since I’m dating his brother. The words they use to describe me are like gunfire—rapid, painful, and almost impossible to dodge.
He doesn’t look their way, but I can tell he’s listening. “Don’t do anything to them,” I say quietly.
“Why not?”
“Because what they’re saying . . . it’s true.”
His eyes widen. “No, Chloe. That’s not—”
I try to keep my voice steady. “I can’t hide behind you to save myself from the consequences of what I’ve done.”
He looks so fiercely protective that I blink a few tears back. “It’s nothing for me to stop them from saying something cruel like that.”
“I know,” I tell him. I want to squeeze his hand, but I can’t. Not yet. Not here. “And I appreciate it. But if this is what they think about me, then this is how it is.”
He glances back at them. The frenzied whispering hushes. “Their opinions mean nothing, you know.”
“I know,” I tell him again. And it’s mostly true. I just wish that Kellan wasn’t going to have to deal with the aftermath of my choices in such a public forum once he comes home.
Giuliana’s already waiting for us by the time we walk out the main doors. She’s so sophisticated in a black sweater dress, black boots, and black sunglasses that she looks like she ought to be back in Italy sipping cappuccinos rather than chauffeuring high-school kids. A small crowd of boys surround her, clearly flirting, and she’s good-naturedly tolerating it. The moment she sees us, though, she brushes past her paparazzi. “Ciao, bellas! Let’s get going!”
“What’s the rush?” Jonah asks as we climb into her car.
“Karl and I have a fun night planned for you two. But to do it, we must hurry. No more questions. Enjoy the ride.”
Twenty minutes later, when Karl pulls the Hummer into one of the parking spots outside of my favorite hiking trail in the woods, it dawns on me where we’re going. “Annar?” I exclaim.
Karl turns the car off. “Yep.”
“It’s about time you see your wife,” I tease, but in truth, I’m absolutely giddy over this. I’ve been to Annar once—and it was under stressful circumstances. Now, to go with Jonah . . . .
It’ll be perfect.
The portal amazes me just like it did the first time. Some places have portals in buildings, but this one’s in a cave behind a series of secret tunnels, accessible only through high-tech handprint and retinal scanners. It’s a beautiful, comfortable room filled with couches, artwork, and plants that looks better suited to a mansion than a cave. The actual portal is similar to a large glass phone booth with two doors. Inside, a small panel appears with a single, silver switch.
“You ready for a night on the town?” Giules asks us once the door clicks shut. Karl flicks the switch and white light fills the space around us.
Chapter 33
I don’t think I’ll ever get over just how cool Annar’s Transit Station is. It’s a high-tech facility, similar to a swank airport. Everything is glossy white except sleek, wooden benches with bright-red cushions and the gorgeous, flowering plants hanging above. It’s a massive building, nearly thirty stories high. Countless portals, marked by hammered, copper signs designating destinations, line the hallways. Unlike an actual airport, though, there are no delays, no cancellations. Portals are only closed by a Creator, and only then by Council decree.
Outside, Karl and Giuliana hand over a note and then dismiss themselves. We read the note together:
Guards aren’t necessary in Annar, considering it’s protected. You’ve got reservations at 7 tonight at Haven—it’s two block south of Karnach on 12th Street. We’ll see you two back at the Transit Station by 11.
“What does that mean, Annar is protected?”
Jonah folds the paper and sticks it in his pocket. “Hiders are constantly working on shielding the entire plane. Didn’t you notice during Alex’s presentation that there’d never been an attack here? The Elders probably don’t even know Annar exists, since it didn’t exist when they were in power.”
It’s just beginning to snow, just a light dusting, really—but the small, white flakes glitter like diamonds in the air as they fall around us. And, although there are hundreds of people out and about, rushing all around us, it feels like old times. Where’s it just him and me. There are no Guards, no Elders, no Cousins, no hurting Kellan . . . My heart, so incredibly full and content, threatens to burst.
We take our time heading to the restaurant, hand in hand, stopping every so often to window shop or to simply talk. The strain of the last year isn’t with us, and it feels so good to have my best friend back. It doesn’t matter that a ton of people keep stopping us to say hi to him, it’s just enough to be together.
After yet another girl leaves, I tease, “Cora told me you and your brother are rather well-known here in Annar.”
“Well, I’ve spent a lot of time here,” he says, completely missing my meaning. “And, if you think about it, despite there being around ten thousand Magicals living in Annar at any particular time, it’s really an insular society.”
“Did you come here a lot with your dad?”
He hesitates, just a second, really. But it’s enough for me to notice a small, fleeting slice of sadness cross his face. “Mostly with my uncle, and a friend of the family. My dad . . . he was here, but I never saw him much.”
“Why do you think it’s like that?” I ask. “Because my parents are the same. Do you think it’s a Magical thing? Are we all cursed to be crappy parents?”
He laughs. “No. I actually don’t think they’re the norm. There are some Magicals, like our parents, who are so completely focused on their work that they don’t see past the end of their noses. There are also a lot of Magicals out there who are great parents, too.”
I snort my disbelief. “Do you actually know any of these mythical creatures?”
“Yeah. Believe it or not, I do.”
I stop and lean against a building. “Really?”
“My Uncle Joey was very involved,” he says quietly. “For a long time, he was the only real father figure my brother and I had.”
I reach up and twist a strand of his inky hair around my fingers. “You don’t talk about him often.”
The smile he gives me is so sad it tugs at my heart. “I miss him a lot.”
“How did he die?”
“I’m assuming the Elders killed him. But at the time, none of us knew how. He’d gone out for a mission and never came home. His body was found a week afterwards, washed up on shore.” When my eyes widen, he adds, “He was a Tide, which is probably why my brother and I love the ocean so much. He’s the one who gave it to us. And we’re still able to feel him when we’re out there.”
I want to throw my arms around him and take all the sadness away. “What about your aunt? The one still in Main
e?”
“She’s . . . .” He looks away and sighs. “Let’s say that she’s never been a very involved sort of person in my life, other than making sure I don’t let everyone down. And even that’s no longer her concern anymore.”
I think back to my phone call with Kellan. “What’s wrong with her?”
“Dementia,” he says.
“Can’t a Shaman do something about that?”
“I think . . . sometimes there are some things a Shaman can’t fix.”
I don’t know a lot about a lot of things, but I do know that a Shaman can pretty much fix anything. “But—”
He stares somewhere off into the distance. “I think Aunt Hannah very much wishes she could be a Creator and will herself out of her existence.”
I gasp quietly. “That’s horrible.”
“She doesn’t let anyone help her. She’s let herself slide into a place where she’s halfway existing—still here in body, but her mind is gone.”
Jonah’s lost so much for someone so young: his mother, his uncle, his aunt—as distant as she may be. He’s been left with a father who can’t bother himself to take an interest in his son’s life and a twin he’s fighting with because of me. My insulated, lonely life seems like heaven next to what he’s gone through so far.
I take his face in my hands. “You have me. You’ll always have me.”
It’s not arrogance when he says, “I know.”
“I just want you to know that even though your aunt is crazy and your dad sucks, you have me. And I’m not going anywhere.”
“I know,” he says again, and I wrap my arms around him, because he’s here, and he’s mine, and I finally can.
The Dwarf at the small jewelry stand near the restaurant has so many facial piercings and tattoos that he looks like a piece of art himself. He nods at us while talking to a group of Faeries, all giggling over a series of bracelets they’re looking at.
Jonah nudges my shoulder as I survey the displays. “You don’t wear much jewelry, do you?”
I am, as a matter of fact, not wearing a single piece of jewelry at the moment. “True,” I say as I pick up a bracelet to look at. “But it’s not because I don’t like it. I actually like jewelry quite a bit.” I pause. “My mother forbade me for a long time from wearing it because she said it makes women look like they’re, and I quote, ‘desperate for male attention.’”
He looks shocked before bursting out in laughter.
I laugh, too. “And this is the same woman who insisted on me being a cheerleader. Jewelry apparently attracts male attention, whereas a tiny cheerleading skirt does not.”
“So I’m taking it that you don’t own much jewelry then.”
“Not really,” I say, fingering a delicate necklace. Then I turn around and hold out my hand. “May I see your ring?”
He slips it off his finger and hands it over. It feels like forever since I last held this ring in my hand. In the waning sunlight, I read the words I hadn’t been able to remember that day he first showed up in my class: To my darling son, life awaits.
I slide it back onto his thumb. “Obviously from your mother?”
He nods, and I wait for the story behind the ring, perhaps behind the words, but it doesn’t come. And it strikes me that Jonah has always been guarded with his stories, with his past. With his mother.
Just then another ring catches my eye, beckoning like a siren’s song. It’s stacked on a leafless miniature tree’s branch along with a number of other rings. I lean in to look at it closely. It’s made of a thin rope of knotted wood. The more I stare at it, the more it calls out to me.
Jonah leans in. “Find something interesting?”
“This one,” I point out, oddly excited. “It’s . . . beautiful.” My finger, mere millimeters away from the ring, gets a small shock and a humming goes through my body, like recognition. I withdraw my finger and stare at it.
“Are you okay?” Jonah asks.
I nod, dazed. He pulls a stack of rings off the branch, extracting the one I’ve been admiring.
The Dwarf running the stand appears at our side. “Well, well,” he says approvingly, “this is a pleasant way to close shop tonight.”
“Pardon?” I ask as Jonah turns to look at him.
“It’s always nice to find a match. Seems like it happens less and less nowadays.”
When he doesn’t offer any clarification, I prod, “Meaning?”
But Jonah is the one to answer, despite appearing dazed himself. “This ring is yours.”
“Yours isn’t here,” the Dwarf says, as if he and Jonah are discussing tomorrow’s weather report. “Pairs rarely are mined at the same time.”
Jonah simply stares at the ring in his hand.
“No worries, though,” the Dwarf continues. “Usually doesn’t take too long to find it. Not once the first is, anyway.”
“Find what?” I demand, still confused.
The Dwarf leans against the stand. “His ring.”
I ask my boyfriend, “You want a wooden ring?”
“It’s not wood,” the Dwarf says, frowning. “It’s Dwarven gold.”
I look at the ring in Jonah’s fingers and then at the others back on the tree branches. “They look like wood.”
The Dwarf stares at me as if I’m dumb. Jonah says, ignoring him, “Dwarven gold is very rare and has certain Magical properties.”
“Impossible,” I say quickly. Only people have Magic . . . don’t they?
“I know it seems like it, but it’s true. The thing about Dwarven gold, though, is that it takes on different properties once it touches certain people.” Jonah slides the ring onto his pinky. “See, on me, it stays the same.” Then he takes my left hand and slides it onto my ring finger. The wood, warm against my skin, tingles before slowly hardening into rose gold. “But on you . . . it changes.”
I’m so startled I grab another ring and slip it on. But the new one stays wooden. You’d think, having grown up around Magic, stuff like this wouldn’t surprise me, but it does. I look up at Jonah, not asking, but waiting for an explanation.
“It’s because we have a Connection,” he says softly, moving closer. I ignore the Dwarf’s obvious curiosity at our conversation. “The rings are another symbol of how we’re meant to be. This one is yours. It’ll only ever change for you.”
I finger the ring, still warm and perfect against my skin. “And you have one out there somewhere?”
He slides off the second ring and kisses my hand. “Yes.”
Several minutes later, after he’s bought me my treasure using a credit card exclusive to Annar and we’re standing in an enclosed doorway out of the snow, I’m still marveling at the ring. Every time I take it off, it reverts back to wood. But on my finger, against my skin, it changes into something solid and beautiful, something representative of the real feelings and ties I have to Jonah.
“We need to find yours,” I say, giddy and drunk over the sheer romance of it all.
There is a long pause where he struggles to find the right words. “Chloe, I need to confess something to you.” He holds up my hand, fingering the ring. “I know we’ve only rediscovered each other recently, but I want . . . need you to know that you have been the only girl I’ve ever truly loved my entire life. I can’t remember a time in which I wasn’t in love with you.”
I seriously feel like swooning. “I feel the same way.”
“We’re going to be eighteen in just a few months, and living here.”
I nod, refusing to break my gaze away from his. My birthday is in three months, his in two.
“And, I want you to know . . . .” he says quietly, almost nervously, “that I plan to love you, and only you, for the rest of my existence. The last fourteen months, and most especially the last two, have made that crystal clear to me.”
I open my mouth to say something back, but he squeezes my hand, indicating he isn’t done. “I want to marry you as soon as we can. I don’t ever want to be separated from you again. I kno
w that sounds crazy, with us being so young . . . But like I said, we’ll be here soon.”
I stand there, my heart frozen, my breath gone, the ring alive on my finger. And if I’d thought I was happy earlier, that my heart had wanted to burst then from simply being with him, well, it’s nothing compared to this. “I want that, too.”
He lets go of my hand so he can put his behind my head. “There’s only ever been you for me, Chloe.”
I am so filled with love for this man it’s ridiculous. We kiss for a very long time, oblivious to all the people and things going on around us. The first thing I say when we come up for air is, “How soon can we do this?”
He laughs quietly, resting his forehead against mine. “Let’s finish high school first, and our first year at the U. But no longer than that, okay?”
But the more I think about it, the better the idea sounds to me. Being with Jonah is fifty times better than being with parents who don’t like having me around. “Why not when we first move here?”
He holds his left hand up and wiggles his fingers. “Well, we don’t have the ring yet, right? Can’t do anything without it.”
“Seriously?”
“You heard that guy. Apparently, this is how these things work.” When he sees the look of disappointment on my face, he adds, “But isn’t it any consolation that, by finding your ring, we’re guaranteed Fate wants us together?”
I tug him closer. “I don’t need a pair of rings to tell me that.”
Despite dinner being in an impossibly romantic location, all I can focus on is the fact that Jonah Whitecomb wants to spend the rest of his existence with me. This person, who I first discovered before I could even read, is telling me that he loves me more than anything. That he’s sitting in front of me: real, loving and perfect. And I give thanks to Fate for the first time in a long time. Because it gave me Jonah, and that means everything.
Chapter 34
A Matter of Fate Page 26
