I could feel something crack and break in my chest; I was going to start crying again for sure. “I’m . . . sad,” I said.
Ridiculous. Such a small, stupid word that in no way touched upon the truth. She should’ve laughed me out of her tiny apartment.
She didn’t. “How sad?”
“Sad enough that I’m sitting here,” I said.
That was almost a joke, but still she didn’t laugh, and not laughing made me feel like I was doing the right thing, and that she was listening and hearing me in a way I hadn’t been listened to or heard in a long time.
“My mother could make you something that would wipe all that away.”
“Great,” I said. “Great.”
“Or I could make it for you.” She glanced up at me. Her eyes were ringed with dark makeup that made the whites seem extra white. “And we could keep it between us.”
I swallowed. She was too young to be a hekamist, which meant she was illegal. If anyone found out, she and her mom and anyone else in their coven would go to jail.
But what did that matter? I needed a spell.
“It’s fine,” I said.
My indifference didn’t seem to make her feel better. Her frown deepened, as if I wasn’t getting something. “My mom charges five thousand dollars for permanent spells.” I didn’t have anywhere near that much money, but I didn’t think about that. “If you wanted to feel okay for a day or week or two, that would be a couple hundred since you’d have to come back every once in a while and re-up, but I won’t do that to you.”
“Great. Thanks,” I said.
“You have five thousand dollars?” she asked, and I sort of half nodded.
“I don’t have it on me, but I can get it.”
“I want to practice some before I give it to you, make sure it’s all right.”
“Fine.”
“Win, I’m going to be in your brain. You’re going to have to be okay with that.”
“Okay. I’m okay with it.”
She frowned and pulled her long sleeves over her hands, clenching them into fists. “You don’t even know me.”
I looked at her and the cards laid out on the table in front of her. I looked at the couch sticking into the room, then back at Echo. Even with my dampened emotions I felt for Echo. Something in the way she held herself, or the depth in her eyes. She shouldn’t even exist. How did she go anywhere? Meet anyone? For a stark moment I forgot my own drowning and felt how it would be to live in this house, to live Echo’s life.
It would be lonely.
“I trust you,” I said.
Finally she let her face relax into an expression of pure sunshine, a strange contrast with the black leather and fierce makeup. “Great. I’m going to fix you, Win Tillman. You’re going to be as good as new.”
She had me describe how it felt, then, and I tried to tell her. How the world seemed dimmer than it used to be. How when Ari kissed me I didn’t feel anything, or I felt only a crushing panic. She made notes and flipped through cupboards and listened, and I found myself—not happy, but relieved.
I told her about faking normal with Markos and my wariness of drugs and my fear that I wasn’t strong enough to live through it all.
“You are,” she said, and I believed her.
I woke up with sand in my mouth, head resting on my balled-up jacket, Cal Waters’s legs tangled with mine. The light was gray and misty, and the waves hitting the shore sounded like someone retching. No, that was someone retching—fifty feet down the beach, on her hands and knees in the wet sand. The bonfire had dimmed to a couple of red embers in black.
I extracted myself from Cal and shook out my jacket. He woke up and rubbed his eyes, which only ground more sand into them. Nothing about this seemed romantic or fun anymore.
“Hey, so, goodbye,” I said.
“Yeah, okay.” He stood up and reached for my hand. To shake it? I clasped mine behind my back, and he dropped his, grinning cheerfully. “Nice to meet you, Kay.”
“Same.”
He leaned forward faster than I could step away in the sand and kissed me, but both of our mouths were flavored with rotting alcohol, and I could see—because I was too startled to close my eyes—that his eyes weren’t closed, either. He was staring at me while our dry tongues and dirty mouths pressed together like pieces of raw bacon.
Definitely not romantic.
But at least he remembered my name. At least I hadn’t been so bad at kissing that he couldn’t bear to look at me. I waved goodbye to him, already back on the ground and half asleep again, and then made my way up the beach to the parking lot.
A year ago, when I used to hear people talking about the aftermath of some awesome party, I always pictured it brightly lit and hilarious. I never would’ve pictured this group of sad, tired leftovers. I needed to find Ari and Diana and tell them what happened; maybe that would make it real and exciting. Maybe they’d missed me and had stories of their own to tell.