I settle down next to him and fold my hands in my lap. I peer up at the string of lifeless twinkle lights hanging above the bed. I remember how Riley used to leave them on at night, yellow pinpricks casting shadows against the pale turquoise paint. “I know. I’m sorry. I couldn’t hang anymore. It was too—”
“Fake?” he supplies. The corner of his mouth lifts in a sad smile. “Dad says that funerals are for the living, but, man, Riley really would have hated the whole thing.”
My heart flutters with a lightness I haven’t felt in days, and it takes me a moment to recognize it as comfort. “Yes, exactly. It felt like she was missing from it, you know? I mean, come on, who invited the show choir?”
He huffs out a breath that sounds a bit like a laugh. “My mom, of course. She thought they were a nice touch at June and Dayton’s service.” Invoking his friends’ names washes the glimpse of happiness off his face. Deflecting, he throws the heat to me. “You haven’t gone back to school yet?”
I twitch a shrug. “I made it about halfway through yesterday and then walked out of a meeting with the school psych. She called my parents and said that I might not be ready to interact with the public yet.”
“I don’t think she’s ready to interact with the public. She’s kind of a trip,” he says. His shoulders roll back, stretching his chest. The soft crackle of joints and bones makes his insides sound like a campfire. “She cornered me after Riley’s service, tried to get me to have a session right there. I told her that we have our own grief counselor—we’re a funeral home, you know—and she still went to my parents, asking permission to have daily meetings with me when I go back to school.”
“I don’t recommend even one meeting with her.” I shudder at the thought. “Are you coming back to school?”
“Ever?” he teases, and I’m living for the flash of teeth he gives me. “Of course. I’m going to finish my senior year. I need to graduate. And there are people depending on me—honor society and the Rausch Committee. I’m a peer counselor, too. But my parents don’t want me to rush into going back. They’ve already gone back to work, but they’ll come up here randomly during the day and just . . . look at me. Like they’re checking to make sure that I’m still here. They didn’t know she was out when she died.” He closes his eyes. His lashes are unfairly long. Of course, he’s never had them snap off while wearing three coats of waterproof mascara. “They never knew where she was. They kept pushing her away, making her pretend to be something she wasn’t. I keep thinking if they’d just let her be Wiccan instead of pretending like she quit because they forced her to, would she still be here? Would she have told them where she was going that night? Would she have told me? I was with June’s family, at the funeral reception. When I came home, she was gone, and my parents had no idea.”
“I didn’t know either,” I say, my voice suddenly working hard to be more than a whisper. I haven’t been able to say this to anyone yet. There hasn’t been anyone to hear it. “I left her here after June and Dayton’s service. I had a paper to write, so I told her that I’d talk to her in the morning and warned her not to text me unless it was the biggest emergency. I don’t even know why she would go near the creek.” My sinuses burn, and I scrub under my eyes to keep the tears from spilling. “And maybe if I hadn’t told her not to bother me, she would have told me why she was going down there. I could have saved her—”
I almost divulge my theory about Riley’s murder and the spell that could bring her back. But I stop myself mid-breath. Xander is burdened with enough right now. If I succeed in raising Riley from the dead, he can reap the benefit without having to know how it happened. I lost my best friend, but he lost his friends and his sister. I can’t complicate that with thoughts of murder and revenge.
“No.” He leans toward me, his face open and imploring. “No, you can’t think like that. You can’t blame yourself for her death. Don’t even think it for a second.”
He reaches into the foot of propriety between us and scoops up my hand. His fingers brush against the elastic on my wrist, scorching my skin. I swallow, hypnotized by a half-healed scratch on the curve of his thumb. Paper cuts are as common at Fairmont as racism and Adderall addictions. But the line is jagged and swollen, an odd imperfection against his flawless white skin. His hand squeezes mine, and I can feel myself shiver from the tips of my boots all the way to the roots of my hair.
Focus on his giant forehead, I tell myself. It’s large enough to almost be a flaw. But it’s also ample space for a single lock of hair to coil seductively. Fuck. I wonder if I rubbed my face against his face, memorizing the texture of his skin and the curve of his bones, if I could finally shake loose from this pathological jonesing. Or would the flames roar higher and swallow my entire life?
“Mila,” he says, branding this moment to my brain forever. What is it about hearing your name on the lips of your crush that makes it seem like an utterly new sound? In Xander’s mouth, my name is a dark flower blooming. “You were the best friend my sister ever had. She was so lucky to have you.”
The idea settles over me, a drizzle of ice water that turns to a downpour. Thank you, Alexander Greenway, for finding the off-switch to my lust—good old-fashioned guilt. Here I am, sitting on my dead best friend’s bed, being comforted by her grieving, tortured older brother, and I’m trying to write a letter to Penthouse in my head?
“Thank you,” I whisper, sneaking my hand out of his grip. I finger the elastic band, longing to give it a tug. “I really needed to hear that. I just . . . I miss her so much. Every place I go without her is worse because she’s not there. She should be here and at Yarrow House and at school. And when she’s not, I feel like it makes me shittier. I’ve been totally unbearable to be around.”
“I doubt that.” He kicks one of my boots with his toes. “I’m bearing it pretty okay, I think.”
“Then you’re immune to my venom.”
“Maybe I’ve got too much venom of my own.”
I smile at him. I can’t help it. Xander is so the opposite of me. He has that alluring Greenway personality that makes people want to be near him even when they can’t pinpoint why. People are literally drawn to him, to his easy smile and winking blue eyes.
He’s not a fat witch who freaks out his own family. Dr. Miller would never be snotty with him. She literally begged to treat him, while I walked out of her office with zero complaints.
I glance around the room. Riley wasn’t the neatest person, but Mrs. Greenway is one of those moms who snoops and tidies in equal measure, and she was always on constant high alert for anything that could be vaguely magical.
“She’s already starting to throw it out,” Xander says, following my gaze. “The first load has already gone to Goodwill.”
I snap my attention back to him. “Seriously?”
“You know my mom.” He sighs. “Now that no one is using it, it’s clutter. It’s not right. It’s like she’s erasing Riley, one box at a time. I tried to stop her, but she wouldn’t listen. She and my dad are at a service right now, so if there’s anything you want—” He pauses and jumps to his feet. “Wait here for a second, okay?”
I blink up at him, startled. “Okay. I’m not going anywhere.”
“Great.” He smiles like he really means it, like my words are a strike of genuine pleasure. Then he darts out of the room.