Chapter 7
THE AIR HITCHED AS I TRIED TO BREATHE. I WISHED I could see his face, his eyes. I wanted to know what he was thinking right at this moment, to touch him. But I lay there, my heart the only part of me that was moving.
His thumb brushed my cheek once more. “That’s what scares me.” Then he lifted himself off me. He backed up, the mats rolling under his unsteady step. “I’ll be in the other training room when you’re ready… to walk back to your dorm.”
There was a brief flash of light from the outside training rooms when he slipped out the door and then darkness covered me again.
I didn’t move but my brain raced on. He was afraid of never being allowed to feel what he did. Gods, I wasn’t stupid, but I wished I was. I knew what he meant and also knew it didn’t mean a damn thing. Part of me was angry, because he dared to say it when all it did was make my chest heavy with an aching want—a want so intense that it felt like it could crush me under its weight. And why admit it now, when I’d begged him before to just tell me he felt the same and he’d denied it? What was so different now?
And he was right about the other thing. I was terrified of becoming something I couldn’t control, of losing myself to the bond, to Seth. It seemed like, even if I got past all the other obstacles in my way, there was that one—the one I couldn’t hurdle over with good oie Alex recklessness.
The door opened again and the soft murmur of two male voices floated through the room. There was a deep, husky chuckle as the mats dipped under their feet. I could’ve said something, but I was too lost in my own thoughts to even utter a single word.
A second later, feet tangled with my legs and a surprised yelp sounded. The mats gave way as a body crashed down, half-sprawled atop me. I let out an “oomph” and pushed the hands off my chest.
“Gods, Alex!” exclaimed Luke, rolling off me and sitting up. “Holy Hades, what are you doing in here?”
“How’d you know it was me by just feeling up my boobs?” I grumbled, throwing an arm over my face.
“It’s a superpower.”
“Wow.”
Luke snorted. I felt the mats roll as he faced his silent, mystery partner. “Hey,” Luke said. “Can you give us a few minutes?”
“Sure. Whatever,” the guy responded, dipping back out the door. The voice was super familiar, but as best as I tried, I couldn’t place it.
“Pervert,” I said. “What have you been using these rooms for, Luke? Naughty.”
He laughed. “I’ll go with something a hell of a lot more entertaining and normal than what you’ve been using them for. You’re the one lying in a dark sensory room like a little freak. What are you doing in here? Plotting to take out the Covenant? Meditating? Self-pleasuring?”
I made a face. “Don’t you have something better to do?”
“Yeah, I do.”
“Then go. This room is already occupied.”
Luke sighed. “You’re being ridiculous.”
I thought that was funny considering he had no idea why I was being a “little freak” in the sensory room. Luke had no idea what had just gone on in here. He probably thought I was hiding from everybody or having some sort of mental breakdown. That last part was still up in the air and could be a strong possibility. If it’d been Caleb who’d stumbled upon me, he would’ve known. I sucked in a sharp breath.
Missing him wasn’t getting any easier, I realized suddenly.
“It sucks not having any friends, doesn’t it?” Luke asked after a few moments.
I frowned. “You know, it’s a good thing you can’t become a therapist, because you really suck at the whole ‘making people feel better about themselves’ thing.”
“But you do have friends,” he continued as if I hadn’t said a damn thing. “You just seem to have forgotten us.”
“Like who?”
“Like me.” Luke stretched out beside me. “And there’s Deacon. And Olivia.”
I snorted. “Olivia hates my guts.”
“She does not.”
“Bullshit.” I dropped my arm, facing him in the darkness. “She blames me for Caleb’s death. You heard her the day at his funeral and in the hallway yesterday.”
“She’s hurt, Alex.”
“I’m hurt, too!” I sat up, crossing my legs.
The mats shook as Luke rolled onto his side. “She loved Caleb. As impractical as it is for any of us to love someone, she loved him.”
“And I loved him. He was my best friend, Luke. She blames me for my best friend’s death.”
“She doesn’t blame you anymore.”
I smoothed back the tiny hairs that had escaped my ponytail. “When did that happen? In the last twenty-four hours?”
Undaunted, Luke sat up and somehow found my hand in the darkness. “The day she came up to you in the hallway, she wanted to apologize to you.”
“That’s funny, because I remember her saying something like I needed to rein in my grief.” I didn’t pull my hand away from his, because it did feel kind of nice for someone to touch me and nothing freaky happen. “Is that a new form of apology I’m unaware of?”
“I don’t know what she was thinking. She wanted to apologize, but you wouldn’t stop to talk to her,” Luke explained softly. “She lost it. She was a bitch about it. Olivia knows that. Then you owning her ass in front of everyone didn’t help, either.”
The old Alex would have snickered at that, but it didn’t make me feel good.
“You need to talk to her, Alex. You both need each other right now.”
I pulled my hand free and came to my feet swiftly. The room suddenly felt stifling and unbearable. “I don’t need her or anyone.”
Luke was standing beside me in an instant. “And that was probably the most childish thing you’ve ever said.”
I narrowed my eyes in his general direction. “And I have something even more childish to say to you. I’m like two seconds from hitting you.”
“That’s not very nice,” Luke teased, stepping around me. “You need friends, Alex. As hot as Seth is, he can’t be your only friend. You need girl time. You need someone you can cry to, someone who isn’t trying to get in your pants. You need someone who wants to be around you not because of what you are, but who you are.”
My jaw hit the mat. “Wow.”
Luke must have sensed my stunned response, because he laughed. “Everyone knows what you are, Alex. And most people think it’s pretty damn cool. What they don’t think is cool—the reason why everyone is avoiding you—is your attitude. Everyone gets that you’re hurt over Caleb and what happened with your mom. We understand that, but that doesn’t mean we have to tolerate your constant bitchiness.”
I opened my mouth to tell Luke that I wasn’t the one being the bitch, that it was all of them who’d been treating me like a three-headed dog since I’d returned—and even before then—but nothing came out. Besides spending time with Seth, I had isolated myself from everyone.
And sometimes I was a terrible person. I had reasons—good reasons, but they were just excuses. Weight settled over my chest.
In the silence and darkness surrounding us, Luke found me and wrapped his arms around my stiff shoulders. “Well, maybe we do have to tolerate it a little bit. You are an Apollyon after all.” I could hear the smile in his voice. “And even though you’ve been a giant bitch, we still love you and we’re worried.”
A lump formed in my throat. I fought it, really I did, but I felt tears stinging my eyes as my muscles started to relax. My head somehow found his shoulder and he patted my back soothingly. For a moment, I could believe that Luke was Caleb and in my head, I pretended that I told him everything that had happened. My make-believe Caleb smiled at me, held me closer, and ordered me to pull my head out of my ass. That no matter what had happened and everything I learned, the world hadn’t ended and wasn’t going to.
And for the time being, that seemed to be enough.
Aiden was waiting for me when I finally pulled myself out of the sensory room. He didn’t say anything as we headed outside. Both of us had said and probably thought too much as it was. There wasn’t any awkwardness between us, but there was this vast sense of… uncertainty. Although, it could just’ve been I was projecting my own feelings onto him.
We made our way up the walkway, heading toward the dorms. The wind kicked up sand and there was a cold, damp feeling in the air as we neared the garden.
Two pure boys were staring at the marble statue of Apollo reaching for Daphne as she changed into a tree. One elbowed the other. “Hey, look. Apollo is getting wood.”
His friend laughed. I rolled my eyes.
“Alex.” There was something about Aiden’s voice, a roughness that told me that whatever he was about to say was going to be powerful. His gaze moved to my face, then behind me. “What the hell?”
Not what I was expecting.
Aiden brushed past me, solely focused on something other than me. Dammit. I whirled around. “You don’t—oh.”
Now I saw what had cut Aiden off.
Two half guys carried a barely conscious Jackson between them—a hardly recognizable Jackson. He looked like he’d woken up on the wrong side of an ass kicking. Every visible inch of his skin was bruised or bloodied—eyes swelled shut, lips split wide open—and the deep, angry mark smeared across his left cheek suspiciously resembled a boot print.
“What happened to him?” Aiden demanded, taking the place of one of the halfs and practically supporting all of the boy’s weight.
The half shook his head. “I don’t know. We found him like this in the courtyard.”
“I… I fell,” Jackson said, blood and spit trickling from his mouth. I think he was missing some teeth.
A dubious expression crossed Aiden’s face. “Alex, please go straight to your dorm.”
Nodding mutely, I stepped out of the way. I was still pissed at Jackson. He had tried to stomp my head in, but what had been done to him was horrific and calculating. Compared to the fist Aiden had planted in his face when Jackson had…
My wide eyes met Aiden’s for a second before he carried Jackson off toward the med building. My conversation with Seth came back to me.
“So, who did you spar with in class?” he’d asked.
“I always get paired with Jackson.”
My gods, Seth had done this.
It appeared that Seth was avoiding me for the most part, probably because of the whole ham sandwich incident. Our practices were either cancelled or consisted of working on my mental shields. For a whole week, whenever I saw him, I asked him about Jackson. With a look of complete innocence, he’d told me he hadn’t done it. I didn’t believe him and I’d told him just that.
He’d looked at me, expression beautifully empty and said, “Now why would I ever do such a thing?”
I didn’t want to believe that he had, because whoever had done that to Jackson had put him out of commission for a long time. Jackson wasn’t talking, literally. His jaw was wired shut, and I’d heard he needed a lot of dental work. Even though he’d heal a lot quicker than a mortal, I knew he still wouldn’t talk. The boy had had the ever-loving crap scared out of him.
And even though I didn’t want to believe it was Seth, I couldn’t shake my suspicions. Who else would do such a thing to Jackson? Seth had motive—a motive that made me feel ill. If he’d done it, it’d been because of what Jackson had done to me in class. But how could he do something so… violent, so unstable? That question haunted me.
The one good thing was that the weird funk that had settled over me like an itchy blanket faded. A tiny part of me missed Seth’s company in the evenings and the way he always managed to turn me into a human body pillow during the night, but there was another part of me that was sort of relieved. Like there wasn’t anything additional expected from me.
Even though no one tried to drug or kill me, Linard and Aiden still followed me around. And when they were busy, it was Leon’s massive shadow that lurked behind me. I’d taken to hanging around the training rooms even on the days Seth and I wouldn’t practice. I knew that Aiden would eventually find me there. We didn’t talk about being afraid again, but we sort of just… hung out… in the training room.
It sounded lame, but it was like the old times, before everything got so incredibly screwed up. Sometimes Leon popped in on us. He never seemed surprised or suspicious. Not even the last time, when we’d been sitting with our backs against the wall, arguing about whether or not ghosts existed.
I didn’t believe in them.
Aiden did.
Leon had thought we were both idiots.
But damn, I looked forward to it. Just sitting there and talking. No training. No trying to tap in and use akasha. Those moments with Aiden, even when Leon decided to join us, were my favorite part of the day.
I hadn’t choked Olivia again, but things were super-awkward when I did see her—no big surprise there. But I did start eating my lunch in the cafeteria with Seth. After the second day, Luke joined us, then Elena, and finally Olivia. We didn’t talk, but we also didn’t yell anything at each other.
Some things didn’t change, though. The mortal holidays of Christmas and New Year came and went, along with most of January. Most of the pures still seemed to expect every half to turn into an evil-aether-sucking creature and jump them. Deacon, Aiden’s brother, was one of the few who braved sitting next to us in class or talking to us around campus. Another thing that hadn’t changed was my inability to write a letter to my father. What was I supposed to say? I had no idea. Each night that I’d been alone, I’d started a letter, and then stopped. Paper balls littered my floor.
“Just write what you’re feeling, Alex. You’re overthinking it,” Aiden had said after I’d complained. “You’ve known that he’s been alive for two months now. You need to just write without thinking.”
Two months? It hadn’t felt that long. And that meant I had a little over a month before I Awakened. Maybe I was trying to slow time down. Either way, my feelings were all over the place, and if my father was as competent as I believed him to be, I didn’t want him to think I had issues.
So after practice with Seth, I gathered up my notebook and headed over to one of the less crowded rec rooms. Curling up in the corner of a bright red sofa, I stared at a blank page and chewed on the end of my pen.
Linard took up position at the door, looking bored. When he caught me watching him, I made a face and returned to gazing at the blue lines on the paper. Luke interrupted a few times, trying to lure me into a game of air hockey.
When his shadow fell across my notebook again, I groaned. “I don’t want to…”
Olivia stood in front of me, wearing a thick cashmere sweater I immediately started lusting after. Her brown eyes were wide.
“Uh… sorry,” I said. “I thought you were Luke.”
She smoothed a hand over her curly hair. “He’s trying to get you to play skee ball?”
“No. He moved on to air hockey.”
Her laugh was nervous as she glanced over at the group by the arcade games. Then she squared her shoulders as she gestured at the spot beside me. “Can I sit?”
My stomach turned over. “Yeah, if you want.”
Olivia sat, running her hands over her jean-clad legs. Several moments passed without either of us speaking. She was the first to break the silence. “So, how… how have you been?”
It was a loaded question, and my laugh came out choked and harsh. I brought the notepad to my chest as I glanced over at Luke. He was pretending not to have noticed us together.
She let out a little breath and started to rise. “Okay. I guess—”
“I’m sorry.” My voice was low, words hoarse. I felt my cheeks burn, but I forced myself to keep going. “I’m sorry for everything, especially the thing in the hallway.”
Olivia squeezed her thighs. “Alex—”
“I know you loved Caleb and all I’ve been thinking about is my own hurt.” I closed my eyes and swallowed down the lump in my throat. “I really do wish I could go back and change everything that night. I’ve thought a million times about all the things we could’ve done differently.”
“You shouldn’t… do that to yourself,” she said quietly. “At first, I didn’t want to know what really happened, you know? Like the details. I just couldn’t… deal with knowing for awhile, but I finally got Lea to tell me everything about a week ago.”
I bit my lip, unsure of what to say. She hadn’t accepted my apology, but we were talking.
She drew in a shallow breath, eyes gleaming. “She told me that Caleb saved her. That you were fighting another daimon, and if he hadn’t grabbed her, she would’ve died.”
I nodded, clenching the notebook. Memories of the night surfaced, of Caleb streaking past me.
“He was really brave, wasn’t he?” Her voice caught.
“Yes,” I agreed passionately. “He didn’t even hesitate, Olivia. He was so fast and so good, but the daimon… was just faster.”
She blinked several times, and her lashes looked damp. “You know, he told me what happened in Gatlinburg. Everything you guys went through and how you got him out of the house.”
“It was luck. They—my mom and the others—started fighting. I didn’t do anything special.”
Olivia looked at me then. “He thought the world of you, Alex.” She paused, laughing quietly. “When we first started dating, I was jealous of you. It was like I couldn’t live up to everything you guys had together. Caleb really loved you.”
“I loved him.” I took a breath. “And he loved you, Olivia.”
Her smile was watery. “I guess I needed to blame someone. It could’ve been Lea, or the Guards who failed to keep the daimons out. I don’t know. It’s just that you’re this unstoppable force—you’re an Apollyon.” Springy curls bounced as she shook her head. “And—”
“I’m not an Apollyon, yet. But I get what you’re saying. I’m sorry.” I squeezed the wire on the notebook. “I just wish—”
“And I’m sorry.”
My head jerked toward her.
“It wasn’t your fault. And I was a total bitch to blame you. That day in the hallway, I wanted to apologize but it just all came out wrong. And I know that Caleb would hate me for blaming you. I shouldn’t have in the first place. I was just so hurt. I miss him so much.” Her voice cracked and she turned away, taking a deep breath. “I know those are just excuses, but I don’t blame you.”
Tears clogged my throat. “You don’t?”
Olivia shook her head.
I wanted to hug her, but wasn’t sure if that would be cool. Maybe it was too soon. “Thank you.” There was more I wanted to say, but I couldn’t find the right words.
Her eyes closed. “Want to hear something funny?”
I blinked. “Yeah.”
Turning to me, she grinned even though her eyes glistened with tears. “After the day you and Jackson had that fight, everyone was talking about it in the cafeteria. Cody was walking by and said something ignorant. I don’t remember what—probably something about how great being a pure-blood is.” She rolled her eyes. “Anyway, Lea got up all casually and dumped her entire plate of food on his head.” A giggle broke free. “I know I shouldn’t laugh, but I wished you’d seen that. It was hilarious.”
My mouth dropped open. “Seriously? What did Cody do? Did Lea get in trouble?”
“Cody threw a fit, calling us a bunch of heathens or something lame like that. I think Lea got written up and her sister wasn’t too happy with her.”
“Wow. That doesn’t sound like Lea.”
“She’s kind of changed.” Olivia sobered up. “You know, after everything? She’s not the same. Anyway, I have some stuff I need to do, but I’m… I’m glad we talked.”
I met her gaze and felt some of the tension leak away. It wouldn’t be like before, not for awhile. “Me, too.”
She looked relieved as she smiled. “See you in the cafeteria for lunch tomorrow?”
“Sure. I’ll be there.”
“I’m leaving for winter break next week with my mom. Some kind of Council business she has to attend to and she wants me to go with her, but when I get back, can we do something? Like maybe watch a movie or hang out?”
While mortals had winter break over the Christmas holiday, we had ours the entire month of February, in celebration of Anthesterion. Back in the old days, the festival was only three days and everyone pretty much got drunk in honor of Dionysus. It was like All Souls Night and Carnival rolled into one giant, drunken orgy. At some point the pures had extended the festival to an entire month, calmed it down, and filled it with Council sessions. Slaves and servants used to be able to participate, but that had also changed. “Yeah, that would be great. I’d love to.”
“Good. I’ll keep you to that.” Olivia got up to leave, but stopped at the door. Turning around, she gave me a small wave and a tentative smile before dipping out.
I glanced at my notebook. Some of the hurt and guilt that had lingered after Caleb’s death had lifted. I took a deep breath and scribbled a quick note to Laadan, telling her not to worry about the drink incident and thanking her for telling me about my father. Then I wrote two sentences under the brief paragraph.
Later that night, I sealed the letter and handed it over to Leon, who was hovering outside my dorm, with explicit instructions to give it to Aiden.
“May I ask why you’re passing notes to Aiden?” He eyed the letter like it was a bomb.
“It’s a love note. I’m asking him to circle ‘yes’ or ‘no’ if he likes me.”
Leon pinned me with a bland look, but shoved the letter in his back pocket. I gave him a cheeky grin before shutting the door. It felt like a semi-truck was lifted from my shoulders now that I’d written the letter. Spinning away from the door, I darted toward the computer desk. My bare toes smacked against something thick and heavy.
“Ouch!” Hopping on one leg, I looked down. “Oh, my gods, I am so stupid.”
The Myths and Legends book stared up at me. I bent quickly and grabbed it. Somehow, during all the craziness, I’d forgotten about it. Sitting down, I cracked open the dusty thing and began searching for the section Aiden had mentioned in New York.
I had no luck in the part written in English. Sighing, I flipped to the front of the book and started skimming the pages covered in what looked like gibberish to me. My fingers stilled about a hundred pages in, not because I recognized any of the writing, but because I recognized the symbol at the top of the page.
It was a torch turned down.
There were several pages written in ancient Greek, completely useless to me. They should be teaching that instead of trig at the Covenant, but what did I know? Then again, the pures were taught the old language.
Aiden knew the old language—kind of nerdy, in a totally hot way.
If I could find out more about the Order, then maybe we could get the evidence needed to prove that something crazy was up with Telly and Romvi. I wasn’t a hundred percent sure that it had anything to do with what had happened, but it was much better than Seth’s suggestion.
The last thing we needed was an uprising… or one of us killing another pure-blood.