Amma and my dad reached a compromise on the eulogy. Amma wouldn’t deliver it, but she would read a poem. When she finally told us what she was reading, nobody gave it much thought. Except that it meant we got to cross off two items on Aunt Prue’s list at the same time.
“Abide with me; fast falls the eventide,
The darkness deepens, Lord, with me abide.
When other helpers fail and comforts flee,
Help of the helpless, O abide with me.
Swift to its close ebbs out life’s little day;
Earth’s joys grow dim; its glories pass away;
Change and decay in all around I see;
O Thou who changest not, abide with me.”
The words hit me like bullets. The darkness was deepening, and though I didn’t know what the eventide was, it felt like it was falling fast. It wasn’t just comforts that were fleeing, and it was more than Earth’s joys and glories that were passing away.
Amma was right. So was the guy who wrote the hymn. Change and decay was all I could see.
I didn’t know if there was anyone or anything who changest not, but if there was, I would do more than ask them to abide with me.
I wanted them to rescue me.
By the time Amma folded the paper back up, you could’ve heard a pin drop. She stood at the podium, every bit Sulla the Prophet as the original. That’s when I realized what she had done.
It wasn’t a poem, not the way she had read it. It wasn’t even a hymn anymore.
It was a prophecy.
12.20
Hybrid
I was standing on the top of the white water tower, with my back to the sun. My headless shadow fell across the warm, painted metal, disappearing off the edge and into the sky.
I’M WAITING.
There he was. My other half. The dream staggered on like a movie I’d seen so many times that I started to cut and recut it myself, as it erupted into flashes—
Hard hitting.
Chucks kicking.
Deadweight.
Falling…
“Ethan!”
I rolled out of my bed and landed on my bedroom floor.
“No wonder Incubuses keep showing up in your room. You sleep like the dead.” John Breed was standing over me. From where I was lying, he looked twenty feet tall. He also looked like he could kick my ass better than I had been kicking my own in my dream.
It was a weird thought. But what came next was weirder.
“I need your help.”
John was sitting in the chair at my desk, which I had started to think of as the Incubus chair.
“I wish you guys could figure out some way to sleep.” I pulled my faded Harley Davidson shirt over my head. Ironic, considering I was sitting across from John.
“Yeah. That’s not really an option.” He stared up at my blue ceiling.
“Then I wish you could figure out that the rest of us need to—”
John cut me off. “It’s me.”
“What?”
“Liv told me everything. The One Who Is Two guy—it’s me.”
“Are you sure?” I wasn’t even sure I believed him.
“Yeah. I figured it out today at your aunt’s funeral.”
I glanced at the clock. He should have said yesterday, and I should’ve been asleep. “How?”
He got up and paced across the room. “I always knew it was me. I was born to be two things. But at the funeral, I knew this was something I had to do. I felt it, when the Seer was talking.”
“Amma?” I knew Aunt Prue’s funeral had been emotional for my family, the whole town really, but I hadn’t expected it to affect John. He wasn’t part of either of those things. “What do you mean, you always knew?”
“It’s my birthday tomorrow, right? My Eighteenth Moon.” He didn’t sound too happy about it, and I couldn’t blame him. Considering it was bringing on the end of the world and everything.
“Do you know what you’re saying?” I still didn’t trust him.
He nodded. “I’m supposed to make the trade, like the Demon Queen said. My pathetic screwed-up experiment of a life for a New Order. I almost feel bad for the universe. I’m getting a bargain. Except for the fact that I won’t be around to see it.”
“But Liv will,” I said.
“Liv will.” He dropped back down in the chair, holding his head in his hands.
“Damn.”
He looked up. “Damn? That’s the best you can come up with? I’m ready to lay down my life here.”
I almost couldn’t imagine what was going through his mind—what would make a guy like him willing to die. Almost.
I knew what it felt like to be willing to sacrifice yourself for the girl you loved. I was going to do the same thing at the Great Barrier, when we faced Abraham and Hunting. At Honey Hill, when we faced the fires and Sarafine. I would have died for Lena a thousand times over.
“Liv’s not going to be happy.”
“No. She’s not,” he agreed. “But she’ll understand.”
“I think things like this are pretty hard to understand. And I’ve been trying for a while now.”
“You know what your problem is, Mortal?”
“The end of the world?”
John shook his head. “You think too much.”
“Yeah?” I almost laughed.