We were standing in a park—Central Park, in fact—on a path I’d walked several times over the years. There was no one around to see us materialize and I wasn’t sure if that was good or bad, but one thing was for sure: Amon was definitely not the person I had believed him to be.
In the distance I could make out Hotel Helios. Amon’s chest heaved against my hand, which was splayed across it, his head angled toward the sun, his eyes still closed.
“Amon?”
He opened his eyes and looked down at me and then at our surroundings with an expression of confusion that quickly turned into something else.
“Mehsehhah ef yibehu hawb!” he shouted, and threw up his hands in a gesture of intense frustration. He slowly turned in a circle, mumbling to himself in another language. When he recognized the hotel, a few more words that sounded suspiciously like expletives escaped from his lips.
Emotion was building up inside me that I couldn’t restrain. My very structured life was spinning out of control.
I was smart. I was cultured and tactful. I got along easily with adults. I was the epitome of cool, calm, and collected. And I was always, always in control. I was Lilliana Jailene Young, and I was in danger of losing my wits over a boy—a crazy, fascinating, inexplicable, impossible-to-understand boy.
Amon eventually circled back to me and said, “My powers are weakened and my brothers are too distant. We are going to need help.”
“Help?” I spat, and then shouted incredulously, “Help? Really? You think? Because personally I’m feeling a little bit beyond help!” I had never shouted at the top of my lungs before in my life. Since meeting Amon, shouting seemed to be becoming a new habit of mine, but the upside was that yelling at Amon actually felt good.
Amon zeroed in on me like I was the mental patient. “Young Lily, calm yourself.”
“I don’t think so!” I shouted.
“Lily, we need to—”
“We need to nothing! I don’t know who you are or what kind of crazy drugs you’ve been feeding me, but you’re done. We’re done. Do you get it? I am finished helping you.”
Turning toward home, I stalked away, an action that felt immensely satisfying. Each step, every small unit of distance I put between us, helped me gather myself and get back to feeling normal. I shifted my bag so it wouldn’t bounce so much and hoped Amon wasn’t following me.
The few passersby who came into view gave me a wide berth as I stomped along, mumbling about lost, dying, homeless boys who were far too attractive for their own good. I couldn’t describe what had just happened without using Star Trek references.
I’d tried to rationalize everything that had happened, placing each strange event into a neat little box, but this, whatever it was that Amon had just done, had set off a bomb in my tidy mental office. This one wasn’t going to fit. In fact, it was way, way outside the box. The best thing was to get some distance and then try to figure out what was going on with me, because clearly I wasn’t right in the head. I wondered if Amon would come after me. If he did, I’d simply scream. There were usually people all over the park and someone was bound to hear me.
“Lily!”
Speak of the sun devil. Amon was coming after me.
“Young Lily, come to me now!” he called out as if I were a disobedient puppy.
“Leave me alone or I’ll scream!” I yelled back, picking up the pace to a half-jog, half–power walk.
I could hear him following me, and I took in a breath to shriek for help, when, with an imperious voice, he cried out, “Lily, you will stop!”