I smile into his shoulder. “I feel lucky too.”
Alex’s chest rises and falls underneath my cheek. “Why’s the room empty, anyway? Where’d Gunn run off to tonight?”
Just the mention of Gunn’s name is like an alarm, threatening to end a perfect dream. I give a deep exhale. “I’m not sure. He said he had some business on the road.”
“Right.” Alex nods, rubs his chin softly against my hair. “But he only manages the Den, from what I understand. Where else would he be?”
Despite the throb of the shine inside me, Gunn’s warnings push through it, wrap around my mind like rope. No one can know about the shine, about the deal. “Probably on a run for McEvoy or something.”
“Strange, because McEvoy was looking for him—”
“Hey, Alex?” I say softly. “I don’t want to think about Gunn right now.”
He nods, pulls me tighter, and the music’s singer starts to croon, “Time stops when you’re in love. . . .”
And then Alex opens his mouth beside me, and somehow the woman’s voice starts to pour from his lips, “As timeless as the stars above . . .”
I laugh, lean my head against his shoulder. “I don’t know how you’re doing that, but please stop. It’s kind of creepy.”
He laughs with me, but stops singing, and pulls me closer too. And then the music fades away and it’s just our heartbeats jumping, beating like a pair of drums.
BUM. BUM. BUM.
“This is nice, Joan.” He puts his hand on the back of my hair, lets his fingers wrap around the nape of my neck. And then he whispers, “No, this is wonderful. You are wonderful.”
I burrow a little more into his shoulder. The way Alex looks at me is almost as intoxicating as the shine. The way he sees me makes me feel like I do deserve him, that I might even deserve another chance—not just this chance to do right by my family. But a chance, maybe, to leave the past behind.
“What past, Joan?” Alex says softly.
“Wait. Was I talking out loud?” I practically whimper.
“I don’t know . . . but either way, I can hear it.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I see a flash of white—a nightgown, hands grasping for me, a worried, strained face watching me from the corner.
I gasp, pull back from Alex—
And then the image is gone.
“You okay?”
“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine.”
But on the other side of the room appears a thin, haunting-looking girl standing at the door, reaching for me, crying, “Joan, I can’t see her. Joan, I’sm losing her—”
The high is suddenly too much, too intense, too loud, and I crawl onto the floor, pull myself into a ball, my back to the edge of the sofa. I close my eyes.
But all I see is blood curling around wrists—
“Make it stop.” But the voice that comes out of my mouth is Ruby’s. “Oh my God.” I push my hands into my eyes. Stop. Stop stop stop stop stop—
“What is it? What happened?” Alex sputters as he sits down beside me.
I don’t look at him. “The shine’s getting intense. I can’t tell what’s real and what’s in my head anymore.”
“I think that’s the point.” I open my eyes, and Lord, I can see Alex’s whisper slink around my shoulders like a rich, gray mist. Like the mist behind the cabin that night, Mama’s pleading, her cries, show me, Eve, show me—
“I’m not who you think I am,” I blurt out.
Alex falters, pulls back a little bit. “Joan, it’s all right, you’re high.”
“It’s not the shine, it’s me.” I squeeze my eyes shut tight again. “There’s something wrong with me.”
The words open a dam inside me, and a river of tears starts running over my cheeks, winding salt into my mouth. And then I know I’m going to say the words I’ve never been able to say, not out loud at least, the words that make me loathe myself as much as I loathe Jed. Even as I’m thinking, Stop, Joan, don’t don’t don’t say it don’t make it real, I blurt out, “I killed my mother.”
Alex looks at me, confusion—fear? repulsion?—stitched across his features. “What are you talking about?”
“Nine months ago,” I whisper, “right around the time I was coming into my magic. I was scared of it, a late bloomer, hadn’t expected that I was going to get the magic touch at all. Mama was the only one who knew I even had the ‘gift’ until that night.” I try to stop the crashing rush of blood to my head, but I can’t. And even still, my mouth keeps moving. “I found my uncle abusing her, using her—I tried to fight him—but instead I ruined everything.”
When Alex doesn’t say anything, I rush on, “Sometimes I feel like if I give everything I’ve got, work myself into the ground to help my sister and my cousin, maybe then I’ll make it right. I’ll earn the right to leave the past behind.”