The girl hovered outside the garage now. She was just standing there, squinting at X and rubbing her nose, her hair askew from sleep. Yet he was so transfixed by her that everything in his body stopped. She had wavy, light brown hair that just barely grazed her shoulders. There was a dark beauty mark on her left cheekbone that drew attention to her eyes, which were wide and glinting and seemed to change from blue to gray even as X looked at her.
He turned away and coughed savagely. Stan’s sins had been polluting his body ever since Regent set them loose in his bloodstream. Now that X had let Stan go free, the pain had intensified. The Trembling was the lords’ way of ensuring that the bounty hunters would follow orders and return to the Lowlands with their prey.
X had never suffered like this before because he’d never refused his duty before. Still, he knew that his misery—the fever, the pain, the delirium—would only increase unless he renewed his search for Stan. Even if X could endure his sickness, the lords would send another bounty hunter after him—or maybe Regent himself would arrive, seething and bent on vengeance.
When his coughing subsided, X turned back to the girl and her family. The mother was holding her children at a safe distance. Still, the boy managed to break free, and rushed at him. X’s body stiffened reflexively—no one ever approached him unless they meant to do him harm—but the boy only wanted to hug him and to whisper, “You saved my dogs!”
He embraced X so tightly that X gasped.
“Stop it—you’re hurting him,” said the girl. “And you’re being weird.”
“Step away from him, Jonah,” said the mother.
The boy did as he was told. The mother peered around the garage.
“My god, it’s hot in here,” she said. “How is that possible?”
X had warmed the air with a simple rubbing together of his hands. Seeing the mother’s concern, he made a circular motion with his palm and the garage was frigid again in an instant.
“Wow,” said the mother, even more alarmed than before.
“A-mazing!” said the boy.
The girl said nothing. She hadn’t stepped any closer. Was she afraid? Disgusted? X couldn’t blame her. He was repulsive even to himself. He saw her notice the bruises beneath his eyes, then look quickly away. Shame radiated through him. He wished that she and her family would flee. He wished they would burn the garage down around him. He did not want them to bind their fate to his. Now that he had betrayed the lords, he was a body in free fall, gaining momentum as he fell.
X touched the boy’s back gently to let him know that he had not hurt him. He stole another look at the girl, afraid he would see horror in her eyes. Instead, he saw a soft expression that he could not identify. Was that what pity looked like?
He managed to speak, which came as a surprise even to himself. He said four words with as much force as he could muster: “Leave me. Protect yourselves.” Then, so quietly it was as if he were speaking to himself, he said two more: “Jonah. Zoe.”
He began to lose consciousness then, and darkness poured in from every side. He heard one last exchange. The boy said in wonderment: “He knows our names, Mom! How does he know our names?!” And the mother answered—though it was not truly an answer but an exhausted kind of prayer—“I just wish I knew what I was bringing into my house.”
It took Zoe and her family ten minutes to devise a plan for ferrying X inside. As he waited, he drifted in and out of consciousness, like a boat that couldn’t decide whether to sink or float. Each time he came to, he begged them to abandon him. He could not make them understand the dangers. Finally, Jonah and his mother left to fetch something from the house. X and Zoe were alone.
Even in his fever, X could feel the awkwardness of the moment. He felt Zoe’s eyes flit over his face again—his hair, his lips, his eyes—and again he was ashamed to think how he must look to her. He’d seen others like her from a distance before, and they’d never stirred anything in him. But Zoe … He could feel her gaze on him even when he turned away—even when his eyes were closed. Her face gave off such warmth that it was a kind of light. No amount of horror or hatred could make an impression on X anymore—but loveliness and kindness laid him flat.
“Who are you? What are you?” said Zoe, after an agonizing silence. She paused, and laughed to herself. “Do you skateboard?”
“Do I—?”
“Sorry,” she said. “I have a blurting problem.”
Again the awkwardness was everywhere. X wanted so badly to speak to her, to make her comfortable, to let her see something in him that was not wretched.
“I do not … skateboard,” he said.
She laughed for some reason, shook her head, and put her face in her hands. She stared out into the darkness to see if her mother and Jonah were on their way back. They were not.
“Zoe,” said X, wondering if he had the energy to speak the words swarming in his head. “You must abandon me. I am not like you. You have seen what I am capable of—and creatures even more dangerous will come after me soon. They will demand that I recapture Stan, and they will destroy anyone whose shadow falls across their path. Zoe, truly, I can offer you nothing but peril.”
She knelt by his side.