“It’s real magic, Katie! I can feel it when I hold it!”
Katie threw him a disgusted look, but beneath the sadness at her own deception, she felt a sudden, deeper pain. Row’s enthusiasm wasn’t false; Katie hadn’t seen him this excited about anything in a long time. When he held the jewel, something happened to him . . . magic, as he put it. Why wasn’t anything happening for Katie? She squeezed the jewel tightly in her fist, but there was nothing, not even that warming tingle she remembered from the night on the bench with Tear. The jewel was an inert rock in her hand.
“What kind of magic?”
“It shows me things!” Row’s eyes were bright with excitement. “The past. The Crossing. I know what happened, Katie! I know why they kept it a secret!”
He paused, waiting for her to ask what, but Katie did not. Anger bubbled inside her, anger that began with a sickly, acid trickle she recognized as jealousy.
“Get real, Row,” she replied, turning away.
Row grabbed her arm. “I’m not lying! I saw it!”
“Sure you did.” Part of Katie felt sick at this exchange, at lying, once again, to her oldest and best friend. But she couldn’t help it; the trickle of jealousy inside her had quickly widened into a raging river. Katie was the one who had promised, the one who followed William Tear, who killed herself to learn his lessons, and now she was even keeping Jonathan Tear’s secrets as well. Row hated William Tear. So why did he get to see?
Row stared at her, his face both angry and hurt. “You think I’m lying?”
“I think you’re having some sort of delusion.”
Row’s eyes narrowed. He held out his hand, silently, and Katie returned the sapphire, relieved when he tucked it back into the drawer. As the drawer was closing, Katie caught sight of something else there—a dull gleam of unpolished silver, almost circular—and then it was gone.
“I’m sorry I wasted your time,” Row said stiffly. “I’ll take you back home now.”
Katie nodded, just as stiffly. She wished she could just walk out, but the idea of going back up through town alone, in the dark, gave her the jitters. She waited silently as Row doused the lamp, then followed him out the door.
The wind had picked up again, hissing through the pines. Katie’s night vision was gone now, and she saw only a black world beyond the timbers of the porch.
The Town is darker now, she thought, but didn’t know what the thought meant.
Row locked the door of Jenna’s shop, and in each movement Katie sensed the sudden deep gulf between them, a gulf that had never existed before. They argued sometimes, certainly, but nothing like this. She felt an absurd impulse to take it back, tell him she believed him, but pride wouldn’t let her utter the words. What the hell was Row doing playing with William Tear’s sapphire anyway? He wasn’t supposed to know about it, he had said so himself.
Crap. At least admit that you’re just jealous.
Katie grimaced. She could admit it, but not to Row. She walked faster, overtaking Row and then passing him, following her breath in the frosted air. She wished she could just not speak to him until morning, when she would surely have calmed down. Why was she so jealous, anyway? She was content to be Katie Rice. She didn’t need to have magic, to be one of the Crossing children with their strange assortment of gifts. It was Row who couldn’t bear to settle for the hand life had dealt him, Row who wouldn’t rest until he brought down William Tear’s entire town—
Katie halted. That last thought hadn’t been her own, but someone else’s, as though there were a stranger inside her head. Not Row, not Tear, but a third party, a voice she had never heard before.
Hearing voices. You’re about two steps from crazy.
But Katie didn’t believe that. She turned to look at Row, to see whether that voice had been correct, whether she could find destruction in his face.
The road behind her was empty.