Between (25 page)

“I’ll find you later and we’ll figure out where to start with your powers,” Keiran says.

“Sounds good,” I tell him, and Seth grunts behind me.

Alexander nods. He and Keiran step together and disappear.

I exhale, staring at the vacant space. There’s something purple in the grass and I step closer, picking up the strand of wisteria that must’ve fallen from my wrist when the parallel was here. I wind it over my arm again. When I turn, Seth’s eyes are already on me.

“You okay?” he asks.

“I have no idea.”

He pulls me close, and I rest my forehead against him, enveloped in his warmth. “I’m going to take you to my place, okay?”

I nod against his chest, and we vanish.

Seth’s house smells like his shirts—grass and sunshine. The light-brown sofa in front of me is a shade or two lighter than the chocolate hardwood floors. There’s a window seat, shelves filled with books, and paintings on the wall.

My paintings.

The huge watercolor I gave him a couple years ago, of the pond beyond the barn at our house. A framed drawing of the stars that form The Big Dipper as I used to see them from my bedroom window at night. A rough sketch of Seth and Sam from behind, sitting side by side in the grass in our front yard.

All mine. All here. I walk around the room, examining them one by one. “I had no idea you kept these.”

Seth’s eyebrows wrinkle. “Why wouldn’t I have kept them?”

My front teeth dig into my bottom lip, biting back a grin as I take in this gesture that, to him, seems completely natural. It’s not just that he kept them. He loved them so much that he surrounded himself with them. I don’t even think Mom has this much of my work displayed around the house.

Had.
Had
this much of my work displayed.

I won’t think of her in past tense, but I need to let go of the home I used to know. The sound of the screen door slamming against its frame. The scent of lemons hanging in the air when Mom dusted. Sam sitting cross-legged on his bed, strumming his guitar. Mom curled up on the corner of the couch, reading. My own room, with every little knick-knack that I thought defined me so well. Every sound. Every smell. Every scene. I close my eyes for a moment and see them all.

Seth stands beside me in front of his bookshelf, and I fight the urge to lean on him. I need to let go of that, too. I’m not going home, and I’ll never be with Seth. It’ll be easier if I accept that now.

“Hey,” he says, keeping his eyes on the books scattered across the shelf. “Earlier, when the parallel showed up…” His voice trails off.

“Yeah?” The last hour held a day’s worth of drama. I crawl back through everything that happened, from Keiran to the spider to the parallel.

Her face.

Seth gives me a sideways glance, then turns to study my expression. “It was like you recognized her.”

As crazy as seeing a face in a tree had seemed the night of my birthday, nothing seems odd about it now. “Well, I did,” I tell him. “I’ve seen her face before.”

His face wrinkles with confusion. “What are you talking about?”

I rub my fingers underneath my eyes and tell him what happened after he went home after our birthday dinner, from the bracelets to the face to Mom coming out to look for us. Seth’s expression is skeptical, bordering on complete disbelief. “That’s why Sam and I weren’t on the porch when the Mothman showed up.”

He stares at the ground and rubs his hand over his chin. “And Sam didn’t see her?”

“No,” I tell him. “She was gone before I could point her out. I thought I’d imagined it.”

If I’d known about Marian, of course, I would’ve recognized her that night. I would’ve known the face was real, and I would’ve known it meant something. If I had known about Marian, everything would’ve been different.

“If you hadn’t seen the face, the Mothman could’ve surprised you…” Seth’s voice trails off, and he stares toward the watercolor over his mantle.

I blink. He’s right. If I hadn’t seen her face, Sam and I would’ve been sitting on the front porch alone when the Mothman showed up. Mom would’ve been inside. Who knows if she would’ve heard anything at all? Even if she had, she couldn’t have made it to the front yard in time.

Marian saved me before Adele did.

I press my hand to my chest. She saved me.

Marian risked everything to bring me here when I was a baby. She risked it again by showing her face a few days ago. Both times, she did it for me.

I stare at the curved grain in Seth’s dark wooden floor. Have there been other times? Has she been there, watching over me, my whole life? How many times has she saved me without my knowledge?

Seth paces to the other side of the room. “This changes everything. If Marian’s coming out of hiding, there’s so much more at risk.” He stops, pivoting on his feet and staring at me. “What’s better than one muralet? Two.”

“She’d never show herself to Whalen,” I say. She’s been in hiding this long. She wouldn’t risk it.

He walks toward me until his feet are only inches from mine. “She would if she had to. Think about it. Nothing else has brought her out of hiding in seventeen years—just you.”

He holds my gaze until the pieces fall together.

I’m Marian’s kryptonite. As long as I’m in danger, she’s not safe, either.

Seth’s hand goes to his pocket. “I can’t put this in PRU. I need to go to Alexander.” He tilts his head. “You should rest while I go do that. It won’t take long, and when I get back we can figure out this new training plan with you, me, and Keiran.”

I wrap my arms around myself, and Seth turns like he’s going to leave, then changes his mind and turns back again. He tilts my chin up with his finger and says, “It’s going to be okay.”

His tender touch on my face is enough to remind me of the way he touched me in the wisteria tunnel. A not-at-all unpleasant chill runs down my neck and across my shoulders. “Alexander told me,” I blurt out, like my subconscious has been waiting for the most awkward opportunity to address the Aegis-Apprentice rule. Clearly the most pressing issue right now is how I can’t kiss him.

Seth drops his hand. “What?”

“He said the Fellowship forbids us from having feelings for each other.” My eyes land on his arms, his lips, his eyes. “Is that true?”

Say it isn’t, even if it is. Let’s pretend it’s not
.

His chest rises and falls, releasing a breath like he’s been holding it for a lifetime. “I was going to tell you. I couldn’t figure out how.”

It’s more crushing than it should be. I spend as much time arguing with him as admiring him. His constant focus on what’s wrong instead of what’s right is always going to be a problem. He’s never going to be able to separate who we are from what we are. I know that.

Still.

When he’s close, I feel better. And I want him as close as he can get.

“So that’s that, I guess.” I can’t decide if I’m angry or hurt or sad or relieved.

He laces his fingers between mine. “Charlie, I—”

“You can’t do that.” I yank my hand from his with a huff. “That’s the problem. You’re different here. I never wanted you like this before. You’ve always been this pushy, overbearing, bossy, infuriating—” I stop as his eyes dance over my face. The corners of his eyes crease, and his lips curve upward. “That’s exactly what I mean. Stop looking at me like that. You can’t do that.”

“Do what?” he asks.

Hold my hand. Pull me to your chest. Breathe against my neck
.

I bite my lip. “Don’t look at me like you want me. Don’t touch me like it’s going anywhere.”

The smile disappears from his lips. “You’re right. I’m sorry. I get close to you and I know what you’re feeling and I know what I’m feeling and it’s hard not to act on it.”

There it is. That’s what I need to know. I push off the shelf and move in front of him. “What
are
you feeling? Because I have no idea.”

Seth keeps his eyes down like he’s afraid to look at me. I walk forward until I’m standing between his legs, leaning against him. His hands move to my hips, holding me there. He lifts his gaze, looking at me through his eyelashes, and I decide I’m an idiot for giving him a list of things he can’t do. As far as I’m concerned, Seth can do anything he wants.

“I want to kiss you just to know what it’s like,” he says quietly.

I close my eyes, committing everything about this moment to memory. His dark eyes. The husky edge in his voice. The way the sun shines through his window blinds and leaves wide stripes of light across our bodies. His fingers resting on my hips.

“But I can’t,” he whispers, “because once I kiss you, I don’t know how I’ll ever be able to stop.”

I squeeze my eyes shut tighter.

His lips press against my forehead before he flickers away, taking his warmth with him. I don’t open my eyes until he’s gone.

F
OURTEEN

T
he next morning, Artedion’s lobby is packed with Apprentices. They’re everywhere—sitting on the sofas near the fireplace, clustered by the bookshelves, leaning against the map—all wearing their aernovuses. My hand flies to my own, stuck to the front of my brown tanktop. Keiran had said he’d meet me here at eight, and it’s already five minutes past. He’ll be here any second. I ease the door shut behind me so it doesn’t loudly announce my entrance and stick to the edge of the room, twisting the ends of my hair around my fingers.

I stand by the map, running my fingertips along it again, looking for more gates. Knowing that I should look for what doesn’t belong helps—with that in mind, I shouldn’t have so much trouble finding them. I press the tips of my fingers into the tiny golden dots scattered throughout the drawing of Ellauria. A couple beyond the Clearing, five surrounding the lake, two near the library, the four in the Meadow of Music. I memorize them. I’ll keep an eye out for them today and sneak back when I find time alone.

An Apprentice with wire-rimmed glasses and a head full of blonde braids brushes past me, and I concentrate on keeping my eyes on the wall. Eye contact invites conversation, and that’s the last thing I want.

It’s not that I’m afraid to meet new people.

Well, in a way it is. For one, I don’t want to have to explain why I’m not going through the regular training like the rest of the Apprentices. They’re doing weekly rotations with every major creature population in the mystical realm, learning typical behaviors and schedules, before they’ll move into the more technical stuff with the mirrors and PRU.

But the bigger reason is, so far, I haven’t been all that lucky with friends here. Lulu is adorable, but I don’t see her much. Clara is clearly a beach, and, of course, Keiran’s the son of the freak who started all this.

He appears right then, illuminated by the sunlight from Artedion’s open doors, and I watch his eyes search the crowd. I lift my hand and Keiran smiles, but it’s not the million-dollar one. It’s close-lipped and dimple-free, and the fact that any part of his light has gone out makes me feel guilty for thinking the freak thing.

I make my way to him, and he does the same toward me. Heads turn as he presses through the crowd, and he doesn’t release a single wink or “Hello, Beautiful.”

Great. Keiran’s broken.

“Hey,” he says when he reaches me.

“Hi.” I don’t know how to act. I feel extremely close to and far from him at the same time. We’ve both been defined by our secrets, labeled by what rather than who we are, but it’s what we are that’s the problem. I’m a muralet, and he’s the flamethrower son of the man who wants to kill me.

Except he’s also Keiran, my friend—the guy who calls me “Freckles” and makes me laugh at every opportunity.

How do I balance the two?

“What’s that?” he asks, nodding at the bulge on my hip.

My hand lands on the knife there, encased in a leather case. “Alexander gave me a knife yesterday.”

Keiran nods. “That’s good. You never know when you might need it.”

We step out of Artedion and pause at the top of the steps. “Alexander wants to move you along pretty quickly,” he says. “I thought we’d start by the far end of the willows and mess around a little. Nobody lives out there, so it’s usually pretty empty.”

He won’t look at me.

I can’t do this. I’m already exhausted from spending yesterday afternoon with Seth, pretending not to care that he and I can’t be a “we,” then feeling ridiculous since there’s no point in pretending anything around Seth. He didn’t acknowledge my emotions at all, and I can’t decide if that makes it better or worse.

Duck it. I can’t spend today pretending Keiran and I are okay when it’s so obvious we aren’t.

I’m tired of the charade.

“I don’t know what to do to make things normal,” I tell him.

Keiran shakes his head and stares at the ground. “I shouldn’t have tried to be your friend. I knew you were eventually going to learn who I am. It was dumb.”

“It wasn’t dumb.” I pull him down the stairs and away from Artedion. “Look, yesterday was a shock. I don’t really have many friends here, and to find out you’re…” There’s no good way to finish that sentence, so I don’t. “I just wasn’t prepared. But Alexander obviously trusts you. There’s no way he’d leave us alone together if he thought I was in danger.”