Chaos (21 page)

Something broke in his chest.

Corinthe was here. She was real.

Emotion clogged his throat and tears burned the back of his eyes. He reached up and took her face between his hands. His hands shook as he brushed a thumb along her jaw. He moved his fingers through her wild, tangled hair, then pulled her close, into his chest. They fit together perfectly. He could feel her heartbeat reverberating in his chest: an echo of his.

“I missed you,” he whispered into the top of her head. It was all he could do not to cry.

“I missed you, too,” she said, and then pulled away, giving him a crooked smile. “Is everything okay?”

“It is now,” he said. When he finally moved his lips against hers, felt her respond to his touch, it was as if everything that had happened, everything that had gone wrong, was driven back by the soft pressure of her lips.

He had done it.

Everything was fixed.

“I’m so glad you’re back,” he said, between kisses.

“Back?” She gave a half laugh. “You’re the one who left. Where were you this morning, anyway?”

He wondered—where
had
he been this morning? In this life Luc could’ve woken up to get bagels next door, or taken a run through the Presidio. Not that it mattered now. There was so much he needed to say, so much to do and explain. It was strange—he felt as if Corinthe might vanish from in front of him at any second. But they had all the time in the world now. He took her hand and led her down the short hall. Jasmine’s door was closed. He wondered where she was—he felt a great swelling of love for her, too. She and Corinthe would be close. They were
both wild, in a way. Stubborn, too. They followed their own hearts.

His room was neat, as though someone had straightened it for him. Perfect, like everything else. He sat down on the bed and pulled Corinthe into his lap, wrapping his arms around her waist to hold her tight. He already knew the contours of her body from the night they spent together in the Land of the Two Suns.

They’d had such little time together, a few stolen moments and then it was gone. It all seemed hopeless, but now here she was, in his arms again. All the pain and uncertainty had been worth it. Corinthe was alive. She was here.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Corinthe said gently. “You seem … different.”

“I told you. I just missed you.” He swallowed the thickness in his throat. Did she know what he had done? Would she ever know? Did it matter?

She pulled away and stared into his eyes. “I’m not going anywhere, Luc.” A spasm of pain crossed her face. He wondered at it briefly—why pain?—but dismissed the concern. He would be nothing but happy. He tried to kiss her again, but she evaded him.

“I talked to your dad earlier. He’s feeling better. They want him to stay another week to be sure he can handle everything. I told him not to worry about you. I told him to stay as long as he needed. Of course he’ll come for the service.”

“Okay,” Luc said cautiously, trying not to betray how little he understood. Was his dad still in the hospital? But
that didn’t make sense. Corinthe had been dead—he was afraid to even think the word when she was here, warm, vibrant—when his dad decided to go cold turkey. Had he rewound even further than he thought? But what kind of past was this, where Corinthe knew him, loved him already?

“The florist called when you weren’t here,” she said. He stared at her dumbly. She took a quick breath, stood up, and began pacing. “Look, I know it must be awful to talk about this stuff—to
think
about this stuff. The everydayness of it. So I went ahead and ordered lilacs and white calla lilies. And jasmine, of course. Lots of jasmine. I hope that’s okay. They needed an answer and I didn’t know where you were.”

There was an idea flickering in the back of Luc’s mind, like a warning signal blinking far off in the distance. Lilacs and white calla lilies. Funeral flowers.
And jasmine, of course
.

He cleared his throat. “What—what are you talking about?”

“Do you think the jasmine is too much?” Corinthe bit her lip. There were tears in her eyes. “I thought … I know I didn’t know her that well, but I thought … well, that’s what she would have wanted.”

“Who?” Luc asked. The word seemed to take a long time to go from his brain to his mouth.

She stared at him. “Your sister. What do you mean,
who
?”

The look in her eyes felt like a punch to the gut. His chest tightened and breathing became difficult.

Impossible. He had turned back time. That had to mean Jas was okay, too. That meant she had never met Miranda, never been poisoned by the Blood Nymphs, never come close to dying in the Great Gardens of Pyralis. A knife of fear slid down Luc’s spine. Was she in the hospital again? Had he gone back so far that she OD’d again? And had he failed to save her this time?

“Jas!” Luc shouted as he ran for her room. He threw the door open and it slammed against the wall. “Jas?”

She wasn’t there.

Her room was too neat. The bed was made and there were no clothes piled on the chair or scattered across the floor. Jasmine always had incense burning or music blasting from her speakers. But there was nothing but empty silence.

“Luc, I’m worried about you,” Corinthe said from behind him.

He turned slowly and saw the tears glistening in her grief-filled eyes.

“Where have you been? I thought you went after him,” Corinthe said. “When you were so late coming back, I thought something happened to you, too.”

It was like Corinthe was talking through a thick fog. Everything slowed down and it took enormous effort to hear her over the roaring that had started in his head.

“You thought I went after T.J.?” Luc’s jaw was numb. The blood in his veins felt like cooled metal, thick and cold.

“T.J. Who’s T.J.?” Corinthe frowned and shook her head. “I meant Ford.”

“I don’t know who you’re talking about.” Things were getting more and more muddled. He couldn’t feel his fingers now. He stumbled to the window, wrenched it open. He needed air. Where was his sister?

Corinthe was looking at him as if he was crazy. “Ford. The Radical that Jasmine disappeared with. Don’t pretend you aren’t angry enough to kill him. You told me—”

Only a few words penetrated the fog in his brain. Someone had Jasmine. “Where is she? Where did he take her?” The panic inside him turned to desperation. He couldn’t get enough air into his lungs. He was drowning above water.

Corinthe crossed her arms. Even from several feet away, he could see that she was shivering.

“Maybe—maybe you should call that grief counselor.” She dropped her eyes. “The one the hospital recommended. I think I still have her card.”

He crossed the room and grabbed her shoulders. She cried out. For a moment, she looked frightened of him.

“Tell me the truth,” he said. He knew he was gripping her too tightly, but he couldn’t make his fingers unclench.
“Where’s Jasmine?”

“She’s gone,” Corinthe said. She put a hand on his chest and eased him back. She was breathing hard. They both were, as though they’d been running. “You know that, Luc. You were the one who found her body near the rotunda.”

Luc turned away, now certain he was about to be sick. Bile rose in his throat. He finally understood. He hadn’t
gone back in time—he’d gone
forward
. He’d leapt into a future where Corinthe was back and Jasmine was dead.

He rushed to the bathroom and slammed the door. He gripped at the counter, allowing the anger to build up inside him.

He took Jasmine’s ring out, its little circle cutouts glinting dimly in the overhead bathroom light. She used to fidget with it when she talked, twisting it around her finger.…

How could he live in a reality where Jasmine was gone?

But how could he leave Corinthe behind, knowing he might never see her again? Finding her alive, touching her again, brought him joy unlike any he’d ever known.

He could not—he
would
not—trade one for the other.

This was not their fate.

This was not his fate.

“Luc?” Corinthe was hammering on the door. “Luc, please let me in.”

He straightened up and put the ring back in his pocket. His eyes were rimmed with red. He sloshed some water into his hand and drank it, then slugged back the dregs of a mini bottle of mouthwash, not bothering to spit.

He wasn’t done. He would fix this, too.

He took a deep breath. His stomach no longer felt like it was trying to digest a dictionary. He could do this. He swung the bathroom door open.

Corinthe swiped at her eyes quickly. “Luc, please talk to me,” she said in a quiet voice that broke him. He
wanted to stay. He wanted to hold her again and tell her it would be all right. “I’m scared.”

Luc took her face in both hands. He had to duck a little so they were eye to eye—but just a little. They fit together perfectly. “I can’t explain this to you,” he said, his voice hitching. “But this isn’t how it’s supposed to be.”

Corinthe wrapped her hands around his wrists. He could tell she was fighting the urge to cry again. “The counselor said … she said you might be in denial.”

“This isn’t about denial.” He kissed her nose once, lightly. “Trust me. This is about acceptance.” He took her hands in his, twining their fingers together.

“I—I don’t understand,” she whispered, searching his face, as if she could read the answer to a puzzle there.

He didn’t reply. Instead, he kissed her: a desperate kiss, a fierce promise that he would find her again.

They walked down the hall, hand in hand. She had obviously given up arguing with him. Now she was silent. He could feel her body trembling. She seemed so different from the fierce Corinthe he had first met, the girl with the wild eyes and the secret smile and the knife clasped so easily in her hand.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the butcher block on the counter.

In one fluid movement, he grabbed the large serrated knife and wrapped it in a tea towel. He tucked it in his coat pocket, thinking only of revenge.

“I love you,” he said to Corinthe. “More than anything in the world.” More than almost anything, he
amended silently. He wouldn’t sacrifice Jasmine’s life so that Corinthe could stay.

He knew that he could find a way to get them both back. He had to.

He stopped at the door. His chest ached. His throat ached. It was like the pain of taking a deep breath in the cold, a sudden slicing in his lungs. If he failed, this might be the last time he ever saw Corinthe. “I need you to wait for me. Will you do that?”

She had started crying again. “Luc, please. Whatever you’re going through … whatever’s going on … you can tell me. Stay here. We’ll get through it together.” Her eyes were a soft violet, the exact shade of the sky in Pyralis. He wondered whether she still thought of her old home. She had given all of that up for him. Now he was leaving her. He had a moment of doubt—but the thought of Jasmine dead, gone, was unbearable. Impossible.

“This isn’t the end,” he said. “I’ll come back. I promise.”

She wrapped her arms around his neck. “I’m not going anywhere,” she said. Her lips brushed his neck. They were so soft and warm. She smelled like the best kind of summer day. “But come back soon, okay?”

Luc counted to three. He inhaled her, memorized the way she felt in his arms. His eyes were suddenly blurry with tears, and he knew if he didn’t go now, he’d never be able to walk away. He pulled away, wiping his eyes quickly with his forearm.

“I promise,” he said. He didn’t look at her again. Just
turned and took the steps at a jog. After a minute he heard the door click behind him. It took all the strength he had not to turn and go back to her, start pounding on the door, tell her he loved her and wanted her to stay.

With each step he felt sicker and sicker. And then angrier and angrier.

What kind of universe did he live in, where choices were impossible, where people didn’t get to be happy, where loved ones died?

He moved quickly, head down, as if depending on momentum to take him away from Corinthe. Each time his heels hit the pavement, he imagined the street cracking, fissuring under his weight. He wished he could destroy everything, the whole house-of-cards universe and its crazy rules.

He caught himself sympathizing, momentarily, with Miranda, and then immediately felt guilty. Even though he was tired, he started jogging, just to get some relief from the tension in his body and his head. He’d always liked to run. The ragged sound of his breathing drowned out the thunderous noise in his head, the thought of Corinthe’s eyes and the softness of her touch.

Luc headed back to Mountain Lake Park, figuring that since the Crossroad had spit him out there, he’d be able to find a way back in. He nearly stumbled on a group of kids from his high school lying on the grass, the remains of a picnic spread out on a patchwork of beach towels and blankets. Even from ten feet away, he could smell the cheap, sugary wine.

Luc ducked into the treeline, not wanting to be seen. He hurried along the edge.

“I just can’t believe it,” a familiar voice said. “Just last week I gave her a ride to school. And now Jasmine is gone.” Karen swirled the red wine around in her clear plastic cup.

“It’s not like you knew her or anything,” Lily said.

Luc clenched his fists. God, she was such a bitch.

Karen’s shoulders stiffened. “She was Luc’s
sister
, Lily. Can you imagine what he’s going through right now?”

“You weren’t too worried about him at your party,” Lily said.

Luc watched Karen pour the rest of her wine over Lily’s plate of pasta. The rest of the group oohed, laughing as if Karen had done something hilarious. She got up to leave, and a small affection for her tugged at Luc’s chest. Karen wasn’t a bad person. She had made a couple of bad choices, but so had Luc.

Maybe when this was over and he’d set things right, he would tell her he wasn’t angry—that he didn’t blame her. Mike got up and followed Karen, pulling her toward him into a hug. There was nothing else to see.

Luc turned away quickly, grateful he still had his sweatshirt. He tugged the hood over his head and felt for the knife in his front pocket. He headed the long way around to the banks of the pond where he had been deposited by the Crossroad. But there were no irregularities here. Nothing that even seemed vaguely out of place. Was it possible that the entrance had been sealed
somehow already? The only other Crossroad he knew of was the angel on Market Square, but that was all the way across the city. At this time, when all the people downtown were getting out of work, it would take at least forty-five minutes to get there. Forty-five minutes in a world where Jas, his little sister, who used to make him have tea parties with her stuffed bears, was dead.