Chasing Before (27 page)

At this point I feel myself drifting out of the memory, but then something grabs hold, and I find myself snapped into Julian’s point of view. I’m inside his head now, in this memory. It’s such a vast space that I hear an echo in his thoughts. I see through his eyes—he’s gazing down at me sleeping in his lap—but it’s a level removed, almost as if I peer through frosted glass.

“I could stay here forever,” Julian whispers. He brushes loose strands of Felicia’s long hair away from her forehead, taking a few pieces to weave together into a braid. He is fully immersed in this scene, fully grounded by the closeness of her skin and the sound of her breathing. He knows how easily moments evaporate into the mist. In the future he’ll look back on this day and it will seem like a dream within a dream, but for now it belongs to him.

By the time Felicia starts to stir, he has woven all her hair into tiny braids and then unraveled them again. Her hair lies in a crinkled fan around her face. If only he could tell her how much he cares about her. But he can’t. She’d never understand the depth of his feelings, or how they could even develop. She might even think it creepy if she knew how he looked for excuses to view her through the Morati’s portal in the palace—that he followed her life on Earth every chance he got. She was like a splash of bright color in his otherwise dull, white world.

It would be even worse if the Morati council knew of
his affection. They would ruthlessly use it against him. No. He’ll have to carry this through, hide his love behind a veil of indifference. In order to keep Felicia safe, he will do anything. No matter how much it hurts.

The memory changes again then, zooming out of Julian’s point of view and spinning back into mine.

A fat droplet of water plops onto my cheek and brings me back to consciousness. I open my eyes when Julian shifts under me. “It’s starting to rain,” he says softly. “We should go.”

The sky is gray and threatening above me. How could the weather change so rapidly? How long was I asleep? I sprint for my bike. “We’re never going to make it. We’re more than an hour away from home.”

“We have to try.” Julian races around me and mounts his bike first. “That’s all we can ever do.”

We ride against the rapidly rising wind, and grains of sand pelt my face and bare arms. Twenty minutes into our journey, the rain trickles down, and soon enough we’re caught in a downpour. We take cover in a copse of trees. I shiver, and Julian pulls me tightly against his chest. Water rushes down his face and neck in rivulets, and his wet lips part in a sigh. I have the urge to tell him that I love him. But I beat it down, because he would think I was crazy. I barely know him.

So I slip my hands under the drenched fabric of his T-shirt and let my fingertips run over the smooth planes
of his back. He strips off his shirt, and it lands in a damp puddle at our feet. Then he kisses me, and the force of it makes me stumble back into the rough bark of the tree. I let him guide me down to a patch of shiny grass, lost in the delicious swirls of summer wine that pool in every part of my body.

“You have a twig in your hair,” Julian teases me between kisses. I reach up and tap my head until I find it. I fling it away. I catch sight of my watch and the late hour. “Oh crap!” I use Julian as ballast to push myself up. “My mother will kill me if she sees me like this. We have to go.”

The rain has let up a bit, but it’s still a slog to get back home. Because I’m in such a hurry, I have time to give Julian only a quick cheek kiss at the corner before heading to my house.

I emerge from the memory to find my head in Julian’s lap. It hits me with such a strong dose of déjà vu, I gasp.

The side of my scalp feels tight, and when I reach up and touch a braid there, the thoughts Julian had in his memory rush into my mind. Were they real? Did he show me his true self? Or is it another invention? I can’t think straight with Julian looking at me like he is, like he wants a chance to reenact that day right now.

My instinct is to flee this scene, but I close my eyes and find my strength. It wouldn’t be fair for me to run away, no matter how uncomfortable this is for me. Not when Julian finally seems to be making an effort to be genuine.

Julian carefully lifts my head from his lap and shifts his body to lie next to me. It’s an awkward dance to get comfortable, and a tight fit for both of us, but Julian keeps his hand on my hip, so I won’t fall.

I don’t need to open my eyes to feel the weight of his stare. “I should go.”

“You could stay,” Julian says, his voice hitching. His lips brush my cheek, featherlight. The tangle of feelings for him I’ve been holding back—fascination, fear, frustration, desire—come loose inside me.

“Don’t,” I say, though it comes out strangled. Too weak. Still, I force myself to meet his gaze. His face is just inches from mine. “I can’t do this. I need to be good.” If I cross this line, not only will Neil be lost to me forever, but I’ll be lost to myself.

“You are good,” Julian whispers. “Too good.”

I don’t agree, and I don’t think anyone else would either, but I know what he means. Despite everything Julian and I are to each other, and how easy it would be to close this distance between us, I won’t cheat on Neil. Sighing, I place my hand over his on my hip. In his memory, when I was asleep, he thought about how he needed to feign indifference so that the Morati wouldn’t hurt me. “So the things you’ve done, all the lies you’ve told, were to keep me safe?”

“Yes. Always.” I believe him. I understand now where he’s coming from, even if I still find it difficult to forgive.

“Why do I feel so close to you? You’ve lied to me time after time, but I can’t seem to be able to let you go.”

“I’d like to think it’s because you love me,” Julian says.

Love.
The word buzzes around in my head. Do I love Julian? If I do, it’s not in the way I love Neil. When I’m with Neil, I want to be a better version of myself. When I’m with Julian, I want to be reckless and selfish. I hate that he brings out my bad side.

I sit up, my back to him and my feet firmly on the floor. “Oh, Julian.” I pour all my regret and longing into the utterance of his name.

He stands and walks to the window and presses his palm against the glass pane. “But you want to know the truth?”

“That’s all I’ve ever wanted.”

“The truth is, you feel so close to me because you
are
me.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” My stomach lurches. If the truth is this crazy, maybe I don’t want it after all.

He lets his arm drop to his side and turns slowly to face me. “You are part angel, Felicia. And that part came from me.”

thirty

“THE NIGHT YOU WERE MUGGED in Kenya, the day before your thirteenth birthday, I stood in front of the window to Earth in the Morati’s palace and just happened to see you. And then suddenly, inconceivably, your thirteen-year-old self stood in front of me, in Level Two.” Julian shakes his head and looks toward the ceiling. “You were there only for an instant, but I was irrevocably changed, and so were you.”

I remember seeing Julian in my nightmares—nightmares that turned out to be a memory of my brief first visit to Level Two.

“But how can that be?” I fly to my feet, stride across to the window where Julian stands. “I don’t feel like an angel.” If anything, I feel more like a demon.

“I don’t know how or why, but our shadow DNA
transferred to each other during the fissure. You have eight percent of my DNA. And the eight percent DNA that you lost?” He puts his hand over his heart. “It’s here. In me.”

Is this why Julian and I have always had this strange, overpowering connection? Because we are literally part of each other? My knees buckle, but Julian catches me before I can faint. He scoops me up in his arms and sets me gently back on the sofa. I tuck my legs underneath me and squeeze my arms across my chest.

“Angels have DNA?”

“Angels don’t have mortal DNA, but we have shadow DNA. A human’s mortal DNA is connected to their immortal shadow DNA. When a human dies, the shadow DNA is what’s left. Some call it a soul. It’s the part of you that moves on.” Julian runs a hand through his artfully disheveled hair. “We exchanged shadow DNA, and it made you stronger. Superhuman.”

My being part angel does explain some mysteries. Why I never got sick as a teen and why I recovered so much more quickly than Neil after our car accident. Why I was able to wean myself off the Lethe drugs in Level Two faster than others, and why I got headaches and felt weak in the brimstone jail. And the incident at Western Bridge, where I thought I repaired a tiny part of it, even though that’s something only angels can do. Maybe I wasn’t hallucinating it. “Why didn’t you tell me this before?” I ask.

He sits on the opposite side of the sofa, like he doesn’t dare to touch me. “I should have. I guess I had this foolish
notion that you could love me for me.” He looks at me slightly askew, his features soft and vulnerable. My heart leaps with yearning, but I don’t trust it. Because as much as I want to believe Julian is essentially good, if a bit misguided, he is Morati, after all.

And that makes me eight percent Morati. Eight percent evil.

“The Morati haven’t killed me. What do they want?” I ask.

“If I knew . . .” His pupils flick away just for a second, but that tiny movement reveals everything. He might have told me about my hybrid nature, but he’s still hiding things from me for my own good.

“Never mind.” I hastily untangle the braid Julian put in my hair and smooth the crinkled strands between my shaking fingers.

“I’m on your side. I always will be,” he says.

I can’t stand to look at him anymore. “One hundred percent on my side? Or only eight percent?”

“Felicia!”

“See you tomorrow, Julian.” I speed for the door.

“The Morati are dangerous,” he warns as I leave. As if I needed to be reminded. I slam the door on my way out.

Libby’s office is empty. Neil must be at sound check already. Yesterday’s concert went well, if you judge by the crowd’s reaction.

I rush over to Assembly Hill, burning with even more secrets that I won’t tell Neil. That I’m part Morati. That
every time he looks at me, he’s looking his greatest enemy in the face. That I’m evil, and somehow I’ve always known it. I have to push through the crowd to get to the front. It’s later than I thought, and people are restless for the music to start.