Chasing Before (35 page)

Neil shakes his head as if it’s too much to take in.
“Amazing! I mean, that’s a good thing, isn’t it?”

“Well . . .” I hesitate. Neil might hate me when I tell him the truth. “Not really. Because I’m eight percent Morati, I think it gives me a tendency to become obsessed. You told me yesterday you thought something was off about me.” I lower my head so that my hair falls over my eyes.

Neil puts his arm around me and pulls me to him. “No. Some of the Morati chose to rebel, like Mira and Eli. And even Julian. They fought against evil. And so do you.”

I’d like to think I wouldn’t be drawn into the Morati’s schemes again. I still feel their presence here, but I can’t be sure if it’s only Julian or if there are more, lying low, waiting for another chance to ascend to the next level somehow.

“That reminds me. I have a present for you,” Neil says.

“One of my birthday presents?”

“No.” He takes my wrist and unties the chain that still holds the obol, letting the charm slide off and fall onto the bed. “This skep here, it’s a part of another story.”

I rub my wrist, glad to have the charm and its destructive power gone. But I still don’t know how Neil managed to obtain something on Earth that originated in the heavens. “Can I ask where you got the skep?”

“I found it on my desk at home,” Neil says. “With a typewritten note that said ‘Felicia might like this.’ I thought one of my parents left it there. But now that I know what it really is, that doesn’t seem very likely.”

“No, it doesn’t.”

Neil hands me a small white box. “Open it.”

I remove the lid and poke around under the cotton inside until I uncover a charm in the shape of the infinity symbol.

“This is the start of our new story.” Neil threads the charm onto the chain. “And we’ll write it as we go. No promises that can be broken, just infinite possibilities.”

“I love it. Thank you.”

We stay like this for several minutes, letting everything sink in. There’s so much uncertainty right now. The one thing I can be sure of is that Neil is squarely on my side. But if Neil and I should break up someday, we break up. It won’t be the end of the universe. My afterlife will go on.

Then Neil lifts the sheet, a seductive glint in his eye. “How shall we start chapter one?”

“I might have a few suggestions,” I say, pouncing on him. He throws the sheet over our heads, and for the first time we join together without a single reservation.

Two days later, when we finally emerge from Neil’s room and venture outside onto the green, we discover a new, more peaceful Level Three. Julian has rebuilt both bridges, so full classes can resume. Julian’s next task will be to try to repair the files in the records room, so we can find any Morati who may be flying under the radar, but he needs to regain his strength first.

Furukama is fine after his shock of being mind stunned by four of his trainees—Autumn, Cash, Ira, and Ian—in his office. Brady tells us that it was Cash who knocked him
out on his way back from finding Nate. Furukama and the career council reprimand Nate and Keegan for throwing Emilia and the twins into the pit when they could have been interrogated. Keegan claims he did it as payback for Kiara’s murder.

I fill in Furukama on everything that happened with Autumn and Cash—even that I had a part in the explosions by viewing Cash’s memory globe gifts instead of turning them in. Maybe in part because I know about his reinvention and he wants me to keep his secret, Furukama lets me off lightly—he dismisses me from seraphim guard training. But he also hugs me, so on the whole I think he’s grateful for my contribution to exposing the Morati.

If Furukama, the security team, and most of Level Three are surprised that Autumn was working with the Morati, Nate is not. “I always knew there was something off about her,” he boasts to whoever will listen. I remake my former room into a shrine of sorts for her, though. In the end she was my friend, and she sacrificed herself so that I could live. Despite everything else she did, I honor her for that.

The weeks fly by, and soon Ascension Day is upon us.

As I make my way to Assembly Hill, I run into Julian. Since he repaired the bridges, he is being celebrated as a hero, and Libby allowed him to join the muse program with us as a reward. We haven’t had the chance to talk, because his entourage usually surrounds him, but today he is alone in front of the rebuilt Muse Collection Library.

“So it all worked out for you, didn’t it?” I ask him. “You’ve been found innocent of the bombings, you’re popular with the people, and you’re going back to Earth as a muse. You got everything you ever wanted.”

He reaches out and lightly grazes my cheek with his knuckles. “Not everything,” he says sadly.

I deflect the emotionally charged moment by asking a question that’s been tumbling around in my mind. “How did Cash know that, as a hybrid, I could open portals?”

“I’ll show you,” Julian says. “Even though this memory doesn’t paint me in the best light. Okay?”

When I nod, he materializes the eggplant sofa right out here on the lawn. We sit down together, like old times, and we connect our palms.

Julian drives the stolen police car, pumping the gas pedal. He’s on the lookout for Neil’s car, because Cash has ordered him to hit it head-on and take Felicia’s life. Julian doesn’t know why vehicular homicide is not considered murder, but it isn’t. In any case, Julian doesn’t want to go through with it. He has a plan. He’ll have to crash into them, or Cash will become suspicious, but he can do it so that Felicia has a maximum chance of survival.

Julian turns on the sirens as a warning. He switches lanes as he rounds the bend, and Neil’s car speeds straight toward him. At the last second he swerves, but Neil swerves too and the cars collide, metal grinding and glass shattering. As they spin together, Julian locks eyes with Felicia.

The cars screech to a halt in the middle of the road. Julian exits the police car from the passenger side and rushes over just before a second police car comes barreling at Felicia, who is still trapped in the wreckage. He recognizes the driver, Octavia. Cash must have sent a backup Morati assassin. Felicia throws her arm out in front of her face in a protective gesture, through the broken window, a metal charm glinting in her palm. A blast of light flies out of her fingers. It steamrolls toward the oncoming car, flattening grass and shrubbery alongside the road before it entirely encompasses the car and zaps it into oblivion.

Julian stops in his tracks, utterly stunned and terrified. Somehow Felicia made an entire car and its driver disappear. It’s impossible, and yet he witnessed it with his own eyes.

Julian approaches Felicia with caution, dialing 911 on his cell phone.

“Nine one one. State your emergency,” the dispatch says calmly.

“There’s been a car accident. Two people are hurt.”

“Where are you? Why are there sirens?”

“I don’t know what it’s called, but it’s the old country road off Route 4. Hurry!”

He hangs up. “Are you hurt?” he asks Felicia, his whole being on high alert.

She stares straight ahead, like she’s in shock. “I—I can’t get out.” Her long hair is stuck in the twisted frame of the car. “Please help Neil!”

Julian rips Felicia’s door off the hinges and throws it to the pavement. He leans over her and gently extracts an unconscious Neil from his seat belt, keeping Neil’s neck straight as he pulls him over Felicia and lays him in a patch of grass. Julian administers CPR and makes sure Neil is breathing normally before he turns to Felicia in anguish.

“I have to go before the ambulance arrives.” He kisses her on the forehead and wipes a tear from her cheek. “I’m so, so sorry. I hope you can forgive me someday.”

Felicia doesn’t say anything, and Julian knows he doesn’t deserve an answer anyway. He’s a coward, and he proves it by racing off across the field as fast as his feet can carry him.

We exit the memory, and Julian flinches like I might punch him.

“I made a car disappear?” I ask incredulously.

“That’s why Cash didn’t want you to have that memory. He was scared of you. He theorized that as a hybrid you might be able to destroy angels. He thought if you knew, you would eventually use your power against him and the other Morati.”

“Why didn’t you show me this before?” I ask.

“Honestly? Because I thought you would smite me, first chance you got.”

“You think I have it in me to smite you?”

“You look like you want to smite me right now.”

I laugh. “I do a little.”

“Told you.”

“Fair enough,” I say. “But the water from the Styx wasn’t involved in the car crash. I thought the three main ingredients were a hybrid, the Styx, and an obol.”

“Cash said you probably blacked out when you were thrown from the car and maybe partially crossed over, which would mean going through the Styx.”

“Okay, but how did Cash go from theorizing that I could kill Morati to theorizing that I could open portals?”

Julian wipes his hands on his jeans. “Later, once you were already in Level Two, Cash found Octavia, the assassin he thought you destroyed. She was hiding out in a hive, afraid that Cash would punish her for her failure. That’s when he knew that what you actually did was open an unstable portal to a higher level. But he didn’t tell me that until recently.”

“But you’re a hybrid too. Can’t you open portals? Why didn’t Cash just use you instead of setting up this elaborate scheme with me?”

“I can open them, but only to lower levels. We’re linked, and so our powers are balanced out that way. I bet you can open them only to higher levels.”

It’s not a theory I want to test out anytime soon, that’s for sure.

Back in Level Two, when I relived the memory of my supposed death, the shock of Julian’s betrayal left a deep scar in my psyche. But now I understand that he was manipulated as much as Autumn and I were. That doesn’t make it right, but it gives me a reason to forgive. “After the crash
you stayed to make sure I was okay. You helped Neil. That counts for something.”

“I ran away. I left you there.” He groans and punches the arm of the sofa with his fist. “If I had stood my ground right then and there against the Morati, if I had stayed and protected you every day of your life, maybe you’d still be alive.”