Salt (15 page)

I shift on my toes and try not to draw any unneeded attention on myself. Where is he? This is embarrassing. I can’t even imagine what Gran is thinking, but I’m sure something like “I told you so” will be the hidden message. And Pop—what’s he doing? Connie is probably horrified because she knows how much I want this.

My stomach is in knots. Where is he? It’s all I can do not to lose it. This is my life, my future. I knew this Prescott guy would be trouble—I knew it as soon as the other girls starting talking about him. About how awesome he was, how powerful, how good. There’s no one that perfect. He’s not that great at all. He may be noble, but he’s obviously not what he seems to be. He’s a jerk. A pompous rich kid. I hate him. I hate him so much.

If he shows up I’ll tell him
exactly
what I think of him.

Someone coughs in the crowd.

Mrs. Bentham clears her throat and it echoes across the room. All the breakfast I ate hours ago fights its way to the surface and I swallow it back down. My fingers grip tighter, pushing crescent-shaped marks into my palm.

“Mr. William Prescott,” Mrs. Bentham repeats.

There’s a shuffle in the crowd and for a second, I think it’s the door, but it’s not because it doesn’t budge.

And then there’s more silence.

Stifling, eerie silence. There’s nothing like this moment: a crowd full of eyes watching a stranger ditch you. Who the hell is this guy, anyway? How can he just not show up?

The rest of the room starts to murmur. Someone please save me already.

My cheeks turn fourteen shades of red and I steal a glance at Mrs. Bentham. She’s flustered, her hands flying all over the place, looking for a way to settle, but failing. And Ellore looks horrified. Mr. Bentham just stands there.

Then I hear it. Not just me, the whole room. The boys’ door opens and thousands of eyes look in that direction. I’m relieved and pissed.

And then I see him
and I’m pretty sure I’m dreaming.

Because it’s not William Prescott.

It’s Carter.

Chapter Sixteen

My mouth drops to the floor as I look at him. From his eyes, to the stubble on his chin, to the lips I wanted to kiss again. Carter is William?

Carter seems as surprised as I am. At least, I think. The smile is gone as we stare at each other. The unease in my stomach is more like a storm, and I know now that it’s the magic pulling from him—and my anger. I open my mouth to speak, and close it again.

This is a joke.

Carter shifts as Ellore looks between us, and then he forces the smile back on his face. But it’s not like before, not bright and gorgeous, it’s less. More unsure and totally fake.

How can he be this surprised? I told him I was being Paired for the test. He knew. He
never
mentioned this to me. He never mentioned a lot to me, like his name. William Prescott. If he’s William Prescott, then he was already being tested, too. He didn’t come here for me during the magic tests—he was already here. He lied to me about everything.

And he knows all my secrets.

The crowd recites our blessing and then Ellore’s hand is on my back and we all exit together.

“That was inappropriate,” Ellore says as soon as we’re off the stage.

“I’m sorry.” Carter’s eyes are on me and I don’t know whom he’s talking to. I’m not taking an apology. Not after that. “It was an accident. I lost track of time.”

I want to punch him the face.

And then I’ll apologize and say it was an accident. That I lost track of my fist.

“Let’s get to our training room,” Ellore says, clasping her hands together.

Carter scrubs his hand over his face while we walk. I move until I’m as close to him as I can stand to be, which is about four feet away, and I try
not
to look at him. Partly because he looks good today in that suit. Like, really good. And mostly because I want to see how many hits it would take to break his nose.

He steals a glance at me, and I walk faster behind Ellore. I don’t know what I’m supposed to say to him.

Our training room is pretty simple. Some mats, chairs, windows, water cooler. Ellore is talking, but I’m not hearing anything. It’s like the teacher in Charlie Brown, noise that doesn’t matter, and I can’t seem to focus on anything except Carter. I can’t believe he lied. I feel dirty and low, like I wasn’t worth his honesty. I feel betrayed.

“…gather some things.” Is all I hear before Ellore walks away. Her heels echo through the room and the door clicks shut. It’s just me and Carter and awkward silence. Him staring, me not sure what to think about any of this. The silence makes it worse because I want to fill it, but all my thoughts are angry.

He reaches out for me. For a second, I’m tempted to let his hand linger on my arm. To let him explain and pull me in, but before his hand actually reaches me I’m lurching away. “Don’t. Don’t touch me.”

“Pen—”

“Don’t call me that!” I yell.

He’s quiet for a second, eyes focused. “It’s me.”

I’m looking at him, but I don’t see Carter there. I see William Prescott. I see the boy who would lie to me about all of this, and that’s not a boy I want to know. I shake my head. It’s my own fault. I’ve only known him a week and I let him get too close. I got too close. And now this is crap. All of this.

“I can explain. There’s a reason I couldn’t tell you everything,” he says.

I can’t handle this. Not with him. Not after everything. It’s so complicated already with our magic and why did he lie? I never lied to him. Not once. In all my life, I’ve never been that honest with someone.

I won’t do that again.

“Pen, please,” he says, stepping closer to me. I can’t look away from him, and it’s the last place I want to look but he’s like the sun. He’s moving closer and my senses betray me. He smells like nutmeg mixed with cloves and it’s such an intoxicating scent.

He reaches out for my hand. It fits together with his. They feel right—more right than I want them to. “Pen, I never meant to hurt you.”

But you did. You are.

I yank my hand away. He can’t touch me. I don’t know who he is—Carter Trent or William Prescott—and I don’t want this. I can’t handle it. I run my hand through my hair and my brain is swirling. I should’ve seen it. He had his own secrets, his own reasons, but he never told me what they were. What’s the right thing to do? It’s Carter. It’s— “What’s your name?” I snap.

He locks his jaw and gives me an indignant look. “Carter.”

I shake my head. “Your real name?”

“It
is
Carter—William Carter Prescott. No one calls me William except the officials.”

“And Trent?”

“My mom’s maiden name,” he says.

I don’t know him at all. He looks like Carter, but all this new information is a little much. “I can’t be here with you,” I say.

I move to the door and try to pull it open. It doesn’t budge. The doors are locked. Right, of course they are. I’m stuck here and the room is closing in on me. I run to the other side of the room where there are more doors. Nothing. I look around. Five windows. I jump to one, but it doesn’t move either. Locked.

Carter’s hand touches the small of my back and I recoil. I’m pretty sure it hurt his feelings, but I don’t care. I need out.

“You’re freaking out,” Carter says. I press my forehead against the glass of the window. That’s an understatement. “At least you already know me so we can pass that awkward stage,” he says.

I snap away from the window and look at him. “Do I? How do I know you aren’t lying about something else?” Everything inside me is shaking. Even the magic is bubbling up inside me. I can’t breathe. I can’t think. I can’t do anything but be mad at him.

“This is why you didn’t want me to say anything about the demon hunting! The scandal of the head of Triad’s son hunting demons for fun. It would’ve ruined your father, your family,” I whisper.

“I told you the truth about that. It’s not what you think it is,” he says. His voice is rough and rushed.

I lean in closer to him. “
You’re
not what I thought you were. I told you about my parents—about myself. You didn’t even tell me your name.”

“I couldn’t, Pen,” he says. His hand reaches out to touch my face and everything boils more. I hate when people touch me when I’m upset. Even if this touch is different. I don’t want it to be different. I want to hate him, and right now I do.

“Let me explain it to you, Penelope.
Please
.”

For a second I think about it.

For a second I’m almost willing to let him plead his case to me. To explain. The way he’s looking at me, with his eyes all glassy and wide and innocent. With the sound of him begging me, and that one little
please
. I want to—God, do I want to—but who is he? I thought I liked him. I let him kiss me.

“You lied,” I say.

The magic builds within me with all the emotion. At any moment, I’m going to lose it, and it won’t be pretty. He reaches out for me again, but I move away. Carter opens his mouth to speak when Ellore comes back inside, a cart moving behind her. I step away from him, his eyes never leaving me, and walk past him until I’m standing next to Ellore.

She looks between us, something telling in her dark eyes, “Everything all right?”

I smile and I know it’s the most plastic smile ever. I’m okay with it.

“Peachy,” I say, crossing my arms. Ellore looks to Carter with an eyebrow raised, but he only smiles, too.

“Okay then,” she says, drawing out the
O
. “The thing you need to know about the test is that it’s on you. Not me. We can prepare all we want to in here, but in that test it’s you and the demons. If you want to pass you have to work together.”

I stare at her, waiting. Anything to take my mind off the lies that continue to swirl through my mind. She pulls a pair of boxing gloves out of the cart and tosses them to me.

“What do you say to some magic-free sparring?”

I smile. This one is real because nothing has ever sounded better.

Chapter Seventeen

Each time I punch, Carter blocks me. It’s so infuriating! He won’t let me get a hit in. Low punch, block. Uppercut, block. I even pulled out some of my karate moves, but nothing. How can he anticipate every move I’m making? Ellore sits across the room, watching us. She hasn’t said anything since we started. I wonder what she knows.

I blow a piece of hair out of my face and move around the mat on my toes. Carter’s all sweaty, his white undershirt soaked through. It’s gross. I do a fake-out punch toward Carter’s face, and instead lift my leg for a roundhouse kick. He grabs my leg and pushes it away only a centimeter from his abdomen.

Damn.
Thwarted again. He throws a punch at me too, but he doesn’t hit me at all. We’re evenly matched, which is probably why they paired us. That’s it. I need to make a move he won’t be expecting.

“Let’s take a break,” Ellore says, moving from her seat and making a beeline toward the bathroom. I drop my arms and Ellore flicks her wrist before she disappears through a door. Our gloves fall to the ground. Carter moves toward me, but I speed around him. I walk around the training room, hands on my hips. It’s really hot in here. I feel trapped by the walls, by myself, and by Carter.

“Pen,” he whispers, coming closer to me. I shake my head. I need to be angry with him or I won’t be able to function.

“Stop,” I say, as his fingers run across my skin. “I can’t.”

I turn away, but Carter snakes his arm around my waist and pulls me toward him. He doesn’t let me go this time. Carter’s mouth gets closer to my ear and his breath trails down my neck. “I never meant to hurt you, Penelope.”

I look up at him. “Well, you did.”

I try to move from his arms, but he doesn’t let go. He holds me tighter against him. The situation replays in my head. I try to think of something to say. All I can think about is punching him. My hands are trapped between our bodies, and that’s not happening.

“You ready to listen?” he asks.

I stare at him for a moment, and I almost say yes. Almost.

“No,” I say.

Before he can react I push away from him, raise my leg, and kick him in the shin. He shouts my name. I race back across the room toward the mats. That felt so good. I hope it hurts.

“Why would you do that?” Carter yells.

“You deserve a hell of a lot more,” I say.

Ellore stands next to me, her hand on my shoulder. When did she come back? Did she see me kick him? Now I’m more pissed at him. “I take it you two already know each other?”

Carter doesn’t respond.

“Most girls who kick him know him first. I used to do it all the time,” she says with a smile. I raise my eyebrow at her. “He’s my cousin.”

“What name do
you
call him?” I ask.

Ellore looks between the two of us. Everything is quiet for a couple of minutes, just the three of us sharing the same space and glances at one another. She crosses her arms.

“I’m going to leave you two for a while. Part of being a team is working it out, and if you can’t then you should quit now and stop wasting my time.” She turns on her heel and snaps her fingers so the cart follows her toward the door.

“Can’t I have a new partner?” I ask.

Ellore shakes her head. “You were Paired for a reason and you have no say in why or how.” She waves her hands around in the air and says an incantation in Latin. We both stare at her. “The door will unlock when the room feels like you’re ready. Tomorrow, I expect you’ll be more civil.”

The “
…
or don’t show up” is implied. Then she leaves.

Carter leans against the wall, studying me. I roll my eyes and plop down on the wooden bench in the corner. This is going to be a long afternoon.

I’m not sure how much time has passed when he walks over to where I’m sitting. Long enough for me to be starving, and long enough to realize I really liked Carter—pre-William era. Long enough for me to be curious about why he lied.

Not long enough for me to know how to forgive him.

Or to not want to kick him in the shin again.

He sighs heavily and hovers above me a second before he sits down a few inches away on the bench. I tug at my shirt, uncomfortably. Neither of us says anything at first.

“I’m sorry.”

“For which part?”

William Carter Prescott taps his fingers on his leg. “For all of it. I should’ve told you. But Penelope, my name comes with expectations. I didn’t want you to expect those things before you knew me.”

“I don’t know you,” I say.

He leans into my space. “You do know me. You’re the only one who knows me. To everyone else, I’m William Prescott. Next in line to be the Triad leader, noble, rich, powerful. To you, I’m just me.”

“Just you? A boy who wears a leather jacket and hunts demons in his spare time?”

His eyes are steady. “Yes.”

“You didn’t even tell me your real name.”

“It’s Carter,” he says. “My name is Carter and you are Pen—”

“I’m not Pen—” I say over him.

“—and we are meant to be together.”

I clamp my mouth shut. Every cell I have inside me—magical and not magical—is on alert. Tingling. If I were one of those motion-sensor singing fish, you’d never get me to shut up.

I cross my arms. “Because the Triad put us together?”

“Not because of them, no. Because of us. There’s a reason our magic works together. I’ve told you from the beginning that there’s something about you, and it’s completely trapped me.”

He reaches out to touch my hand and the magic stirs in me again. It fills me, bubbles to the surface, and surges with his. At first, nothing else happens. I cock my eyebrow, because maybe we broke the spell we were under—or whatever the explanation is. But then there’s a flash of light and a shattering. The windows I tried to escape through earlier burst. We look at the empty space.

“You were taking the tests, too. The same time as me. That’s why you didn’t mind being here,” I say.

Carter nods. “I was already here.”

I look at him—really look at him. He is still the Carter I knew. He is. I mean, he feels so right that it has to be. What am I supposed to do here? He still lied. All of this that I’ve been feeling? It still sucks. That doesn’t go away. He leans in toward me and brushes his hand across my jaw, rests it there.

I know what he’s planning. My heart knows it, too. It races around inside my chest and pounds against my head. He’s going to kiss me, and I want him to. God, I want him to.

“Don’t,” I say. My voice is weak—I have no control over anything, obviously. But he stops moving, his hand still frozen on my face. “Not like this. I’m not sure.”

Carter drops his hand. “What do you want to do?”

I don’t know what to do. I don’t know. I’m so close. He has to understand that. If he doesn’t understand that, then why are we here?

“Why didn’t you just tell me that you were going to be an Enforcer? Why keep it a secret?” I ask.

“I don’t know. Honestly. I wanted to tell you—especially when you told me everything—but then I couldn’t. I was a coward. I didn’t want you look at me the way you are right now. I’m sorry.”

“Too late now,” I say. Yesterday everything made more sense. Yesterday I was not Paired with Carter. Yesterday I didn’t know he was lying to me. Majorly. Today? Nothing makes sense.

“Tomorrow we’ll come back and we’ll get along. We’ll work together. We’ll train for the test and take it,” I say.

“And if we pass?” he asks.

“Then we’ve both got what we want. Shouldn’t be a problem,” I say. He looks like he wants to say something else so I add, “That’s all.”

His jaw tenses. “Right.”

I look away from him and move from the seat. He’s on my heels. “How long will you be mad at me about this?”

I shake my head. “I don’t know.”

“I guess that means I get to show you.”

“Show me what?”

“How hard I’m going to fight for you to trust me again.”

“Carter,” I say, not daring to look at him.

“I’ll prove it, Pen. I’m someone you can trust.”

He walks ahead to the door. I follow behind him. Carter knocks four times and stares at me in the silence. His gaze is a bit unnerving, like he’s seeing through me again.

“You know,” he says, “if I had to put my life in someone’s hands, there’s no one else I would choose. I trust you with everything.”

Not everything. You didn’t trust me with your secret.

A chill spreads across my spine. He doesn’t look away and neither do I—not until the door clicks open to set us free.

The chills don’t go away until I’m home under the covers. I eat dinner with my family, and try to be positive while they ask me questions about William Prescott, son of the Triad leader. I avoid all of Connie’s questioning looks and excuse myself before dessert and bury myself in my bed so she can’t ask about Carter.

The more I think about today, about Carter being William, the angrier I get. At the demons, at the Triad, at him, and at myself.

Tears fight to come out, but I won’t cry. Not until I figure it out. I’m a lot of things—even though I’m not really sure which right now, upset or angry or heartbroken or excited.

But I’m definitely sure that I was—am—falling in love with Carter Trent.

Which is really inconvenient, because I’m not sure I can trust William Prescott.

And how can you love someone you don’t know?