Ann Aguirre - Mortal Danger

“It’s not a big deal, Edie. I was already serving a life sentence. So it doesn’t matter.”

“It does to me.” I fixed him with a look that promised I wouldn’t budge until he confessed, but Kian shook his head.

“Knowing certain things would make your life worse. This is one of them.”

“Before, you said ‘I want you to have a life.’ And you looked so sad. Is it because you signed away what little freedom you had left? For me?”

“Stop talking,” he said firmly.

I wasn’t in the mood, at first, when he started kissing me, but Kian’s mouth changed that. Even though his physical closeness felt good, it didn’t change my sadness. When Kian left an hour later, my sorrow still went bone deep, because our kisses tasted of loss and endings. The Pandora’s box in my head exploded, peppering me with emotional shrapnel: Brittany, Russ, now Cameron. The guilt spread through my system like a poison, and I couldn’t even rely on Kian to be straight with me. Our relationship could survive all kinds of stress, but not his silence or his secrets, and I didn’t want to watch us die like I had Cameron. That night, I cried until my head ached.

Things didn’t look better in the morning, possibly because my eyes were almost swollen shut. An hour of cold compresses reduced the damage enough for me to leave my room. Sunday my parents slept in; I couldn’t talk to them and a day in isolation wouldn’t help, so I shoved some things in a backpack and headed out. One of my favorite places in the city was the Victory Garden on Boylston. During the day, it was a great place to walk when you had nowhere else to be and, more important, it was free. During the worst time of my life, I’d spent hours hiding there and pretending I had a social life. Today, the character of each plot didn’t charm or relax me. I wandered aimlessly, shoulders bowed beneath the awareness that Cameron was gone, and it was my fault.

I wish I knew what I accomplish that’s so important. The immortals were batshit crazy if they thought I could see things like this and then stay on course toward a shining future. Of course, maybe that’s the point. You don’t know who killed Cam. If Dwyer is watching you, he might’ve decided that guilt would drive you nuts. If that was true, maybe I didn’t manifest the death dog after all. It wouldn’t save Cameron, but then I wouldn’t have to live with knowing I was a heinous person. But I’d ping-ponged over who to blame before.

Despite the brisk breeze and the sunlight, I spun in place, suddenly wary. The people wandering the garden this late in the year were mostly old. A few gardeners had planted pumpkins and had Halloween displays not yet taken down. Bales of hay and gourds, mostly, though there were ghosts made of white sheets and fat-bellied witches from plastic trash bags. I didn’t see anyone rang my alarm bells.

Until something rasped, “Hello, pretty-girl skin.”

The thin man had spoken to me once before and I would never forget that sound, or the waft of the grave that poured from his mouth. I whirled, making sure he was out of reach. Kian said not to let him touch you. But he wasn’t close enough. Yet. People passed all around us, probably guessing I was admiring the autumnal colors in the chrysanthemums before me.

“What do you want?” I growled the words, low, hoping nobody would notice the crazy girl talking to the flowers.

“I bring a message from my master.”

“And who’s that?”

“The Lightbringer, of course.”

A scared click of my brain, and I suspected he meant Dwyer, who Kian had guessed must’ve been known as the sun god. “Make it fast.”

Pure bravado, because what would I do if he attacked? Before, when I tried to escape, he appeared in front of me in the blink of an eye. My heart pounded out a terrified rhythm. If I can’t run, maybe I can fight. Too bad I had no idea how.

“He is waiting. Waiting for you to breathe your last,” he rasped. “Your death is already written. But you cheated, pretty-girl skin. Now you’re a hole in the world, and you let other people fall in your stead. How long before you become one of us?”

With awful, empty eyes, he reached for me. This time, I understood the futility of running, so I did the only thing I could. I touched him first.

Madness. He doesn’t take your life. He steals your mind instead.

My brain spilled over with cascading flashes of pain and violence, red splatter, black dog, crawling maggots, a bird eating a fish head. The images twisted and bled, burrowed deep until I couldn’t think, and still it wasn’t finished. Despair, decay, dread poured into me, endless rivers of poison, until my vision grayed, replaced by shadows, echoes of footsteps running away, away. I tried to call out, but a bony fist about my throat choked my voice.

For a few seconds, I saw how this ended—me gibbering in a padded room while nurses shot me full of tranquilizers, and then I glimpsed the other end of the tunnel, where this vacant thing hunched, avid for my pain. Channeling everything toward me left a vacuum on the other side. Simple physics. Trembling, I fought the only way I could—with my own dreams and memories, hopes and longings. I shoved back hard, until slivers of me plinked into the empty well. Spelling bee, DNA model, trip to the Grand Canyon, first kiss, A + in calculus—I swam against the toxic stream, carrying my life, my identity with me.

You didn’t touch me, I told him silently. I touched you . That makes you mine.

When I couldn’t bear more without screaming myself hoarse, the thin man vanished. My eyes snapped open; I was on the ground, surrounded by worried onlookers. A middle-aged woman I had noticed tending a garden nearby crouched beside me.

“Are you diabetic? Epileptic? Do you have medicine?” She spoke slowly, like I might not be able to understand her.

I shook my head, coming up onto my knees. “I’m all right, right and tight.”

Dizzy, I scrambled to my feet and rushed away, staggering with each step. I heard an older man say, “Probably a tweaker. Cops don’t patrol this place like they should. You know I’ve found needles down by the water?”

Sadly, being mistaken for a junkie was better than them thinking I was nuts. Near the exit, my legs went watery, I grabbed on to the fence and forced myself to stay awake through sheer force of will. With agonizing languor, the tendrils receded; my brain felt as if it had pinpricks all over it. But it was mine, wholly mine, and if I’d had the strength, I would’ve shouted in triumph.

Like a drunkard, I stumbled home, and it took me the better part of an hour, though I wasn’t far in terms of physical distance, but I kept having to rest before my legs gave out: curbs, benches, other people’s front steps. I didn’t realize I was sitting near Kian’s building until he strode down the street toward me. Rarely did I get the chance to observe him when he didn’t know I was looking; in this unguarded moment, his mouth was compressed into a grim, pale line, and his green eyes held the weight of a promise he refused to share. Women checked him out as he went by, but he never turned. Not once.

In fact, not expecting me, he hurried past and then whipped around, like he might’ve imagined me. I managed a weak smile. “Hey, way.”

“Are you waiting for me?” he asked, butterfly-tentative.

“Nope.”

“Then what are you doing?”

“Sitting.” I sounded giddy, goofy, even, I couldn’t stop giggling. “Hitting.”

“Edie?” He crossed to me in a few steps, leaned in with a look of dismay gradually dawning. “Jesus Christ. I smell him on you.”