Brodi Ashton: Evertrue

I opened my eyes and caught a glimpse of him looking at me from under the lampshade on the desk in the corner of the library. He set down a yellowed piece of paper on a large stack of similar pages, all part of the documents I’d taken from Mrs. Jenkins’s house after she’d been killed.

I shook my head, trying to erase the memory of finding Mrs. Jenkins’s body on her couch, the life drained out of her. Cole had told me Max and the other Dead Elvises had killed her. She’d known too much about me, and Cole didn’t want word getting back to the queen that a Forfeit had survived the Feed. I didn’t know how Cole planned to take over the throne, but I knew he was counting on the element of surprise.

The documents in front of Jack were the only thing left of Mrs. Jenkins. And since Cole had taken my heart two weeks ago and then left town—like he always seemed to do when we needed him—these documents were all we had to focus on.

“How did you know I was doing the spiral-of-hate thing?” I said.

Jack frowned. “Because your eyes were squinty. And your hand was over your heart. And you have that look that says you want someone’s head on a stick.”

I reached across the table and brushed a clump of brown hair from his cheek. “You hate him too.”

He shrugged. “That’s an absolute. But I’m trying to focus my hate on finding a cure for your . . . condition.”

“Is that what we’re calling it? A condition? I’m missing a vital organ. I’m not sure if condition covers it.”

“We still don’t know if you’re an Everliving. You haven’t been able to feed on me.”

Jack was right. Since that first night, I’d tried to feed off him, but nothing had happened. Could it be possible that Cole had stolen my heart yet I was still human?

If Cole were here I’d ask him, but he’d taken off with the band. And most likely with my heart. Jack and I had camped out at his condo for three days before we started seeing internet chatter about a Dead Elvises concert in Milwaukee. He’d been gone ever since.

“Can I be truthful?” I asked.

“You mean, can you be pessimistic,” Jack said.

“Truth. Pessimism. They’re sort of one and the same lately.”

Jack sighed. “Go ahead.”

“We’ve been through the documents. A thousand times. We’ve found nothing.”

Jack pointed to one of the papers he’d been looking through. “Actually, this one has instructions on becoming a Shade. Apparently if you’ve been an Everliving long enough and then you miss a Feed, you become a Shade.”

Miss a Feed. I’d known only one Everliving who’d missed a Feed. I thought back to my trip through the labyrinth. “Cole’s friend Ashe missed a Feed. He looked like he was made of smoke. Maybe he was becoming a Shade.” I shook my head. “It doesn’t matter. Instructions on how to become a Shade don’t help me.”

“You never know what will help. We’ll keep looking.” He leafed through a few more pages, then held up one. “Here’s something about a glowing rock. Maybe that will mean something. Something we could take to Professor Spears.”

I rolled my eyes and glanced out the window. We’d done that already too. We’d gone to Professor Spears. He was able to help us once before, when he’d deciphered an ancient bracelet and told us that Cole’s heart was an object.

Last week we’d sat in his office and told him the truth about Cole, and me, and my missing heart, and the fact that I was an Everliving now. He’d accused us of playing an elaborate prank on him. Stopped just short of running us out of the building. We’d had Meredith’s bracelet with us, but that wasn’t necessarily proof of anything; and I didn’t think documents about a glowing rock would make any difference. It was frustrating that I couldn’t make him understand.

“Professor Spears can’t be the only person who knows about this stuff,” Jack said.

“He’s not, but the people who do know about it—the Daughters of Persephone, or the Everlivings themselves—don’t exactly have loose lips.” From the window, I could see across the street to the city park. A mother and father taking turns pushing their toddler on the swing, a man throwing a Frisbee to his golden retriever, a bunch of girls playing some sort of game that involved tagging and freezing, out enjoying the blue sky of the coming summer. But my focus was on the mother and father. Would Jack and I ever grow old together? Would I ever grow old at all?

“Look at me, Becks,” Jack said.

I turned away from the window toward Jack.

“We’ll find a way to save you.”

I smiled. “Look at me . I don’t need saving. I’m just not going to ever grow old. And then when the next Feed happens, in ninety-nine years, I’ll skip it and die. I’m not ancient, so skipping a Feed won’t make me a Shade. So we have ninety-nine years.”

There was one part of my diagnosis that I hadn’t told him about yet, though. The day after Cole had stolen my heart, I’d started to feel weak. The feeling had only gotten progressively worse since then. But I didn’t want to scare Jack.

Jack reached across the wide desk and put his hand on my cheek. I was surprised he could reach so far, but then again, he’d come out of the Tunnels so much bigger and taller than he had been before. It affected his wingspan.

“Maybe you’re the one who needs saving,” I said.

Jack raised an eyebrow. “Why is that?”

“Because you came out of the Tunnels bigger. And taller. And who gets taller at eighteen years old?”

Jack pressed his lips together and dropped his hand. “Nobody dies from getting taller. And bigger.”

“Yes, but there was that one boy in Indiana who died from too many abs.”

Jack’s lips quirked up in a grin. “Now you’re just making stuff up.”

“Nothing is as it seems in the Everneath. The fact that it made you bigger . . .”

“We’re not going to worry about maybes right now either. I don’t know why I came back bigger, but at least I have all my vital organs.” He reached his hand across the table again, only this time he placed it directly beneath my collarbone. “Call me selfish—and really, I’m completely selfish when it comes to you—but I want you. All of you. Your heart included.”

“You have my heart.”

“Only metaphorically.”

“If you want to drop the metaphors, you can have my hands,” I said.

Jack smiled, and then he wrapped his fingers around my wrists and brought my hands to his lips. He kissed each fingertip. “What else can I have?” he asked.

“Hmmmm,” I said, still focusing on the way his lips moved softly against my skin. “My elbows. I can throw those in for good measure.”

He released his grip on my wrists and grabbed my elbows. “If I have the elbows, I might need the rest of your arms.”

“I think we can negotiate those,” I said.

With a grin, he stood up and pulled me to a nearby corner behind a wall of books. He guided me gently until my back was up against the wall. His hands moved up and over my elbows to my neck. I looked past him to make sure no one could see us; but when he pushed the collar of my shirt aside and put his lips on my shoulder, I stopped caring if we were in anyone’s view. I shivered.

“Um, we never discussed the shoulders,” I said, my voice ridiculously breathless.

“Sorry,” he said. “I get carried away talking about elbows and things.”

My head tilted so his lips could get better access to the base of my neck. “Just wait until I tell you about my kneecaps.”

He put his lips on mine, and it was a long time before I thought about kneecaps again.

A buzzing sound made us pull apart and catch our breaths. Jack pulled out his phone and checked the screen.