Brodi Ashton: Evertrue

“You’re right,” Jack said. “It doesn’t. She doesn’t know you exist, and the good thing about Cole is that he will guard that knowledge to the grave. But the sooner we confront him, the better.”

“It’ll have to wait until after school.”

Jack’s phone buzzed with an incoming call. As he pulled it out of his pocket, I glimpsed the caller ID.

“Does your mom know where you spend your nights?” I asked.

“Everyone knows where I spend my nights,” he said, pressing the ignore button and putting the phone back in his pocket.

“Then why doesn’t she do anything about it?”

“She’s not about to do anything that might push me to ‘run away’ again. So I guess my time in the Tunnels turned out to be a good thing.” I sat down, and his hand trailed down my shoulder and my back. I shivered into him. “Why?” he said. “What does your dad think?”

“That I’ll always be twelve years old. Going on eleven. He doesn’t know.”

“He knows,” Jack said, always reading my mind. “He just refuses to see.”

I shrugged. “He’d kill you if he knew.”

“He knows, Becks. He’s just trying not to lose you again.”

We drained our cups, and I rinsed out the first one and put it in the sink; but as I was cleaning the second one, I accidentally dropped it and it shattered in the sink. Jack came up behind me and put his arms around me.

“Don’t be nervous,” he said.

I shook my head, confused. I wasn’t normally a klutz. The coffee cup hadn’t even been slippery. “About summer school? I’m not. It must’ve . . . slipped or something.”

He dipped his head toward my neck; but before his lips could make contact, the door connecting the kitchen to the garage swung open, and my dad rushed in. Another one of his “surprise” visits that worked almost as well as a chastity belt.

Jack sprang away from me as if I’d given him an electric shock.

“I forgot my travel mug,” my dad said. “I trust I’m not interrupting anything.”

“No, Mr. . . . Mayor,” Jack said, his voice shaky.

Mr. Mayor ? I rolled my eyes. Could he be any more formal? “Actually, Dad, we were just about to leave for school,” I said.

My dad raised an eyebrow. “Great. We can all walk out together.” My dad looked at his watch. “I have to get to the office.”

I nodded and pulled out my own phone to check the time.

My dad stared at the hand that held the phone. “What’s on your wrist?” he said. “Did you hurt it?”

Confused, I looked down. Right along the wrist line there was the faint shadow of a dark band. It wrapped around the entire circumference of my wrist, as if a watch band had rubbed some of its color off on my skin.

But at first glance it looked like a light bruise.

I pulled down my sleeve, glimpsing Jack’s suddenly wide eyes. “It’s nothing. I think my bracelet just left a mark.”

I smiled and kissed Dad’s cheek, grateful once again that my dad wouldn’t have noticed that I didn’t wear jewelry.

I grabbed my bag, and Jack followed me out the door, staring intently at his phone as he walked. Once we were in the car, I jabbed my elbow into his ribs.

“You seemed enthralled with the blank screen of your phone back there,” I said.

“What’s on your wrist?” he said. The effort he used to force his voice to sound calm had the opposite effect. He sounded devastated. “Did I do that? Did I grab your wrist the other night?” He sucked in a deep breath. “Did I hurt you?”

“No,” I said. “No. I don’t know what it is, but it doesn’t hurt.” I held out my hand in front of his face, twisting my wrist back and forth. “It’s not anything.”

Jack closed his eyes and nodded. “Okay.” The second he turned on the ignition, my phone buzzed with a text.

I checked the screen. “From Cole,” I said.

“What did he say?”

I took a deep breath as I reread the message on the screen. I involuntarily looked at the mark on my wrist before I read the text out loud. “He’s asking if my shackle has appeared yet.”

Jack pressed his lips together, and his nostrils flared. “Is he talking about your wrist?”

I shrugged.

“How would he have known?”

“It’s probably a coincidence,” I said, but the way it came out didn’t sound very convincing.

“Text him back. Tell him we need to see him. Now.”

I texted and got an immediate response. “He says he’ll see me at school.”

Jack sighed. He gunned the gas and then let up off the pedal as if he couldn’t decide whether he wanted to get me to school faster or never take me there at all.

NOW

The Surface. On the way to summer school.

Jack took the corners tight. Fast. As if he’d decided on speed over turning in slow circles.

I was happy he was paying so much attention to driving that he didn’t see my face, because my reaction to Cole’s text was a little more baffling.

It was exhaustion. I fought to keep my eyelids up. My head kept tilting to the side as I started to drift off. I thought maybe some fresh air would help, but when I went to raise my hand to open the window, nothing happened. My hand didn’t move from its position on my thigh.

I stared hard at the hand, willing it to go up, but Jack pulled in front of the school before the hand actually moved.

It was as if I were on a ten-second delay.

Jack threw the car into park and then turned to say something to me, but whatever it was he wanted to say got caught in his mouth once he saw my face. His eyes grew wide.

“What?” I said.

“You’re so pale. And the circles under your eyes are even darker than they were. You look . . .” His voice faded away as he seemed to catch himself from saying something else.

“I look what? Say it.”

He frowned. “You look worse than when you first came back from the Everneath.”

Without hesitating, Jack leaned forward and kissed me. Still, there was . . . nothing. No exchange of energy. Our kiss was just a kiss.

He pulled back. “It’s still not working. I didn’t feel any energy leave me.”

“Me neither.” I sighed. “So maybe this weakness is a human thing, not an Everneath thing.”

Jack frowned again and looked as if he didn’t believe me. “Maybe we should go to a doctor.”

“Hah!” The exclamation was involuntary, as if I didn’t have the energy to control my immediate reactions. For a moment I felt a burst of energy, and it showed itself through words pouring out of my mouth. “Sorry. I just . . . suddenly I thought about how that visit would go. The doctor pulls out a stethoscope, holds it to my chest, and asks me to breathe deep. Then he gets a really confused look on his face. He puts the little listener thingy on another spot. Then another. He’ll be speechless. And then we’d have to act all surprised and be all ‘What? No heartbeat? Huh. Funny. Moving on, the bigger problem is why do I have circles under my eyes?’

“And he’d say, ‘Wait a second. Did you hear me? No heart!’ And we’d be all ‘Yes, yes, we heard you. But other than missing a major organ, what’s wrong with me?’ And then he’d go on and on about the whole no-heart thing, and then I would try to distract him by doing that dance I do—you know, the one that looks like the running man. . . . But before I finish my entire routine, the doctor would be texting the CIA to tell them about my lack of heart, and the rounds of involuntary government testing would begin. And then—”

Jack leaned forward and cut off my next word by covering my lips with his. It was a few minutes before we stopped, and by then I’d forgotten everything except the feel of Jack’s lips pressed hard against mine.