Between (21 page)

“Can you tune me out?” I ask. “Do you have to take on my emotions as well as your own?”

“I suppose I could, yes, but I never have. I’m used to handling both of us.” His eyes move from my hand to my face. “Would you prefer me to tune out?”

I press my lips together. I don’t want to be any more of a burden than I already am. So much of the pain I cause is beyond my control, but this is something I can do. Besides, I liked it better when my feelings were my own. “Yes.”

He nods. “I’ll keep that in mind. It’ll be an adjustment, but I can stop reading you all the time.”

“Thank you.”

After a moment, he pulls his hand from mine. “You should get some rest, and I should go see if there’s anything I can do at the lake.”

I don’t want him to leave, but I know I have to let him go. Whatever’s happening at the lake is more important than me right now. I hope he’s already tuning me out.

He rises from the table, and I join him. My whole body feels heavier, weighed down by exhaustion and memories. I yawn. “You’re right. I’m going to go to bed.”

“Alexander wants to work on your powers tomorrow. I’ll be here first thing in the morning.” He reaches a hand toward me then lets it fall, like he’s changed his mind. I want to step closer, to get inside his arms and stay there until I go to sleep, but I know he has a job to do.

“Seth?”

He lifts his eyebrows. “Yes?”

The bogmen live in shadows, and I spot several around my room. All these creatures I should be safe from are finding ways to get close to me anyway. I almost ask him to stay, but instead I say, “Nothing can come in here unless I let it, right?”

“Right.” He turns toward the door and stops, turning back to me. “Charlie?”

Stay. Please say you’re going to stay
. “Yes?”

“You’re safe.”

E
LEVEN

I
miss sleeping with my window open. I love waking up and listening to the random noises of the night. Crickets. Cows. A lone car on the road. Even the coyotes. I miss the sounds.

And the breeze. I miss lying in my bed, absolutely burning up, and letting the air flutter through the curtains and chill the sweat on my skin. My room here at Artedion is fine, with a perfectly controlled temperature that leaves me neither hot nor cold at night.

But I long for the breeze.

I miss everything about my life before Ellauria. Back when everything made sense and no one wanted to kill me, as far as I knew.

I’ve been lying here staring at darkness for hours. My body is completely drained, but my brain is working overtime. I roll to my side and pull my blanket over my shoulder. My eyes land on Sam’s guitar, and I wonder where he’s sleeping and if he’s comfortable. Is Mom with him? Does he close his eyes? Is he scared? Does he know where I am? I don’t let myself question whether or not he’s alive.

I flop onto my back and lay my arms on top of the blanket, fiddling with the beads on the red string tied around my wrist. “I swear,” I whisper to the ceiling, “I won’t give up until you’re with me.”

At least Mom chose to be in the Fellowship. At least she knew what she was getting into when she became my Aegis. Sam? He was born into this life, same as me. There was no choice, no exit clause. Nobody told us the lives we’d planned for ourselves would have to come second to what the Fellowship had already mapped out.

I sit up and lean forward, resting my elbows on my legs and pressing the heels of my hands to my eyes. There’s the dead centaur, right behind my eyelids, just like every other time I’ve closed my eyes tonight.

If I weren’t in Ellauria—would he be alive right now?

I push the covers away and turn on the lamp on my nightstand, tired of forcing sleep when it so obviously isn’t going to happen.

I grab a glass of water from the sink and carry it back to the sofa. I’m carrying too much of this on my shoulders. I’m not delusional enough to think I’m to blame for the deaths of the creatures at the lake or the trials my family has gone through. I’m not Whalen. I’m not evil. His actions are beyond my control.

Still, they happened because of me. I feel a weird sense of responsibility for what’s been sacrificed in my name.

Mom gave up Ellauria. Sam gave up normalcy. Seth gave up living a life solely for himself. Max gave his life. Marian gave her freedom. Now everyone in Ellauria is in danger, simply for sharing space with the last muralet.

I have to make it right.

I reach past the book about sirens for the tattered green bestiary Seth left earlier, and curl up beneath the chenille throw with the old book propped on my knees. The title has long since worn away, leaving empty indentations and gold flecks of thread where it once adorned the cover. I trace it with my fingers. The first letter is a large capital “B,” but the rest of the word is too shallow to trace. I flip it open to find pages filled with elegant handwriting, too curly and extravagant to be modern.

I thumb through the pages. There’s a page or two per creature, and each entry includes basic facts like who they are and what they look like, along with strengths and weaknesses. There’s no order to the list, just one creature after another. I stop when I notice a page titled
Harpy
.

Winged death spirit. Giant hawk with the head of a woman. Extremely violent. Fond of torturing victims before consuming them alive
.

Ick. There’s a sketch of a harpy in the bottom right corner, complete with empty black eyes and sharp, curved talons.

The next page has a drawing of a spider with ten legs covered in long hair, two of them held above its head like antennae. A pair of extremely large jaws protrudes from its mouth. At the top of the page are the words
Solif Spider
.

The size of a dinner plate. Runs at speeds of up to thirty mph. Can jump up to five feet. Victims report hearing a shrill scream before attack. Highly aggressive. Will typically aim for the neck. Venom is not poisonous, though bite can leave large wound
.

A giant, screaming, jumping spider. That’s about the most terrifying thing I can possibly imagine. Awesome.

I flip back to the front of the book and notice a signature at the bottom left of the inside cover.

Maxwell, founder

Everything goes blurry except for those two words. Max created this book? Max, my father?

I fan the pages, studying the drawings with new eyes. They’re elaborate and detailed, more than just quick sketches—these are realistic, careful representations. I turn to his signature again and run my finger across it.

My father was an artist. A truly gifted artist.

I hug the book to my chest and smile, savoring a moment of connection with a man I will never know. My father was an artist, and so am I. One more thing I can be sure of.

I read the pages in the order they were created, stumbling across terrifying creatures like banshees and chimeras tucked between more pleasant entries such as pixies, unicorns, and hobbits. I study the facts and drawings until my eyelids grow heavy, and scoot further down the couch until my head rests on the pillow. When I close my eyes again, the centaur is gone, replaced by a slideshow of hand-drawn creatures and scripted handwriting.

Seth knocks on my door the next morning as I pull my black T-shirt over my head. When I step out of the bathroom, he’s standing by the couch, eyeing the wrinkled throw and sunken pillow. His hair is more chaotic than usual, but it works on him. Everything works on him. The messy hair, the light stubble on his jaw, and definitely that yellow button-up shirt with the rolled-up sleeves. I run my fingers through the still-damp waves of my hair and say, “I had a hard time sleeping last night.”

“Me, too.” He grabs Max’s book from the table where I’d left it, upside down, opened to the page where I’d stopped reading. “After everything you saw yesterday, you chose this as your nighttime read? No wonder you couldn’t sleep.”

I pluck the book from his hands. “You didn’t tell me Max was an artist.”

Seth grins, and I’m so grateful for his smile. “Who do you think painted the map in the lobby?”

“He painted, too?” My father was an artist. He loved the things I loved. Warmth spreads through my chest and down my body.

“Different mediums.” He drops his chin and looks me in the eye. “Just. Like. You.”

I smile, unable to say or do anything else. All these things make my father more real, like he was someone I would’ve loved, if I’d had the chance. Maybe even as much as Mom and Sam.

I set the book on the table and look at Seth. “After what happened at the lake yesterday, I never heard if there was anything new on Mom and Sam,” I say.

The corners of his mouth drop. “Yeah. Let’s sit.” Seth steps around the coffee table to sit down, throwing the blanket across the end of the sofa. The expression on his face tells me I’m going to hear something unpleasant, and I bite the inside of my lip. I sit beside him, crossing my legs beneath me and pulling the pillow into my lap.

“We found evidence of harpies near the gate where they were supposed to enter the Between,” he tells me. “Alexander and I are now certain the harpy yesterday morning was here for you.”

“What kind of evidence?” I hug the pillow to my chest and brace myself. The bestiary said harpies ate their victims alive, and Clara had called them messy eaters. I try not to imagine what might be left behind, but it’s useless.

“Nothing to make us think Adele and Sam are dead, Charlie,” he says quickly. “At this point we think they’re being kept somewhere.”

I close my eyes and exhale into the pillow, overcome with relief. They’re alive. Probably.

Definitely.

They’re definitely alive.

But why? I saw the harpy yesterday. She could’ve ripped me to shreds in seconds. Why show restraint with Mom and Sam? “Why would someone keep them? Who? Where?”

Seth turns toward me and lays his arm across the back of the sofa. “Whalen is obsessed with power. Neither Adele nor Sam is particularly useful on their own, but they become pretty valuable if they’re important to, say, a muralet.” He lifts his eyebrows. “We think he’s going to offer you a trade.”

My stomach churns. A trade. My family for my blood, like goods in a market. That’s all they are to him—a means to an end. They’re only worth what they can do for him. They’re completely unimportant on their own.

I clench my jaw. He doesn’t value them as living creatures. They’re bargaining chips.

Not that I’m questioning his ruthlessness after what I saw yesterday. “What about the lake attack? Did you guys find anything else?”

Seth bends his arm and rests his head in his hand, spreading his fingers through his hair. “No. There wasn’t much we could do. It’ll be a few days before we can remove the bodies. The necrolate has to be gone before we can touch anything. The fairies took care of a lot, though. Alexander helped Clara create a spell to mask the decomposition until we can get everything cleaned up.”

I remember the way the fairies flew back and forth across the lake, studying the massacre. “What were the fairies doing yesterday?”

“They sense death,” he explains, sitting up straighter and removing his arm from the back of the sofa. “The humans got a lot right in their fairy legends—fairies create life throughout the world with plants of all kinds. But they also play a very important part in death. They’re in tune with every step of life’s cycle. It comes in handy for the Fellowship when we’re searching for survivors or dealing with death of any sort.”

“Would they be able to sense Mom and Sam?” I ask. “If they’re dead, would the fairies know?”

As soon as the question is out, I can’t decide what I want the answer to be. On one hand, I’d know for sure, one way or the other. On the other hand, I’d know for sure, one way or the other.

Do I want to know?

The tremor in my pulse says no.

Seth scoots closer and puts his hand on my knee. “Don’t think like that. We’ll find them. We have a starting point now. We know they made it to the gate, and we’ll track them from there.”

He’s right. Snap out of it, Charlie. They’re alive, and they’re going to stay that way. If the harpies have them, there must be a way to track them. I lean against him, resting my head on his shoulder. “Do we know how the harpy got inside Ellauria?”

Seth lies back on the couch again, taking me with him. He rests his feet on the coffee table, and I rest my feet on his legs. “Something’s messing with magic, affecting some of the older sorcery. There’ve been too many breakdowns in spells lately. The fairy rings, the gates, even the transport of your art supplies from the mortal realm to Artedion,” he says. “It’s probably a first-or second-year Apprentice, one smart enough to read magic, but not skilled enough to actually control it.”

I go back to what Seth said about having a starting point. My brain starts putting thoughts together and coming up with plans, and I give myself a moment to let it work. “If we figure out where the harpy entered Ellauria,” I say slowly, “we could trace it back to where it came from. The Aegises in the mortal realm can trace from their side, and we trace from here.”

The plan of action reenergizes me, lifting me off the sofa. This will work. I jump to my feet and start pacing. I talk with my hands, firing off words. “We’ll be coming at them from both directions. We’ll find them twice as fast.”