Blood To Blood (26 page)

Sure enough, his frown became
less deep, and I could see the space between his brows again. He was relaxing.
“That's good, Angel,” he said into the intercom. The beginnings of a small
smile played around the corners of his mouth.

I felt victorious. I’d
actually done that. But soon my joy turned to doubt.

Was it right? To purposely
manipulate someone's emotions, even if it was, supposedly, for their own good?
After all, if Sawyer, or anyone, wanted to be in a nasty mood, did I have the
right to decide otherwise? As the implications sank in, I remembered what Star
and the others had said about the importance of free will. No, I had no right
to do that. I had no right to force my will on an unsuspecting person, no
matter how right it seemed to me.

Relax, sis.

I looked down and sure enough
my feet floated slightly above the floor. I took a deep breath and immediately
touched down, vowing to never manipulate him, or anyone, again.

The morality thing’s
complex, huh, Angel? The more you explore your abilities, the more dilemmas pop
up.

“Let's start with No. 8,”
Sawyer said to Don, who began hitting buttons and sliding do-hickeys. Sawyer
turned to speak into the intercom. “We'll start with No. 8 Angel.” Of course,
he didn’t know I could hear everything outside of the booth.

I nodded and resolved to
never manipulate him, or anyone, again. The music started to play in my
headphones. No. 8 was one of my favorite tracks. Musically, it was straight
pop, but Sawyer had managed to incorporate a classical cello that captured the
mood I was in when I'd written the lyrics during one of those mind-numbing
history classes. The song was about the uncertainty of a new journey, and the
longing of wanting to share the trip with someone who understood me. They were
my insights right before The Change happened. I marveled at how far I'd come
since writing them.

Closing my eyes, I put all
the emotion stemming from those revelations into the sounds coming from my
mouth.

“
Is there anyone who
understands?
”

I belted the high note and
held it, remaining conscious of the level of intensity and the fact there were
mortals within feet of me.

I continued to hold the note
and opened my eyes. The first and only thing I saw through the window was
Sawyer, and I sang to him:

“I know the road is winding/

I know that it's mine alone.

But
I know you'll be there to hold my hand/

Until
I get back home.”

His eyes bore into me like
lasers. The music stopped and the spell was broken. He gestured for me to leave
the booth. When I emerged, LaLa and Julietta were all smiles, high-fives, and
complimentary pats on the back. Don winked at me before turning back to his
soundboard. But Sawyer didn’t even deign to look in my direction. I blinked
back the red sting of angry tears.

“Julietta, let's do this,” he
said in a clipped tone.

“I'm not ready,” she
squeaked. LaLa and I instantly recognized the deer-in-headlights look: Jules
was having an anxiety attack. She had them, too, every now and then, especially
in situations where she felt inadequate. Despite her lovely voice, she didn't
feel capable in this new professional recording environment.

I passed her a hot cup of tea
with large squirts of lemon juice and honey. LaLa rubbed her back while
whispering an encouraging pep talk. “I'm sorry,” Jules said.

“Just give her a few
minutes,” I told Sawyer and Don.

“We need to take a break
anyway,” Sawyer said in a monotone. And with that, he left the studio and went
outside.

We all looked at each other
in confusion. Sawyer never left the studio, especially in the middle of a
session. It wasn't my imagination. He was acting bizarre. After making sure
Jules was all right, I excused myself, grabbed my knapsack, and went outside,
too. It wasn’t until I isolated his scent and followed it that I realized I was
instinctively tracking him.

His scent led me to his
apartment. The door was unlocked, so I walked in. His studio was
uncharacteristically dark. I sat in the unlit space and drank down several
thermoses while listening to him upstairs, pumping dogged push-ups. After a
minute, I made my way up the stairs—something none of us had done since
meeting him. The second floor was a long hallway, off of which were a number of
closed doors. Each door had a number on it.

Cici picked up on the growing
feeling of trepidation I was experiencing.
Angel, what are you doing?

I had to find him. Intrigued,
I followed the strongest trail of his scent, and it led me to one closed door
in particular. Number five.

This must be his bedroom
,
Angel, maybe you shouldn’t
—

I ignored her and knocked on
the door.

“Come in, Angelika,” he
whispered from behind the closed door. How did he know it was me and why would
he think I could hear him whisper? For one second, I considered heeding Cici's
warning. But I knew there was no turning back down the hallway. There was no
turning back from him. I slowly opened the door.

Sawyer lay, shirtless, on the
floor in the middle of his room. On his chest, a thin sheen of perspiration
glistened in the muted sunlight fighting its way through heavy black curtains.
I stepped inside and closed the door behind me. There was a king-sized bed
covered with a mussed black and gold comforter with black sheets. The headboard
was a massive antique. A treadmill lived in the opposite corner, and bushy
potted trees hinted that sunlight was allowed into the room after all.

And then there was the altar.

His voice was soft. “I can't
hide who I am from you anymore.”

I was so absorbed in the
altar, and the implications, I didn’t know he was standing a few inches behind
me. “You practice magic.” I said in disbelief.

“I'm very much a novice.” He
paused before continuing. “And…to reference a popular phrase, I see dead
people. They’ve been telling me things. About you. I know you're different.”

Panic arose. When I took a
deep breath to calm it, the scent of him traveled deeply into my very core.
Warning bells set off in my mind. But it wasn't because I was hungry. It was
because he was weird like me and I wanted to rejoice. My impulse was to hug
him, kiss him. But instead, I fought against the urge until my face felt like
stone.

“They won't tell me
why
you're different, though,” he continued.

I knew I had to turn around
and face him. But my feet seemed glued to the floor.

“Angel. Is this a deal
breaker?”

Where was my voice? I
couldn't speak.

“If it is, I'd understand.”
His voice was like velvet behind me. “My mom more or less denounced me because
of it.” I listened to his footsteps and the subsequent groan of the hardwood
floor as he walked back to the middle of the room and sat down. “When I was
little...things used to happen around me,” he said. “They still do.”

I finally turned around to
face him. He looked so upset. I wanted to soothe the frown that had again
settled on his brow, but I knew if I moved toward him I might not be able to
control myself. Knew that if I touched him, I wouldn't, couldn’t stop. So I
waited. When he continued, it was in a gush, as if he were exhaling after a
long moment of holding his breath.

“My parents were both sixteen
when I was born. My Dad was an angry, racist alcoholic who hated everybody. He
beat her everyday that I can remember.”

His Georgian accent came out
the more he talked. I was completely enthralled.

“He even beat her when she
was pregnant. She lost that baby, and even though I was only four, I knew she
lost it because of me. You see, when my parents went at it, I got angry and
scared, and things would break. Dad would get injured. And one day, he just
disappeared.”

“Literally?” He nodded while
eyeing me closely.

“I finally told him, ‘I wish
you would just disappear.’ He did.”

Whatever he saw on my face
made him feel comfortable enough to continue. “The older I got, the more these
weird things would happen to the people around me. Like Mom's boyfriend. He
drank
and
did meth. I was nine when he started hitting me. One night he
hauled back to punch me again, and just dropped dead. I knew something was
really wrong with me when he came to me afterward and thanked me, but no one
else could see him.”

I wasn't sure which part of
Sawyer's story was more disturbing: the abuse, the destructive emotions, his
communication with the dead, or that after hearing all of this, I found him
even sexier than before.

“Shortly after that, Ma
discovered the church. There was a music teacher there who taught music theory
and piano. It all helped me feel normal. But the more normal I felt, the more
spirits I would see.
I had
no friends. Instead of going out to play, I shut myself in my room and played
my guitar and an old beat-up keyboard the teacher gave me.”

I imagined a young, isolated
Sawyer, lonely and in his own world of music and unexplained magic. My heart
ached for him.

“Eventually, Ma met my
step-dad at church. Never treated me bad. But when he found out I was different,
she became afraid something would happen to him, too. Said she'd seen it, my
way of being, in the family before. Her Mom; my Nana. She begged me not to hurt
Mick the way I'd hurt the other two.

“I knew then that I had to
visit Nana to understand what I was and what I was capable of. Sophomore year,
I got her address and traveled over three counties away. It was the best thing
I could have done.”

He smiled and my heart
melted.

“She told me that when I have
strong feelings toward someone—anger, hate, fear, love—it causes
magic to happen, sometimes in dangerous ways. Every summer I stayed with her
and she taught me how to control my way of being so I wouldn’t hurt, or kill,
anyone else. Since then, I've worked at it.” His hands balled into fists. “I
thought it was under control.”

I wanted to know more about
his grandma, but his tortured eyes stopped my questions. I remained silent and
he continued.

“Then I met you. And my world
turned upside down. Heist. The shooting at the house. The fights at your
concert. People were dying and getting hurt again. And it’s because I...have
strong feelings for you.”

My heart was beating out of
control and I wondered if his ever-steady heartbeat was a result of his learned
self-control. It was all starting to make sense. His moodiness and his
insistence that my getting shot was his fault. All the things he listed were a
result of my lack of control, but he'd thought it was his doing. How could I
tell him he was wrong? That it wasn't him, that it was actually me? How could I
tell him the truth without doing further harm to my family or to him?

Angel, don't you dare...

I'm not going to expose
us, Cici. But I have to say something.

I walked over and sat down on
the floor in front of him.

“I could never shun you,
Sawyer. Anymore than I could shun myself.”

We sat there for a while,
breathing and exhaling together. Watching each other with cautious, excited
eyes. I wondered how intense his “manifestations” were. What would happen to me
if he didn't concentrate? The air of danger that always seemed to surround him
now made sense. And it made me want him even more. It felt like there had been
an unspoken agreement between us that only now was coming to the surface.

“I’ve always had to hide
pieces of me,” I continued. “From everyone; people at school, my family, the
girls. But I feel like I can tell you anything. As much as I can.”

“Your secrets don't define
you, Angel. Anymore than mine do.”

But don't they? “Things have
changed a lot...since we met.” I bit my lip.

He reached out and touched my
hand. It was like being caressed by a live wire and I quickly pulled away. The
smell of him was still intoxicating, but the hunger that was starting to
register took a back seat to other sensations. I turned away, unable to face
him. “We can't be together, Sawyer. I can hurt you.” My voice was so thick I
almost didn’t recognize it.

“More than I've already hurt
you?”

He gently turned me around,
and placed a hand on my chin, forcing me to look into his sparkling eyes. “This
is dangerous, Sawyer.”

“Is it the black/white
thing?” His tone was playful, but his eyes were grave as they searched mine.
“Boston is full of interracial couples, we won't stick out that much.”

I felt the corners of my
mouth lift. But the smile quickly died.

His hand was still on my
chin. “Your moodiness can be quite dangerous. But I think I can adjust,” he
murmured. His eyes reached into my soul. I inhaled the sweetness of his breath.
But I had to bring this back to reality. And the reality was, despite his
revelations of weirdness, he was still mortal. And I was not. In the wake of my
Mahá, it was clear I wasn't even a
normal
immortal. At the end of the
day, I didn't know
what
I was.