Eat Your Heart Out (Descendants) (7 page)

Sid shrugged and kept swinging. “Other ideas?”

Rachel yelped as another marsh light planted a stinging kiss right near her butt. She plunged one hand into her bag and whipped out her dagger. On a whim, she also grabbed the ever-present collection of herbs and powders packed into the old wooden box stamped with her family’s crest.

“Kendra, catch!” Rachel tossed the dagger toward her friend. Sid was right, what else did they have?
Unless her box of goodies somehow contained a magical bug spray. Beast-Be-Gone or something.

Kendra caught the dagger in one hand and flipped it around so she grasped it palm down. She sunk her knees low into a fighter stance and narrowed her eyes. Then she whipped her arm through the air and sliced one of the marsh lights right in half. It squeaked once and exploded against the boardwalk in a tiny tidal wave of black ichor.

Rachel’s mouth dropped open. And next to her, Sid went still. But only for a second. Then he roared with another sting and started flailing again.

“What was
that
?” Rachel yelled.

Kendra shrugged, her eyes still on the swarm of marsh lights swooping and diving on them. “Lucky, I guess.” But then she arced out again with the dagger and sliced apart three more.

Rachel tore her eyes from her friend and opened the box. She hopped back and forth on her feet and rifled through the box: powdered wormwood, minced mandrake. There was a leather satchel full of dried carnation and anise seed. But nothing that’d send a swarm on its merry, sting-y way.

Then her fingers curved around a cream silk pouch tied with a green ribbon and labeled
agrimony. Perfect. It she couldn’t repel the pests, she could put them to sleep. She remembered learning from her mom that agrimony was a powerful sleeping draught for most demons.

Rachel slammed the box shut and dropped it back into her bag,
then she dumped the contents of the silk pouch into her palm. A marsh light stung the back of her arm, but she tightened her hand to keep from clutching at the newest sting and concentrated. The powder was pale yellow, almost like sulfur she remembered working with in high school chemistry.

Holding her cupped palm close to her mouth, Rachel pulled in a big breath and blew. The powder scattered on the wind, and a hundred marsh lights dropped. They hit the boardwalk with a tiny groan and a thud, their little bodies twitching with sleep. A few of them even started snoring. Rachel cocked her head and stifled a laugh. The little bastards looked kind of cute when they weren’t buzzing trying to sting her to death.

A couple steps away, Kendra still crouched with the dagger held out in front of her as she faced the now-silent reeds. Poor girl was probably traumatized. She’d never quite warmed to the actual fighting part of demon hunting.

Rachel
tip-toed through the sleeping marsh lights and placed a light hand on Kendra’s arm. The girl whirled, a few marsh lights crunching under her feet, and her hand jerked forward. Like she wanted to cut Rachel. But then she dropped the dagger with a big gasp.

“Oh, crap,” she squeaked. Kendra laughed nervously. “Sorry,
Rach. I’ve, uh, never done that before.” Another nervous laugh wriggled out of her mouth. “I think maybe I should stick with researching.”

Rachel frowned and dropped her hand from Kendra’s arm. She’d actually been afraid of the girl for a split second. Rachel didn’t like the feeling. “Yeah,” she said, forcing bravado into her voice. “I think you might be right.”

Kendra grinned brightly. “Lunch? I’m starving.”

Rachel pressed her lips together and glanced behind. The storm at their back had quieted, dissipating to a broody summer storm. Above, streaks of sunshine winnowed through the low clouds. Weird. Rachel hitched her bag higher over her shoulder and nodded to Kendra. “Sure. That sounds good.” But she realized as the three of them picked their way through the marsh lights and marched down the rest of the
zig-zagging boardwalk that it didn’t sound good. At all.

CHAPTER 9

The storm that had threatened yesterday made good on its promise. Wind buffeted the windows of Rachel’s house and trapped them indoors all day. Rachel pulled her knees to her chest and peered out her bedroom window. She couldn’t even see the giant oak tree in the backyard past the lashing rain. She shivered and hugged her arms around her legs. On her
window sill, the protective plants her mom had given her shivered too. It seemed everything was reacting to the storm.

The lamp on the bedside table flickered. Rachel leaned across her bed and wiggled the cord. The
lightbulb flared bright in response.

It’d been another long day of research, with Daphne and Bruno taking up space in the greenhouse and Rachel and Sid spread out on the dining room table. Her life had dissolved into research mode and training, made boring and dragging by the absence of Kendra. Rachel had talked to her mom about getting Bruno to apologize, but so far nothing had come of it.

Rachel stretched her shoulders with a groan and twisted to either side until her back popped in a thousand places. Research and training. Training and research. Her head was swimming and her muscles protested every movement. Bruno was an exacting teacher, keeping her at archery or hand-to-hand combat for hours at a time in a tiny space cleared in the greenhouse. Rachel wondered if that was what it was like for
all
the Descendants still living in France.

Lightning illuminated the world outside Rachel’s bedroom window and was answered by a crash of thunder. The lights flickered again, threatening to finally give in to the power of the storm.

“Rachel?”

Rachel tilted her head rested on her knees and squinted at Sid in her doorway. He and Bruno had been camping in the den since coming to Shipley. It was still odd to have to wait in line for a bathroom.
And odder still to see shaving cream and guy deodorant on the bathroom counter. She’d never lived with men before, didn’t even have a memory of a dad. It was … peculiar. But not entirely bad.

Sid took Rachel’s silence as invitation and joined her on the bed. He perched at the very edge, far away from where Rachel curled at her headboard near the window. Sid looked around her room, something like a smile on his face.

“I figured all American girls had, I don’t know, posters of pop stars on their walls.” Sid shook his head and laughed. “Of course, you’re not exactly the norm, are you?”

Heat bristled through Rachel. That’s right. Sid wanted an American girl, or his idea of an American girl, all blond hair and pink lips and bubbly personality. Rachel grimaced against her knees. Sid wanted a girl with posters on her walls, not shelves stacked with books and a cork board heavy with first-place ribbons—debate team, mock United Nations, Spanish club reading award. Rachel felt retroactively embarrassed. Then annoyed at her embarrassment. She was proud of her achievements, even if they may not ever amount to anything. She’d yet to run across a demon that cared about her National Merit Award.

Sid scooted closer on the bed and reached out a hand to poke at Rachel’s arm. “I’m just teasing you, Rach.”

Rachel wriggled away and grit her teeth. “My arm is still on fire from Bruno’s stupid exercises this morning.” She’d been made to hold her arms straight out while holding two daggers for ten minutes. Her shoulders ached at the memory of it. But at least the memory of physical pain was better than thinking of Sid being with Beth Ann, his perfect American girl.

Sid rolled his own shoulders and pulled his legs onto the twin bed so he could lean his back against the poster-free wall. Instead, it was swirling with a mural she and Kendra had painted between sophomore and junior year, a riot of blues and greens above and reds peeking up from her quilt. It was an ocean scene, with the sea above and a coral reef below.

“Yeah,” Sid muttered, “welcome to my childhood.”

For a moment, Rachel didn’t know what he was talking about. She’d been lost in her own thoughts, but she relaxed her arms where they clutched together around her legs and peered at Sid. A crack of thunder broke the sky apart and made Rachel jump, and the lights flickered again.

“Did you really train like that all the time?” Her voice was small, a voice asking for secrets.

Sid picked at a loose thread on Rachel’s quilt and nodded, his eyes on his hands. “Since the age of five. Bruno’s tough, but he’s got nothing on Nicholas Martin, my
wonderful
father.”

“It seems like Bruno doesn’t really like him.”

Sid laughed, a harsh thing that scratched past his teeth. “Yeah, not many do. Dad is the head of the Descendants Council and can be … very strict.”

They both went silent for a moment, just the sound of the wind and rain and thunder keeping them company. Then Sid rolled his head against the mural to look at Rachel. Lightning lit his face in sharp relief, throwing shadows under his cheekbones and chin and making his gray eyes glow.

And then the lights went out.

Rachel scrambled off the bed in the dark, her hands crawling over familiar furniture and her feet automatically carrying her around the nightstand. There was a crash and a hiss,
then Sid swore loudly. Apparently his feet didn’t know the way around the nightstand like hers did. One of his arms slapped her hip as he fell and raked down her leg. Rachel tried to jump out of the way and jammed an elbow against her dresser, sending the attached mirror creaking back and forth.

“Sid?”

He answered her from the floor.

“Just stay there, okay? I’m going to light a candle.”

She stepped gingerly, inching forward. There were candles on her shelf against the opposite wall and a packet of matches in the nightstand drawer. Her fingers roved over the shelves until they hit cool wax, and she pulled three candles into her arms. Her vision was adjusting, turning the room into a wash of grays and blacks.

But not adjusting enough.
Rachel’s foot hit Sid still sprawled on the floor, and she dropped one of the candles hugged in her arms. Sid yelped, and she didn’t miss the way one of his hands grabbed at his crotch in the dark.

“Shit,” she squeaked.

“No, it’s fine,” Sid managed, his voice strangled.

Heat crawled across Rachel’s face. She deposited the two candles on the nightstand and rifled through the drawer until her hand found matches. A scratch and a flare of light, then sulfur tickled her nose. Warmth pooled in one tiny part of the room, throwing the rest into darkness.

Sid pushed himself up off the ground—still wincing, Rachel noticed—and collapsed onto Rachel’s bed. Rachel joined him, taking up position in a far corner. She tried her hardest not to think about the fact that Sid was sitting in her bedroom on her bed. In the dark. She shook her head against the thoughts invading her mind. It wasn’t like he hadn’t spent
dozens
of hours in her dorm room, but that was different. Enclosed and private and … intimate. Even thinking the word made her cheeks flare red.

“Do you think these storms are really
Abbadon?” She whispered across the darkness between them.

Sid ran a hand through his hair. He needed a trim. “Bruno thinks so. It’s what led him here, after all.”

“But your dad didn’t agree.”

“Bruno and my dad don’t agree on many things. My training, for example.”

Rachel watched Sid closely, at the way a muscle jumped on the edge of his jaw and his hands clenched in his lap. Sid twisted so he faced Rachel, and she was very suddenly aware of the space between them. Or, the lack of space. She could reach out and touch his face. Instead, she pulled her knees back to her chest and hugged them tight.

“It sucked, Rachel.”

Rachel looked up and met his eyes. They were dark and shaded, half-lidded like he was seeing something she couldn’t.

“But look at how much you know,” Rachel said. “At how
good
you are when we’re fighting.”

Sid shook his head. “Because that’s all I’ve ever known. You’re lucky. You had a
life, you have something outside of being a Descendant. I have nothing. Or, I didn’t for a very long time. And he did the same with Thomas.”

Rachel cocked her head to the side. She’d heard Sid talk about his little brother before, but he wouldn’t have inherited like Sid did. “Your dad made your brother train like you?”

“Thomas isn’t made for this stuff. It kills Dad. We’re just massive disappointments in his eyes. Which is such a lovely way to grow up.”

Again, Rachel was struck by how different she and Sid were, yet how very similar. Her mind caught on something Sid had mentioned—that demon hunting was his life … or had been. She opened her mouth, sucked in a breath, but didn’t know how to ask what she wanted.
What had changed for him?
She snapped her mouth shut, her teeth tight.

“Dad once made Thomas hunt a werewolf with me. It’d gone wild, was terrorizing a herd of sheep in southern Germany. Dad wanted to catch it before it moved on to people. You should have seen how scared Thomas was, trying to throw knives at what—to him—looked absolutely human. He barely spoke for a week afterwards.”

“That’s awful, Sid,” Rachel whispered. Candlelight flickered off Sid’s face, caught at his Adam’s apple when he swallowed hard.

“Dad sent Thomas to the same boarding school in Norway that I had attended not long after that, and I had no reason to stay.” Sid spoke low and flat, like he was repeating this history to himself. “I tried getting away from this”—and he waved a hand between the two of them—“all this
fate,
you know? I fled the continent, went to university in England. I had a few years of being almost normal, but there’s no escaping it.”

Rachel swallowed back a harsh laugh. No kidding. Her grades were a testament to how inescapable it all was. She hadn’t shared her exciting new GPA with anyone, but she couldn’t forget. It made her insides squirm just to think about it.

“Would you get rid of it if you could? Our inheritance?” Rachel let her knees fall and sat forward on her elbows. Sid mirrored her so they sat facing each other, heads bent together. She felt almost shy asking the question.

Sid watched his lap for a long moment, but then looked up into Rachel’s face. “No,” he said, and he sounded very sure.

Rachel pressed her lips together, a crease between her eyebrows. How could he be so sure? Just a year ago, Rachel had so many plans, a map laid out of her life. And she’d
wanted
to follow it, had been excited at the prospect of it. But now … Now all those dreams had been cast aside and seemed as withered as her poor grades.

“
Rach,” Sid’s voice rumbled against her skin, sank into her. He reached out and pulled her hand across the quilt. The contact made shivers roll up her arm and heat bloom in her belly. “What we are, it’s only one part of us. It’s not the only thing about me, not anymore at least, and it doesn’t need to be the only thing about you. You’re smart and driven, and I
know
you’ll find a way to be both a Descendant and everything else you want.” He squeezed her hand.

Rachel squeezed back. Sid moved his fingers, and the pad of his thumb whispered against the inside of her wrist.

“Rachel,” Sid said. Her name was so much more coming from him. A question, an appeal. He leaned in, his eyes on her. And Rachel leaned in to cover the distance. She licked her lips and stared at Sid’s mouth, wondered what it’d feel like on hers.

But another part of Rachel, the part that drew up study guides and always sat in the front of
the classroom, pulled away. Six months ago she hadn’t been able to stand Sid, with his stupid bowtie and affectations of academia. Yet they’d become friends, good friends. What would happen if they tried for more and failed? Rachel had never had many friends, had never been the girl who could go to parties and make conversation. And now she had Kendra and Sid, and she didn’t want to ruin that.

That practical side of Rachel piped up, adding to the argument. He’d not tried talking about the near-kiss they’d shared the night they defeated Willem. And she’d overheard Sid talking about her in French, which couldn’t mean
anything good.

Rachel tugged her fingers from Sid and sat up straight. She saw a flicker of hurt ripple across his face, but she ignored it. “God,” she teased. “We sound like two freshman psych majors. Let’s go see what Bruno and my mom are doing. Maybe we can psychoanalyze them too.”

Sid pulled his hand back into his lap and clenched it tight. “Rachel, I think we need to talk.”

Her breath fled. Prickles of anticipation surged through her chest and pooled in her fingers as electric as the lightning splitting the sky outside her window. “I—”

“Rachel, I think I’m—”

The door banged open. Rachel and Sid jumped apart and spun on the bed to find Daphne staring at them.