Equal Parts (17 page)

I waited on the sofa for Achilles to get back. That was, assuming he got back at all. It did cross my mind that he might go back to
Georgiana’s
house after … well, whatever it was they were doing, but it was better to be safe than sorry.

I had no right to be jealous. I had no right to be acting as crazy as I was. Achilles had abducted me, put my life in direct danger more than once, and never indicated he felt anything for me besides a grudging kinship, mostly because of our shared sense of dark humor.

But the fact of the matter was, it
hurt
to know he was out with some other girl. The very thought of someone touching him the way I had last night made my gut churn. There was no point denying it, because I had no one to answer to but myself. I’d had him to myself, basically at my beck and call, and I’d let him go.

Well, I wasn’t making that mistake again.

“…heard you had some chick holed up in here. Savanna told me there was, like, a girl in your bed when she came home with you,” said a saccharine-sweet voice from the office.

Oh sweet Baby Jesus,
she
had come home with
him
! I hadn’t predicted that!

They were right outside, by the sounds of it, probably making their way to the apartment through the office floor.

“Crap, crap, crap,” I hissed, looking around the room wildly for something that would make me look busy. Knitting? A book? Anything!

No! Assertive! This is
your
territory, too – you have a right to be here. She doesn’t
.

I didn’t hear Achilles’s response, as I was too busy trying to think of a new plan. Then the door to the living area creaked open, and I sprang into action before I knew what I was doing, storming across the room to confront them head-on.

“Get out,” I snarled at the girl – a busty girl about my height, with a dress half as short as mine and twice as transparent.

“Achilles, what the hell is -?”

“Out!” I grabbed a rolled-up newspaper from the coffee table and physically shooed her out the door with it, slamming the door shut behind her. “And stay out, unless you want to be crapping words on paper for the next month!”

Leaving no time to reassess my tactics, I turned to Achilles. Why did I get the distinct impression he was trying not to laugh?

“Get on the sofa,” I ordered, shoving him backwards.

“Yes ma’am,” he said with a smirk. I ignored it. I’d come too far to doubt myself now.

“You wanted to know why I don’t give out my power very freely, yeah? Why I’m so afraid to make people ‘happy’?”
Just blurt it out. Just say it. Don’t think, just do
. “When I was seventeen, my brother Xavier was having a bad day. Xavier was three years older than me, and he was my everything. Ever since I can remember, Xavier had been my hero. When he was sad, I was sad. When he was happy, I was happy. So, because my powers had developed by then, I decided there was no harm in using them on him – I hated seeing him sad, and surely I’d been given this power as a gift, right? To make my family happy?” I laughed without an ounce of humor.

“Flick, you don’t –”

“So Xavier’s having a really bad day,” I continued, as if he hadn’t spoken. “We all have them. I just felt worse about this one because I knew there was something I could do. I gave him everything I had – all the happiness I’d collected over six months. I had no use for it, and I figured it would last him a while. He goes off after that, happy as anything, and for a few weeks, everything’s sunny again.

“Then, Xavier has another bad day. And another, and another – and every bad day ends up with him visiting me, asking for my help. I loved him with my entire being, so of course I gave him a shot of the stuff every time. My parents didn’t know. Nobody knew. I thought of it as our little secret, you know, like a private joke? Something that was too cool for adults to know about?” Again, a laugh escaped me. The alternative was to collapse into panic completely.

“On my eighteenth birthday, there was a big party at my house. All the family came, including Xavier. I hadn’t used my power on myself in so long, not since my brother had started asking for my help – but I figured, on my eighteenth birthday, I was entitled to some happiness. It seemed fair, anyway. So I used it on myself, had a great night, and went to bed.”

Achilles’s eyes were wide, as though he knew what was coming. I needed to keep going, though. I needed these words to see daylight at last.

“Xavier came into my room in the middle of the night and asked for another shot of happiness. I told him I’d used it on myself, and he … didn’t react well.” My hand shot to my cheek, the memory of his slap fresh as a freaking daisy. “He told me if I didn’t help him, he’d kill himself.”

“You don’t have to –”

“And that was when I realized –
I
did that.
I
turned my own brother into some kind of junkie, and I had no one to blame but myself.” My throat tightened around the confession but I forced them out anyway. “I should have told my parents. I was just so afraid of Xavier getting into trouble, of them shipping him off to some asylum somewhere…” A shuddering breath, and I pooled the last of my strength to finish the story. “I couldn’t get the happiness fast enough. I didn’t know how to get it from smaller groups – I’d only ever experienced the power at parties and gatherings, and there was never enough of it at school to make an impact. I tried everything the day after my birthday – malls, parks, playgrounds, cafes. But it wasn’t enough. I didn’t know enough about my power to control it, so most of the happiness just slipped away.

“Three nights after my birthday, the police came to my house and told my parents that Xavier had … had stepped in front of a train. A week later, I moved to Carova, far away from anyone I cared about.” I moved my gaze to Achilles, who looked … troubled. “You think my power will be good for you, but I know otherwise. I can’t keep your demons at bay any more than I can my own, Achilles. Happiness is not my forte. Not by a long shot.”

A long while after the words had left me, Achilles slowly got to his feet. He walked straight past me to the stereo, tapped in a few buttons, and suddenly the air around us was filled with a slow, rather kooky song about outer space.

“Dance with me, darling,” he whispered into my hair, clutching my waist with one hand and my own hand with the other.

“W-what?” Was he serious? After all I’d just told him, he wanted to
dance
?

“You look far too
lovely
to spend the rest of the night in tears.” We fell into a soft rhythm, his cheek pressed against the top of my head. “I’m going to tell you to do something, and as an act of trust, I want you to do it. Okay?”

I was too weirded out by his sudden dance urges to decline. “Okay…”

“I want you to give me everything in that bottle of happiness.”

As though he’d electrified me, I went to break free from his hold, to no avail.

“
Do it
,” he said, tightening his hand.

“Did you not hear what I’ve been saying for the last ten minutes? You honestly think I’ll –”

“You know me well enough to know I’m smarter than the average person. I wouldn’t ask this of you if I wasn’t sure of its outcome. You aren’t seventeen years old, and I’m not your brother. This will work. Just trust me.”

I drew back enough to look him in the eye, and I hoped to God he wasn’t lying. “If you hurt me for this, I will kill you,” I told him, not as firmly as I’d have liked.

“I will not hurt you.” How could he be so sure?

Screw it. If he wanted to ruin his life, so be it. This was what he’d wanted all along, right?

I pressed my palm against his and hit him with everything I had, imagining the bottle of happiness being drained dry. He instantly straightened, his mouth curved upwards, his eyes a little brighter, even behind the contact lenses.

“Happy now?” Pun fully intended.

“Concentrate very carefully,” he said softly. “Because now I’m going to give it back.”

“Wait,
what
?”

I didn’t get an explanation. What I did get was a full-blown, hundred-watt smile from him, and a blast of sunshine right through my being. Not just a trickle, not just a hint – like last night, after ‘the incident’, he was giving me … everything.
A maelstrom of emotion pinged around my chest like a pinball machine gone wild. I felt …
calm.
In control. Like he’d balanced the scales in me.

“What the hell was that?” I rasped, bottling the happiness before it could spread through
me
.

Not breaking our slow-dance, he shrugged. “You make people happy in small doses. Ergo, they can’t give anything back to you – they use it for themselves. But when you give large amounts, like that, there’s an excess, like you’re overfilling a cup. Your brother – though I’m sure he didn’t know it – was trying to stuff the overfill into himself, and it drove him crazy. Our minds can only deal with so much in moderation – happiness, sadness, anger, fear. Too much of any of them is a bad thing. You gave me overfill, so I poured it right back.”

“I don’t … you just…” I momentarily lost my grip on reality, and found the room spinning before my eyes. We came to an instant standstill. “You can’t just give it to me! That’s not how it works!”

“Look at me, Flick.” His forehead pressed against mine, filling my vision. “I’m different
to
other people. You know it, I know it. It’ll take a lot more than an overdose of happiness to kill me.” He drew back slightly, brows drawn together. “And for what it’s worth, your story makes me feel … helpless. Again.”

I wasn’t too proud to accept the fact he’d insinuated I was suffering. Like it or not, I
was
suffering. Had suffered, was suffering, would probably continue to suffer this pain for the rest of my life.

But try as I could, I didn’t
feel
like I was suffering. I still felt as though everything was fine. I waited and waited for the numbness to sink bac
k in, for the sunshine to fade, but it never came. Instead, I just felt … normal. For the first time in years, my emotions weren’t clawing their way out of the pit in my heart – they were just at peace.

“You know,” said Achilles, breaking my concen
tration, “the way I see it, you’ve been half-living. No wonder happiness
is a burden for you
. You aren’t giving yourself a chance to live life to the full.”

“And you’d know all about that, wouldn’t you?”

He just laughed, but I got the feeling it wasn’t just a
side effect
of the sunshine. “Right, I forgot about the sarcasm defense mechanism.” The song changed – this one faster, about trumpets –
and suddenly he spa
n me away from him, the smile on his face
cooling my temper. “
Joie de vivre
, darling – that’s what you need.”

“Can we just forget about the world for a while?” I asked, quickly rebuilding my mental walls against the raw memories. Achilles had knocked them down in a single punch. It wasn’t right that he had that much power over me, but there it was.

“Now that, darling, happens to be
my
forte.”
As if he’d been waiting for the request, he grabbed both my hands and started dancing like an absolute moron with me. I never thought I’d see someone like Achilles try and cheer me up by doing the Robot, but then again, I never thought I’d tell anyone Xavier’s story. It was a night of miracles, I guess.

So, giving up my resistance to Achilles’s attempts to make me feel better,
I kicked off my platform shoes
, pulled out my cheesiest dance moves
, and let the most feared man in the city frighten away my ghosts for one night.

Chapter Eleven

Smudged Paint

My recovery from the car crash wasn’t easy. Once the morphine left my system, and I transferred to standard painkillers, the real aches and pains started to crop up.

Achilles avoided me like the plague – well, at least, I think he did. It seemed like every time I was awake, he wasn’t in the apartment, and as soon as I was asleep, he was there. Even the thugs left me to my own devices, never interrupting me or poking in a head to make sure I was still alive.

Six days after all the drama with Achilles, I was getting into a routine: wake up, have breakfast, take a shower, watch TV until dinner, fall asleep on the sofa, be carried to bed by Achilles, go to talk to him, and fall back to sleep before I got a word out.

On that sixth day, I found cream the surgeon had left for me on the bedside table for treating the bruises and swelling, so I retreated to the bathroom and stripped down to my underwear, guessing Achilles wouldn’t be home until midnight, at the earliest.

As I waited for the ointment to dry – it seemed to lessen the bruising before my very eyes – I went through the bathroom cabinets, looking for a cloth to wash my face with. My eyes fell on Achilles’s pots of face-paint for the hundredth time in only a couple of days. Going against most of my instincts, I took them out and studied them.