Lost (2 page)

I raised the remote to mute the television and caught a glimpse of the headline.

Death toll rises to 2,000 in Guatemala.

The monotone reporter said, “Experts are saying that a contagion may be the cause of the sudden deaths of so many in Sololá. The government is assuring that the problem is being contained and will not spread to-”

I muted the television, still needing the light, but not interested in hearing about contagious diseases. I crawled in bed and rolled my eyes. Soggy tissues covered my pillow and the occupied one next to it. I pulled out one of Emma’s
earbuds
. “What are you doing in here?” I asked.

She blew her nose and flung the tissue too close to my face. “I fell asleep waiting for my so-called friend to answer my text,” she whined. “Since you were so busy with your PG-13 kissing that you couldn’t check on me, this is what you get, a mess in your bed, and I’m not leaving. I don’t have enough energy to go to my room.”

Dramatic. She lived literally three steps down the hall, assuming she wouldn’t use magic to get there.

“You haven’t texted me since seven when you spilled your drink on the table,” I said. “I replied with the smiley that looks shocked.”

She popped the other
earbud
out and checked her phone. “Oh. I didn’t press SEND. You’re forgiven.”

“Merci.” Her mascara had run under her eyes and onto my very white pillowcase. “What’s wrong?”

“Paul…” She flipped from her stomach to her back, freeing the mountain of tissues underneath her. This was her third
I love Paul but he doesn’t love me back
breakdown this week. “When he asked me to go to his parents’ house for dinner, I thought it was for something special. He made it seem that way.” I would say she’d thought it was going to be a little more than special. She’d raided my closet for the perfect dress, like they were going to the altar, not someone’s dining room. “It was a special night … for him. He said he wanted the people who meant the most to him to meet-” She sucked in a broken breath and grabbed a fresh tissue. “…
his
new girlfriend,” she whispered.

“Oh my God.”

“Annabelle. Stupid Annabelle. What a dumb name. And she’s hot with huge …” She took a moment to catch her breath again. “Boobs. She’s some witch one of his friends set him up with. She was Miss Teen Nebraska a few years ago. I hate Nebraska!” I was pretty sure Em had never been to or known anyone from Nebraska. She was from Paris, and besides living with Sophia in
Texas,
she’d only explored America’s party towns. “And she came in right when his mom was cleaning the tea I spilled. I could die.”

She sobbed into her hands. I wanted to reach for her, hug her like a normal friend, but I couldn’t. I usually waited for her to touch me if we were going to make contact.

I could hear human thoughts without doing a thing, but I was rarely around them now. I only had to worry about my powers stirring when I touched Paul and Emma. Nathan was immune for some reason, and Sophia knew how to block people like me. Paul and Em had learned to be careful. They usually didn’t touch me or limited contact to quick encounters that didn’t reveal too much of their minds.

Now, Emma stayed on her side of the bed, with a safe distance between us.

“Maybe he wouldn’t date her if he knew how you felt,” I said.

“He knows. He has to know.”

I brushed two stray tissues from my pillow and lay down. “You’ve never told him. I think he thinks that you two only hook up when you’re drunk. That’s why you need to talk to him about it … without a drink in your hand.”

She peeked at me through her fingers. I smiled, trying to show her that I wasn’t judging. She’d gotten into a terrible pattern with Paul. She played the role of best friend all day, and as soon as she took a tiny sip of anything stronger than water, she used it as an excuse to be all over him. The worst part, she acted clueless the following day, blaming alcohol for her selective memory loss.

“What am I going to do?” she asked.

“Tell Paul you love him. Tell him you remember everything. Or I might just say it. I don’t know how long I can keep this from Nate. He brings it up all the time.”

“Christine Grant!” She popped up in bed and glared at me. “What will happen to you if you breathe a word of this to anyone?”

I groaned. “You will tell Sophia that we have Lydia Shaw’s shoes.”

I didn’t want to find out what Sophia would do to me for stealing from the woman who saved the world from magical domination and was in charge of the hunters, all of them but Kamon.

The thievery had started as an accident, but it was my idea to keep the shoes for good. They were for Lydia
freaking
Shaw and, for some reason, having something that belonged to her excited me.

“Damn right, I will. As far as you know, I don’t feel anything for Paul, and I can’t handle my liquor. Are we clear,
clepto
?” she said, pointing a glittery finger in my face as she blackmailed me.

“You’re nuts. And I should throw you out. You told Nathan about the application. I can’t believe you did that.”

 
“That’s not the same kind of secret. You
have
to talk to him. Sophie told me not to let you hold things in. She said it’s dangerous for you.”

I rolled my eyes at Sophia’s theory of why I got so angry at times. According to her, I didn’t speak my mind enough. Problem was, what was on my mind wasn’t always polite to say. And I had to be careful of what I said since I lived in a house full of creatures humans like me were typically made to destroy. I didn’t want to scare them.

They accepted me and believed what Sophia and my mother’s diary said, that I was naturally psychic but not bred like other copies. We talked about it, joked about it, but I knew they kept the idea that I could kill them in a moment somewhere in the back of their minds. They’d have to.

“Oh, Chris. I’m sorry. I didn’t get a chance to ask Mrs. Ewing about the candles,” she said, sniffing between each word. Since Sophia wouldn’t help me contact my parents, I’d asked Emma. She’d gotten a list of magical ingredients needed to open a door to the spirit world. We were only missing red candles made with magical wax. No one she knew had them. They were used for magic that toed the line between light and dark, and apparently, it was classless to have them, or admit that you did.

“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “We’ll find them. I’m sorry about your night. Maybe Paul’s not that serious about her.”

“I think he is. Their kiss was very passionate. Just like the ones … I don’t remember having with him.”

“Don’t give up before you tell him,” I said.

 
“I can’t. It’s
Paul
.
Paul Harrison Ewing.
Sophie used to bathe us together. He’s supposed to be my brother.” I laughed. The times I’d seen Emma and Paul make out, they’d looked nothing like siblings. “I don’t want to get my feelings crushed.”

I took one of the fresh peonies from my vase and brushed it under Emma’s nose. “My love,” I said, imitating Sophia. “They are already crushed.”

She giggled, took the flower, and rolled over. I tucked her in as she jammed the
earbuds
back into her ears.
 

Emma snored as loud as Nathan. I never slept alone, so I’d learned to tune out the sound. In the morning, I smelled lemons before I heard Sophia whispering protection spells in the hall.

I would never admit it to anyone, but my first real thought of the day was always about Remi. Before I opened my eyes, I prayed for her, that she was safe, that Lydia Shaw would rescue her soon.

“Good morning, loves,”
Sophia
said, her voice bright and happy. She liked this bed guest better than my other. “I made breakfast for your first day of…”

She paused and cleared her throat, deleting the rest of her sentence.

“Just say it, Sophia,” I said. “ Work. Work. Work. The word isn’t going to kill me.” She picked up one of the tissues from the pile covering both of our pillows.

I couldn’t say it wasn’t mine.

Emma was more terrified of telling Sophia about her feelings than telling Paul. She didn’t think she’d be accepted into the Ewing family outside of being a charity case. She was so delusional, but I was her friend. It was my job to listen to her cry and deny her feelings right along with her.

 
And I knew how to be a friend now. You don’t sit and let them talk without replying for hours and stare at random specks on the wall. Sometimes, I wanted to go to New Haven and apologize to my old roommate, Whitney, for putting her through hell with me. But she’d dished out her own brand of hell after, torturing me with the queen of our orphanage, so I considered us even.

“I didn’t say it wouldn’t make me cry.” I pulled the tissue from Sophia’s hand to own it for Emma. “I said it wouldn’t kill me.”

“Don’t worry, angel-pie. We’ll be having so much fun, you won’t even realize they’re gone.”

I stifled and eye roll and got out of bed.

Since my friends had decided to kill me with the mission trip, she’d been here most of the day, watching me closely with her sparkling blue eyes. Like she was waiting for me to spiral and act like my mother. I knew from her diary that she couldn’t handle being alone and away from my dad. She loved him too much, which could be another reason why I didn’t have parents.

Sophia didn’t know if CC died with my dad or by her own hands after Julian killed her husband. Some days, I believe she did because of her diary. Others, something makes me sure that she was stronger than that and wouldn’t have left me if she didn’t have to. I wouldn’t know for sure until Emma and I found those red candles.

I brushed my teeth as Sophia wrestled Emma out of bed. “My love, please. The boys are already up.”

“She could stay,” I said, my mouth full of minty toothpaste.

“I could,” Emma said. “And continue to have twenty-three dollars in my checking account.”

I rolled my eyes. Twenty-three dollars could go a long way when you never had to buy anything. Oddly, I was the only human in this house, and I was the least concerned about human currency.

When Emma left, Sophia joined me in the bathroom. She put her wrinkled hand on my shoulder and sighed.

“How are you?” she asked, searching my eyes for the truth.

“Fine.” I dried my mouth and didn’t fill the silence like I knew she wanted me to.

“Christine...”

I tightened my ponytail in the mirror, even though I didn’t really have a reason to comb my hair. Thanks to her,
I
wasn’t going anywhere today.

She cleared her throat and the eye roll I’d held back earlier escaped me. She wanted me to say:
this job just shows how different I am from my friends – not the same species, not capable of the same things. I’ll be alone. I don’t want to lose them. They are all I have outside of you
. But she’d have to do more than bat her white eyelashes to get that much honesty out of me.

“I’m okay,” I said. “Can we not make this a thing? Please?”

She pulled me to her chest, totally making it a thing, and held me until Nate knocked on my open door.

Sophia hugged him on her way out. This was my life: being passed from person to person, never having to be alone until now.

“Do I look like I’m ready to bring peace to a shattered kind?” he asked, pointing to his new, hideous, work shirt that was the color of rotting peas. I stopped myself from commenting on the ridiculous motto he’d chanted.

Peace for a shattered kind.

According to my friends, the unemployment
rate for magical kind was triple
the human rate. Most had trouble keeping jobs and those of them who didn’t appear human lived so deeply in the shadows that they couldn’t work at all. It sounded like an awful life, but some would argue that the millions of humans killed during the war were a fair trade for the poverty many of them endured.

But I couldn’t say that out loud. My shifter boyfriend and my witch and wizard best friends wouldn’t like that very much. Plus, it would make me sound a lot like a copy – a real one.

 
“You didn’t answer. I must look awful,” he said, leaning in for a kiss.

We used all of our allotted five minutes before I could refute that.

Paul and Em were also in those awful pea-colored shirts at the dining table. Paul had on a green and white scarf over his, managing to look fashionable and slightly homeless for his first day of work.

“Nana, this is your last chance to let me stay with Chris,” he said.

“Hush,” Sophia said. “You should be happy to do something with your life.”

“You act like I’m the only Ewing without a career. Dad’s a freaking photographer for crying out loud. He makes no money! And I really don’t need a job. I’m going to eventually marry Chris and become a millionaire.”

Sophia pushed his head down as she passed him on the way to her seat, and Nate chucked a biscuit at him.

“Don’t be silly. I’m going to draw up a wonderful prenuptial agreement before Christine marries anyone,” Sophia said, eyeing Nate.

 
I rubbed his leg under the table. I knew it hurt him that Sophia treated him like a gold-digging pervert at times.