Promise Bound (22 page)

The new arrivals approached our table. Chelsea pulled back and smiled while I sat in stunned silence.

“Hey, Chels.” Her tall, thick-necked ex loomed over me. He was wearing a Lakehead Thunderwolves hockey jersey. I suddenly remembered I was wearing his clothes. He gestured to the girl with him that she should go find a seat.

“Marc Parnell,” he said, introducing himself. “I used to hook up with Chelsea.”

“Shut up, douche bag,” Chelsea said, her cheeks coloring.

“Nice talk, babe.”

“Why don’t you get back to your puck bunny?”

“Just stopped over to say hey,” he said. “Y’know, jealousy is not your best look.”

I cleared my throat and stood up. The guy was tall, but I overtook him by a couple of inches. I said, “I suspect you’re barely a memory these days.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Chelsea smile up at me.

“I’ve done my best to make sure of that,” I said. “If you know what I mean.” Then I winked like Judd Nelson in
The Breakfast Club
.

Marc set his jaw. “Doesn’t matter. I wouldn’t be interested in your sloppy sec—”

But he didn’t have the chance to finish the repulsive sentence because, without thinking, I pulled my arm back and let my fist fly.

It connected solidly with his mouth. Blood spurted onto his shirt (the one I was wearing), then ran down his chin
onto his clean white jersey. It was the first time I’d ever attacked anyone on land. It made me feel … strange and … off-balance.

“Oh my God, Marc!” shrieked the girl he came in with. “Seriously? Again?”

Marc lunged at me, but I stepped back quickly, and he fell forward, onto the floor. He grabbed me by the ankle. I lost my footing and staggered against another couple’s table, spilling their margaritas into the woman’s lap.

The man yelled, “Hey! Watch it!”

Chelsea jumped up and grabbed me by the elbow. She dragged me out of the restaurant while the sombrero-clad waitress ran out of the kitchen behind us, yelling about the bill.

“Run!” Chelsea said through tears of laughter. So we ran. Fast.

We jumped in her car, and she peeled out of the parking lot, racing through a couple of lights. She glanced in the rearview mirror and asked, “Is he following us?”

I looked over my shoulder, but I had no idea what the guy’s car looked like. “Quick, make a left here,” I said.

Chelsea cranked the wheel and several cars blasted their horns, but no one followed. At first.

By the time we got to the end of the block, a blue car made the corner. Chelsea pulled into an alleyway, and then we bounced—hard—over railroad tracks. She turned left at a warehouse and then back onto the main drag. She hadn’t been modest when she’d said she knew the city well.

After several minutes, Chelsea pulled the car between
two buildings and threw the gear in park. Then, without a word to me, she clambered out of the car.

I followed as she took off up a steep hill behind the buildings and ran up over the crest. The streets were narrow here, and poorly lit. We ran several blocks and collapsed, laughing, under a grove of trees.

“Oh, hell yeah,” she said, panting. “Now … even I don’t … know where we are. You better hope Marc doesn’t either, or you’re toast.”

“I doubt that.”

She flashed a toothy grin. “What you did back there. That was … unexpected. Weird. But strangely chivalrous.”

“That guy’s a jerk,” I said. “You’re better off without him.”

“I know,” she said. She took a few seconds to catch her breath; then she pulled a tissue out of her pocket and tried to wipe Marc’s blood off my shirt. She let her hand not-so-subtly glance against my thigh.

Her touch seared me with the pain of loss and emptiness. I didn’t want to be here. As nice as she was.

“Why are you helping me?” I asked, suddenly suspicious. “What do you want?”

“Nothing,” she said, her tone defensive.

“That’s a lie. Everyone wants something.”

She kept wiping at my shirt, and her silence confirmed my suspicion.

After a few seconds she said, “Let’s just say I have a soft spot for the terminally ill.”

“I’m sure there’s a hospital you can volunteer at.” I removed her hand from my chest and tossed it back in her
lap. Deep within my chest, the empty pit of loneliness yawned, openmouthed and jowly.

“And you’re not so hard on the eyes,” she added, grinning.

Here we go
. I rolled my eyes, but my heart was black.

“Oh, come on. I was only trying to make you smile.”

The air between us hummed with Chelsea’s warmth. The open space between her lips was lemon yellow, like an exit door cracking daylight into a dark movie theater. Her happiness was my way out of the pain. And I wanted it. So help me God, I wanted it.

I slipped my hand behind her neck, and she kissed me—softer than the surprise attack in the restaurant.

I didn’t think of Lily. Or more like, I didn’t
let
myself think of Lily. No one could ever replace the fullness that Lily had once given me. But I was going to have to swim soon, and given that I would never make another absorption—never again take someone completely—kissing Chelsea was the closest life raft I could find. Whatever tiny bit of happiness I could steal from her now … Well, she was as good a temporary fix as any.

Who could blame me for jumping at that chance?

E
ver since Pavati had denied Sophie’s request to be changed, Sophie had been giving me the stink-eye silent treatment. She was good at it. Unfaltering. Not even Mom could convince her that it had gone on long enough—though she had no idea what had set it in motion. Maybe if Mom had known how miserably I’d failed with Pavati, she’d be mad at me, too.
I’d deserve that
, I thought bleakly.

In an effort to stage a treaty in the war of silence, Mom had sent us both down to the Blue Moon Café to make peace over a “hot drink” and maybe a “cream-filled something or
other.” I couldn’t deny something hot would be nice. In the three days since Calder had left, I’d been unnaturally cold. I shivered in my bedsheets at night, and while everyone else was breaking out their summer wardrobes, I was still in sweaters. Today I had a purple crocheted scarf wrapped three times around my neck, and I still felt chilled underneath all my layers. It was as if I were shrinking, constricting like ice, day by day becoming a smaller, harder version of myself.

As for how Sophie was feeling, well, I didn’t have to be able to read emotions to know. She didn’t like being with me any more than
I
liked being with me.

“Come on,” I said, dragging her roughly through the café door.

She dropped noisily into one of the bright yellow chairs as I went to order.

When I came back with her hot chocolate, she frowned at it.

“Aren’t you going to drink it?” I asked, maybe a little too loud.

She kept her eyes on the cup and folded her arms over her chest in a sign of defiance. But she was too dramatic in her movements and accidentally knocked the cup over.

I jumped up, but Sophie didn’t move. She just stared at the table and let the hot chocolate run dark and creamy across the table and onto the checkerboard floor.

I glanced at the shaggy-haired barista for a little help, but he avoided eye contact. “Oh, come on!” I exclaimed.

Mrs. Boyd poked her head out of her office. “What spilled? Oh! Lily. You’ve made quite a mess of things.”

If only she knew.

To Sophie, Mrs. Boyd said, “That’s okay, love. Just a little spill. Your sister will take care of it.” Then she closed her office door.

Sophie made a
hmph
sound, the meaning of which was not lost on me. I growled at her low under my breath.

If only I could take care of everything. Put Calder’s past back together, bring him home, save Danny from Pavati, pacify Pavati’s concerns for Adrian, cure Mom, unify the family … There was a lot on my plate. I might as well add “bring about world peace.” It wouldn’t have made my list any more impossible.

I found the table-washing bucket in its usual spot behind the counter and sank my hand into the soapy water. I breathed deeply, feeling the flash of calm the warm water delivered, then extracted the terry cloth rag.

The tall boy behind the counter barely acknowledged me and bent over nonexistent work. It irritated me to no end. It was his job to clean up this mess. Not mine.

“What the hell is your problem?” I demanded.

He looked up, eyebrows raised. “Me?” he asked.

“Yeah, you. Why am I the one cleaning up the mess?”

“Uh … because you made it?” he suggested. Oh my gosh. He was a supreme idiot.

“Lily,” Sophie said, her patronizing tone telling me to settle down.

I spun on her, surprised by the sound of her voice. I’d nearly forgotten what it sounded like. “Oh, so now you’ve got something to say to me?”

Sophie’s face flushed.

The kid behind the counter said, “You should just stay home when you’re PMSing so hard.”

My eyes flashed hot. He did
not
just go there. “What did you say to me?”

“Lily,” Sophie said again. I hadn’t heard her get up from our table, but now she was dragging me by the elbow back to my chair. “What’s going on with you?” she asked.

“Me?” I exclaimed. “You’re the one who’s had nothing to say.”

“Don’t blame
me
for being mad,” she said. “You’re the one whose colors are going all crazy these days. How am I supposed to react?”

“Don’t do that,” I said.

“Do what?”

“Rub it in my face.”

She pulled her eyebrows together. “Rub what in your face?”

I looked around to make sure the barista wasn’t listening. “Oh, come on. Don’t pretend you don’t
enjoy
the fact that you can see emotions while I can’t.” The sarcastic tone in my voice surprised me a little. I didn’t know how much my inability bothered me until I said it out loud.

“Okay …,” she said, drawing the word out. “See, this is what I’m talking about. You should see yourself right now. Pretty gross.”

I ground my teeth, not doubting her in the slightest. I’d felt it coming on for days—some weird kind of funk I’d never felt before. I missed Calder. Sometimes it felt like I
couldn’t breathe, I missed him so much. Sometimes I was so angry he’d listened to me when I told him to leave, but then I had to remind myself that that was my fault. I hadn’t given him much choice.

The barista came up to our table. “Here,” he said. “Mrs. Boyd said to give you this,” and he set a fresh hot chocolate in front of Sophie, who looked up with a faint smile. The kid didn’t look at me at all.

“You don’t know how good you’ve got it, Sophie,” I said

“You think?” She popped the lid off her cup and blew away the steam. “What about you? You get to do everything you want, and I never get to do anything. You got Calder. You get to be a mermaid.”

“Hush now.”

Sophie scowled at me and continued. “Now Pavati has this stupid baby. I bet you that Danny Catron will get to be with Pavati before me. She was mine first.”

“Pavati was Jack’s first,” I said. “And I’m betting a hundred more before him. And they’re probably all dead.”

“Pavati would never hurt me.”

I toyed with telling her the truth about what had happened last May—that Pavati had hypnotized her, used her as bait for Maris and Tallulah’s purposes. Calder had told me every detail. But even though a little fear might have been healthy for her, I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Instead I said coolly, “Pavati is not a good friend for you.”

Sophie looked at me with pained eyes.

I sighed and examined my hands. “She killed Jack,” I said, sneering.

“She only did it to save you.”

“I know.” I owed Pavati for that. “I know,” I said again.

“So I’ve been thinking,” Sophie said. “I bet Pavati would save me. If I fell into the water. Like maybe from a boat or something.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I don’t think Pavati would let me drown. She’d change me like when Calder was changed. She might not want to, but she would if she had to.”

I was shaking my head vehemently before she was done talking. “Why has my family gone completely insane?”

Sophie ignored me. “If I were changed already, she wouldn’t have any reason to say no to Mom. It’s a logical solution.”

“You’re eleven. You don’t come up with logical solutions!”

“Why are you so mean?”

I didn’t know how to answer that. What I did know was that I couldn’t let my mother die. And I couldn’t let my sister throw herself into the lake to make Pavati do what I couldn’t force her to do. Pavati’s refusal to cooperate was leaving me no choice but Maris, and I was going to put that off for as long as I possibly could.

S
omething tickled my nose. I opened one eye and found the culprit. My face was pressed into a patch of spongy grass. I took a second to appreciate the fact that my clothes were soaked in dew. Any bit of moisture was a welcome relief. Stiff-necked and groggy, I tried to remember where I was.

There’d been a fight … some hockey player chasing us in his car … I remembered running. Laughing. And a most unfortunate lapse in judgment.

I’d ended the kiss just as quickly as it had started, and abruptly changed the course of the evening by blurting out that Marc had probably given up by now and we’d better go
get Chelsea’s car. But we’d lost track of where we’d parked it, and after wandering dark streets until way past midnight, eventually we’d sat down under a tree to talk and wait for daylight.

We’d talked long into the night about my fake terminal condition, Chelsea’s parents’ divorce, and her cat’s fetish for men’s feet.

After a while, Chelsea made it perfectly clear that she was interested in something more than just a kiss, but I rebuffed her, telling her that I had a girlfriend, which didn’t sound convincing to either one of us. Sometime after that, our conversation slowed to an uncomfortable silence. One moment Chelsea’s bitter voice was in my ear saying something about me not playing fair, and the next moment, sleep.

I stretched out my hand and felt a bony knee. Oh, man … Where were we? What was that smell? Rotting meat?