Shades of Darkness (22 page)

Fear rolled in my gut.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. This morning. After breakfast. You never showed me the Ten of Swords before.”

He stopped walking when he said it. We stood outside a yarn shop with a cheery display of a knit squid and I nearly laughed. Not exactly where I thought I'd tell him about my life before Islington.

“Why didn't you tell me?” he asked. He sounded more than a little hurt.

I looked down at my boots.

“It didn't seem necessary,” I said. “That was the old me.”

“When?” he asked.

“Sophomore year,” I said. “After . . . well, after homecoming.”

The pieces clicked for him.

“Jesus Kaira. I'm sorry.”

“It's the past.”

“But it's still relevant. Especially with . . . you know.”

I nodded.

“I just wish you would have let me be there for you, is all.” He reached out and put a hand on my arm. Unlike when Chris did it, there wasn't a hallucination. Just the warmth of his touch and the words that spilled from his lips in a slow stream.

“Before I came out, I tried to kill myself,” he admitted. I jerked my gaze back to him. He continued before I could ask. “Never got very far, you know. But I was scared—I couldn't tell anyone and all I saw at school were kids getting beaten up or called faggots even if they had girlfriends. This was in
middle school
. And one day I was home alone and I'd just watched some gay porn and I felt so shitty about myself. So trapped, because I was doing this thing and I didn't want to do it or like it but I couldn't stop. So I went to the kitchen and got a garbage bag and went back to my room. Wrote out a note and everything. But I couldn't do it.” He laughed, which sounded more like a sob, and looked at the squid in the window. “I never told anyone that. Not even Oliver. After I started choking I ripped off the bag and threw it away and burned the note. The next day I applied to come here because it was the only escape I could manage. It felt like my only way out.” When he looked back at me, there were tears in his eyes. “The last two weeks I've woken up every morning feeling like I'm suffocating on that fucking bag. And I hate myself because I want to feel worse for Jane and Mandy, but all I can think of is how glad I am that I chickened out last minute.”

He started to cry then, and I pulled him close and let my own tears fall unchecked.

“I love you, Kaira,” he whispered. “You mean the world to me.”

“I love you too, Ethan.”

“No more secrets, okay?” he asked. “I don't want to lose you.”

“I promise,” I lied.

Because even though I felt his pain, even though this only cemented our bond, there were parts of my life I couldn't tell him. If I did, I'd lose him.

He couldn't know that I hadn't chickened out at the last minute. That I died the night I cut myself.

He couldn't know that it was the raven that brought me back.

We went back to campus a few hours later, a bag of art supplies and silly gifts from the dollar store in hand. Shopping therapy wasn't my usual balm, but it worked as well as anything else. Especially because most of this was for other people.

Ethan dropped me off in front of my dorm, leaned over in his seat to hug me good-bye and make me promise we'd have a pizza party in the Writers' House later tonight. Of course I agreed, and he said he'd invite Oliver and I should invite Elisa and maybe Chris, which was the first time he'd said the
C
word all day. The look I gave him must have been answer enough.

“Just Elisa then,” he replied, and I nodded and left.

But Elisa wasn't in when I got up to our room. Not in an ominous
oh no, she's missing
sort of way, but in the usual
she's probably out with friends or rehearsing
way. So I wrote her a note saying where and when the pizza would be and left it on her pillow, alongside a tiny pink stegosaurus and a chocolate bar (dark, of course).

I sighed and sat down on my bed. As usual, there were a dozen things I could be doing right now, most of them involving homework. That was the one thing about this school I loved as much as I hated—the work never stopped. Ever. No rest for the wicked. And no time to mourn.

That's when I remembered Jonathan's note in my pocket. Another sigh. I should probably go see him. I knew that if I waited too long, he'd send Helen after me. Not that I really wanted to defend my thesis to someone right now—especially someone not even
in
the arts department—but he was my adviser and had the final say in my career here. Hell, he could probably prevent me from graduating if he wanted to. Not that I thought he
would
do something like that, but it was a possibility. So I slipped back into my boots and rebuttoned my coat and headed back out into the cold.

Dealing with this was not something I wanted to be doing. But I wanted to be dealing with my inner demons even less.

Even though it was only three, the sky was darkening with storms. Seriously, was it ever going to stop snowing?

I was halfway to the academics concourse when I saw him, bouncing his way down the path toward me. Chris.

He caught sight of me and paused. Thankfully, he didn't do the awkward thing of turning around. He halted for a second and then kept walking. So I did the same.

“Hey,” he said with a lackluster wave.

“Hey,” I replied.

“Where you off to?”

“Jonathan's office. He wants to talk. About my thesis.”

“Ah.” He looked at his feet. “I saw your work. It's impressive.”

“Thanks,” I replied. I couldn't think of any way this conversation could feel more awkward.

“About yesterday.”

“Yeah?”

“Are you feeling any better?”

It wasn't the question I expected.

“Sort of. Went off campus with Ethan for a bit. It helped.”

“Good. I was worried about you. Never seen you that angry.”

Well, you barely know me,
I wanted to say.

“Yeah, I'm sorry about that,” I said instead. “I didn't mean to direct that at you. You were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

He gave me a sad grin. “Can we still be friends?”

I nodded. He held out his hand. I hesitated for a second, then took it. No vision, but I did hear a crow caw in the background.

“Still friends,” I said. “Anyway, better be off. Don't want Jonathan to think I'm avoiding him.” Which I
had
been doing, but he didn't need to know that.

“Sure. See you at dinner?”

Damnit.

“Actually, doing pizza with the boys. You can join if you want. Five p.m., Writers' House.”

His eyebrows lifted in surprise. “Really?”

“Yeah, of course. C'ya then.”

And it was then I realized we were still holding hands. I let go quickly and hurried the rest of the way to the concourse—just slow enough to not look like I was running—and didn't look back.

•  •  •

“Kaira, come in,” Jonathan said.

I hovered in the door for a second, glancing around his office. I'd been in here many times, and in many ways it was the office I'd like to have if I ever had a job that, you know, actually required me to have an office. The walls were covered in posters of old woodcut paintings from mythic texts—the Bhagavad Gita, Beowulf, the Norse Eddas, even Tolkien. Books were piled in the corners against concrete statues of fauns and gods, the tiny space brimming with history and strangeness.

“Hey Jonathan,” I said. I stepped in and settled myself on the chair across from his desk. The offices weren't luxurious by any stretch of the imagination—the chair and desk looked like they were from some fifties Ikea—but he'd made the place a little more homey. “You wanted to see me?”

“I did, yeah.” He was even more casual than I was used to seeing him—jeans and a T-shirt—which meant his tattoos were all bared. I couldn't take my eyes off his sleeve—gods and mortals battled it out, all surrounded by a great, twining serpent. “I thought you might want to talk about your thesis.”

“I'm not depressed, if that's what you're asking.”

“No, no.” He held up his hands. “Not that at all. The arts were developed to help mortals peer into the shadows. I don't think there's anything wrong or unsettling with your project.”

“So why did you want to see me? I just kind of thought it had to do with Jane's . . .” I couldn't say the word “death” or “suicide.” It lodged in my throat, and all I could picture was Ethan suffocating himself with tears in his eyes. I shook the image away.

He sighed and seemed to choose his next words carefully.

“I suppose it has to do with that, somewhat. I
am
your adviser, and that means I'm also here if you need any emotional support. I wanted you to drop by today so we could talk. If you need or want to, that is.”

“I think I'm okay,” I said. “I'm kind of talked out about the whole thing.”

“I don't blame you,” he said. “It's been . . . a very rough few weeks.”

We sat there in silence for a few moments, and I couldn't tell if it was comfortable or uncomfortable. When he spoke again, it felt like a small release of pressure.

“So tell me about your project,” he said. “I read your thesis statement but I want it from your own lips. Why the Tarot?”

I shrugged.

“My mom gave me a deck my freshman year and I've been pretty into it ever since. It helps put my life into a bigger pattern, you know?”

He nodded. It wasn't one of those dismissive nods, either; he looked like he understood. More importantly, he looked like he was interested in learning more.

“Is that why you took my class?”

“I guess, yeah. I've always liked fairytales and folklore.”

“But to you it's not just fairytales and folklore,” he said with a grin. “I mean, the Tarot draws upon all these old myths. In order to truly believe in the cards, you have to believe there's something manipulating them.”

I shrugged. I didn't like talking faith to anyone, not even my mom. I definitely wasn't about to discuss it with a teacher. “I guess,” I admitted.

There was no way I was going to tell him about the dreams or events that
actually
inspired the paintings. No way in hell.

“I don't know if you remember my mentioning the tutorial group,” he said. “Especially with everything else, I can't imagine it would be foremost on your mind. But they meet every other week. I'd love for you to join—I think you'd find it highly educational.”

Right. The stupid study group. And I didn't have the excuse of being busy with my thesis anymore, either.

“What's it for?”

“Independent study, mostly. It's not a lot of extra work, but we explore many of the topics we only brush over in class. The relationships between cross-cultural deities, the origin of rituals, that sort of thing. I wanted to give students a safe place to explore the more esoteric aspects of what I can cover in the curriculum. Even Islington has its limits to what I can teach.” He grinned, as if confiding a secret. “I figured you might be interested, what with your own ties to the occult.

“You don't have to say yes right now. Just know the offer's on the table. I think you'd find it very helpful for your future work, especially if you continue that Tarot project.”

“Thanks,” I said. “But I don't know if I'll have the time.”

“No pressure. We're meeting again tomorrow afternoon. I was thinking of canceling, in light of things, but then figured that work is a decent enough distraction in and of itself. Might help get your mind off things and—how did you phrase it?—put your life into a bigger picture.”

“Thanks,” I said. He had a point. The only way I was going to get through this was by distracting myself, and a new workload would do just that. Especially one that didn't involve art. I had a feeling I wouldn't be able to spend any more time in the painting studio than absolutely necessary. “I'll see if I can make it. Was there anything else?”