The Vision (11 page)

It was enough to make my heart stop. And definitely to make my brain stop, because who believes a player when he says something like that?

Me. That's who.

chapter 16

I drifted around the apartment like I was in a dream the rest of the weekend. Liv called and texted, dying for scoop, but I didn't want to shatter the euphoria of remembering Zander's eyes on mine, that kiss, the things he'd said. Speaking them aloud would and I couldn't
not
talk about it. Liv would never let me. So I put the phone on mute and left it on my dresser. Though I strolled casually by every half hour or so, just to see if Zander'd tried to reach me.

He'd sent one text early in the day, a “thanks for last night.” Even his words typed on the screen were thrilling, as if they'd been whispered in my ear. Liv was right. I had it bad. It made me smile to admit it.

“Not a date, huh?” Petra said from her chair by the window as she caught me grinning foolishly for about the fiftieth time.

“Okay, maybe a date,” I answered.

“Tell!”

I did. And Petra said he sounded delicious, which of course he was.

I was nervous walking to school on Monday. I hadn't heard from Zander the rest of the weekend. Not a big deal. He said he wanted to hang out again, but it wasn't like we were exclusive. Or even anything, really.

I hoped I could pretend that's how I actually felt.

He wasn't at his locker when I passed and I wondered whether he might be waiting at mine, but when I rounded the corner, I saw only Erin, Liv, and Hannah, ready to pounce.

“How was it?”

“What happened?”

“What's his house like?”

“Does he have any brothers?”

I laughed, holding up my hands. “Easy, guys. Stop.” The sharp edge of nerves relaxed. “Hannah, it was great,” I said. “Liv, I had dinner with him and his mother, then he drove me home. Erin, his house is nice.” I paused, thinking about the dining room, filled with old things. “Unusual. His mom collects stuff. Antiques.”

“Did he kiss you?” Liv's eyes gleamed.

“That would be awfully forward, wouldn't it?” I said innocently. “I mean it was only dinner …”

“Cassie!” Liv practically stomped her foot. “Did he?”

“Yes,” I answered, forcing myself to sound blasé.

“Aha! I knew it!” She lowered her voice. “Was it amazing?”

“Um, yeah.” I turned to my locker, fiddling with the lock to get a grip on my emotions, which were flying so high it seemed equally possible that I could laugh hysterically or burst out crying.

“Oh, Cassie, that's so awesome! I've got goose bumps for you,” Liv said, adding, “But still …”

I glanced up. “What?”

“Just, you know, be careful.”

“Because he's a player?”

“Well, yeah.”

“Yeah, I know, Liv. We talked about that.”

“You did?”

“Uh-huh.” I traded the books in my bag for those of my first- and second-period classes and swung the door shut. I turned to face the three of them, all leaning forward like they might pull the words from my mouth. “He said he knew that's what people said about him and they were right. But that he's not playing me.”

It sounded defensive, even to my ears.

“But,” Hannah jumped in, rescuing me from Liv's skeptical look. “You never answered my other question. Does he have a brother?”

Everyone laughed and we started down the hall, Liv changing the subject—thankfully—to her first weekend as a working girl at TREND.

He found me at lunch.

I'd dreaded going in there, afraid he'd be sitting at his usual table with his usual friends and ignore me, as usual, proving Liv right. But he didn't. I'd just paid and was walking with my tray when he spoke, his voice close behind, making my back shiver as if he'd touched me.

“I've been looking for you.”

I turned, my tray sticking awkwardly between us. “Hey, Zander.” It came out cool. Perfect. Much calmer than I felt.

“Let me take that.” He reached for the tray, carrying it easily to the side with one hand so he could walk close to me. Close enough that I could see heads turning as we passed. “I thought I might see you at church yesterday.”

“I had to work.”

“Oh, so you got to see your boyfriend then.”

I was confused for a minute. “Ryan?” I looked up to see him smirking.

“So that's his name.”

I played along. “Mm-hmm. Yeah, we spent the day together. It was very romantic, side by side over a dead body.”

Zander paused. “What?”

Oops. I'd been working so hard on my banter that I'd totally forgotten to pay attention to what I was telling him. Too clever for my own good. “Yeah,” I said, still walking, forcing him to keep up. “I guess I forgot to mention it. I work at a funeral home.”

I was cringing inside, wondering if he'd just veer off, back to his table without another word, maybe even taking my lunch with him in his hurry to escape.

“That's weird,” was all he said. We'd gotten to my table, Liv, Erin, and Hannah already sitting there, trying desperately not to look up. Zander put my tray down. “Hi, ladies,” he said smoothly.

“Hey,” they all answered.

He turned back to me. “I'll leave you to your lunch, but are you free on Friday?”

“I have to work.”

“Graveyard shift?”

“Ha-ha. No, but I probably won't be done until around ten.”

“Okay, I'll pick you up.”

“Sure,” I said, even though it hadn't been a question.

“Great.” He smiled, his teeth sparkling white against bronze skin. “We'll talk details later. Just tell Ryan you're spoken for.”

He walked away, true to his word to be a gentleman. He hadn't tried to touch me or hold my hand, much less kiss me again.

Be careful what you wish for, I thought.

chapter 17

I'd meant to go to Vauxhall Hospital after school on Monday, long overdue for a visit to Demetria. Instead, I went home and cruised the social sites for Zander. Nothing. I wasn't surprised. There was something more sophisticated about him and his friends—who I still didn't know and who continued to ignore me in the halls—to think they'd be chatting online. Whispered confidences and smoky nights out seemed more their speed.

I thought about going to see Demetria on Tuesday instead, but Hannah asked me to do something. She and I had never hung out alone before and I didn't want to say no. We ended up at TREND, where Liv convinced me to buy an outrageously expensive sweater for my date with Zander.

“He will not be able to resist you in that,” she said when I stepped out of the dressing room. I wouldn't have given it a second glance—pale blue, hip length, fitting soft and snug over my few curves. It looked both innocent and touchable.

Liv's manager rang me up—raving about Liv the whole time—then Hannah and I went next door for yogurt. It turned out we didn't have much in common other than our friendship with Liv—she didn't read much, I didn't know the actors she talked about, and we had no classes together. I thought later that it was probably only seeing me with Zander that'd made her invite me out. She was far from the only girl at school with a crush on him.

He'd texted me about plans for Friday and sent a few other quick messages—“thinking of you” and “how's your day, beautiful?” Cheesy stuff that still made me tingly inside. But we hadn't done more than wave, smile, and say hey in the hallways and lunchroom at school.

I probably would have drifted through the whole week that way, mindlessly counting down the hours until Zander picked me up, if I hadn't run into Nick Altos.

I'd stayed at school late to finish up a science project and was bundled up and headed out the door when I saw him sitting on the bottom step of the deserted staircase, his head in his hands.

“Nick?”

He looked up, startled. My chest squeezed when I saw his tear-stained face. Guilty, guilty, guilty.

“Hey,” I said sympathetically, walking over to him.

He sniffled. “You have a knack for finding me like this.”

I sat carefully and waited. When he didn't speak, I prompted gently, “Want to talk about it?”

Nick shrugged jerkily, almost convulsive. “What's there to talk about? It's the same shit. My dad.” He paused, breathing deeply for control. “At first it sucked because … well, it just sucked. He was dead. I wasn't going to see him again. That was bad, but it wasn't so …” He stopped, his mouth quivering, and looked at his hands. “So personal.”

I kept my eyes averted. After a minute he continued, his voice harder, strained. “I went to his apartment. Just me. My mom didn't want to go. I don't blame her and I'm glad she wasn't there. It would have just been harder …”

I thought of the picture next to the bed, knew already what Nick had found. The same kind of stuff I'd found cleaning out our apartment after Nan died. Photos, cards, years of memories that had meant enough to keep.

“… Father's Day,” Nick was saying, his hands balled into fists. “Pictures of me dressed like him for Halloween. The letters he wrote were the worst. Four of them, stacked inside a drawer. All for me. All unsent.” Nick's next words were partly strangled by emotion. “Telling me how sorry he was. How he was going to be better. You know that dad in commercials?” His voice rose, a little hysterical, but I let him go on, trying my best to squelch the guilt that kept rising like bile in my throat. “The throw-the-football-let's-go-fishing guy? The one I never had? He wanted to be that guy,” he said, his hands still clenched, their knobby knuckle ridges white. “And now he never will.”

I didn't reach for him or do anything but sit there quietly while he got it together. When he was calmer, I tried to reassure him, feeling like the biggest fraud in the world the whole time. He nodded, seeming embarrassed, and I thought: who the hell am I to comfort the kid whose dad I let die?

I went to see Demetria that afternoon.

chapter 18

She trudged in, looking sloppy and disheveled, her belly rounder than I remembered, though it had to be my imagination. It hadn't been
that
long since I saw her and it was way too early for her to be showing.

Sitting there, looking at Demetria and remembering the awful conversation with Nick, I couldn't believe I'd let so many days go by without coming. What was I thinking, allowing my golden opportunity to tick away, minute by minute, like this? It made me angry with myself and determined to get it out there today, even if I had to ask her point-blank. Demetria would be released someday, maybe soon. I'd wasted so much time already.

I leaned in close, smelling the industrial clean of generic detergents wafting from her gown. “Demetria,” I said, speaking low, to be sure the nurse behind me wouldn't hear. “I need to talk to you about your visions.”

It took a minute, but slowly her eyes drifted up, connecting with mine. I felt a surge of elation.

“There's a reason I've been coming to see you so often,” I said urgently. “It's not just because I needed someone to talk to. That was true, but really it's that …” I paused, her eyes watching me as if through a steam-fogged mirror. Medicated? I didn't know what they could give a pregnant girl, but she didn't look all there. I willed myself to go slowly, though everything in me wanted to spill it all out. “I think you and I have the same”—don't say problem—“ability.”

There was a flicker, a light breeze of recognition that stirred Demetria's placid features. I leaned closer, my hands almost touching hers. She didn't flinch.

“My mom could do it too,” I said. “I didn't know her, but I'm sure of it. She was in a place just like this and I read her files. When she told them about it, they thought she was delusional.”

Demetria's eyes were clearer, still focused on me. Though she hadn't spoken yet, I could almost feel it coming. We were on the verge.

And suddenly, I realized that this might be it: the moment I would know the truth about whether there were others, whether I truly was descended from the Fates, born with something beyond ability. Responsibility. Learn whether there was a consequence to my actions beyond what I could see or imagine. Whether each life I saved truly sacrificed another.

I squeezed my hands together and took a deep breath.

“I'm hoping you can help me understand it, Demetria, what we can do with the mark—”

“Don't.”

I looked up, startled by the voice interrupting me, familiar and out of place. He stood just behind me, close enough to touch.

“Zander?”

He stepped around the chair to face me and shook his head, saying it again. “Don't.”

“Don't what?” The words came out automatically, without conscious thought, my brain too busy trying to fit together the disjointed pieces before me:

Zander, where he'd denied ever being.

Looming over me and this girl I'd counted on as the key to my past and future.

The word he'd spoken.

Don't.

My anxiety was different from a minute earlier when I'd been on the edge of telling Demetria my secret. This was a throat-closing dread.

“Don't tell her,” he said.

A chill went through me. My words were weak and totally unconvincing. “Tell her what?”

Zander didn't bother answering, just held out his hand. “Come with me.”

I stood numbly, my brain frozen. Firmly, he grasped my arm above the elbow, pulling me to the door. I could feel the heat of his touch through my sweater. Zander led me past the nurse, who glanced up, nodded, and checked off my name as I exited the room.

I was dizzy. Not in the warm, exciting way I usually felt around Zander, whose face was tight and determined. This was a disoriented, upside-down dizzy. I let him pull me along, not sure I could command my feet unguided. Not sure I had much choice anyway. We passed hallways and doors, down elevators and through waiting rooms. I shrugged on my coat just before the final gauntlet of sliding magnetic exits that ushered us outside, the Midwest winter like a slap in the face.

Zander gently pushed me against the brick of the hospital wall, glancing quickly to either side, before leaning in close exactly as he had less than a week before when he'd kissed me, pinned against his car.

“What were you thinking?” he hissed, his breath hot and angry in my ear.

I couldn't answer, fear and confusion choking my words like an invisible collar.

“Yes, Cassie,” he said, pushing back. Crossing his arms. “I know what you are.” Zander smiled, but his eyes weren't warm. They were hot. Burning into mine. “You knew there were others, didn't you?”

I was mute. My mind still grasping, fumbling. Understanding, but trying not to.

“Of course you did,” Zander said, hitting the heel of his hand against his head as if he'd just made the connection. “That's what you've been doing here, visiting Demetria. Every week, right? Sometimes more.” He shook his head again, chiding now. “Where did you ever get the idea she was like us?”

Us.

Of course. Why hadn't I considered it before? And then I realized why.

“But you're not a girl.”

Zander frowned with mock disappointment. “You just figured that out? I'd have thought with the kiss and all …”

“That's not what I mean. I thought …” I stopped, still not sure it was safe to say it out loud. Did he really know? How could I believe him? Of course, I'd been ready to believe in Demetria, who'd given me no reason to think she was anything other than a troubled pregnant teenager.

“Let me help you out,” he suggested wryly. “You thought the Fates were women.”

“Yes.”

“And their power only went to female descendants.”

“Right.”

“I'm not a descendant of the Moriae,” he said, fingering the gold charm hanging from its black leather cord. “The theta,” he instructed. “I thought when you were staring at it in my car, you knew. And when I realized you didn't, I could see how clueless you were about all of it.”

“So you're not a Fate,” I said, struggling to follow along.

“Right.”

“Then who—what—are you?”

“I'm a descendant of Thanatos, half brother to the Fates. I claim the soul.”

It sounded absurd, but the jokes that normally would've sprung to mind wilted. He was still fingering his necklace, deadly serious. And looking at his face, I knew it was true. All of it.

There
were
others and I'd found one. Not Demetria—Zander.

It was a sickening feeling. Especially when what he'd said made its way through the frazzled circuits of my brain.

“You … you kill them?” I whispered, barely able to say it aloud.

Zander rolled his eyes. “No, I don't kill them, Cassie. I'm a soul guide. I expedite.”

“You expedite,” I echoed stupidly. “What does that mean?”

He didn't answer. We stood there silently for a minute, me still leaning against the wall and Zander standing tall and powerful before me. Light was fading from the sky, a deep purple gray that threatened snow or rain. Drips of water had frozen midstream from the lip of the downspout beside me. I was too numb to feel it, though, colder inside than out.

“We should go somewhere more private,” Zander finally said, his eyes looking deeply into mine.

My pulse sped up, as if it still thought Zander was trying to get me alone so we could kiss rather than talk about death and our roles in it.

I followed him mutely to his car, thinking back to the first time he'd driven me home after school. I'd felt giddy—happy and nervous all together and even a little scared, but in a good way—about riding with this boy Liv and my own better sense warned me away from.
He's dangerous,
she'd said.

She didn't know the half of it.

Zander drove to his house.

“Is your mom home?”

He shook his head. “She's in the city. Working. It wouldn't matter, though,” he added. “She knows about you.”

Of course, I thought dully. He still hadn't explained how
he'd
known about me, but I figured I could just add that to my massive list of questions.

Inside, the faintest scent of incense and Greek tea hung in the air. It was a sudden, aching reminder of Nan, so unexpected and bittersweet that my eyes filled with tears. I tried to wipe them away, but Zander saw.

“Hey …” He stepped closer, his hand brushing my cheek lightly. Zander pulled me close, which made it worse because I felt that crazy attraction, but it was all mixed up now. He wasn't who I thought he was. I hadn't wanted him to be who I thought he was when I thought he was a player, but I didn't want him to be this either.

Or did I? Would it be better having a partner with benefits or just more confusing?

I was having trouble thinking straight and there was so much to think about. I shook my head and pulled away, turning my back to discreetly erase the remaining tears. “Thanks,” I said hoarsely. “I'm fine.”

“You're new to this.” Zander sighed, almost to himself. “I have to remember that, try to be more … sensitive.”

It wasn't a word that suited him. “It's okay,” I said. I'd stopped crying, but my eyes and nose were probably still that awful shiny red. I sat on the sofa, looking down so Zander couldn't see the ugly mess I'm sure I was. He took the armchair next to me.

“I guess I have a lot of questions to ask you,” I said finally.

He nodded. “I thought you might.”

“Can you tell me what you know?” I said without looking up.

“Why don't we start with what
you
know,” Zander suggested. “I'll fill in the blanks.”

I nodded. “Okay.” And then had no idea what to say. I decided to start with what I'd been about to tell Demetria when Zander turned my world inside out. “I know that I see something,” I said. “The mark, I've always called it. It's like a glow around someone and it means they're going to die.”

I raised my eyes, almost afraid to see what he thought.

“Mm-hmm,” Zander prompted casually, like we were talking about a test at school or a movie we'd both seen. “So you know the moment they're going to die?”

“Not exactly,” I answered. “The light is on them all through the day of their death, as far as I can tell.”

His expression flickered, like the shutter on an old camera, a momentary change of emotion I couldn't quite place. And then he said, “Anything else?”

I looked back down. It was easier to say it that way. “I know that I can change things. I can tell them what I see, what I know, and they live.”

“Sometimes,” he corrected. “Right?”

“Right,” I said, remembering the ones who died anyway. “Sometimes.”

He nodded.

“I know …,” I started, pausing when I realized there really wasn't a single other thing that I knew. Not for sure. “I guess that's all I really know.”

Zander disagreed. “You knew there were others.”

“Well, yeah. There was a letter in Nan's things, written in Greek. She gave it to me when I turned sixteen, but I never bothered with it until after she was gone and I realized that the mark was more than just knowing about death. It was an ability to delay it.”

“And the letter said …?”

“It said I was a descendant of Lachesis, one of the three Fates of Greek mythology.”

“Responsible for determining the length of a human life,” he finished.

“Yes.”

“That's it?” Zander asked.

“No,” I said, looking up to catch every nuance of his reaction. “It said I could change the course of fate, but only at the cost of another life.” I felt everything in me tense as I asked the critical question: “Is it true?”

He nodded. Without hesitation. “Yes.”

“How do you know?”

“My mom told me.”

“But how does
she
know?”

He shrugged. “She just does.”

“Has she ever seen it happen?”

Zander looked confused. “Seen what happen?”

But she wouldn't. That wasn't her gift. It was mine. I could picture how it would look, the mark disappearing from one person and reappearing on another. Someone in the same scene, unmarked before.

What was the likelihood I'd ever be there to see it? The mark wasn't like a fly, moving through physical space, or a germ, passing from one person to another. I'd never know who'd been sacrificed. Never know if anyone truly had been. I'd have to take it on faith. Or not. Kind of like religion, which is what it had been for the ancient Greeks. But I was a seventeen-year-old high school student, not a Greek goddess.

Maybe the original Fates were just girls like me, too. Normal people. Maybe they all were—Jesus, Buddha, Allah, Krishna—none of them gods at all, but regular people with bizarre, extraordinary abilities or really good tricks; Jesus's walking on water nothing more than finding a sandbar underneath.

It was the chicken and the egg. Untestable. Unprovable. You either believed or you didn't.

Diagonally from me, Zander sat, waiting expectantly for whatever else I had to say.

“That's it, I guess,” I told him finally. “That's all I know.”

He nodded, but said nothing.

“So?” I prompted finally.

“So, what? Are you asking me what I think?”

“No. I'm asking you if it's true. Me—us—being some kind of descendants of Greek … gods.”

“Yes,” he said, annoyed at having to answer it again. “Of course it is.”

Of course. Right. How could I have thought otherwise?

“What about you?” I asked.

“I'm a soul guide.”

“So you said. But what is that exactly? Do you know when someone's going to die?”