The Ylem (33 page)

But that didn’t mean I trusted his instincts
this time. Following this girl was a big waste of time. She
could’ve been just a regular customer of the Keeper’s—and wasn’t
there only one high school in this town? The girl knowing the
Benandanti didn’t mean anything.
They could’ve been lab partners
for all I know
. Or cheer partners. The girl had the looks, or
so I’ve been told. Massimo had seen her yesterday and said she was
"bellisima," with that hand gesture he did whenever he liked
something a lot. Gavran hadn’t mentioned anything on the matter.
But I knew that part of his relentless tailing had to do with this.
Beautiful women were his Achilles' heel. And I feared his instincts
had derailed onto the “lust trail,” clouding his good judgment.

Now there was nothing we could do about it.
He was on his way to do what he’d been planning all day: get her.
He’d asked the others to stay on their guard around downtown in
case the Benandanti decided to show up. I was the only one who’d
stayed behind, hiding like some gutless chicken in a small cave
we’d found yesterday—we’d had to kill a roaring, pain in the ass
bear to get it. The shady place still reeked of stale blood and
death.

I walked up to the jagged entry to breathe
some fresh air and leaned back against the scraggy wall. I knew
that Gavran had asked me to stay away from any struggle. I was the
fastest one in the pack, and he needed me because of that. He
needed me to report things to the Lord in case everything went
wrong. And I’d accepted it. I hadn’t had any other choice.

But I had one now.

You’re really going to do it, aren’t
you?
A voice suddenly echoed in my head.

I smiled.
What makes you say that,
Nick?

Come on. I know you. I saw your face when
Gavran told you to stay behind. You’re not going to do it. You’re
way too impatient to wait behind the curtain. You’re a leading
actor, not a set designer.

He did know me.
Who knows? Maybe I’ll
surprise my alter ego when the time comes—if trouble does
come.

Nah. You love me too much to leave me
undefended. I'm the cherry on the top of your cupcake. You can’t
live without me.

I guess you’re right. I do love you.

Jesus
, he said with a snort.
What a
fag, Caleb. You could’ve told me to fuck off
.

I barked a laugh.
I'm not the one talking
about cherries and cupcakes. And anyway, tell that to the waiter of
that little café in Rue Baptist. Or to that veterinarian we found a
couple of weeks ago. I'm sure they would disagree with you,
thoroughly.

Boasting about your conquests, Casanova?

More like stressing my manhood.

No need to. The countless hearts you’ve
left broken speak for themselves
, he said with the hint of a
smile. Then, he paused for a moment.
It’s not whole,
though
.

I frowned.
What the hell are you talking
about?

Your manhood, I mean. You haven’t
exactly…exploited it entirely
.

You’re confusing me, Nick
.

A man is not a man if he hasn’t loved a
woman, Caleb
. From all the words I’d expected to hear, none of
them had come close to this.

Love. I looked down at the mud-crusted,
rugged ground. He was right. I never fell in love when I was a
human. I had no time for that. Working for a living was the only
thing that mattered—jumping between paltry jobs and paying the rent
of shabby, moldy rooms was my life. Stealing food at gas stations
when I couldn’t afford grocery stores was part of it, too. I had
nothing to offer. I was a drifter. So why losing my time thinking a
girl could be interested in a beggarly guy like me? Life isn’t a
fairy tale. Happy endings were just a dreamer’s masquerade of
hope.

Now that I was a Shifter, love wasn’t even a
blip in my radar. My human life had ended at nineteen, and with it,
the chance of sharing my heart with someone. I had fun from time to
time, of course, going to bars and nightclubs with Nick, looking
for one-night stands. But that’s what they were. Only one-night
stands. Our life didn’t allow us to go further than that—unless it
was a vampire, which I personally didn’t like. The lack of scent
and warmth was a huge turn off.

But I was okay like this, carefree with no
strings attached. Feelings only weighed you down, placing rocks
along the way and making one’s journey bumpy. Nick was a clear
example of it. Memories of his human girlfriend still haunted his
mind—she’d died of lung cancer. Apparently cigarettes had been her
second love. And to be honest, I wasn’t an exception to that weight
in the chest either. True, I’d never been in a relationship with
anyone. I didn’t know what that was. But I’d experienced an
entirely different type of love. A brotherly love. Nick said he
hated how fragile human nature was, how breakable, and that made me
wonder about her, about that little girl that’d caught my heart
with her smiling eyes years ago. What if she’d fallen sick, too?
What if she’d been in an accident? Was she okay? The guilt for
leaving her consumed me sometimes.

I’d promised to her I would never leave her,
but at the end reality had dawned on me. I belonged in the streets,
not next to her.

Why so quiet all of a sudden?
Nick
said.
Afraid of telling me I'm right?

Don’t you have more interesting things to
do, like keeping watch over the Benandanti?
I snapped.
Stop
babbling and focus.
This was exactly why feelings were a
burden. They made you act like a constipated idiot.

Whoa, there. I seem to have touched a sore
spot
.

Goodbye, Nicolai
.

Okay. Fine. I’ll let you know if something
comes up. Enjoy your bitchy tantrum
, he said with a final
smirk. And as quick as he left, the gates of the past took me away
in a journey. The memory of that little girl I’d loved as a sister
too strong to fight.

I was in the living room, wandering around
the sprawling space, looking for her behind the couch and the
floor-length curtains. As usual, Hide-and-Seek was our game. She
couldn’t let a day pass by without trying to find a new hiding
place to make me lose. I always found her and she hated that. Her
small ego couldn’t handle it. She wanted to win at least once.

I could have pretended and let her win, of
course. But I liked seeing her angry pouts too much. Her plump
cheeks turned bright pink, like sweet strawberry lollipops, and the
honey hue in her eyes ate up the green, leaving two blistering
pools that could've melt even the strongest of hearts. She had the
cutest angry face in the world.

But I guessed I wasn’t going to see it today.
She’d found a way to twist the game with that wily mind of hers. I
was supposed to give her steamed veggies and “skimmed” mashed
potatoes for dinner—which meant no cream in the mix, just milk and
butter. She’d been put on a low fat diet that week. Some of her
clothes didn’t fit her anymore, and the percentage of overweight
kids in this country was already too alarming, I’d been told.

Still, what kid liked to eat vegetables and
sugar-free stuff? She was in pain. She whined a lot during
meals.

Tonight however, pouting or complaining
wasn’t in her plans. She’d made a deal with me. If I found her, I
would have to make her one of my special grilled cheese sandwiches,
which she called “skyrockets” since their yummy taste propelled her
high into the sky. If I didn’t find her though, she was going to
eat the veggies and mashed potatoes.

The deal wasn’t fair. She knew either side of
it would bring her a victory. It was up to me to decide which
one.

I walked to her room and stopped next to the
bed. The headless Barbie and ponies I’d placed inside the toy trunk
a couple of minutes ago were laying on the floor. I smiled. Was I
going to let her eat a cheese-and-butter packed sandwich?

I slid to the foot of the bed and kneeled in
front of the trunk. It’d been a hard week for her food wise. She
deserved a little break. I pulled up the lid and leaned over the
edge.

“Boo,” she said, crestfallen, her lips
pushing out that lovely pout.

I chuckled, watching her as she struggled to
get free from all the toys surrounding her body—especially her
head. Several Barbie's hands were tangled in her hair.

When she finally sat up and looked at me, a
smile lit up her face, as if she’d suddenly realized something.
“Skyrockets!” she shouted.

“That’s right,” I smiled and stood up.
“So…are you going to stay there or are we going to race and see who
gets to the kitchen first.”

It took her less than two seconds to get out
of the trunk and less than one to storm out of the room. For
someone that chubby, she moved pretty fast.

I made her one special skyrocket and gave her
a chocolate chip cookie as a prize for beating me to the kitchen. I
knew I shouldn’t have done it and that I was going to get into
trouble because of that. But in that moment, all I cared about was
making her happy. And she couldn’t have been any happier. Her face
was glowing after that last bite of soft chocolate chip cookie. She
was a Cookie Monster, which is why, according to her father, she
had grown wider over time.

Abusing of Pepperidge Farm too much led you
to that.

“You know…my Ken looks about the same as
you,” she said, studying my face while I was eating my second
sandwich. “Except for the eyes. The blue in yours is electric, not
pale—and the blond hair…yours is a bit longer, kind of shaggy, and
darker…like caramel. You could be singer Ken!” she added
excitedly.

I didn’t know if being compared to a dumb,
plastic doll who only hanged around dumb, plastic blondes was good.
But I wasn’t going to tear down her enthusiasm. “Is that a good
thing?” I asked before taking another bite.

She cocked her head, as if confused by the
question.

“Being like Ken, I mean,” I mumbled with a
long string of cheese coming out from my mouth. “Is it good or
bad?”

“That’s a very stupid question, Cay,” she
said pulling a face and almost sounding like a grownup, as if the
matter was of crucial importance. “Of course it is good. It means
you’re handsome, silly. And guess what? Beautiful people always
have happy endings.”

I swallowed back a smile. “Says who?”

“My books—and movies.”

I dropped the greasy sandwich on the plate
and looked at her. “Things aren't easy like in fairy tales, Chewy.
They’re way harder than that.”

“Says who?” she asked defiantly.

“Life.”

She paused with a frown, as if analyzing what
I’d said. “You can create your own fairy tale if you believe, Cay.”
She looked at me. “You are the writer of your own life, not the
reader.”

I stilled and stared at her, taken aback by
her words. Such wisdom and maturity wasn't normal for a small girl
like her, for a girl who believed books and movies were the real
thing. It was as if she’d made a jump in time to her adult years.
The seriousness in her face was deep, and I knew she wanted me to
grip the message and wrap it around my heart so it would become a
relentless part of me. And I did.

I smiled. “You’re right. We create our own
stories—and since I’m such a good writer, I already can see what
your story is going to be about.”

“Really?” Her eyes widened, sparkling.

I nodded. “I can’t tell because it goes
against a writer’s code of honor. But what I can tell you is that
is going to have a happy ending—a very special one.”

“Even if I'm not beautiful?”

“Who says you’re not beautiful?”

She looked down at her stomach. “Beautiful
people don’t have Tootsie Rolls wrapping their bellies.”

I gave a soft laugh. The tender smile in my
lips an echo of the warmth in my heart. “Tootsie Rolls have nothing
to do with it, Chewy.” I nodded to her belly. “What makes a person
an enchanting princess or a charming prince…it’s what’s underneath
here.” I placed my hand in the middle of her chest. "True beauty
lies within."

“My heart?” she asked, staring at my
hand.

“Your heart—and you have the most beautiful
one I’ve ever seen.”

She looked up at me and twisted her lips into
a bright smile. “I'm an enchanting princess,” she said proudly,
with her chin high.

“You are.” I smiled. “And one day you’ll find
your charming prince.”

She took my hand in hers. “You will too,
Cay—I mean, find your princess. And we’ll all live together, like
one big happy family,” she said, with the glow of a joyful future
shinning in her eyes.

Family. My heart swelled at the sound of that
word, taking my mind to places I’d never pictured myself—a birthday
party, a barbecue, a Christmas dinner, with a sparkling tree and
gifts piled underneath—an actual Christmas.

“Daddy says he wants you with us.” Her voice
pulled me back from the stream of my thoughts. “He’s going to talk
to some people to make it happen.”

“To some people?” I asked, suddenly
anxious.

She nodded. “People who help kids like you,
with no mommy or daddy.” She looked at me from head to toe. “You
don’t look like a kid to me, though.”

Crap
. “I'm sixteen. To the law, I'm
still a kid.” Which meant that if everything went wrong, a foster
home would be waiting for me at the end. And that was something I
couldn’t experience again. I’d rather be dead than go back to one
of those places.

As if she’d noticed the storm of clashing
feelings inside of me, she climbed out of the chair and hugged me.
“Promise me you’ll stay with me,” she said in a small voice.

I didn’t answer. Fear was eating my guts. I
could only think about my old foster home and the pain and the
humiliation. A red
no
flashed in my head. I couldn’t go back
there.