Page 37 of Irreverent (The Marked Saga #7)

I’d finally managed to make it to school on Friday, which consequently happened to be right on time to turn in my English Lit assignment. Unfortunately, I had a big whopping nothing to turn in since the entire project had slipped my mind altogether. Mrs. Gardener was not impressed with my ‘obvious lack of a priority list’ and after a ten-minute lecture in front of the entire class, finally agreed to give me an extension until Monday.

As the rest of the day progressed, I did my best to listen and take diligent notes throughout each of my classes, but it was getting harder and harder for me to keep up with everyone after all the days I’d missed. Not to mention that my morning training sessions with Gabriel and my mother were wiping me out even before I’d started the day.

By the time lunch rolled around, I was ready to curl up under my desk and go to sleep. Obviously, I couldn’t do that—not because I wouldn’t, but because I needed to talk with Morgan.

We didn’t share any of the same classes this year and so I had yet to run into her and tell her about the conclusion I’d arrived at last night. I needed someone’s input that knew Trace as well as I did and since Morgan was not only his good friend, but also a Seer, I figured she would be my best bet.

It only took a couple of minutes before I’d spotted Morgan and her big-ass red curls walking out into the quad with Carly hanging on her arm.

“Hold up!”

I called as I rushed out to catch up to them.

Carly was the first to swing around, her smile already stretched from ear to ear. “Hey, Jemma!”

she beamed as she threw her arms around me in a hug. “Oh, my gosh. Your hair looks so cute today! Did you get it trimmed?”

I blinked at her. My hair was literally the same as it looked every other day of my life. “Um, no.”

“Are you sure? I’m usually so good at spotting these kinds of things.”

“I’m sure…I mean, unless someone snuck into my room and trimmed it while I was sleeping.”

She broke out into fit of laughter, and I found myself seriously pondering whether the girl had ever had a bad day in her entire life. It was like her personality only had two settings: happy and fucking ecstatic.

Honestly, whatever she was on, I needed some of it.

I turned to Morgan who basically looked like a storm cloud in contrast. She generally had her face twisted into some form of a scowl and always looked like she was one comment away from ripping someone’s throat out. Today, of course, was no exception.

“Can we talk for a minute?”

I asked, trying to keep my tone as even and casual as possible. There was a definite break at the tail end though.

Her green eyes flicked up to mine, questioning. “Yeah. I guess so,”

she said and then turned to Carly. “I’ll catch up with you later, Car.”

“Oh. Is this like a private conversation type thing?”

asked Carly, her sad, caramel doe eyes bouncing between the two of us as though she were being left out of some super-secret slumber party we were planning.

If only she knew, she’d thank me.

“No, no. It’s a homework thing,”

I lied, knowing that Carly would want absolutely nothing to do with that convo.

“Oh, okay. Good to know,”

she said, clutching her chest like a crisis had been averted. Her eyes wandered over my shoulder to another group of girls walking together a few yards away. “Find me in the quad when you two are done!” she said and then meandered off to meet up with them.

“So?”

asked Morgan, the inquiring look in her eyes from earlier still present. “What’s up?”

“I think I figured out what your message means.”

Her brows pulled together as though I’d just started talking to her in another language. “How?”

“The how doesn’t really matter,”

I said, waving it off because I wasn’t about to discuss my personal life with her. We may have been on speaking terms these days, but Morgan was not my friend. “That bit about a transformation?” I began, making sure no one was within earshot of us. “I think it’s referring to Trace Turning.”

“Turning what?”

she asked, her brows still bundled in confusion.

“Turning,”

I repeated pointedly. “Into a Revenant.”

She stared at me for a really long time. For a second, I wasn’t sure she’d heard what I said and was just about to repeat myself when she barked out, “Have you lost your freaking mind?”

Well…that was entirely debatable at this point.

“Apart from the fact that Trace hasn’t moved a single muscle since Nikki smashed the Talisman, I swear our soulmate bond is growing weaker as the days go by. It’s like he’s slipping away from me, Morgan. And if it’s true what they say about the Paradigm: that it always balances itself out, then it’s quite fucking possible that Trace is slowly dying right now.”

Judging from the horrified expression on her face, none of this had occurred to her either.

“There’s only one real way to cheat death and that’s by—”

I dropped my voice to a harsh whisper— “Turning.”

Morgan’s entire face blanched. “I…”

I waited on bated breath. “You what?”

“I think I need to sit down.”

She spotted a bench a few feet away from us and staggered over to it before slumping down onto it like her legs had lost all mobility.

I could see she was distressed as she tried to process what I was telling her, but I had to keep going. I had to make it all make sense for her. “If you think of it in that way, then your message makes perfect sense. Doesn’t it?”

She stared straight ahead. “I guess it does. It’s just not the message I thought I was getting.”

“You and me both.”

I slipped into the spot beside her. “So, what do you think?”

She turned and met my eyes. “About what?”

Damn, the brightness was not strong with this one. “About Turning him. As a last resort obviously.”

She turned forward again, watching as groups of people shuffled back and forth around the quad, completely unsuspecting and oblivious to the hidden world that existed right on the fringe of our society.

When she didn’t answer, I prompted, “Morgan?”

“I think he would lose his shit,”

she finally said and my heart flatlined in my chest. “He wouldn’t want that.”

“So you’re saying we should just let him die then?”

I asked, aghast, and then continued without giving her a chance to answer. “I’m telling you now, Morgan, that’s not even an option. I lost him once because I couldn’t find a way to save him. I won’t do that again—not when there’s something I can do to stop it.”

“By condemning him to an eternity as a bloodsucker?”

she challenged.

“Isn’t that better than being a fucking vegetable? Or worse, dead? Are you seriously telling me you think he’d rather die than be Turned?”

I couldn’t seem to absorb what she was saying. I knew as much as anyone that Trace hated vampires, but the idea that he would give up on life—that he would give up on being with me for even one more day when there was a way to keep living, it just wasn’t sitting right with me. Not when he promised me he’d walk into hell just to be able to stand beside me. That he’d give a million breaths just to see me smile. Because as it stood, I was already living my hell and definitely not smiling, and where the fuck was he now?

I shot up from the bench, my stomach bunched into a hundred knots. “You’re dead wrong about this.”

“Maybe I am,”

she answered easily—too easy. “Or maybe you’re seeing what you want to see because you can’t let him go.”

“That’s not what I’m doing!”

I rasped out as though I’d just had the breath punched out of my lungs.

“Are you sure about that?”

Was I? Honestly, I wasn’t sure about anything anymore.

“This was a mistake talking to you,”

I decided, unable to answer her question or take her judgmental eyes for one more second. “You weren’t in love with him. He didn’t make any promises to you.”

She crossed her arms and pursed her lips. “Well, maybe that’s why I’m able to look at this with a clear head.”

Fuck her and her clear head.

“I don’t need you looking at my life with a clear head or otherwise. Last I checked, you were a Seer, so do us both a favor and See something that can actually help us for once.”

“My visions are plenty helpful.”

“Then prove it,”

I challenged, my eyes wild with desperation. “Light some incense, do a séance and connect with whoever the hell you connect with to get us some answers. If there’s another way to help him, find it. If not, I need to know that he’ll be okay in the future if I’m forced to make this decision for him.”

“That’s a little specific. It doesn’t exactly work that way.”

“Well, make it work, Morgan. In case you haven’t noticed, the shit has officially hit the fan. We’re going to need every little bit of magic working in our favor if we plan on making it to the other side of this,”

I said as a cool chill swept over my skin and through my hair. “You may not give a crap about what happens to me and that’s fine, but I know you care about Trace so do something and help me figure out a way to help him!”

She stared at me icily for a moment as though she were contemplating sending me to the Spirit Realm by way of her eyes, and then finally nodded. She’d gotten the message loud and clear.