Page 166 of Life and Death

“No, I’m good,” I promised. Archie could be lying to make me feel better, but either way it worked. It wasn’t so bad if Archie wanted to help me, too. If he wasn’t just doing it for Edythe.

“So what do we do now?” I asked.

“We wait for something to change.”

It was a very long day.

We stayed in the room. Archie called down to the front desk and asked them to suspend our housekeeping service. The curtains stayed shut, the TV on, though no one watched it. At regular intervals, food was delivered for me.

It was funny how I was suddenly comfortable with Archie. It was like his vision of our friendship, spoken out loud, had made it real. He sat in the chair next to the sofa where I sprawled, and answered all the questions I’d been too nervous to ask before. Sometimes he’d answer them before I asked them. It was a little weird, but I figured that was how everyone else felt around Edythe all the time.

“Yes,” he said, when I thought about asking him that. “It’s exactly the same. She tries hard not to be obnoxious about it.”

He told me about waking up.

“I only remembered one thing, but I’m not even sure itwasa memory. I thought I remembered someone saying my name—calling me Archie. But maybe I was remembering something that hadn’t happened yet—seeing that someday someonewouldcall me Archie.” He smiled at my expression. “I know, it’s a circular dilemma, isn’t it?”

“The hair?” He ran a hand over his scalp, unselfconscious. The stubble was just long enough to see that his hair would have been dark brown, nearly black, like his eyebrows. “It was a rather extreme look for 1920. A little too early for me to have been a skinhead, thank heavens. My best guess is disease or bad behavior.”

“Bad behavior?” I asked.

He shrugged. “I might have been in prison.”

“You couldn’t have been much older than me,” I protested.

He steepled his fingers thoughtfully. “I like to believe that if Iwasa criminal, I was both a mastermind and a prodigy.”

Jessamine—back at the desk and mostly silent—laughed with me.

“It wasn’t confusing the way it probablyshouldhave been,” Archie said when I asked him what his first visions were like. “It seemed normal—I knew what I was seeing hadn’t happened. I think maybe I’d seen things before I was changed. Or maybe I just adapt quickly.” He smiled, already knowing the question I had waiting. “It was Jess. She was the first thing I saw.” And then, “No, I didn’t actually meet her in person until much later.”

Something about his tone made me wonder. “How long?”

“Twenty-eight years.”

“Twenty-eight . . . ? You had to wait twenty-eightyears? But couldn’t you . . . ?”

He nodded. “I could have found her earlier. I knew where she was. But she wasn’t ready for me yet. If I’d come too early, she would have killed me.”

I gasped and stared at her. She raised an eyebrow at me, and I looked back at Archie. He laughed.

“But Edythe said you were the only one who could hold your own against her—?”

Jessamine hissed—not like she was mad, like she was annoyed. I glanced at her again and she was rolling her eyes.

“We’ll never know,” Archie said. “If Jess was really trying to kill Edythe, rather than just playing . . . ? Well, Jess has a lot of experience. Seeing the future isn’t the only reason why I can keep up with Edythe—it’s also because it was Jess who taught me how to fight. Lauren’s coven all had their eyes on Eleanor—she’s pretty spectacular, I grant you. But if it had come to a fight, Eleanor wouldn’t have been their problem. If they’d taken a closer look at my darling”—he blew her a kiss—“they would have forgotten all about the strong girl.”

I remembered the first time I’d seen Jessamine, in the cafeteria with her family. Beautiful, like the others, but with that edge. Even before I’d put it into words inside my own head, I’d sensed there was something about her that matched up with what Archie was telling me now.

I looked at Archie.

“You can ask her,” he said. “But it’s not going to happen.”

“He wants to know my story?” Jessamine guessed. She laughed once—it was a dark sound. “You’re not ready for that, Beau. Believe me.”

And though I was still curious, I did believe her.

“You said humans were harder . . . but you seem to see me pretty well,” I noted.