Page 11
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Theo made him list his injuries.
“Come on,” he said when Kade rolled his eyes. “You can’t go to English spitting blood. Just tell me.”
Kade twisted his cigarette between his fingers. They were in the disabled bathrooms again, a spot Kade was getting truly attached to. If they made it to graduation, they’d have to have some grand send-off in here. Maybe one last cigarette, their fingers bumping carelessly as they shared it. If they made it to graduation, the ritual would be dead and they’d be able to touch each other. At least, Kade hoped.
“My leg stings,” he started. “But that’s going away. Tongue hurts, bit the shit out of that. My nipples hurt.”
Theo made a face. “Your nipples ? Did he punch them?”
“No, Liss twisted them. I’m just glad she didn’t stab me with that pen.” Kade blew a stream of smoke. “How are you?”
He nodded toward the bandages peeking out from under Theo’s shirt.
“I’m fine.” Theo took the cigarette out of his hand and stubbed it out on the wall. “Open your mouth.”
Kade’s breath hitched.
“For your tongue,” Theo explained.
“Right. Yeah.” Kade opened his mouth wide, jaw clicking with effort. He figured Theo would tell him to cope with it, a bitten tongue wasn’t that big of a deal. But now Theo was sliding his fingers over Kade’s tongue, his touch unbearably gentle even as it seared him.
Kade let out a pained noise.
“I know,” Theo said, grimacing. “Almost done.”
Kade’s eyes watered. The pain ebbed, first the throb of the bite and then the burn Theo had created. There was a millisecond when Theo’s fingers were solid and cool against his tongue, and Kade’s heart leapt.
Then Theo pulled his fingers out.
“All done,” he said, voice high and strange. He cleared his throat, wiping his shiny fingers on his jeans.
Kade shifted on the spot, cheeks burning. Was now a good time to bring up the secret sex-related Google searches he’d done while Theo was making dinner? It was, Kade was embarrassed to discover, very possible. It was just…less dignified than Kade hoped. Less intimate . And they still couldn’t kiss. Which Kade really, really wanted. He just wasn’t sure if he was willing to die without having technically-kind-of-sex with Theo because he was holding out for a kiss.
Kade swallowed, gearing himself up to ask. For some reason it was stupidly difficult. He’d had sex before, sort of. And he was ninety-five percent sure Theo wanted him, even if Theo had seen him drunk and crying and seething and pathetic too many times to count. But he couldn’t make the words come out.
“What’d he say?” Theo asked.
Kade startled. “Huh?”
“Finn,” Theo said. He reached into Kade’s jeans pocket, pulling out another cigarette and the lighter Theo had gotten him. “Did he say anything weird? Anything we can use?”
Kade swallowed. His cheeks were still red, his tongue still buzzing from Theo’s touch. “No. He was just being his regular asshole self.”
Theo lit a cigarette. “You’re sure?”
“I don’t know.” Kade held out a hand expectantly.
But Theo put the cigarette back to his mouth and took another drag. “So Finn hit you first?”
Kade waited. When it became clear Theo wasn’t going to let this drop, Kade sighed. “No.”
“Kade,” Theo said, the disappointment in his voice making Kade’s insides shrivel. He finally handed the cigarette over.
Kade took it, regret flooding through him in waves. Regret for punching that asshole, for not being able to talk to Theo about what he wanted, for not being able to have what he really wanted. All he could have was this: a shared cigarette, damp at the tip with Theo’s spit.
Kade put it between his lips. “He kicked me. Okay? You know it’s harder when they actually touch me. Pitbull brain kicks in.”
“I know,” Theo said. “I just?—”
“Well, I’m just sick of being Lock’s monster. Alright?” Kade took a long, hard drag of the cigarette. His mouth still tasted like blood. Blood and burning.
Theo started to speak. Kade knew what he’d say: they were getting out of here. Kade was going to fashion school and Theo was doing… something , he wasn’t sure yet, now that he wasn’t going to join his parents law firm. Something with plants—gardening. Landscaping. Maybe cooking. Whatever they did, they were doing it far away from Lock.
Kade couldn’t stand to hear it again. “We need to raid the Emmerson place,” he said, cutting Theo off. “Delilah’s missing. She went for a run in the woods, and…”
He trailed off. Theo’s face had tightened, his jaw flexing hard enough to crack stone.
“They might have some of the shit he needs,” Kade continued. “Or he’s turning people and adding them to his vampire army. Even if it’s that, we still need to check her house in case she’s got a spear hanging in a secret room. Or a dress. Or?—”
Theo took the pouch out of his pocket and dug through it, rooting pink petals out of the dirt and holding them over the open toilet.
“Wait,” Kade blurted. “What are you doing?”
Theo frowned. “Throwing them out? We have photos. Keeping them feels like I’m just waiting around until he bursts back in to beat the shit out of me again.”
Kade watched the petals glint in the dim bathroom light. The idea of watching them vanish down the drain made him choke up in panic. They didn’t belong in a sewer, they belonged with them. Taken care of. Cherished.
Since when am I the one getting emotional over plants , Kade wondered.
He stubbed out his cigarette. “Just…give them here first. The pouch, too. Been meaning to look at those bones anyway, I’m pretty sure they’re human finger bones.”
Theo snorted. But he dropped the petals back into pouch and held it out.
Kade took it. There was a strange moment of vertigo where his vision blurred, and he had to blink hard to clear it. Then he reached into the pouch and dug through the petals for the small, thin bones that had been in his dreams last night, half-remembered and hazy and horrifying?—
Kade’s vision tunneled. He tipped forward, not even able to enjoy Theo catching him as he?—
—falls.
Theo’s hand flashes out, catching Kade by the back of his coat.
“Goddamned root,” Kade complains. He straightens, waiting for the inevitable admonishment. But Theo simply stands there, hand tight in Kade’s coat, standing closer than Kade remembered. He is beautiful, even in the darkness. His silhouette makes Kade ache for things they can never have.
He swallows, stepping back. “Thank you. Again.”
Theo lets go of his coat, expression unreadable. He starts walking once more, and Kade follows. It is the third time he has tripped in these dark woods tonight. Each time, Theo catches him and pulls him back up. By the coat, of course. They have not been able to touch each other without painful consequences for almost a year.
“We could kill ourselves,” Kade suggests.
Theo shoots him an exasperated look.
“What?” Kade asks. “It would fix it. He would have no lock, no key. We’re his only chance at seeing her again and razing the town.”
“We’re not dying,” Theo insists. “We’re undoing this. We will find a way out of this curse he’s bound us to, and then we will live. Far away from here.”
Kade sighs. “Theo.”
“We will undo this,” Theo says over him. “I’ve spoken to the hunter’s spellcaster. She says there is something we can do.”
Kade’s stomach twists. He can’t afford to let himself hope. He’d learned long ago that was a luxury meant for the lucky. Kade has never been lucky as long as he lived. He thought he might’ve been, when he met Theo. Then that turned into yet another doomed story.
“Is this why you brought me into the woods so late?”
“No,” Theo replies.
“Then why?”
“Because of this.” Theo lets him go and reaches into his pocket. When he brings it back out, his fingers are curled around something small and pink.
Kade cannot hold back a smile. “Already?”
“Just in time,” Theo says softly.
His hand ? —
—opened.
Kade groaned, squinting in the bright light of the nurse’s office.
Theo loomed over him, those beautiful brown eyes wide with concern. Kade remembered the day of Victor’s funeral, lying on the grass after Theo dragged him out of the car Kade had wrecked.
“We have to stop meeting like this,” Kade slurred.
Theo frowned. “What?”
Kade shook his head, making the plastic sheets under him crackle. He so rarely got to lie down on the cot, Kade mused as he waited for his head to stop spinning. Usually, Nurse Telfar threw a bandage and some aspirin at him and told him to stop being a stain on the student population.
Kade squeezed his eyes shut against the aching lights. The vision was already fading, like trying to remember a dream upon waking. No matter how much he tried to argue with his own visions— they’re my memories, a previous version of me but they’re MINE, quit taking them —they dissolved anyway.
Nurse Telfar appeared over Theo’s shoulder, glaring under those magnificent bushy eyebrows. “Is he on something? I have to report him if he is.”
“He’s not on anything,” Theo said defensively.
Nurse Telfar glowered at him. She was well loved by the majority of the student body. She let girls curl up on the cot while they waited for the pain pills to kick to dull their cramps. She even turned out the light for one student who got chronic migraines. But like most of the town, she had little sympathy for Kade. He’d stumbled in on the third day of freshman year with a black eye and swollen knuckles. She’d taken one look at him—ripped jeans, a dozen earrings, smudged eyeliner, a shirt with a word on it that would soon get him suspended—and said, I hope you haven’t been causing trouble.
“I’ll take him home,” Theo assured her. He slid a hand under the small of Kade’s back, easing him up. “Come on.”
Kade hummed, sagging forward. That vision had taken more out of him than usual. His head flopped onto Theo’s shoulder.
Theo jerked away. “Careful.”
Kade peeled his eyes open. He’d come dangerously close to shoving his forehead into Theo’s exposed neck.
The nurse turned away, grumbling as she tidied the cot where Kade had been lying. Straightening the sheets. Brushing the pillows free of Kade’s filth.
Kade waited until the door closed behind them, then turned to Theo. “I had it. I knew where those flowers were, and then it was gone. Where the hell are we even supposed to look ?”
“No idea,” Theo said, his arm a wonderful clamp around Kade’s waist. “But I know who might.”