Page 19

CHAPTER NINETEEN

The greenhouse was gone. Blackened struts stood up from the ground, the scent of melted plastic still hanging in the air days later.

The burned flowers stayed, too. Acrid and heavy, making Kade’s eyes water.

“You grew them for me,” he said. “The flowers. Victor did something to them, after. Twisted them for his own shit. But you grew them for me.”

Theo didn’t respond for a long time, turning over burned chunks of plastic with his foot.

“Okay,” he said finally, looking like he would rather talk about anything else.

Kade rolled his eyes. “It’s romantic!”

“It’s two dudes who died centuries before we were born,” Theo replied. “Do you feel anything?”

Kade considered. He stepped into the middle of the charred flowers, digging his sneakers into a patch of old blood. His own lifeblood pumping out of him and staining the dirt, the moss, the burned petals.

“Here,” he said.

Theo twitched. He kept looking around like he was watching out for the Fletchers, but Kade knew that really, Theo didn’t want to look at the spot where Kade died. Which Kade supposed was fair. It was bad enough going through it. He couldn’t imagine what it must’ve been like carrying Kade’s corpse to the car, not knowing if the vampirism process had worked.

Kade lay down. Part of him hoped for nothing, like all the times they’d trekked out to Cyth’s tree to try and induce a vision. But the moment his head touched the burned ground, he was flooded with images: fire on meat. Worms in dirt. Flesh withering around the bone.

“Kade,” Theo said, his voice very far away. “Are you?—?”

“—even listening?”

Kade doesn’t open his eyes. The moss is soft and nothing smells of blood. His head is on his beloved’s lap, and they are both wearing gloves.

It is near the end, no matter how much Theo denies it.

“Kade,” Theo says, low and persistent and lovely. “Kade!”

Kade wills himself closer to sleep. Just as he can feel its insistent call, the stiff corner of a newspaper presses gently into his chest.

Sleep falls even further away. Kade groans, forcing his eyes open.

Theo leans over him with a relieved smile. “Thought I lost you for a moment.”

“Almost,” Kade says, and yawns. “But no, your grating voice brought me back.”

Theo smiles harder. “I was just reading about the plays showing in New York. Would you want to go to one, after we leave here?”

Kade sighs. Theo has been making more of an effort in these last months. Trying to convince Kade that they will have a life together after this. Kade does his best to believe it. But there is something stubborn in him, something a lot like his family line and a little like fate, that insists otherwise. A happy ending is a pretty idea. But Kade has never seen one in the flesh.

Then again, he thinks, taking Theo’s favorite curl and tugging. All sorts of strange things exist in this world. Perhaps it isn’t foolish to hope.

“I’ve never been to a play,” Kade admits. “It would be nice.”

“Perfect,” Theo says. “I’ll make a note. How do you feel about Shakespeare?”

“Men have died from time to time,” Kade quotes. “And worms have eaten them, but not for love.”

Theo laughs. “You know it better than me, evidently.”

He runs a gloved finger over Kade’s growing hair. His touch is gentle, and Kade pretends that he can have this forever. That they can have New York and plays and a story that doesn’t end in tragedy.

“I was thinking about what you said,” Theo said. “About this clearing. Spring is coming up, it would be the perfect time for it. What do you think?”

“I think I want to sleep,” Kade says, thinking of Shakespeare and worms and his mother reciting half remembered scripts as he fell asleep. “Do you mind? I managed two hours last night, at most.”

Theo sits back against the tree, the newspaper rustling. “As you wish. As long as you come ? —”

“—back to me.”

Kade’s eyes fluttered behind his lids. Theo had been so clear before. Now he sounded like he was shouting from the wrong end of a very long tunnel.

“Kade,” Theo said, too far now. Kade could barely hear him over the roar of flames. Over bones snapping, petals crisping. Dirt showering down. They had done this all before and here it was, coming around?—

—again it will happen again everything has already happened the flowers grow and die and rot and come back next year dirt in a hole bones in a hole flesh rots flowers rot the hunters curl them together touching in death as they couldn’t in life one final kindness one last apology before they cover them with ? —

—dirt stained Theo’s beautiful hair, his worried face haloed by moonlight.

Theo was saying something. Kade couldn’t hear it. Half of him was still stuck in the visions, the memories, the roots . Thick and dark and deep in the ground underneath, feasting.

Finally, Theo’s voice filtered through, thick and murky, as if through a fog.

“Kade,” he said desperately. “You have to come back now. Okay? Come back to me.”

He squeezed Kade’s arms.

I’ve been thrashing, Kade realized dully. Burned petal fragments stuck in Theo’s hair from where Kade had been writhing in the earth, flinging up bits of soil and moss.

“Hey,” Theo said, face collapsing with relief. “Are you with me?”

Kade reached up to pick the burned fragment out of Theo’s curls. All these pink petals that Theo had cultivated for him. So beautiful. So hungry .

“We fed them,” Kade mumbled.

Theo’s relief faltered. “What?”

Kade grabbed his shirt, fingers locking shakily in the dirt-streaked fabric. “It’s us. We’re here .”

“We are here,” Theo said, half confused, half soothing. “We’re okay.”

Kade shook his head, rot still heavy in his nostrils. Burned flesh and dirt and his own blood baked to the ground underneath him. He shuddered, wiping furiously at his clothes, trying to get it off.

“No,” he spat, wiping desperately at the moss sticking to the back of his hair. “ We . Past us. They buried us here, together. Under the flowers.”

Theo stilled. He looked down at the burned petals they were crouched in, swallowing against a dry throat as the horror set in.

Kade panted. He could still see it, see them : bare fingers interlaced between their bodies. Together in death.

Dread filled him in a horrifying wave, as real and solid as the moss sticking to his cheek. “We’re doomed,” he whispered “Oh, shit. We’re so bloody doomed.”

Theo knelt over him: twisted mirrors of the bones that lay underneath the earth.

“We’re not doomed,” he insisted. “We—the other boys, they had nothing to do with us. They’re just something that happened a long time ago.”

Kade laughed wetly. Of course Theo would believe that. He hadn’t lived his whole life with the same stories repeating behind and ahead, stories his family knew by heart and still acted sad about when they came to pass. He’d tried so hard to escape it and yet here he was: throwing something he loved around his bedroom. Breaking mirrors. Screaming so loud it scared the dog. The same story over and over.

If they sabotaged the ritual, Victor would just kill them. Bring them back in another two hundred years. They’d do this again. Kade shuddered, picturing it: bones buried on top of bones, two boys with their faces and personalities and loves crouched in the very place they were crouched now, having the same horrifying realization.

“We need to get out,” Kade whispered.

“Kade,” Theo started.

Kade cut him off. “Let’s get out of here. We can…we can leave town, take Sundance and Sparky, we can just go . We can hide, he won’t find us?—”

“He will,” Theo said quietly. “Kade. Sweetheart?—”

“Don’t sweetheart me,” Kade cried. A black tear tracked down his cheek and soaked into the dirt. “How do you not get this? We’re doomed . We were doomed before either of us even existed . You and me, sunshine, we’re punctuation points at the end of a tragedy. We did this already, we’re dead, we’re bones ?—”

“Kade,” Theo said, voice breaking.

His phone rang, so sudden and shrill that they both jumped. Kade actually flew a little, hovering over the destroyed earth before slamming back down.

Theo wiped his face and fumbled his phone out of his pocket. “It’s Liss.”

Kade grabbed for the phone, but Theo was already turning it toward him, the screen glowing furiously in the dark:

ok, u can come now .

Police lights made the whole street bleed red and blue. There were four cop cars pulled up outside the Emmerson place, the parents huddled together on the lawn as police questioned them. They looked dazed. They had woodchips and plaster in their hair.

“An animal,” Kade heard the mom say as they cruised past with the window down. She spoke too fast for it to be anything but lying. “It was… huge .”

A few houses down, Beverly and Felicity stood next to their car. A cop was walking away from them, looking troubled.

Theo pulled over ahead of them and paused. “Don’t get out of the car.”

“I’m fine,” Kade insisted. But he held his breath, all the Sloans’ tiny cuts and bruises making his mouth water. Beverly held her arm strangely, her jaw set in a tight mask of pain and deep annoyance as she tried to dab peroxide into her daughter’s split lip.

Felicity batted her away.

“Heeey,” Kade heard her crow as Theo walked up. “You made it!”

Then she grinned, her broken-bone smile so huge and brittle it could only mean one thing.