Matter of Truth, A (9 page)

“If we make it out of this,” I tell him quietly, “and you
want to talk about who I am and what I’m capable of, then we will. Absolutely.
I’ll tell you everything you want to know. But right now, we need to get this
thing out into a less populated area so I can try to take it down.”

This finally earns me a quick glance. “Have you ever done so
before?”

His question surprises me. “Uh . . . I’ve imprisoned some
before. None of us have ever been able to kill them, though. They’re pretty
much immortal.”

“Are you?” When I don’t answer, he clarifies, “Immortal?”

I shake my head. “These things . . . they’ve hurt me before.
Last time, it took me by surprise. Broke a bunch of bones in my arm and one of
my knees.”

His head whips to face mine, eyes wide in horror.

“Eyes on the road, Will.” I wait until he refocuses. “We . .
. my kind. We have people who can heal others, like doctors. But you and I
don’t have a Shaman with us today.” A quick scan shows we’ve lost the Elder for
now, but I can’t find any optimism in the cab of this truck. “Whatever happens,
if I tell you to leave me behind and drive away, I need you to do that, okay?”

The horror in his eyes transitions to incredulity.

“They’ve gone after people I cared about before. Nearly
killed my cousin. Hurt—they hurt my fiancé. More than once.” I’m trembling all
over. “It was—I can’t . . .” I slam my palms against the dashboard. “I don’t
know what I’d do if you got hurt because of me, too.”

His eyes refocus on the road. “You’re saying I’m a liability
to you.”

Yes. In more ways than he knows.

He swears softly under his breath. “It doesn’t feel right,
agreeing to that. I don’t leave my friends behind.”

I nearly melt in relief. Angry as he is, he still calls me a
friend
. “I know.” He lets me touch him now, my fingers cool against his
arm. “And that’s one of the things I love best about you. But you’ll need to do
it anyway.”

And yet, I get no promise from him in the end.

After nearly an hour of driving, Will calls his dad and
tells him not to go home, because there’s a problem at the house that needs to
be fixed—if by problem, he means part of the house being destroyed and all.
I’ll repair the damage if I make it through the next several hours, and then
most likely pack Cameron and Will up in their trucks and insist they get as far
away from me and Anchorage as possible.

“So. These things.” Will cups the back of his neck and
angles his head toward me. “What’s the game plan?”

Yes, Chloe. What IS the game plan? I’ve spent much of the
hour wondering that exact thing myself. “I guess imprisonment. I’ve done it
before.” I shift; my butt has gone numb. I’ve never been one for road trips,
even tiny ones that barely constitute the label.

“When you say it’s immortal, do you really mean it?”

I twist my neck until it cracks. “I’m pretty sure that
immortal means immortal, Will.”

He’s frustrated with my responses. “I’m just saying, how can
we fight it?”

“
We
can’t fight it at all.
I
will fight it.”

He’s quiet for a long moment. And then—“Is that bloke you
were engaged to like you?”

“Yeah.” I want to lean my head back, but I won’t have a good
view of the side mirror anymore. I haven’t seen the Elder in a long time, but I
know better. They always come back. “I mean, not exactly like me—but he’s a
Magical.”

“You said you’re a Creator. I’m assuming it means you can
create stuff.”

I exhale a breathy laugh. “That’s the gist of it.”

“What does he do?”

I twist my hair up in a faux bun and then let it drop back
down. “He’s an Emotional. He can . . .” It hurts to just think about Jonah, let
alone speak about him. “He can make anybody feel whatever he wants them to
feel.”

Both of Will’s eyebrows shoot up. “That’s . . . incredibly
fucked up, Chloe.”

Now that I’ve opened the floodgates, worry and love and
concern come crashing through. What is Jonah doing right now? Is he in Annar?
Here on the Human plane?

“And the brother?”

Another pang, right against the tender valves that hold my
heart in my chest as I snap my attention back to Will. “The same.”

He pauses before he asks, “They make you fall in love with
them?”

A glance out the window shows trees and snow all around us.
I give in and let my head fall back, staring up at the cab’s roof. “No. I
mean—not like you’re thinking.” My finger touches the spot where my ring used
to lay. I twist my head until I’m facing Will. “They rarely ever used their
crafts on me, and when they did, it was usually with my full knowledge.”

One of his long arms drapes across the steering wheel. “I
sense a
but
.”

By now, I have little left to lose. Will knows what I am.
I’ve dug our graves. So I give him the Cliff’s Notes version of Connections,
about how I have two, and how it’s torn
me
in two. About how I met
Jonah. How I met Kellan. How I planned on marrying Jonah. Cheated on him with
Kellan.

When I’m done, he’s quiet. I pick at a popped stitch in the
leather below me. “True love isn’t so shiny and desirable now, is it?”

He smacks my hand away from destroying his seat any further.
“Let me get this right. You are incapable of falling in love with anyone else?”

I nod and resume my watch for Elders. “Well, I mean—I can
love people. I love you and your dad, for example. I just can’t
romantically
fall in love with anyone else.”

“What made you decide to pick one over the other?”

I look away from the side mirror. “Huh?”

“Despite how you felt about both guys—you picked one. You
told Jonah you’d marry him. If I’m not mistaken, you were actually willing to
elope. Why did you decide on him instead of Kellan?”

I groan, rubbing the spot in between my eyes. “Ask the easy
questions, why don’t you?”

“Were you with him because of a sense of obligation?” Will
asks. Both hands are back on the wheel.

I shift to fully face him. “Whaaaat?”

“You said you thought Fate or whatever meant you two to have
a Connection. You guys met in your dreams. Grew up together. Did you decide to
stick with him because you
thought
you should? Because it was
expected
of you?”

I can actually feel my eyes grow so wide I fear my eyeballs
are going to pop straight out. Pop right out and smack him straight in the
face. If they do, I hope they explode and ooze gross eye juice all over him. It
would serve him right.

“No!” My voice rings in the cab.

“He shows up at your school, and you had the perfect chance
to reconnect with him. What do you do? You ignore him and fall in love with his
brother. You hooked up with this other bloke multiple times. Pined for him.
That’s very telling, Chloe.”

“I . . . I! I EXPLAINED THAT! It was because we’re
Connected!”

“And yet, if I understand this correctly, you have a
Connection to Jonah, too. One you were more than willing to ignore for the sake
of being with his brother. Were you ever pining for this Jonah when you were
with his brother?”

Hell yes, I did. My fingers curl into fists, jagged nails
digging into my palms. “You don’t understand.”

“I disagree. I think I understand better than you think.”

One of the tires explodes. Will jerks the wheel and limps us
over to the side of the road. I don’t bother telling him that it was because of
me. Or that I can make him a new one. Because, Jonah was never an obligation. I
was never with him because I had to. I love him. He’s the best person I know.
I’ve always loved him.

He’s not an obligation.

What I feel for him isn’t an obligation.

It isn’t.

Is it?

The more I think about it, the angrier I get. The more
frustrated. And feel all the more helpless.

“Well, isn’t this just the perfect time for a tire to crap
out on us,” Will mutters, getting out of the truck.

Wait—is he planning on changing the tire? Does he not
remember what I am? Or that we have a monster chasing us? I wrench open the
door and throw myself out of the cab. I round the front of the truck, my fists
still tight balls, ready to argue and fix the truck all at the same time. “You
don’t know the first thing about how I feel about Jonah.”

Will pulls a red beanie out of his pocket and tugs it over
his now wavy, wet hair as he gets out the tools needed to change the tire from
the back of the truck. “I know what you feel for him isn’t real.”

Excuse me?
I’m seething now. “
Yes
. It is.”

He pulls out a wrench and bends down next to the tire.
“Magic made you believe you love him. It’s not real.”

That’s it. The wheel he’s working on disappears; a fuchsia
one appears in its place with flowers, hearts, and rainbows swirling through
the tread. When the wrench in Will’s hands freezes, I stomp closer. “Really? Is
that tire real? Because I just made that with my so-called
Magic
.”

He slowly stands up to face me. “Tires are not the same as
feelings, Chloe.”

“Why? Because you can’t touch them?” I shove a mittened
finger against his chest. “Because you can’t see them?”

“Because feelings ought to be organic,” he stresses,
knocking my hand away. “People should fall in love because they want to. Not
because something
makes
them.”

Caleb, my Conscience, used to force me to count to ten
before I said something I may regret. I try this now and find myself needing to
count to fifteen instead. “The joke’s on you then. Most of the so-called
organic
stuff you’re referring to has been either altered or created by Magicals. It’s
what we do.”

“Emotions are different. They’re personal. Nobody has a
right to mess with somebody else like that.”

My teeth grind together. “How do you know that my feelings
for him aren’t”—I flash air quotes—“
organic
?”

He crosses his arms. It’s brutally cold outside, but we’re
both too stubborn to actually get back into the truck at the moment. If the
Elder comes along now, we’ll be easy pickings. “Because you just told me that
you have some shite voodoo called a Connection that ties you to him.”

“Yes,” I stress, “but I also told you that I grew up with
him. I
know
him. I fell in love with him.
Me
. With
him
.
Not because Fate said I had to, but because I. Fell. In love. With
him
.”
We’re toe-to-toe now. “He’s the best person I know. The best.” I poke Will in
the chest again. “If I didn’t have a Connection with him, I’d still love him.”

He scoffs. “Then why are you here instead of there?”

I shove him until he stumbles back, not enough to fall, but
just enough to skid on the salted roads. “I told you.”

“Yeah, but that’s a load of rubbish. If you really loved
him, you would’ve stayed and tried to work it out.”

A tree falls down nearby, sending an explosion of snow to
cover us. Will jumps, but I know it’s not due to the Elder. This is all me. And
I’ve got to get myself under control. I count to twenty this time. “Did you not
hear anything I’ve said?”

“I heard you. I also heard what sounded like you two grew
apart, and you were more attracted to his brother than him. And it was only
when the shite hit the fan and got real that you ran back to what you thought
was safe.”

Another tree bites the dust. “That is
not
what
happened.”

Will stares at the shrinking grove of trees near us.

I throw a hand out and the trees float back up, trunks
stitching back together. “Look. I won’t deny I love Kellan. That I haven’t
thought about what it’d be like to be with him. That I miss him still. But—”

But that’s the thing. For the last several months, I’ve
drowned in how much I miss Jonah. I’ve thought about Kellan, yes, but the pain
of losing him has never cut me quite so deeply as Jonah’s. I love Kellan, I’ve
thought about what it’d be like to be with him, but I never pulled that
trigger. And I think I finally know why.

It’s Will’s turn to look like a cartoon character with eyes
ready to explode as the trees right themselves. Some of my anger eases, but not
much.

I let out a groan of frustration. “Yes, Will. The trees are
me.”

He snaps his fingers. “The laundry detergent! That was you,
as well!”

Now I’m flat out humiliated.

A chuckle precedes his finger wagging. “My, my. Somebody has
a temper.”

A scream fills the quiet distance. I whirl around and peer
through the white behind us. “You better hope I can keep it up.”

He’s instantly by my side. “That thing—the Elder. It’s
coming?”

I nod. Still no sighting, though. “Get in your truck and go,
Will.”

“Fuck that. I’m staying. Besides, you think I’m going
anywhere with a tire a four year old would’ve designed?”

“This isn’t a game!”

“Obviously.” He steps in front of me. “I’m not leaving, so
you might as well make me as useful as I can be. What can I do to help? Can you
make me anything to fight this thing with?”

Fight? Like . . . hand-to-hand combat? I shudder. Is he
forgetting the whole immortal thing?

Will’s hands clamp down on my shoulders. “Whatever it is, it
used to be like you. Living, breathing, whatnot. Living things can be hurt.
Give me something to work with. If it can smash into my truck, it can hurt if I
shoot it or stab it.”

Is he joking? “No. I won’t risk you.”

Another scream fills the air, closer still.

His dark eyes bore down into mine. “I’m not asking. I’m
telling. If I have to go get a branch from the woods to beat it, I will. No
matter what, I’m staying.”

I close my eyes and take a deep breath. This goes against my
instincts, but . . . “Fine. Fine!” I open my eyes and whip up my favorite bow
and arrow set and pass them over to him. And then I make another for me.

He’s amused. “Are we hunting?”

“Big game, my friend,” I tell him. My smile is vicious. “The
biggest you’ll ever see.”

Fighting on the open road isn’t
going to happen. Not that many vehicles have passed us in the last fifteen
minutes, but I can’t risk nons reporting anything going down. I’m already risking
enough as it is; I’ll be damned if I leave Will out in the open. I convert our
clothes to a waterproof, cold-proof fabric of my own making, plus switch out
our footwear for sturdy snow boots and then take off into the woods with Will
hot at my heels.

“Do you think it’ll follow?” Will asks. Bastard is barely
winded, but the stitch in my side reminds me that months of bowling and hanging
out in a diner have done little to keep me in shape.

The screaming swells sporadically, each burst like nails
against the chalkboard lining the inside of my skin. But I need the advantage.
I need to be the one to take a stand first. And I need to do it in the right
spot. So I keep running, the bow bouncing on my back, until we get to a large
clearing.