Shades of Darkness (31 page)

“A few hundred years ago, it wouldn't sound so insane.” I thought of Jonathan's lessons on how gods and man used to walk side by side. And remembered I still had to meet with him at the stupid tutorial.
How am I supposed to pretend everything's normal after this?

“But this isn't a few hundred years ago. This is now. In an art school. And our friends are paying whatever debt is out there. We need to stop it.”

I shuddered as, above us, the crows cawed out angrily.

“You don't stop the gods,” I said gravely. “Neither of us asked to be saved. Neither of us asked for this. We aren't special. We're just lucky.”

Again, I knew it was a partial lie. I was being saved for
something
. To fight. But I wasn't a fighter and neither was he.

“I don't like that logic,” Chris said.

“I don't have any other logic to give,” I said. “We're not heroes, Chris. We're kids. Whatever is going on is beyond us. We get involved, we get killed. It's that simple.”

In the back of my mind, I knew this wasn't over. Not yet. There wasn't any settling in and waiting for it to pass. Dreams filtered back into my thoughts.
The end times come.
That's what the girl had said. This wasn't a series of deaths. This was the beginnings of a war. And if I gave over, if I became the violet-eyed girl's vessel, I'd be on the front line. The crows above cawed again, and a new fear struck through me: Would Chris even be fighting on the same side as me? The girl kept mentioning the Aesir, and if Chris . . . I shook my head. No. No. No matter what, I wasn't becoming embroiled in this—whatever war this was, it wasn't mine. And it wasn't his. This wasn't our fight.

Chris stared at me for a while. I looked away. I couldn't tell what sort of judgment he was passing. What I was suggesting was ludicrous. And yet . . .

“You're not running away screaming,” I ventured, trying to make my voice light.

“Not yet,” he said. He grinned. Then it slipped. “This is . . . this is all a lot to process. I mean, a few weeks ago all I could think of was graduating and maybe getting your attention. Now there's . . . all this. What do we do now?”

I shrugged.

“We stay the fuck out of it.” I glanced to the crows. “Nothing good comes from messing with the gods. Nothing. This isn't a battle we can fight.”

“So, what? We just hope no one else gets hurt?”

“I don't know if there's anything else we
can
do,” I said. I hated myself for it. “These are gods, Chris. You can't fight a god. And neither of us summoned them or whatever when we were saved. I think this might be out of our control.”

“Bullshit,” he whispered. “I know you don't mean that. You're not the type to just give in; it's not fair to anyone.”

“Fair?” My voice was too loud, borderline hysterical, but I forced it back to submission. “
Fair?
What about this is
fair
, Chris? Our friends dying? You and I getting spared? I've spent every single day of my life thinking that I was alive not because I was special, but because I was willing to do something terrible to survive. How the hell is that fair?”

But he was right. We both knew he was right. I just hated that he was perceptive enough to notice.

“You know what I'm talking about,” he said quietly. “What if Ethan was next? Or Oliver? Or Elisa. Hell, what if it was you or me? None of us are safe, Kaira, even if it is out of our control.”

“We can't do this, Chris. We can't interfere; we have a debt. We're here because we're vessels. They keep mentioning a war and how we have to fight. But it's not us doing the fighting. We were spared because the gods need bodies to inhabit if they're going to battle each other. The moment we open up to them, the moment we let our guard down, bam. We're no longer Chris and Kaira. We're hosts. And I'm not ready to give up this life. Not just yet. And neither should you.”

“But if this is happening to others . . .” he began.

“It means there are more gods on the playing field. I don't know what's going on, Chris, but they're preparing for a war. And I have a terrible feeling you and I aren't the only ones who are being prepped as cannon fodder.”

I expected conversation to be stilted after that; I mean, it's not like talking about gods taking over our bodies and killing our friends was an everyday conversation. But the moment we left the woods and headed into the cafeteria, we slipped back into our old modes. We barely talked, but if we did, it was about classwork. Since we'd missed most of lunch, the cafeteria was largely empty, and the table we normally shared with Ethan and the rest was abandoned. We ate fast and pretty much in silence, and not one part of me gave a shit about the rumors I knew would be circulating after we'd spent this much time together. Let people think we were dating; it clearly didn't matter anymore.

And yet, every time I glanced at him I wondered if maybe those rumors wouldn't be unfounded. I mean, we'd definitely rocketed past the whole teen-angst-romance thing. This wasn't a crush. We were bound by something I couldn't place, something I didn't necessarily want to be a part of, and it didn't matter that he was cute or intense or sensitive. He had a secret similar to mine, and that meant we would always be in the other's orbit. For better or worse.

When we finally got up to leave, it felt like committing a crime. Like we shouldn't be parting ways—we needed to stick together. Which was stupid, because I was just heading to class and would be seeing him after . . .

Shit.

“I can't go to the movie tonight,” I said as we left the cafeteria.

“What? Why not?”

“I have a tutorial.” I couldn't have sounded less excited if I tried.

“Skip it,” he said. “You're a senior.”

“I can't.” Which was true. And it had nothing to do with learning academics. Jonathan knew something about all of this, I was certain. If there was any way to figure out what was going on without actually losing myself in the process, it was through him. A part of me wanted to tell Chris about the sketch and Jonathan's reaction, but I didn't want him to get too hopeful. Not when lives were on the line. “I have to talk to Jonathan about my thesis tomorrow. Apparently some professors are upset over the subject matter.”

Which I knew was a lie. I mean, maybe they
were
upset, but I knew it wasn't the real reason Jonathan insisted on me coming to meet with him. He wasn't the only one used to telling half-truths through lies.

“Sucks,” Chris said. He looked to his feet, then to me. “What are we going to do now?”

It was a question he'd already asked a dozen times, but I knew he wasn't just talking about the deaths. He was asking about
us
.

“I don't really know,” I said. “But we're in this together. We'll figure it out.”

Maybe not the most convincing of statements, but it was the best I could do under pressure.

“Thank you,” he said. “For, you know, not thinking I was crazy.”

“I don't think I'd ever be in that position.”

“Yeah, but. It feels good. To have a friend who knows.”

I nodded. I hadn't really allowed myself to notice it, but he was right. Now that I'd told him everything, I felt a little freer. A little less alone. Things weren't any less crazy or confusing, but at least I wasn't navigating them on my own.

•  •  •

I wasn't certain how I was going to make it through the rest of the school year like this. I couldn't focus at all in American Civ—not that this was a huge departure from normalcy, in all honesty—and spent the entire hour drawing ravens and circles in my notebook. How was I supposed to focus when every movement, every second, felt like careening toward the end? Even the world outside seemed to mirror my thought process. The sky was prematurely dark, clouds roiling like sulfuric soup. And everywhere, the crows. They perched on gutters and trees and car hoods, all watching, all waiting.

They were my protectors. I knew that, in the far corners of my soul. They were my watch. So why were they all here en masse? It made my skin crawl.

After class, I headed straight toward the painting studio to get work done. Or, well, the studio we were using while the other got . . . cleaned. I made sure to go through a different entrance to the arts building—I had zero desire to see my Tarot cards up in the hall. They were my one foray into the mystical world, the one safe zone I had between mundane and magical. Now, even they seemed like too much. I didn't want to be reminded of the night everything had changed, the night Munin and the violet-eyed girl came in and fucked everything up for good.

The studio was smaller than most, down one of the side hallways in the sculpture wing. And it wasn't empty. Ethan sat at one of the stools, staring down a still life that was eerily similar to the one we'd begun. They must have picked up the table and moved it down here in one go, though the lighting was a little off from the original setup.

He had his headphones on and didn't look up when I entered. Not until I sat down beside him and began setting up my own paints.

“Hey,” he said. His voice had that distant, tentative tone of one needing to talk about something, but being terrified of what the conversation would actually reveal.

“Hey,” I replied. I looked over; he wore two long-sleeve shirts layered atop each other and jeans caked with paint and Celtic runes. There were dark shadows under his eyes, and the red knit hat over his scraggly hair told me he hadn't showered. He only wore that hat when he was feeling particularly gross.

“How are you?” he asked.

“I'm okay. You?”

He nodded like that was answer enough and glanced to the still life.

“I didn't sleep at all last night,” he said.

“I could tell.”

He closed his eyes and pressed a palm to his head, like he was trying to push out the dreams or memories or whatever was plaguing him. I put a hand on his shoulder. He actually flinched under the touch, then leaned into it.

“I kept dreaming about it. About her.” A small shudder wracked through him.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

He peered through his fingers.

“I don't know if I can do this anymore,” he whispered. His voice sounded so small.

“What do you mean?”

He closed his eyes again.

“This. Moving on. Pretending everything's okay when nothing's okay. Pretending I can sleep at night.”

“What are you dreaming?”

“Don't really remember. I just know I wake up feeling like I'm suffocating. I'm lucky I haven't screamed myself awake. Feels like I could be, sometimes.”

I sighed and leaned over to wrap him in a hug.

“It's stress,” I whispered. “It'll go away soon.”

“But it won't. Because they aren't coming back.” He took a deep breath, his whole body shaking. “I keep thinking about what we saw. And I swear, every time I blink I see that damn circle. And I can just imagine her lying in there, stretched out like that DaVinci picture. It's horrible. It makes me feel so . . . I don't know. Wrong inside. Tainted.”

“Like you saw something you weren't supposed to see?” I ventured.

He nodded. “It's just a fucking
circle
. But I keep seeing it and drawing it and I feel like . . . what if these weren't suicides? What if they were murders or something? And what if that's just the calling card? What if it means I'm next?”

My heart thudded to a violent stop.

What if he's next?

Suddenly, the boy in my arms was a very real, very fleeting thing. I couldn't save him. Not without killing myself. But if he
was
next, if I could save him . . .

“You're not next,” I said. Was I trying to comfort him, or me? “There's nothing sinister going on and you know that. You're just stressed with your thesis and tired and this is all compounding. You're going to be okay.”