I stared at him. “So am I going to be okay now?”
He nodded. “As long as you feed on me every night.”
“Every night?”
“Yes. You can’t miss a night if you want to, you know, stay alive.” He smirked. “Which I understand never seems to be your priority.”
He was saying he was life. And at his discretion, he could give me life or he could take it away. He had the ultimate power over me. And I had let it happen. I’d asked for it to happen, first when I’d begged him to take me to the Feed and then when I’d voluntarily fed on him three times in the Everneath. The first time was just a kiss to show him I was the real me and not the Siren about to lure him into a trap. I hadn’t known I was feeding on him. The second two times, I’d known I needed the energy, but I’d been so close to saving Jack that I wasn’t willing to go back to the Surface. I was impatient. I’d fed on Cole to stay in the Everneath.
He knew I would. He always had the power.
I clenched my fists and punched his chest. I’m sure it felt like a feather duster pounding on a brick wall, but I couldn’t help it. I hit him as hard as I could, trying to pulverize the past away. Crush the decisions I’d made, such as trusting Cole in the first place. Beat on the weak girl who had gone with Cole to the Everneath.
Stupid girl. Foolish girl.
Cole let me hit him. And why not? Sure, he had just given me a dose of energy, but I still felt as powerful as a sponge.
The fact that I wasn’t hurting him made me hit him even harder. Cole glanced down at my futile attempts to inflict pain, and then in a swift move, he pulled me to him and held me against him so that my arms were pinned against his chest.
“I know,” he said. “I know it’s a choice you’d never allow yourself to make. You’d never give in to the life of an Everliving. So I chose the life for you, because I know something you refuse to recognize.”
“What’s that?” I said, my voice muffled against him.
He held me back just enough so I could see his face, and his determined frown. “You were meant for this life. With me.”
I tensed against him. Did Cole really believe that, deep down, I wanted this? My eyes stung, a sure sign tears were on their way.
“Hear me out, Nik. Remember the moment we met? At the concert at Harry O’s? Everything in your life—your decisions, your joy, your pain at losing your mom—all of it was the universe guiding you to cross paths with me. And everything in my life, up until that point, directed me toward you. I knew it, but I didn’t believe it until you survived the Feed.”
I pushed against him, but he held me tight. “You’re delusional,” I said.
“I’m the delusional guy who’s going to keep you alive.” There was a fire behind his eyes.
I set my jaw. “You’re the delusional guy who killed me in the first place.”
I turned around and ran out of the courtyard with a renewed energy in my veins. A fire that Cole fed me, from his lips to mine. In order to survive, I was dependent on the person I hated the most. A person who just over two weeks ago had had a place in my heart. I had been sure during our trip to the Everneath that Cole was my friend. He could’ve been the good guy. He could’ve been my hero.
Instead, he’d tricked me.
Pausing in front of the door to the hallway, I realized that there was no way I could sit through the rest of the class. I wandered to the front of the school and noticed a black sedan parked down the street. Jack’s car. I sighed as the bands of strain around my chest loosened. I didn’t even realize how much tension I was feeling at that moment until the sight of Jack’s car released it. I ran toward him. The driver’s-side door opened, and Jack, taking in my manic state, started jogging toward me, eyes wide with concern. We collided, and he gathered me in his strong arms.
“Shh. It’s okay,” he whispered with his lips next to my ears. “Everything’s going to be okay.”
My breathing slowed as he held me tight. His calm heartbeat tempered my own racing pulse.
“You’re shaking,” he said.
He studied my face. Eyes, lips, nose. My pink cheeks. I saw the subtle change in his expression.
A small smile crept onto his lips. “You’re feeling better.” He pulled me toward him again, but this time he pressed his lips against mine and kissed me as if I were water in a desert.
I put my fingers in his hair, knotting them, pulling him closer.
He broke away. His eyes were wild. “Sorry, I—”
“Don’t you dare apologize,” I growled.
He squeezed his eyes shut, as if he were trying to restrain himself.
“No,” I said, knowing that the kiss was over but refusing to accept it. “Stop stopping kissing me.”
I bit my lip as I realized how ridiculous my words sounded. Jack’s lips twitched, and he opened his eyes. He shook his head almost imperceptibly. “How did you do it?” he asked, effectively changing the subject from our kiss to the new pinkness in my cheeks. “Did you . . . eat something?”
I glanced back at his car. “I think you should sit down.”
His face went blank, and then his eyes narrowed. “What happened?”
“Let’s get in your car for a minute.” I turned him around and gently guided him to the car. He let me.
When we were seated inside, I could see that his face had drained of color.
“It’s okay,” I said. “Everything’s okay.” I realized how often we said these words to each other. I wondered if they’d lost their meaning yet.
“Just tell me, Becks. The anticipation is worse than knowing. Was Cole there? Did he do something?”
I closed my eyes. This was one of those times when the anticipation was better than knowing. “Cole was there. He wasn’t interested in trading anything for my heart. He knew I was getting weak. He says I’m dying, but he can save me. By . . . feeding me.”
I waited. No noise from beside me. I opened one eye.
Jack was staring straight ahead out the windshield, clenching the steering wheel. It didn’t look as if he was breathing. I’d never seen him so still. I looked at his hands. The knuckles on his fingers were white.
“Jack?”
“Give me a minute,” he said.
Finally, I saw the rise and fall of his chest. He closed his eyes and slowly released his grip on the steering wheel. Deep divots appeared where his fingers had been, distinct impressions in the hard plastic.
“If it’s a matter of you needing energy, I’ll feed you,” he said.
I shook my head. “It doesn’t work like that because I’m in ‘transition,’ he called it. We know he’s telling the truth. We’ve tried it.”
“So Cole holds your life in his hands?”
I nodded.
He blew out a breath, and I thought he was coming back to me until he growled, “I’m gonna kill him.” He grasped the door handle and yanked hard.
“Jack, no!” I didn’t know if he was serious about killing Cole or not, but his eyes were blazing. He didn’t stop. He exploded out of the car and slammed the door behind him. I jumped out as fast as I could and threw myself in front of him, my hands on his chest.
“Stop!” I dug my feet into the ground and threw all my strength into stopping his forward momentum. It took every bit of energy I had, even the new stuff Cole had just given me. His eyes looked strangely vacant, so I figured the fewer words, the better. “Listen to me. You hurt him . . . you kill me.”
He froze, staring at me.
I nodded slowly, trying to emphasize visually the truth of my words. With a small, twitchy shake of his head, the vacant look in his eyes slowly vanished.
“Becks.” He clenched and unclenched his fingers, and I wasn’t sure we were out of the woods yet.
“Just come back to the car.”
He didn’t move.
“Come,” I commanded, taking his large hand in mine. He allowed me to drag him back to the car. Once we were inside, he dropped his head against the steering wheel.
“Wow,” he said, breathing slowly. “I don’t know if I’ve ever felt so angry so quickly.”
I stared at the deep finger impressions on the steering wheel. Angry might have been an understatement.
He looked at me. “Okay, Becks. I’m okay now. Tell me everything.” He frowned. “Cole fed you?” The words seemed to have a hard time finding their way out of his mouth. His hands started shaking.
I squinted one eye. “Um . . . maybe we should go somewhere else, where things aren’t so breakable—”
“I’m okay now. What happened?”
I pressed my lips together, resigned. “During Creative Writing, he confronted me about my . . . weakened state. He said that I’m like a baby bird, and as long as he held my Surface heart, he was the only one who could feed me.” I thought about all the other things I’d learned, and I realized that the only way to get through it was to blurt it all out. “He said that without his nutrition every night, I’ll die. Feeding off him is the only way I won’t die. At least . . . until even his nutrition isn’t enough.”
“What happens then?” Jack said in a soft voice.
I swallowed hard. “Then I have to feed on a Forfeit for a century. Immediately. Not in ninety-nine years like we’d thought.” My voice caught. “And if I don’t, I die.”
Jack’s mouth opened and then shut again. Opened and shut. And then he grabbed my arms and hoisted me over the center console until I was sitting in his lap. He crushed me to his chest so strongly that any more force would probably have broken a rib. But I didn’t protest.
It was either this or he would storm into the school and tear Cole apart. With me, he knew he had to stay in control.
“So the ninety-nine years we thought we had . . . now it’s just weeks? Maybe?”
I nodded. “It might even be days.” We’d gone from having ninety-nine years to this.
Jack sighed and held me tighter. I wondered about the thoughts he wasn’t giving voice to, and if they were as hopeless as my own.
SEVEN
NOW
The Surface. In Jack’s car.
I stayed in his arms for I don’t know how long, with my ear against his chest, listening to the rhythmic rise and fall of his breathing. As he expelled his breath, his chest shuddered.
I wondered about his temper, his instant anger from a few minutes ago. It seemed so un-Jack-like. I glanced at the steering wheel and disentangled my right hand to run my fingers over the divots there. I closed my eyes and shook my head. One supernatural problem at a time.
“I have to go,” I said. “I left my book in Mrs. Stone’s classroom.”
His grip around me eased slightly. “Hurry back.”
“I will.”
“When do you have to feed off him again?”
I cringed. “Tonight.”
I left Jack sitting in his car, listening to his iPod. By now the students were streaming out of Mrs. Stone’s class, so I darted inside and found a note sitting on top of my book. It had Cole’s handwriting on it.
I’ll be at your window tonight. Midnight. Wear something comfortable. I’m blushing just thinking about it.
I crumpled the paper and tried to keep myself from sinking to the ground.
I was so wrapped up in the note that I didn’t notice Daphne Bentley sidle up next to me.
“So, Nikki, how do you know that Neal guy?”
I looked at her with what I’m sure was a blank expression. She tilted her head. “That is his name, isn’t it? Mr. Tall, Dark, and Obvious Hip Dents?”
I shook my head in a clearing-the-cobwebs kind of way. She was talking about Cole-as-Neal.
“Yes, that was Neal. Sorry, Daphne, my brain is . . .” I made a hand gesture near my head, my best impression of a brain made of macaroni.
“No problem. I was just wondering if you knew Neal.” She paused. “And more specifically, if you know whether he’s seeing someone.”
Seriously? Was she asking me to set her up with an immortal from the Underworld who sucked the life out of humans just for fun?
I closed my mouth, which had apparently been hanging open. “I think he is seeing someone,” I said.
She frowned. “Who?”
I wasn’t expecting further questions. “Um, a girl. Nancy.” Were girls named Nancy anymore? “She lives in . . . Canada.”
She looked like she was trying to raise a single eyebrow, but she didn’t have the ability. “Well, Canada isn’t here, is it?”
She stared at me, waiting. For what, an answer? “Um, no. Canada is . . . north of here.”
She gave me a curt nod and stalked away.
“Glad we established where Canada is,” I muttered under my breath. I guess if you knew nothing about Cole, he could be attractive. Even in his Neal form, which wasn’t as dazzling as his natural form, he was still more magnetic than any other guy at school.