Harpies, my scars …
I start to pull away from Daphne, but I am too late. Her hand clasps tightly under the scars. “What is that …? What the hell?” Her voice falters, and I know she’s seen it.
Her name. Carved and scarred into my skin.
She lets go of me and backs away quickly. “What … why? What the hell is that?” Fear strikes into her eyes. “Are you insane?”
“I can explain …,” I start to say, but I don’t know if I really can. Not without exposing the whole truth. Not without breaking the most steadfast rule the Underrealm has placed on me. Not without losing every chance I have of ever getting her to fall in love with me.
“No. I don’t really want to know,” she says. “You’re sick, Haden. You’re sick and you obviously need help.”
From the way she looks at me now, I know any chance I had with her is over. She doesn’t see her friend standing in front of her. She doesn’t see her singing partner. She doesn’t see someone she would ever want to embrace again. She looks at me the way I feared she would after I killed the Keres.
She sees the real me.
She sees the monster that has come to take her away.
“Daphne, please …”
She lifts her hands defensively in front of her the way she had when the Keres tried to attack. “Don’t come near me.”
“Daphne, what’s going on?” Joe says groggily from behind her. I’d all but forgotten he was here. He rocks up on his knees.
“We’re getting out of here.” She grabs his arm and pulls him to his feet with one hand, and holds her other hand up to ward me off. “Don’t you dare follow us,” she says to me. “Or I’ll call the police.”
I let her go. I let her walk away.
She takes every particle of my hope and happiness with her as she leaves.
Chapter forty-four
DAPHNE
“He’s crazy,” I mumble to myself as I lead Joe toward the house.
“He’s daft,” Joe agrees.
“He’s insane.”
“He’s mental,” Joe says.
“I don’t even think he’s human.” I know I sound like the crazy one, but there is no human explanation for what I had seen Haden do. What kind of person can throw lightning bolts out of his hands?
“Not even human,” Joe says. At least I had one person who could corroborate my story.
Tobin is going to flip when I tell him.
If I tell him.
Why wouldn’t I tell him?
I unlock the front door, take Joe into the house, and then lock the door again behind us.
“And I can’t believe I kissed him!”
“I can’t believe you kissed him.… Wait, who are we talking about?” Joe stumbles, trying to put one foot in the front of the other as I lead him up the stairs. I realize we haven’t been having a conversation; he’s just been drunkenly parroting me.
“Never mind,” I say, and propel him down the hall toward his bedroom. He falls into the nest of satin sheets on his bed, and settles his hands under his cheek against his pillow. He reminds me of a child.
I pull off one of his boots, and realize that my hands are still shaking. The only time they had stopped trembling since that thing attacked us was when I’d kissed Haden. Now the thought of that, and my name freaking carved into Haden’s arm, make my hands shake even more. I tug on Joe’s second boot. He smacks his lips and wiggles his foot, trying to help me.
“Who did you kiss?” he asks with a yawn.
“Haden,” I say, figuring that Joe won’t even remember in the morning.
“Oh,” he says. “Don’t kiss him. Haden is the devil.”
“What?” His boot pops off his foot, and I stumble backward, almost tripping over one of the various empty beer bottles on the floor. I drop the boot on the ground. “What do you mean?”
Joe snores in response. I shake his shoulder. “Joe? What did you just say? Joe, can you hear me?”
But it’s no use. He’s out cold, and I doubt he’ll wake up until morning. And by then he’ll have no idea what he said to me.
I gather up the empty beer bottles on his floor and take them down to the recycling bin in the kitchen. He had been sober for almost two months now. I wonder what set him off on this binge. There’s a half-empty case of beer bottles on the counter. I pull out a bottle opener and start popping their tops off, and then pouring their contents down the drain, finding myself angry that I even have to do this.
Joe seems to live a charmed life—so why does he keep trying to drown himself in this stuff? What is so terrible that he is trying to numb himself from thinking about?
I pick up a new bottle, but before I pop the top off, wind rattles the window over the sink. I jump, almost dropping the bottle. I check the window lock, not knowing if it would do any good against someone who can throw lightning.
What the hell is that all about?
And why is my name cut into his arm?
That is a whole level of psycho I wasn’t prepared to deal with.
I look at the beer bottle in my hand. If there is one thing I’d want to numb myself from remembering, it would be the moment I found those scars on his arms. The moment I went from wanting him to realizing he’s a sick freak. A sick freak who I kissed!
Now that’s a memory I’d like to erase.
I should have listened to Tobin’s warning to stay away from Haden. He probably really is from a long line of wack jobs. Even Joe seems to think he is a bad person … if he is even a person at all …
He’d even called Haden the devil.…
I shake my head at the possibility of even entertaining Joe’s drunken ramblings. I’ve never been a religious person, and the idea that a living, breathing incarnation of the devil is walking around Olympus Hills and practicing duets with me is about as crazy as believing in fairy tales, or even Greek mythology, for that matter!
I dump the last of the beer down the drain, wash the scent of it off my fingers, and go to my room. I don’t need to escape reality; I need to figure out what the hell is going on.
I flop down on my bed, ready to call Tobin—hoping his phone isn’t still turned off for the musical showcase—and admit that he’s probably right, when I see my iPad sitting on my night-stand, where I’d left it after studying last night. I turn it on and the text from my mythology book appears on my screen. I remember how defensive Haden had been that first day in humanities class when I tried to compare the Greek mythological character of Hades to that of the Christian devil. It was almost as if he had been offended.