“Matthew told you that?”
Breezing past my question, he said, “Which just proves my point. You doan want anything to happen to me. Because you got it bad for me, peekôn.”
My face flushed, the truth laid bare.
“You got it even worse than you let on that night at Finn’s. You remember our little talk?”
“Of course I remember. I wasn’t chugging whiskey like a marooned sailor at the island oasis.” Jackson had talked about starting a life with me—on one condition. “You said I had to give up my quest to find my grandmother. When I told you I couldn’t, you broke up with me.”
“I didn’t break up with you, no. I just shot my mouth off because I was frustrated. Never met a fille so frustrating as you.”
How odd to be having this conversation when I was dressed in disappearing suds.
“I’ve been going over my options.” He raised a forefinger. “Ignore my every survival instinct and stick around some kids who are out to kill each other. Some real sick ones, too.” He raised a second finger. “Or leave and go after the Army of the Southeast, get my revenge.”
Jack and his adopted sister Clotile had been in that army. Only one of them had made it out alive.
“What was your decision?”
“Still here, ain’t I?”
“What swayed you? And why now? It isn’t like you’ve learned something new to change your mind, not since you informed me that I’m not right,” I said pointedly. Unless he had . . . No. That suspicion was too humiliating even to contemplate.
“Like I said, I figured some stuff out on my own.”
“Look, Jackson, say I did have feelings for you. That was before I realized you could never accept my nature. You saw me and freaked out.”
He narrowed his eyes. “I doan freak out, no. I think I’ve handled this pretty damn well. If you’d shown me that shit before, instead of springing it on me—”
“That shit saved my life.”
“From what I understand, it also led you to a madman. The Alchemist, non?”
Touché. “You treated me like a leper when you saw my abilities.”
He shot to his feet, pacing, and took another swig. “You expect me to get it right the first time every time!”
“Get what right?”
“My reactions, my words, everything. I ain’t goan to. I saw something I’ve never seen before, and I reacted.”
“With the sign of the cross? Really, Jack?”
“I’m a Catholic boy, me. And the sweet girl I knew had just slaughtered some kid and looked mighty pleased about it. It was like you were possessed by a demon or something!” He shook his head. “You expect me to be perfect.”
“It hurt, Jackson. Okay?” I pulled my knees to my chest, sloshing water.
As if helpless not to, he glanced down, seeming enthralled with my movements.
But he jerked his gaze up when I cried, “It broke my heart! I’d just gone through the most horrific event in my life. I needed you, but you were disgusted with me.” My eyes pricked with tears. “I needed you!”
He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Does it count for nothing that . . . that I’m trying to handle all this?”
“Maybe you shouldn’t have to try so hard. Come on, we have problems that extend past the game. We’re always fighting, always on a different page. I can count on one hand the number of times we’ve had a civil conversation. Most of the time I don’t know what’s going on in that head of yours.”
“What you want to know?” He sank down in the chair again, resting his elbows on his knees. “You want me to talk out my feelings? Goddamn it, how do I even start?”
I blinked in surprise. He wasn’t being a smart-ass. He was genuinely baffled how to do this. And why shouldn’t he be? Where would he have learned how to discuss his thoughts and emotions?
Not from his mother. She hadn’t even been able to feed Jackson as a boy, much less teach him to talk about things that bothered him. From his dad? The man had washed his hands of his son.
It was a wonder Jackson was as decent as he was. I remember how he’d admitted that he didn’t know how to behave with me. You can teach me how to court you. ’Cause I doan know my way around that.
He was trying. And how should I help him with this? Offer advice? Use your words, Jack.
“You spring this shit on me, then within days you expect me to get over the fact that my girlfriend ain’t exactly human!”
I didn’t know what bewildered me more—the girlfriend or the human part.
“Damn it, Evie, you been to my house, you saw how I lived. Can’t you understand why I hate surprises? Why I doan like it when people live secret lives?”
Maybe we were too different. “Too much has happened. And you’ve been hideous to me for days.”
“I was angry because I didn’t understand any of this. I doan like things I doan understand. And that morning in Requiem, just when I was trying to come to terms with this, I returned—right as you were about to cut that Irish kid’s throat.”
“He attacked us, after I tried to call a truce.”
“I get that people are gonna be hurt. I understand the program—hell, I wrote the program on people getting hurt, well before the Flash. But when I saw you liked it . . .”
I buried my head in my hands. “I don’t want to!”
“I understand that now. Something comes over you. It’s still you, but you got a problem. Peekôn, look at me.”
I glanced up.
“If you got a problem, I can work with that.”
I wasn’t convinced. “Being with you hurts.”
“But sometimes it’s good. Real good between us. You thought my kiss was ‘perfect.’?” His gaze flicked from my lips, to my neck, to my collarbones . . .
“I never told you—” Realization dawned. “Oh, my God.” My jaw dropped, my earlier suspicion confirmed. Yep, just as humiliating as I’d feared. “You took the Alchemist’s recorder!” Which contained the tape of my life story.
Jackson flashed me a shameless grin. “Ouais. Been listening to it for days. That was one reason why I got held up that morning in Requiem. I was sourcing for some earphones, so I could listen under my hood.”
“You wouldn’t!”
“I played a big role in that tale, wanted to make sure you got me right.”
“That’s why you’ve been so up and down?” The angry looks, the troubled looks. The smirks?
“Some things you said pissed me off.” Expression darkening, he grated, “Had to listen to you talking about your boyfriend. Bad enough the first time around.”
Brand had been a good guy. Immature, maybe, but he’d had a good heart. His and Jackson’s personalities had been as different as day and night. The two had hated each other.
“But then you’d turn around and say something good. Like when you were nice to Clotile. You smiled at her and waved hello, when not another person in school was kind to her.”
I could’ve been nicer to her, wished I had been.
“Or when you described our kiss at the pool at Selena’s house.” Jack scrubbed a hand over his face. “I must’ve worn a groove in the tape listening to that over and over.”
The way his lids went heavy and he shuddered, you’d think he’d had an eargasm. My breaths grew shallow in reaction. And suddenly I was very aware of my nak*dness, of the cooling water. Of Jackson peering at my damp skin.
“That tape was private!”
“You’d tell this Arthur guy, a stranger, our story?”
“By that point, I was fairly sure he would never tell another soul.” My skin began to glow with remembered fury, glyphs winding along my arms, across my chest. Were my eyes turning green?
Jackson stared at the changes in me. “You showing me these . . . these glyphs to scare me off?”
Huh. He had the lingo right.
“It woan work. That tape let me wade into this Arcana thing, let me learn about it little by little. Like you did. And I heard you say that I was your anchor.”
“Yeah, so?”
“You pulled back from killing that Irish kid—once you saw me. Do you deny that?”
At length, I shook my head.
“You need me, and now I know it,” he said. “You warned me it wasn’t ever goan to be easy with you. I’m still signing on.”
“Why would you? This is deadly and weird and terrifying.”
“So is this whole world!” He shoved his fingers through his wet hair. “Here’s how messed up in the head I am: I can accept this game better than I can your secrets. At least now I know what I’m up against.”
Part of me was delighted that he wanted me. Part of me thought anything between us was doomed. “Let’s just be realistic about our chances—”
“You wanna know what I’m feeling? Lemme tell you, bébé. Amusement. You’re acting like we got some kind of choice in this matter. You’re just as screwed as I am—because we’re both too far gone for the other.”
I bristled. “Liking me is akin to being screwed? I thought you were smoother than this, ladies’ man, with all your gaiennes.”
He shrugged. “The other night after we kissed, I told myself to just keep walking. That this shit was too heavy for me and none of my business. I told myself not to think about you.”
I’d told myself the same and had just as little success.
“Hell, you expected me to desert you anyway. But I got sicker with each step, like someone had strung up my guts with barbed wire. And I realized you got me by the balls. Stupid to fight it. Doan give a damn what you are.”
“Be still my heart,” I said in an arch tone, but I was softening toward him, as ever.
Yet then I remembered more of what I’d said on that tape. Such as how jealous and hurt I’d been when he’d flirted with Selena. Or how I felt like I’d lost my ever-living mind when he’d kissed me.
Was that what he’d been smirking over? “I still can’t believe you’d violate my privacy like that!” In school, when Jackson had wanted to see my journal, he’d stolen it. When he’d wanted to listen to my messages to my boyfriend? He’d stolen Brand’s phone.
Jackson kept running roughshod over me, and I was sick of it. “You need to leave.” My glyphs were so vivid, they lit the room more brightly than the fire. “I want to get dressed.”
“Doan let me stop you. I ain’t leaving until you admit how you feel.”
“You’re going to blackmail me?” Now it was a matter of principle. He’d crossed the line by listening to that tape, and now he expected me to reward him for it?
“You can always go.” He propped his boots up on the table, easing back to balance his chair on two legs. With a smug grin, he put his hands behind his head.
He was so cocky, I wanted—nay, needed—to wipe that grin off his face. I’d reached my limit. I could die tomorrow, and I refused to spend my last night on earth getting manipulated by a moonshine-guzzling Cajun.
Besides, I wasn’t too shy. I’d worn my skimpy cheer uniform to school in front of slavering teenage boys, and my best friend Melissa had pantsed me routinely. “Fine.” I twisted in the tub to rise with my back to him, then stepped out and marched to my clothes—
Wham! He’d crashed back in his chair?
Stifling a grin, I wiped myself semi-dry with my old T-shirt, then pulled on the panties.
“E-Evie?” His voice sounded strangled.
I reached for my bra, might’ve showed side-boob, didn’t care. When I had the strap fastened, I glanced over one shoulder.
Next to the overturned chair, Jackson knelt with his lips parted, breaths ragged. His high cheekbones were flushed, and his muscles were tensed—like he was about to lunge at me. “You . . . you stood up?” He swiped a shaking hand over his mouth, and again, his eyes dark with lust. “Never thought you’d stand up, ma bonne fille.” My good girl.
With a shrug, I reached for my jeans. “If you can’t take the heat, stay out of the cabin.”
He swallowed audibly. “Brûlant.” Sizzling hot. “And believe me, cher, I plan to take that heat.” Then he was on his feet, coming for me, those heavy boots pounding the wood floor. His every step multiplied my anticipation. He was going to kiss me again, and just the idea filled me with energy.
No, no, no! This was wrong. I didn’t want him to hit on me just because he was drunk and hard up.
Before I could put on my clothes, he’d spun me around, looping his arm around my lower back. “You swished that pretty ass in the wrong direction, bébé. You should’ve come to me when you were all nak*d and wet.”
“Don’t you dare make moves on me! You’re just going to accuse me again of mesmerizing you.”
“I realized you didn’t have all your powers when I first started wanting you.”
“Why would you think that?”
“Because if you were mesmerizing back then, all them Sterling boys would’ve been panting over you instead of Clotile.”
Chin raised, I said, “Hey, I didn’t do too bad, Cajun.”
“For true. When I saw you that day alone in the school courtyard, in your cheer skirt . . .” His expression was smoldering. “I wanted to lay you back on that table and take you right there, Evangeline.”
I shivered at the way my name rolled off his tongue in that accent. Irresistible. I knew this, because I was struggling to resist.
He was right; I was gone for him. Stupid to fight it. I gazed up at him, whispering, “Just, just don’t hurt me again. If I kiss you, and then you get disgusted . . .”
He gave a low laugh, moving his h*ps against mine. “Does it feel like I’m disgusted?”