Sixteen years of Catholic church filled my mouth with answers, but they all tasted like paste and I was silent. Suddenly it occurred to me that I didn't have to have an answer-- that I didn't want to speak. Instead, I hugged him, throwing my arms around his lean frame and pressing my cheek against the scar on his shoulder where he'd first traced the blade.
Luke lay his head on top of mine, his breaths counting the minutes, my heartbeat slowing to fall in step with his. Then I felt his mouth, his breath hot on my cool skin, push against my neck, at once tender and insistent. Part of me urged me to stop him while I still had my senses, but the better part of me wanted it too badly--wanted to feel him lay a path of kisses up my neck, under my ear, along my jaw, until his mouth found mine and stole my breath. I 190
couldn't think, with the musky smell of his skin pressed so close to me and the feel of his fingers tangled in my pony-tail. My brain screamed too far! but my body moved on its own accord, pressing closer to him.
A sudden, stabbing pain in my heart forced a gasp out of me, and I felt Luke's body stiffen. He pushed away, his hand moving up to his chest, his fingers against his skin, his eyes darkening.
As the pain flamed through my chest again, Luke shuddered, squeezing his eyes shut.
"What's happening?" I whispered. But the finger of fire dragged across my heart again, and this time, Luke's body spasmed and he crashed against the counter, sending a pot lid clattering to the floor. He reached a shaking hand toward the counter before collapsing down next to the pot lid on the tile. The tore glowed white hot on his arm, illuminated by some sort of fearsome magic.
It was only then I figured it out. This wasn't my pain--it was his. What I was feeling was only a shadow, some sort of sympathetic pain caused by the weird magic I'd performed on us in the graveyard. I dropped down next to him as he shivered in time with the waves of fire that rolled through my chest.
"Luke." I touched his face, and he focused his eyes on me, biting his lip. "What's happening to you?"
It was worse than I could have imagined, feeling his body shaking underneath my hand and seeing him work so hard not to cry out. His voice was tight. "I'm--being-- punished."
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I jerked my head up, looking at the windows, trying to see what could have been watching us.
Luke, seeing my gesture, forced out, "For--what I told--Eleanor." He groaned, and curled his body tightly around his clenched fists.
I remembered Eleanor's face then, the puzzlement on her face when she asked Luke why he couldn't kill me, just a girl. Faerie bitch! I wasn't just a girl. I was a girl with freakdom off the charts. I reached into the tangle of limbs and pressed my hand against Luke's chest, feeling the thump of his heart, slow and labored, each lethargic beat slamming against his ribs.
I closed my eyes, trying to think about the feeling I got when I was moving clovers across tables.
In my head, I saw the fire in Luke's chest, burning brightly across the wings of a frantic dove.
The flames, reflected orange and white in the dove's black eye, ate one feather after another, curling them black and useless.
"Go out," I whispered. But the fire kept burning, and the dove opened its beak and stared at the sky, eyes frozen and empty with the pain. I had to concentrate, to focus on the problem. What made fire go out? Lack of oxygen, right? I imagined the air sucking away from the flames, fleeing from the heat, leaving nothing but emptiness for the fire to feed on.
The fire flickered and diminished on one of the wings, and the ache in my own heart flickered in response.
"No," gasped Luke, and I opened my eyes to see him shaking his head. "No, don't do it. Just leave me alone."
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"Why?"
"She'll know." Beneath my hand, his heartbeat crashed convulsively. "She'll--know what you can do. She's--only --guessing--now."
I could see the pain written on every muscle in his body. "I can't just watch you like this."
"I--lied to her. Told her you--weren't--a threat." He turned his face away, bitten lip bleeding.
"Please--Dee-- don't."
I didn't know what to do. I was so afraid that he would die there on the kitchen floor, lying next to the pot lid on the tile. If he could die; after seeing the knife blade stuck in his chest, I wasn't so sure he could. But I knew he could feel pain, and watching him writhing on the floor was harder for me to bear than physical pain of my own.
I lay down on the cold tile beside him and curled my body next to his, wrapping my arms around his shuddering muscles and burying my face in his neck. And lying like that, together, him growing hotter and hotter and me squeezing tighter and tighter, I waited until he stopped shivering and finally lay still, breathing hard. Knowing, the whole time, that I could have stopped it. I think it was the hardest decision I had ever made.
Luke opened his eyes and lay a hand on my cheek, his words barely loud enough to be heard,
"Thank you."
Maybe he hadn't even said it out loud.
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fifteen
I didn't want to go to the party. It had seemed pointless to go in light of Granna's condition; now, after watching Luke tortured in the kitchen, it seemed downright idiotic. I had a horrible sense that time was precious and that entertaining a bunch of rich lawyers was a waste of it.
"Life has to go on," Luke said when I told him I wanted to blow the party off. "You can't
