I slam the lid closed and grab a towel from the closet.
“Are you at least going to tell me?” Chill asks. I stop, unable to turn my back on him as much as I want to. “I’m your Handler, Jack. It’s my job to know where you are. And I can’t do that if you’re shutting me out. What really happened up there?”
I don’t want to lie to him. I just don’t know what to tell him. I don’t understand what’s happening between me and Fleur. Or why. Or what any of it means. I throw the towel over my shoulder and head for the shower.
“Give me a few years to figure it out.”
3
Hounds of Winter
FLEUR
There’s no sign of summer anywhere. The night’s too cool, too dismal. It smells too much like the city in spring. I jaywalk across all three lanes of Woodmont Avenue, my running shoes slapping against the shallow puddles that reflect the bright lights of the marquee where Julio and I usually meet. I press my back against the wall of the theater, taking shelter from the rain under the red awning out front. The faces rushing by are all half hidden under hoods and umbrellas.
“Do you see him anywhere?” I hunch into Jack’s coat, my collar raised against the windblown mist. My transmitter’ssilent in my ear.
“Come on, Poppy. You can’t possibly still be angry with me.” The incident on the mountain with Jack was almost two months ago. I didn’t tell her everything that happened after I turned my transmitter off so she wouldn’t have to lie for me. But I shouldn’t have to tell her everything just because she’s my Handler. There should be moments in my own life I’m allowed to keep for myself.
Poppy begs to differ.
Poppy was eighteen months younger than I was in 1991 when we died, back when eighteen months felt like an eternity, when just the number eighteen still felt like an attainable goal. Poppy must have seen Gaia that night in our room. Gaia sat in a beam of light from the parking lot outside our window, in a chair at the foot of my bed, nosing through my poetry books, waiting for me to die while the rest of the hospital slept. Poppy only pretended to sleep. She turned off her respirator the minute I flatlined, determined to come with us, as if she had nothing left to hold on to but me.
Sometimes, she just holds on too tightly.
“Don’t be like this.” I lean back against the brick under the shadow of the awning. “It’s one night—one stinking movie, for crying out loud. If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were jealous.”
“I’m not jealous,” she says begrudgingly.
A young couple rushes past, heads bowed, laughing as they jog to beat the rain. They’re so wrapped up in the moment, they fail to notice the low-hanging branch of the tree ahead of them. I slide my mind inside its roots, then up through its trunk, lifting the heavy limb just high enough for the couple to clear it. They don’t notice the small movement in the dark, and I feel a pang of loneliness when their lips meet as they dash beneath it.
“I bet he proposes over dessert,” I say, just loud enough for Poppy to hear, certain she noticed them, too.
Her sigh’s heavy. “Peanut butter cheesecake.”
“They’ll move in together. A condo in Georgetown.”
“No. A house in the suburbs.”
“She’ll get him a puppy for Christmas.”
“A shelter dog,” Poppy insists.
“They’ll have two kids.” This time, the sigh is mine.
It’s a game we’ve played for years, since before we were what we are. I remember our reflection in the window of our hospital room, Poppy’s oxygen lines and my IVs tangled around us, the light fog of our breath where we pressed our faces to the glass to watch the people in the parking lot below. There was something hopeful about predicting the futures of strangers, like throwing coins into a fountain, even if neither of us had a future of our own to wish on. But now, the game only leaves me aching, wanting . . .
“Any sign of him yet?” I ask, kicking off the brick. The crowd in front of the theater has thinned. The sidewalk’s nearly empty. Poppy doesn’t answer. I check the time on the clock above the ticket counter, my last hope of the evening slipping away on another sigh. The ten-o’clock shows are already starting.
“If you’re listening, you’ll be happy to know I’m heading back to my room now. I’ll try again tomorrow.” And she’ll still be mad at me then. Poppy hates that Julio and I get along. It worries her. We’re falling in the rankings. But the truth is, I’ve been gradually falling for years, since March 1997, when I cornered Jack in the men’s room of a bus station in Baltimore. He was cowering in a stall, using the metal door to shield himself from me.
“What do you want?” he shouted.
“From you?” I asked, surprised that the answer wasn’t obvious.
“From any of this!”
It was the first time anyone had ever asked me that. I listened to him panting on the other side of the door. After all those years, he was still afraid of dying. Terrified of it. Willing to fight to the last breath, even though the outcome was completely inevitable. No one had ever bothered to ask me what I wanted from my life. It had always been assumed I wouldn’t live long enough to know the answer. Life had been taken from me the day I got my terminal diagnosis, then given back the minute I died. And then there had been Poppy, clinging to my side and choosing our names, and Gaia explaining the rules. And no one ever bothered to ask me what I wanted, what I was willing to fight for.
No one but Jack.
I was thrown so off-balance by the question, I let him walk out that door. Because up until that moment, I didn’t have an answer.
I duck out from under the awning to the slap of windshield wipers and the glare of headlights, darting between gaps in traffic as the sky begins to pour. My hotel is twelve blocks north, and I’m drenched before I make it halfway there. All I want to do is curl up in a warm bed and sleep. I slip into a convenience store, sneakers squeaking on the floor tiles as I scavenge for something to take back to my room to eat. My hand hovers over a bag of M&M’s when I’m struck by the feeling of someone watching me. A soft popping sound is coming from the next aisle over, the slow cracking of someone’s knuckles, one by one.
I glance over the top of the divider. The blond-haired boy on the other side lowers his eyes. I carry the M&M’s to the register, darting a quick look over my shoulder as the cashier counts out my change, but I don’t see his spiky blond crown anywhere as I turn to go.
The bells on the door jangle as it sweeps shut behind me. Too soon, they clang again, as someone else leaves the store. I pick up my pace, the hair on my neck prickling the way it used to years ago, back when Julio used to hunt me. I draw in a breath, but all I smell is the chocolate in my pocket and the dumpster in the alley up ahead. I risk a backward glance as I turn the corner. Through the wet strands of my hair, I can just make out the boy’s shadow, his quick gait stretching toward me.
“Poppy?” I whisper. “I think I’m being followed.”
Something moves up ahead, to my left. Another dark figure crosses the street toward me. A third matches my pace on the opposite side of the street. I know, in the bone-deep way that only someone who’s been hunted can know, that they’re herding me.