Earthquake

  I mumble a quiet thank you, not wanting to get even more on this woman’s bad side. Logan says nothing, just pockets his key and squeezes my hand.

  “Daniel left you a gift on the table,” she says as she pushes the door open, which swings silently on well-oiled hinges. “He says you’ll know what to do with it.”

  Curiouser and curiouser, I think wryly. But I’m anxious to get out of this woman’s sight and be able to talk to Logan without overly attentive eavesdroppers. “We’ll be fine,” I say aloud.

  “Food,” Logan blurts, then looks at me apologetically. “I’m starving.”

  The truth is I am too, so I can hardly blame him. The dried fruit only went so far in making up for three days with only one meal.

  “I’ll have something sent up.” She looks Logan up and down and adds, “Something substantial,” in a tone that makes me want to smack her.

  Whatever. As soon as she’s through the doorway I close it behind her, just inches shy of knocking her over. “Finally,” I say, my back to the door.

  We’re in a very large room that seems to be part kitchenette, part bedroom. Like a studio apartment, really, with a sitting room around the corner on one side and what looks like a doorway to the bathroom on the left.

  Logan is standing a few feet from an elegantly made king-size bed, and he runs his fingers through his hair awkwardly. Trusting me, even holding my hand, is one thing; being shoved into a bedroom with only one bed after being told to “get some rest” is another.

  I look away, giving him a few seconds to get his bearings, scoping out the room instead. The hallway was elegant and nice, but this room is a completely different kind of elegance. It’s sparse and a bit artsy, with silver and black trim on pretty much everything. In place of paintings, black and white photos of buildings and cityscapes dot the walls. Here and there a touch of maroon breaks up the color palette: a throw on the back of a plushy chair, a vase that stands empty on a high shelf, one pillow in a pile of several on the bed.

  I remember the woman’s cryptic comment about a gift from Daniel and look around for the table—seems like it would be easy to find, but it turns out that it’s a semicircular, bar-height table that’s mounted below a mirror, and so I miss it at first glance, thinking that it’s just part of the decor.

  Still trying to avoid awkwardness with Logan, I walk over and pick up the cardboard tube sitting atop it. “No note,” I muse. But whatever. I pop the top off the tube and start to shake it out, but as soon as I realize what’s inside I yank my fingers back like they’ve been burned.

  It’s from the dugout back in Camden that Quinn took me to. The painting that messed me up so badly. My breathing is sharp and noisy and Logan is walking toward me, but I hold up a hand to stop him and force myself to calm down.

  A little.

  This canvas was in Benson’s backpack the night I found out what he was. Why does the Curatoria have it?

  “What is it?” Logan asks tentatively.

  “It’s just a painting,” I respond absentmindedly. I’m too caught up in the sight before me to attempt to act like less of a total weirdo.

  “If it’s just a painting, then why did it make you jump out of your skin?”

  He’s right. It did make me jump out of my skin. But that was nothing compared to what happened the last time I touched it.

  I’ll never forget the sensation. It was like I was a radio set to the wrong frequency.

  “Tavia?” Logan says.

  I look up at him with what I’m sure is a nearly manic expression. If it was the wrong frequency for me, then there’s only one person who it could be right for.

  And in a bright flash of light, I remember. I remember! Quinn and I knew our artifacts were too obvious. Him a jewelry maker, me an artist. Of course a necklace and a painting would be obvious creations, with obvious owners. So we reversed them. I created a replica of a necklace he made me; he created a copy of a painting of our home. That way someone looking to destroy all of Rebecca’s memories would miss one. Then we packed them away in the dugout.

  That’s why the necklace worked on me and not him.

  I didn’t paint this painting; Quinn created it.

  My whole body trembles now as I realize what a treasure I’m holding in my hands. “Logan,” my voice is too quiet and too high-pitched all at the same time. “You should see this.”

  His eyes are hooded, fearful, and I realize that in a world that has literally turned upside down on him in the last three days, anything might happen. Any paranoid fear might become a reality.

  “It’s a good thing,” I say quickly, hating that expression of terror cast in my direction. “Just . . . here, take it.”

  I hold out the painting and he obliges. The second his fingers come in contact with the canvas, everything changes.

  His hands tighten around it, crushing the edge of the painting, and he takes two stumbling steps backward until his shoulders meet the door. His eyes widen and then focus on me.

  “Tavia,” he murmurs. And it’s clear, he knows me.

  He takes one step—not even a proper step, half a step—and his hand rises as though of its own accord. I’m still, stunned into paralysis even as my lungs force air in and out with a gasping, hissing sound, and adrenaline fills my veins in a rush that deafens me.

  His fingertips brush my face so gently, as though I’ll break into a million pieces if he presses too hard. His eyes scan me, taking in every detail, until I feel like I’ve been stripped naked in front of him.

  And I don’t mind.

  Logan stands like a man transformed, even though his appearance hasn’t technically changed. His shoulders are straighter, his eyes more knowing. That face—suddenly it understands unspeakable wonders of the universe that normal humans simply can’t comprehend.

  Then the world hits Play and his lips are on mine, his hands clutching, until I feel every part of him pressed against me. Hands, chest, hips, lips, teeth. With a growl he pushes my back against the wall and grabs at my hips, pulling me to him like he needs me closer now. “Becca,” he breathes in my ear, whispering my old name like a sacred memory before attacking my mouth again.

  My brain is full of the chorus of women in my other lives singing with joy. Their strange music fills me, making every inch of my body tingle and glow. I know tomorrow I’ll have bruises from Logan’s rough, desperate handling, but I don’t care. I want it—all of it.

  “I’m so sorry,” he whispers between kisses that trail down my neck, over my shoulder. He lifts my fingers to his mouth and kisses every fingertip, then rubs his face against my palms. “For everything I said. The way I treated you. I didn’t know,” he says, his voice gravelly now as his hands grip the waistband of my jeans.

  I groan as his hands can’t resist and slip under the back of my shirt, his fingers skimming bare skin. Everything I ever wanted with anyone explodes into this one moment. “It’s okay,” I manage, as I lean against him, his mouth back on my neck. He rolls his hips against me. It’s like an ocean wave we can’t stop, crashing into us, sweeping us away with it.

  We walk unsteadily backward—in the direction I hazily remember the bed sitting—we’re grasping at each other as our worlds collide in the most blissful crash I could ever imagine.

  Logan lifts me, wraps my legs around his waist, and carries me the last few feet. He tosses me on the bed and kneels over me, reaching for the buttons on my jeans. Impatient with his fruitless fumbling, he tears his T-shirt up and over his head, and my whole body shakes at the sight of the familiar yet brand-new bare skin of his chest. He reaches for the bottom of my blouse, and as I raise my arms it suddenly seems to me that everything, every terrible, awful thing that has happened in the last month, was worth it.

  The next few minutes are a blur of desperation as we learn each other all over again. It has that brilliant excitement of newness wrapped in the
comfort of the commonplace. We say nothing as our bodies speak their own language; and even though I feel like I should savor this moment—take time to renew our friendship, our love—I can’t.

  I look up into his leaf-green eyes above me, my hand clenching at his shoulders, and for the first time since the plane wreck, I feel free. I let go of everything. Of every fear and doubt, of tension and pain.

  And in that moment I let my entire body fill with pure, unadulterated joy.

  NINE

  I’m so wrapped up in Logan I scarcely notice when the lights flicker and then die, plunging us into total darkness.

  For a moment there’s silence, and then we both start to laugh. “Did we do that?” I ask, finally getting some control.

  “I didn’t do it. Did you do it?”

  “Bad timing, I guess.”

  “Or extremely good timing,” Logan says, his lips brushing my neck.

  A moment later there’s the glow of a candle that wasn’t there before.

  “You made that!” I say with a gasp.

  He raises one eyebrow, the expression somehow sultry in the dim light. “Of course I did,” he says, pressing a kiss against my brow. “I still want to look at you,” he says, a hint of a growl in his throat. “And kiss you, and touch you, and hold you.” I pull his face back down to mine, and it’s like the weird power outage never happened.

  It’s only hours later, when exhaustion overtakes us both, that we slow down. Logan helps me into his discarded T-shirt and kisses my forehead one more time before blowing out the candle. Then he pulls me against him and breathes a long sigh, the kind that sounds like it’s been waiting two centuries to be released.

  “We found each other,” I marvel, and even now I hardly believe it.

  “You found me,” Logan whispers, kissing my forehead. “Fate needed a little help.”

  It’s mere seconds before I hear Logan’s breathing slow, and he falls asleep, his arm draped over me. I’m near sleep myself, but I take a moment to revel in the last few hours in this silent, dark room. Every part of my body feels tender and new, like a butterfly emerging from its chrysalis for the first time. New, and perfect.

  As perfect as I will ever be.

  • • •

  He’s looking at me when I wake up, and for half a second I wonder why his eyes aren’t blue.

  Guilt stabs my chest as the memory of last night comes flooding back. I push visions of sky-blue eyes aside and smile at Logan.

  My lover. My diligo.

  “Good morning, I think. Lights finally came back on,” he whispers in his rough morning voice.

  A voice I last heard over two hundred years ago. My mouth curls up at the thought.

  “What?” he asks, running the tip of his nose up my cheek and making me feel very awake indeed.

  “I haven’t seen you in a long time.”

  He tosses his head back and laughs, and I realize I miss his long hair. It’s not a big deal. Hair grows. I, of all people, know that. He kisses me soundly and then leans on one elbow and looks down at me, my head still buried in the pillows. “So, Tavia? That’s a funny name.”

  A giggle busts out in more of a snort. “My mom came up with it,” I say, a tiny pang making its way into my heart. “No one ever says it right.”

  His eyes soften and he kisses me again, and we waste another half hour or so kissing and rolling about on the bed before Logan’s eyes grow serious. “We should probably talk,” he says.

  I nod and sober up. I guess the honeymoon is over.

  For a little while anyway.

  Logan pulls the sheet off me, and I fight the urge to grab it back. Or at least cover the fact that all I’m wearing is underwear and his shirt. But he’s not looking at me that way. His eyes are serious—maybe even sad—as he pushes his T-shirt up around my ribs and looks at the scars from my surgeries. The huge staple-marked scar on my thigh is gone—compliments of the Curatoria med team—but there are plenty others to see. My trach scar, several small marks where ribs broke the skin, the remains of a lesion across my hips from the seat belt on the plane, that sort of thing. Enough that even in the darkness last night, he would have felt them.

  “What happened to you?” he whispers, his voice so full of sympathy and anguish it makes tears of joy come to my eyes.

  Joy that I found the person who feels this way about me. That we’re together now and can be forever.

  Literally, forever.

  I swallow hard and then take his hand and move it to my head. I angle my neck and sweep my hair away and let him see that scar too. Feel it. Other than doctors, nurses, people I had to let feel it, no one else has ever touched my scar.

  Except Benson.

  He doesn’t count anymore.

  “Tavia,” he says, touching the scar very softly. He doesn’t say anything else, but after a few seconds he drops his hand and looks at me. Waiting.

  It takes a long time, but I tell him everything that has happened in the last eight months: the plane wreck, the slow manifestation of my powers, Sammi and Mark, the Reduciates, Marie, the virus. Especially the virus since we couldn’t really talk about it in the prison.

  I don’t mention Benson.

  I should. But I can’t. He’s too raw a wound, and I don’t want Logan to know about him at all.

  Maybe someday.

  I get to the part of my story where I arrive in Phoenix, and we both laugh at how stupid we were.

  “Mostly how stupid you were,” I say in mock defense.

  “So stupid,” Logan agrees. “I could have been doing this days ago.”

  I sober. “Maybe if I’d found a way your family wouldn’t have died,” I whisper, needing to get that out. To let him know he can talk about it with me. That, having lost my own parents, I’m especially suited to understand.

  But he only shrugs. “Maybe. But that doesn’t matter anymore. You’re my family now.”

  My eyebrows scrunch together as I stare at him and try to keep the horror out of my eyes as he—likely unknowingly—repeats the phrase the Reduciate woman used. His little siblings, his mother, his father; they just don’t matter anymore? I remember very distinctly the months of feeling as though part of my physical body had been cut away when my parents died. How can he act like I could replace his family?

  Maybe he’s in denial. I can be patient. Especially with so much going on with us. Later. It takes time—I know that.

  He stares off into space, and I take a moment to love the sight of him, the overhead lights reflecting off his tousled golden hair. Between it and his tan skin he looks just like a god should.

  “We have to go soon, don’t we?” His voice is full of mourning.

  “Yeah.” I choke out that tiny word.

  “Meet Daniel. Find out what he wants with us.”

  “From us.”

  “No one ever lets us just be happy,” he says, turning to look at me again with those eyes that paralyze me with wanting. “At least we’ll get to see each other afterward.” He casts his eyes downward, and I understand what he’s not saying—that this time, it won’t be like the night the hooded horsemen came for us two hundred years ago. I nod and he rolls over onto his stomach. “Hungry?”

  “Starving,” I admit. “We never did get food last night.”

  “Probably because of that power outage. Here.” He snaps his fingers and a wooden breakfast tray appears on the bed between us with a hot French press full of coffee, croissants, steaming eggs perfectly over easy, crispy bacon, and two glasses of cold orange juice.

  That’s right. We have powers.

  And unlike me, he remembered that little fact.

  But . . . have we actually resurged? I don’t know exactly what that means—what it requires. Just that it makes our creations permanent and gives us seven more reincarnations. I’m about to say something when I c
atch sight of the melted nub of candle on the bedside table.

  Logan created that last night. It’s still here. Does that mean that we’ve done it, that the clock on our lifetimes has been reset?

  A warmth of happiness and accomplishment starts to fill my chest, when I remember Sammi wondering if I was too damaged to resurge. Not Logan, me. All the permanence of Logan’s candle means is that he’s safe. And although that fact makes me gloriously happy, I can’t help but fear I’ve saved him only to damn him to seven lifetimes without me.

  “Think that’s enough?” Logan asks, looking down at the heaping tray. “Do you want to add anything?”

  I force a smile when what I really feel is a rush of fear. “It looks great,” I say. And no, I most certainly do not want to add anything. If it disappears—if I’m not good enough—I . . . I don’t want him to know.

  As Logan is browsing the tray, I clench my fist, peer at my bedside table—just outside of Logan’s line of sight—and create the first thing I think of.

  Now I just have to wait five minutes.

  Trying to hide my nerves, I dig into a croissant, only now remembering how famished I am. I was a little . . . distracted before. As I chew, it occurs to me that, at least as long as I’m with Logan, I’m never going to have to worry about not getting enough to eat again. I’ll never wonder if I’m going to pass out before Benson can get me food.

  I swallow that thought away along with the bread that suddenly feels dry and wash both down with a long sip of searing-hot coffee.

  The pile of food is completely gone in five minutes. Logan pats his bare stomach. “I’m stuffed.”

  “You’re a good cook,” I say with a laugh.

  “It’s so weird that I could just forget that I literally can have anything I want with a simple thought,” Logan says, and I have to struggle to pay attention. “But boy am I glad I remembered! Serious perks.” He stands, stretching, and all my worries flee at the sight of his bare skin spread out before me with such casual confidence. I don’t think he had that yesterday.