Fissure

  If keeping the girl I had it bad for just out of my reach when I’d waited forty-eight hours wasn’t enough, seeing the shadow of nothing on Emma’s face had been more than enough to unhinge me. I couldn’t imagine anything less than the death of a close member could twist the joy that had been Emma on Monday afternoon to the shell of herself she was today.

  Whatever it was though, I was going to find out. Ty and his covert ops couldn’t foil me. I’d uncovered rogue Inheritors halfway around the world—I could find a beautiful woman on the Stanford campus.

  Maybe I couldn’t. My confidence, along with my sanity, had hit empty late last night after a second night of sitting in the shadows outside her dorm, watching, hoping, and praying she’d pass by. She never had.

  After a second night of staking out, I was expecting campus security or even the police to pay me a visit and possibly slap me with a warning or a restraining order to stay away. Of course, I would have heeded neither, but no one seemed to pay me any attention, like I was invisible or unworthy of their attention. Or maybe pathetic, lovesick guys hanging outside the dorm halls of the girls they loved was a regular thing here at Stanford.

  Cutting the Mustang’s engine in the black saturated night, I knew I couldn’t stand by as an inactive party another night. I was knocking on that door until someone answered—I’d teleport in if I grew really desperate, although that was a last resort.

  Ever notice how desperate men tend to go with their last resort as Plan A? I was hoping I’d gained enough mental fortitude and sheer willpower over generations of walking the earth to at least save teleporting for Plan B.

  It was easy enough getting in the building, despite the outside doors locking after dark. Everyone was either on their way to get drunk or already there, so no one noticed or cared who dodged inside when the door opened.

  I don’t know how I ended up in front of her door so quickly, but I knew I hadn’t used teleportation only because I’d ended up outside her door. I would have put myself dead center in her room if I’d employed any supernatural powers, no question about it.

  My heart was in my throat; I finally got what people meant when they said that, and it wasn’t a figurative use of the expression. I was certain if I reached a finger past my tongue, I’d find a beating organ blocking my esophagus.

  I rapped on the door, but in the silence it echoed through the empty hall like I was pounding on it.

  Soft footsteps padded towards the door, and my senses were on such high alert I could sense the air being disturbed as a form cut through it. I was so focused on these minute details, I didn’t process that the person twisting the doorknob open was not the one I’d come searching for.

  Opening the door a sliver width and a half, Julia’s nuclear green eye popped through the space. I took an involuntary step back, which was rude I knew, but it was better than lunging back like I’d wanted to do when that unsettling eye latched onto me.

  “You,” she said, heaving the door open the rest of the way.

  Typical Julia greeting: succinct, sharp, and psychotic.

  “Me,” I answered back cryptically.

  She nodded once, like I’d just given her an answer to a silent question.

  “Is that a good or bad thing?” I asked, not even about to guess what she was thinking.

  “Depends,” she answered, lifting a shoulder as she turned and headed towards the back of the room.

  Taking her not slamming the door on my face as an invitation to come in, I took a few steps inside, but since this was a dorm room we were talking about, I was already halfway inside when Julia’s head got lost behind a mini-fridge. “You want a sparkling water?” she asked, already pitching one my way.

  “Eh, sure,” I said, snatching the green bottle somersaulting through the air. “Thanks?”

  Tilting the bottle she was holding at me in acknowledgement, she took a chug.

  “And here I thought I was the goth,” she said, surveying me toe to head before taking another swig. “You look like you’ve been dead for the past hundred years.”

  I came close to spewing the sip of water I’d just taken. Despite knowing Julia was attempting to be amusing, the trueness of her statement wasn’t lost on me. Knowing her, I could tell her every last nitty gritty detail of my world and she’d shrug an unimpressed shoulder and get back to sacrificing small animals or brewing vex potions or whatever else she did on a Friday night.

  “Keep the compliments coming,” I mumbled, twisting the cap back on the water of nasty bubbly origins.

  “You’re a misogynist pig,” she said, like it was on the tip of her tongue, relieving me of the disgrace-to-water bottle.

  “Now that actually hurts. Why would you say that?” I asked, making myself comfortable on the edge of Emma’s bed. I wasn’t sure what the antonym of misogyny was, but that’s what I was. I was possibly the most devote lover of woman out there.

  “Because if you cared anything for Emma’s peace of mind, you wouldn’t be here right now,” she answered, leaning into the mini-fridge and appraising me with those nutty eyes.

  “I just needed to know if she was all right,” I admitted, transparency coming naturally in Julia’s presence, or maybe she was a bonafied witch and was forcing me to spill my guts. Not that I’d come across an actual witch in my existence, but as a being of supernatural quality, it seemed hypocritical to believe Immortals had the market cornered on all things paranormal.

  “I don’t think all right are words I’d ever use to describe Emma’s state of being,” she said, talking into her bottle. “But she’s still breathing.”

  I smiled humorously. “Where’s she been? I’ve been looking for her.”

  “Really? I haven’t noticed you lurking like a creeper in the shadows the past couple nights.” Julia had perfected the tone of sarcasm. You see, anyone could season their statements with it, but it took a true pro to be able to make each word burrow itself under your skin. “She’s holed up at jerkwad’s bar and brothel. Also known as his frat house,” Julia finished, curling her nose.

  I put the lid on the shot of pain that was blooming into a grimace. I knew Emma wasn’t the frat house cockroach type, so either she was doing her best to avoid me or doing her best to cater to Ty’s overbearing ways. It made me feel like a bit of a dirt-bag to hope for the latter.

  “You know,” Julia said, shifting her eyes at me. “You don’t have to hide the way you feel about her with me. I saw amore in your eyes the first night I met you, but I suppose that’s to be expected with someone like Emma.”

  “Yeah, she kind of crawled into my heart and stayed there,” I admitted, rolling with this whole transparency with Julia thing.

  She nodded. “If I believed in angels, I’d believe she was the bloody gold star one of the bunch,” she said, kicking off one of her purple boots and sailing it into the wall across from her. “She doesn’t deserve to be dicked with.” Another thud against the wall as the other boot landed beside its mate.

  “I know, I know,” I said, trying to roll the tension out of my shoulders. “I’m not trying to . . . dick”—I wasn’t brought up to use crass language in front of a woman, but Julia transcended the gender into something else entirely—“around with her. I swear my intentions are pure.”

  Julia arched an eyebrow.

  “Well, ninety-nine percent pure,” I confessed, the implied meaning in Julia’s face and slouching into Emma’s bed forcing a scorching heat to my face.

  “Thanks for the confession, my son,” she said, crossing herself theatrically. “But the slime I was referring to ‘dicking with Emma’ was the turd she believes is her boyfriend,” she said, practically snarling before smiling at me for the first time. “You, I like.”

  I was stunned stupid by the compliment. Something told me that a girl who believed black wasn’t a color, but a state of mind, didn’t hand out compliments readily.

  “Why?” the genius inside me asked.

  “Hell if I know,” was her immediate answe
r.

  Roundabout as it was, I’d take any compliment aimed my way at this time in my life. “Thanks for that, Julia. Really. But how do I get the other girl to like me?”

  “That’s the easy part,” she replied, taking a final chug of her sparkling water and launching the empty bottle under her bed. The garbage can was less than a foot away from her. “The hard part is getting her to admit it to herself.”

  “Hold up.” I leapt up and squared myself in front of Julia. “Are you saying that Emma . . . likes me?” My bad day was threatening to take a turn for the best.

  “Of course she does,” she answered, doling out a look like she thought I was the worst kind of clueless. “She just doesn’t know it yet.”

  That jostle in my gut I just felt could have been my heart breaking loose. “Perfect,” I muttered, combing my fingers through my hair. “So she ‘likes me,’ she just doesn’t know it yet,”—I wasn’t muttering anymore, although I’d decided to add pacing to my emotional roller coaster—“and you know what? She’ll never know it because she has a boyfriend, she avoids me like I’m a walking freshman twenty, and as if those things aren’t convincing enough,” I said . . . I yelled, throwing my hands up in the air, “we have nothing in common.”

  “You know what I hear when people say they have nothing in common with the person they want to be with?” she asked, her voice as calm as mine was crazed. She paused long enough for me to catch she was waiting for an answer. I shook my head, not trusting myself to open my mouth again. “A coward making chickenshit excuses.”

  This conversation just pulled a brody on me.

  “She’s got a boyfriend, she avoids me,” Julia was repeating my words in the same volume I’d employed, peppering it with a whiney voice. “We have nothing in common. Boo hoo,” she continued, wiping at the absent tears in her eyes. “Quit your whining and grow a pair.”

  Under most circumstances, I would have had an insane comeback to this accusation, but arguing with a hardcore goth girl while Ozzy droned on in the background wasn’t normal circumstances.

  “Her boyfriend is a tick that burrowed in six years ago and won’t go away,” Julia said, her hands flying about like she was juggling imaginary daggers. “She avoids you because she likes you—”

  “She just doesn’t know it yet,” I said under my breath.

  “And, and . . .” she repeated in a fury, searching around the room. Her eyes finally narrowed in on something and she was across the room after it in two lunges. “And sparkling water,” she shouted, throwing a heater straight towards my . . . pair.

  I was taken by surprise, which was becoming a regular occurrence for me. Not by the bottle sailing at my man business, but by the violent change in conversation. Had I not already confirmed it, I would have said Julia was crazy. Bad crazy, not the cute, semi-amusing crazy.

  “Wow,” I said, sliding my full-except-for-a-sip bottle into my jacket pocket, removing one weapon from her reach. “Detour much?” I asked, looking up at her.

  She was the picture of calm now, arms crossed loosely and shoulders back. “Connect the dots much?” she threw back at me, trying on my voice for size. She must think I sounded like Sean Connery getting kicked in the nuts.

  I opened my mouth, an automatic response to such a question, but no words came out. I tried again—still nothing. This thing with women striking me speechless was becoming a regular occurrence.

  “There’s your one thing,” she said, thrusting her hands at where the bottle peeked out of my pocket. “You both hate sparkling water.”

  I massaged my temples. “Life changing.”

  “You made a claim that one of the reasons you two couldn’t be together was because you had nothing in common. Well,” she said, “I’ve proven that a lie. And who cares about how much they have in common when they love someone, tell me that? Do you think Mark Antony fell in love with Cleopatra because they both liked the color green? Did Tristan fall in love with Isolde because they were both morning people? Do you think Lancelot divided the freakin’ Knights of the Round Table because Guinevere shared his love of roast duck?” she continued on without taking a single breath, and I wasn’t going to interrupt. Don’t mess with a woman on a mission. I learned this lesson the hard way.

  “Do you think Emma’s going to fall in love with you because you both like old movies?” she paused, sucking in a hard earned breath. “Well, do you?”

  I knew I should tread lightly with Julia in her present scary-calm state, but I didn’t do what I knew I should very often. And this was one of those times.

  “Let me take a three prong approach to my answer. One,” I listed, lifting my index finger, “those three lovely couples you aforementioned all died sad, miserable lives without the one they risked everything for as they gurgled their last words. And two,” I ignored Julia’s death glare and continued, lifting another finger, “are you implying that’s the bar Emma and I should strive for if, by some miracle, we end up together? And three,”—ring finger up to accompany the other two—“how does any of this help me?”

  Clasping her hands in a prayer position against her face, she blew out a slow breath. I’d seen this nonverbal response dozens of times in my presence.

  “Listen, I know you’re not a coward, but you’re scared of something,” she said, keeping her eyes closed and hands clasped. “Something is keeping you here when you should be charging through the doors of that Future Eunuchs of America clubhouse and carrying her off into the damn sunset.” Opening her eyes, she graced me with a second smile. “Or whatever it is you normal types do.”

  Returning the sad smile, I answered. “I’m here—I’m scared,” I clarified, “because it’s like what you said earlier. If I care about her peace of mind, I need to leave her alone.” My head hung lower admitting it, but I knew she was right. Peace of mind and Patrick Hayward were mutually exclusive entities.

  “That’s right, I did say that,” she said, walking towards me. “If you care about her peace of mind, you’ll leave her alone,” she said again, an undertone in her voice, some meaning I was meant to pick up on, but hadn’t yet. “But if you care about her best interests you’ll get your persistent little butt back to following her around like a little puppy.”

  Julia was like the Buddha of clarity. Everything she’d said made sense and had cleared the fog that had been stalling me. I felt something for Emma, and she could avoid me as much as she wanted, but I wasn’t going away until I told her just how it was for me. I was done making chickenshit excuses, as master Julia had so eloquently put it.

  “Which frat house is it?” I asked, my hand twisting open the doorknob.

  Layering her hands over her heart, she fluttered her eyes. “There’s the man I’m going to still be doing dirty things to in my dreams fifty years from now.”

  “Lucky me,” I said, not letting my mind go anywhere near that cringe fest.

  Julia was off in some daydream or, maybe in her case, a nightmare, so before things got all hot and heavy with her and imaginary me, I cleared my throat. “Jules, focus,” I said, clapping my hands. “Where is Emma?”

  She did a clearing shake of her head. “Just head out of the main road, and when you find the freshmen with water balloons for boobs puking in the front yard, you’ve found the place. Make sure you wear latex gloves if you touch anything. It turns out some new-found STDs devised in that house can be passed from surface to skin contact.”

  My stomach clenched envisioning Emma in a place like that. I was halfway down the hall when Julia called down at me. “You called me Jules,” she said, her voice girly like I never imagined it could be. “Only my truest friends call me that.” Sticking two fingers in the air like a thin peace sign, she said, “There’s two things you have in common now.”

  “Hey, that’s got to be better than one, right?” I called back to her, continuing down the hall, in a hurry to get to Emma.

  Before I hit the stairs, I remembered my manners. Or at least what few I possessed.

/>   “Jules?” I hollered.

  Her dark head popped out the door.

  “Thank you,” I said, my tone of sincerity hopefully demonstrating what two meager words couldn’t.

  She grinned down at me. “I’m going to break tradition and make an expected, contrived response.” Pausing, she cleared her throat. “You’re welcome. Now, shoo,” she instructed, shooing with her hand as well. “Watch your back in there, Hayward. They’re animals,” she added as I charged down the stairs.

  “Good thing I’m a hunter,” I said to myself, wrapping my fingers around the Mustang’s steering wheel a wink later.

  It took me all of thirty seconds to hear the place once I’d pulled onto the main road off campus, but it was another thirty before it came into view. I shook my head, realizing that if these were the Ivy League youth of our future, I was going to be kept busy as a Guardian.

  Julia had under-exaggerated. The front lawn was smothered with the puking “girls” like she’d said, but even more were passed out cold and, thankfully less, girls having clothed sex with guys spewed over crippled lawn furniture.

  I was tempted to snap a picture and forward it to father to thank him for insisting I be put through the whole college experience thing, but calling upon a vast amount of willpower, I refrained. No father of a daughter should have to see another father’s daughter in such a state of disgrace.

  Classy joint.

  I wouldn’t have left my Mustang anywhere within a drunken mile of this place, but Emma was in there. My stomach twisted into an advanced yoga contortion when I pictured her in a place like that. Against every car worshipping bone in my body, I punched the Mustang over the curb and rolled it up on the grass since there was nowhere to park on the street. A fire marshal would have had a heyday if he’d been invited.

  I couldn’t get out of the car fast enough and, once I made it through the maze of girls whose makeup had melted to Joker-scary, I bound up the stairs in one leap. The kid who was supposedly admitting would-be party goers was passed out cold on his stool in the doorway. A few phallic-esque caricatures had been sharpied on his face. Poor guy was going to wake up with more than a headache.