The Chosen

  “And then he disappeared. So there’s a chance,” Chloe interrupted with more bitterness than she’d intended. Maybe her dad had skipped town to avoid the assassinations, the kidnappings, and the general craziness of being caught between the Tenth Bladers and the Mai. Or maybe he was just trying to protect Chloe—the man who knew too much getting out so she could live a more normal life. Maybe he thought Mom was safer not knowing about anything.

  Suddenly Chloe was exhausted. She fell back into her mom’s lap again. “Did I mention Paul and Amy are breaking up?”

  “A little too weirdly timed, with his parents and all, don’t you think?”

  Her mom reached over for the cup of coffee she had been sipping from. Unlike many things in the house, it was old and the handle had broken off and been glued carefully back on almost ten years ago. It was a dark aqua, kind of out in household furnishings since the early eighties, and clashed with all of the jade- and turquoise-themed pieces that fit into Mrs. King’s New Southwest style.

  Out of place, old, and infinitely comforting. Her mom had used that mug since before Chloe could remember. She closed her eyes, squidging her butt more comfortably into the couch.

  “So they’re not going to the fall formal together?” her mother continued, after a loud sip. “Maybe he’ll take you. Or all three of you could go together or something. I went to my junior prom with my best friends. We pretended we were Charlie’s Angels, undercover. With potato pellet guns.”

  “Oh, those wacky seventies.” Chloe tried not to think of Alyec. She and Paul and Amy only ever went to dances when Amy dragged them. If Brian lived—when Brian got better—she would really have to decide what to do about him. Them. Us. Things had gotten too serious. Of course, there was still the question of Mai and humans and toxic kisses; just because Brian hadn’t died immediately didn’t mean there weren’t long-term effects.

  Chloe sighed.

  It was time to visit Xavier.

  She didn’t have to scramble around her messy room desperately looking for his address this time; whether it was another Mai ability or something she’d always had and never used, Chloe had no problem remembering exactly where the apartment was—by landmark and general direction, though, not street names and house numbers.

  She went immediately after school the next day; no makeup classes that afternoon. It was nice to get away from everything. I really do need a little more “me” time, Chloe reflected unironically as she skipped up the steps to the old house. And not just running at night across the skyline. She needed a good book or a hobby or to get out on the mountain bike her mom had given her for her sixteenth birthday.

  Chloe rang the doorbell, her scarf unfurling behind her in the October breeze. Then, without even asking who she was, Xavier—or someone—clicked the thing that unlocked the door and Chloe went in.

  Just three floors until I find out if Xavier is alive or dead.

  She rushed up the stairs two at a time, trying to make as much headway as she could before her nerves failed her. Once again the old-house smell of wood and lemony cleaner made her ache to live in a beautiful house like this, even if it was just an apartment. She hated her house—it looked like every other piece of two-story urban ranch mediocrity out there. One of the things that first drew her to living with the Mai at Firebird was waking up in an old gabled nook with perilously warped wood plank floors and the dusty quietude only an old house could have.

  When she got to the right landing, Xavier’s door was already open a crack. She knocked anyway, not wanting to just walk in. Not like last time.

  “It’s open …,” came a voice from inside. The voice was male—but she couldn’t tell if it was Xavier’s or not. It was hard to hear anything right now over the fast and heavy heartbeats that drummed in her chest—and the only words they’d exchanged had been shouted at the top of their lungs in the club and whispered outside in the parking lot.

  The apartment looked almost exactly like it had the night she had come upon him rolling on the floor, dying. A few extra magazines were scattered around, a new candle placed on a windowsill. Still spare, expensive, casual, and Euro-bachelor-y. From the scraping sound of a pan and a spatula, Chloe decided he was probably in the middle of cooking something …. But was it him?

  “Oh.” Xavier came in from the kitchen, dish towel under his chin and pan in one hand, spatula in the other.

  Chloe almost threw up with relief. He was alive. And okay.

  More than okay, actually. Chloe was shocked by how good-looking he was even in daylight: raven black hair, lovely tan skin, and eyes an incredibly, amazingly light brown. Very exotic. He wore jeans and an impossibly crisp white T-shirt, like he was just preparing for a “casual” model shoot.

  “Chloe—right?” he said, raising his perfectly formed eyebrows. “The girl from the club?”

  She was floored that he could remember. As far as she knew, he was just a rich foreign college student who was into picking up random American high-school girls. Her heart was finally calming down; for a moment there it was fifty-fifty she was going to pass out.

  “Uh, yeah.” Chloe had had no actual plan for when she actually met him, if he was still alive. Now that she had seen him, all she wanted to do was rush back and see Brian. There was hope.

  “Have you eaten yet?”

  Eaten yet? It was two thirty. Lunch? Tea? Elevensies?

  “Uh, I’m fine, thanks,” she said awkwardly. Her hands itched for her cell phone.

  “So.” He put the pan carefully down on a coffee table. “I haven’t seen you at The Bank, but then again, I haven’t been there much recently myself,” he said, referring to the club where she met him on the eve of her sixteenth birthday.

  “You’ve been sick,” Chloe said as neutrally as she could, making it sound like both a question and a statement.

  “How did you know?” He looked up at her sharply.

  “I … came here a couple of nights after we met,” Chloe admitted. “Your door was open and I found you lying on the floor, all … suffocating and covered in hives and stuff. I called 911.”

  “That was you? I would have died if you hadn’t come. I was all alone here.” He shivered. It was weird seeing the sexy guy from the club—the one she almost had sex with. “They said I was in shock, the whole deal. My body just started attacking itself and they couldn’t figure out why.”

  “But they were able to treat you,” she said, again neutrally, trying to sound like she wasn’t digging for information.

  He shook his head, his beautiful black hair staying neatly put. “They couldn’t do anything. I went into a coma … and then one day I just suddenly got better. I woke up and it was all over. They said it was like my body was all of sudden able to heal itself or something. No explanation. I just woke up, on October 19.”

  “Well, I’m glad you’re okay. I just came back to see how you were.” Chloe turned to go, feeling it was a good time to exit.

  He put a hand out to stop her. “But they said no one was in the apartment when the ambulance came.”

  “I freaked and ran away. Sorry about that,” Chloe apologized with a small smile. Why was it easier to tell a stranger the whole truth than her friends and family? “If my mom found out I was in some strange guy’s apartment at night—even if it wound up saving his life—my life would be over.”

  Xavier laughed, an open, clear-eyed laugh that held none of the seducer’s smile from the night at the club.

  “In fact, I should probably get going,” she added. Okay, you’re not dead. This is where the Xavier-Chloe story ends. Goodbye and good luck. No more complications. “Like I said, I just wanted to make sure you were okay.”

  “I mean it, I owe you, Chloe,” he said standing up with her, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand in an extremely sexy, masculine way. “I would have died. If there’s anything you want or need, name it. Even, like, help moving in somewhere,” he added with a grin of teeth as white as the plastered wall on the postcard of Santorini t
hat hung on Chloe’s fridge.

  “Uh, I’ll keep that in mind.” Although the idea of a rich young Euro playboy who owed her was an intriguing concept—visions of a free vacation in Greece came to mind—Chloe was pretty sure she was never going to see him again.

  “Hey,” he called as she walked out. “Maybe I’ll see you at The Bank sometime?”

  “Maybe!” Chloe shouted back. But she was already two flights down.

  Nine

  Xavier was alive.

  Chloe repeated this over and over to herself as she rode the bus to Sausalito, her foot impatiently marking the seconds as she tapped it against the seat in front of her.

  There still remained the mystery of how he “just woke up,” but it seemed like her kiss wasn’t fatal—this time, at least. Maybe it wouldn’t be for Brian either. Maybe the curse was losing its power as the centuries wore on, remaining overhyped as something to scare the kids with. Maybe everything was going to be okay.

  A bubble of hope grew out of control in the back of Chloe’s head, threatening to explode and drench her spirit with joy. She tried to rein it in, not wanting to be disappointed later if reality went south on her. Instead she channeled it into movement, leaping off the bus as soon as it stopped and running all the way to Firebird.

  No going in the back way this time. Chloe was the leader of this Pride, for chrissake. She didn’t need to go slinking around into her own den,, embarrassed by the presence of her human boyfriend and intimidated by Sergei. Chloe walked right up to the front door and strode in breezily past the receptionist.

  “I’ll tell Sergei you are in,” the sharp-angled woman said with the slightest of bows.

  “Tell him I’ll be right there,” Chloe said,, trying not to snap, not looking over her shoulder. “There’s something I have to do.”

  How did a leader speak to her subjects? Not that she was, really—but she wasn’t going to be treated as a helpless teenage girl by Sergei and his employees anymore. Until she found a middle ground, it was going to be tricky.

  And as much as she wanted—needed—to see Brian, there was another person Chloe had to talk to first.

  She went straight to the sanctuary, knocking on the door lightly before cracking it open and stepping silently in. Surprisingly, Kim wasn’t there, though the lingering traces of incense indicated her recent presence. There was another Mai woman there—Valerie, Igor’s fiancée. She was bent over on the floor before the statues of the twins Bastet and Sekhmet, murmuring something plaintively. She was beautiful, a perfect devoted servant of the Twin Goddesses, and might have been taken right off an Egyptian wall painting had it not been for her bright lavender suit and stiletto heels.

  Chloe backed up quietly until she was out, not clicking the door completely closed, afraid of disturbing the woman. What was she praying for? Her marriage? A baby? Or was her visit just something routine—like going to mass every Sunday? Chloe wasn’t sure she could show that much devotion to the goddesses she supposedly received her power from; in the same way that Buddhism sounded neat, she was just too Western, Judeo-Christian monotheistically raised to be able to treat ancient deities with much belief or reverence.

  Valerie had taken down a deer with her bare hands—and claws—on the Hunt that Chloe had attended. Another thing Chloe was also pretty sure she couldn’t do. They should have chosen her, she thought sadly. Or Kim. People who actually deserved leadership of the Mai.

  She headed upstairs to the library, the other obvious place Kim would be, though she checked the dining room and the little Firebird kitchenette first. All empty. Except for the usual coffee-swilling real estate drones.

  Chloe kicked herself mentally. A lot of these people would have died for an opportunity to live in America and be—mostly—left alone with their Mai habits to work for a Mai company and be fairly well paid to do so. She would really have to stop judging people so much if she was actually going to be a leader.

  Bingo.

  Her friend stood at the end of a long bookshelf, silently turning the pages of a monstrous leather-bound volume. The long windows were shaded and draped by equally long velvet curtains; motes of dust hung silently in the air, unsparkled by any stray beam of sun. It was to protect the ancient and rare books, Chloe understood, but the darkness made the whole place also kind of reek of doom.

  Kim looked up directly at her, even though Chloe could have sworn she hadn’t made any noise.

  “Hello,” the girl with the black, velvety cat ears said in a normal voice, strangely out of place in a room that demanded whispering.

  “Hey, Kim—I have a question for you.”

  Kim’s ears flicked back and her green slit eyes focused, waiting.

  “Is there a chance …” Chloe bit her lip. She was calling into question all this other girl believed in. She sucked it up. “Is there a chance that the whole human-and-Mai curse thing could be a little, well, overblown?”

  Kim blinked her heavy eyelashes. “Which part? The feud? The story of the Mai girl who was killed?”

  “No, the, uh, biological particulars. Could it be a complete fib that humans and Mai can’t interact?”

  “Chloe, unlike many of the Mai, I believe that you are free to choose your relationships however you wish, but I cannot advise testing that theory on any human you particularly like.”

  “No, no.” Chloe sighed and sat down on the edge of a table—something she would have been screamed at for in any other library in the world. Kim merely raised an eyebrow. Chloe couldn’t help noticing the Ethernet ports and wireless broadband antennas that stuck out of the center of the table, incongruous against the old wood and tarnished brass printers’ lamps. The Mai were such a strange mix of boldly going modern and completely hung up on the past. “Look, I’ve already kissed two humans—uh, boys.”

  Kim’s eyebrows climbed even higher than Dr. Lovsky’s had. “The one at the club … Olga mentioned it,” Kim said.

  “Yeah, I checked up on him. He’s fine now.”

  Kim stood in way that implied that had she a tail, it would have been swishing back and forth. “And who else? Paul, maybe?”

  Chloe started. “What? I don’t know, maybe as a kid. No, I meant Brian. Right before he conked out.” Didn’t Kim realize how much she liked him? And what did Paul have to do with anything? “And Dr. Lovsky says he’s recovering normally.”

  The two girls looked at each other for a long moment.

  “It sounds like our curse is somehow being lifted or fading,” Kim said slowly, thinking. “How exactly did the boy from the club ‘recover’?”

  “I don’t know. He said he just sort of woke up; they told him that he suddenly just ‘got better.’”

  “And when exactly did this happen?”

  “Uh, October 19th.”

  Kim’s eyes widened. “That’s the night you died—at the Presidio, with everyone.”

  “Yeah, so … ?” Chloe hadn’t made the connection and still didn’t see what it had to do with anything.

  “You’re lifting the curse!” her friend practically shouted, scaring Chloe with her intensity.

  “Um … what?”

  “You died saving a human!”

  “She’s my mom, Kim….”

  “Yes, but listen—we were cursed because we killed whole villages of humans!” Kim said excitedly, her fangs gleaming and her eyes a little crazy. “Maybe because you died saving one, it mitigates our burden. And Brian? How is he?”

  “I’m going downstairs to see him now, but the doctor said that so far he hasn’t shown any signs of anything.”

  Kim glowed with excitement. “I must research this further,” she said, disappearing back into the stacks. “I’ll call you later if I find an answer!”

  As she headed downstairs to the hospital room, Chloe smiled to herself at the idea of her lifting an ancient curse. Besides it meaning that everyone would be okay … how cool was that? It finally sounded like something a real leader would do.

  Brian was still unconscio
us on the bed, IVs and tubes sticking in and out of his body. There was almost no discernable change from the other day, except that maybe his wounds looked a little scabbier, like they were beginning to heal around the edges. Maybe. No signs of death or toxic shock.

  “Hey,” Chloe said softly, taking his hand. Without her realizing it, her claws came out, slowly and delicately. She used them to comb back his hair.

  “Oh.” Dr. Lovsky stopped short when she came in and saw the two of them together. “I, uh, I’ll just leave the two of you alone ….”

  “No, it’s okay. Has he shown any signs of—has he—?” Chloe didn’t know how to say it.

  “There has been no sign of any of the traditional symptoms associated with humans who have … closely interacted with Mai,” the doctor answered, shaking her head. “I even went back and looked up in our oldest documents any description of what happens. Boils. Fever. Strange bruises and scratches.” She ticked them off on her clawed fingers. “Inability to breathe. Eyes sealed shut. Blood from the pores. Nothing. Zero. Zip. Nada. Aside from being severely beaten, Brian is fine.”

  Chloe’s bubble of hope grew a little bigger.

  “I don’t understand it at all. I’m completely thrilled for my patient, but … I’ve seen what happens when a Mai kisses a human,” Dr. Lovsky said helplessly. “Anyway, the best thing for him now is rest—and lots of antibiotics—to let his body get on with the process of healing.” “Why antibiotics?”

  Dr. Lovsky narrowed her eyes at Chloe as if she were an idiot and raised one eyebrow to further illustrate her feelings. “You found him injured on the street in a puddle. Would you like me to list all the sorts of buggies an already-stressed body can be taken up with?”

  “Uh, no, that’s okay,’ Chloe said, quickly holding up her hand. “I get it. Thanks for everything.”

  Dr. Lovsky left and Chloe turned back to Brian.

  He rustled in the bedclothes—though his leg in the cast was eerily still. “Chloe?” he whispered hoarsely.