Immortal Beloved

  Idly I glanced up and saw that Nell was actually tearing her roll into tiny bits and dropping them into her soup, where she flattened them with her spoon. I almost burst out laughing, but the intent, deadly expression on her face stifled my amusement.

  Had anyone else noticed? She actually seemed a little like she was going off the deep end. Reyn was watching her out of the side of his eye, no expression on his face.

  Everyone was talking about Yule plans, and the mood was light, happy, and cozy. I glanced around, and everyone—except Nell and Reyn—seemed content. I had another one of those forehead-slapping insights: I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been in a group of people who seemed, by and large, content. Certainly not any of my friends, who, with time and distance seemed like sociopaths to me. I’d been around rich and powerful and kind of limitless people for a long, long time, but when had any of them seemed actually content? Triumphant, yes. Victorious, yes. But content was a completely new phenomenon for me, and I was struck by it.

  The people at this table were not changing the course of history, or running huge companies, or taking over territories. They weren’t pushing anything to the limit and beyond. They weren’t subjugating other people, weren’t working to increase their control over anything except themselves, weren’t doing anything to excess, weren’t acquiring whatever they could. Each of them, I now knew, had horrific tales, and stories of triumph. Each of them needed to be here for a short while or a long while.

  And yet there was a deep level of contentment here. Even Jess, ravaged by time and experience, seemed content. No one thought he or she was perfect—everyone was working on skills, strengths, areas of knowledge. Everyone was a work in progress. They were important in no sphere except this one, were known to few besides each other. We all had relatively low-key jobs, and we all schlepped and cleaned and carried like serfs, every day.

  Why were they so happy? It wasn’t even like everyone was with his or her ultimate soul mate. Asher and River were a couple, but no one else was, that I knew about.

  I felt astonishment. More: I felt a sudden awakening, a dawning, a clarity of thought. Maybe my moonstone was helping me—but I suddenly, finally knew what I wanted. It all seemed obvious, as if it had been in front of me the whole time, even before I’d arrived here.

  I saw that River was looking right at me, her clear brown eyes alert. Raising her brows slightly, she cast her eyes at Nell’s roll, now mashed to bits inside her soup bowl. Then she narrowed her eyes at me, as if to say, I know you caused that.

  I bit my lip.

  The meal was over. I had prepared only the roll spell, so once it was paste in Nell’s soup, my fun was over. But it had been glorious.

  Then I found out that Reyn and I were the cleanup crew for dinner. We hadn’t been scheduled together since we’d found each other out, and I could have sworn my name hadn’t been there before dinner. But it was there now, and when I looked at River she gave me a no-nonsense look back. Perhaps this was my penance for the roll? She couldn’t have known for sure. Maybe she could.

  In the kitchen, Nell was standing very close to Reyn, who was filling the sink with soapy water. She was laughing up at him, murmuring in her sweet voice.

  “Nell?” said River.

  Nell looked around with a charming smile. When she saw me her smile faltered, but she quickly propped it up again. She waved a cheerful hand at me. “Nastasya, you go on. I’ll take your part tonight.”

  I whipped around and was about to zip out of the kitchen when River said, “I’d like Nastasya to do the kitchen with Reyn tonight, Nell.”

  We were all surprised—people switched chores all the time. This was kind of unusual. Clearly I had some kind of life lesson to learn by being cooped up in the kitchen with my archnemesis. I felt distinctly unready to learn it.

  I let out a breath and started organizing the leftovers to store in Tupperware containers. River waited until Nell had reluctantly left, then came closer to me.

  “We’ve felt… someone scrying for you, Nastasya. Usually we wouldn’t pick up on it, but we’ve put spells in place to conceal your presence here. Someone has been trying to find you, using magick.”

  My heart kicked up a notch. “Incy?”

  “That would be my guess,” said River. She patted my back. “I don’t want to worry you, but I wanted to let you know. We teachers will take steps to assure that you’re safe here. Unless you want to talk to Innocencio?”

  “I don’t. Not yet.” Maybe not ever.

  “Okay, then. Everything’s fine, but I thought you should know.”

  I nodded, and River left.

  The night outside the windows was black and cold. Yule was tomorrow; the house felt festive. But here in the kitchen, Incy was hanging over my head, and there was bad blood between Reyn and me. And here, “bad blood” is a ridiculously lame euphemism.

  “River says we need to talk.” Reyn was scraping dishes into the pigs’ bucket—they loved leftovers. “She’s right. She usually is.”

  “Not this time. I don’t want to talk to you.” I dumped some salad into a baggie and put it in the big fridge.

  “Neither of us wants to leave here.” His voice was low and controlled. “But we have this thing between us. I don’t want it to cause problems for us or anyone else.”

  This thing between us? He made it sound like a bad date. “Anyone else, like Nell?”

  He slanted a glance at me. God, he was good-looking. So totally, cosmically, karmically unfair. “I don’t know why you keep harping about that. There’s nothing between me and Nell.”

  I snorted. “Does Nell know that? ’Cause she’s practically picking out your china.” He looked blank and I clarified, “For your wedding.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.” He looked horrified, and my heart gave a little skip. My heart is so stupid that way.

  “Don’t be an oblivious, insensitive moron,” I retorted. “Oops, too late!” I went into the big pantry to get some containers, and startled when Reyn followed me in. This pantry was a narrow closet, essentially, and there wasn’t enough room for both of us.

  “Get out,” I said, my hands full of plastic.

  “We could kill each other,” he said. He was tall and broad and smelled surprisingly good for someone who had massacred whole villages. My gaze was riveted on the vee of skin at his shirt’s collar, and I remembered the burn he had. Then his words sank in.

  “What?” A cold knot tightened in my stomach. As defensive weapons, Tupperware was grossly inadequate.

  “You could kill me for the part I played in your worst experiences. I could kill you for the part you played in my worst experiences. We both lost siblings, parents, friends, in horrible deaths. Now there’s only you, heir to the House of Úlfur, and me, heir to the House of Erik the Bloodletter. You and I are all that’s left.”

  “And you think we should kill each other and be done with it?” I frowned. “I can’t even figure out how.”

  The side of his mouth quirked and I drew in a quick breath. “We could hold hands and jump into an industrial turbine.”

  I stared at him. “You think this is funny?”

  He made an impatient gesture. “I think this is four hundred years later, is what I think. If you wanted revenge, you should have come after me then.”

  “I was ten years old!”

  “I was barely twenty!”

  We glared at each other for long moments.

  “Barely twenty?” I said finally. “Not, like, two hundred by then?”

  Reyn shook his head. “No. My father was five hundred then. I had three brothers. One was four hundred and sixty. One was two hundred and ninety-nine. One was a hundred and seventy four. I was twenty. Being immortal was incomprehensible to me then.”

  “And they all died?”

  “Yes,” he said grimly. “One died—that night. The other two died with my father when he tried to use your mother’s amulet.”

  “Why didn’t you die then, too?” It would
have been so convenient.

  “I don’t know. Why didn’t you die that night?”

  “My mother fell on me—I was hidden under her skirts.”

  We were silent then, revisiting memories that, hidden, were so much more painful. It was amazing to me that I had someone to talk to about that night, someone who had experienced it.

  Reyn let out a breath. “What now? Do we come to terms with it? Do we kill each other? Does one of us leave? I can tell you, it won’t be me.”

  “I don’t want to leave.” The last two months had been the best of my entire life, the healthiest. I felt so different now; though I often experienced more pain, I could see that it was like lancing a blister. Once the memories were out, they were less destructive.

  “So we both stay,” Reyn said.

  I scowled. “I guess. Until I can think of something awful to do to you. But if you were a gentleman, you’d leave.”

  He gave a hard smile and the oxygen in my lungs evaporated. “We both know I’m not a gentleman.”

  “Yeah. Okay, let me out. I’m tired.”

  “There’s something else,” he said, and I groaned.

  “What now?”

  “This.” He stepped closer to me, so close that the containers were sandwiched between us. His eyes looked down into mine, intent and golden, like a lion.

  “Oh, no, you don’t!” I hissed, dropping everything. I pushed hard against his chest; it was like shoving a tree.

  “Yes,” he said very softly, leaning down. “Yes, I do.”

  I did wriggle. I did push against him and try to turn my head. I really did. But you know, he’s so much stronger… and I’m, of course, a complete and total idiot, and when he held me tightly and finally captured my mouth with his, every coherent thought flew out of my head and within seconds, I forgot to struggle.

  Thoughts like mortal enemy, thoughts like hate him, thoughts like Nell’s a problem—they all just slipped away like smoke blowing away in a breeze.

  I pulled my mouth away, torn and confused and so full of longing that my chest hurt, and said, “Why?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know.” He sounded frustrated and uncertain and dismayed. I felt his heart thumping against my chest. “I just—want you. I want you so bad, all the time. I know I shouldn’t, I know I can’t, I know it’s wrong… but even when you’re pissing me off, when you’re reminding me of pain and despair and torture—it’s there, the wanting. I’m tired of fighting it. I fight so many things, all the time, every day. I don’t want to fight this. Not anymore.”

  Our foreheads were pressed together. His hands were locked around my waist; mine were on his shoulders. He felt like rock beneath my fingers, and I traced on his shirt where his burn must be. I wanted to melt into him, wanted to drag him back to the hayloft—and at the same time knew it was stupid and crazy and that I should be psychoanalyzed immediately. Possibly given shock therapy. Perhaps put into a straitjacket.

  It was like everything on the outside knew it was wrong and traitorous and stupid, but everything on the inside was going, oh my God this feels so good, so right, we fit, we’re the same, we know each other down to our bones.

  I don’t know how much longer we were there, or what time we finally broke apart. Was it a tiny sound that filtered into my fevered brain? A hissing? A slight brushing sound on the flagstone floor outside the pantry?

  But minutes later we heard yelling, and at almost the same instant we smelled smoke.

  “Fire!” someone shouted, echoed by other people, and then an actual fire alarm sounded.

  Reyn grabbed my hand and pulled me out through the back kitchen door, out into the frigid night air. We raced around to the front of the house, where people were gathering in the front yard. Everyone looked shocked and upset.

  “Where’s River?” I grabbed Brynne as she ran by.

  “They’re putting it out,” she said breathlessly. “The teachers. I’m supposed to count heads.” She started pointing at everyone—a few had run out of the house, some had been outside, and Jess had been in the barn. She got all eight students, including me and Reyn, who had been making out in the pantry. I winced when I remembered it.

  Within just a few minutes, the windows no longer showed the flickering light of flames.

  “It looks like it was in the dorm wing,” Daisuke said, rubbing his arms. Most of us weren’t wearing coats. I was taking care not to stand too close to Reyn—inside, my thoughts were sort of screaming in both horror and joy, but I needed to keep it all a secret until I figured out what the hell I was doing.

  “Oh, Reyn! There you are!” Nell came over and linked her arm through his while I looked the other way and tried not to react. “Goodness—what’s happening? I smell smoke.” She glanced around at the others and then caught sight of me. She did an obvious double take when she saw me—blinking, mouth open, looking at me as if to make sure I was there.

  “There was a fire,” Rachel said. “You’re right, Daisuke, it was in the dorm wing. I had to use the fire stairs on the other side of the house.”

  A minute later River, Anne, Asher, and Solis came outside.

  “The fire is out,” Solis said, and a couple students clapped.

  “What happened?” asked Charles. “How did it start?”

  “We’re still figuring that out,” said River. She looked very serious and tired. I wondered if they had used magick to put out the fire.

  “Exactly where was it?” Nell asked. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Reyn disengage her hand and step away from her. She looked at him longingly but tried to keep her face calm.

  “It was by Nastasya’s room,” said Anne, looking at me. “All around her door.”

  My mouth fell open.

  Nell shook her head. “Some people have to be the center of attention,” she murmured under her breath, just loud enough for a few people to hear.

  I turned to face Nell, but before I could speak, River said, “Yes. I know what you mean.”

  Nell looked as if she hadn’t meant for River to hear her, and flushed.

  “I didn’t set it,” I said angrily. “Is my room okay?”

  “Yes, we think so,” said River. “You can go in and check.”

  “Well, where were you?” Nell gave me a concerned look. “You weren’t in the kitchen. You weren’t in the barn. You weren’t on a walk with the others. You must have been in your room. How did you get out? How do we know you didn’t set it?”

  I put my hands on my hips, wanting to smack that smug look right off her face.

  “That’s enough, Nell,” said Asher. “Nastasya, let’s go check your room.”

  “But—why is anyone believing her?” Nell looked dumbfounded. The other students circled around us and I got the feeling they didn’t witness stuff like this too often. I had brought excitement to River’s Edge! In a totally bad way, of course.

  “Nastasya was with me,” Reyn said shortly.

  Nell’s eyes were round. “No—she was in her room. Where were you? You weren’t in the kitchen. I—needed to ask you something, and you weren’t there.”

  “Nastasya was with me the whole time, after dinner till now. Not in her room.” A muscle was twitching in Reyn’s jaw—he was angry.

  The possibility of Reyn’s standing up for me did not seem to have occurred to Nell, and it flustered her. “She might have taken a moment, run off, set the fire, then come back,” she tried. “Where were you?”

  “She didn’t,” said Reyn.

  “Nell—it’s like you have it in for Nastasya,” Rachel said.

  “I don’t!” Nell insisted. “But why does everyone trust her? Why does everyone believe her? Ever since she came, things have been awful! It’s been dark—evil! She’s ruined everything!”

  Suddenly River and Solis were standing on either side of her. “It’s over, Nell,” Solis said gently.

  “What’s happening?” Charles asked.

  “Nell,” said River, putting a hand on Nell’s should
er. “You know what I’m going to say. We talked about this. You’ve gone too far, and I have to ask you to leave River’s Edge.”

  Jaw after jaw dropped, including mine.

  Nell looked astonished. “No! What are you talking about? Not me, her! She has to leave! She’s evil, violent! She’s tried to hurt me! I didn’t want to tell you, didn’t want to make trouble. But she’s put spells on me! She’s tried to hurt me! You have to get rid of her!”

  “Nell,” River said, and waited till Nell focused on her face. “We’ve talked to you about this, about the spells you put on Nastasya’s room, the other things you’ve done. You’re working dark magick, and we won’t have it. We’ve given you several chances to choose a different path, but you seem unable to get past your hatred. Now, as we discussed, I’ve arranged for you to go spend time with my aunt,” said River. “In Canada. Asher will go with you, get you settled in, if you like.”

  “I do not understand what’s happening,” I said.

  “What’s happening is that you’re winning!” Suddenly Nell’s face transformed into rage. “You stupid bitch! You’ve been trying to get rid of me since the beginning! Reyn loves me! He wants to be with me! But you’ve cast a spell on him, made him want you! I saw you kissing!”

  Please, ground, just open up and let me fall into an endless crevasse till I hit the center of the earth and combust. Please. Is that too much to ask?

  Nell lunged at me while I was rooted with embarrassment, but River and Solis held her arms. River started murmuring things, tracing symbols onto Nell’s back, her arms. Nell started screaming, writhing, kicking. “No! Stop it! You’ve got it all wrong! It’s her! She’s the one! She’s dark! We’ve all felt it! Get rid of her!” Her last words ended in a shriek.

  It was horrible and painful and mortifying, even though I pretty much hated her. It was still bad.

  A couple moments later Nell slumped, sobbing tiredly, and Solis put his arm around her, leading her to the van. Anne followed them, speaking softly, saying that they would send Nell’s things up to her. Nell was still mumbling, tears streaming down her face, and to tell you the truth, she looked like a crazy witch.

  I was trying to absorb the fact that River did seem to believe me, be taking my side, despite everything. Reyn was standing close to me, though he wasn’t touching me. I saw his hands clenching and unclenching, and was aware that everyone was looking back and forth between us like they were watching a Ping-Pong match.