My memory ran dry. None of these last actions registered anywhere in my head. My blood surged, studded with shame. I shivered and went to pull my coat tight.
Ian grabbed my wrist. “No. Stop.”
I stopped.
“I didn’t know what to do. You went ape shit when I said I’d take you to Eaton Hall, and I couldn’t take you home. Your dad didn’t need to see you like that. Lord knows, Hampton would have tried to kill me had I taken you there, but he seemed the best bet, so I dialed his number on your phone, stuck it in your hand, and hid in the woods until he showed. I didn’t want someone from the Guild finding you first.”
It was odd, this Ian who admitted such things. It made me want…but no. I shook my head, worried that the drug had stayed dormant in my system, waiting for something like this. My head didn’t clear. “But that didn’t. It doesn’t.” Speaking was difficult. Thoughts curled through my head, escaping my grasp.
Ian took my arm and flipped my wrist over and traced the faint white circles that made up the owl with his thumb, again and again. It felt like he’d been doing it for a long, long time when finally he broke the silence and said, “And then you stopped speaking to me.”
I had to clear my throat, but honestly, I was surprised to have any voice at all. “It seemed like the safe thing to do.”
“Safe?” Ian laughed, knowing that safety wasn’t something I usually went looking for.
“Are you going to tell me what this is all about?” I asked.
Ian gave me his Cheshire Cat grin. “Are you going to agree to work with me to sort this shit out with the Guild?”
I took a deep breath, a cleansing breath, Dec’s mom would have called it. Then I nodded slightly, which was as much as I had to offer.
“Stellar.” Ian lifted an eyebrow. “But my point is…” He launched himself off the bed and scooped my backpack out of the closet, pulling out the black pouch of vials as if he owned them. “You need to ditch all this.”
“No.”
Ian stood over me, muscular arms crossed, glaring at me like he used to glare at Colin when he was chewing him out for some infraction. “I’m not your…” I started unsure of how to finish my sentence. Brother. Lover. Sycophant. None of them quite fit.
“I thought you were going to die that night. I’m not going to stand by and think that again.”
“You’re serious?” I asked. The possibility that Ian had been spying on me pushed into my head.
“I’m serious.”
“Thanks for caring, but I’m not going to die. I know what I’m doing. You don’t have to save me.” I rubbed my eyes in disbelief. “Besides, weren’t you the one telling me to use my ‘unique abilities’ to win over the Guild?”
“I’m not saying you don’t know what you’re doing. But sometimes, when you think you’re using something, it’s really using you.”
Before I could formulate a response, Ian added, “Also, now you have me.”
I didn’t move a muscle, held in place by my anger. All except my jaw, which clenched tight. “You. Are. Not. My. Abilities.”
Ian broke out into a wide, arrogant smile. “No, Griffin. I’m better. I’m what they want, only they can’t have me without you.”
“So now I’m a charity case?” My head was spinning. I was still having a surprisingly hard time latching onto words.
“I didn’t say that either,” Ian insisted. “You are the best that St. Hilaire has. You are going to take over this entire operation, straighten it out, and make it mean something. You are possibility.”
“Possibility?” It was an improbable word. “What does that even mean?”
Ian put the pack of vials down on the bed and sat next to it. He smiled the snakelike smile that made my internal organs melt. “It means you’re better than your grandmother.” Ian slid the zipper of the black case open. “It means you’re better than the mother who abandoned you.” I watched in shock as he grabbed one of the vials I’d worked so hard to fill with serums. The top snapped open in his hand with a terrifying click, and then he leaned over and poured the liquid into the dirt around the base of my ficus. “It means you’re better than I am, although don’t quote me on that.” As we watched, the dirt bubbled up; one white shoot poked up through the soil, bloomed a flower as iridescent as Ian’s Mustang, spun around three or four times, dropped off, and died.
Ian raised an eyebrow and looked at me. “You’re better than this. And you’re a fuckload better than you think you are.” His voice was a whisper as sharp as a razor.
I couldn’t look away from the plant. Something inside me echoed the life and death of the flower. I thought I might laugh. I thought I might be sick. The crook of my arm burned with desire for the substance Ian had spilled out. My hands clenched. I was shaking.
I still have one vial. I can make more. That realization was the only thing allowing me to hold it together. I had my grandmother’s notebook. Her plants were still growing deep in the woods behind the house. I could make more. I’d be fine. Ian didn’t understand. Of course he didn’t, he was Ian Mackenzie. He didn’t need to understand everything I’d gone through, everything I’d sacrificed, everything I’d hidden. Ian had never had to do any of those things.
Ian grabbed my chin and turned my head until I had no option but to look straight into his extraordinarily blue eyes. “You’re on the brink, Griffin. I can feel it.”
“On the brink of what?”
“Losing it. Believe me, I’ve known junkies. I get the pull. But I saw you in the freaking woods that night. And now you’re one step from throwing away everything you have ever wanted because this”—he moved back and held up the other vial—“is going to become more important to you than anything else.”
I wanted to reach for it, to safeguard the thin glass tube that Ian held too tightly. I wasn’t a junkie. I knew exactly what I was doing. It was all for a cause, a greater purpose. Besides, it wasn’t as if I needed the drug. I’d done perfectly fine before I moved to St. Hilaire, known things I shouldn’t have known and occasionally talked to people that no one else saw. And I didn’t need it now. But that didn’t stop every molecule in my body from wanting it.
Ian continued, “The good thing is, you’re also one step away from getting everything else.”
Was I? Was it still possible that I could walk into the Guild’s testing room and pass their tests clean? On my own? Was it still possible I could make my father’s sacrifice worth it? Possible I could make sure that what happened to the Hamptons never happened to anyone else? Possible that Dec… No, that wasn’t going to happen. In my heart, I’d had always known that would never happen. Now Dec was leaving; I had to accept it. It’s just that accepting it would be so much easier if I had my grandmother’s serum, the option of a few missing hours when things got too much to handle.