Jaxon catches me, just like he said he would, and then suddenly, I’m flying. Forward. In a straight line.
“I’m doing it!” I shout to Jaxon, who is grinning hugely about twenty feet behind me, still hovering where we started.
“I can see that,” he answers.
“I’m flying, Flint!” I shout down below me.
Flint gives me a big grin and a double thumbs-up in return.
“Hudson! I did it! I’m flying!” I whisper excitedly, knowing he can hear me at any distance.
“Yeah, you are.” Suddenly, he’s floating on his back next to me. “Wanna race to the end of the field?”
“Only if you don’t ‘let’ me win.”
He lifts a brow. “Do you know me at all?”
“Good point.” I flap my wings extra hard, just to see what will happen. Then squeak with delight as I move ahead.
Hudson laughs, then pulls back even with me a few seconds later. “Ready?” he asks.
I nod. “On your mark.”
He rolls over. “Get set.”
I get myself into position, then yell, “Go!”
We shoot through the sky, and though a part of me knows he’s not actually flying next to me, for these few seconds it feels like he is—and it’s amazing. Exhilarating. Intoxicating.
We race through the air, going faster and faster and faster, until we hit the finish line together. I pull up, do a quick loop-the-loop that leaves me breathless and laughing, while Hudson does a front somersault.
Down below, Macy and Flint and Mekhi are cheering, and so is everyone else. I wave to them, then glance back at Hudson to share my joy, only to realize that he’s gone. Or, more accurately, that he was never there at all.
Suddenly, the race doesn’t feel quite so amazing. And neither does anything else, though I have no idea why.
“Hudson?” I reach out, wondering if he’s gone back to wherever he goes when he doesn’t want to talk to me.
“I’m here,” he answers in my thoughts. “You looked great out there.”
“We looked great out there.”
“Maybe.”
I can feel him starting to say more, but before he can, Jaxon is right in front of me, wrapping his arms around me in a celebratory hug. “That was awesome!”
I gaze up at his face beaming down at me. “It was, right? I can’t believe I did that. Can you?”
“Of course I can. I’m beginning to figure out that you can do anything, Grace.”
“Umm, no. But tell me the truth. How much of that was me and how much was you?”
Jaxon grins. “That was one hundred percent you.”
“At the end?” I ask, eyes wide as I think about the loop-the-loop I turned.
“No, the whole time. It was all you. That was my last idea. To let you go and see what happened if I wasn’t holding you back.”
64
Pardon My
Existential Crisis
There’s something in the way Jaxon talks about holding me back—or, in this case, not holding me back—that makes me nervous. I don’t know what it is, considering he’s never been anything but supportive, but it niggles at me for the rest of the afternoon as Flint and the others teach me Ludares’s rules and tactics.
Or, should I say, attempt to teach me, as every single person on the field has their own idea of the right way to play the game—which, I figure, should make for a really interesting team strategy.
“It’s all about the portals,” Xavier tells me at one point. “Sure, they’re going to screw you over sometimes, but you’ve got to use them. You hit the right one and you win the game, just like that.” He snaps his fingers to illustrate. “Plus, the crowd loves it!”
“The crowd also loves when you end up surrounded by the enemy and all alone as the ball burns the shit out of you,” Eden contradicts with a hard eye roll. “It’s about getting the ball down the field, Grace. You do that and they’ll love you, no matter what. And portals may be flashy, but a straight shot makes one hell of an impression, too.”
“For now,” my cousin tells me when we’re walking to our positions later in the afternoon, “the most important thing is that we work together and build a team. If we do that, the rest will come.”
“No mercy!” Flint tells Jaxon, Gwen, and me as we get into our last huddle of the day. Gwen joined up after her test, and I have to admit, I’m grateful to have a witch on our side now. Thoughts of Macy turning all of us to turtles have been dancing in my head for hours. “When it comes to Ludares, mercy is for weaklings. We’re going to go into these last plays and crush them into dust.”
“What if I don’t want to crush them into dust?” I ask, winking at Jaxon, who is rolling his eyes behind Flint’s back.
“Do it anyway,” Flint orders. “Just stomp those pretty gargoyle feet of yours all over them.”
Yeah. I don’t bother to tell him that’s not going to happen, but I’m pretty sure he can tell from my face. And from the fact that, by the end of that round, Eden stomps her Nikes all over him.
We play all day—turns out Flint charmed a few witches in the kitchen into making us a picnic lunch—and by the time it gets dark, I’m exhausted and limping more than a little. But I’m also feeling pretty good about my ability to fly a ball down the field, so I’m definitely calling it a win.
Jaxon walks Macy and me back to our room around nine, and I start to invite him in to watch a movie or something. But he’s looking a little worse for wear, the energy burst I gave him this morning having obviously worn off.
Because I know him and his ridiculous pride, I don’t offer to give him another boost. Instead, I wait for Macy to slip into our room before I hug him close, kiss his neck, and send a spurt of energy down the mating bond before he even knows what I’m doing.
He pulls away immediately. “You’ve got to stop doing that.”
“I’m not going to stop doing that. Not when you so obviously need it.”
“I’ll be fine,” he tells me, resting his forehead against mine. “This isn’t the first time in my life I’ve been tired and had a lot on my mind.”
I know he’s thinking of the time he and Hudson fought, and my chest feels tight. “This time, things will end differently. I promise.”
Jaxon gives a not-altogether-pleasant laugh and says, “Yeah, well, let’s hope, for his sake.”