I kiss him all at once, before he can say because we killed him. Kiss him with the detective closing in and the sister grasping for his sleeve. Kiss him hard enough to bring him back to me, hard enough to remind him that he killed for her, hard enough to save us—
“Jade,” says Sister María de los Dolores. It floats over us like a corpse on the water. “That’s enough.”
And it is, because all at once Mack whispers against my lips, “He’s gone. He’s gone.” And he pulls me close and his relief drowns me as deep as the waves that drowned Banks.
“He was never here,” I say, still coaxing soft. I kiss him again and he’s real this time. For a soaring shining moment there is nothing else at all—
only Mack and me, fearless—
only Mack and me, bound by blood—
only Mack and me, sworn to each other.
“Jade,” says the sister again.
My lips leave Mack’s. His gaze is clear now. His fear still lingers but he’s slashed it down and left it powerless. He is brave and mine. The sister and the detective stand waiting in their matching gray, but I don’t care, because nothing they do can pull Mack away from me.
“Miss Khanjara,” says the detective, eyes flicking between us. “Mr. Mack. Your friend Brody Banks never came home last night—”
“We’re not saying anything without our attorneys present,” I say. Sweeter than sweet with all my relief sinking in.
The detective looks at Mack. “Andrew,” he says, and he doesn’t know anything about us at all. “You and Brody go back a long way.”
Beside me, Mack nods. His arm is still close against me and it trembles, just a little, and I slip my hand into his and hold tight.
“You’re sure you don’t know where he is?” the detective asks.
Mack takes a breath, stuttering at first but then even.
And he says, “You’ll have to speak with my attorney.”
I’ve made him perfect, right in the last desperate moment.
“Well, you heard them,” says Sister María de los Dolores. “They’ve asked for their lawyers.” Her stare hooks doleful into the detective.
He steps back and says, “We’ll talk again.” Looking too close at Mack’s bruise-dark eyes.
The sister says, “Until then—Jade, behave.”
But she winks when she says it. Fast enough to miss and hidden under her wimple and the heavy sag of her cheeks, but there.
When they fade back across the room Mack sighs out guilt and ghosts. We should go back to Piper and Duffy, be our shining best selves, but right in this second I can’t. Right in this second it can only be us.
Right in this second I pull Mack around the corner and tuck us in by a window where two walls come together.
Mack says, when we’re alone, “I thought I was brave.”
Somewhere far away there’s the faintest rustle of feathers and wings.
“After Duncan,” he says. “When I woke up the next morning I felt—proud.”
His voice slips through the space between us and dances across my skin. His darkness and his light are circling each other.
He doesn’t know which side will win.
“But I’ll never be as brave as you,” he says. “You’ve seen all of it. Everything we’ve done. And look at you.” He traces two fingers across my cheek. “You’re beautiful. You’re glowing. There’s no guilt on your face.”
His fingers trail down my neck and over my collarbone. He takes the crucifix between his fingers. The silver links us together here in our stone corner.
His eyes flicker to the window. “Those birds yesterday—did you see them?”
I nod.
“I wonder where they went.”
I think of the whole flock taking wing when I screamed into the sky. Their huge shadow rushing west to the water.
“I wonder what it means,” he says. “I wonder how it ends.”
“With us,” I tell him, and I wrap my hand over his and close his fingers tight around the crucifix. “It ends with us.”
Caught
He sleeps, finally, after school. In my arms, with the curtains drawn tight. In my arms, with the little waves lulling us toward dreams. In my arms, with no one else to make him doubt.
In sleep he looks younger. The boy who wouldn’t raise the knife until I locked his hands around it and told him it was the only way to keep his honor.
But I know better.
He sleeps because he isn’t that boy. He’s found his dreams and darkness.
He’s found himself.
I lie sleepless in the dark with my good cruel king. My thoughts float and fly and swim. I should leave, but I don’t.
When I finally stand he doesn’t stir. I get dressed and fix my lips and my hair. I’m slipping almost out the door when Mack’s phone buzzes on the floor.
The message is from the coven: Not even her?
I never asked them to send it.
I flare. I unlock his phone—what’s yours is mine; that’s what I told him when I leaned close last night and watched him unlock it. I delete their message and scroll back up.
He asked them, this morning, before he came to lunch with Banks’s ghost hobbling behind him—
What do you know?
They said, Everything you don’t want told.
He said, You mean Duncan.
They said, Everything.
He said, I need to see you.
They said, You can’t be trusted.
He said, I won’t tell anyone.
And they said, hours later and already knowing, Not even her?
He didn’t answer.
But he didn’t tell me.
The anger closes over me as hard as the rolling waves did last night.
They tell me, Don’t lie. They say it all the time. Summer sweet and Jenny sharp and Mads silent. They all say it, even though they know I only lie when I have to. Not when it matters. They say, We’re yours.
Don’t lie.
They’re the liars.
I type fast and thoughtless: Don’t ever talk to him again without talking to me first. Then, Meet me at the marina. Right now.
Then I delete all of it.
I kiss Mack good-bye with my lips brushing his like hummingbird feathers. I leave him dreaming.
I go to my coven with a storm gathering under my wings.
Liars
Summer had the secret phone this morning.
Jenny rats her out, Jenny the girl she loves, Jenny the girl she won’t tell with words even though she’s already told her a million other ways.
Jenny says, the second Mads stops her car, “It was Summer.”
And Summer says, “Jenny!”
And Jenny says, “What? It fucking was.”
Summer blushes pretty and perfect. She gives me her fluttery praying-mantis eyes. They don’t work on me. She can’t charm me like she can charm boys at bars and girls at parties and Jenny spinning circles in the boxing ring.
I say, “Get out.”
Mads has her car pulled up at the edge of the marina. Her sunglasses are on and the engine is running. I was at the end of the dock waiting when she drove in. I could feel six eyes on me through the black glass. Feel the secrets they never should have spun without me.