Endless Knight(28)

“That shit saved my life.”


“From what I understand, it also led you to a madman. The Alchemist, non?”


Touché. “You treated me like a leper when you saw my abilities.”


He shot to his feet, pacing, and took another swig. “You expect me to get it right the first time every time!”


“Get what right?”


“My reactions, my words, everything. I ain’t goan to. I saw something I’ve never seen before, and I reacted.”


“With the sign of the cross? Really, Jack?”


“I’m a Catholic boy, me. And the sweet girl I knew had just slaughtered some kid and looked mighty pleased about it. It was like you were possessed by a demon or something!” He shook his head. “You expect me to be perfect.”


“It hurt, Jackson. Okay?” I pulled my knees to my chest, sloshing water.

As if helpless not to, he glanced down, seeming enthralled with my movements.

But he jerked his gaze up when I cried, “It broke my heart! I’d just gone through the most horrific event in my life. I needed you, but you were disgusted with me.” My eyes pricked with tears. “I needed you!”


He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Does it count for nothing that . . . that I’m trying to handle all this?”


“Maybe you shouldn’t have to try so hard. Come on, we have problems that extend past the game. We’re always fighting, always on a different page. I can count on one hand the number of times we’ve had a civil conversation. Most of the time I don’t know what’s going on in that head of yours.”


“What you want to know?” He sank down in the chair again, resting his elbows on his knees. “You want me to talk out my feelings? Goddamn it, how do I even start?”


I blinked in surprise. He wasn’t being a smart-ass. He was genuinely baffled how to do this. And why shouldn’t he be? Where would he have learned how to discuss his thoughts and emotions?

Not from his mother. She hadn’t even been able to feed Jackson as a boy, much less teach him to talk about things that bothered him. From his dad? The man had washed his hands of his son.

It was a wonder Jackson was as decent as he was. I remember how he’d admitted that he didn’t know how to behave with me. You can teach me how to court you. ’Cause I doan know my way around that.

He was trying. And how should I help him with this? Offer advice? Use your words, Jack.

“You spring this shit on me, then within days you expect me to get over the fact that my girlfriend ain’t exactly human!”


I didn’t know what bewildered me more—the girlfriend or the human part.

“Damn it, Evie, you been to my house, you saw how I lived. Can’t you understand why I hate surprises? Why I doan like it when people live secret lives?”


Maybe we were too different. “Too much has happened. And you’ve been hideous to me for days.”


“I was angry because I didn’t understand any of this. I doan like things I doan understand. And that morning in Requiem, just when I was trying to come to terms with this, I returned—right as you were about to cut that Irish kid’s throat.”


“He attacked us, after I tried to call a truce.”


“I get that people are gonna be hurt. I understand the program—hell, I wrote the program on people getting hurt, well before the Flash. But when I saw you liked it . . .”


I buried my head in my hands. “I don’t want to!”


“I understand that now. Something comes over you. It’s still you, but you got a problem. Peek?n, look at me.”


I glanced up.

“If you got a problem, I can work with that.”


I wasn’t convinced. “Being with you hurts.”


“But sometimes it’s good. Real good between us. You thought my kiss was ‘perfect.’?” His gaze flicked from my lips, to my neck, to my collarbones . . .

“I never told you—” Realization dawned. “Oh, my God.” My jaw dropped, my earlier suspicion confirmed. Yep, just as humiliating as I’d feared. “You took the Alchemist’s recorder!” Which contained the tape of my life story.

Jackson flashed me a shameless grin. “Ouais. Been listening to it for days. That was one reason why I got held up that morning in Requiem. I was sourcing for some earphones, so I could listen under my hood.”


“You wouldn’t!”


“I played a big role in that tale, wanted to make sure you got me right.”


“That’s why you’ve been so up and down?” The angry looks, the troubled looks. The smirks?

“Some things you said pissed me off.” Expression darkening, he grated, “Had to listen to you talking about your boyfriend. Bad enough the first time around.”


Brand had been a good guy. Immature, maybe, but he’d had a good heart. His and Jackson’s personalities had been as different as day and night. The two had hated each other.

“But then you’d turn around and say something good. Like when you were nice to Clotile. You smiled at her and waved hello, when not another person in school was kind to her.”