Of Breakable Things (30 page)

“Shut up.” She flung her arm toward the pile of books on the nightstand, and the force of it nearly knocked him from his feet. As he caught his balance, she was able to snatch the pillow from his hand.

“How did you get to be so strong?”

She didn’t buy his peaceful tone or his flattery for a minute, and predictably, he pushed against the air between them. She wobbled but reacted quickly, retaliating with her own hands outstretched.

Stuck there in a battle of flirtation and stubbornness, Chase smiled and curled his fingers, clasping the energy between them. An outsider might think they were in the midst of some formal dance, staring each other down in a rainstorm of white feathers.

“Say I win,” Chase whispered, tightening his grip on the charge that zinged between their palms. She could feel the pressure of it.

“I win.”

“Not what I meant.”

Alex tried to push him away. She couldn’t take her eyes off of him. If she had, she would have seen the walls trembling. “Why are you breathing so hard?”

“You take my breath away,” Chase joked.

“That’s fine. You don’t need it.”

“I hear old habits die hard.” One side of his mouth curled flirtatiously, and he stepped closer to her. He grasped her hand, sending shockwaves through her being. They locked eyes and Chase ever so slightly wetted his lips. The intensity of his gaze generated crackles in the space between them.

She stood. And waited. Until the moment passed, and she knew he wasn’t going to act on what they both wanted to do. The relationship was even more agonizing than it had been in life. “Don’t you need to get to the fields? You’re going to be late for your game.”

He scrunched up his face, pretending to be offended. Instantly, a loose lacrosse jersey covered his torso. “You don’t want me here?”

No, because I don’t understand you at all
, she wanted to say. “Are you going like that?” She waved her hand up and down. “What’s with the dirty clothes?”

“I’m going to run around in the dirt.” He shrugged. “I don’t blame my mind for projecting it onto my shirt.”

“So if you envisioned a space suit, that’s what you’d wear?”

“I suppose.”

“Okay then, I dare you to go to the field wearing a space suit,” she said, tossing his bag to him.

“What do I get if I win the dare?”

“Respect.”

He blew through his lips. “Puh.”

“What? My respect isn’t worth anything?”

Chase let out a soft laugh and bent down to tie his muddy shoes, which somehow he hadn’t tied in his mind.

Alex made a disgusted face. “Those things are filthy.”

“I’m not exactly rolling around in feathers out there, am I?”

Alex laughed. “You could take some of these,” she said, gesturing to the feathers that covered the floor “That would be interesting.”

“And very manly.”

“Girls play out there, too.”

“Yeah, yeah. Do you want to walk to the stadium with me?”

Alex shook her head. “I have a lot of work to do, and the stadium is distracting.”

“And that”—he pointed to the box of letters peeking out from under the desk to watch the show—“isn’t distracting at all.” He picked up the letter he’d meant to read before and opened it, turning it over several times. “Is this a joke?”

“What?”

“There’s nothing written here.”

“Whatever.”

“I’m serious.”

This was probably a trick, a diversion so he could pin her to the ground again. She inched towards him gingerly.

He held up his hands in surrender. “Truce. I’m not kidding.”

She took the letter from him and started reading aloud. “January eighteen sixty-six. Dear Sephi, I hate to admit weakness, but you have completely taken over my mind … ” She held up the letter. “Clear as day.”

“Alex, I don’t see anything.”

She realized he was serious. She folded the letter, tucked it back into its place, and pulled out a new one, double-checking that the writing was there. “What about now?”

“Nothing.” he said with a shrug.

“You honestly can’t see it?” She thought she heard the box sigh in exasperation, and she whipped her head around to glare at it. Chase kissed her softly on the forehead, like it was completely normal that she could see something that he couldn’t. Then he left her alone with her confusion. And the box.

August 1867

Dear Sephi,

I wish I had access to what you are seeing in your thoughts, but the window has become clouded. This is your doing, I suppose. You have never been allowed any extent of privacy, so I will console myself by assuming you need some privacy in your own mind. When you initially admitted that maybe the holes in my mind are because of you, I was beside myself. But the instances when I can’t control my emotions are the same instances when my mind doesn’t feel like it’s my own. And I become this way when the situation involves you. So maybe it’s time to put some distance between us. The last thing you need is more attention, since your fame is worldwide, and my antics have not exactly been kept quiet.

Please know that no matter what happens, my feelings for you will never change, but I feel like I need to do this for us. I have hope that Paradise truly is a place to keep those with talents safe. I have hope that maybe those spirits might know more about me. And if that’s the case, then I need to go find Paradise.

Go? He was leaving Eidolon? But, the story wasn’t over. Alex had barely read half the letters.

Dear Sephi,

Against my better judgment, I continue to write to you during my journey. I will be enslaved by my thoughts unless I free them somehow. Thus, as dangerous as the written word may be, I have reached a point of desperation. I write these words faithfully to you and only you. And I thank you for being my deliverance.

Perhaps my most significant accomplishment thus far has been securing the opportunity to practice my talents without the Dual Tower to report to. I need to learn to distinguish the difference between what is real and what I imagine. And if I imagine it, can I make it reality, or is it already so?

At first we encountered only the bodied along the course of our travels, and so I was unable to practice manipulation tactics. There’s no game involved. But I’ve recently found a large group on which to practice. You’d be shocked to discover how beneficial a banshee fight can be when searching for hidden strengths. When stretching the boundaries of mental endurance, perhaps it is best to face something, or someone, with nothing to lose.

Alex couldn’t wrap her mind around the idea that Eviar had actually left. Why would he leave Sephi? She reached into the depths of the box for the very last letter, skipping over mounds of weathered envelopes she had yet to open, tied together tightly like mended pieces of a broken dream.

My Dearest Sephi,

My mind is a blessed asset and a malignant curse. In the past few decades, I have trodden down a fresh path, revolutionizing the extent to which our mind power can bend, no matter the sacrifice. I have opened doors through which no one would have ventured had it not been for my abilities and tolerance. And alas, my memory depletes. I am finding day by day that my memory no longer permits me to revisit much of the journey that brought me here. I don’t understand, but I wonder often since our minds are linked, has the information leaked to you? Doubtful.

Why are there so many wretched holes in my mind? I have asserted that most likely the abilities and deterioration are dependent upon one another. Is this the cost of what I’ve conditioned myself to do?

Is that why you cannot seem to find me? I know you are hunting me. I’ve felt you elbow your way into my mind a time or two. Did it frighten you when I attempted to grab your elbow when it interrupted my thoughts? Is Westfall with you, too? Are you even trying? Surely if you gave it your all, you’d be waltzing through my door at this very moment.

I wish for that.

I am aware of the threat these written words may present. What else could be so binding, so incriminating? I do not want to forget the road that I’ve traveled both dead and alive. Mainly, I cannot forget that you are my purpose. I realize that without you, without these words, I irretrievably forfeit my sanity, but regardless, when the time is right I must dispose of your letters. You are already a target. You believe you are the hunter, when really you are the hunted.

Do you know what I’ve learned? That we make our own way. We make our own fate. I’ve been chasing things that were already mine before the journey. I’ve built what I intended, finally, but I sacrificed my mind. I sacrificed you. And I sacrificed time. That is the most valuable thing.

And time isn’t on my side. I cannot find enough room to accommodate the memories of others in addition to my own. I once reveled in the fact that I was finding gift after gift, strength after strength. But now something is harming my mind. Can you see it? Perhaps if you are willing to open your thoughts to mine again, you would see what is

Alex gasped as the ink on the page rippled and then vanished. What happened? Where did it go? She flipped over the letter. Bare. She snatched up another letter. Bare. And another. And another. What was going on? She frantically thumbed through the box until she was back to the beginning.

November 1865

Dear Sephi,

Professor Melbourne is late for the morning session as usual …

She snatched up a letter in the middle of the stack. The ink remained. Why were only some of the letters now blank? She glowered at the box, which now had its back to her. Seriously? Was it punishing her for trying to share the letters with Chase?

And then it occurred to her that if the ink didn’t reappear, she would never know the ending. This was all she was going to get to read. She had been hoping for Eviar to have a happy ending, to prove that true love really can conquer all.

But her hope for him had vanished like the words on the yellowed page.

Alex was desperate to read the rest of the letters, but that stubborn black box had zipped its lips tight. She figured there was one person who might be able to help her. The next morning, Alex perched on a desk with Skye, waiting for their ABC assignment. Duvall cursed under her breath, squinting at the bottom of a list.

“What is it?” Skye asked, setting down a large white stone the size of a human skull.

“I forgot to tell Matthew to add bathroom mold to his list.”

“He’ll be just thrilled about that,” Skye remarked, and Alex thought she caught a tinge of amusement flicker across Duvall’s face.

“Skye, could you please chase down his group and inform them of my little addition?”

Skye didn’t look like she wanted to be the bearer of bad news. “Uh, sure.”

Alex focused on the shelved jars, eavesdropping over the room like birds on a wire, and pretended not to see Skye’s signal for her to follow. She waited a few moments and then sidled closer to Duvall. “Professor?”

“Hmm?” Duvall didn’t look up.

“I have a question.”

“Obviously.”

“It’s about a kind of ink.” Above her head, the hanging test tubes clinked and clanked. “Have you ever heard of writing that can disappear?”

“My dear, I believe that toy is older than you are. You can find it at any joke store, I’m sure.”

“No, this would have been long before joke stores existed. And it’s weird because, well, not everyone can see it … ” Alex stopped speaking when a look of warning clouded her teacher’s face.

Duvall used a pair of tongs to hold a crucible over a green flame. “Sounds like make believe.”

“If Thymoserum tricks the mind into forgetting something, I just inferred there’d be something counteractive, something that could make things appear to the mind.”

“That sort of magic isn’t something spirits can create. A mind must be trained to open up to such extensive levels of visibility.”

Alex eyed the murky goo inside the bowl. “Can someone who isn’t a spirit create it?”

“Do I have to say it, since you already know the answer?”

Alex shook her head, knowing full well this was witchcraft, yet she supposed a part of her had hoped that Eviar wasn’t involved with that. Was witchcraft the reason why he was so powerful? She longed to ask Duvall but avoided bringing up the name of someone whom Duvall had despised. “How could one person see something that another couldn’t?”

“Because of you. If the writing is meant for you to read, only you can see it.”

“But it
wasn’t
written for me. It disappeared right in front of me.”

“All of it?”

“No.”

“It’s a glitch, then.” Duvall placed the crucible on a ring and stared down at the contents. The silvery substance levitated as one large mass and then broke into a dozen globs, each of which landed in a vial.