Demetria’s eyes were clearer, still focused on me. Though she hadn’t spoken yet, I could almost feel it coming. We were on the verge.
And suddenly, I realized that this might be it: the moment I would know the truth about whether there were others, whether I truly was descended from the Fates, born with something beyond ability. Responsibility. Learn whether there was a consequence to my actions beyond what I could see or imagine. Whether each life I saved truly sacrificed another.
I squeezed my hands together and took a deep breath.
“I’m hoping you can help me understand it, Demetria, what we can do with the mark—”
“Don’t.”
I looked up, startled by the voice interrupting me, familiar and out of place. He stood just behind me, close enough to touch.
“Zander?”
He stepped around the chair to face me and shook his head, saying it again. “Don’t.”
“Don’t what?” The words came out automatically, without conscious thought, my brain too busy trying to fit together the disjointed pieces before me:
Zander, where he’d denied ever being.
Looming over me and this girl I’d counted on as the key to my past and future.
The word he’d spoken.
Don’t.
My anxiety was different from a minute earlier when I’d been on the edge of telling Demetria my secret. This was a throat-closing dread.
“Don’t tell her,” he said.
A chill went through me. My words were weak and totally unconvincing. “Tell her what?”
Zander didn’t bother answering, just held out his hand. “Come with me.”
I stood numbly, my brain frozen. Firmly, he grasped my arm above the elbow, pulling me to the door. I could feel the heat of his touch through my sweater. Zander led me past the nurse, who glanced up, nodded, and checked off my name as I exited the room.
I was dizzy. Not in the warm, exciting way I usually felt around Zander, whose face was tight and determined. This was a disoriented, upside-down dizzy. I let him pull me along, not sure I could command my feet unguided. Not sure I had much choice anyway. We passed hallways and doors, down elevators and through waiting rooms. I shrugged on my coat just before the final gauntlet of sliding magnetic exits that ushered us outside, the Midwest winter like a slap in the face.
Zander gently pushed me against the brick of the hospital wall, glancing quickly to either side, before leaning in close exactly as he had less than a week before when he’d kissed me, pinned against his car.
“What were you thinking?” he hissed, his breath hot and angry in my ear.
I couldn’t answer, fear and confusion choking my words like an invisible collar.
“Yes, Cassie,” he said, pushing back. Crossing his arms. “I know what you are.” Zander smiled, but his eyes weren’t warm. They were hot. Burning into mine. “You knew there were others, didn’t you?”
I was mute. My mind still grasping, fumbling. Understanding, but trying not to.
“Of course you did,” Zander said, hitting the heel of his hand against his head as if he’d just made the connection. “That’s what you’ve been doing here, visiting Demetria. Every week, right? Sometimes more.” He shook his head again, chiding now. “Where did you ever get the idea she was like us?”
Us.
Of course. Why hadn’t I considered it before? And then I realized why.
“But you’re not a girl.”
Zander frowned with mock disappointment. “You just figured that out? I’d have thought with the kiss and all …”
“That’s not what I mean. I thought …” I stopped, still not sure it was safe to say it out loud. Did he really know? How could I believe him? Of course, I’d been ready to believe in Demetria, who’d given me no reason to think she was anything other than a troubled pregnant teenager.
“Let me help you out,” he suggested wryly. “You thought the Fates were women.”
“Yes.”
“And their power only went to female descendants.”
“Right.”
“I’m not a descendant of the Moriae,” he said, fingering the gold charm hanging from its black leather cord. “The theta,” he instructed. “I thought when you were staring at it in my car, you knew. And when I realized you didn’t, I could see how clueless you were about all of it.”
“So you’re not a Fate,” I said, struggling to follow along.
“Right.”
“Then who—what—are you?”
“I’m a descendant of Thanatos, half brother to the Fates. I claim the soul.”
It sounded absurd, but the jokes that normally would’ve sprung to mind wilted. He was still fingering his necklace, deadly serious. And looking at his face, I knew it was true. All of it.
There were others and I’d found one. Not Demetria—Zander.
It was a sickening feeling. Especially when what he’d said made its way through the frazzled circuits of my brain.
“You … you kill them?” I whispered, barely able to say it aloud.
Zander rolled his eyes. “No, I don’t kill them, Cassie. I’m a soul guide. I expedite.”
“You expedite,” I echoed stupidly. “What does that mean?”
He didn’t answer. We stood there silently for a minute, me still leaning against the wall and Zander standing tall and powerful before me. Light was fading from the sky, a deep purple gray that threatened snow or rain. Drips of water had frozen midstream from the lip of the downspout beside me. I was too numb to feel it, though, colder inside than out.
“We should go somewhere more private,” Zander finally said, his eyes looking deeply into mine.
My pulse sped up, as if it still thought Zander was trying to get me alone so we could kiss rather than talk about death and our roles in it.
I followed him mutely to his car, thinking back to the first time he’d driven me home after school. I’d felt giddy—happy and nervous all together and even a little scared, but in a good way—about riding with this boy Liv and my own better sense warned me away from. He’s dangerous, she’d said.
She didn’t know the half of it.
Zander drove to his house.
“Is your mom home?”
He shook his head. “She’s in the city. Working. It wouldn’t matter, though,” he added. “She knows about you.”
Of course, I thought dully. He still hadn’t explained how he’d known about me, but I figured I could just add that to my massive list of questions.