Zander raised his eyebrows.
“Yeah, I was there. I didn’t know who he was, but I saw the mark, I followed him. Spent a whole day doing my damnedest to learn enough about him to make a good decision. And in spite of all that, I couldn’t even find out he was the father of one of my classmates, who’s a good guy and totally crushed by it.”
“So what’s your point?” Zander asked quietly.
“My point is …” I stopped, wanting to be sure I said it exactly right so maybe he could give me the answer, help me figure out how to live. “My point is I don’t know how to decide. More than that, I don’t know if I can. I’m not sure if I can live with the idea that what I do—or don’t do—leads to someone else’s death. I’ve tried to believe it’s their actions, their choice, that everything they do leads up to the moment where I see them with the mark …”
“That’s what you should believe, Cassie.”
I shook my head, thinking of how I’d told off Lucas at the end of philosophy class in Kansas. People are responsible for their own actions, I’d said. In making choices, they accept the outcome. I’d tried so hard to believe it, to live it. “The truth is, Zander, I think it’s impossible for me to walk away from death like that. I don’t know how you can, role or not. You still know they’re going to die. But worse for me is the idea that if I do intervene, I’m damning someone else.” I shook my head at the frustration of the ultimate catch-22.
“You’re too human,” is what Zander said. “I’m going to help you get past that.”
That’s what we’d come to.
Zander was driving more slowly now, his head tilted slightly as if he were listening or watching for something. I looked out the window, trying to find a restaurant or shop or coffeehouse or any likely destination, but metal gates were pulled down over the storefronts and the people hurrying down the streets didn’t look like they’d be friends of his. Nothing about the neighborhood suggested it was somewhere we would visit. Or should visit.
“Where are we going, anyway?” I finally asked him.
Zander pulled to the curb and shut off the car, answering with a single word. “Hunting.”
Chapter 21
We stood on the sidewalk, between Zander’s car and the storefronts lined with garbage bins. I still had a hand on the car’s roof like it was home in a game of kick the can. Somewhere safe.
“What does that mean?” I asked.
“It means exactly what you think,” Zander said, reaching for my hand. “Let’s go.”
I crossed my arms, leaning back, fully against the car now. It took him a few seconds to realize I wasn’t coming. Zander dropped his outstretched hand.
“What?”
“You don’t really think I’m just going to follow along, do you?”
“Listen.” He exhaled, a short, frustrated sound. “You want to know how this works? Then come with me.”
“I get it, Zander. The mark means they’re going to die, so I decide if it’s the right time, you do your … whatever.” Because of course, I still didn’t know what he did—his necessary actions. It gave me the shivers and I shook my head. “I’m not sure I want to do this.”
“I don’t get you at all,” he said. “On the drive, you were dying to know. Here I am now, ready to show you, and you won’t let go of the damn car. What’s the deal?”
“I do want to know. I’m just not sure I want to actually be, like, a part of it. Right now. Here.” I glanced around at the dirty streets, pulling my coat a little tighter.
“Well, we don’t really have much of a choice, do we, Cassie? That’s the bitch about death, you don’t get to pick the time.” He smirked. “Well, actually, you do, but you know what I mean.”
We stared at each other for a minute. A stalemate.
“Look,” he said, when it became obvious I wasn’t moving. “You have to come along. I need your help.”
“With what?”
Zander jangled his car keys, looking down the dim, near-empty street, before answering. “I don’t know who it is,” he said finally. “Or if it’s the right time. My gift is meant to be paired with others’ gifts, just like yours. That’s how they used to work.” He spun the keys impatiently, flipping them around a finger, then back again: tah-ting, tah-ting. “I’ve learned how to do it on my own so that I can usually find them, but getting the timing right is much harder.”
“What if you don’t?” I asked, then backtracked, realizing I had never considered that his gift might be different from mine in this way. “How do you find them, anyway? What do you see?”
He shook his head, dark waves swaying slowly. “I don’t see. I feel.” Zander’s eyes narrowed, his vision turning inward to cull the right description. “It’s like … I sense their weakness, their muscles moving slower or their heart struggling, as if the body knows it’s almost done, like it’s giving up. Even the young ones. When they’re near, I smell decay, though nothing’s in the air.” He shook his head at the insufficiency of words. “I don’t know. It’s like a combination of smell and sight and hearing at a very essential and primal level.”
“Like a predator seeking out his prey?”
Zander made a face, not amused.
“So, you feel something, but …?”
“But it doesn’t always mean it’s the right time. I learned that pretty early on,” he said wryly. “My mom’s tried to help, but she doesn’t have the gift.”
“She doesn’t?” I’d suspected as much, but wanted to hear what he’d say.
“No. Mine passes only to the males in the line, just like yours passes to the females.”
“So your father …?”
“Had it.”
I asked it more directly. “Where is he?”
“Gone.” It was like watching a padlock snap shut on Zander’s lips. There’d be no more discussion about that. It was too cold to stand out here wasting time, so I went back to my earlier question instead.
“So what happens if you get it wrong?”
“I’m not sure,” Zander admitted. “I’ve been told that doing it too late forces the soul to wander indefinitely and being too early steals a part of their essence. In real life, sometimes it seems like nothing happens. And sometimes they get”—his face darkened, something forbidding passing across it—“fucked up.”