“He had a knife.”
“A sword, actually,” my uncle interjects.
“That’s right.” I close my eyes, and it all comes back to me.
Walking down the crowded hallway.
Catching sight of Hudson, sword raised, out of the corner of my eye.
Stepping between him and Jaxon because Jaxon is mine—mine to love and mine to protect.
The sword coming down.
And then…nothing. That’s it. That’s all I remember.
“Oh my God.” Horror swamps me as something new, and terrible, occurs to me. “Oh my God. ”
“It’s okay, Grace.” My uncle moves to pat my shoulder again, but I’m already moving.
“Oh my GOD!” I shove the chair back, jump to my feet. “Am I dead? Is that why I can’t remember anything else? Is that why everyone was staring at me in the hallway? That’s it, isn’t it? I’m dead.”
I start to pace as my brain wigs out in about twenty different directions. “But I’m still here with you. And people can see me. Does that mean I’m a ghost?”
I’m struggling to get my mind around that idea when something else—something worse—occurs to me.
I whirl on Jaxon. “Tell me I’m a ghost. Tell me you didn’t do what Lia did. Tell me you didn’t trap some poor person down in that awful, disgusting dungeon and use them to bring me back. Tell me you didn’t do that, Jaxon. Tell me I’m not walking around because of some human-sacrifice ritual that—”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” Jaxon bounds around my chair and takes hold of my shoulders. “Grace—”
“I’m serious. You better not have pulled any Dr. Frankenstein stuff to bring me back.” I’m spiraling and I know it, but I can’t seem to stop as terror and horror and disgust roil around inside me, combining into a dark and noxious mess I have no control over. “There better not have been blood. Or chanting. Or—”
He shakes his head, his longish hair brushing the tops of his shoulders. “I didn’t do anything!”
“So I am a ghost, then?” I hold up my hands, stare at the fresh blood on my fingertips. “But how can I be bleeding if I’m dead? How can I—”
Jaxon grabs my shoulders gently, turns me to face him.
He takes a deep breath. “You’re not a ghost, Grace. You weren’t dead. And I definitely didn’t perform a sacrifice—human or otherwise—to bring you back.”
It takes a second, but his words, and the earnest tone he says them in, finally get through. “You didn’t?”
“No, I didn’t.” He chuckles a little. “I’m not saying I wouldn’t. These last four months have given me a shit ton more sympathy for Lia. But I didn’t have to.”
I weigh his words carefully, looking for loopholes as I hold them up against the suddenly crystal-clear memory of that sword connecting with my neck. “Didn’t have to because there’s another way to bring someone back from the dead? Or didn’t have to because…?”
“Because you weren’t dead, Grace. You didn’t die when Hudson hit you with that sword.”
“Oh.” Out of everything I’d braced myself to hear, that one didn’t even make the top ten. Maybe not even the top twenty. But now that I’m faced with that very logical although unlikely answer, I have no idea what to say next. Except: “So…coma?”
“No, Grace.” My uncle answers this time. “No coma.”
“Then what is going on? Because I may have giant holes in my memory, but the last thing I remember is your psychopathic brother trying to kill you and—”
“You stepping in to take the blow.” Jaxon growls, and not for the first time I realize how close his emotions are to the surface. I just hadn’t figured out, until right now, that one of those emotions is anger. Which I get, but…
“You would have done the same thing,” I tell him quietly. “Don’t deny it.”
“I’m not denying it. But it’s okay if I do it. I’m the—”
“Guy?” I cut him off in a voice that warns him to tread carefully here.
But he just rolls his eyes. “Vampire. I’m the vampire.”
“So, what? Are you trying to say that sword couldn’t have actually killed you? Because from where I stood, it looked to me like Hudson really wanted you dead.”
“It could’ve killed me.” It’s a begrudging admission.
“That’s what I thought. So what’s your argument, then? Oh, right. You’re the guy.” I make sure my voice is dripping with disdain when I say the last word. But it doesn’t last long as the adrenaline rush of the last several minutes finally passes. “So where have I been for four months?”
“Three months, twenty-one days, and about three hours, if you want to get specific,” Jaxon tells me, and though his voice is steady and his face blank, I can hear the torment in the words. I can hear everything he isn’t saying, and it makes me ache. For him. For me. For us.
Fists clenched, jaw hard, the scar on his cheek pulled tight—he looks like he’s spoiling for a fight, if only he could figure out who or what to blame.
I run a comforting hand back and forth across his shoulders, then turn to my uncle. Because if I’ve just lost close to four months of my life, I want to know why. And how.
And if it’s going to happen again.
5
Gargoyles Are the
New Black
“The last thing I remember is bracing for a blow from Hudson’s sword.” I glance from my uncle to Jaxon, both with their jaws clenched tight like they don’t want to be the one to tell me something. “What happened then? Did he cut me?”
“Not exactly,” my uncle tells me. “I mean, the sword connected, so yes. But it didn’t hurt you because you had already turned to stone.”
I play his words over and over in my head, but no matter how many times or ways I repeat them, they still make absolutely no sense. “I’m sorry. Did you say I turned to…”
“Stone. You turned to stone, Grace, right the fuck in front of me,” Jaxon says. “And you’ve been stone every single one of the last one hundred and twenty-one days.”
“What do you mean by ‘stone’ exactly?” I ask again, still trying to get my head around something that sounds impossible.