I’m all geared up Monday morning to spend hours fielding questions about Coach Jenkins. I was, after all, called down to the gym right before they found her body and was therefore the last known person to see her alive. But after I give my statement to police officers at the school (“We just chatted about the homecoming float, that’s all!”) and they decide it was likely an unfortunate accident, everyone’s too upset to pay any attention to me.
Thea breaks down in homeroom. A few people from the squad have to go home, and whoever isn’t going into hysterics in the hallway is loudly recounting their personal anecdotes about the beloved cheer coach/home ec teacher. But in true Hollywood fashion, we haven’t even made it to lunch before she’s become the butt of a million jokes. I even hear someone from the football team say that anyone who could accidentally stab themselves in the neck with a pair of craft scissors deserves to die. Nice.
Though I don’t see him, I’m sure Bishop’s out there, somewhere close by, watching my every move. In math class I test my hypothesis by getting a hall pass to use the bathroom. I haven’t made it past the water fountain when he appears.
“You shouldn’t be going places alone,” he says, falling into step beside me.
“I have to pee,” I explain. He makes to follow me into the girls’ bathroom, but I push him out. “Nice try, buddy.”
“It’s for your own safety,” he says, but he’s grinning. I let the door swing closed in his face. Despite the jokes, I know he’s feeling pretty bad about the close call yesterday. About Coach Jenkins. And that, in turn, makes me feel a tiny bit safer. At least I know he’s on his toes now.
I don’t see him again the rest of the school day, but when there’s a knock at the door not ten minutes after I arrive home, I’m not surprised to find it’s him. He, however, looks mighty surprised to find that I’m pushing him back outside.
“Let’s go,” I tell him.
He raises his thick eyebrows high, but doesn’t say more. “Aunt Penny’s going to the shop tonight to do inventory,” I explain. “And if I don’t get out of the house before she’s out of the shower, I’m probably going to get roped into helping.” Buh-bye, practice time. And if yesterday was any indication, I could really use it.
“Actually, that works out, because it’s a long drive to where we’re going. We need to hit the road now or we won’t get back before late.”
“And where is it we’re going?” I ask.
“Indie?”
Crap.
Aunt Penny edges downstairs, a silky pink bathrobe tied around her waist and her blond curls twisted into a braid over her left shoulder.
I sigh and move aside in the doorway. “Aunt Penny, this is Bishop. You’ve seen him around, but I don’t think you’ve officially met.”
“Nice to meet you,” Bishop says, giving Aunt Penny a friendly smile that she returns with a tight one of her own.
“You too. Hey, Ind, can I talk to you for a minute?”
And here it is.
“Be right out,” I tell Bishop, then push him outside and close the door, turning to face my aunt.
Penny sits on the stairs “So what’s with this guy?” she asks.
“We’re friends,” I answer simply.
“Friends?” Her sleek eyebrows arch up high.
“Yes, friends. You know, buddies? Pals? Confidants?”
“I don’t know that I like you guys hanging out so much,” she says, ignoring my sarcasm. “How old is he?”
I laugh. “Are you seriously lecturing me about boys right now? Do I need to remind you about Stan, or Michael, or Aaron, or—”
“Okay, okay, I get it,” she interrupts, her hands raised in defense. “I’m irresponsible, and I’ve made some bad choices, and I’m twenty-eight and have nothing to show for it, but I’m your guardian now and I take that job seriously. I have to nag you, so let me do that, okay?” A deep frown is etched into her brow. Aunt Penny, who might as well be pictured in the dictionary under “party girl.”
“Don’t worry,” I say, my tone softening. “I’ll be careful.”
She gives me a grateful smile.
When I go outside, Bishop is nowhere to be seen. But then a horn honks from a car parked across the street, and I follow the sound to find him waving at me from inside a cherry-red muscle car with a yellow stripe across the body. I saunter up and place my hands on the roof, bending to look at Bishop through the window.
“You have a car,” I say.
“It appears that way,” he answers, grinning.
I exhale. “Okay, so then why have I been driving everywhere? Why haven’t I seen it till now?”
“Because I just picked it up yesterday after you left. I hate cars. Bad for the environment.”
“Oh, so you’re an environmentalist now?”
He nods happily.
“Well then, I’m sorry to be the one to inform you that muscle cars are especially bad for the environment.”
He shrugs. “So I’m a bad environmentalist. There’s also the small issue of a war with the Priory. Wouldn’t do to show up late to a battle because the bus wasn’t on time. Are you going to get in or what?”
I circle around the vehicle.
“You like it?” he asks as I drop into the faded red bucket seat.
I snort. “No, I hate it. It’s horrible and ugly and I won’t be seen in it.”
Bishop beams. “It’s a 1969 Shelby GT500.”
I run my finger over the wood-paneled dash. “Authentic.”
“It’s great, isn’t it? I was worried you wouldn’t like it.”
“Who cares if I like it?” I say. “It’s your car.”
He guns the engine in response.
Sure, why don’t you wave a cigarette and a bottle of Jack Daniel’s out the window while you’re busy making Aunt Penny hate you?
Bishop maneuvers the car through traffic until we hit the open freeway. The engine rumbles beneath me. Hot wind snaps my hair across my face, and the radio, tuned to some obscure punk-rock station, blasts a song I actually know. Bishop mouths the lyrics, tapping his hands on the steering wheel as sunlight reflects off his aviator sunglasses. Before I know it, I’m singing along too. Bishop smiles. I smile. There’s a whole lot of smiling going on. And I just know that this memory will be forever burned into my brain, because this kind of magic—the kind that can’t be conjured with a spell, where everything is just right, and all your problems vanish for three perfect minutes—doesn’t happen every day.
But then the song fades away, and guilt stamps down the thrill of the ride. How can I have a great moment when Mom’s dead? What kind of person does that?
Bishop turns the radio down. “You all right?”
I nod and force a smile, looking out the window. He leaves the radio turned nearly to mute, so that the hum of the tires on the freeway is the only sound in the car.
“So are you going to tell me where we’re going, or what?” I ask, just to fill the silence.
“The Guadalupe sand dunes,” he answers.
I glance over at him. “Um, why?”
“Because it’s big and open and there are places in the dunes so remote it’s highly unlikely we’ll come across another human, which is a rare thing in L.A., and I’d prefer not to have to wipe anyone’s memory if at all possible.”
“That’s great, except remember that whole part about the Priory trying to kill me yesterday? Don’t you think it’s a bad idea to go out, just the two of us, to some remote sand dunes? They could attack us.”
“That’s exactly why it is a good idea. No way would the Priory think we’re stupid enough to be alone after yesterday. They’d think it was a trap.”
“Yeah, ’cause it’s definitely not stupid,” I mumble.
“Just trust me, okay? I’ve got something up my sleeve if that happens, which it won’t. I’m completely prepared.”
As usual, he has an answer for everything, almost as if he’d planned out this conversation or something. “Hey, have you done this before?” I ask.
“What? Drive my 1969 Shelby GT500 to the Guadalupe sand dunes with a hot cheerleader? No, I haven’t. Why?”
“No, jerkass,” I say, grateful he has to pay attention to the road so he doesn’t see my pink cheeks. “I meant teach someone magic. Have you taught other gir—er, other people before?”
Bishop laughs. “Have I taught other girls? Nope. No other boys, either.”
I shake my head, looking out the window instead of at him so that I can suppress the smile threatening to spread over my face. Soon his laughter ebbs, and the radio takes over the silence again.
After driving for miles, we exit the freeway, and a short while later we arrive at a huge parking lot with a squat information building and a single car parked close to its entrance.
“This is it?” I ask.
“Not quite.” Bishop shifts the car into park and opens the door. “No vehicles allowed past here. We walk the rest of the way.”
“Since when do you care about rules?” I slam my door and follow him toward the edge of the lot, where the sand dunes begin.
“I’m making an effort. Don’t want to sully your impressionable young mind.” He glances back and grins.
“You’re not even two years older than me,” I point out. But then a thought strikes me. “Unless you’re secretly two hundred years old or something?”
Bishop laughs at the horrified look on my face. “Nope. I’m really eighteen.”
“Oh good,” I say, relieved. There are already too many ways I feel inferior without being a virtual toddler in the life experience department compared with him.
Bishop smiles, then lets his shades slide back down onto his nose.
We’ve been walking for only minutes, me doing routine shoulder checks for the Priory, when I become aware of the sweat beading my brow, the hot sun tingling my bare shoulders. I’m at least appropriately dressed for the heat, having donned a pair of cute canvas shorts and a loose ballet top this morning, whereas Bishop sports his usual trim black pants, motorcycle boots, and a V-neck band T-shirt. He left his leather jacket in the car, but I still don’t know how he can stand all the superfluous clothing.
I squint at the huge sand dunes rolling across the horizon, set against a sky so blue it looks like it’s been Photoshopped.
“This far enough?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “Bit farther. Then we’ll fly farther in.”
I groan.
It doesn’t take long for the hard sand under my shoes to turn doughy as the dunes begin to rise in small undulations. Soon, my legs sink ankle-deep into the sand, and I have to lift them higher and higher to travel across the soft soil. It’s so much work that I almost forget to be worried about the Priory attacking. As if reading my mind, Bishop stops abruptly and scans the area around us.
“Ready?” he asks, taking off his shades and slipping them into the neck of his T-shirt.
I exhale. “So ready.”
And then there’s this awkward pause that never existed between us before.
“Should I …?” I hold my arms out to the side.
Bishop jerks into action. “Yeah, sure, good idea.” He places one arm under my knees and another around my back, cradling me like a baby. His face is just inches, maybe centimeters from mine, but I don’t dare look at him. Not when he swallows, and it’s so loud it would be comical if I were in the mood to make fun of him. Not when he asks if I’m ready, and the way his breath—minty and woody, like he’s been chewing on a toothpick—rushes against my ear and makes goose bumps rise over my arms. Not when his fingers touch the bare skin on my back, and that touch makes my heart pound against my rib cage so violently I’m sure he must feel it. And so when he lifts up off the ground, I pretend to be riveted by the sand dunes rippling twenty feet beneath us, like giant waves in an angry sea, the sand twinkling in the bright sun.
Something’s got to be wrong with me, I decide. Mom’s death must be taking my emotions on a wild roller-coaster ride—amplifying everything, not just the hurt. This makes me feel a bit better about myself.
After a few minutes of flying, Bishop lowers us to the ground. When he places me on my feet, I teeter a bit, like I’ve just had a few drinks.
“Little tip,” I say. “Might want to pick another remote location next time. Mount Lukens, maybe? It’s boiling out here.” I fan out the shirt that clings to my sweaty skin.
Bishop gives a pointed look down at my chest. “No, I think I made the right choice.”
I could kick myself for nearly smiling. “If you don’t cut it out I’ll be forced to rate your performance as Very Poor on the Magic One-oh-one feedback questionnaire.”
Bishop gasps. “Scoring poorly on a test! You wouldn’t threaten me with something so vile.”
“Very funny. Can we get started, please? It’s getting late.”
“Sure thing, boss.” Bishop holds out a hand, and a broomstick materializes in it. Not a common kitchen broom or even a janitor’s push broom. Nope, this is a broomstick that TV and movie witches would be proud to ride: a bundle of yellow straw tied to a long brown handle.
I look from the broom to Bishop. “You can’t be serious.”
“More serious than I’ll ever be.” He pushes the broom into the space between us.
I push it back. “You don’t use a broomstick to fly.”
He pushes it back toward me. “And I also don’t say my incantations aloud, but then I’ve been a warlock for two years and you’re only just learning. Take the broom.”
I sigh and snatch it from him.
“Great,” he says. “Now that you’ve learned to harness your magic, flying should be easy.”
I roll my eyes, because he had said harnessing my magic would be easy, but he ignores me and continues.
“Harnessing your magic was about learning to manipulate the energy in your body, which you used to move the desk yesterday. Flying applies the same principle, but to manipulate energy outside your body. Instead of pulling all your heat into your core and out through your fingertips, you push the heat down and out of your body to manipulate the air currents instead of objects, and voilà—that’s flying.”
“Sounds simple.”
“I’m glad you agree.” Bishop points at the broomstick, which I’m holding away from me like a used tissue. “Straddle it.”
I glare at him.
He raises his hands. “What else do you call it?”
I reluctantly do as he says. “You better not be screwing with me about this broom or I’ll be pissed.”
“I’m not screwing with you. It’s much harder to focus on invisible air currents than it is a tangible broomstick.”
“So it could be anything, then? Not just a broomstick?”
“Just focus, Indie.”
Sighing, I close my eyes, and the heat flares to life in my stomach. But pushing it down rather than pulling it up is another beast entirely. I push and shove and slam the heat down, but it’s as if I’m trying to jump through a springy new mattress; I can get a few inches of movement, but mostly it’s impossible. Yep, just as I anticipated, flying isn’t as easy as Bishop makes it out to be, even with the stupid learner’s broomstick.
Time ticks by. The sun moves across the sky, reminding me just how long we’ve been out here alone, and without any witnesses—we might as well be wearing freaking neon targets on our backs for all the opportunity we’re giving the Priory to attack. I’ve already drained the water Bishop packed for the trip, and I can pretty much bet on a wicked sunburn come morning. I don’t want to quit—wouldn’t normally dream of quitting—but there hasn’t been even a glimmer of progress and we still have the long drive home ahead of us.
“Okay, I’m done.” I toss the broomstick into the sand and stalk away from Bishop with my hands laced behind my head. To suck at flying after doing well with moving objects is more than a little disappointing.
“Don’t give up.” Bishop, for once, jogs to catch up to me. “You were getting so close.”
“Close?” I laugh. “No I wasn’t. I’m hot and sweaty and tired, but close? Not even slightly.”
Thank God he doesn’t argue the point, because I’m feeling violent. He chews the inside of his cheek a moment before speaking. “There is something more I can do to help, but you won’t like it.”
“There’s something more, and you haven’t told me?” Yep, definitely feeling violent.
“You won’t like it.”
“Tell me, already. I want to fly. What is it about the hours of practicing in the heat that hasn’t given you that impression? I’m willing to—”
“I drop you from a height,” he interrupts.
I close my mouth and give him a glare.
“Adrenaline can help you harness your magic in the right direction.”
“Yeah, right. Sort of like candles are energy drinks for witches?”
“Fine, don’t believe me.”
“Great, I won’t. You know, you might gain a little more credibility if you stop bullshitting me for fun all the time.”
“You don’t want to do it, just like I thought—I get it. But you should know I wouldn’t let you get hurt. I’d catch you before you hit the ground, if it came to that.”
I shake my head and huff and roll my eyes a bunch, but all the while his words are sinking into my brain. “You won’t let me hit the ground?” I ask.
He shakes his head.
“Say it out loud. Promise.”
Bishop places his hand over his heart. “I, Bishop, hereby promise not to let one Indigo Blackwood hit the ground.”
I bite my lip, contemplating. “What the hell. Fine. Let’s do—”
Bishop snags his arm around my middle and lifts into the air so suddenly and quickly that I jerk in half like a foldaway bed. My hair sucks around my face and my stomach does a flip, the landscape below becoming smaller and smaller until I’m sure NASA is probably picking up our movement on their satellites. And then the hands around my middle are gone. There’s a split second where I reach out to anchor myself on something solid, before I realize there’s nothing to grab.
I plummet. A whole-body fear clutches at me, a tremendous rush of chemicals passing up my body like the worst roller-coaster ride times a million. And then all I can hear, all I can feel is the wind. It pushes against my body and warbles my cheeks, instantly drying my damp top as I pinwheel my arms, belly flopping toward earth.
“Push it down. Push the heat down.” It’s Bishop, plummeting next to me like he’s my parachuting buddy or something. The same wind sucks his hair back and flattens his T-shirt tight against his frame, but, unlike me, he couldn’t look calmer. Until he appeared, all I could think about was how it was going to feel when I splatted to the ground, but now I remember that I’m supposed to harness my magic, push it down and blah blah blah. But I can’t. How can I concentrate with the ground zooming nearer by the second? This was a mistake. I wordlessly reach out for Bishop.
“Sorry!” he yells over the wind, shaking his head solemnly.
“What? Help me!” I say, choking on a mouthful of air.
The sand nears, closer and closer by the wasted second. Forty feet. Thirty. Twenty-five.
“Push it down!” he yells.
I reach out to claw onto the shirt flapping around his midsection, but he pulls away, just an inch out of reach, grinning that infuriating grin. “Push it down!”
My anger makes it easy to find the heat, and for a second I think that maybe it’s working this time—going down instead of up—but then the heat sucks back in at the sight of the sand, so very close.
Seconds before I splat to the ground, Bishop swoops under me and plucks me up in a smooth reverse swan dive, rising high into the sky again, holding me tight against him so that we’re nearly nose to nose. The crazy noise of the wind falls away, and it becomes deathly quiet.
I want to scream at him. Tell him he’s a jerk for waiting so long to catch me, but then I become hyperaware that we’re face to face, that the length of our bodies are pressed together, and I don’t say any of those things. His chest rises and falls against mine, and I imagine I can feel the drum of his heart between the two thin layers of clothing separating our skin. I risk a glance at his eyes. This close I notice that, though dark as earth wet with rain, they’re flecked with gold, like a fire burns behind them. Like he’s hungry. The thought makes my breath turn so hard and ragged it can’t be healthy. His eyes fall to my lips, and he swallows.
He inclines his head so that the tip of his nose nearly grazes mine, so that our lips would touch if a strong wind should arise. I’ve never wanted to be kissed so badly, so of course this would be the time Mom pops into my head—the Mom from the theater with the knife in her temple. The guilt from the car ride comes crashing over me like a tidal wave. How can I be doing this?
I draw away from Bishop, as much as I can with him still holding my arms in his iron grip. “Oh God, please put me down, I don’t want to do this.” I’m hyperventilating now, but for a different reason entirely.
Bishop senses the moment’s over and floats us to the ground. His expression is blank and unreadable, and that somehow makes everything worse.
“I’m sorry,” I say, digging my fingers into my scalp. I turn around and start walking.
I make it only a few steps before Bishop catches my wrist and whirls me around. “You can be happy, you know. It’s okay for you to be happy again.”
Tears well in my eyes.
He sighs and slackens his grip. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to yell at you.”
I don’t say anything, but it’s not because I’m mad at him. I just don’t know how to tell him how grateful I am that he understood me, that he knew how I was feeling—torn up that I could feel anything but anguish when the memory of Mom dying is still a heavy weight on my heart—all without me having to say a single word. So I show him the only way I know how. I snake my arms around his neck and crush my lips against his. They’re soft, much softer than I expected, and for a moment, they’re motionless against mine. And then he moans into my mouth. His hands sink into my hair and he kisses me back, hard and fast and passionate, like it’s both the first and last kiss of his life. His lips find my jaw, my throat, the spot behind my earlobe, sending a thrilling ache into my belly. I claw at his clothing, tugging his shirt up, and pull him to the sand. He falls on top of me, pressing his full weight onto me. His greedy hands move up my body, and I yank at the sides of his pants, my heart racing in my desperation to get rid of those two layers between us, because I need this, because I need the way it feels to not think of anything else but what I’m doing. Bishop slides his warm hand up my shirt, and my back arches in response.
And then his lips stop moving. He lets out a frustrated groan and becomes as motionless as a statue on top of me.
“What?” I ask, breathless.
He groans again, like he’s in actual physical pain, before rolling off me into the sand, white-knuckled fists braced over his stomach.
“What? What is it? Why’d you stop?” I push up on my elbows, catching my breath and watching Bishop splayed in the sand, squinting into the fading sun.
“I don’t want it to be like this,” he says.
I shake my head. “What do you mean?”
“When you’re sad. It was stupid of me. I don’t want to take advantage of you.”
“Stupid of you?” I exhale and push to sitting. “I kissed you, remember? What happened to all the ‘it’s okay to be happy’ bullcrap?”
“I’m sorry, okay? It’s my fault.”
Fault. Like he did something wrong. Tears sting my eyes. I can’t believe what’s happening. Nowhere along the line did I think he’d humiliate me, that he’d make me feel like a sexual predator. I stand up so suddenly pockets of sand go flying onto Bishop. “Forget it, let’s go back.”
He groans once more, loudly, without getting up, then chases after me. “Come on, Ind. Don’t be mad. Can’t you understand? It’s not that I don’t want to.”
Oh great, what’s next: it’s not you, it’s me?
“Ind.” He catches my wrist so that I’m forced to face him. I speak before he can delve into any more embarrassing apologies. “Listen. It was stupid—you’re right. I shouldn’t have done that.” My voice cracks a bit when I say it, so I lace some extra anger into my last words. “I shouldn’t have done it, I’m sorry I did, and it’ll never happen again.” I shake free of his grip and walk away. “Now take me home. I’m tired.”