I went to school and kept the hood of my jacket pulled over my head the whole time. I passed a pop quiz in biology just by glancing at the study guide right beforehand. I slept through Business Admin.
I saw Jason in the hall but looked down. The memory of Reed’s drift was days old, but still felt fresh in my mind. It would be even harder if I let myself think about the fact that the boy in the basement was Jason. The last thing I wanted to do was sympathize with him.
I often wondered if Jason would be different if he could get help, but it didn’t matter. Reed was the Hushed with that secret, and it was locked with him. As long as Reed stayed silent, no one would ever know what happened in the basement. Jason could tell, of course, and stop his own Hushed from ever stirring . . . but he never would. That was what his uncle was counting on. The wound was too deep—Jason wouldn’t let anyone near it.
The after-school shift at Mal’s was split strangely, so I was done an hour before Rory. I took a muffin from the glass bake case and headed down the street.
Three blocks later, I stopped.
Our Shepherd of the Faith Church was small, but in good repair. Unfortunately, in this town, that was a defining feature. Influencers liked to take pictures on the front steps, even though the older parishioners would tell them it was rude. I’d been inside a couple of times, and always because of Fabian. Which is why I stood on the front steps, a muffin in my pocket. The factory was just down the road, and he liked to take his breaks in the sanctuary. We hadn’t talked since the fight, and everything about life felt slightly off-kilter after that. I told myself it was because of the fight. It wasn’t because of anything else. It couldn’t be because of anything else.
The doors were open. They always were. I walked in through the foyer, stopping just inside the sanctuary. The ceiling reached up impossibly far, disappearing into the rafters. There were a couple other people inside, but they were further up, with their heads bowed low. They didn’t notice me when I walked in. Fabian was in here, somewhere. As I waited, I slipped into the last pew, my jeans sliding effortlessly against the polished wood. I pulled myself to the middle with the armrest, and then pushed off again, sliding a foot down the bench.
Someone coughed next to me, and I stopped, setting my hands in my lap before looking up.
Fabian stared down at me.
“Thou shalt not slip and slide in the sanctuary,” he joked.
“Sorry.”
He motioned for me to scoot over, and he sat down.
I pulled the muffin out of my pocket and leaned over.
“Is ‘thou shalt not eat’ a rule, too?” I whispered.
“Only if said food is secretly a vegetable in disguise,” he whispered back, eyeing the muffin.
“I promise, this is not a carrot cake muffin.”
There was a beat as he looked at me out of the corner of his eye.
“I’ll allow it.”
I handed him the muffin. He broke off the bottom and handed it to me. I hated the top; he loved it. Another way in which we seemed like two parts of a matching set.
I looked at him as he looked around. His light brown hair hung over his forehead. He needed a haircut, but I knew he would only go get one once Rory mentioned it. He had a scar above that eye from when he was jumped a couple months ago after a Haunt attack. It was healing nicely. It sliced through his eyebrow in a way that made him look more dashing. I was worried for about a week that he would wind up looking like a cartoon villain. His blue work shirt was open, revealing a white tank top. His cross necklace hung over the hem. I got it for him at a gas station in Tulsa. I finally followed his gaze and looked around the church.
It was beautiful. The light from the stained glass lit up the cavernous space, and the ceiling rounded off high above my head. On the far right stood three confessionals, so inconspicuous that you might miss them.
Some churches stopped providing confession years ago. It turned the priests into Harborers, and widows got sick of having thousands of naked people show up the moment their husbands died. I couldn’t really blame them. Still, it was nice to see that some were still willing to try and help humans through their problems.
Fabian’s knee was warm against mine.
“I’m sorry for telling you to go to hell,” I said, finally.
“It’s not really an insult if you don’t believe in hell.”
“Har-har,” I said through a mouthful of muffin.
“I’m sorry for what I said, too. It was below the belt at best.”
Scared is all you are, Eerie.
I swallowed and leaned against his arm. He grabbed my hand.
“It’s not like it wasn’t true,” I said quietly.
“It’s really not, Eerie. And I shouldn’t have said that. I said it to hurt you. And that sucked, because everything I do is about protecting you.”
I drew a slow breath.
“You can’t protect me if you’re dead,” I whispered. It was a cheap shot, but I didn’t care. I didn’t need to be honorable. I just needed to be effective. If this was Fabian following his Pull, I could forgive him not letting it go. But this wasn’t the Pull. This desire for answers was born from his own search for truth, and I hated it.
“Why does finding out the truth have to mean that I’m going to die?” he asked.
“You might not have a choice, Fabian. If you find what you’re looking for, if you unearth it, you won’t be able to undo it.”
Fabian shook his head. “I’m doing all of this because I have a purpose, and I’m not living it. I’m here for a reason, and I have no idea what it is.”
I shook my head. I came here to end a fight, not to start a whole new one. “You think your purpose is to tell a secret and die in the middle of the street?”
This was the problem. The wall we hit every time we tried to reason with each other. He believed we weren’t an accident. We weren’t a mutation, or a punishment, but a different type of child in the eyes of God. Strange, unwanted by the rest, but still a part of the plan.
“No. Not to die in the street. To know where I belong, Eerie.”
“Some people believe you belong in the street. Dead.”
Fabian looked up at the rafters.
“Something terrible happened at Ironbark.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“I mean even before the fire. Something wasn’t right there.”
I was quiet, then. I knew this was the moment I should tell him about what I saw between Reed’s drift and waking up. I hadn’t thought about it much since it happened, but every once in a while, the memory would float to the surface of my mind, unbidden. The little boy in the window, the one smiling at me. But I had a policy of not telling anything to Fabian, no matter how small. If there were anyone who might be able to use information from drifts—no matter how small or random—it would be Fabian.
It was on the tip of my tongue, ready to fall past my teeth. But I sucked it back in. I couldn’t do it. He’d gone three weeks with no sign of remembering anything, despite the daily updates on Leonard Mark’s trial. Whether or not he admitted it, he was starting to think we would never remember, and that’s what I wanted. It would make it easier to convince him to leave when the time came.
He leaned down next to me, resting his elbows on his knees.
“I’m not asking you to do this with me. In fact, I’m glad you’re not. I’m just asking you to understand why I need to do this. It’s dangerous, but it isn’t a suicide mission. There are pieces to the puzzle, parts of the police reports and court records that just don’t add up. And I want to know why.”
I looked down at my knees. My jeans were thinning. I’d have to patch them before the winter was over.
“You know what I’ll say to that.” My voice sounded small, and I coughed. I normally didn’t care if I looked small in front of Fabian. He knew how small I was. He’d carried me out of the smoke, tucked against his chest. I was allowed to be small with him. But the tinge of pain from the words we threw at each other two nights earlier was still there, and I wasn’t ready to give him another clean shot.
“Everything is going to be okay. You’ve got to trust.”
I felt his chin lift, and I knew he was looking at the altar at the front. I kept my eyes on his hands and swallowed another fight before it started.
It’s not that easy. You were born with faith. I wasn’t. His human probably had faith, so did Fabian. It was that simple. Or maybe not. Maybe our beliefs were random, like how we look, or our gender and age. Either way, Fabian believed down to his bones, and he wanted that kind of faith for me.
I just wasn’t buying it. I’d seen too many Gravediggers come out of this place, crossing themselves and asking for blessings on their hunts. I didn’t understand asking for help from something that seemed to also be helping people like Jason Bell.
I checked my watch. It was almost time to meet Rory.
“So, you and Rory, huh?” I asked, grateful for any type of conversation that wasn’t about that fucking prison.
Fabian cleared his throat and shifted in his seat. I sat up.
“You gonna be needing that confessional, dear brother of mine?” I teased.
His face flushed. Even though we weren’t actually related, I loved seeing that he blushed as badly as I did.
“We’re . . .” he stopped. “I don’t know what we are.”
“Making out?” I offered. “Hooking up?”
Fabian put his whole open palm on my face, and I shoved him off. An old woman in the front pew looked over her shoulder. I expected her to give us a stern look or shhhh, but instead she smiled and turned back around.
“And what about you? I saw you talking to Logan Winspeare last night.”
I shook my head and let my smile slip. He was trying to make his tone as light as possible, but I could hear the tightness in it. If anyone were okay with the idea of human and Hushed being together, it would be Fabian. But even he wouldn’t be able to deny the danger that I would be risking. There was worry underneath.
“Nothing. Nothing at all,” I said.
“I hope not, because it’s dangerous, Eerie. If you were to remember your secret around him, and if it had anything to do with him . . . the Pull is hard enough to adjust to with time and distance—”
“Nothing, Fabian,” I said, sharper this time. I didn’t go into how hypocritical he sounded. That never got us anywhere.
He relaxed against me.
“Good. ’Cause he’s trouble.”
“Fabe.”
“Sorry.”