Hot, staccato red hits my eyes, blinking like some kind of code. I shake my head to make it go away, but it keeps on flashing at me. Awareness picks up enough that I absorb a few more specifics—I’m lying on my back. Something warm and heavy is resting on my shoulder. And my eyes are closed—that red signaling, I realize, must be sunlight jouncing on my eyelids.
I move to sit up, confused, and the soft weight slips off my shoulder. “Ksenia?”
Lexi. She was sleeping with her head nestled against me. She pushes herself up on one hand and we both look around. We’re under the half-grown green of spring trees, sun specks darting all around us. Moss and stones and a blue sky shaking through the foliage. The clearing by the gorge.
The real one. The cool damp from the earth blots my back and sun-warmth perches on my hands. As convincing as Prince’s fake was, this place has a deeper reality about it than he could ever match. There’s a song under the skin of the world here, and it hums inside me too. Like crickets purling alive, alive, alive.
“Lexi,” I say. I don’t have a complete grasp of the situation, but a few memories start to break through the blear. “I thought I could never see you again. I thought that was the deal. The magic was going to get back at us, for getting free.”
“I didn’t say anything about letting go of you forever,” Lexi points out. Golden sun and pearl-blue reflections curl on her dark cheeks, and it’s impossibly beautiful. She grins at me, sweet and shining. “Which could be something of a problem, actually. And Ksenia? You didn’t say anything about breaking your pledge either. Which might mean—if I understood Prince correctly, I’m afraid you’re going to be living with a lot of pain. Missing … it’s going to be a constant ache for you.”
I shrug. What else would it be? And anyway, my mind is already spiking with a new worry.
“Lexi? Did you eat anything while you were there? If you did, we need to get you a candy bar or something right away.”
“I knew better than to eat anything, even though it felt like I was trapped for days before you came for me. I’m going to need a lot more than a candy bar.” She gets up, a little unsteadily, and halfheartedly brushes off a few leaves. “Let’s go to the diner and order one of everything.”
I struggle up too. “I don’t have any money. And I’m supposed to be dead. Anyone who sees me will freak their ass off.”
“My treat. Remember how you just rescued me? And anyway, Ksenia, I’m willing to bet that no one thinks you died now. I’m almost certain that the whole enchantment has just been undone, and all those little kids are safe at home. Just as if they’d never been stolen in the first place. For that, I’d say you deserve some breakfast.”
“You’re the one who kept rescuing me, Lexi. More times than I can count. And you figured out what we had to do. I think—I’m almost positive I was too close to Josh to see it. You did what I couldn’t do.”
“It’s my treat anyway.” Lexi holds out her hand. “Ksenia, we have to go get food before I faint.” Then she glances down at herself: barefoot, in torn and filthy pajamas. “Or, okay, we’ll swing by my house first. I have a feeling—I bet my family’s away at the beach.”
I’m looking pretty ragged myself. My boots are thick with dust, my glittery shorts are sludge-gray from all the grime and crusty with my blood. Grave dirt still streaks my legs and crumbles from my hair. And all I’m wearing on top is that hacked-off tuxedo jacket, black scraps dangling. On my hip, a thin pink line threads the skin above my waistband.
I glance down again. Where that knife was wedged in my flesh, there’s nothing but a scar.
We manage the long walk back to Lexi’s house, both of us staggering from hunger. She fetches a spare key out of one of those fake rocks, and lets us in the back door into quiet so dreamlike and lush that I know at once she’s right. No one else is home. I can barely handle the peace of being there, in Lexi’s pretty kitchen with its cherry cabinets and Moroccan rugs hanging on the walls. We both slump at the table in a daze, and then Lexi hauls herself up to make coffee and eggs and toast, and we forget all about going anywhere. The antique clock above the sink says it’s almost noon, and once Lexi checks the date she tells me it’s spring break.
The internet tells us that a tornado ravaged the town last week, inflicting however many millions in property damage, taking lives. In the list of six people dead, twenty injured, there’s no mention of an Alexander.
“But you think Xand is still dead?” I ask after a while. We’ve finished a huge breakfast, and started in sharing a pint of mint ice cream. We need showers, and I can’t go around in these clothes forever. Oh, and I’m homeless. But I’m so overcome by the bliss of being here, free from that nightmare, and eating ice cream with someone so awesome, that it seems like I can worry about all of that later.
Lexi’s face tightens. “I think so. You and the kids didn’t physically die, Ksenia. You were just taken, and your deaths were basically a matter of warped perceptions. They were a distortion, not reality. Xand, though—it was unspeakable, what they did to him. I’ll try calling his family, once I’m ready to face it, but I doubt that’s something that can be undone.” A grimace. “When I left, his changeling had just walked in their door. What if it’s still there?”
I nod. “But we don’t even know that my death was undone, right? That’s just your theory.”
Lexi’s sorrow reverses instantly into a grin. “Let’s test it.” And before I realize what she’s planning, she runs upstairs and comes back with her phone. What she’s about to do—I get it all at once, and it smacks me with panic.
“Lexi, I’m not sure this is—”
“Mom? Hey, how’s everything at the cabin?” I’m still trying to talk and Lexi waves to shush me, her smile growing wider by the moment. “I just finished everything I have to do here, so I thought I’d drive out this afternoon. I can be there by dinnertime. Is that good?” I can hear her mother’s voice as a series of upbeat intonations, but I can’t catch the words. Lexi twists around, perching on the edge of the breakfast table. “Is it okay if I bring a friend with me? Ksenia’s back in town!” I almost move to snatch the phone, but Lexi just squirms out of reach and arches her brows at me. More wordless chatter comes from her receiver. I have to admit it doesn’t sound particularly horrified. “No, she’s just been working up in Buffalo, but she knows she needs to start college in the fall. Mom, honestly? That’s part of why I want her to come out. I think she could use a few quiet days to—you know, just contemplate what she wants out of life. Okay, thanks. Pie? Sure, we can stop at a farm stand … Love you too.” The look she turns on me is giddy with triumph. “You know, if my mom thought you were dead, she probably wouldn’t be quite so comfortable inviting you to Cape Cod.”
Dead or alive, I can’t believe Lexi’s parents are willing to let me intrude on their vacation. I’m the one who’s always a stranger, always violating other people’s everyday happiness. “Why the hell did she say yes? Even before I died, everyone thought I was some emotionless freak.”
Lexi shakes her head, still beaming. “You don’t understand my mom. To her, you’re not just that disturbing foster-care girl. It’s more like that disturbing foster-care girl who nonetheless maintained a GPA of 3.9, and read books I recommended to her. She’s a big enthusiast for untapped potential. So we’ll lounge on the beach for a few days, and all you’ll have to do is cope with some intense dinner conversations about your future. Are you in?”
It’s hard to imagine what else I would be. I have nowhere to go.
But it’s more than that. I’m so relieved at the prospect of getting to hang out with Lexi for a few more days that my legs go tremulous, just processing the emotion. I’ve been trying not to think about what she said to Josh, but now it comes back to me, inescapably. Like, that examining her feelings thing wouldn’t be connected with bringing me out to Cape Cod, would it?
“Thanks, Lexi,” I say, because all at once I’m too flummoxed to say anything else. And then I change the subject. She’s watching me closely, and I can’t completely suppress my old habit of diverting her from seeing too much of me. “You know there’s another thing we need to test, right?”
Lexi nods. “If I can talk to—. And especially, if I can talk about you. I’m not ready to try that yet, either, but I promise you I’ll get to it soon.” She gives a little shake from the shoulders up. “Ksenia? The strange thing is that I tried to say that name just now. And it was like it spilled sideways, right off my tongue. I might be actually incapable of naming—somebody—to you.”
I haven’t said Josh’s name aloud either, not since we woke up in the clearing. Joshua Korensky, I think, and I try to force the thought into sound.
It comes out as a kind of grunting exhalation. And with that burst of wordless air, I really feel the ache Lexi was talking about before. I told myself that I accepted the deal we were making. But inevitably there was the wheedling belief, deep in my mind, that somehow we wouldn’t lose each other absolutely. That Prince was just lying, or that the magic might be careless enough to leave a few loopholes.
Joshua Korensky, Joshua Korensky, Joshua Korensky. How can I think so clearly what I can’t say? I try taking it one syllable, one letter at a time. Jo—
No. The magic is onto me. I sound like I’m choking.
“Ksenia,” Lexi is saying, “Ksenia, stop!” But I can’t stop, not until I get it out. I want to drive my voice straight through the force constraining me. Use Josh’s name like a knife, gut the enchantment, leave it bleeding.
Then Lexi has her arms tight around me, squeezing my head against her chest and stroking my hair. I stop trying to say what I can’t say, and let the impulse drown in her warmth.
We drive out a few hours later. Lexi insists on stopping at my favorite thrift store on the way and lending me the money for a couple of less-insane outfits, no matter how many times I point out that I’ve got no idea when I’ll be able to pay her back. We find two pairs of skinny jeans that fit me, black and gray, and two of my usual ruffled tuxedo shirts, black and lilac. Both of us are giddy in that half-hysterical way you get when you’ve just staggered out of a nightmare, popping ridiculous hats on each other’s heads and gasping with laughter. We buy packs of cheap underwear and black tank tops and a few basic toiletries at the dollar store on the edge of town, and I shove everything into a scuffed backpack that Lexi swears she was getting rid of anyway. Not that I believe her, but I’m too tired, and too grateful, to keep arguing.
Then we hit the highway in her new Mini Cooper. Trees blip past, streaking into a steady chartreuse flux; rooftops wrap up other people’s safe, reliable lives. And now that we aren’t cracking up, the silence starts to shift its tone. It goes tense, stretched by the weight of unsaid words.
And I should make the effort to say at least some of them. Shouldn’t I?
“Lexi,” I try. And then it’s almost like when the magic throttled Josh’s name in my throat, because I completely fail to keep going. But what’s killing my voice now? It’s all me, all my own fear, and not some external force. I have to own it.
She gives me a minute, just in case I can hack it on my own. Then: “Yes?”
I pull in a deep inhalation, trying to slow my heart. “All those times when you thought I didn’t care, or that I was being distant because I didn’t trust you enough—I mean, you see now it wasn’t like that. Right?”
Lexi nods, her twists bobbing. All the darkness and the glow of her, framed by the sky beyond. “It was like you kept daring me to give up on you—like you wanted to see how much it would take before I lost interest. But I didn’t.” Her mouth curls in a wry half-smile, but she’s gazing straight ahead. “I think I wasn’t ready to truly look at why I couldn’t give up on you, Ksenia.”
Does that mean what I think it means? “I don’t know why you didn’t give up on me! You gave me so many chances, and I have no idea why you thought I was worth it.” I have to keep forcing the truth out. Don’t I? “I know I’m late saying this. But seriously, thank you.”
It feels like something, but also nowhere near enough. Lexi finally glances at me from the corners of her almond eyes.
“Ksenia. What if I’m giving you another kind of chance, right now? Do you want it?”
I can’t answer.
“I promise, I will understand completely if you aren’t interested. It won’t affect our friendship at all, no matter what you say. Okay? Because I do know—you’ve been pressured way too much, and you need—whatever you choose, whoever you love next—you need to make that decision from a place of absolute freedom. So just take this as one of your options.” She hesitates. “I’m sorry, Ksenia. I shouldn’t have said anything so soon.”
Lexi’s voice is shifting deeper. Still calm, but smoked by low pain. I’m about to blow it.
“I do—want the chance, though,” I manage. “Lexi, I mean, of course I do. I admire you more than anyone I’ve ever met. I’m lucky even to know somebody like you. Much less—”
There’s a chatter of gravel at the wheels. We’re pulling over.
And then Lexi tugs my head down to hers and kisses me, so softly that I’m suspended inside the sweetness of it. A warm dizziness erases the edges of my body, and what remains is her lips on mine, all of me, and all of reality, caught in that contact.
She lets me go—God, too soon—and leans back. Just a few inches, which makes it easier. “Ksenia? There’s something I need to make absolutely clear. I’m not here with you because you’re lucky. I’m here because you deserve it.”
Yeah, right, I almost say. But her eyes stop me. There’s something in the depth of them that I can’t get across.
“Think about it, Ksenia. Who has ever fought through more than you have? You even fought your way back from a world that wasn’t the world, and you were contending against creatures that aren’t even human. And you didn’t just free yourself, either. You made sure that no one else was left behind. What about that says to you that you don’t deserve love?” She sounds genuinely annoyed now. “Can you acknowledge what I’m saying to you?”
I messed up a lot, actually. But Lexi has a point. When it was really essential I came through. I ripped the truth out of my heart until the stairs let me climb up, I tricked Unselle, I walked mist-blinded down into the gorge. If I heard that story about someone else, I’d give them credit for being almost a hero. So why can’t I appreciate the same things in myself?
“I get all that in the abstract,” I tell her at last. “It’s just hard for me to really feel it.”
“Then that’s what you have to do next,” Lexi says. “Work on feeling it. Can you do that?”
I can do it for you, I want to say. But that’s not what Lexi’s asking, and I know it. Even if Lexi vanished, even if her car dissolved, and I was left sitting alone by the side of the road—I’d need to learn to feel it anyway. I can’t put this on her.
“I can do it, Lexi,” I tell her. “I’ll keep working on it until I get there.”
Lexi smiles at me and starts up the car again. “You’ve made it so far already, Ksenia. Right? So just keep going.”
We don’t merge back into traffic just yet, though. She kisses me again first, and this time I let myself pull her close. Holding her feels like holding the whole bright and whirling world.