Hexbound (The Dark Elite 2)

We held hands as we walked back to St. Sophia’s, but we didn’t speak a word. He stopped in front of the gate and embraced me again, then dropped his head to press a kiss to my lips.

After he left, I glanced back at the school. I wasn’t ready to head back inside. I looked out over the city again and spied the familiar orange moon of a coffee-house down the street.

“There’s nothing a little overpriced latte can’t fix,” I quietly said, then headed back down Erie toward Michigan Avenue, trying to clear my head.

He was cursed.

Let me repeat that. He was cursed. And when the full moon came, if I was around, he’d rather rip me into shreds than kiss me. It did tend to discourage dating humans, I guessed.

Why did stuff like this have to happen just when things were looking so promising? When I was starting to like a boy with blue eyes who, at least until a few minutes ago, hadn’t been trying to kill me. There was a pretty big nasty in the closet, and the burden fell on me to deal with it. What was I supposed to do? Tell him it didn’t matter?

Or worse—lie to him? Tell him we’d find a solution that thousands of years—and probably thousands of wolves—hadn’t revealed.

Tears stung at the corners of my eyes.

I crossed the street at the light. I’d dealt with getting dropped off in Chicago, with firespell, with a best friend with a magical secret, with constant doubts about my parents.

This was the straw that broke the Adept’s back.

It might be time to skip the latte and go straight for the triple hot chocolate.

“We keep running into each other.”

I glanced up. Sebastian stood in front the coffee-house, orange paper cup in hand. He wore jeans and a dark blue fleece jacket that almost perfectly matched the color of his eyes.

I swiped at the tear that had slipped down my cheek as casually as possible. “I assume it’s not a coincidence you’re a block from St. Sophia’s?”

Frowning, he held up his cup of coffee. “It is, actually. My parents have a condo.” He gestured toward the tower above the coffee place. “I was visiting.”

It took me a second to remember that Reapers, whatever their motivations, were people, too. With parents and condos and lives beyond evening battles.

But still . . . “We aren’t going to be friends, you know.”

His eyes seemed to darken. “I didn’t expect that we were.”

“Good.”

“Friendship is a lot simpler than what we are.”

I looked over at him. “We are not anything.”

“Then why are you still standing here?”

I looked away.

“The world isn’t black and white, Lily. Ambivalence rules the day.”

I looked up at him. “Meaning what?”

“Meaning what I’ve been telling you. Meaning things are rarely as simple as they seem. Sometimes you don’t figure out how the story is supposed to end until you’ve read it.”

“And what are you supposed to do until you get to the end?”

He looked out over the city, pride in his features. He was undeniably handsome—dark hair, dark brows, dark eyes. He had the bones of a fallen angel—and apparently the same wickedness. But he had helped me, had given me undeniably helpful information. “You’re supposed to do the best you can with what you’ve got. Or you’re supposed to get it.” He looked down at me. “There’s no fault in that, Lily. That’s what life’s about.”

But that was where he was wrong.

“No,” I said. “That’s not what this is about. Not this.” I cupped my palms together, closed my eyes, and blew into my hands. When I opened them again, the spark was there, the tiny star of pure green power.

I looked up at him and saw the surprise in his face. I guess he hadn’t expected me to catch on so quickly.

“This isn’t a weapon. This isn’t a strategy. It’s the thing that holds the universe together. The stuff that keeps us moving. You want me to doubt my friends. You want me to doubt what they do, the battle they fight.”

I opened my palms and let the spark free. For a moment, I watched the spark flitter and float, then mouthed the words “come back.” The spark spiraled in the air, and then with a slow, arcing descent, landed on my palm again.

When I spoke again, my voice was quiet. “I’m not sure why you’re talking to me. And I’m not sure I trust you. But I do know right from wrong. I don’t need a boy or a girl or an Adept or a Reaper to tell me that. You try to drown people in the sea of their own misery.” I swallowed. “And we try to bring them back.”

“It’s never that simple.”

“It is that simple,” I said, eyes on the spark, which floated—as if waiting for a command—just above my palm. “We may not have magic for very long. But this isn’t a force for destruction.”

I looked up at Sebastian, expecting to see disdain or disagreement in his expression. But instead, there was something soft in his eyes.

He looked down at his clenched palm, and then opened it. In his curled fingers sat his own small spark. Suddenly, it jumped out to meet mine, the attraction of opposite forces. Like long-separated lovers, the sparks entangled, then rose into the air and floated through the currents across Erie Avenue.

“So that you don’t forget the world isn’t black or white,” he said. “It’s gray. And someone tells you otherwise, they’re lying.” He reached out, and with a finger, brushed a lock of hair from my face. “You deserve more than lying.”

And then he turned and walked away.

I stood there for a moment imagining the world—the city—spinning on an axis around me.

What if it wasn’t so easy to pick out good from bad?

How were you supposed to know who the bad guys were?

I looked across the street at the Portman Electric building, and let my gaze take in hearty brick and simple landscaping . . . and the letters of the Sterling Research Foundation sign.

More important, how do you know who the good guys are?

As I crossed the street and walked down the block, I found a tour group standing in front of the convent’s stone gate. The tour leader wore a long black coat and a black top hat, a stuffed raven perched on his shoulder. He stood atop the stone wall, arms outstretched, his voice booming across the sunlight. The tourists kept looking between him and the convent—back and forth—like they weren’t quite sure what to believe. I stopped a few feet away to listen in.