Beyond it, Zachary can see the layers and the levels spiraling up. Shadows that are deeper than others. Spaces that curve and move outward, speckled with lights that are not stars.
He marvels for a moment at how far he has come, turning the broken bottle over in his hands and picturing the stairs and the ballroom so very high above.
He hears footsteps approaching. Appropriate, he thinks, to have found Fate again now that he’s finally reached the Starless Sea. Now that not yet is just now.
“Hi, Max,” Zachary greets her. “I found your—”
There is a strange swift motion as he turns. For a moment his vision is a shadowed blur and when it focuses, it is not Mirabel standing in front of him.
It is Dorian.
Zachary tries to say Dorian’s name but he can’t and Dorian stares at him in eyebrow-raised shock and Zachary can’t breathe and he’s never met anyone who literally took his breath away before and maybe he is actually in love but wait, he seriously can’t breathe right now. He feels light-headed. The glow from the sea is fading. The broken champagne bottle falls from his fingers and shatters.
Zachary Ezra Rawlins glances down at his chest where Dorian’s hand is wrapped around the hilt of the sword and just as he begins to understand what is happening everything goes black.
excerpt from the Secret Diary of Katrina Hawkins
I was at the Gryphon sitting in a booth in the back so I wasn’t in anyone’s line of sight drinking and reading and this older woman in a white fur coat sat herself down across from me like I’d been waiting for her. She had one blue eye and one brown eye and a crystal-clear martini in her hand with two (matching) olives in it. The glass was still frosty, she must have just picked it up at the bar.
“You’re a difficult woman to locate, Miss Hawkins,” she said with a fake pleasant smile that looked almost real.
“I’m not,” I said. “It’s not that big a city. There are, like, two bars that I go to. You probably have my class schedule, too, right? Don’t really need the tracking devices.”
She stopped smiling. Definitely one of them but now I’ve earned the big guns, this lady’s a pro. No obvious spying from across the room this time.
She didn’t say anything so I asked, “What did that used to be?”—nodding at the gigantic fur coat. She wasn’t going for inconspicuous at all and I kind of admired that.
“It’s faux,” she said, which was disappointing. “How’s the book?” She tipped her martini at my copy of The Kick-Ass Writer.
“It’s for class,” I said, which is true. The chattiness threw me off. I didn’t think any of these people were actually going to talk to me, ever.
“You miss him, don’t you?” She directed this remark at my drink. Sidecar. I’d ordered it because I couldn’t think of anything else, I just wanted to sit somewhere that wasn’t my apartment. I forgot to tell them to hold the sugar and it was making the stem of the glass sticky.
“Do you know where he is?” I asked.
She didn’t say anything but she had this weird look in her eye—the brown one, I thought the blue one was a cloudy-cataract situation. I couldn’t tell what the look was, I know it sounds like it should have been an aha you DO know where he is moment but it wasn’t. She looked at me and sipped her martini and when she put it back down she said, “You must be sad about your breakup.”
I haven’t told anyone that Lexi and I broke up. L got all mad at me when I started trying to figure out what happened to Z and said he probably just took off and said I was just mad that he didn’t tell me and then I accused her of setting up the bee-key-sword thing as one of her theatrical scavenger hunts and then she called me a “waste of her time” which seemed overly harsh and I’m not sure I am sad. I feel okay about it. I’m not sure I want to be in a relationship right now anyway. Things change. Things are changing particularly fast right now, like a week ago everything was different. It’s still snowing, though. That hasn’t changed.
“Not really,” I said.
“But you don’t have anyone anymore,” the lady said. “Not really.”
I was pissed because she was kind of right but I wasn’t about to tell her that. I have my notebook and my projects and I was sitting there alone with my drink because there was no one else I wanted to be drinking with. I don’t have people. She said it in a way that kind of implied she knew my family isn’t all that fond of me either.
I didn’t say anything.
“You’re on yo
ur own. Wouldn’t you prefer to belong somewhere?”
“I belong here,” I said. I didn’t understand what she was getting at.
“For how long?” the lady asked. “You’ll stay for a two-year graduate program because you don’t know what else to do and then you’ll have to leave. Wouldn’t you like to be a part of something bigger than you are?”
“I’m not religious,” I told her.
“It is not a religious organization,” she said.