CHAPTER 14
Armand had a giant smirk on his face I wished to wipe off when I entered Chemistry late.
“How’s life, lover girl?” he drawled. I was lucky not a lot of people had come yet, or else I would be vegetable.
“A lot better now that I remember some,” I shot back, “no thanks to you.”
The redhead jerk laughed. “You’re just too amusing to watch. And cheesy.” He half-snorted, half-sighed. “The whole soul mates thing.”
“What about soul mates?”
Armand blinked slowly. “But I thought you remembered.” He lowered his voice. “Duane did let you touch the sessho-seki, didn’t he?”
“He did. But I only remembered part of it all.”
Armand’s brows creased. “And he didn’t explain to you the rest of it?”
“Nope. Nada.” I leaned forward, trying not to look too eager. “Perhaps you can tell me instead? Like, for example, if I’m a kitsune—”
“Hush!”
I lowered my voice to a whisper. “If I’m a kitsune, then why can’t I shift into a fox, like Duane shifts into a wolf anytime he likes?”
”That’s because you’re not mature yet. You’re still a baby.”
I hissed in exasperation. “I’m being serious!”
“And so am I. He should have explained this to you.” Armand sighed heavily. “You’re not a full-blood kitsune. You’re only a half. That’s why—”
He was cut off when Mr. Zimmerman entered the classroom.
“Later!” I hissed at him.
The lesson went on by without me paying attention. My mind was reeling. Every ticking of the clock was going to draw me closer to a mental hospital. I stared at the clock the whole time. My eyeballs were so dry I was afraid they were going to fall out.
And then the bell rang.
Armand walked with me in the hallway, taking the route we knew Jamie and Nick wouldn’t pass so that no one would interrupt us.
“Elena?”
I almost flinched in shock, I was so skittish. “Ah, Ingrid. Hi.”
Her eyes shifted from me to Armand, then back to me. “Have you seen Jamie?”
“She’s, uh—you can find her in the lunch hall.”
“Thanks!” She glanced at Armand one last time before sending a wink at me and went away.
My face burned in humiliation. She must have thought I had a secret affair with Armand or something. I looked up at Armand, who just shrugged as if whatever Ingrid thought didn’t matter. But it mattered to me. She would tell Jamie, and Jamie would pester me on…
I looked at Armand—I still couldn’t believe he was what Duane had said. A Keeper, older than Duane, who was supposed to be old. With Duane, I’d seen the hard edges on him, the look in his eyes that let me know how much he had been through, how much he had seen. But Armand? He looked young—not young-and-foolish kind of young—I guessed he could pass for any ages between overgrown sixteen-year-old-boy and youngish nineteen-year-old guy, but I really couldn’t imagine him as someone older than Duane.
But I’d seen him more these past few weeks, and I knew there were things I couldn’t see because I wasn’t willing to see them. Armand might carry himself like a carefree—to the point of almost bored—popular nice guy, but sometimes when he didn’t think I was looking, I would catch that lurking intelligence in his eyes, as if he was the mastermind of a game we all played in, just waiting and seeing what would happen next.
Armand was more dangerous than he let on.
“So?” I prompted.
“Okay, where were we?” Though his tone was light, I knew he’d caught me scrutinizing him.
“You were telling me that I’m a half kitsune.”
“Right. That’s why when you were first born you’d be born as human, and you’d die as human. When your human body dies, you become sort of a semi-corporeal the Red Fox spirit. Which means you’re basically a full fox, but with some ghost-like abilities. Vanishing into the thin air, going through a tree straight and pass through it, etcetera. That’s for fifty until one hundred years, if you survive through the period, then you can finally get a human form.”
“Wait. If I survive? You can kill a spirit? How? How did I die anyway?”
“That’s not my place to tell. Ask Duane. But yeah, you can kill The Red Fox, if you catch it off guard or trap it with something of its weakness. Silver, in this case.”
“So…if the Red Fox dies, then what?”
“Then it dies. The end.”
“What—”
“Your Red Fox form didn’t die, obviously. But it was injured badly, to the point that forced it to shift into a human prematurely. That’s why you woke up into the world as a what—fourteen? Fifteen?—year-old girl on the spot where the Red Fox got injured.”
“So…before that, I was a fox? And before that again, I was a human?”
“Yes. You were about twenty-one, according to Duane, when you turned into a Red Fox.”
“So what you’re saying is that…I’ve got to wait until I’m twenty-one in order to—”
“Be a mature kitsune? Nah, you don’t. Your powers are already starting to show. Remember the party where that guy lit you on fire? And before that, when a guy tried to stab you with a silver knife?”
“It was silver? I thought—”
“We just had to make something up for your unusual reaction. Poison was more likely. But humans are getting smarter, so the doctors did a check on you—and of course there was no poison.” Armand sighed. “Anyway those guys came from these some underground supernatural rebels. They wanted to test your abilities. It’s either use or kill for them.”
“What do you mean?”
“They tried to kill you with silver. Appeared out you survived somehow. Your tolerance to silver must be the result of your human heritage. So they tried to burn your with fire. Appeared out fire doesn’t burn you—don’t look at me like that. It hurt, but only for awhile, didn’t it? So their plan now is probably to use you as their weapon.”
“What weapon?”
“There’s a…conflict. You, Duane, me—we’re all considered newcomers. And yet we immediately settled on the top food chain. They don’t like it. They want to take over back their region.”
“Er…they? As in who?”
“Oh, you know. Just some werewolves, vampires, and these pesky little big things. Fucking barbarians, in my opinion. Europe was much more refined, albeit boring.”
Boring? I guess there really were some worms living in these people’s brains then.
I was deep in thoughts.
“Lena.”
I looked up. “Yeah?”
“I’ve been saying your name for, like, hundred times. You’ve been acting strange lately. What’s wrong with you?”
Everything. “It’s nothing.”
“Come on, Lena. This isn’t like you. You’re usually the gentlest person I know, even when you’re PMS-ing.”
“It’s no—”
“Don’t say it’s nothing. You’ve been different since your visits to Armand’s.”
I froze. Duane had said that Mr. Cadwell was a Vigil, but not Jamie. “How do you know about that?”
“Words get around. It’s a small town.” She peered at me. “I’m kind of hurt, Elena. Why haven’t you told me?”
“Told you?” I squeaked.
“That you’re hooking up with Armand. You know I won’t judge you—”
Oh, Ingrid, I’m going to kill you!
“No!” I nearly shouted. “No,” I repeated, more calmly this time. “I’m not going out with Armand.”
There was a sly smile on her face as she clucked her tongue. “Denial, denial,” she sang.
“I. Am. Not. Going. Out. With. Armand.” I made sure I punctuated every word.
“Proof says otherwise. He lent you his jacket at the party. You’ve been spotted whispering sweet nothings to each other in Chem. And I heard that you’ve gone to at least three dates.”
“Where did you hear that?”
“From the changing room,” she said smugly.
I rolled my eyes. I had to invent something. Something that would explain my actions lately. “You got it all wrong. Ask Sylvie. I’m going out with Duane.”
Jamie gasped. “You told Sylvie but not me?”
Actually, I hadn’t even spoken to Sylvie since our short encounter in the restroom. And of course Duane and I weren’t anything close to going out. But the words she’d said to me… It had sounded familiar. Sort of like what Armand told me, in the party where I got burned. I had suspicions that she was a Vigil—but I hadn’t asked either Duane or Armand to confirm that.
“It’s not like that,” I said. “Duane and I wanted to keep our relationship a secret, but Armand told Sylvie. That’s why I’ve been to Armand’s house.”
Wow. I might have believed my own fabrication if I hadn’t known better.
“Look, I just—I’m tired, okay?”
Jamie looked at me for awhile, then nodded and turned off the light.
I was dreaming again.
“Your name for mine. Remember? You said you’re going to tell me the meaning of your name. I think you have made me wait long enough.”
I rolled in the grass to face him. There was a dried leaf caught in his light hair. I plucked it out and smiled. We both smelled like grass and dew and autumn rain. I kissed his nose, for I have loved it since the first time we kissed and it kept bumping into mine. It was the nose of an American man—the people of the village didn’t like it.
The villagers did not like me, either.
But that was how I could meet him in the first place.
“Eiko,” I told him, “means eternity.”
“Eiko-chan,” he breathed, and pulled me down into a kiss.
When I woke up afterwards, my pulse was erratic, as was my breathing. I wanted to remember that part. I needed to remember it.
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