...and, exactly as I hope, it doesn’t.
Evan stands on her tiptoes and pulls my head down to her level so she can start a kiss of her own. Her style, if I can call it that, is nothing like I expect. I guess I was expecting Evan to be soft, sweet, and gentle. Instead, she’s pretty unrefined, her teeth banging into mine more than a few times.
But I don’t care. Any kiss from Evan is better than no kiss at all. It helps that I’m feeling the same chill I get every time I hold her hand, but multiplied by a thousand, so it feels like Icy electricity.
I end up being the one to pull away again - it doesn’t take long before I’m out of breath.
“Wow,” Harris says. I turn around and see his mouth hanging wide open, just waiting for insects to fly in. And he’s not the only one. Everyone else in the room has adopted the same expression. Even Henley - although he’s got his hands over his eyes.
“Is it safe yet?” Henley asks.
“Don’t try and fool us,” Michelle says. “We all saw you sneakin’ peeks.”
“But yeah, it’s over,” Kevin says.
Henley uncovers his eyes. “Thank God.”
“Hey, why don’t these two take some Seven Minutes in Heaven?” Rachel suggests.
“Oh no,” Henley grumbles. “Not another girly game. What’s next, Spin The Bottle?”
“Yeah, doesn’t Spin the Bottle usually come before Seven Minutes In Heaven?” Michelle asks. “And nobody tell me I should know ‘cause I’m a girl.”
“Whatever,” Adele says. “And let’s make that Six Minutes, ‘cause I think they’ve already used up one.”
“I agree with your decision, fellow Game Mistress,” Rachel says.
“Thank you, cousin. But before he leaves, Jason needs to make a Truth or Dare request of his own.”
Everyone looks at me, and I look back at everyone before finally deciding who to ask. “Henley, truth or dare?”
Henley trembles in his seat. “Um...I don’t want a dare. Truth.”
“Okay then. Are you a natural blond, or do you bleach it?”
Henley reaches up to his hair. “How’d you guess?”
“Is that a yes or a no?”
“Yes,” Henley says. “I’m not a natural blond. I just did it ‘cause my mom did it first.”
“Cool,” I say. “Now if you’ll excuse me…” I take Evan’s hand and lead her out of the main room, and down the hall. “Wait a minute,” I say when we’re far enough away from the main room that we can’t even hear the game anymore. “I’m lost. Where are we goin’ again?”
“I think this door leads outside,” Evan says, pointing to a door at the very end of the hall.
“You sure you wanna risk it?” I ask. “It’s hella cold, even for us Ices.”
“Just ‘cause we’re Ice doesn’t mean we can’t use our body heat to keep each other warm and cozy,” Evan laughs.
“All right, you got me.”
We go outside and sit on a white metal bench that’s been put up on the small concrete stoop. Outside the confines of the building, the wind is blowing, and the chill is deepening. But as long as we sit together, holding each other closely, neither of us really minds the weather.
We don’t really kiss, other than a couple of quick pecks on each other’s cheeks and noses. And, at one point, on my ear. We’re so close right now that we don’t really need the extra contact. Right here, right now, it’s perfect.
“I almost wanna sing a Christmas song right now,” Evan says after a long silence.
“Me too,” I say, putting my hand under her beanie so I can run my fingers through her hair. “Anything but ‘Baby, It’s Cold Outside.’”
“I know, right?” Evan laughs, wrapping her fingers more tightly around my upper arm. “That song is so overplayed. And creepy.” She pauses, then snaps her fingers. “I know!” She starts singing "All I Want For Christmas Is You" - or whatever the hell that song is called.
Evan may be a very good singer - something I’ve never been able to properly appreciate, having never heard her sing before - but that doesn’t stop me clapping my hands over my ears. “Do you have any idea how much I hate that song?”
“What?” Evan looks at me like I’m growing a third eye. “How can you not like that song?”
“Do I look like the sort of guy who’d enjoy Mariah Carey?”
Evan starts laughing her head off. “What? Really? I’ve never met a single person who didn’t like Mariah Carey! It’s like not likin’ Beyoncé!” A dangerous gleam appears in Evan’s eyes, and I cringe, knowing exactly what’s coming. “‘If you like it, then you shoulda put a ring on it...’”
“Oh my God, make it stop!” I scream, pulling away from Evan and leaping - yes, leaping - away from the porch.
Behind me, Evan continues to laugh up a storm. “You...you...you’re just so odd!” she cries when she finally gets a chance to draw breath again. “So if you don’t appreciate the Queen Bee or Mariah Carey, then what do you like?”
Luckily, it just so happens that I have my iPod on hand at this moment, so I’m able to pull it out of my pocket and show Evan my music selection.
“Hmm...let’s see now,” she says, cycling through my list of artists. “Arcade Fire, Coldplay, Dire Straits, Fall Out Boy, Haim, Muse, Panic! At The Disco, Republica, Sara Bareilles...wait a second. You don’t like Mariah Carey, but you like Sara Bareilles?”
I grin at her. “Sara Bareilles speaks to me like most singers never can. ‘Love Song,’ ‘Uncharted,’ ‘Brave.’ I can safely say I felt like I was the intended recipient of all three at some point.”
“How does that work?” Evan asks. “I’m pretty sure all three have wildly different meanings.”
“You askin’ me to fathom the way my own mind works?” I ask, continuing to grin.
“Kinda, yes.”
“I’m not gonna answer that,” I say, spinning my thumb on the click wheel. “Instead, I’m just gonna subject you to a random choice of one of my tunes.” I hand Evan the earbuds and keep scrolling through the list until I finally find a good one. “You might have heard this one in a few comedy-movie commercials,” I say, putting the song on.
Evan starts waving her fingers in time to the music. “Isn’t this that Arctic Monkeys song?” she asks.
“Nope,” I say. “It does sound similar, though, I’ll give you that. It’s actually ‘The Stroke’ by Billy Squier, and it’s authentic 80s classic rock.”
“This is nice, actually,” Evan says, her head starting to bob around. “Is it normal to feel the urge to rock out with full air guitar and everything?”
“I’d be insulted if you didn’t, love.”
“You’re callin’ me ‘love’ now? What, are you British all of a sudden?”
I put on an accent just like Dad’s as I say, “I bloody well am, love.” I switch back to my regular voice as I add, “Well, half-English, anyway. My dad’s from London.”
“Is he now?” Evan asks. “Didn’t know that before. That’s interesting. Hey, you should do that British accent more often. It suits you and your quirky Dark nature.”
“Why, thank you,” I say in my fake accent.
“Okay, that’s enough,” Evan says, removing the earbuds. “I don’t want your sexy accent to get old. You know what I mean?”
“Never heard it described that way before,” I say, my grin expanding to the breaking point. “Hey, I just got a random idea. Howsabout we take advantage of the wind and fly around a bit?”
Evan stands up and walks off the porch. “Good idea. But I think I should clarify something for you - we don’t need to fly wherever the wind takes us.”
“Really?” I ask, following her out into the cold.
“It’s a very common misconception,” Evan says, shrugging. “But it does take a little practice to get to the point where you can fly against the wind. How long have you been flyin’ again?”
“I just did it for the first time last night,” I say. “Or early this morning. I’m not sure of the exact time.”
Evan smiles shyly. “How did it feel?”
I lean against a tree and let out a long sigh. “Indescribable.”
“That’s how the first time is supposed to feel,” Evan says, spreading her arms and rising a few feet into the air. “Now get off that tree, Jay. How do you expect to fly when you’re bound to the ground like that?”
She leans down, takes my hand, and pulls me up into the air - how, I have no idea. Maybe it’s just because I’m able to boost myself with my own power, which helps Evan lift me. I’ll have to ask Harris how the physics of that scenario would work.
The wind is blowing away from the house, but with Evan leading me, we’re able to fly up and back over the roof. She and I stop on the very top, and then she says, “Ready to try beatin’ the wind?”
“Ready as I’ll ever be,” I say.
Evan grins devilishly, and by the time I see what she’s got in mind, it’s too late. She pushes me off the roof, towards the front of the guest house. I immediately use my arms to catch the wind, but this of course only leads to me bashing repeatedly into the roof. I think my glasses might be scratched now, but somehow they’re not broken.
“Don’t go with the flow, dude!” Evan yells down at me. “That’s exactly what we’re tryin’ to avoid here.”
“You don’t know how hard this is for me!” I yell back. “I can’t fly as well as you.”
“Come on,” Evan says. “Push yourself. That’s what I had to do. I didn’t have anyone to help me learn this.”
I do another near-faceplant on the roof. “You know what, just take my spex,” I say, holding them out. “Better not risk breakin’ ‘em.”
“Good thinking,” Evan says, taking my glasses. “Now try again. Really avoid goin’ with the flow. The wind is your enemy.”
I sit on the slanted surface, looking towards the front entrance to the guest house. It suddenly looks very high, a lot higher than I know it to be...No. I won’t let myself get taken over by fear. I need to show Evan that I can match her skill.
With that in mind, I roll onto my feet, hunkering down low. Then I jump off the roof, concentrating all thought on slicing through the wind as it blows into my face.
It takes a while before I can get it right, but when I finally do, it’s just amazing. It feels even better than flying with the wind, because there’s more friction to put up with.
“Hey!” I cry out, looking at Evan. “I did it!”
This, of course, is my cue to lose control and get carried by the wind right into the roof.
“You’re so lucky you didn’t have your glasses on this time,” Evan says, laughing as she returns them to me. “You’d have broken ‘em for sure.”
I laugh too as I sit next to Evan on the top of the roof. “Don’t tell me Ices can predict the future too.”
“No,” Evan chuckles, “but they can look damn hot on a freezing day.” She ruffles my hair. “Like now. You’ve got the Ice look now.”
I take my phone out and snap a selfie so I can see it for myself. Knowing now why my complexion has gone silvery-blue, I’m considerably less freaked by the sight. I almost want to say it’s an improvement over my normal appearance.
Nevertheless, I delete the selfie, prompting Evan to ask, “Why?”
“Is there any point in me keepin’ this crap on my phone?” I ask.
“To show proof of how good-looking you are as an Ice,” Evan says. “Not that your Dark self isn’t any less easy on the eyes. Hell, I think Dark looks better on you.”
“Is that so? Well, what would you think if I told you I preferred my Ice look?”
“I would think that it’s just your brain naturally yearning for something different,” Evan says, leaning her head against my shoulder. “Which is probably why I prefer you as a Dark. Well, that and the fact that your eyes are so easy to get lost in.”
“Stop it, you’re gonna make me cry!” I’m not kidding - I can feel the tears of joy starting to form, making my eyes sting in the cold. Call me sappy, but I’ve never really felt any reason to be glad for the fact that my eyes are dark brown.
“Just wait until we’re inside before you do that,” Evan suggests. “I wanna see you cry when your eyes are dark again.”
I kiss the top of Evan’s head. “Well, there’s a reason why Angel was able to pull off the slapped-puppy look so well.”
“Exactly,” Evan says. “Hey, before we go in, let’s surprise the others, huh?” She gestures towards the lights of the main-room window.
“Great idea,” I say, taking Evan’s hand and leading her towards the big window. When we get there, I knock on the glass, startling everyone inside for a moment.
Then Henley spots me and points up at me and Evan. As everyone else catches on, we can hear faint cheering noises from the other side of the window.
“Oh shit, paparazzi alert!” Evan cries, pointing at Harris, who’s already got his phone out, poised to take a picture of us. We fly out of view quickly, then touch down again on the back porch.
“That was a fun Six Minutes in Heaven, wasn’t it?” I ask.
“Hell yes,” Evan says, “‘cause it sure felt like longer than that.”
“Think we can risk goin’ in now?” I ask.
“Well, just in case…” Evan opens the door practically into Harris’s face. He pulls his phone up and takes a picture just as Evan kisses my cheek. The result is me looking like I’m trying to squirm away from her. Very embarrassing.
“Some people sure had fun, I see,” Harris says, pocketing his phone before I can take it from him and delete the photographic evidence of Evan’s sign of affection. “By the way, this was the dare I took from Michelle. It was a hell of a lot tamer than I thought it would be.”
“Can we never do Truth or Dare again?” I ask Evan.
She shrugs, laying one hand on my shoulder. “No promises, as long as Adele and Rachel continue to hang around with us.”
We go back to the living room, where we just start carrying on a totally random conversation that veers from one subject to another faster than Barry Allen catching Oliver Queen’s arrow in midair from that one commercial that kept airing in the first few weeks of last summer. I swear, at one point, we’re talking about lava lamps - apparently Harris has a collection of them - and then someone brings up the topic of flight. Specifically, how can Ices fly without wings?
Kevin, Evan and I naturally have no answer for that.
All too soon, it passes ten o’clock, and we decide to turn in for the night - we’re going to be needed as early as eight-thirty tomorrow morning. Henley, it turns out, is going to be staying in our room, in the extra bunk.
“Glad to see your mom was able to make this kind of arrangement at such short notice,” I say as Henley takes out his pj’s from his bag.
“What do you mean?” he asks.
“Well, you said your mom couldn’t find a babysitter, right?” Harris asks, looking down on Henley from his upper bunk.
Henley scoffs. “Yeah. Another lie for the list. Truth is, my mom wanted me to stay here and watch the show. She thought I could do with something to take my mind off things.”
“What things?”
Henley sighs, laying a pair of gray sweats next to his thermal shirt. “I don’t really wanna talk about it.”
Harris drops down to Henley’s level and kneels next to him. “You sure about that? Jason and I can keep your secret, no problem.”
I join the other two and sit on the bed, on Henley’s other side. “Yeah. What he said.”
Henley sighs again. “Okay. I’ll just tell you the basics.”
Harris and I sit back. Henley takes a deep breath and then says, “My cousin Fionna died a few weeks ago. She was my favorite cousin, too, and I was hers. So I was really broken up about it.”
“How’d she die?” Harris asks.
Henley shudders. “That, I really don’t wanna talk about.”
Harris tentatively reaches out and hugs Henley - I can see the little kid is crying silently. My own eyes prickle as the tears well up again. I put my hand on Henley’s shoulder, hoping that helps him feel a bit better.
“I-It was actually my idea to come here,” Henley says, wiping his eyes. “I thought Fionna would’ve wanted me to enjoy myself somehow, even if she weren’t there to share with me.” He adds a short, sharp laugh. “My mom agreed with everything I suggested - except for one thing. She wouldn’t let me into the Ice palace.”
“Why not?”
“‘Cause I’m underage, and I’m not an Ice,” Henley says. To illustrate his second point, he raises his hand and shines a bit of pure white Light towards the door.
“So?” Harris asks. “Are you havin’ fun here? Even with us monstrous teenagers?”
Henley lets out a loud snort of laughter. “Hell yeah. You guys are awesome.”
I smile down at Henley, while at the same time wishing I could’ve brought Jeremy along for the ride. If Henley could enjoy his time here, so could my little brother.
“Thanks, guys,” Henley says, wiping his eyes one more time. “I’m glad you were here to hear that. I mean, if you guys weren’t here, I wouldn’t have had anyone to talk to.”
“Don’t mention it,” Harris says, hugging Henley again.
That night, I sleep surprisingly well. I was afraid the downer note on which the day had ended would contribute to a string of nasty nightmares, but the other, more pleasant experiences help to counteract that possibility.
Sunday goes very well at the palace entrance. There are fewer arrivals to deal with, and even fewer pose any kind of issues at the entrance. In spite of myself, I’m inclined to believe that the whole Scaler threat might have been blown way out of proportion.
Everyone else seems to share this mindset at dinnertime. We eat slowly and casually, not in any rush. The Rising is set to begin at eight, just under two hours away.
“A toast,” Elena says, raising her wine glass. “To the Magi, to the Solstice Rising, and to the eventual defeat of the Scalers!”
“Cheers,” I say, clinking my glass (filled with sparkling cider) with everyone else’s.
“You kids about ready to come to the tent?” Ben asks. “We’ve got all the live feeds piped in there for the big event.”
“Just about,” Michelle says before burping loudly. All us boys laugh, and Evan even snickers a bit, while Adele and Rachel look at Michelle, horror-struck. “Don’t blame me,” Michelle says. “Blame the delicious dinner.”
Ben chuckles, but then stops as the walkie-talkie on his belt starts to buzz. “First Attempt to Third Degree,” a voice squawks out. “Mayday, Third Degree! They’ve cut the power! Over!”
Ben’s face morphs into a look of concern as he answers the message. “Go for Third Degree. Did you just say, ‘Mayday?’ Over.”
“Yes, Mayday,” says First Attempt. “They’re here. The Scalers. They just knocked out the fence, and they’re comin’ up to the palace right now! Over.”
Ben runs to the kitchen and grabs his iPad, swiping the screen. “Oh, shit,” he breathes. He turns the tablet around to show us the screen. It’s split into four quadrants, each one showing the feed from a single security camera.
As we watch, a man in a black hood approaches the camera in the lower-right corner. He takes off his glove, raises his hand, and then the image goes completely black. Within seconds, the remaining three blocks of the screen are blacked out as well, also by Dark power.
“Follow me, kids!” Ben drops the tablet in his haste to leave the room, and he bursts out the door with his Light power at the ready.
“Let’s go,” Elena says, leading us out the door after Ben.