The Light of the World, page 31
You are out of cycle. The words reechoed in Eva’s mind.
Liv’s entire body seemed to shake with exhaustion. The explanation, Eva knew, was not going to be enough, not unless she pushed Liv for answers. “You are… oddly, not supposed to be a part of it.” Liv brushed her bangs from her eyes. “At all.”
Eva didn’t understand what Liv meant, but this was reminding her of the dreams she’d had about the faceless girl. She’d said Eva was out of cycle. What did that even mean? Why was that girl so dead-set on warning Eva off Liv and the light of the world?
“How do you mean?” she asked.
Liv crossed to stand before Eva, her hands hanging limply at her sides. She knelt down, steadying herself on the chair. “You are an anomaly in the pattern, Eva.” She pressed her hands onto Eva’s knee, her fingers warm and her smile intriguing and inviting. “The guardian has one soul across the whole of the cycle. I share with Catherine Monroe the same as I share with all the others before me. Guardians have their one person, the only one whom they can tell about the light of the world. That soul repeats the same cycle of death and birth, same as the guardian’s.” Liv smiled and tapped Eva on her nose with her finger, her eyes twinkling with amusement. “You, my dear Eva, are an anomaly.”
“Why?” Eva asked. She was still caught up on the feeling of warmth that came with Liv’s confessing this to her.
“Because I was never supposed to fall for you, Eva.” Liv bit her lip. “There is a matched set. A guardian and their one, they are the two sides of the same coin. In the eyes of the light, that one is the only person a guardian can love. Because Mary lived such a long life, I couldn’t… well, fall in love. And the other guardians who came between me and Wren, they couldn’t either.” She shook her head, flustered.
Eva stared blankly at her, not really following.
Liv tried again, her fingers warm on Eva’s forearm. “Eva, I went to your grandmother’s funeral because she was the one who possessed the soul I was supposed to fall in love with. Guardians and their counterparts die together most of the time, murdered by seekers. Wren did everything in her power to keep Mary safe, and Mary lived a long life because of her sacrifice. Mary should have died with Wren and her soul should have been reborn, over and over as Wren’s was. I don’t think it was though. I knew as soon as I saw the um… the urn, there was this sense of finality about it. I don’t know.”
“So where’s Mary’s soul now?” Eva frowned.
Liv shrugged. “I suspect that in living so long, Mary broke the bond forever, leaving me free to fall in love as I choose. And I choose you. My anomaly. The one I was never supposed to fall in love with at all.”
“You love me?” Eva faltered. She wasn’t sure she was ready for that.
“I—I won’t deny what this is. My fate was pre-determined, but everything’s all out of whack now. Your grandmother lived long enough to throw off the cycle.”
“Is that what that… thing was talking about?” Eva asked. She thought of the creature made out of shadow and blackness that had latched onto Theo and had taken over his mind. “I kept dreaming about a girl with no face telling me not to seek the light of the world because I was out of cycle.”
“I’m not surprised.” Liv pushed herself to her feet. She shoved her hands into her pockets and shrugged. “The guardian is not supposed to possess free will. I’m not supposed to be able to make a choice like that. Wait. The shadow said it, too?” When Eva nodded, she continued, “Ugh, I wasn’t paying attention at all. Too busy trying to save Theo. But I’d assume so.”
Eva blinked, realization dawning on her face. “So… there’s like one person that the guardian can tell, and it shouldn’t be me.”
“But it is you. I was able to tell you,” Liv pointed out. “Which shouldn’t be possible, but it is.” She looked at Eva sideways for a moment. “The shadow is a creature of habit. All the seekers are. When Theo found his way down there the first time, I’m sure his intent truly was to simply explore and maybe see if there was any proof of who Wren was and then get on with life. I don’t think that he intended at the time to deceive us. But he had the belief, you know? That’s all they need to latch onto someone.”
“It’s strange to think of Theo’s belief as a bad thing,” Eva said. She didn’t understand why it was considered such a bad thing in the first place. Theo believed in the light of the world with every aspect of his being, as had Mary. He had never witnessed how terrible a power it truly was. Now, though, he knew better than most.
“The shadows got into him, and then he just… I don’t know, they latched onto his belief and let it consume him. That’s why he stole from you; he’d never do something like that normally, Eva.”
“I know,” Eva replied. She tried not to think of what Theo had looked like that morning before she’d left the hospital, lying still on a stark white hospital bed. They weren’t sure if he would ever wake up. The damage to his head had been so severe.
Taking a deep breath, Eva tried to figure out how to ask the one question that she was afraid to ask. Was Liv was going to disappear someday like Wren had, leaving Eva to spend the rest of her life heartbroken because of it? She didn’t want that fate, and she wouldn’t accept it.
“Is there another soul for you?” she asked quietly. “Another person you could tell the truth to now that my Gran is dead?”
Liv sighed and nudged Eva’s good arm off the arm of the chair. She perched on it, her back warm on Eva’s shoulder. “Honestly? I don’t know.” She looked down at Eva then, her eyes strangely distant and unfocused. “The guardian is supposed to die when the seal is opened, Eva. I’m not supposed to be alive…”
Liv was supposed to have died? But she was here, warm against Eva. “Are all guardians supposed to?”
“Die on the seal? After a fashion, yes. Living long enough to see it open and the shadows threatening to jump into this world and surviving, is something of a novelty for us.” Liv shrugged. “Before, we were never so lucky.”
“Wren died that way.”
“Yes,” Liv replied shortly. “And the others who came before her and after her. A guardian is only as good as her ability to keep things safe and secret. I let a shadow out. I let it attack a person that I care a great deal for.” She shook her head. “I failed at being a guardian.” She held up the necklace, which glinted in the light that spilled from the windows.
Eva smiled. “I don’t think you did, Liv.”
“Why not?” Liv sighed. “I certainly mucked this up.”
“No…” Eva started, reaching out and touching Liv’s thigh. “I think you finally figured out something that generations of guardians before you didn’t. You were able to save everyone. You weren’t trapped in a cycle of love and loss. I guess because of me.”
Liv shook her head, her expression darkening. “Theo’s still in the hospital, you got hurt… I really screwed it up.”
It would be easy to lie to Liv, to tell her that Theo would be okay in time. Eva didn’t know that he would be, or that he’d ever be truly all right again. He’d seen things; he’d done things that no man should ever do to another person. Eva hated that he’d been the one to hurt her, and that Liv had been powerless to stop it.
“You’re still the guardian, Liv,” Eva said quietly. “And you saved us all. I’m sure that Al can’t thank you enough for making sure that his dad got out of there alive. I know I can’t, either.”
Liv looked down at Eva’s hand on her thigh and set her own on top of it. She hesitated for a moment before curling her fingers around Eva’s. Her hand was hot and sweaty, and Eva wondered why she was nervous.
“Thank you,” Liv said at length. She turned to look at Eva then, and her eyes were shining with everything that she didn’t seem to be able to put into words. She leaned down, and pressed her lips gently to the top of Eva’s head. Eva felt her cheeks redden as a warm feeling arched high across the bridge of her nose and across her temples. She pulled away, her fingers gripping Eva’s fingers tightly. “I want to do this with you, Eva. I don’t want to live for something that can never happen.”
They truly knew what it meant to live in longing for love. Her grandmother had carried a terrible burden, and they’d found a way to give her peace at last. Pride filled Eva at their accomplishment. Perhaps now, in that cemetery out on the island, her grandmother would finally be able to rest.
“I’d like that too,” Eva replied.
Liv slid off the arm of the chair and pressed her lips to Eva’s. She was careful not to jostle her shoulder, and her lips were warm and tender. There was a smile in that kiss, and Eva knew she was smiling back at her. Liv tasted like cigarettes and mint gum, and Eva kissed her with all of her heart, rewriting what was set in stone.
Chapter 28
A New Beginning
Theo woke up two weeks later, and he came home a week after that. Eva went over to help Al rearrange the bookstore’s displays on a Monday morning in early December. Mr. Bertelli had cut her hours back until her shoulder was fully healed. He ostensibly did it so Eva would have time to go to physical therapy three days a week, but she could tell he was worried about her.
She liked the freedom the reduced hours offered her, but Eva also needed something to do. She spent her downtime researching city colleges. She wasn’t sure that she wanted to go back, but she felt more ready to entertain the idea than she had been in years. Mary Oglesby had never had the opportunity to go to college, despite the extraordinary life she led. And Eva remembered her grandmother’s quiet acceptance of her own decision to withdraw from college. She’d wanted Eva to get well above anything else.
She could go back to college for her grandmother’s memory. She was in a good mental place now, and she was sure she would do better this time. The pride she knew her grandmother would have felt in her graduating was enough to make her want to finish her degree.
The days had turned bitterly cold. Eva stood shivering and stamping her feet as she waited to cross the street to get to the bookstore. The sky was a cold gray overhead, and the air smelled like snow despite the fact there was none forecast. The bitter cold cut deeply into her bones and made the still-healing wound on her shoulder ache.
Her feet hit the pavement in loud slaps and she winced. There was no one around to hear her disrupting the silence of the mid-morning. The side street was empty.
The bookstore door jangled open. Eva glanced around to see a handful of regulars in their usual spots on the overstuffed armchairs. The door to the back room stood open, and the gloom that usually permeated the far reaches of the shop was chased away by the brilliant early-December sunlight filtering in from the skylights beyond.
Al was leaning against the counter, his laptop open and ear buds trailing out of the headphone jack and up to his ears. He was moving his head along with the music, not really paying attention to Eva as she ambled up to the counter. She tugged her hat and scarf off, scowling as she felt the hair on her forehead lift upward in a burst of static electricity. Al glanced up then, all eyelashes and charmingly amused smile.
“Your hair is sticking up,” he said, tugging his headphones from his ears. The thick beats of something that Eva didn’t recognize could be heard before he hit the space bar on his laptop and they fell silent. He was editing photos again. The very idea of it seemed so absolutely boring and mundane after the excitement of their adventure. She leaned forward and peered over the top of the laptop.
The photos showed the clinical starkness of her hospital room. Liv was sitting by her bedside, her expression closed off and distant. “When did you take these?” Eva asked. She scooted around to the other side of the counter to get a better look.
They were powerfully evocative pictures, taken in black and white and filtered with high contrast. There were no real grays in these, but they didn’t look to be intentionally shot to maximize white-black balance as some photographers tended to prefer. It was an interesting dichotomy.
“I took ’em right after we were allowed to see you in the hospital,” Al explained. He opened a series of pictures that made Eva’s heart ache.
She knew why Al had taken them. Eva’s body lay in a hospital bed with tubes and wires running out of her like some sort of bizarre spider web. It must have been when she was out cold after the surgery. She looked so small and broken in the photograph. Liv was sitting at her bedside, her hand clutched around the blanket. Al had captured the desperation in Liv, and the anguish on her face was clear.
“She was really worried for you, yeah?”
“She was.” Eva agreed. He still didn’t know the full picture. He didn’t know that this was Liv breaking the cycle. Liv was given a chance by the grace of Mary Kessler to fix what was wrong with the light of the world. Liv had stayed with Eva, her one. She didn’t run the way past guardians had—the way Wren had. She stayed by Eva’s side and waited for her because her parents weren’t able to get home until after the surgery had been done.
Eva hated it. She hated everything about how sad Liv looked in this picture, how desperate she seemed sitting alone on that chair. She was doing something monumental. She should be happy, but Eva knew all good things taste bittersweet when they are tinged with loss.
“They’re…” Eva didn’t want to call them wonderful, because they weren’t, not really. They were evocative and heartbreaking, powerful images of what they’d all been through together, but they were not wonderful. It wasn’t the right word and Eva hated that she couldn’t think of what the right one would be. “They’re really good, Al.”
He smiled kindly at her, as if he knew what she was trying to say but was strangely unable to. Eva liked that about him, how easygoing and friendly he was about things that she couldn’t put into words. She knew that someday she would have to stop taking this for granted. For now, though, it seemed all right. A challenge for another, perhaps even a rainier day. “Thanks, E.”
There was a quiet rustling of papers behind them and Liv appeared, a thick volume tucked under one arm and her legal pad held under her chin as she tried to balance three rolled maps in her free hand. Eva took half a step forward and caught the pad, holding it while Liv righted the papers.
“Hey,” she said. She took the legal pad when Eva held it out to her and set it precariously on top of her maps.
“Hi,” Eva replied.
She hadn’t realized how much she missed Liv. The flicker of a smile at the corner of Liv’s lips and the awkward way that she shuffled her feet while a blush blossomed across her high cheekbones was enough to make Eva very aware of how much time they’d been spending together lately.
It hadn’t been a conscious decision that they would, either. After the conversation on the day that she’d come home from the hospital, Eva had told Liv that she hadn’t wanted to rush things. It hadn’t felt right to jump into any sort of a relationship after what they’d been through. They’d just kissed a little and that was nice and good and really rather excellent, if anyone was bothering to ask Eva. Those kisses had become more frequent, and the press of Liv against her was something that Eva never thought she’d miss, waking up in the morning in a cold bed alone.
Still, the long, lingering looks that they shared were getting ridiculous.
“You two are the worst,” Al announced, folding his arms over his chest and scowling at the pair of them. “First it’s angst central over how you can’t ever be together, or whatever, now it’s just awkwardly staring at each other whenever you get a sec.” He made a grand sweeping gesture, as if to shoo them together. “Now, I feel it’s my job to tell you to kiss, goddammit. Kiss all the time.”
Eva grinned shyly at Liv who threw her head back, laughing long and loud and hard. “Been there,” Liv began.
“Done that,” Eva agreed.
They giggled.
Al, for his part, simply groaned loudly and slumped back down onto the stool behind the counter. “The worst…” he reiterated, fiddling with the power cord of his laptop.
It was easy to forget all that they’d been through together in this moment, but the wound still festered for Eva. She needed to speak to Theo to clear the air between them.
She waved to Al, promising to come back up to help him move the displays around later, and drifted toward the back room in Liv’s shadow. They fell into step so seamlessly that it was odd for Eva to be half a step behind. She slipped into the office and tugged her coat from her shoulder gingerly. She slung it over her arm and stood there, not quite sure how to break the ice with Theo.
He was sitting at the table in the back room, empty boxes open before him and his glasses perched on his nose. He looked thin, far thinner than he’d been before their misadventure. The stay in the hospital had taken a great deal out of him. Al was worried that he’d never look healthy again.
They didn’t know why he’d been unconscious for as long as he had, but they had been able to ascertain that he had little memory of what had happened down in the seal room. For that, at least, Eva was grateful. She didn’t think that anyone should have to remember such a desperate struggle for his life. Now that she was closer to him, Eva could see how drawn and worn-out he looked. It was almost alarming how quickly the life had come out of him, and she took a hesitant step forward before he looked up. A smile blossomed across his face and he pushed his chair away. He moved slower, too, Eva could see, as he made his way around the table to clasp her gently on her good shoulder. It was all that she could do not to flinch away under his touch.
“I’m so sorry,” he said quietly.
Eva looked away, biting at her lip. “I know,” she replied. It wasn’t all his fault, it couldn’t be. There was so much more to what had happened than a simple man who had a fervent belief in something that, according to Eva’s world view before meeting him, was not real. The light of the world hadn’t been anything more than a tangential connection that she’d used to get his attention at first, and now it had changed her life forever.
Theo took Eva’s hand when she offered it to him and led her over to sit on one of the chairs that surrounded the table. She sat and he settled into a chair opposite her, his hands resting on his knees. “Al has told me, for the most part, what happened down there.” His brown eyes behind his glasses seemed almost comically large and Eva felt herself smile slowly. “And I truly am sorry, Eva. I had no idea that going down into that place would wreak such havoc on me.”
