True: An Elixir Novel (6 page)

“This is all your fault,” I say. “
You
did it, and I will never,
never
forgive you.”

Clea and Mom both say things as I walk away, but the tears are coming harder than ever now. I can’t hear them, and I don’t want to see them. I wave them off and run back home, run back to my room and fling myself onto my bed. I pull all my pillows close and curl into a ball around them, squeezing them tight while I cry and cry and cry.

I’ll probably cry forever.

CLEA

“She’s right,” I tell Ben. “It’s my fault Nico’s dead. I sacrificed him to save Sage.”

Ben and I are in the family room. We face each other on the couch, our feet pulled up and our backs against the armrests. He’d found me outside, sitting in the grass after I’d tried to explain to Wanda. I hadn’t made a lot of sense, but once she’d understood that Nico was gone, she hadn’t listened for more. She’d left without another word. She probably believed what Rayna said, that it was my fault.

Within the last seventy-two hours I’ve been shot at, threatened at knifepoint, and pummeled head to toe by flying rocks and branches, but nothing scared me like Rayna’s face when she said I killed Nico. Nothing hurt as badly, either. I think I’d still be sitting out there, wounded in the grass, if it weren’t for Ben. He gathered me under his arm and led me inside to my favorite of the overstuffed gray couches, then draped an afghan over me while he went into the kitchen and made tea. Azteca Fire, mixed with sugar and almond milk, my favorite comfort drink. I clutched the mug in both hands, and only after I’d taken several sips did he ask what happened.

“It’s not your fault Nico’s dead,” Ben says now. “It’s mine.”

“No, it’s not. You can’t blame yourself.”

“Pretty sure I can, seeing as I actively tackled him into a knife.”

“You actively tackled him
away
from killing another man. What happened after that . . . just happened. He fell. It’s my fault he was even there to begin with.”

“How do you figure that?”

“I should have made him stay home with Rayna!” I insist.

“The man’s a house,” Ben says. “You really think you could have stopped him?”

“Why not? You think
you
could have stopped gravity!”

He leans forward to make another point, and I’m set to volley it back . . . when he slumps back into the cushions. “Wow . . . Can we stop fighting about which one of us is more horrible?”

I find a weak smile. “Okay. Is Sage upstairs?”

Ben nods. “Asleep. I didn’t know where you’d want him, so I put him in the guest room.”

“Great. Thanks.”

Neither one of us says anything for a long time. It feels good, though. I’m so down-to-my-bones exhausted, I can’t imagine trying to chat . . . but with Ben I don’t have to. There’s no pressure. Even after everything, I can just sit with him in silence and feel totally at home.

Then I wonder. “Did you ever tell Suzanne about . . .”

I wave my hand in the air. It’s the only way I can think to sum up everything Ben might have told his girlfriend—all about Ben’s past lives, and mine, and how time after time the men with Ben’s soul caused tragedy for me and Sage.

Ben gives a short laugh and shakes his head.
I smile too. I know Suzanne—she works for my mom—and there is no way I can see her handling that kind of conversation.

“Just as well,” he says. “She ended it. You know, after . . .”

Now it’s his turn to drift off, but I know what he means. After the night on the beach, when I threw myself at him. Maybe it should make me uncomfortable that he brings it up, but it doesn’t. I can tell he’s not upset about it—not anymore. He just says it that way because he’s as tired as I am; it would take too much energy to do anything else.

“You okay?”

“Oh yeah. It’s better, actually. Suzanne’s a little bit . . . high-maintenance.”

I nod sympathetically, but a second later we both burst out laughing because Suzanne isn’t just a little high-maintenance, she’s
ridiculously
high-maintenance. But even that isn’t it. Not really. We laugh because it feels so good and light and easy and
normal
, and we both keep going until we’re gasping for air. When I’m completely spent I take a deep breath and let it out in a long sigh . . . at the exact same time Ben does, which starts us laughing all over again.

“Can I tell you something?” Ben says once we
settle down. I expect him to make some kind of joke and I narrow my eyes at him. “I really admire you.”

I scan his face for sarcasm, but there’s none. “Me?” I ask. “For what?

“I admire your strength. Most people, if they faced even a fraction of the stuff you’ve had to deal with, they’d land in a psych ward. But you handle it.”

“Badly.”

“Better than you think.”

Ben has a throw pillow in his lap and twines his fingers in and out of its fringe. The circles under his eyes . . . I’ve seen him pull three all-nighters in a row juggling work and research projects, but I’ve never seen him look this tired. More than tired. He looks worn, like . . .

Like an old soul.

Ben can talk all he wants about how much I’ve had to handle, but he’s dealt with just as much. Nico’s death was the worst. If I were any kind of friend at all, I’d urge him to go on vacation someplace far away, where he could try and forget everything that happened this year. The Elixir is gone; my drama doesn’t have drag him down anymore.

The problem is there’s no one else I can ask.

“I’m hoping you can do me a favor,” I say.

“You want me to do some research and find out what’s going on with Sage.”

It’s exactly what I want, but now I can’t say it. I can’t drag him into this any deeper.

“No,” I say. “Forget I mentioned it. You’ve done enough.”

“Stop. Of course I’ll help you. We’re friends.”

He looks at me meaningfully, and I hear what he
doesn’t
say: that all the confusion about our relationship is in the past. We’re friends. That’s all, and that’s everything.”

“Thank you,” I say.

“Happy to do it. I figure I’ll start with the library at Yale. They have an ancient text collection that’s pretty extensive. The content is all over the place, but you can find some incredible things if you know where to look.”

“And you know where to look?”

“I do.”

He starts to say something else, but cuts himself off with a yawn that lasts forever. “I think maybe I’d better take off,” he says instead. “I’ll call you tomorrow.”

“Good night. Thanks again.”

I watch until he leaves, then I go up to the spare room, where Sage lies tangled in the covers. There’s a pen and small steno notebook on the night table, a Post-it stuck on the cover. I pick it up and see Ben’s scrawl.

Pls write down anything unusual.

Of course. He knew I’d ask for his help, and he knew he’d come through for me.
Anything unusual
, though . . . I could fill the entire notebook. Maybe I should. Maybe if I write everything out, I could give it to Rayna and explain.

I messed up so badly with her. As I wash up and get changed, I run through the whole awful conversation. I should have handled it differently . . . but how? What was I going to do, just let her see Sage without explaining? Wouldn’t it be worse if she thought she had Nico back, actually saw him in front of her, and
then
found out the truth?

I don’t know. I can’t tell her in writing, though. That wouldn’t be fair. I have to talk to her, face-to-face. Just not now. It’s one in the morning. I’ll wait until tomorrow.

Even asleep, Sage looks like himself. Rayna once told me Nico sprawls when he sleeps, every limb splayed out in all directions. Not Sage. He’s
coiled, tensed, ready to leap into action. His soul calls out to me, and I’m dying to crawl into bed next to him, but I keep seeing him through Rayna’s eyes. I feel so guilty, like I deserve to be punished. I sentence myself to a night alone and pad back to my room for a long night of dreams in which I have the same horrible conversation with Rayna, again and again.

The second I wake up, I call her. “Hey,” I tell her voice mail. “I know you hate me right now, and that’s okay. I just . . . I really need to talk to you. Rayna, please call me. I need to explain some things to you. Please. I love you.”

This is so hard. I have no idea how to make this okay, but every minute she doesn’t know the whole truth makes me feel like I’m lying to her. I text and e-mail her.

“AAAAAIIIIIIEEEEEE!!!!!!”

I jump up and race downstairs, hoping desperately that our housekeeper, Piri, saw a mouse, or a spider, or someone crossing the threshold without touching the jamb to discharge evil spirits . . . anything except Sage. The last thing in the universe I need is for Piri to tell Rayna she saw her boyfriend. It would be a complete dis—

Crap.

Piri stands in the entranceway to the kitchen, frozen. Her shopping bags dangle from the ends of her fingertips as she stares in mute horror at Sage, who hums to himself as he pulls a skillet out of the oven. He’s wearing Piri’s
ASK ME ABOUT MY SAUSAGE
apron, which Dad found in Hungary and thought was so funny he bought it for her, despite the fact that it made no sense on a woman.

The minute Piri sees me and knows she has an audience, she drops her shopping bags. They stay upright, which is nowhere near dramatic enough for her, so she taps one with her foot until it topples and spills apples, squash, and zucchini across the room. Sage has to have seen it happen, but he ignores it.

“I made breakfast!” he crows, and tilts the skillet so I can see inside. “Shrimp and asparagus frittata with parmesan!”

Piri points a bony finger at him, and her mouth curls in disgust. “You!”

My heart pounds. With old-world superstitious certainty, Piri always knew there was something different about Sage. Can she tell it’s really him inside Nico’s body?

She stalks to him and peers into the skillet with
such disdain I’m sure she’s going to spit in it. “You went through my kitchen. You used my parmesan.”

I almost cry, I’m so relieved. Let her hate Sage for violating her cheese. I’m cool with that.

“I did,” Sage says. “And if you’d like to join us, I think you’ll be very pleased with the results.”

Piri’s eyes squint, and I know I have to get Sage out of the room as soon as possible. Even if she doesn’t suspect anything yet, she will soon. The real Nico would be falling all over himself to apologize, bowing and scraping until he won back Piri’s approval. Sage . . . not so much.

“Smells good, right?” he says.

Note to self: When a man takes over someone else’s body, probably best to brief that man on what the previous resident was like.

Then again, Sage trying to play Nico would probably be an even worse disaster.

“Why are you here,” Piri asks, “without your girlfriend?”

His eyes shoot toward me. No. Bad.

“
Because
,” I say brightly, “
Nico
wants to make
Rayna
a special meal, and he’s practicing to make sure he gets it right.”

Piri sniffs the air, a human lie detector. She glares up at Sage, her hands on her hips. “No
more cooking in my kitchen. You want eggs? I’ll make you eggs.”

She reaches for the pan, but Sage sweeps it out of the way. “I’m good, thanks. These are fine.”

Piri’s face turns beet red as Sage flips the frittata onto a plate, then sweeps into the dining room, which I can see he’s already set with our plates and a huge pot of tea. “You coming, Clea?”

“In a sec.”

I bend close to Piri. “Sorry about Nico. He’s not himself. I think he and Rayna are going through a little rough patch.”

“Hmmm.”

“He really wants to make it up to her with a surprise. So when you see her, please don’t say anything about this. You probably shouldn’t say anything to Wanda, either. She’s not so great at keeping secrets.”

“Hmmm.”

Piri’s mouth is a thin straight line, and she won’t stop glaring into the dining room at Sage. The best thing I can do is get him out of her sight.

“Breakfast looks great,” I say as I walk into the dining room. Behind me, I hear Piri mutter in Hungarian and make spitting noises. I lower my voice. “Maybe we should take it upstairs.”

“Why? I have the table all laid out.”

“Just . . . trust me. Please.” I already have our plates and utensils in my hands and am on my way out of the room. Sage follows with the teapot. “It’s only until I talk to Rayna,” I add when we’re out of earshot. “I don’t want Piri saying anything to her, so the less she sees of you the better.”

Sage follows me into my room and I lock the door behind us, then spread a blanket on the floor. I arrange our plates on it. “Like a picnic. It’s good, right?”

“It’s perfect,” Sage says.

But he’s not looking at breakfast, he’s looking at me. He moves closer, shrinking the distance between us, and my heart thuds in my chest. I’ve been in a scattered frenzy all morning, but now the whole world shrinks down to only me and Sage. When he reaches out and cups my cheek in his hand, I close my eyes to savor his touch.