Ascendant (24 page)

I hadn’t heard from him since he’d accidentally blurted out the L word. Was he regretting saying it? Was he avoiding me? He’d gotten off the phone quickly enough afterward, as if terrified I’d call him on it. I’d left him two messages in the past two days that he hadn’t yet returned, and I loathed the idea of becoming that needy girlfriend who left strings of messages on his phone.

I dialed his number. After a few rings, it went to voice mail. “Hey, Giovanni. It’s me. It’s just really quiet and boring around here tonight, and I miss you. Give me a call if you get a chance.”

There. That was light and easy. I didn’t sound desperate or pathetic or clingy.

Except, maybe a little too disinterested? Like I only called him when I was bored? I didn’t want him to think that. I was sure that over in New York, there were dozens of cute coeds who found him absolutely fascinating, who wanted Giovanni to whisper sweet Italian nothings in their ears, who would never for a second weigh the pleasures of a video game or the writings of a medieval German nun against even the most casual chat.

Girls who he didn’t have to say he loved over the phone from three thousand miles away.

Did he even mean it? It had kind of slipped out. Not, “Astrid, I love you,” but part of something else. Granted, it had been part of the most beautiful thing that anyone had ever said to me. What did it matter if he’d said the words or not when he so obviously meant them?

Meant them, and then didn’t call me back for days.

Maybe I should call back, make it clear that I really did want to talk to him. Though, that’s what I’d done in my last voice mail.

And where was he, anyway? If you counted back the hours it was—okay, it was about three
P.M
.
He was probably in class with the ringer turned off. I plopped on the bed. Long-distance relationships really sucked. I wondered if he ever sat around like this, counting up the possible and terrifying reasons that I hadn’t returned his messages, or if that kind of worry was of strictly female provenance.

Naturally, because I
returned
his calls! I lived for them. I hated coming back from a visit with the unicorns to find that I’d missed a chance to speak to Giovanni. He never had to spend a minute worrying that I wouldn’t call him back, that I was entertaining some other boy, that I was out doing something really fun without him, and didn’t care. He knew my life. Unicorns, school, bed. How fortunate for him that his girlfriend wasn’t halfway across the world in a city famous for never sleeping. That she was shut up in a sleepy French village, in a remote and lonely château that, except for the clothing options, might as well be an Italian nunnery.

I picked up a controller and cued up the video game where I got to shoot zombies. This would do for passing the time. Besides, there was so much pleasure in killing things that exploded into tiny red pixels instead of actual blood. It made for a nice change.

Sometime later, there was a knock on the door and Brandt poked his head in. He checked out my indecently high score on the screen then whistled. “I’m afraid I’ve created a monster.”

I paused the action. “Hey, what’s up?”

“Nothing. I was going swimming downstairs and wondered if you wanted to come along.”

Swimming. Now there was a novel thought. Isabeau had shown me the indoor pool beneath the ground floor on my first day here, as well as insisting that I purchase a bathing suit on our shopping trip, but I had yet to take advantage of them. “Sure,” I said. “I’ll grab my suit.”

Brandt smiled. “See you down there.”

After he was gone, I changed into the suit I’d bought. It was a plain navy tank suit with a white trim along the neckline, slim straps, and a scooped back that I didn’t realize framed my enormous back scar until I was standing before my bathroom mirror and picking out a towel.

The scar shone, as dark red and shiny as if I’d never taken care of it. Not true. All the hunters worked on their scars, lavishing them with cocoa butter and vitamin E and every other treatment designed to reduce the appearance of scar tissue. Nothing worked. My other scars were small, though. The one on my back was a traffic-stopper.

I loosed the elastic on my hair and shook out my braid, allowing my hair to drop over my back like a curtain. There, that would help.

I wrapped myself in a short white robe, tied the belt around my waist, grabbed a towel, and slipped my feet into an unlaced pair of sneakers. Perhaps I should buy flip-flops next time I was out, that is if Brandt and I were going to make a pool date a regular thing.

No, not a date. A pool rendezvous. No, that was even worse! A pool …
outing
. Or inning, since it was right here in the château.

I started toward the door, but stopped when I heard a buzz from my phone. I unearthed it from my bedcovers and checked the display. A missed call from Giovanni. He must have called back while I’d been changing and I hadn’t heard the phone in the bathroom.

I hesitated, standing there in my suit and wrap, with my towel slung over my arm. If I called him back now, we’d get in a long conversation, and I’d miss the swim. However, I could call him back after the swim. It was much earlier in the States. There’d be plenty of time, and I’d still manage to have some fun tonight.

I dropped the phone to the bed. Let Giovanni be the one to wait and wonder for once.

T
he pool room at the château was tiled and misty with chlorine-scented air. Brandt had left the overhead lights off, so the entire room was lit with a pale blue glow from the pool lights shining up from beneath the water. Some sort of dance music pulsed through the space, competing with the sound of water lapping against the steps. Brandt was swimming laps, his strong arms churning through the water with swift, powerful strokes. Back home, when we’d been dating, I’d actually attended a few of his swim meets. I’d sat in bleachers for hours to watch him swim for five minutes and fifty-four point ninety-one seconds, during which I’d see the occasional arm or leg and a whole lot of splashing. According to the newspapers and our high school’s sports program, Brandt was very good. Hadn’t made it any more fun to watch.

He surfaced near the edge and grinned at me. “Hey there!”

I dropped my towel on a bench and started to untie the belt of my wrap. He pulled himself out of the pool and went to turn down the volume on the stereo. Droplets of water ran in streams over his shoulders and down his bare back. I glanced at his leg, where his alicorn scar stood out against his skin.

He caught me staring. “Yeah. My claim to fame.” He pointed at my arm. “I see you’ve got a few as well.”

I put my hands behind my back and fanned out the base of my hair to make sure my largest scar remained covered. “Professional hazard.”

He smirked. “One of many?”

I blushed, then waited until he dove in the pool to follow him.

“So,” he said, settling into a lazy backstroke, “tell me for real. How are you enjoying working for Isabeau?”

I swam after him. “What do you mean? I love it.”

He looked skeptical.

“I do!” I swept up alongside him. “You have no idea what it was like for me before I came here. Not knowing if I was going to survive from day to day, not knowing if I’d ever even finish high school! I feel like I was in a war and I’ve been pulled out of the hot zone and given a cushy desk job. I love it.”

We’d reached the other side of the pool now, and Brandt grabbed hold of the ledge, then pushed his feet against it, ready to push off. “I guess I never thought of it like that,” he said, and shoved away.

I finished my lap and rushed after him.

“I suppose this is relaxing, comparatively.”

“And luxurious,” I added. “My own room, my own bathroom, my own tutors!”

Brandt laughed as he reached the far end many strokes ahead of me. “You’re the only girl I know, Astrid, who considers more attention from your teachers to be a luxury.” He tugged my hair softly as he went by. “Goody two-shoes.”

I didn’t finish the lap or chase after him, but set my feet down on the bottom of the pool and waved my hands through the water, watching him pull himself effortlessly through lap after lap.

“I like school,” I said with a shrug. “Much better than killing things. Science was always my thing, remember? You had swimming, Phil had volleyball. I had school.”

“Not anymore.” He stopped a few feet away and mimed aiming a bow at me. “You’re ten times more athletic than I am now, Astrid.”

I looked away. “That’s different. It’s magic.”

“And you don’t practice anyway?” He reached forward and squeezed one of my biceps. “These muscles are magic?”

I twisted away, crossing my arms over my chest and spinning in the water until I no longer faced him. “These muscles are gross.”

“Well, I’m jealous of them. I’d need a personal trainer—oh my God.”

The ends of my hair floated in front of me on the surface of the water. My back was completely exposed. Oops.

“Astrid,” he whispered, and then I felt his palm press flat against the scar.

A sensation akin to electric shock shot through the twisted marks everywhere his skin touched mine, and yet, I did not pull away. There was something else there—something familiar.

“What happened to you?”

“What do you think?” I mumbled.

“I’ve never seen an alicorn scar like this.”

I turned my head to cast him a glance over my shoulder. “Yes, well, this is what happens when you get run through. When a kirin decides to skewer you like a human kebab and carry you off like a trophy. This is what happens when you should be dead, immunity to alicorn poisoning or no.” I pushed off from the bottom and swam away from Brandt, away from his touch, away from the look of pity in his eyes.

“Astrid, wait up!” And because he was so very much faster than me, I had barely reached the wall when his arms caged me in on either side. “I didn’t know what happened to you. I’m sorry if I was being flippant about the whole hunter thing. You’re right. Once you’ve been through that, I imagine life here feels really peaceful. And about the scar—I didn’t mean to make you self-conscious about it.”

He held my gaze, his eyes as brightly blue as the pool water glowing all around us.

“It’s all right.” I reached for the wall to steady myself, expecting him to push off for another lap. But he didn’t move.

“It’s hard,” he whispered, so softly I almost didn’t hear him over the tiny waves lapping at the ledge. “To be so close, to have this glimpse of what it is to be a hunter, but never to truly understand… .”

I swallowed. “What do you mean?”

“The things you see, the way you feel them. I can almost touch it. I feel a twinge sometimes, in my leg, when they’re near.”

“Really?” Our legs bumped against each other under the water, but he still didn’t move back.

“Sort of. Like déjà vu, almost. Like a memory you can’t quite reach. A sound you can’t quite hear.”

It was hard for me to hear any sounds at the moment, with the way my blood seemed to be pounding in my ears. Brandt
knew?
He knew what I felt out there in the woods sometimes?

His eyes never left my face, blue and burning. “I’ve never told them that before,” he said. “I couldn’t imagine them understanding. Not like you.”

“Oh,” I replied, for it was the only thing that seemed to fit.

“Because we’ve been through so much together,” he said. “Back at home, with the attack, and how you saved my life. How you
changed
my life. And now, here in France.”

I said nothing, because on that night in the woods back home, both of our lives changed. His for the better; mine for the worse.

“Things are so weird now. We’re so far from home. And the other day, sitting around playing video games with you—it felt like old times. It felt like
home”

I gave him a weak smile. “Yeah, it did.”

“Even though we’re both caught up in this search for the Remedy. In this quest to change the world.”

When he put it like that, my doubts about the captive einhorns melted away. We were working for the greater good. Had the einhorns been free they’d be nothing more than a target for my arrows. Here at the château, their suffering might lead to a major medical breakthrough. To saving thousands of people’s lives.

“And I wonder,” he went on. “With your boyfriend …”

I steeled myself for whatever he was about to say. “What about him?” I asked.

“Nothing.” He looked down, his eyelashes shading his gorgeous eyes.

“Liar.” It came out like a challenge.

A challenge Brandt was more than willing to take. His elbows bent and he leaned in, pressing me between his body and the pool ledge. “I wonder”—he breathed in my ear—”if he can possibly understand you the way I do.”

I caught my breath, pinned there with him, with the sensation of his flesh against mine like the touch of a brand.