surrounded by strangers who love me
(un)strangers made strange
by pain
I felt my fingers twitch, looking for the pen that wasn’t there. I fought the poetry off. It was a new habit. It hurt too much to write now. Three days after Ethan left, the word NO appeared, inked in black Sharpie on my left hand. WORDS appeared on my right.
I hadn’t written a word since, not on paper. Not in my notebook. Not even on my walls. It seemed like forever since I had.
How long had Ethan been gone? Weeks? Months? It was all one long blur, as if time had stopped when he left.
Everything had stopped.
Link stared up at me from where he was sitting on the kitchen floor. When he unfolded his new quarter-Incubus body like that, he took up most of the kitchen. There were arms and legs everywhere, like a praying mantis, only with muscles.
Liv studied her own copy of the puzzle from the table—clipped and taped into her trusty red notebook, covered in her neatly penciled analysis—while John leaned over her shoulder. The way they moved together, you would think it hurt them not to touch.
Unlike Casters and Mortals.
A human and a hybrid Incubus. They don’t know how good they have it. Nothing catches fire when they kiss.
I sighed, resisting the urge to Cast a Discordia on them. We were all here. You would have thought nothing had changed. Only one person was missing.
Which made everything different.
I folded up the morning paper, sinking into the chair next to Liv. “Book of Moons. That’s all it says. I don’t know why I keep reading it. If I read this thing any more times, I’m going to burn a hole in it with my eyes.”
“You can do that?” Link looked interested.
I wriggled my fingers in front of him. “Maybe I can burn more than just paper. So don’t tempt me.”
Liv smiled at me sympathetically. As if the situation called for anything like a smile. “Well then, I suppose we have to think. Those are three rather specific words. So it seems the messages are changing.” She sounded precise and logical, like a British version of Marian, as she always did.
“And?” Link sounded irritated, like he always did lately.
“So what’s going on… over there?” Where Ethan is. Liv didn’t say it. Nobody wanted to. Liv pulled the three crossword puzzles out of her notebook. “At first, it seems like he just wants you to know he is…”
“Alive? Hate to break it to you—” Link said, but John kicked him under the table. Amma dropped a pan behind me, sending it clattering toward where Link sat on the floor. “Oww. You know what I meant.”
“Around,” John corrected him, looking from Amma to me. I nodded, feeling Amma’s hands slip down to rest on my shoulders.
I touched her hand with mine; her fingers curled tightly around it. Neither one of us wanted to let go. Especially now that it was possible Ethan wasn’t gone forever. It had been weeks since Ethan had started sending me messages through The Stars and Stripes. It didn’t matter what they said. They all said the same thing to me.
I’m here.
I’m still here.
You’re not alone.
I wished there was a way I could say it to him.
I squeezed Amma’s fingers harder. I tried to talk to her about it right after I found the first message, but she just muttered something about a fair trade and how it was her mess to sort out. How it was what she aimed to do, sooner or later.
But she didn’t doubt me. Neither did my uncle, not anymore. In fact, Uncle Macon and Amma were the only ones who really believed me. They understood what I was going through, because they had gone through it themselves. I didn’t know if Uncle Macon would ever get over losing Lila. And Amma seemed to be having as hard a time without Ethan as I was. They had seen the proof, too. Uncle Macon was there when I saw Ethan’s crossword for the first time. And Amma had all but seen Ethan standing in the kitchen of Wate’s Landing.
I said it out loud again to everyone, for the tenth time. “Of course he’s around. I told you, he’s going somewhere. He’s got some kind of plan. He’s not just sitting there, waiting in a grave full of dirt. He’s trying to get back to us. I’m sure of it.”
“How sure?” Link asked. “You’re not sure, Lena. Nothin’s sure, except death an’ taxes. And when they said it, I think they were talkin’ more about stayin’ dead, not comin’ back again.”