He hands me a sprinkle-covered Pop-Tart as he chews. “I love these. But for the record, I like sugar cereal for breakfast. Boo Berry is my favorite. But I like Trix too. The new ones. With marshmallows. In fact, just get all the marshmallow cereal. You can’t go wrong with marshmallow cereal.”
And there he is. The man I met yesterday. “You’re kinda dumb, you know that?” But I’m smiling when I say it.
He just smiles back. Nods. Then, with mouth full, says, “Grant always kept a candy drawer for me too. Up in the cathedral kitchen. So next time you go shopping, get some candy.”
“Should I pick up the family bag of Laffy Taffy and jawbreakers? Or the fun-sized Twix and Snickers?”
He points at me with his Pop-Tart. “I would appreciate all of those, thank you.”
“I am not eating this Pop-Tart. I’m not hungry. So if you want mine—”
He grabs it. “Thanks.”
Then we both sigh and look at the door. But we’re really looking past it. At the cemetery. I really don’t want to go inside one of those tombs, but if this will get rid of Russ Roth, I will do it. He does weird things to me. I don’t like it. He makes me feel very out of control.
“Shall we go then?” I ask.
Pell nods and shoves the rest of his breakfast into his mouth.
We walk up the hill side by side, but the last time we did this, he was holding my hand. And it’s hard not to compare yesterday to today.
I change the subject instead of dwelling on it. “Do you think Tomas is around?”
“Probably not,” Pell answers. “He needs time to recover from that whole fire-breathing scene. I’ve never seen him do that before.”
“Never?”
“No. I mean, he and I haven’t been hanging out much for the past thousand years, so I’m no Tomas expert or anything. But just appearing in that human body takes a lot out of him.”
“Should we check on him?”
We’re just at the top of the hill and here Pell pauses. He actually turns and looks down the hill. And at first, I think he’s looking at the caretaker cottage, but then I realize he’s looking at the lake out beyond the walls. He answers my question, but it’s done absently. “We’ll see him soon enough, but we can’t help him when he’s like this. He’s… beyond our help when he’s in his base form. When he’s not around, it’s best to forget about him until he comes back.”
“What if he’s hurt?”
“Nothing we can do. And he can’t die, so…” Pell shrugs. Then he points towards the middle of the cemetery. “Tarq’s tomb is over there.” We begin walking again. “I need to show you the greenhouse anyway. You’re gonna need to take care of it. There’s always been plenty of sunshine coming through the roof, but there is an elaborate aqueduct system for watering that needs watching.”
I don’t really have anything to say to that, so I say nothing.
It’s all very… tedious. Everything about yesterday was easy, but today there is a strain between us.
He’s having regrets, I can tell. He’s thinking, What the hell was I smoking yesterday? Except all the sex happened before we started smoking shit.
This makes me feel worse.
But he does pull open the cathedral door for me, and then wave me through first. And I am reminded about a stray thought I had that first day I came here. When I saw Tomas on the second-story balcony and I thought he was a hot guy with manners.
“What’s so funny?”
“I was thinking about Tomas.”
“Oh.” Pell nods, then looks straight ahead again with his too-serious face.
“Not like that,” I say quickly. “I mean—” I stop and sigh. “Pell?”
He turns to me.
“What’s going on?”
“What do you mean?”
“You regret yesterday, don’t you?”
“No. Not at all. Why?” He makes a face at me. “Do you?”
“You’re acting weird. Why are you acting weird?”
“You didn’t answer my question. Do you regret yesterday?”
I shake my head slowly, then look up the stairs instead of him. “No. But everything feels off.” Now I look back at him. “And I don’t like it. We’re a team, right?”
He nods. Then he blows out a breath and his words come rushing out. “OK. I’m gonna tell you something. This book, Pie.” He pauses and shakes his head again. “There is nothing in there that can break our curse. But this is a powerful book with powerful spells. And one of them is a banishment spell. But banishment uses very negative energy. It’s a dark spell and it has a price.”
“What kind of price? And whose book is this?”
“The price is always a sacrifice.”
“Like a… virgin?”
He laughs. And I’m so relieved to see this laughing Pell, my whole body relaxes. “What is it with you and virgins?”
“Well, what kind of sacrifice are they looking for? I think this is important, don’t you?”