Shift (3 page)

A single tear slipped out of my eye, rolling over my temple like hot wax down a candlestick. Logan caught it.

“Hey, look.” He held up his wet fingertip. “I finally wiped away your tear.”

I smiled despite my doubt. “Thank you.”

“It’s the least I can do, considering I cause most of them.”

The sadness in his eyes stabbed at my heart. The twitch in his jaw twisted the knife.

I pushed him onto his back and kissed him hard, my hair falling in dark curtains around his face.

Groaning deep in his throat, Logan slid his hands down my back and over my hips—hands that were strong and solid for the first time in five months.

“Don’t make us stop,” I pleaded. “I don’t care what happens later. I want to be with you now.”

“Now,” he echoed.

When our clothes were gone, Logan coaxed me back on top of him. “It’ll hurt less this way. I wish I’d known that the first time. Then—”

He cut himself off, and as we stared into each other’s eyes, we silently filled in the rest.

If it had hurt less the first time, then I wouldn’t have made him stop. Then on his birthday he wouldn’t have been so nervous and gotten so drunk, and then I wouldn’t have yelled at him for almost passing out, and then he wouldn’t have taken that cocaine to wake himself up for sex.

And then he never would have died.

I closed my eyes. “It doesn’t matter now.”

“Yeah. Let’s pretend we believe that.”

I kissed him softly, ready for this at last.

Suddenly my face hit the pillow, crushing my nose against the warm sheet. I turned my head and opened my eyes.

I was surrounded by violet.

I shoved myself up and saw Logan lying beneath me, but he might as well have been invisible.

“Aura, what happened?” He grasped for my arm, but his hand went right through me. He gaped at his body, which was clothed again in his baggy shorts and open shirt. “Oh God. No.”

“Logan?” I clawed at him. “Logan, come back.”

“I don’t know how!”

I stuck out my trembling hand. “Spider-swear, like before.”

He slid his fingers between mine.

“Spider-swear,” we said together, but our hands passed through each other like they were made of air.

Like Logan was made of air.

“No …” I jammed my hands against my eyes. “Why?”

“I don’t know.” He rolled off the bed. “Goddamn it! God-fucking-damn it!” As he paced, the edges of his form started to darken and ripple.

“Logan!” I rushed to block his path, not that I could stop him. “Calm down or you’ll shade again.”

He clutched his hair. “I was alive, Aura.” His voice crackled with static. “And God, you look so beautiful.” He reached for me, then recoiled. His hand was shot through with black lightning.

“Logan, look at me.” I waved my arms, though his shady energy made me dizzy. “Look at me!”

“I can’t look at you!” He turned away and hunched over, covering his face. “I want you so much, it makes it worse.”

I stood helpless as he tried to contain himself. The black streaks zipped over his body, following the lines of his muscles and bones, as if a thousand invisible knives were carving him up.

“Logan, you can fight this. Stay with me. Please.”

For a moment the black lightning zoomed faster, stronger. Then, just when I thought he would disintegrate, the streaks slowed and faded until he was all violet again.

A knock came at my door. “Aura, are you all right?” Aunt Gina called. “I heard you yelling.”

“Shit.” Logan straightened up. “I’ve gotta get out of here.”

“No!” I grabbed my nightshirt from the floor. “If someone else sees you, they might report you to the DMP. Then the Obsidians will trap you in one of their little boxes forever.”

Aunt Gina rattled the doorknob. “Are you on the phone at this hour? Why is your door locked?”

“Just a second!” I called to her as I slipped on my nightshirt, then turned to Logan. “I’ll only tell her you’re a ghost again, none of that other stuff.”

He looked at me from the corner of his eye. “Put on some pants.”

I did as he asked, for his sake as much as my aunt’s. Then I opened the door.

Gina stood with her hands on her hips, her short blond waves flat on one side from bed-head.

I smoothed my own hair, hoping it wasn’t too tousled.

“Logan’s back.”

T
hey call them the loudest band in New York!” Megan shouted over the gut-bending bass and distorted guitars as she accelerated toward another yellow light. “Which makes them the loudest band in the world, right?”

The car hit the intersection a split second before the light turned red. “Yes!” Megan hissed, bobbing her head and pumping her fist. The section of dark red hair not pulled back into her tombstone barrette swung against her cheek.

We weren’t late for school. Megan tended to drive to the tempo of her music—which was always fast. This morning it was her latest discovery, A Place to Bury Strangers. I’d laughed at the name, until I heard ten seconds of the first song and fell in love.

I closed my eyes and let the drum machine’s driving beat and the singer’s dreamy monotone soak my brain. They were loud,
for sure, but not angry. Frustrated, maybe, even defeated.

“I’m definitely getting a copy.” They seemed like the kind of band I’d listen to alone, letting the earbuds trap the noise inside my head. I’d crank up the volume until I couldn’t hear my own thoughts.

“They’re Mickey’s new favorite band.” A slow, ponderous song began, thumping out of the speakers and turning the sunny morning’s mood as gray as fog. Megan lowered the volume with a few taps of her green-lacquered nails, then pulled a stick of gum from the pack on the dashboard shelf. “But I’m not sure he should be listening to this stuff right now. He’s broody enough as it is. You saw him last Saturday at Black Weeds, just sitting at the bar, not dancing, barely looking at the band. Definitely not looking at me.” Her voice curdled with hurt, reciting the details of their latest fight.

I frowned as I checked my makeup in the visor mirror, and not just because of the puffiness under my dark brown eyes. Megan’s words reminded me of the pain Logan had brought his family. More than any of us, his older brother, Mickey, blamed himself for Logan’s death, which had dumped him into a giant vat of self-hatred that threatened to drown Megan, too.

Then after Logan shaded and disappeared, it got worse for all the Keeleys. Not only had their son and brother fallen into what they considered hell—which, according to Logan, turned out to be correct—the entire tragedy had happened in public.

Megan interrupted herself to ask me, “You’re coming to the gig tomorrow night, aren’t you?”

“Of course.” So she wouldn’t see my smile, I looked out the passenger window at a hawk perched on our school’s wrought-iron fence.
I was dying to blurt out the news that would turn everyone’s life right side up again: Logan was back.

But until Aunt Gina made sure Logan was safe, I couldn’t tell Megan, because she’d tell Mickey, whose sudden happiness would make everyone suspicious. The Keeleys would find out tomorrow night anyway, after Mickey and Siobhan’s acoustic show at the Green Derby.

Gina was probably at the courthouse right now, asking a judge for Logan’s order of protection against the Department of Metaphysical Purity. That way, the DMP agents—or “dumpers” as we often called them—couldn’t touch him unless he was close to shading, and even then they’d have to get a warrant.

Megan took a sip from her Lollapalooza water bottle as we pulled into a parking space. “Listen to me, I’m practically hoarse from bitching about Mickey. You must be sick of it.”

I gave her a sympathetic look. “Probably not as sick of it as you are.”

I started to get out of the car, but a horn blasted before my door was open an inch.

“Bitch alert,” I said as a sleek black BMW convertible glided into the space beside us. Becca Goldman glared past me from the driver’s seat.

A surge of loathing gave me the courage to get out of the car instead of cowering like I wanted to.

“Put a leash on your friend, McConnell,” Becca snapped at Megan, ignoring me. “Next time I won’t honk, and you’ll be missing a door.”

“Try it, and you’ll be missing a tooth.” Megan cracked her gum in Becca’s direction.

“Hmph.” Becca tossed her long sable hair in a motion straight out of a shampoo commercial. Then she strutted down the walkway toward the school, followed by her three minions, Hailey Fletcher, Chelsea Barton, and Rachel Howard (Megan and I joked that Becca required her friends to have names with the same number of syllables as hers).

Maybe two minions was more accurate, I thought, as Rachel hung back instead of following the other girls. She was a senior, like them, but we’d been friends since I moved to our Charles Village neighborhood when I was two.

“Hey,” she said, falling into stride with Megan and me. “I heard you and Zach are going out tonight.”

“That’s the plan.”

“Do us all a huge favor and hook up with him? Becca thinks she still has a shot. Maybe she’ll find another obsession if you mark your territory.” When Megan and I laughed, she said, “Okay, that sounds totally vile. But you know what I mean.”

I nodded, but the thought of having dinner with Zachary, much less, um,
marking
him, made me too nervous to answer.

Besides, I had to figure out how I felt about Logan. My gut clenched at the memory of his hands, his body—his real, solid
weight
—against me. This morning when I woke I’d almost thought it was a dream, until I found Logan pacing my living room like a stray tomcat.

We approached the Ridgewood front courtyard, where the sunlight bounced off the water burbling in the fountain. The area was full, as usual, since our school was totally BlackBoxed to keep out ghosts.
Unfortunately, the thin layers of charged obsidian in the walls also blocked cell phone signals.

At the courtyard, Rachel returned to Becca’s entourage, and Megan and I went to join our friends near the fountain.

Zachary stood facing away from us at the center of the small crowd, which seemed to be passing an object around as he told them a story. As usual, he was curbing his native Glasgow accent enough to be understood. But not enough to curb the hotness.

“I stayed on the right side the entire way this time,” he said. “It was a bloody miracle.” His remark was met with laughter and a round of what looked like mock applause.

Jenna Michaels spotted us as we approached. “Aura, Zach has a surprise for you.”

He started at the sound of my name, then grabbed a small card out of Christopher’s hand and slid it into the back pocket of his own jeans.

Zachary turned to me, green eyes clouded with worry, a frown erasing his usual dimples. “Let’s talk for a second, aye?” He led me to the side of the courtyard, where we sat at one end of the slate-topped stone wall.

I wondered what was wrong, and if it involved the DMP again. The agency had followed me ever since they’d figured out I was the first person born after the Shift. And Zachary? He was the last person born before.

But it was no coincidence we’d found each other. Zachary’s dad, Ian, was an agent for the DMP’s British counterpart, MI-X. Exactly a year before our winter solstice births, Ian and my mother each visited
Ireland’s Newgrange passage tomb (an ancient megalith like Stonehenge, but older and cooler). Something cosmically huge happened the morning they were there, something that led to the Shift itself a year later. Zachary and I swore we’d be the first to know what it was.

He curled one leg onto the wall to face me straight on. “You know how you were going to fetch me at six to have dinner before the reception?” He scratched the back of his neck and the soft dark waves of hair that brushed it. “There’s a bit of a change in plans.”

I should have been relieved. Now that Logan was back in my life, I needed time to sort out my feelings for him and Zachary. Still, my stomach sank with disappointment.

Zachary placed a white laminated card on the wall between us. “Instead, I’ll fetch
you
at six.”

I grabbed his driver’s license. “You passed?”

“No, I gave up and had a false one made. See, it says I’m twenty-five, so I’ll save on car insurance, too.”

I examined the birthday on the license—same date and year as mine. I laughed at his joke anyway. “Congratulations!”

“And our dinner destination is now a surprise, since I am in total control of our travels.”

“Ooh. What should I wear?”

“I dunno.” He regarded me from under long, dark lashes. “Something stunning?”

I twisted the strap of my book bag with sweaty fingers. “So is this a real date now?”

His face turned serious. “Do you want it to be?”

As I met his gaze of cautious hope, my own desire and fear
arm-wrestled for my answer. It ended in a draw, so I waffled.

“Didn’t your dad say the DMP would freak out?” The First and the Last, the agency called me and Zachary. They tried to keep us apart so we couldn’t—I don’t know, rupture the space-time continuum or whatever. MI-X was a lot less paranoid.

“Since when do you care what the DMP thinks?” Zachary asked.

“I care if they start chasing us again like they did back in December on our first date. Our last date.”

“Our only date.” He took his license back and slipped it into his wallet. “It wasn’t all bad, was it?”

My face heated at the memory of our one long kiss. “No. It wasn’t.”

“Besides, my father’s doing a good job keeping them out of our lives. We’ll be fine, so long as we don’t do anything reckless, like dance naked in the street.”

The heat spread to my neck, which I started rubbing. How could I go out with Zachary after all that had happened last night? Then again, he’d be leaving when school was out in June. He’d waited patiently for almost three months while I mourned Logan’s shading, and now, just when I’d been ready to move on with my life, Logan had reappeared. Did that mean I had to keep denying my chance to be with Zachary?

“If anything,” he said, “I think the DMP is losing interest in you, since there’s been no sign of—you know.”