better.” I went around the back of the car and opened the hatchback, digging into the bags from Tobias.
Simon followed me. “Hey.” He touched my arm, and I turned to face him. My friend looked worried.
“I’m fine, Simon. I mean, I don’t feel great, but I can do this.”
“I would never say that you can’t,” he said in a low voice. “But I’m going to ask you if you should.” He took one step closer to me, his hand rising to my cheek, though he stopped short of touching the bruise there. “You’re hurt.”
“It’s nothing—”
He just cocked an eyebrow. “You’re hurt where we can’t see it, Lex.”
That brought me up short. “What did Quinn say to you?” I demanded.
Simon ignored the question. “A thousand ghosts, packed into a small space. What happens if you lose your shit?”
I inched closer to him, so we were toe to toe. “Don’t. Push. Me.”
I thought he would shout at me—I would almost welcome it, because I was a lot less scared of arguing with Simon than I was of facing the Unsettled. But he slowly reached his hand up and tucked a strand of hair behind my ear, his thumb grazing my cheek. “He told me you would say that,” he said softly. “He said you would get mad and yell at me. He made me promise I would try anyway.”
My breath stopped.
“He loves you so much,” Simon told me, and there was the tiniest hitch in his voice.
Then I got it.
Simon loved me too.
I opened my mouth, and Simon shook his head hard. “Don’t say it,” he mumbled, looking away from me. “If you say it, then it’s real.”
“Simon . . .” I didn’t know what to do. I had known forever that there was a certain attraction between us, an undercurrent we didn’t talk about, but this was different. “Why?” I blurted. “You’re not . . .”
He gave me a tiny, sad smile. “I’m not what? A vampire? A badass?”
“Broken,” I whispered.
His eyes widened. “You think—”
Behind him, the front door swung open, and Lily and Tobias started through the doorway, Lily turning her head to say something to the werewolf.
Simon shook his head, suddenly very interested in studying the tree line. “It’ll pass,” he said in a low voice, so only I would hear. “Quinn’s my best friend. He’s a vampire, and you’re going to live forever; it’s perfect.”
“I’m not going to live forever,” I said weakly, swiping my eyes with the heel of my hand. “I die all the time.”
He let out a chuff of laughter, and Lily and Tobias were coming down the stairs. “But not tonight, okay?” Simon said seriously. “I promised Quinn.”
I nodded.
“What are you guys talking about?” Lily asked, closing the distance between us.
“Just going over the plan,” Simon told her, and he turned away from me.
Simon drove, with Lily navigating with her phone. Tobias and I sat in the back seat, where he was cheerfully regaling me with his adventure at the army surplus store. I was so preoccupied that I barely listened. With the new obsidian protecting me from psychic assault, I wasn’t paying attention to the remnants outside the car. My thoughts spun around Simon and Odessa and Becca, and my mother’s bloodstone. I felt unmoored without it.
“Lex,” Lily said eventually. I looked up at the sound of warning in her voice.
“What?” I asked, but I heard the thunder even before she pointed at the sky. A few seconds later a bolt of lightning lit up the night.
“Hell of a coincidence,” I muttered, looking at the weather.
“I don’t think it is,” Lily said.
“The coven did this?” Tobias said in a near-squeak. “They can control the weather?”
“Control, no. But if a storm was nearby, or the pressure was building for a storm tomorrow, they could have nudged it along.”
“Shit.”
“So we have to crawl through a Civil War cemetery, at night, during a storm?” Tobias said in a small voice.
I took a deep breath. My body felt like garbage and my mind was twisted into knots, but Tobias needed me to sound in charge. “We do, buddy. Sorry about that. If it helps, though, I can promise no ghosts are going to get you.” I turned my head to smile at him. “I won’t let ’em.”
He reached over, and I took his hand and squeezed it. Come on, Lex, I told myself.
By the time we arrived at the bottom of the city cemetery, a light, misting rain had started to fall, punctuated with lightning.
I did some