myself once more, I struggle to inhale a full breath. My lungs are deflated, like a bagpipe with no wind. I open my eyes to a prism of bleeding colors in the bright sunlight, and I close them again. I’m conscious enough to understand that someone is carrying me—Kyon. I’m jostled and bumped against his chest as he runs with me in his arms. The light that shows red through my eyelids suddenly dims, and I hear his shoes clap against the stone floor.
He lays me on a soft mattress. We’re now in our bedroom. The next thing I feel is a hard slap to my cheek. I open my eyes and see him above me. Lifting my hand to my swelling face, I groan, “Yeah, I felt that.”
“You’re back,” he says. He exhales in relief. He gazes down at me like he’s glad to see me.
“Worried, were you?” My voice is gravelly as I quake with cold. I feel frozen from the inside out.
“You have to gain some control over your ability, Kricket, or it will kill you.” He’s sort of handsome when he’s concerned, I think begrudgingly. He gathers the blanket on the bed and tosses it over me, covering my trembling limbs.
“I’ll work on it if you agree to stop hitting me,” I say, rubbing my stinging cheek. My skin is freezing and I have vanilla ice cream breath. There is something in my mouth. I spit it out into my hand. Looking in my palm, I find a sliver of a vanilla bean, only it must be the Etharian version because it’s the size of a coffee bean. I let it fall into the folds of the blanket.
“I was told that the taste of vanilla would sometimes bring your mother back from the future,” Kyon explains. He picks it up and throws it outside onto the patio.
“So you shoved a bean in my mouth?”
“I’ve been carrying them with me since last night. I thought it might help bring you back. Did it?” he asks.
“I don’t know,” I reply honestly. I’m starting to thaw. “I liked it better than the slap.”
He flops on the bed next to me, and we both lie shoulder to shoulder looking up as the waning sunlight moves across the ceiling. My teeth stop chattering. I glance at him; his shirt is wet with sweat.
“Did you carry me all the way back from the gazebo in the woods?”
“Yes, and you weigh a ton,” he lies. “I’ll have to stop feeding you pancakes.”
I study his cameo-perfect profile. His blond hair covers mine. “What happened?”
“You’re asking me? I’m not the one who just came back from the future.”
“You found me on the ground in the gazebo?”
“Yes. It will be dark soon. You should’ve been back sooner. I went looking for you.”
“Were you worried?” I ask with a frown. “I thought you said we’re safe here from attack.”
“A lot of things can happen here. There are other ways to get hurt.”
“Oh.” I shrug that off. “I can take care of myself.”
“Clearly,” he scoffs, gesturing in my direction.
“I’m all right,” I murmur.
“A few more moments away from your body and you wouldn’t have been. I tried everything I knew to get you to come back.”
“Clearly. The bean was genius,” I tease him.
“You were gone a long time. You must have seen something very important.”
“I didn’t see anything,” I lie.
“And I didn’t just hit you.”
I need to change the subject. I turn toward him, drawing my legs up. “Why do you hate your dad?”
He shows no emotion as he says, “You didn’t seem to like him much, either.”
My laughter is hollow. “I tend not to like people who want to kill me. It’s this rule I have.”
“He wants to kill me too. He wants to kill anything he can’t control.”
“He can’t control you?” I ask.
“Not anymore. Not for a very long time.”
“So we’re allies in that.”
“In what? In staying alive?” he asks with a small smile.
“Yes,” I say softly.
“If you’d like,” he replies.
“I’d much rather go home.”
“You are home.”
I turn away from him and look up at the ceiling once more. “That’s funny—this doesn’t look anything like my apartment in Chicago.”
“You’ve outgrown Chicago,” Kyon replies. He leans over and kisses me quickly on the cheek. He rolls to the edge of the bed and stands. Peeling off his damp shirt, he tosses it on a nearby chair. He turns to me, and I get an eyeful of his ridiculous physique. He looks fake—someone had to have airbrushed his