Thanks to Lena, I had spent enough time studying in the last two years to earn a scholarship somewhere I actually wanted to go.
Okay… somewhere not all that far from where she wanted to go.
What can I say? I’m a guy who loves his girl.
I’d go anywhere for Lena Duchannes, whose name rhymes with rain—whose birthmark looks like a Caster moon, whose hair curls when she uses her powers, whose green and gold eyes shine brighter than the sun.
She is the other half of me.
In the last two years, I’d figured something out—something I never would’ve believed before I met a Caster girl and fell in love; before I died fighting for our lives against Lena’s Dark Caster mother, Sarafine; and before I died the second time to save the world and the people I loved, and then fought my way back to them.
Happy endings don’t come cheap.
It isn’t enough to know you’ve found your soul mate, if you believe in that kind of thing. I do, because I have one.
You have to make it happen. You have to will the whole world to bend around you and the person you love. You have to kick fate in the teeth and poke fortune’s eyes out. You have to fight and claw and scrap your way to her side. You can’t let anyone or anything or any reason—supernatural or otherwise—stand in your way.
True love?
Fate?
Your future together?
To get there, it means refusing all the other crap the universe hands you. It means telling the Wheel of Fate to suck it and roll over someone else. It means not settling for any of the other endings you see coming.
It means holding out.
If Amma were here, she would’ve said it was all in the cards. But that was true only if Amma was the one reading them. She taught us that.
The rest of us had to make our own destiny.
Lena and I knew that better than anyone. Ridley and Link, they still had to learn it the hard way.
I guess that’s sort of where this whole story begins.
AFTER
Wesley Lincoln
Wesley Lincoln never could’ve imagined being as whipped as his best friend, Ethan, not for one minute of his life. Not even back when he was a hundred percent Mortal, one bite and a whole quarter Incubus ago.
Things with Ridley weren’t like that. The two of them didn’t say nice things to each other; they fought. They didn’t look for little ways to help each other; they competed in one-liners and dares. They didn’t hold hands and go on errands and hang out with each other’s families. They made out like two lit firecrackers burning up oxygen off the same match.
Then they didn’t speak for weeks at a time.
It was hot.
Stupid, but hot.
When Rid walked into the room, Link got goose bumps. He didn’t even have to be looking at her. Just so long as he knew she was there. It was like he had some kind of radar that went off in the presence of that girl. Right or wrong. Good or bad.
Maybe it was an allergy.
A bad one.
Wait, is that a certain kind of whipped? Is that how it’s supposed to be? Like an infection? Poison oak or something?
Link didn’t mind about Ethan and Lena. They were like Bert and Ernie, and it was sort of sad to see Bert without Ernie. Those two fuzzy little guys belonged together, no matter what his mom had to say about it. And he had become used to having Lena around, especially during the time they had both lost Ethan to the Otherworld. Lena was like a little sister to him. A fuzzy little sister.