I gasped. “Jackson!”
“You smell like honeysuckle. You likin’ ole Jack now?”
“I never stopped liking you. Even when you were warding me away with the power of Catholicism.”
“Can’t help the way I was raised—anything supernatural is supposed to be either a miracle or satanic.”
I rolled my eyes. “And you’re still trying to figure out which I am?”
“Non. I’m trying to figure out if I’m still Catholic.” He grinned that heart-stopping grin.
Gorgeous lips. I wanted them on mine.
Just before he kissed me, he said, “You might be different from what I thought, but I’m goan to protect you anyway. I’m goan to try to accept all this. But you got to accept me.”
“Accept you? What are you talking about?”
“I’m a nineteen-year-old bayou boy. I got a fondness for liquor. I’m goan to say stupid shit. Doan you go getting your feelings hurt at the drop of a hat.”
I laid my palm against his face. “You’re going to get more than your feelings hurt if you stay with us. And it will be my fault because I don’t want to separate from you. You wanted me to let you go.”
“That was before I realized something this week. I wasn’t goan to live a long life even before the apocalypse. Before there were Baggers, cannibals, and plague. Now I figure I’ll spend my limited time left doing what I want.”
“And what do you want?”
His grin deepened. “You’re what I want, and I’d like to be doing you.” He leaned down, pressing his lips to mine.
At that contact, the rain began to pour down at last, pelting the cabin’s tin roof. I hadn’t heard that sound since the night I’d gone to Jack’s home in the bayou.
He drew back. “Christ, your lips are sweet. Douces comme du miel.” Sweet like honey. He yanked off his shirt, revealing his damp chest, the rosary around his neck. I’d missed seeing him like this.
My fingers skimmed over the raised scar on his arm. How I loved that mark. If he hadn’t been getting that wound tended to the night of the Flash, he would’ve died like most everyone else.
His hands landed on my ass, giving it a possessive squeeze. “T ’es pour moi, Evie. You’re mine. Every part of you.” He leaned down, took my lips once more. Between kisses, he said, “I told you once and I’ll tell you again: there is nothing that can happen to you that we can’t get past. Just give me a chance to get to you. Promise me.”
“Jack . . .”
“Promise me. You doan leave me again.”
“I promise.” Staring at his lips, I said, “Would you always come for me?”
He drunkenly murmured, “Chase you like a junkyard dog.”
I laughed. How could I feel this much happiness in our situation? “I’m glad I don’t have to hide this any longer. No more secrets then—for either of us.” Wait. Had his eyes darted? “Do you have something you want to tell me?”
“Non, rien.” No, nothing.
“Are you . . . are you lying to me? Jack, nothing is more important than trust right now. Considering this game, this whole world, we have to be able to depend on each other.”
“I’m not lying. You can trust me alone, Evie,” he said more firmly. “I got no secrets, peekôn. Except for how bad I want you.”
Relieved, I gave him a shaky nod. “I believe you.”
“Good.” He swept me up, cradling my body against his chest to head for the bed. “That night by the pool, you would’ve let me have you if I’d gone slower. I’ll do that now. Nice and slow, me.”
“We can’t be together like that. What if I hurt you with my powers?”
“What a way to go, ma belle.”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I.” He strode toward the bed, dipping his mouth to mine for brief, wicked kisses, blanking my thoughts. “You love me too much to hurt me.”
I didn’t bother denying it.
“Now, hush. We do best when we doan talk.”
Brows raised, I tilted my head. Because he had a point. I leaned up for more of his lips. Our kiss grew deeper, tongues tangling. I’d heard the phrase “drunk from his lips.” I literally was from the moonshine.
There was French kissing, and then there was Cajun French kissing. Spicier, harder, wilder.
That’s how it was with Jackson. Burning out of control. Probably just as destructive as an inferno. And I didn’t care.
He drew back and tossed me on the bed—
The blanket collapsed; I was plummeting into a pit, arms flailing. At the last second, I snagged the edge with my fingertips.
Jack dove for me. He snatched my wrists just before I lost my grip. “Jesus! I’ve got you!”
I could barely hear him. An ear-splitting foghorn sounded from the roof of the cabin.
A signal for this . . . trap?
As Jack lifted me back into the room, I gazed below. Rusted rebar jutted from the ground at least ten feet down. He yanked me against him, cupping the back of my head protectively.
There’d been no mattress; someone had spread a thin layer of foam across a bed frame, then camouflaged it with a bright blanket and pillows.
“Dear God,” I muttered when the horn died down. In my panic and confusion, I thought I heard wolves howling in the distance.
He hugged me tighter until I could feel his every shuddering breath. “I . . . I could’ve killed you.”
Again debatable. But it definitely would’ve hurt. “Wh-who would do this?” I asked, though I knew. That blaring signal had been like a quitting-time horn for a factory—or for a mine.
“Cannibals.” Jack grabbed my clothes, shoved them into my arms. “If this is their trap, they’re goan to come running. We got to go, bébé. Fast.”
11
DAY 257 A.F.
IN CANNIBAL COUNTRY, APPARENTLY
“Why do they call it a downpour,” Finn mused as we climbed in the pitch dark, “as opposed to an uppour?”
The rain came down so hard it drummed our heads, had since we’d fled the cabin three nights ago.
I’d grown up in Louisiana; I knew thunderstorms. I’d never felt rain like this. Why had I wished it would pound down from the sky?
Finn swiped a muddy hand over his face. “For the record, dealing with cannibal crazies on top of Arcana crazies blows goats.” He melodramatically raised his fist to the sky. “Serenity now!”
Matthew piped up. “Cannibal Arcana!”
“Yeah, yeah, thanks for reminding me that some can be both.”
Though midnight had come and gone, we continued to flee, clawing our way uphill, digging into the mud, into the ash I hated. Streams of gushing water sluiced all around our ankles, threatening to trip us with every step. Tree trunks toppled over left and right, pushed down by rivers of runoff.
But now Jack was there to help me through it.
The threat of cannibals had us charging forward into the night. Even the specter of Bagmen hadn’t motivated us to run like this. Yes, Matthew had told me I’d never “known terror” like I would when the rains came.
We were being hunted by people who wanted to eat us—it didn’t get more terrifying than that.
With no stars to guide us and no sun during the day, we couldn’t pinpoint our position, just kept heading south. We hoped.
After that foghorn, we’d all scrambled together outside the barn; even in the midst of our panic, the three other Arcana had noticed that Jack kept my hand clasped tight in his. With his chest bowed proudly, he’d announced, “Evie’s with me now.”
Matthew had tilted his head. “Not Arcana.”
Finn had grinned, and Selena had looked gutted. But she hadn’t said a word then or since, had seemed to stoically accept it.
Now when we came upon a rushing stream, Jack said, “Come on, you.” He scooped me into his arms, hugging me against his chest as he trudged through the knee-deep water.
I was shivering, miserable, would have given anything to be warm and dry.
“We’re goan to get through this, Evie. And just think, at this pace, we’ll be at your grand-mère’s in no time.”
Now that we were officially together, Jack’s attitude had changed. He was even fiercer, even more determined, as if he had something to fight for. For three days we’d been stealing kisses, whispering conversations.
In one, he’d solemnly told me, “After we bring down this game, I’m goan to rebuild Haven for you, ma belle. You see if I doan.” In another, he’d admitted, “By the pool wasn’t our first kiss. When I returned for you after the Flash and you were knocked out in your bed, I’d never seen anything like you, all soft in sleep. I stole a bec doux.” A sweet kiss. “I was gone for you, even then.”
Last night we’d camped for a few hours in the cab of an old logging truck. With Selena on watch, Jack had finally fallen asleep with me in his arms. Drifting off, he’d pressed his lips to my hair, inhaling. In French, he’d murmured, “Honeysuckle. Even now, I could die a happy man.”
Whenever I was freaked out more than usual, he would tease me. Yesterday he’d trailed behind me for long moments. “I meant what I said about you not being human.”
Just when I was about to flare, he’d said, “Evie, that ass of yours—um, um, UM! C’est surhumain.” It’s superhuman.
On the other side of the stream, he set me on my feet, but lingered with his arms around me, resting his chin on my head. “We’re goan to find us a place to hole up, then pick up where we left off.” His voice was husky, sending shivers all over me.
Even amidst so much hardship and fear, I found myself imagining what would’ve happened if the cabin hadn’t been a trap.
Good money said I’d no longer be a virgin. “Jack, I don’t know h-how many more miles I have in me.”
“Just a couple more rises. Then we’ll stop for an hour or two.”
“O-okay.” We pressed on. . . .
The Arcana calls were always abuzz, but a pair had grown louder, even with Jack’s presence.
—Red of tooth and claw!—
—We go now to our bloody business.—
We were used to Fauna’s, but I didn’t know who the second one belonged to. Neither did Selena. We only knew he was male. Somewhere in these forsaken mountains was a boy who might crave our deaths. Could it be the Hierophant?
I’d asked Matthew. His answer: “The water!”
I’d been hearing Death as well, feeling his presence as he spoke directly to me. Once he’d whispered about Jack: —The mortal boy will never understand you. But then, that could be because you’re soon to die.—
Shut up! I’m sick of you!
He’d just laughed.
If Matthew had sent me those dreams of Death to teach me more about him and the game, then I knew I needed to study every detail. In that long-ago contest, other players had been close by the canyon. I recalled that Fauna had controlled lions then, but it was still unclear whether she’d been my ally or my foe. Had Judgment been gloating over my looming demise, circling like a buzzard? Or had he been preparing to attack Death from above—
A coughing fit overtook me. My breaths were heaving so hard, I’d inhaled rain.
Over the pounding shower, Jack told the others, “We need to take a break!”
Despite my dread of cannibals, by this point I thought I’d almost rather make a stand than keep running. I couldn’t release poisonous spores in this kind of weather, but a tornado of thorns could do some damage. If I could manage one. “We can’t run anymore.”
“Figures you’d say that since you’re so shitty at it!” Selena snapped.
Suddenly, Finn, Selena, Matt, and I fell silent, freezing in place. An Arcana call began boiling up in our minds. I slapped my hands over my ears, as if that would help. Then a booming: —RED OF TOOTH AND CLAW!—
Jack raised his bow and yanked me behind him. “What’s goan on here?” His gaze darted. I grabbed Matthew, dragging him close.
“Fauna. She’s coming,” I answered. Would she fight us? She had to be alone—so why would she approach an alliance of four Arcana?
Just as Selena flanked me, raising her own bow, a pretty girl appeared, seeming to materialize from the rain.
She looked Eurasian, with doe-brown eyes that swept up at the corners. A baggy conductor’s hat covered her black hair, and she wore a camouflage coat. Freckles dotted her pale skin. She couldn’t have been more than fourteen or fifteen.
Though she sported no visible weapons, a huge hawk perched on one shoulder—and three enormous black wolves surrounded her protectively, baring their fangs.
Pet wolves in the movies were always majestic; these were the ugliest I’d ever imagined, with patches of fur missing and scars all over. Raised lines crisscrossed their snouts. One was missing an eye. Another limped.
“State your business,” Jack ordered, pointing his crossbow.
Her tableau flashed over her, a girl controlling the gaping mouth of a lion. Then the image was gone.
Finn stared at her, his lips parted. All of his recent illusions began to waver over him in a rush, as if from an involuntary response to the girl. He went invisible—twice—as he mumbled to her, “We b-both have infinity symbols on our cards.”
She frowned at him, then said to the group, “I’m Lark. And we’re in trouble.”
12
“Why shouldn’t I kill you right now?” Selena demanded with her bow aimed at the girl’s face. “Why should we trust anything you have to say?”
“Because I’ve come here as an ally,” she said. “And to prove myself, I’m about to save your asses.”
Selena gave a laugh and drew back farther on her bowstring.
Finn and I gaped at the Archer. “Let her talk!” he said.