I wish I knew what to think. “It felt more like it pulled me out of time.” I struggle to describe the sensation that washed over me when the shadow changed. “Almost as though we stepped into another room.”
“Interesting.” Jesse shoves an arm under his bed and withdraws the tattered notebook from our lunch in the courtyard. The spine falls open easily as he flips it to an empty page and begins to write.
I tilt my head back, briefly closing my eyes. “You never finished your story.”
The scratching of pen against paper pauses. “Well, Iwasinterrupted. Pretty rudely, by the way.”
A reluctant smile cracks the stiff lines of my face. “Sorry. Next time, I’ll wait until you’re done to start screaming.”
“That’s all I ask.”
The smile becomes a grin, and I open one eye to peer at Jesse. “Get on with it, Talbot.”
The notebook balances on Jesse’s knee as he leans against the bed’s footboard, weaving his fingers together behind his head. “Where was I?
“Your mom had just passed. You think she made some kind of deal to bring about your birth.” I open the other eye. “I still don’t understand, though. Why do you think you’re cursed? It sounds like your mom was the cursed one.”
“I don’t think my mom understood the terms of the deal. Curses are like termites. Once it burrows in, you’re hard-pressed to shake it loose.”
A ping on the other side of the room startles a squeak out of me. Jesse glances at his ceiling and sighs, reaching for a bowl layered with a dirty terrycloth towel and sticking it next to the dresser. A drop of water rolls across his ceiling and falls dead center into the bowl.
I chuckle. Jesse shoots me a hard look. “Something funny, Mansour?”
His waspish tone catches me off guard. “Every house in Ward has a bowl on standby for when the roof starts to leak. I was thinking about the ones I put out in our living room yesterday.”
“Oh.” Jesse shakes his head. “Sorry.”
You would know that if you bothered to get to know anything about Ward,I wanted to point out.You wouldn’t feel like you were in a cage with the rest of us looking in on you.
But I say nothing, because we’re not friends, Jesse and me. Even calling us allies is a stretch.
Jesse crosses his arms over his chest, which is admittedly an excellentlook for his biceps. He’s not as built as Alex, but the lean strength in his body manages to exude far more menace.
“My mom’s curse wasn’t as simple as exchanging one life for the other,” Jesse continues abruptly. “I wasn’t born … whole. I had ripped away one soul, and as a result, I was born without one.”
I blink. Wariness creeps over me again, the itchy paranoia that I’m being pranked. “Huh?”
“I don’t have a soul, Mansour.” He offers it without fanfare, the way you might tell someone you’re a pescatarian. “That’s why Miss Diaz stayed possessed after I showed up, even though you said it only possesses people when you’re alone. It’s why it can’t possess me—there’s no soul to attach to.”
A thorn of uncertainty pierces my blooming fury. Jesse might still be a stranger, but I just can’t imagine he would be cruel enough to compose this whole tragic tale about his mom simply to screw with me.
Which would mean he’s telling the truth. Or he believes he is, anyway.
“If you were soulless, wouldn’t you have showed symptoms by now? Symptoms aside from being a cranky loner with no taste in shirts.”
“Symptoms like what? Stalking people in alleys and experimenting on animals?”
“For example.”
Jesse mouth quirks. “I’ll pencil it into the agenda.”
Eventually, our smiles fade, and I swallow. “What does your curse have to do with mine?”
“Equilibrium,” Jesse says softly. “One soul destroyed, one soul saved, and one soul earned.”
He crouches in front of the rocking chair, dark eyes earnest.
“If I break your curse, Mansour, I think I’ll earn my soul.”
