“Only a little bit,” he assured her.
She moved with intent, and he felt the sideways writhe of her trying to slip away. In a panic, he caught her to him. He wasn’t sure what he meant to do, only that he couldn’t let her leave. Couldn’t let her dream. Not here, with the clock running, running, running and the specter of wrongness still tainting the air between them.
She lay perfectly still in his arms, awash in midnight and in athanasia. Leaning in, he ran the tip of his nose along the bridge of hers.
“Stay here with me,” he said.
“Okay,” she whispered.
Something wordless pulsed through him. Her heart against his chest. His heart beneath his bones. All the impossible, inexorable ways in which he wanted to crawl inside her, the time beating at an impetus.
“Asphodels,” he said, without entirely meaning to. He propped himself onto his forearms, fists curled in the sprawl of her hair. Beneath him, her eyes shot through with confusion.
“What did you say?”
“Asphodels,” he repeated, and hated his voice for cracking. “It’s a perennial flower. Known, famously, for growing in the meadows of the underworld.”
Lane’s eyes narrowed. “Haunted flowers.”
For a haunted girl, he thought but didn’t say. The memory of her eyes flooded black still ebbed at him. “In some stories, Hades crowns Persephone in a garland of asphodels. He knows his Hell isn’t where she wants to be, and so he does whatever he can to make it a little bit more bearable in winter. A little lovelier. So maybe she won’t be so afraid of him in the end.”
Silence rose up to meet them. The only sounds in the house were the distant tick of his mother’s Langston grandfather clock, the muffled rumble of a car going past in the street. Their breath crashing between them.
Slowly, Lane brought a hand to his cheek. He sucked in a breath, willing himself still.
He’d never felt more like a tragedy.
“I guess what I’m saying,” he whispered, “is that I’ve decided asphodels would be far better suited to you than roses.”
Colton had spent the better part of his Monday morning trying to talk Lane out of going to school.
He sat on a stool at the kitchen island and watched her poke at the empty husk of a ripe autumn pomegranate. Her eyes were ringed in shadows, her sweater rumpled. A coffee stain darkened the thin plaid of her skirt. The countertop was jeweled in a spill of red seeds, piled with several haphazard stacks of textbooks. The entire kitchen smelled like espresso.
“You know,” he said, trying another angle, “there are students who skip class when it rains.”
Lane skewered him in a look. “If you have a point to make, then make it.”
“My point,” he said, “is that harboring an ancient entity is a valid reason to take a sick day.”
She slid the pomegranate into the trash, crossing the kitchen to set her dish in the sink. “If my grades drop any lower, I’ll lose my scholarship.”
“It’s just a piece of paper, Wednesday.”
“It’s not,” she countered. “Not to me.”
There was something ferocious in her gaze. Something he knew better than to cross. He knew it was eating at her—waiting around for a solution. Finding nothing. All that time looking for a way to invite something in, he’d never anticipated needing to cast it out. He and Lane spent the weekend holed up in his house, scouring the internet. Poring over books. Reading ancient texts and religious texts and firsthand anecdotes until their vision blurred. Until they fell asleep tangled in his bed.
Until midnight crept in, and she woke.
It happened each night like clockwork. The witching hour arrived and the beast stirred beneath Delaney’s bones. She sat up in bed, her eyes strange, her smile a wholly un-Delaney smile.
“Poor C.J.,” she’d said on Saturday. Her voice was all wrong, bubbling as if the pond itself lived within her. She’d hummed a tune, tapping her fingers against the bedspread. “Can’t save anyone, even yourself.”
On Sunday, he’d fallen asleep facedown on his desk, glasses askew, an open page crumpled beneath his chin. He’d woken to Lane standing over him, a kitchen knife at his throat.
“What if I killed you?”
At the kitchen counter, Lane struggled with the zipper of her bag. Oblivious to the way she toyed with him in the dark. The way she taunted him, bold and leering.
