And changing.
Like a drop of rain falling into a lake, the eddies rippled outward, disturbing the flawless flow of the skin, revealing small blemishes in the instant they passed over: a hair, a freckle, a scar. I let go of his hands in surprise, and the skin retained the imprint of my hands for a second. And it, too, looked different, with the knuckles clearly visible in the instant before that eerie nonflesh washed over them again, erasing them as smoothly as footprints in the tide.
It was so quick it made me wonder if I’d imagined it. But no. I scowled at the too-perfect flesh, because I had seen it, if only for an instant. I had seen Jules, inside the body bag his flesh was busy crafting for him.
And somehow I had to find a way to get him out.
I vaguely registered Marco pulling everyone back to the lounge—the witches, the Circle, everyone except for the vampires. This wasn’t for outsiders, if they couldn’t help. This was about family.
Someone dimmed the lights; I don’t know why. Maybe to give the gawkers less to stare at; maybe because it just felt like the right thing to do. And vampire eyes didn’t need the light. Mine didn’t, either, with a diffuse beam leaking through from the lounge, illuminating Jules like a spotlight.
It was enough. It was more than enough. I pressed my hands against him, both of them, palms flat and fingers outstretched, gripping hard enough to make indentations in his skin.
And then I swiped down, revealing pink nipples, hard abs, a concave stomach, and the brief indentation of a naval. It looked like a plasterer had taken a trowel to a wall, scraping away the surface to reveal what lay beneath. And what lay beneath was Jules.
He was still in there, somewhere.
But a second later, the healthy skin had been washed away, replaced by the pale, poreless perfection I had already come to hate.
Someone put a hand on my shoulder, but I shrugged it off. And tried again, but it was the same. Wherever my hands rested, and for a small space around them, the skin looked normal, and the body was whole, straight, perfect. But as soon as I took them away, or tried to move onto another spot, it was as if whatever magic was there simply vanished.
And I didn’t know how to make it stay.
“No,” I said, helplessly. “No!”
“Cassie. Come away.”
I looked up to see Marco staring at me, dark eyes troubled. “Come away? I’m trying to help him!”
“I know. But there’s nothing you can do. We . . . we’ll call someone—”
“Who?” I demanded. “We already tried Augustine, and if the maker and a senior war mage can’t remove it, do you really think—”
“What I think is that you’re exhausting yourself for nothing. You need—”
“Nothing?” I stared at him. “Don’t you see it?”
“Don’t I see what?”
I looked back down, at where my balled fists were resting on the pink and perfect skin of Jules’ stomach. It looked like some kind of modern art installation, where a white painted mannequin is punched only to reveal part of a living person beneath. Only Marco didn’t see that person. Marco, I realized blankly, didn’t see anything.
I blinked at him, confused. I’d thought maybe I’d inherited some of Roger’s skill, that maybe that was why . . . but was I imagining things? Was this necromancy or just wishful thinking? Or something else entirely?
“Come on, girl,” he told me gently. “You’ve got raccoon eyes. You need rest—”
No! Let her try!
God, Marco must be right; I must be tired, I thought, rubbing my eyes. Because that had sounded like Jules. A lot like, I realized, as the voice came again.
Please, Cassie, please! Oh God, you can’t—don’t leave me like this! I can’t bear it. I can’t! I can’t! I—
I was hallucinating; I had to be. You can hear me? He sounded almost as shocked as I
was. You heard that?
“I—no. No.”
“Don’t lie!” And suddenly, the tiny sound at the back of my mind that I might have been imagining was a full-blown voice, and there was no question this time. It was Jules. And he was talking a mile a minute. “Nobody could hear me! I’ve been trapped in here, screaming and screaming, but there’s only been silence and—oh God. Oh, Cassie, oh God!”
“This isn’t possible,” I told him numbly. I wasn’t a vampire; I couldn’t mind-speak. Well, with anyone but Billy Joe, and even he had to be in residence. When he was outside my body, I had to talk to him like anyone else.
“Well, you’re doing it!” Jules said frantically. “And I can’t—I haven’t been able to talk to anybody. I’ve been calling and calling, but nobody answered. I didn’t even try you; I don’t know why. I guess I didn’t think you could do it—”
“I can’t do it.”
“Then what do you call this?”
I had no idea.
“What’s going on?” Marco demanded. “Who are you talking to?”
I hadn’t realized that I’d closed my eyes again, but I opened them to see him frowning from a crouch beside me, his bulk blocking out half the room.
“Jules. Can’t you hear him?”
“No.” Marco didn’t look happy about that, and neither was I, because I’d learned the hard way that anything in magic I didn’t understand could and probably would come back to bite me. But there were more important things right now. Only I still didn’t know what I could—
And suddenly, it was all there, laid out in front of me. Instead of the dim living room, and the ring of glowing, vampire eyes, I saw something like an old book. Not grimoire-old, but a flashy paperback, like one from the thirties, with a lurid cover and boldface type. I didn’t get a chance to read the title, because a wind came up, and the pages started ruffling. The book opened.
It was about Jules.
Days like sentences, months like paragraphs, years like pages flipping in the wind, going back, back, back through Jules’ whole life. Like an autobiography written in flesh.
“What—how are you—” Jules choked.
“I’m . . . not sure.” But when I put out a hand, and stopped a page, suddenly I wasn’t seeing the book anymore. I was seeing him.
I saw a boy on a farm where no rain fell, but where billowing sheets of sand swept over the landscape, burying the farmhouse up to the windows. I saw him bundled into an old jalopy by his parents, along with half a dozen siblings like little stair steps, with the mother’s belly already rounded with the next. I saw them flee their ruined home for a brighter future in a promised land. Which only led to a life of backbreaking labor when they could get it, hunger, scorn, and constant motion.
“But I had a talent,” Jules said softly.
“Your face.”
I saw it change as he grew, a random ordering of genetics that took his mother’s thin features and his father’s florid ones and crafted exquisite perfection. Enough to make people stop and stare at the ragged little boy with the angelic features. And suddenly, they all wanted to help.
Money, a place to spend the night, work for the father, new clothes . . . The family received assistance again and again from people who thought they were being charitable, but who were really just charmed by a boy learning to use his greatest talent. It took him far—
“A little too far,” Jules said quietly.
He wasn’t exaggerating. Hollywood, parties, drinking binges, the pages flipped, and Jules changed. His father’s floridity started to show up around the edges as the big roles, the meaty ones, the ones that would make his name and fortune, went elsewhere. Until the day he ended up on a ledge, looking down. And wondering how to fall to ensure that his perfect face survived the jump.