Life and Death

“But why should you—”

Archie was there then, his arm around Jessamine’s waist. “It’s been almost a century that Edythe’s been alone. Now she’s found you. You can’t see the changes that we see, we who have been with her for so long. Do you think any of us want to look into her eyes for the next hundred years if she loses you?”

My guilt started to ease. But even though the calm that spread over me felt totally natural, like it came from inside, I knew better.

“You know I’d do this anyway,” Archie added. “Even if Edythe hadn’t ask me to.”

“Why?”

He gri

I stared and he shrugged. “It’s how I experience the world.”

“We’re friends?” I asked, my voice full of wonder.

“Best friends,” he told me. “Someday. It was nice of my favorite sister, don’t you think, to fall in love with my best friend? I guess I owe her one.”

“Huh,” was all I could think to say.

Archie laughed.

Jessamine rolled her eyes. “Thanks so much, Archie. I just got him calm.”

“No, I’m good,” I promised. Archie could be lying to make me feel better, but either way it worked. It wasn’t so bad if Archie wanted to help me, too. If he wasn’t just doing it for Edythe.

“So what do we do now?” I asked.

“We wait for something to change.”

It was a very long day.

We stayed in the room. Archie called down to the front desk and asked them to suspend our housekeeping service. The curtains stayed shut, the TV on, though no one watched it. At regular intervals, food was delivered for me.

It was fu

“Yes,” he said, when I thought about asking him that. “It’s exactly the same. She tries hard not to be obnoxious about it.”

He told me about waking up.

“I only remembered one thing, but I’m not even sure it was a memory. I thought I remembered someone saying my name—calling me Archie. But maybe I was remembering something that hadn’t happened yet—seeing that someday someone would call me Archie.” He smiled at my expression. “I know, it’s a circular dilemma, isn’t it?”

“The hair?” He ran a hand over his scalp, unselfconscious. The stubble was just long enough to see that his hair would have been dark brown, nearly black, like his eyebrows. “It was a rather extreme look for 1920. A little too early for me to have been a skinhead, thank heavens. My best guess is disease or bad behavior.”

“Bad behavior?” I asked.

He shrugged. “I might have been in prison.”

“You couldn’t have been much older than me,” I protested.

He steepled his fingers thoughtfully. “I like to believe that if I was a criminal, I was both a mastermind and a prodigy.”

Jessamine—back at the desk and mostly silent—laughed with me.

“It wasn’t confusing the way it probably should have been,” Archie said when I asked him what his first visions were like. “It seemed normal—I knew what I was seeing hadn’t happened. I think maybe I’d seen things before I was changed. Or maybe I just adapt quickly.” He smiled, already knowing the question I had waiting. “It was Jess. She was the first thing I saw.” And then, “No, I didn’t actually meet her in person until much later.”

Something about his tone made me wonder. “How long?”

“Twenty-eight years.”

“Twenty-eight…? You had to wait twenty-eight years? But couldn’t you…?”

He nodded. “I could have found her earlier. I knew where she was. But she wasn’t ready for me yet. If I’d come too early, she would have killed me.”

I gasped and stared at her. She raised an eyebrow at me, and I looked back at Archie. He laughed.

“But Edythe said you were the only one who could hold your own against her—?”

Jessamine hissed—not like she was mad, like she was a

“We’ll never know,” Archie said. “If Jess was really trying to kill Edythe, rather than just playing…? Well, Jess has a lot of experience. Seeing the future isn’t the only reason why I can keep up with Edythe—it’s also because it was Jess who taught me how to fight. Lauren’s coven all had their eyes on Eleanor—she’s pretty spectacular, I grant you. But if it had come to a fight, Eleanor wouldn’t have been their problem. If they’d taken a closer look at my darling”—he blew her a kiss—“they would have forgotten all about the strong girl.”

I remembered the first time I’d seen Jessamine, in the cafeteria with her family. Beautiful, like the others, but with that edge. Even before I’d put it into words inside my own head, I’d sensed there was something about her that matched up with what Archie was telling me now.

I looked at Archie.

“You can ask her,” he said. “But it’s not going to happen.”

“He wants to know my story?” Jessamine guessed. She laughed once—it was a dark sound. “You’re not ready for that, Beau. Believe me.”

And though I was still curious, I did believe her.

“You said humans were harder… but you seem to see me pretty well,” I noted.

“I’m paying attention, and you’re right here,” Archie said. “Also, the two-second head starts are simpler than the weather. It’s the long term that won’t hold still. Even an hour complicates things.”

Archie kept me updated on what was happening with the others—which was mostly nothing. Joss was good at ru

I also knew I was supposed to be rooting for Edythe and the others to succeed, but I could only feel relieved as the distance between her and Joss got larger, despite Archie’s help. If it meant I would be stuck here in this hotel room forever, I wouldn’t complain. Whatever kept her safe.

There was one question that I wanted to ask more than the others, but I hesitated. I think if Jessamine hadn’t been there, I might have done it sooner. I didn’t feel the same ease in her presence that I did now with Archie. Which was probably only because she wasn’t trying to make me feel that way.

When I was eating—di

My eyes narrowed.

“Was this on Edythe’s lists of instructions?” I asked sourly.