Author: Jodi Meadows

“Was that—” she started, but seemed incapable of completing the thought. Like it was too terrible to comprehend.

The words were ash in my mouth. “Another one.”

This was not an accident.

21

SMOKE

THERE WERE THREE more explosions, each an hour after the one before. Stef tried to send me home every time, but I refused. Sam and Cris never backed her up, and her annoyance devolved into a glower.

“She shouldn’t be here,” she told Whit. “She’s too young. This will traumatize her.”

I turned to watch flames die under the fire-suppressant mist. Floodlights burned across the city, and smoke billowed into the sky, so completely veiling the stars they might not exist anymore except in memory. I’d grown used to geyser steam rising at all hours, but this was nothing like that. Smoke plumed dark and angry, evidence of destruction and hatred.

We waited for the sixth explosion. Everyone wore tight faces and worry, but we stood there by the smoldering ruins of the fifth house and nothing happened.

I stared at the white shell of the house—now streaked with cinders and dust, but whole—and hated Janan. I hated him for what he did to newsouls, how he’d deceived everyone for so long, and that he’d never let anything happen to his precious white city as long as he was awake.

My hand found my knife inside my coat pocket, the cool rosewood handle smooth under my soot-darkened fingers. As I had in Menehem’s laboratory, I wished for a weapon against Janan. Something that would hurt him.

But even if it were possible, Janan reincarnated souls who meant everything to me; I wouldn’t be able to do it.

That made me hate him more.

Sam drew me homeward, into his own white shell of a house. I could sometimes forget about the exterior walls with all the parlor instruments, the honeycomb shelves, and the perfume of roses.

At some point I must have showered, because when I realized I was sitting on the sofa, tense and waiting for another explosion, my clothes were clean and my hair wet. I no longer stank of smoke and ash. A glass of juice sat on a table beside me, half drunk.

Unnerving.

Sam came downstairs, wearing nightclothes the colors of winter forests. Hollows darkened under his eyes, and he carried weariness like chains. “It will be dawn in a couple hours.”

Would the sun even shine through all that smoke? “I can’t sleep. Maybe ever again.”

Birdsong skittered outside, hesitant. Sam sat at the piano like he’d play accompaniment, but his hands rested on his knees, unmoving. “I know. I keep thinking what if our house is next?”

Our house. I liked that he said that, though I wished our house were his cabin in the woods, or Purple Rose Cottage. “It won’t be.”

He raised an eyebrow.

“I’m not pregnant.”

“Oh.” His posture evaporated as he realized what I had: every one of the attacked homes had belonged to someone carrying.

Some had been no more than a month or two, so it wasn’t obvious like with Geral. Two women had died in the explosions, and a third had miscarried. The three babies might have been newsouls. If they were oldsouls, they’d be reborn none the wiser. But newsouls…

Escaped Janan’s hunger only to die before they were born.

Sam swore so softly I almost couldn’t hear the words, but they hissed through me and left smears of despair in their wake. “Someone did this on purpose.”

Of course someone had.

“No one has resorted to this kind of terror in three thousand years.” He faced the nearest window, looking somewhen-else, like he always did when talking about the distant past. “Violence like this only infuriates people. They’ll be reborn and take revenge again and again until they feel they’ve had justice.”

And every death and rebirth meant another newsoul went to Janan.

“Honestly,” he muttered, “it’s easier to live with one another and stop fighting, no matter how much you hate someone. They’re not going away. Ever.” He glanced at me, eyes shadowed. “Until recently.”

“I’m afraid that was the point.” I crossed the floor to the piano bench. He stayed on the edge, facing away from me now, so I put my legs on either side of the bench and pressed myself behind him, my cheek on his shoulder blade, my thighs against his. “Someone wanted to send us a message.”

One of his hands fell to my knee. “They attacked Geral’s house first because she lives close to us. We wouldn’t be able to miss it.”

“I didn’t even know Orrin and Geral were together.”

Sam gave more of a breath than a chuckle. “He keeps quiet about his relationships. Don’t feel bad that you didn’t notice.”

I squeezed my arms around his ribs. Comforting my stupid worries even when…this…was happening.

“Can I tell you something?” He sounded like I felt. Kind of desperate. Depressed.

“You can tell me anything.” Because I wanted to know everything about him.

He threaded his fingers with mine, our hands wrapped together in delicate knots. “I used to worship Janan. We all did, long ago. And now I find out that he’d have consumed your soul if not for an experiment gone wrong.”

Didn’t he know I thought about that every day? Every hour since my return from the temple?

“I keep wondering how this happened. Why we get to live and newsouls get…” His whole body trembled against mine. I could imagine the dark, angry look in his eyes. “When we first arrived in Heart, you asked if I felt betrayed that Janan never aided us in a crisis, never protected us.”

“I remember. You said you did, a little, and that you wanted to believe you were here for a purpose.”

“That’s right.” His voice grew quiet. Distant. “And now I discover that all along our purpose has been to replace newsouls. Our purpose has been to help feed a monster.”

The words made me shudder.

“I do feel betrayed,” he said. The rest seemed to tumble out. “We worshipped him, and he used us. I resent the time I spent caring, even though it was forever ago, and I resent everyone who tried to shame me when I stopped. It hurts, this betrayal.”

His confession and anguish filled me, made me want to shatter. I wanted to draw it out of him, encourage and comfort him like he always did for me. “Why did you worship him?”

“For most of us, it was Meuric’s suggestion. We listened to what he said. The rest was us simply not wanting to feel alone.” He sounded melancholy. “The inscription on the temple said he created us, gave us souls. It said he was responsible for our reincarnation. It said he would protect us.”

“We know the reincarnation part is true,” I whispered. “But it’s not as if no one’s ever changed written history to suit their own purposes. You told me Deborl changed and omitted things from the history books I read in Purple Rose.”

Sam nodded.

“So let’s go by what we know. In five thousand years, Janan never protected you?”

“He kept the walls impenetrable, but since he is the temple and his heartbeat runs throughout the walls, that might be him protecting himself more than anything.”

I squeezed his hands. “Did he help you when you needed him?”

Sam shook his head.

“Does he love you?” I asked.

Silence.

Roses filled the parlor, evidence of love: Sam’s love for me, Cris’s love for his garden, and my friends’ love for one another. I’d seen over and over how they demonstrated their love, and it made them giving, compassionate, and kind. Sam’s love made him brave, selfless, and willing to protect me when I needed it.

Maybe Sam was thinking about the same things, because he said, “It seems love is the most important thing. Someone who doesn’t love us and uses us to hurt others was never worth our devotion.” He let out a long sigh, deflating. “I know now he’s real, but before Templedark, I hadn’t believed in Janan for thousands of years. But then, when I did, it was comforting thinking there might be some kind of power protecting us.”

“There might be. It’s just not Janan.”

“I love your hope. You make me want to have hope, too.” Sam kissed my knuckles, and exhaustion filled his tone. “Are you really all right after earlier?”

“I am. Really.” Though I would never forget the heat and horror. “What will happen now? Will there be an investigation into the explosions? Will the survivors be cared for?”

Sam nodded. His damp hair brushed my skin when I lifted my face. He smelled like soap and shampoo, no traces of tonight’s events.

“There will be an investigation, but it will take a long time to question so many people. It was already night when this happened, and most live alone. There will be few alibis, few reasons to believe anyone. People who’ve actively spoken out against newsouls will be the first suspects.”

“That’s a good start.” It wasn’t enough, though. “I doubt everyone who hates newsouls is stupid enough to blab about it before planting explosives.”

Sam snorted. Had that been a dumb thing to say? I started to lean back, but he tightened his fingers around mine, keeping me pressed against his spine.

“You’re right,” he said. “There are people who hate newsouls but will have kept quiet until they were ready to act.”

I shuddered, wondering who those people might be. “It’s easier when you know who your enemies are.”

“Really is.”

I bit my lip, like that would keep in what I didn’t want to say. Maybe I held my breath, too, and my heart slowed down, or maybe I tensed. At any rate, Sam knew I was trying not to just blurt out my every thought.

“What is it?” he asked, and I could almost hear the resigned smile.

I pressed my face against his back, though his shirt was tight against his skin so there wasn’t anywhere to bury myself. “Promise you won’t be upset.”

He just kissed my forefinger. Not a promise.

“It”—at least I didn’t have to explain what it was—“happened so soon after the meeting, whoever did it must have known our plan.”

He was very still. A statue of a musician.

“Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe it’s just a coincidence that it happened so soon after I asked for help. People have been throwing rocks and breaking into nurseries. Maybe this was their next step and it had nothing to do with tonight.” I peeled off Sam, off the piano bench. He hadn’t moved, but I couldn’t stay still. In spite of the wretched day that wouldn’t end, everything in me itched to run. To go somewhere. The grief inside me needed to escape.

I stalked around the parlor as though my anxiety might leak out from the force of my feet hitting the floor. I made the perimeter twice before Sam came to life again and began tracking my progress.

“I hope you’re right,” he said at last. “I hope it is just a coincidence, because the idea of one of our friends being responsible is too horrible.”

My insides twisted into knots as I stopped before him. We were both exhausted and heartsore. Maybe right now wasn’t the best time for this talk.

When the light shifted in the window behind him, casting him as a silhouette, he looked my age. I trailed my fingertips over the soft curves of his cheekbones, down his freshly shaven jaw, and across the thick lines of his eyebrows. At my touch, he swallowed hard, and little by little the tension drained from his shoulders and neck. He dropped back his head. His lips parted and his breath shallowed.

“I miss being outside of Heart,” I said. “I want those days in Purple Rose before the sylph came.” I caressed the frown line between his eyes, how I always knew he was thinking too hard about something. Then I found the line by his mouth, a long curve from his smile.