All That Lives Must Die - Eric Nylund [76]
Concern creased Jezebel’s otherwise smooth forehead as if she was worried she would be seen. Then she spotted him. Her eyes narrowed with disgust. She turned and walked off in the opposite direction.
But that look—it was the same annoyed, you’re-under-my-skin-look that Julie had given him . . . just before she had kissed him the first time.
Eliot was totally confused now.
He followed her. “Jezebel!” he called out.
Her stride faltered, only a single step, but it was enough to know she’d heard him.
She continued walking, increasing her pace.
Eliot trotted behind her. “Thanks for the other day. You know . . . gym class. You saved my neck.”
“Begone, wormfood.” Her voice was full of icy indifference. “I’ve nothing to say to you.”
He’d expected this. He’d be defensive, too, if everyone treated him the way the other students had treated her—all the whispering, the leering, and the innuendo—just because of her family.
Eliot had, however, seen Hell for himself. Maybe there was a good reason to treat her differently.
But wasn’t he like her, too? At least part Infernal?
Maybe it was time to trust someone . . . introduce himself. There were no stupid League rules that prevented him from telling anyone about his Infernal side. He and Jezebel might even be distant cousins, for all he knew.
“I’m Eliot Post,” he said, this time quietly. “I’m half Infernal. On my father’s side.”
Jezebel slowed. She still didn’t look his way, but she pursed her lips as if deciding something.
“Lucifer’s son,” he said.
They entered the corridor that led to the quartz-paved quad. Columns of veined marble cast crisscrossing shadows along their path.
“You are a fool, Eliot Post.” She quickened her stride.
Eliot’s strength left him. How much rejection was a guy supposed to take before he finally got the hint?
“Okay, no problem,” he said. Then so softly that even he barely heard: “You just reminded me of someone I cared about. A lot. Someone I miss.”
Jezebel halted half in and half out of the shadows.
She trembled. One hand made a fist. One hand reached out, fingers splayed.
Eliot felt a tug in his center: a connection.
Something inside him was drawn to something within her. . . .
“Julie?” He took a tentative step toward her. “It is you, somehow, isn’t it?”
A shuddering breath escaped her, and she turned to him. Her fist clenched tighter, knuckles popping. But her open hand reached for him. Her face quavered with rage and longing; one eye was green—the other blue, and from it, a single tear marked her cheek.
“Maybe,” she said.
The effort of that one word seemed to quench her anger. “Once I might have been Julie, but you don’t know what I’ve done since then—or plan to do,” she said, her words intensifying. “Or what I really am now.”
Eliot met her hand with his, and took it. Her flesh was warm and soft and yielding.
Her face was a mix of Infernal and mortal, Jezebel and the Julie Marks he knew.
He wanted to tell her how much he had missed her. How wonderful that she was here now with him.
The thing in his center, pulling him closer to her, however, cooled and curled inward—repulsed.
“You lied to me.” He dropped her hand. “I mean, you are Infernal. There’s no way you could have lied about that in front of Miss Westin and got away with it. So that means in Del Sombra you weren’t really Julie Marks?”
Her blue eye dissolved into translucent green once more. The tear upon her human flesh evaporated.
“There is no Julie Marks,” she told him, her voice hoarse.
“You pretended to be the manager at Ringo’s,” he said, “and said we’d run away together to Hollywood.” Eliot’s tone hardened. “Was everything a lie, then? Did you ever even like me?”
Jezebel’s open hand closed, and trembled, as if barely restraining it from violence. Her gaze dropped to the floor.
“Tell me the truth,” Eliot demanded.
The shadows in the corridor deepened and angled—became bands of absolute dark slashed by golden sunlight. Eliot stood half in and half out of the shade. Jezebel, however, was now fully immersed