I try to twist out of his grip. “But he can’t be! That’s crazy! You can’t just let him walk out the door like that.” I slide down the wall to the floor and put my hands over my face, my whole body shaking. “We need to lock him up. Make sure he doesn’t have access to anyone again.”
Griffon sits down next to me and puts one hand lightly on my shoulder. “There’s nothing we can do to him. At the moment, he’s an eight-year-old boy.”
“But you saw him! He’s not just an eight-year-old boy. That thing is pure evil.”
“And thank God we now know who and where he is,” Griffon says. “Just because we can’t do anything to him doesn’t mean we won’t be watching him carefully. He made a huge mistake by revealing himself to you just now. The greatest danger of an essence like that is when you don’t know where they are.”
“Can’t you just get rid of him? Make it look like an accident or something?”
“For what?” Griffon says. “So that he can come back ten years from now in another body that we don’t know about, stronger and angrier than ever?”
I can feel my breathing slow down just a little bit. “It’s just so wrong!”
“I agree,” he says. “But sometimes you have to accept wrong now in order to make it right later.” Griffon stands up and holds out his hand. “Let’s walk. You need to get outside, and I was told something about ice cream.”
I shake my head and brush his hand away. “I don’t want to walk. And I definitely don’t want any ice cream.”
“Fine. Just come with me while I get some. There’s a great place with weird flavors just a few blocks from here.”
“Caramelized bacon,” I say quietly. “That’s their best one.”
Griffon wiggles his fingers and I take his hand and let him pull me up, keeping my fingers wrapped around his for just a second longer than necessary. There are so many things I want to say, but everything is so messed up that I don’t know where to start.
“Finish putting your things away,” he says. “I’m going to call Janine and tell her about Zander, so I’ll meet you out front.”
I shove my things into the closet. The rage and fury that took up so much space in my body has vanished, leaving me feeling empty and spent. I duck out into the hall once I make sure that it’s empty. I can’t face anyone else right now.
Griffon is just hanging up when I walk out the front door. “Janine thinks you’re a genius, in case you were wondering,” he says. “She was calling a Sekhem meeting before we even got off the phone.” He matches his step to mine as we walk down the street. “I think she’s going to want you to be a part of this.”
I nod. “I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
Griffon walks in silence for a few steps, but I can tell there’s something more he wants to say. “I . . . I never did apologize.”
My heart races at the words I’ve been wanting to hear. “For leaving you alone with Christophe,” he continues, and I look away to hide my disappointment. Out of the corner of my eye, I see him glance at my neck. The bruises are gone, but I know he can still see them in his memory. “I never would have, if I had any idea what he was.” There’s pain in his eyes, and I see him swallow hard. “I trusted him. I trusted him enough to leave you with him.”
“You didn’t know,” I say. “Nobody did. Christophe was good at hiding who he was.”
Griffon shakes his head. “But I should have known. At the break-in at the Swiss lab, one of the best Iawi Sekhem was killed. We all thought it was outsiders. But putting the pieces together now . . . I’m sure it was Christophe.”
“It’s always easy to see things after the fact. It’s not your fault.” It seems like it’s just moments before we’re in front of the ice cream store. Neither of us says much, lost in our own thoughts as we order and walk back out onto the sidewalk with our cones.
“You didn’t get the bacon,” Griffon says as we walk slowly down the street. He feels like a stranger to me, like we’re miles apart. “I’m a little disappointed.”
“Peanut-butter curry was calling me today.” I take a lick from the bottom, feeling slightly better with the sharp sweetness flooding my mouth. “Want a bite?”
“Sure.” He leans down and takes a small bite out of the side of my ice cream. I take a bite right after him in the same spot. This is as close to kissing him as I’ve been in a long time.
“I thought you hated peanut butter,” I say. “I’m trying to be more flexible,” he says. “Want some strawberry jalapeño?”
I shake my head. “Too spicy. And a little weird.”
We walk in silence, one of those times where you’re not really walking to get anywhere, just walking to be somewhere. I stop and look into the window of a jewelry store. Hanging on a velvet board are a bunch of necklaces, the one in the middle a silver ankh with a purple stone. I reach up reflexively before I remember that I’m not wearing one anymore.
“Yours is gone,” Griffon says, and I’m not sure if it’s a statement or a question.
I nod slowly, still staring into the window. “I gave it back.”
Something seems to shift in Griffon as we stand there looking at the display. “Let me get that one for you.” He glances over at me. “For your birthday next week.”
I feel myself blushing. “You remembered.”
“August twenty-seventh,” he says, glancing at me.
“Of course you wouldn’t forget,” I say. I look back at the necklace. “Thanks, but no. I’m going to get another one, but I want to wait until I find one I love. And then I’m going to buy it myself.”
He nods as though he understands and turns away from the window. “Two truths and a lie,” he says.
I can’t help but smile. “Okay.”
“I broke my leg so badly the first time I went snowboarding, they had to get a sled to carry me down the mountain. Totally embarrassing. And painful.”
“Aw!”
He shakes his head. “Shh. Not done.”
“Sorry.”
“When I was five, I shaved my legs because I thought they were too hairy.”
A laugh slips out as I picture that, and he gives me a look.
“And my newest Akhet skill is the ability to rewind time.” His face is serious as he looks at me. I hold his gaze a beat longer than I need to before I turn away, my heart pounding.
“Too easy,” I say. “Nobody can rewind time.”
“Doesn’t stop me from wishing I could,” he says.
“And the beauty—and the curse—of being Akhet is that we can never forget. Any of it.” There’s a silence as the words settle between us.
“Right,” Griffon says, squinting into the distance. “It’s such a nice day. Do you want to go down to the beach? We could ride along the Great Highway for a little while before I take you home.”
I think about how it feels to ride behind him, the sun shining on the water beside us. “I’d like that,” I say as we walk back toward the recital hall. “But I need to make a stop first.”
Griffon looks at the shiny blue convertible with the white interior and the big silver bass clef hanging from the rearview mirror. “This is yours?”
“Yep,” I say. “A convertible VW Rabbit.” I see Griffon’s grin. “Don’t tell me you had a car just like this when they first came out.”
“Nope,” he says. “I wasn’t really a Rabbit kind of guy. I did always want a convertible, though. When did you get your license?”
“A few weeks ago,” I say. “I had all that money from giving cello lessons, and one of Dad’s friends sold it to me.” I shrug and look at the car that I’ve come to love in such a short time. “I got tired of always being the passenger. Of not being in control of where I was going.” I lean against the car and hold my breath, feeling the moment change. “Or who I was going with.”