The Impossibility of Tomorrow Page 5

  My neck prickles. I whirl around, suddenly sure someone’s watching me.

  In the center of the hallway stands a man, next to a door that I know was closed only moments before.

  His police uniform fits snugly, emphasizing his powerful body. “Looking for someone?” he asks, snapping his gum.

  Officer Spaulding. The cop who’s investigating Mr. Shaw’s death.

  “Nope,” I reply smoothly. “I thought I left a book up here. But then I realized I had it all along. In my backpack.”

  “In your backpack,” he repeats with a smile. “Isn’t that funny? You think something’s lost, and it was right in front of you the whole time.”

  “Yes,” I agree tentatively. My eyes stray to the gun holstered in his belt.

  “Happens all the time in police work. You can’t just look at the evidence once—guaranteed there’s something you’re missing.”

  A peal of feminine laughter spills out from the open door to his right. Officer Spaulding follows my gaze and nods. “I’m interviewing students, looking for new evidence in the Shaw case.”

  I relax in spite of myself. The reassuring murmur of voices inside the open classroom floats into the hall. “I don’t understand. He was killed by muggers, right? What could you find out here?”

  “You never know.” He shrugs. “The police need to be sure.”

  “But didn’t the newspaper say there were witnesses?”

  He smiles. “Yes, a young man and woman from San Francisco. Not much older than you.”

  But I know better. The so-called “witnesses” are Jared and Amelia, Cyrus’s obedient and loyal servants. I remember when Jared stopped a thief from picking Cyrus’s pocket in 1660, aboard the merchant ship taking us to New Amsterdam. When Jared offered with a smug grin to kill the man, Cyrus was delighted. Jared’s been doing Cyrus’s dirty work ever since. As for Amelia, she’s been in love with Cyrus since the day he made her immortal. Not that I care.

  “Are they . . . okay?” I press.

  He cups his chin. “They’re shaken up, sure. Who wouldn’t be? They asked us to keep their identities anonymous. For some reason they seem to think the killer has friends who could come after them. But they’ve been cooperating fully. Helped our sketch artist with drawings of the suspect.”

  Of course. No doubt Amelia and Jared are enjoying this performance, sending the cops on a wild goose chase for a killer who doesn’t exist.

  “Well, I should be going,” I say.

  “Take care,” the officer replies. “I didn’t catch your name?”

  I’m seized by the urge to lie for some reason, but I know no good can come from that. “Kailey,” I answer, which is its own kind of lie.

  “Bye, Kailey,” he replies.

  Downstairs, I hurry past the shrine, ignoring my desire to take the note Cyrus left so that I can study it more later. But for all I know, he’s watching the shrine right now. And I can’t afford to make any more mistakes.

  I squeeze into the girls’ bathroom and splash cold water on my face, letting the full force of the day’s events wash over me.

  Cyrus is alive. My intuition was right. I should feel vindicated, but instead I just feel confused.

  I was wrong about Noah and barely avoided making a terrible mistake. This time, I need to be more like Cyrus. I need to be careful, systematic, to rely only on the evidence, regardless of the way my heart might waver in my chest like torn notebook paper in the breeze.

  And I need to do it alone.

  Jared and Amelia are in San Francisco, playing up their roles as witnesses, and no doubt keeping the rest of the coven—my best friend Charlotte and sweet, quiet Sébastien—under close watch. I suck in a breath as I remember that when I went to the Golden Gate Bridge this weekend, I was so tempted to go by coven headquarters and see Charlotte. How trapped I would have been.

  It’s just me against Cyrus. Kailey’s friends run through my mind. He could be any of them. And whoever he’s become, whoever’s body he’s taken—that person is already dead.

  All I can do is rule them out, one by one. Ask them questions to which only they would know the answers. And hope to hell I don’t get caught first.

  TEN

  The next day after school, Leyla parks her car in front of her favorite thrift store, a place called Aunt Bea’s. She’s apparently on a mission to find outfits that are “more Mad Men, less Punky Brewster,” as she puts it. This is my chance to prove she’s not Cyrus, though I don’t really suspect she is—he always said he’d never take a female body again. In the hundreds of years I’ve known him, he’s done it only once, and barely lasted two days before he traded the wool merchant’s daughter for a stable boy from a neighboring village. He said he hated how weak her body made him feel.

  “But I like your style,” I say as we walk inside. My eyes are drawn to the vintage posters cluttering the walls, but Leyla turns and starts to expertly flip through the racks of dresses. Her hair is pulled back in two high pigtails, shot through with her trademark magenta streaks. It reminds me of streamers on a kid’s bicycle.

  She sighs. “I’m just getting too old for the whole ragamuffin look.”

  I have to laugh. I suppose “ragamuffin” is a good description. Today she’s sporting a black hoodie over a yellow lace miniskirt with purple-and-black striped tights. Beat-up cowboy boots complete the outfit. I adore it.

  “Aha!” She pulls a vintage Chanel sheath dress from the rack. “Look, it’s only twenty dollars because it’s got a broken zipper. I can totally fix that.”

  “It’s nice,” I admit. “But it’s a little . . . stuffy.”

  “I know,” she says happily. “I think I’ll wear this to The Nutcracker tomorrow night—you know my little sister’s playing Clara, right? Bryan said your whole family’s going.”

  I don’t say anything. No one has mentioned this to me; it must have been planned for a while. Since Kailey was still alive.

  Leyla is too enamored with the dress to notice my silence. “I’ll have to get, like, pumps to go with it,” she muses. “Ladylike shoes.”

  If this is Cyrus, he’s a far better actor than I give him credit for.

  “Does this have something to do with Bryan?” I ask. I know the two of them went out on Saturday night, and judging from the goofy grin that Bryan hasn’t been able to suppress ever since, I’d say it went well.

  “Ha. No. I don’t think the subtleties of fashion are really his thing. You know that girls dress up to impress other girls, right?” She meanders over to a jewelry display and fingers a strand of pearls. “Too much?” she asks. “Too much,” she answers before I can reply.

  “Okay, then, what girl inspired this Leyla makeover show?” I trail behind her as she digs through a pile of high heels. I recognize a pair of Dior strappy sandals that I used to own back in New York in the forties.

  “Rebecca Sawyer—you know, the new girl with the hot brother? Just moved here from Sonoma? Their family has a winery up there.”

  “I met her yesterday. She’s a bit . . . different,” I say cautiously.

  “That’s what I like about her,” Leyla replies. “She wears, like, capelets. And pencil skirts. And a freaking awesome pink tweed suit. If I saw her on the street, I never would’ve thought she was in high school.”

  “But doesn’t that seem, I don’t know, pretentious? Like she’s trying to be someone she’s not?” So far Rebecca and her brother have failed to impress me. Not to mention that they arrived at school the day after Mr. Shaw “died.” I can’t help feeling on edge when they’re around.

  Leyla shrugs. “She’s a little awkward, I’ll give you that. But at least she’s being real. People who always fit in perfectly and always know just what to say are usually the ones hiding something.”

  “Interesting theory.”

  “Reverse-reverse-reverse psychology,” she declares, arching an eyebrow. I giggle as she adds a lavender crepe dress to the pile on her arm. “Anyway,” she continues, “I invited Rebecca to
go with us to the party on Treasure Island this weekend. You’ll like her, I swear.”

  “Treasure Island?” I repeat.

  “Oh, that’s right. You weren’t there when Eli was telling us about it. Lots of local bands will be playing.” She eyes a woven pillbox hat on a mannequin’s head, but her arms are too full to reach for it. I laugh at her pouty look and pull the hat down for her.

  “Is Eli’s band playing?” I ask, adjusting the hat on top of Leyla’s pigtails.

  She catches sight of herself in a mirror and frowns. “Not sure. Madison would know. I don’t really care about the lineup, anyway. I’m just going for the post-apocalyptic atmosphere.”

  Of course she is. Treasure Island lies halfway between Oakland and San Francisco, in the middle of the bay, and has an ironically jolly name for an abandoned military base. It sounds like the kind of place that would have roller coasters and funnel cakes, but it’s actually full of graffiti-ridden barracks and broken glass.

  “I’m in,” I say. “And I’m sure I’ll like Rebecca, if you think she’s so cool.”

  “If you can’t trust your best friend, who can you trust?” She smiles. “I’m going to go try these on.”

  Leyla disappears into the dressing room, and I wander aimlessly around the store, her last question echoing in my mind. Can I trust Leyla? She seems so . . . Leyla, but she hasn’t said anything that proves she isn’t Cyrus.

  The salesgirl is parked behind the counter, playing with her phone. She must feel me staring, because she looks up. “Can I help you find anything?” she asks.

  “Just looking around,” I reply. She shrugs and hits a button on the CD player behind her. The store fills with the sounds of the Clash, trying to figure out if they should stay or if they should go.

  Cyrus’s note weighs heavily in my mind as I drift over to a pile of screen-printed T-shirts by the window. Love never dies. How wrong he is. My love for Cyrus died ages ago.

  When, exactly, I can’t say. I remember the first time I left him, perhaps thirty years after he made me immortal. I had kept in touch with one of the younger servants at my parents’ estate, posing as an old family friend and benefactor who sent money and gifts and who wished to remain anonymous in exchange for regular updates of Lord and Lady Ames. I no longer cared what happened to my father after he threw me out of his house, but my mother was blameless.

  Then one day a letter arrived at our home in France telling me that Lady Ames was very ill. I wanted to go to her immediately, but of course Cyrus forbade it. It was too dangerous, he said. Need he remind me that the last time I was in London I was nearly killed? I didn’t care; I couldn’t lose this chance to say good-bye to my mortal life.

  So I left. I slipped out when Cyrus was away. But by the time I made it to London, my mother was already dead.

  I kept waiting for tears, for sorrow, for some sort of release, but it never came. I felt nothing. Far more painful was returning to Cyrus and finding him utterly broken, gaunt and devastated and hurt. He was certain that he would never see me again, that I had left him alone. He wrapped his arms around me like a drowning man when I walked in, choking with sobs. I was so alone, Sera. Please don’t ever leave me again. I held him in my arms, whispered how sorry I was, how much I loved him. And at the time, I meant it.

  Being alone is Cyrus’s greatest fear, and he’s always done his best to instill it in the rest of us. I remember him giving the same speech to the other coven members when he made them immortal: You can never leave. If you do, there’s no guarantee you’ll find us again. What if we took new bodies, new names, a new city? We’ll have disappeared into the world, and you’ll be all alone. There are no others like us.

  Only Cyrus had the elixir, the alchemical formula that severs the connection between body and soul, leaving our spirits free to move into new bodies. He wore it around his neck on a silver chain. I knew his father was the one to give him the vial, and he was also the source of the knowledge for making more. Though in truth, Cyrus stole the formula from his father, Johann von Hohenheim, renowned alchemist and scholar. And killer, I remember. Johann wanted me dead almost as soon as Cyrus made me an Incarnate. Cyrus took the blue book from his father’s house the night he ran away with me.

  Since that night, I have never seen Cyrus without the vial of elixir around his neck. He would never let any of the others touch it. Keeping the elixir from them was his insurance policy. Even if you had the formula, none of you could ever make the elixir, he used to remind us. It requires a skilled alchemist. You could never make new companions.

  How could we leave, knowing we would be doomed to walk the earth alone?

  No one ever left the coven. Until me.

  My phone buzzes in my pocket, pulling me back to the present, to the world I wish would absorb me and keep me secret. A smile plays across my lips when I see who’s calling.

  “Is this the unicorn hotline? I’d like to report a sighting.” Noah’s voice breathes in my ear.

  “You’ve got the right number. Give me the details.”

  “I’d prefer to report them in person, over dinner tonight.”

  “The unicorn hotline will send a representative to your house at eight,” I answer.

  A pause. “You don’t have to do that, Kailey—”

  “I know, but I want to. See you soon!” I tap the END CALL button before he can protest. It’s true—I do want to see his house. I’m in love with Noah, and I want to know everything there is to know about him.

  “The gods of fashion are smiling upon me today,” Leyla declares, emerging from the dressing room with a pigtail askew. “Operation Retro Chic is a success.”

  I make the appropriate admiring sounds as she heaps her finds on the counter and chats with the salesgirl. When Leyla finishes paying, she tosses her purchases into the huge canvas tote that hangs off her shoulder. “I’m so glad we got the chance to hang out, just the two of us,” she says, linking her arm through mine.

  “Me too,” I answer.

  “Just because we both have boyfriends doesn’t mean we can ignore girl time,” Leyla says, pulling me out to the sidewalk.

  “Wait—does that mean Bryan’s your official boyfriend?”

  “Um,” she stalls, a blush stealing across her cheeks. “Yes? That’s okay, right?”

  “Of course it is! You two were clearly meant for each other.” I laugh. “But if you start coming over only to see Bryan and ignoring me, then you’re in trouble.”

  “Never!” She gasps theatrically. “You’re right, though. I think the last time we hung out alone was, what? Three weeks ago, when we got coffee? Way too long.” My heart lifts as she speaks. There’s no way Cyrus could know that.

  “Yeah, what was the name of that café again?” I ask. I need to be sure.

  Leyla stares at me. “Seriously? You don’t remember?”

  My heart starts to pound. “It’s on the tip of my tongue.” My voice sounds strangely high-pitched.

  “Jeez, Kailey,” she admonishes. “We’ve only been going to Caffe Strada for three years.”

  “Right! Duh. Of course.” I clap my hand to my forehead. Leyla’s shaking her head and laughing at what an airhead I am, but I can’t stop smiling.

  “You know what? I think we should hit up Caffe Strada right now,” I say. “Gelato on me.”

  It’s a small victory, but I need to celebrate it. Noah isn’t Cyrus, and neither is Leyla. This knowledge makes me feel much less alone in the world: the opposite of how Cyrus promised I would find myself.

  It makes me wonder what else he was wrong about.

  ELEVEN

  When Noah’s father answers the door later that night, I’m blasted with the smell of whiskey on his breath. “Kailey!” he shouts. “Come in, come in.” He closes the door behind me with a slam, the hinges creaking in protest. “Guess I should oil that,” he says.

  I just nod. I’ve never actually spoken to Mr. Vander before or seen him up close. He’s got Noah’s deep blue eyes, but his skin i
s sallow, his nose a garden of broken capillaries. He’s tall, though, like Noah, and strong. His beard covers up what I suspect to be a twin to Noah’s sculpted jawline. It’s grizzled and shot through with gray. He’s wearing shorts and a stained T-shirt, despite the late fall chill that hangs in the air. The house is freezing.

  Noah’s dog Harker bounds into the room, eyeing me suspiciously. He backs up slowly, tail bristling, a deep growl emanating from his throat. “Stop it, you jerk,” commands Mr. Vander. “It’s just Kailey.” Harker yelps and sits down but doesn’t move his eyes from my own. I subtly bow my head, trying to show canine submission in my body language. I don’t blame the dog for not liking me. Most animals don’t.

  “I swear, that dog’s insane. He doesn’t like anyone but Noah,” Mr. Vander says, folding his arms across his chest.

  “He doesn’t bother me,” I say, looking around. I’ve never been in Noah’s house before. The foyer is covered in dark wooden wainscoting, its oiled finish dull in spots. To my right is a staircase leading to the second floor and Noah’s room. To my left, an open door reveals a small living room, where a TV fills the room with cold blue light. The oak floors are scratched and warped.

  “Well,” says Mr. Vander, focusing on me with bleary eyes, “I should go get Noah. It’s not polite to keep a pretty girl like you waiting.” He looks me up and down, and I momentarily regret the dress I chose to wear. Fitted around the bodice before flaring out at my waist, it’s a robin’s-egg shade of blue that reminds me of Noah’s eyes in the sunlight. I wouldn’t call the neckline indecent by any means—it’s just low enough to frame the birdcage necklace that Noah gave me, on its long silver chain. But the way Mr. Vander looks at me makes me wish for a jacket that buttoned up to my neck.

  He puts his hand on the banister of the staircase for balance, running his hands up and down the smooth surface. I shiver. He never breaks eye contact with me. I wonder how he’s even upright. Judging from the whiskey fumes that emanate from him, he’s been drinking all day. But he doesn’t slur his words, not a bit. And somehow that’s more unnerving than if he had.