I shake my head. “I don’t know.”
It’s not a lie. I still have no idea what the Society is about or how it can be explained. I’ve been a member less than twenty-four hours, and I barely know more than I did as a kid, chasing after my mother down the streets of the great walled city. So I just tell him what everybody already knows.
“A lot of people have ruled in Adria. The Romans and the Turks and the Byzantines. That’s probably the symbol of whoever built this place.”
Despite the darkness, Spence jumps onto one of the fallen stones of the crumbling fortress. He looks like some kind of ancient marauder, claiming the island for a far-off king.
“So, Jamie told me you moved here at the start of the summer.”
The change of subject surprises me.
“Yeah.”
“He didn’t tell me you were so pretty.”
When he jumps off the rock and lands in front of me he is close. Too close. I step back, but there’s a stone behind my foot and I stumble.
I reach back instinctively, bracing for the crash that never comes. Instead, Spence’s arms are wrapped around me, holding me a foot off the ground.
For a second, I am suspended in the air, caught between two realities. I could be Grace, the messed-up little sister. The murderer. The crazy girl.
Or I could be the girl this stranger seems to see.
I think about Ms. Chancellor and Jamie and my grandpa, and how they all want me to be normal. I’m supposed to get over it, move on. Pretend. I think about Noah and Megan, the people on the beach. This is what being a teenager is supposed to be, isn’t it? The Big Moments.
And in this moment all I really want is to be the kind of girl whose biggest worry is whether or not this boy is about to kiss her.
Then there is no more thinking. He is leaning closer and closer. I close my eyes and feel his lips brush mine. I try to stop thinking, worrying, being afraid. But my worries don’t go away. If anything, they multiply. I’m consumed by a new kind of panic. Who is Spence and why is he here and how am I supposed to face my brother after his friend’s hands have been in my hair and his lips on mine and …
I’m stronger than I look, I know. And Spence stumbles back when I shove him.
“Sorry. I shouldn’t have done that.” Spence doesn’t sound sorry, though.
“I should get back to the party,” I say, and start to walk away.
“Wait. Hold up.” In a flash, he cuts me off. “We’re just talking.”
“No. That was called kissing.”
“Grace, I —”
“Why?” Whatever Spence was expecting me to say, it wasn’t this. “Why did you do that?”
“Why did I kiss you?” He raises an eyebrow and sounds like he wants to laugh.
“Is it Take Pity on Your Friend’s Kid Sister Day or something?”
“No.” Spence runs a hand through his too-short hair. “The fact that you are Blake’s kid sister is the one reason I shouldn’t be kissing you.”
“Then why’d you do it?”
“I don’t know. I’m sorry. You’re cute and nice and funny and I thought …”
He thought I was normal.
“What’s wrong?” he asks.
I should answer, but I’m too tired of this place, this boy, this night. I want my bed and my mother’s room. I want to go back to the demons I already know how to handle, so I spin and start across the clearing, back toward the trees and the beach and the party.
“Grace, wait up,” he says. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean —”
Didn’t mean to kiss me? Didn’t mean to hurt my feelings? To incur Jamie’s wrath?
I will never know how Spence meant to finish that sentence, though, because in that moment there is a movement in the shadows near the trees. For a second, I think it is my unreliable mind playing tricks on me, another ghost from my past returning to haunt the present.
Even when the figure yells, “Leave her alone,” I don’t let myself believe he’s really here.
It’s not until Spence turns, too, and looks at the shadow, that I allow myself to say, “Alexei?”
He’s not supposed to be here, but even in my shock I don’t say that. He’s supposed to be in Russia, called home with his father for reasons no one ever explained. He’s supposed to be far, far away from me.
Alexei is supposed to be safe.
It’s what I want for him. But the emotion that floods my veins is enough to say that what I want for me is something completely different.
“Hey, Gracie.”
There is tension in the look on Alexei’s face, in the sound of his voice, pulsing like the beating of the waves or the pounding of the music I can barely hear.
“Who’s your friend?” he asks, unblinking, his gaze firmly glued to Spence.
“Oh, this is John Spencer. Spence is a friend of Jamie’s — they just got here from West Point. Spence, this is Alexei. He’s —”
“The Russian,” Spence says, and for the first time I realize that it’s like I’ve wandered between a lion and a tiger.
“Alexei is Jamie’s oldest friend,” I say, as much for my benefit as for Spence’s. It’s a fact I’ve let myself forget. But my brother, I have to remember, is back now.
“What are you doing here with her?” Alexei asks the other boy.
“Jamie asked me to come find Gracie, make sure she was okay out here. She wandered off.”