Chapter Four
Daylight faded to a pale glow for the night as Stein and Oline took Mrs. Tvedt upstairs to get cleaned up; a special kind of torture Oline had decided on as punishment, and Roar agreed. He would have gone instead of Stein, but someone had to look after Petrus, and he didn’t trust Stein to stick around and help. Roar forced Petrus onto the couch and dropped beside him. Together they surveyed the hall. What a mess. Kind of like his mission.
Roar turned to his friend. “This isn’t working.”
Petrus moved his hands. “That much is obvious.”
“You know what I mean. I can’t do what I’m supposed to.”
“The Elders never gave you any specifics?”
“No, there wasn’t time.” Or was there? Training day after day for years, and it had never come up in his lessons.
“Don’t you think that’s a little odd? I mean, we were both stuck in seclusion with the Elders for years and they never told you what the weapon looks like?”
“Well, I asked once—” Roar began.
Petrus dismissed him with a sour frown. “Let me guess. They changed the subject and made you feel like you did something wrong.”
“Yeah.”
“Remember the time you asked me why I can’t speak?”
An unsettling chill climbed Roar’s spine. “No. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Of course you don’t. But the sick, cold sensation spreading into your brain right now is all that’s left of the conversation, courtesy of a mind alteration device the Elders used on you.”
“Mind alteration? On Aurelis? Petrus, what the hell is wrong with you?”
“Where should I begin?”
The front door opened and Nils stepped inside the house. He took one look at the blood and the blade and he blew into the house, a hurricane of fear gusting in his wake. A dropped soda and crushed eggs ran a slimy, bubbling river through violet puddles in the front hall.
Nils grabbed the knife and glared at Roar. “What did you do?”
“We came over to see you,” Oline said from the stairs, hands tucked under her arms, her voice gentle. She quickly and tactfully explained what had happened.
Tension in Nils’s shoulders melted away. He dropped the knife and sat on the bottom step, his chest concave, shoulders trembling under an enormous weight. “She does this every year. I totally forgot today was the day.”
Oline placed a hand on his shoulder. “What’s today?”
“Nothing. Never mind.”
“I’m so sorry, Nils. If you want to talk about it, you can talk to us.”
“Yeah, thanks but no thanks.”
Heavy silence blanketed the lower floor of the small house. Petrus caught Roar’s attention with a series of gestures he couldn’t decipher. Probably more conspiracy crap. Looking around the room, he noticed Nils staring at him and Petrus. For something to do, Roar picked up the knife from the floor. He should have cleaned this up instead of sitting with Petrus. The chill hadn’t left his spine yet, and the moment he thought about what Petrus said, the cold increased. The knife slipped in his grasp and cut through his finger, a sharp sting. Blood oozed from the wound. A few seconds later, his blood smoked and sizzled into glittery ash.
“Holy shit.” Nils blinked, his whole body transformed as he pushed to his feet. “You have silver blood.”
Oline stood on the steps behind him, shorter than Nils, even with those spindly heeled boots. “Make Roar blush and you’ll see his face glow.”
Telltale prickles of embarrassment rose in his cheeks. “Shut up,” he muttered.
Nils didn’t notice, though. “I thought purple blood was weird. But silver? And it turns to like, glitter or something.”
Uneasy laughter bubbled in Roar’s chest. “You should have seen the humans’ faces when they tried collecting a sample for study.”
“When you first got here?”
“Yeah.” Roar was more careful picking up the knife this time. The cut on his hand had already healed, but he didn’t want another any time soon. “A few months back. They kept us in this concrete base in the mountains down south.”
Nils glanced between the three Aurelites. “Jotunheimen?”
Oline nodded. “Have you been there?”
Nils shook his head. “It’s the biggest mountain range in southern Norway, so that was a safe bet. Was it like some secret military base?”
“Actually, it was.” Roar dropped the knife in the bucket.
“Oh man, Leda is gonna flip when she hears this.”
“Leda?” A sharp stab of something—anger? Jealousy?—stung his chest. “She knows you’re not human?”
“Well, no, not yet.” Nils shrugged. “She’s cool, though. I trust her.”
“How well do you know her?”
Nils smirked. Roar struggled not to race across the room and smack the look off the Woede boy’s face. “What’s it to you?”
“Nothing.” Smooth.
Oline breezed through the hall and sat next to Petrus. “Why do I get the feeling this Leda girl is important?”
Petrus signed: “I think we should go introduce ourselves. See what the fuss is about.”
Solar flare heat erupted over Roar’s skin. “No one is doing anything with Leda! Got it?”
“Whoa, calm down,” Oline said. “What’s wrong with you?”
“Nothing,” he repeated. “I don’t know. I need some space.”
“We’re a couple of billion light years from home,” Oline called after Roar as he walked out of Nils’s place. “Isn’t that enough space for you?”
He ignored her sharp laughter and kept walking through town under a pastel night sky. Humans surrounded him, though he didn’t notice them or what they were doing. The Chief Inspector could have tailed him from Nils’s place and Roar wouldn’t notice. All because some girl twisted his insides and scrambled his brains.
This was irrational. Insane. He kept it together most of the time. So why did he react this way around Leda? How’d she make him lose track of time and forget his purpose? Why did everything lead him to her? What made her so special? She was beautiful, yeah, but he didn’t know her enough to care who she hung around or what she did. He shouldn’t care. They weren’t even the same species! She was human. He had a weapon to find. A planet to save. As much as he longed for a purpose beyond finding the weapon, he couldn’t listen to his body or his heart or any part of him that wanted Leda.
So why did it feel like he’d shred the bones of anyone who touched her?
The face Nils made as he brought the calzone closer to his mouth, one millimeter at a time, almost had Leda in stitches. Eventually he took a bite, his eyes pinched tight, nostrils flared. A second later, he opened his eyes and gobbled another bite.
“This is really good!” he said around mouthfuls. “And there’s no cheese?”
“Nope. Nutritional yeast ‘cheez’ sauce and some grated roast nuts as the parmesan.”
He finished the mini calzone off and grabbed another. “It’s missing the peperoni, but I could live with that.”
Leda rolled her eyes and picked up a calzone. She had ulterior motives when she invited Nils over for pizza and video games. Yesterday evening, Grams had asked her to deliver a bag of yarn and crochet stuff to Nils’s mom. Imagine her surprise when she saw Roar storming from the house, and a blonde shouting at him in a language Leda didn’t recognize.
“So, how well do you know this Roar guy?”
Nils paused, a little sauce dripping down his chin. He took a long, long time wiping the drip away. “We’ve run into each other a couple times.”
“When did you meet him?”
“The same day you did.” He shrugged his scarecrow shoulders.
The day Roar saved Nils. When he moved way too fast. When he touched her and the world stumbled in its orbit. She chose her words carefully. “He seems a little intense.”
“He’s cool. Different, but cool.”
“What do you mean ‘different?’”
The moment stretched spider’s web thin. “He’s not like most guys, you know?”
“I really don’t know. That’s why I’m asking you.”
“You’re awfully curious.” His mouth lifted at one end. “Got a thing for him?”
Leda’s face spontaneously combusted. Not the way she hoped this conversation might go. Time for some honesty. “I saw him at your place,” she admitted, pointing at the canvas tote near the door. “That’s for your mom. I would have dropped it off last night, but it looked like you had company.”
“Yeah.” His gaze dropped. “You know how you can live your whole life thinking you know who a person is, what they are, and then you find out they had this whole other identity that no one else knew about?”
“Sort of. I think.” She hadn’t even known about Grams and Uncle Arne until after Dad died. Mom kept everything a secret—except how she felt about her daughter.
“Well, Roar is…he’s kind of like that. I think he’s probably a nice guy, under all the layers he keeps up for other people to see. Like he’s trying really hard not to get noticed.”
That made her laugh. Roar blended in like a handful of glitter on a white sofa.
“You asked me what I thought of him. I trust him. And that’s saying a lot.”
“I sense a ‘because’ coming up.”
“Fair enough. Yeah, because aside from when he stopped me from choking, Roar found out a pretty huge thing about me and my family, and he hasn’t blabbed.” Nils reached for the remote next to the dwindling plate of snacks. “One more round before I head home?”
“Sure.” Leda grabbed her remote. She’d gotten as much as she was going to get out of him tonight. “Ready to lose?”
“Dream on!”
“Dreaming has nothing to do with it. Trust me.” She tossed an elbow in his side, making Nils yelp and drop his remote.
“I call shenanigans! That was a dirty move, Lindgren,” he said with a crooked smile.
But it didn’t matter what game they played. She always won.
The next morning Leda sat on her bed and dialed her mom’s number, hoping she’d answer this time. But she didn’t. She never did. Where are you? A better question: if she were dying, would her mom come home?
Home. She looked outside at the low-hanging gray clouds stretched across the sky. This was home now. This frozen place where people moved away and stores were closing and no one seemed happy. Except Uncle Arne and Grams. And Nils, even though he didn’t have any friends besides Leda—that she knew of. He was over at her house every day.
“Leda!” Grams called from downstairs. “I’m heading to the mainland for a few hours. Is there anything you need?”
She thought for a moment. “No, thanks though!”
“All right. Arne is in his shop if you need help finding something in the kitchen. Good luck!”
After the fish ball fiasco on Leda’s first night here, and the lack of plant-based protein in her diet, Grams had agreed to let Leda cook tonight. But she didn’t need luck. She knew hundreds of recipes from working a part-time job at a vegan restaurant back home, and she picked the perfect one to start with. She made squares stuffed with meaty mushrooms, soft pieces of cubed potatoes, sautéed leeks, and fresh peas, surrounded by a rich, flavorful gravy and wrapped in phyllo pastry. While they baked, she whipped up a few sandwiches for Uncle Arne and brought them to his shop. Voices carried through the open door—her uncle’s and Roar’s. Her belly fluttered. He’s just a guy. Just a guy she reacted to in a crazy way, like those Van de Graaff generators.
If only her chest didn’t get all warm and sparkly when she saw him. Even staring at his back thrilled her in ways she wasn’t prepared to analyze.
“Hei!” Uncle Arne set his tools down and wiped his hands on his legs, leaving sawdust trails stuck to the denim. “How goes the cooking?”
“Good.” Leda avoided Roar’s gaze, focusing instead on taking the container from her bag.
“Food!” Uncle Arne rubbed his belly. “Why don’t you join us for lunch while you wait?”
Spend more time with Roar? No way. She wanted to, way too much, and that was a problem. “Thanks, but I should start shelling the garbanzo beans. It’s a time consuming job, but someone’s gotta do it.”
“Shelling the whats?” Uncle Arne chuckled at himself and lifted a sandwich from the container, then slid it across the dusty work bench to Roar. “Is this one of your meatless concoctions? No cheese?”
“There’s nothing wrong with tofu.” Leda’s cheeks prickled. “Don’t make me start on how dairy farming is tantamount to ra—”
“I was only ruffling your feathers.” Uncle Arne winked.
Roar bit into a sandwich, chewed, and raised his brows at Leda. Like he couldn’t believe how good it tasted.
Must…not…roll…eyes…
She smiled at the Star Wars graphic on his shirt—Han Solo and Chewbacca, both of them armed, and the words “Take me to your Leia” underneath. Then she made a mistake: she looked into his eyes and that thing happened again, where the world faded out, and there was only Roar, and his penetrating stare, like he felt the crazy-intense pull, too. Her focus settled on him, nothing else. Not the ever steady thud in her chest or wind rattling loose shingles on the roof. Her pulse screamed his name: Roar, Roar, Roar, Roar. His eyes glowed as he reached for her hand. Like he had to touch her. Hold her. Now.
When his hand brushed hers, Leda couldn’t explain her reaction. Couldn’t stop herself from sliding her palm against his. Their fingers locked together; then the other hand, until they stood face-to-face, hands pressed close between them. Like a battle, but also like a dance. Like…something epic and inexplicable. All the while, her pendant burned warm, ever warmer, until the blistering heat reached inside her body and seared her bones.
She jumped, snatching at the pendant, and some of the fog cleared. It was then she noticed they weren’t in Uncle Arne’s shop anymore. They were standing in the kitchen, alone, a pastel sky out the window. What the actual hot hades just happened? How did she get here? How did she not notice her feet moving? Her crutches were still attached to her arms with the straps.
She stumbled back a few steps until she met the table. “You…you did something.”
He seemed just as shocked as she felt. “Leda, I—”
“Did you drug me? Because, seriously, this isn’t normal. We were in—”
“—your uncle’s shop,” Roar finished. “I know. I was there. I promise I don’t know what happened.”
“I don’t believe you.” She moved back, and he followed. “Don’t touch me.”
Hurt flashed in his eyes, replaced by confusion. “I swear I didn’t do anything. Not on purpose, at least. Maybe I…” he began, then pressed his lips together. Shook his head. “I should go.”
“Don’t go!” She clapped a hand over her mouth. Stupid heart. Stupid reaction. Stupid Roar. “I didn’t mean that. See? You must have done something to me. I’m not like this. I don’t lose track of time like that. Ever. Even when I made out with my ex, I always knew where I was and…” Oh crap. Her cheeks burned. “I mean, I never felt this all-consuming need to be near him like I do with you—dang it, Roar! Stop it, whatever you’re doing that’s making me act like a crazy person.”
The jerk grinned. “Honest, I wish I knew. I could bottle it up, sell it, and make millions.”
“Oh, you are such a pig.” She shoved him, but Roar did that too quick thing and snatched her hands. Held them tight against his chest. “Let go,” she whispered, totally unconvincingly.
He moved slower now, until his face was close enough that she felt his breath on her cheek. “You’re blushing.”
“I am?” Ugh, breathless.
He nodded. “It’s…familiar.”
Familiar? She blinked and broke the spell, using her crutches as weapons to escape his hold. “Nice line, Romeo. Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.”
She watched him leave with a sigh. After, Leda locked all the doors and headed upstairs. She paused in the middle when she heard Uncle Arne whispering.
“…terrible. You and I both know they can’t be together.”
“Arne, we don’t know that for certain.”
“How can you be so flippant?” Arne raised his voice at the end.
Grams’s reply was too soft to hear.
Footsteps sounded on the wood floor, pacing. “Suppose we let it play out, and when the time comes, she can’t perform?”
“She’s not an actor in a play, or an instrumentalist. There is no doubt in my mind that she will do what needs to be done when the time comes, and in the meantime, a little harmless flirtation is nothing to worry about so long as that’s as far as it goes. I won’t speak of this again.”
A heavy sigh, then more footsteps. Leda slunk back in the shadows as a door clicked shut, feeling silly for eavesdropping, and curious about the conversation. It was weird. Not as weird as Roar, though.
Why would they care about her and Roar flirting? And what was this about her doing what needed to be done? Did they have so little faith in her that they didn’t think she could handle a fling with a cute boy?
Oh, great. I’ve advanced to calling him cute.
And this business about it being okay for them to flirt as long as it went no further. It was one thing for her to caution herself, but this same kind of caution from them showed her just how absurd it was. Yeah, Leda knew why it was a bad idea for anything to happen with Roar, but they didn’t know that. Most guys weren’t brave enough to show their interest in her. And if Roar had shown anything about himself so far, he was no coward.
A few minutes later, settled in her room, Leda rested on her side in a nest of pillows and went through every Roar-related interaction with a fine-toothed comb. Roar was the kind of unsolvable problem she didn’t want or need in her life. She had a plan—grieve and wallow in a fetid mixture of self-pity and misery, and when Mom eventually showed up, try not to grovel for a shred of attention—and sticking to the plan was the only thing keeping her from losing her mind in this place. Hell frozen over, as Nils had called it.
Thinking about Nils, Leda reached for her phone and shot off a quick message to her friend, explaining why she hadn’t invited him over. He responded with a smiley face and said he hoped she had fun with Roar.
It wasn’t fun, she answered. It was torture. He’s infuriating.
Sounds like u like him, was Nils’s reply.
Leda typed her answer faster than she had ever texted anything in the history of ever. I do not!
Okay, so maybe he had the awesome hair thing going for him. And he was easy on the eyes. Fun shirts. Those tattoos. The muscles. Now, that didn’t necessarily mean she liked him. She didn’t know him from a bar of soap. And she didn’t get random crushes. If she was attracted to a guy, it meant there was more than a great body and smoking hot smile going on.
Sure, Nils texted. Who r u lying to? Me or urself?
Leda pushed out a heavy breath, part irritation over Nils’s text speak, like using proper, fully written out words took too much effort. It drove her nuts. You’re just mad that I never let you win.
A knock sounded on the door. “Are you still awake in there?”
Leda shoved her phone under her pillow, muffling the sound of a text alert. “Yeah,” she said.
Arne popped his head in, his red hair bright in the dim, midnight lit room. “Just wanted to check with you about your doctor’s appointment tomorrow. Grams will take you, if that’s all right.”
Doctor’s appointment. With all the weird, and everything else, Leda had forgotten. Her mom was supposed to take her, but Leda doubted she’d be back in time, or that she even remembered. Where Leda was concerned, her mother forgot more often than she remembered. “Sure.”
“Right. Just make sure you have all your medical documents and files and things with you when you go,” Arne said.
Leda huffed. “I know the drill.”
His expression softened. “See you in the morning, then.”
“’Night.”
Arne hesitated, lips parted as though he wanted to add something, one finger twirling the end of his beard. Then he shook his head and shut the door. The sound of his footfalls on the floor grew lighter the farther he got from her door.
When she found her phone, Nils’s text read maybe im letting u win. He followed with a wink.
You wish! Night, Leda sent, and she put her phone on the night table, then dropped her head on the pillow.
She woke early for her appointment on the mainland. On the drive to the tunnel, Grams stopped at an intersection, and Leda glanced outside. A gray blur, like human-shaped fog, moved toward a house.
She sat up straighter in the front passenger seat. The blur paused near a window on the first floor. A second blur joined the first, and the two worked the window free. Then one of the blurs materialized into a boy with shaggy, lion’s mane hair.
Leda narrowed her gaze as Grams pulled forward, waiting to enter the tunnel in the morning congestion. Even from this distance, she recognized the build and the hair. She’d spent enough time staring at the guy to know it had been Roar.