Page 18 of Roses & Ruin

“What?” My pulse speeds up. I blink rapidly, shaking my head. “What kind of reading is that? You’re…you’re just trying to scare me because I was a skeptic. Right? I mean, every one of us will die.”

“But not every one of us will die before the year is done.” The palm reader looks genuinely devastated. Her eyes are watering. She’s acting like she’s already mourning me. It’s got me speechless, flapping my mouth open and shut like a trout. The old woman stands, putting a gnarled hand on my back. She leads me to the flap of her tent. “Go. Please. Before it’s too late.” Her filmy eyes burn into mine. “You have no idea what danger you are in.”

With a surprisingly strong shove, she sends me out of her tent, calling, “I’m done for the evening. Go away, please.”

What just happened? I glare at my palm, feeling for some reason on the edge of tears. Obviously this was a hoax; it wasn’t real.

But then why is my heart pounding? Why is there a sense of dread skittering up my spine like a black widow? Why is every hair on my arms standing?

I feel an awareness prickle at me from the corner of my eye. I look over, following the feeling, and lose all the breath in my body.

He’s here.

The boy I’m here for is leaning against the towering shelf labeled Fiction (E–K), and his dark eyes are watching me.

Chapter 6

The moment the boy and I make eye contact, he ducks into the aisle. I don’t give it a second thought. I launch after him.

I narrowly avoid knocking into a pair of drunken witches making out in the mystery aisle. “Sorry,” I blurt, bumping into a row of tables, nearly tipping over a wooden chair. People are staring. My cheeks are burning. Why did he have to be on the other side of the library?

I set the chair to rights, turn around, and crash gut-first into a metal cart of books. “Sorry again,” I grunt at a startled cluster of nearby students. I cast a mournful glance at the splay of hardbacks I’ve sent to the floor and keep going. It’s sacrilegious to not fix the mess I’ve made—especially of books—but I can’t risk losing him.

I reach the aisle where I last saw him. He’s gone, of course, but I’m looking for any students close by who might have seen him. There’s no one here at the study tables or in the neighboring aisles. In fact, the second floor seems to be emptying out. The biggest crowd of students is around the staircase. I guess everyone’s heading downstairs now that the palm reader is closed for the night.

So that’s where I go.

“Excuse me,” I call loudly, ducking in and out of clusters of students, rushing toward the staircase. I’m distantly aware of how rude I’m being, how later I’ll cringe at the recollection of my shoving and shouting. Sometimes it feels like I become someone else whenever this boy is around.

I reach the top of the staircase. There’s no sign of him anywhere, and his head start is significant, so I decide to take the stairs down two at a time. But I’m not used to wearing boots. I’m especially not used to wearing Delia’s boots.

When I’m halfway down the stairs, I misjudge a step and my heel catches on absolutely nothing, making me pitch backward. My elbow slams onto the marble step below, and I slide painfully on my butt down the remaining five stairs, my mortification tripling with each one.

I manage to reach the first floor intact and alive—though when I see the wide-eyed, gasping crowd surrounding me, I sort of wish, for a moment at least, that maybe I wasn’t.

“Holy shit, Ro, are you okay?” Delia rushes to my side, looking horrified.

“Ow,” I whimper, looking anywhere but the huge crowd of gawking bystanders.

“I know, baby girl, come here.” She lifts me easily to my feet, and I keep my head ducked as she prods at my shoulder and arm. “What hurts? You break anything?”

“Just my pride,” I mumble, my face molten. “And elbow, maybe. Bruised. That’s it.”

“Promise? Cuz it looked bad.” Delia’s eyebrows are by her hairline. She gives my shoulder a frustrated shake. “What’s wrong with you? Why were you rushing down the stairs like that in those boots? You could have seriously gotten—”

“Because I saw him, Delia.” I close my eyes. “He was here. Upstairs. And I was already flustered—the palm reader gave me this, like, death reading—and as soon as I left the tent, he was right there. We made eye contact.”

“What?” Delia’s head whips around. She grabs my shoulders. “Which way did he— Where did—”

“He’s already gone,” I sigh. “At least he didn’t see me fall. Small mercies, I guess.”

“Yeah, I guess.” Delia studies me. “You wanna split up again? What’s the plan?”

“For you to go and have fun tonight,” I say sincerely. Delia looks like she might protest, and I shake my head. “You’ve already helped so much. And anyway, he’s like the friggin’ Road Runner. He’s already probably halfway to Albuquerque.”

“Oh, hi again!” The girl with curly red hair from earlier appears at Delia’s side, giving me a friendly wave. With a shy smile, she hands Delia two parchment paper–wrapped sugar cookies.

“You found them! Amberrrr,” Delia coos, pressing her nose into Amber’s pretty blush. She pulls back and shoots me a sheepish look. “Sorry, Rose, this is Amber. Amber, meet Rose.”