Page 107

“Mom, I was chewing. “

“I know a smile when I see one.” She smoothed my hair. “Go on. Freshen up. Let Mama fuss.”

I let her.

In the shower, I checked my phone.

Nothing.

I dried off, dressed, checked again.

I checked it on the stairs and on the landing, and I checked it in front of the mirror in my old bedroom, a boyhood room with hockey posters and a shelf of trophies and a bed that felt too narrow. There was nothing. He’d gone dark the moment we left the arena, with no text, no call, and no sideways smiley.

He’s traveling, I told myself. Flying. Airplane mode. He’s a vampire, they probably don’t get reception at forty thousand feet.

I knew that was stupid. I did it anyway.

I texted: Hi. I’ve arrived. What about you?

I sat on the bed with the phone in my hands and watched the screen for eleven minutes. Then I tossed it on the mattress, put on my running shoes, and went out to do the one thing that had always worked.

I ran.

The grounds of the estate go on forever, with trees and hedges and a stream. I ran the north loop, then the south, then out through the side gate and down the lane past the neighbors’ stone walls, breathing hard in the cold, with my breath coming out in white clouds and my lungs burning and my shoulder aching. With every stride I heard the same three words drumming in my head.

Doveryay mne. Zhdi.

Trust me. Wait.

I made it forty-five minutes before I gave up and sat down under an oak by the stream. I took out the phone and looked.

ICE PRINCE: Lex. I must ask for time apart. There are difficulties I cannot explain by text, and I am not safe to be near for now. Please do not contact me, and do not come looking. This is not what you fear. I will come to you soon. Trust me. Wait.

I read it once.

I read it again.

My hand closed around the phone so hard the case creaked.

Time apart.

I knew that phrase. I’d used it. On girls, on the phone, in cars. I think we should take some time. It’s not you. I’m not in a good place. I’d said it to Marisol. I’d said it to Heather. I’d said it, God help me, to a lovely girl called Dr. Patel, who had once diagnosed my knee at a party. It was the softest possible way to say: I’m finished with you, and I’d like to be a coward about it.

LEX: If you’re not going to come see me, you’re still going to text me, right?

The reply came fast, like he’d been holding the phone.

ICE PRINCE: I think that texting will not be possible. I am sorry.

I stared at the words. The stream ran on under the ice. A crow shrieked in the oak above my head, and I stood up so quickly that I dropped the phone in the snow.

I picked it up. My hands were shaking. All the tenderness I’d stored up in five weeks, the night in Room 214, the hand against the glass, the look on his face in the handshake line, went out of me all at once, like air from a punctured tire, and in its place came something cold and old and familiar. The thing with teeth.

You idiot, it said, in a very quiet voice. You believed him.

You believed a thousand-year-old man who told you he loved you. He had what he wanted. Now he’s going home.

LEX: Fuck you, Maksim.