26

F reshly showered and wearing his favorite burgundy sweater, Miles tromped downstairs, ready for a cup of tea and a piece of toast. They hadn't gotten home until past two last night, but for the first time in weeks, he felt well-rested.

Charlee was already awake and sitting on the couch. She was sleep-rumpled, a pink blanket over her shoulders like a cape.

She'd ripped him apart in the car last night when he told her what happened with Florence, demanding to know if he understood what the point of a phone was if not to call people when you needed help. He'd had to stop her from making a U-turn in the middle of the road to go back and start a fight with Gabriel. Then things had gotten extra ugly when she'd noticed the blood in his hair as she followed him up the stairs to the front door. After examining him in the bathroom, she declared the bleeding had already stopped and it didn't need stitches, then quietly stomped to her bedroom, closing the door with deliberate gentleness that managed to be scarier than if she'd slammed it.

They were okay, though, he could tell.

He joined her on the couch, sitting gingerly—he was sore in places he hadn't even known could get sore.

"Seeing Gabriel today?" she asked.

"Yeah. I don't know how this'll work outside of school now that I've been grounded for life…" He sighed. "More midnight sneaking out, I guess. Take advantage of Mom's blind spot while it lasts."

"When—not if —she catches you, you're dead meat."

Yeah, he was playing with fire. But what else was new?

"I hope your crush is worth it."

"Actually…" Miles ducked his head. "He uh, kissed me."

She'd been too mad last night to tell her, and selfishly, he'd wanted to keep it to himself a while longer. He knew what her reaction would be, but he needed to tell someone, or he was going to scream.

She blinked. "He kissed you?"

"Yep." A blush crept up his neck. More than once —but he wasn't going to say that out loud.

A second of silence turned into two, three, and then—

"Well, well," she said, "I never thought he'd have it in him. How was it?"

"What?"

"The kiss—how was it?"

That was the last thing he'd expected her to say. Where was the ranting and lecturing and hand-waving?

"Good," he replied hesitantly.

Her eyebrow went up. "Just good?"

He picked at a loose string on the hem of his sweater, unable to meet her eyes. "Nice. Good. I dunno, it was…" Better than any kiss he'd ever imagined, stole his breath away, made the world spin, and every other cliché under the sun . "Nice. Yeah, it was nice."

Charlee snickered. "Wow, that amazing, huh?"

Yeah, that amazing. But he'd never admit it to her.

"I assumed you'd be pissed about me fraternizing with the enemy or whatever. Where are the jokes about my terrible taste or me hitting my head hard enough last night that I knocked my brain right out? Come on, I can handle it. Let it out."

Charlee opened her mouth—then shut it as fast when the stairs creaked. Miles's mom appeared at the bottom. Still groggy from sleep and wrapped in her purple robe, she gave Miles a wary glance as she crossed the living room to the kitchen. He tried to channel Gabriel, to keep his expression cool and detached.

"Awkward," Charlee muttered when his mom was in the other room.

"Seriously." How did other kids fight with their parents all the time? "I never thought I'd be excited to go to school, but anything to get me outta here."

That made her snort. "Meanwhile, I'm stuck with her, your dad, and my mom all day. I'll never make it."

He winced. That was rough.

It was too early to catch the bus and his stomach was growling—he hadn't eaten much of the dinner Charlee snuck upstairs for him last night—so he took a moment to mentally prepare himself and went into the kitchen. Charlee trailed after him, leaving her blanket behind.

His mom didn't look up, shoving slices of bread into the toaster.

Silently, Miles filled the kettle and put it on the stove, then dug his tea and mug out. From the table, Charlee was making exaggeratedly uncomfortable expressions, trying to get him to laugh. He gave her the finger when his mom's back was turned, and she grinned.

The water started to boil as the first slices of browned toast popped up. You could hear a pin drop.

"Are you making tea?" They all jumped as Robin wandered into the kitchen—Miles hadn't even heard her come through the living room. "Will you make a cup for me, too?"

"Sure." He'd barely managed to avoid sloshing scalding hot water all over himself. "Earl Grey?"

"That's fine."

She sat down beside Charlee without even acknowledging her. The silence grew thick again as Miles got a second mug out.

He was ready to hug both his sisters when they came tromping downstairs, bickering with each other and completely oblivious to the tension. They stepped on his toes as they fought for space at the counter, Amy nearly elbowing over his mug of tea.

"Hey," he complained, lifting it out of harm's way and singeing his fingertips for it. "Watch it."

She completely ignored him, buttering her toast. Brat.

By the time Miles had passed Aunt Robin her mug, and Amy and Jenna had finally sat down at the table with their food, Miles's dad joined them, hair wet and movements sluggish. He mumbled something resembling a greeting and started the coffee maker with a yawn.

Miles avoided his line of sight, wondering what the chances of slipping away unnoticed were. If he signaled Charlee to create a diversion—

His dad cleared his throat. "Miles. Make sure you come straight home after school—your mom and I want to talk with you."

Keeping his gaze fixed on the curling steam rising from his tea, Miles nodded. He'd known it was coming, but he still had no idea what he was going to say. He wasn't sorry. He'd promised himself that no matter how bad they tried to make him feel, no matter how guilty, he wasn't going to apologize.

"Ooh , someone's in trouble," Amy said, and Jenna giggled.

Their mom eyed them critically. "We want to talk to both of you, too. You're turning thirteen next month. It's time to start helping out with jobs after school and on the weekends."

Horror twisted Amy's face. "That's not fair—I'm busy with homework every night. I already don't have time to do anything else!"

Welcome to his world. He'd started at thirteen as well, and it had been miserable at first to juggle everything. There'd be a lot of crying and whining over the next few weeks.

"We'll make it work," his mom said dismissively.

"That's not fair ," Amy protested, as if it meant anything. "And Jenna can't even do anything. She's never going to get her gifts and I'll have to do twice the work."

Beside her, Jenna blanched, dropping her toast back on her plate.

On cue, everyone in the room gave Amy a cutting look. She should know better.

"Ungifted people can still be very useful," Aunt Robin chimed in sagely, sipping her tea. "In many ways."

"Look at your mom," Adam agreed. "She does more around here than the rest of us combined. We'd never get anything done without her."

"Do we get to pick our first job to help with?" Jenna asked their dad, perking back up a bit. "I want to see a skeleton."

His parents exchanged alarmed glances.

"We can talk about that later," his mom settled on.

"You're such a little weirdo," Miles told her fondly.

The energy in the room shifted a little closer to normal. Miles returned to his tea, keeping tabs on the clock. The bitter scent of coffee permeated the air as his parents filled their mugs, shoulders pressed together. At the table, Aunt Robin started asking Jenna about her interest in skeletons—earning both of them a disgusted eye roll from Amy—while Charlee pretended she wasn't listening.

Miles looked around and realized that—despite avoiding his parents and Charlee shooting daggers at her oblivious mom—he couldn't remember the last time his whole family sat down and had breakfast together.

***

The school courtyard was empty when Miles got off the bus, the relentless sheet of icy rain driving everyone inside. His gaze went straight to the tables. They seemed strange without Gabriel sitting there, dark hair ruffled and collar up against the wind.

Apprehension swarmed him for a second as he headed inside, but Gabriel was easy enough to spot—he'd claimed an empty corner of the entrance hall to himself. The way he leaned against the wall, hands in his pockets, made him seem like he belonged on the cover of a fashion magazine.

Something gave a little stutter in Miles's chest.

"Hey." His grin faded as he took in Gabriel's pallid complexion and dark circles. "You okay? Get any sleep last night?"

Gabriel shrugged, not looking at him. "I'm fine."

A foreboding feeling settled heavily on Miles. "You don't seem fine." Was he upset about the curse and what Florence had said? Or was this about the kiss? Was he regretting it? Did he want to act like nothing had happened?

Gabriel gave a familiar, exasperated look. "How can you worry about so many things at once?"

Miles blushed. "Stop reading my mind." It was extra mortifying now that he was allowing himself to think about how pretty Gabriel looked silhouetted in the light coming in from the window behind him, or remembering in excruciating detail how it felt to kiss him, or—"You'd better not be doing it right now."

"How many times do I have to tell you—I have no control over it. Stop thinking about me so loudly if you don't want me to hear."

"Heartless," Miles told him, wanting to die. "You're heartless."

Gabriel's eyes glinted. "Apparently, you like it."

Miles laughed, embarrassed but pleased that Gabriel was teasing him—and so relieved. They were okay. Even as Gabriel's expression shifted back to solemn, a strange prickling tension in the air, Miles knew it wasn't about him. About them .

"If this is about what Florence said," he said, "don't worry about it. She was lying." He'd been replaying her cruel, taunting words and the expression on Gabriel's face all morning. "She was just trying to get under your skin. If anything, her saying there's no way to reverse the curse means there definitely is."

Gabriel shook his head. "I don't want to talk about that right now. It can wait." His attention flicked to the clock at the end of the hall before landing on Miles again. He was watching him more intensely than usual, which was worrying. "I'm not going to class today, I have an appointment I can't miss, but I wanted to… I have something I need to tell you."

That was ominous as hell, and he was acting weird. Oh God, it was going to be terrible, wasn't it?

Miles tried to hide his fear. "Okay, what's up?"

Gabriel let the group of loud band kids pass by before answering. It was the longest ten seconds of Miles's life. "Do you remember when you asked me why I was here, at the school?"

Not the direction Miles had expected this conversation to go. "Yeah. You wanted to find out what my warning meant."

"That was true. But it wasn't the whole truth." Gabriel gripped the strap of his bag tightly. "I wasn't sure how to say it before, but the night of my mother's party, when you came up to me… that wasn't the first time I'd seen you."

When he'd reflected back on that night, Miles had convinced himself he'd imagined the flash of recognition, told himself there had only been confusion and concern.

He swallowed around his anxiety. "What are you talking about?"

"The night before the party, I had a dream about you. A premonition."

Oh.

"Was it"—Miles was scared to even ask—"bad?"

But Gabriel smiled. It seemed to wash away whatever uncertainty he'd had. "It was unbelievably dull," he said, but not like he meant it. "We were sitting together in a classroom—I know now that it's English, that hideous Frankenstein poster was on the wall behind us—and you leaned across the aisle to talk to me. You said something absurd about summoning Shakespeare's ghost to yell at him for writing Romeo and Juliet , and you thought it was funny. You were looking at me in this way, grinning and I—" He cut off, glancing away. "I had no idea who you were or what it meant, and then you came up to me at the party."

And Miles had been a complete idiot. "You must've been freaking out."

"About your warning, yes. About my dream, I was mostly confused. Then I found out you were a Warren, and I assumed the whole thing was a trick. That you were trying to scare me."

It was a fair conclusion to jump to.

"But I couldn't stop thinking about what I'd seen, that we would know each other in the future."

Miles didn't know what to say, what to think.

"I didn't lie about why I came here," Gabriel continued. "It was to get the truth from you and find out what your warning meant. But I could've found you a different way. I enrolled because I was curious about us in that classroom. I wanted to see if it would come true."

It sounded like a confession. His voice wasn't quite shy, because Gabriel Hawthorne didn't do shy, not when he was busy being blunt and harsh and snarky, but it was something . "Part of me desperately wanted to know why Miles Warren would ever look at me like that."

His words conjured up a memory. The first vision Miles had ever had, the fond smile Gabriel had given him. He'd kept it all to himself, too scared to study it deeper.

The bell rang overhead, loud and insistent, but neither of them moved.

Gabriel's confession didn't change anything, but it felt important in a way Miles couldn't quite put his finger on. The world had shifted just enough to make him feel off-balance.

"Why are you telling me this?" he asked.

"I suppose," Gabriel said quietly, "for two reasons. These past weeks, with everything happening and my death looming in the future, it's been a comfort to know that my time wasn't up yet. That I still had at least one more day because you hadn't made a terrible joke about Shakespeare." He let out a quiet breath. "With… everything, I don't know how it's going to go. Perhaps my premonition can still be a comfort, for both of us."

It was a gift of sorts. A reassurance they could share no matter how bad things got, that they'd end up back here together.

Miles really wished they weren't at school right now so he could kiss Gabriel again. He was terrified that if he opened his mouth, mortifyingly emotional mush would come pouring out, ruining the moment.

All he could do was nod, hoping Gabriel could see it all.

He stared back, like he could. "The other reason is that I want you to know, even before I saw you at the party, before you gave me that warning and I had to come looking for you, I wanted to find you. I could tell, before all of it, that you were important."

Important.

No one had ever called Miles that. Gabriel made it sound as if it was the most obvious truth he'd ever spoken.

"Gabriel—" His name caught in the back of Miles's throat. He hoped Gabriel was reading his thoughts, because words were failing him.

"It's fine," Gabriel said, before Miles could try to get anything else out. "You should go to class. Ms. Padilla won't hesitate to mark you down as tardy, remember? And I should go, too." He shifted back on his heels, about to walk away.

"Wait." Miles couldn't just let him say that and leave. "I get nervous when you start being so honest. And I—I don't know what to say."

The look Gabriel gave him was knowingly amused. "We can talk about it later. That gives you time to think of an eloquent response."

"Asshole." It came out sickeningly fond and sweet-sounding, even to his own ears.

The entrance hall was empty now. They were both going to be late. But he didn't move as Gabriel reached up and adjusted the collar of his jacket where it had gotten caught in his backpack strap, lingering long enough for a jittery feeling to kick to life in Miles.

"Later," Miles confirmed. Because they were going to talk about it. He was feeling brave so he added, "It's a date."

He walked away before Gabriel could say something snarky and ruin the moment, lifting his hand in an over-the-shoulder wave. A moment later, he heard the shrill squeak of the entrance door, and when he glanced over his shoulder, Gabriel had already disappeared.