Even so, he musters up the strength to continue. “You meant everything to me. You know that, right?”
“Julian.” Cass sounds wrecked. “Don’t do this to me, Julian. Please don’t leave me. Please don’t?—”
And as the world evaporates into darkness around JJ, he blearily realizes how much he likes it when Cassius Chin says his name.
44
Cass is huddled on the floor in the memory of an ice cream shop, holding JJ’s still form in his arms. Right now, he’s barely managing to maintain the shaky outline of DJ Ice Cream, frantically trying to keep the memory alive?—
Trying to keep JJ alive.
Cass doesn’t know how much energy is left in JJ’s soul, but he can feel it coursing through the bond, strengthening and healing Cass even as JJ weakens and diminishes. He doesn’t know how to stop it, doesn’t know how to break the connection?—
Only someone on the outside can do that. Right now, onlyEzcan do that. And even though it feels like Cass has been here for hours, struggling to cradle the last spark of JJ’s soul in his arms, he knows that it’s probably only been a split second in the real world.
Ez won’t have time to break the connection. Not before JJ is gone completely.
So this is Cass’s only hope, isn’t it? To just stay curled up on the floor in a rapidly fading memory, curled up around the last piece of JJ’s soul?
Maybe if he stalls for long enough, Ez will have enough time to sever the bond. Maybe if he focuses hard enough, JJ will be able to pull himself back from nothing. Maybe?—
“Cass?”
Cass’s concentration shatters. The last vestiges of DJ Ice Cream dissolve around him, leaving JJ’s motionless body in his arms and a familiar figure frowning at him from a few feet away. “Desi?” he says incredulously.
Desi waves back. “Hi!”
The gears in Cass’s head are grinding against each other. What isDesidoing here? He can feel Ez’s influence in the shape of the soul bond and Obie’s touch in the foundation of the memory, but?—
But how didDesiget into Cass’s head? “What are you doing here, sweetheart?” he asks hoarsely.
“I was helping Auntie Ez and Uncle Obie with the spell,” she says, wrinkling her nose as she looks around the formless void. “And I wanted to help more, so I came inside. What is this place?”
“It’s supposed to be an ice cream parlor.” Gently, Cass brushes his thumb over JJ’s cheek. His skin feels cold. “This was the first time JJ and I talked.”
Desi looks lost. “But why here? This is supposed to be an important memory, right?Themost important memory. That’s what Auntie Ez said.”
Tears burn behind Cass’s eyes. “It was important because we talked aboutyou,Desi. About JJ coming to visit you and take you on your field trips. It was important because—because we love you, and that’s how we realized we loved each other, too.”
Because that was exactly it, wasn’t it? Cass first started falling for JJ when he saw how amazing the hunter was with their semi-adopted daughter, saw how fiercely he protected her and how deeply he cared about her.
Cass only loved JJ because JJ loved Desi first. He thinks JJ felt the same way about Cass, too.
“But there are more important memories than that,” Desi says, and when Cass glances up at her, she looks confused. “More importantplaces.Like—” Suddenly, her eyes light up. “Like this!”
In a flash, Cass is back in the living room of his second-favorite safe house, Desi standing next to him and JJ vanished from his arms. Stomach plummeting, he scrambles to his feet. “What?—?”
Before he can finish, an incredulous voice—hisownvoice, he realizes with a start—interrupts from behind him. “You boughthowmany boxes of strawberries?”
“They were on sale!” JJ protests. Heart leaping, Cass whirls around to face the kitchen. JJ is standing there, healthy and alive and smiling, with two bulging reusable bags slung over his arms. “It was a good price overall, and then it was ‘buy two, get one free’ on top of that, andthenI had a coupon for a free box, and?—”
“But did you really need to getthirteen boxes?”
“Strawberries!” Desi cheers, clawing around in one of the bags for her plunder.
“I remember this,” Cass says, walking cautiously forward. The memory doesn’t seem to notice he’s there, Memory-Cass and Memory-JJ still lightheartedly bickering over the obscene number of strawberries while Memory-Desi sits on the counter and wrestles open one of the boxes.
The real Desi is trotting along next to him. “Uh-huh! It was a few months ago, back at the end of January,” she says, and she hoists herself onto the counter. Memory-Desi fades away, and the real Desi takes her place, munching contentedly on a strawberry. “Yay for strawberries!”
