“You mean a monster?” Coleman said.
“Well, that’s what you think at first. But it’s like, um, Beauty and the Beast. When you find out that the monster is actually . . . nice.”
Darcy swallowed. She’d had this conversation a hundred times with Carla, and had never once resorted to the word “nice” before.
“But doesn’t real love work the other way round?” Kiralee asked. “You start by thinking someone’s fabulous, and by the end of the piece you realize he’s a monster!”
“Or that you’re the monster yourself,” Oscar said.
Darcy just stared at the pockmarked table. She had fewer opinions about real-life love than she did about the paranormal kind.
“So what’s the love interest in Afterworlds?” Coleman asked. “Not a vampire, I trust.”
“Maybe a werewolf?” Kiralee was smiling. “Or a ninja, or some sort of werewolf-ninja?”
Darcy shook her head, relieved that Yamaraj wasn’t a vampire, werewolf, or ninja of any kind. “I don’t think anyone’s done this before, exactly. He’s a—”
“Wait!” Kiralee grabbed her arm. “I’m keen to guess. Is he a golem?”
Darcy laughed, dazzled all over again that Kiralee Taylor was sitting close enough to touch her. “No. Golems are too muddy.”
“What about a selkie?” Coleman suggested. “YA hasn’t had any male selkies.”
“What the hell is a selkie?” Oscar asked. He wrote realistic fiction: coming of age and drunken mothers, no monsters at all. Moxie had wanted a blurb from him to give Afterworlds what she called “a literary sheen.”
“It’s a magicked seal you fall in love with,” Darcy explained.
“Just think of it as a portmanteau,” Coleman said. “Combining ‘seal’ and ‘sexy.’ ”
Oscar raised an eyebrow. “I don’t see the appeal.”
“In any case,” Darcy said, not wanting the conversation to stray too far, “my hottie’s not a selkie.”
“A basilisk, then?” Coleman asked.
Darcy shook her head.
“Best to avoid horny lizards as love interests,” Kiralee said. “And stick with something more cuddly. Is it a drop bear?”
Darcy wondered for a moment if this was a test. Perhaps if she proved her knowledge of mythical beasts, they would take her through a hidden velvet curtain to the real YA Drinks Night.
“Aren’t drop bears more your territory?” she said to Kiralee.
“Indeed.” Kiralee smiled, and Darcy knew she’d gotten a gold star on that one. Or perhaps a gold koala bear sticker. The drinks arrived, and Kiralee paid for them. “A troll? No one’s done them yet.”
“Too many on the internet,” Coleman said. “Maybe a garuda?”
Darcy frowned. A garuda was half eagle and half something else, but what?
“Be nice, you two,” said Oscar.
Darcy looked at him, wondering what he meant, exactly. Were Kiralee and Coleman gently mocking her, or all paranormal romances? But the Sword Singer books were full of romance. Maybe Oscar was simply bored with the mythical bestiary game.
“Darcy’s love interest is really quite original,” he said. “He’s a sort of a . . . psychopomp. Is that the right word?”
“More or less,” Darcy said. “But in the Vedas, the Hindu scriptures I was using for inspiration, Yamaraj is the god of death.”
“Emo girls love death gods.” Kiralee took a long drink. “License to print money!”
“How do you hook up with a death god, anyway?” Coleman asked. “Near-death experience?”
Darcy almost coughed out her mouthful of beer. Lizzie’s brush with death was the book’s unique selling point, the singular idea that had carried Darcy through last November, and Coleman had just come up with it off the top of his head.
“Um, not exactly. But . . . kind of?”
Coleman nodded. “Sounds pleasingly dark.”
“The first chapter is megadark,” Oscar said. “There’s this awful terrorist attack, and you think the protag’s going to get killed. But she winds up . . .” He waved his hand. “No spoilers—just read it. Much better than your average paranormal.”
“Thank you,” Darcy said, smiling, though suddenly she wondered how good Oscar Lassiter thought the average paranormal was.
CHAPTER 8
I COULDN’T TELL THE FBI anything new, and the doctors had found nothing wrong with me that stitches couldn’t cure, so two mornings after the attack, we left Dallas in a rental car.
Mom hated road trips, because highways in the hinterlands scared her. But she was worried I’d start screaming if I saw DFW airport again, or any airport. What she didn’t realize was that I was too numb for anything so dramatic.
It wasn’t just exhaustion. There was a sliver of cold still inside me, a souvenir of the darkness I’d passed through. A gift from the other side. Whenever I remembered the faces of the other passengers, or when a clatter in the hospital corridors sounded like distant gunfire, I closed my eyes and retreated to that cool place, safe again.
We left the hospital in secret. One of the administrators led us through basement corridors to a service exit, a squeaky metal door that opened onto a staff parking lot. No reporters waited there, unlike the front entrance.
There were pictures of me in the news already. Lizzie Scofield, the Sole Survivor, the girl who’d sputtered back to life. My story was uplifting, I suppose, the only bright spot in all that horror. But I didn’t much feel like a symbol of hope. The stitches in my forehead itched, loud noises made me jump, and I’d been wearing the same socks for three days in a row.
Everyone kept saying how lucky I was. But wouldn’t good luck have been taking a different flight?
I hadn’t read any newspapers, and the nurses had kindly shut my door whenever radios and TVs were blaring near my room, but the headlines had leaked into my brain anyway. All those stories about the other passengers, all those people who’d been strangers to me, just passersby in an airport. Suddenly the details of their lives—where they’d been headed, the kids they’d left behind, their interrupted plans—were news. Travis Brinkman, the boy who’d fought back, was already a hero, thanks to security camera footage.