Chapter 12 12
Annabeth's POV:
I sat on my bed with Kaelen's jacket in my hands, feeling like a complete idiot. It was just a jacket. Just fabric and thread and a zipper that stuck halfway up. But I couldn't stop myself from lifting it to my face and breathing in.
It smelled like him. That warm scent I couldn't identify, something between cedar and cinnamon but not quite either, something that made my stomach do that stupid fluttery thing I'd been trying to ignore so hard.
God, I was pathetic.
I should wash it and give it back. That's what normal people did. They didn't sit in their rooms at ten PM on a Tuesday night sniffing someone's jacket like a creep.
But instead I put it on.
It was too big, the sleeves hanging past my fingertips and the shoulders drooping. I looked ridiculous in my mirror, a kid playing dress-up in her dad's clothes. Except this wasn't my dad's jacket and I wasn't a kid and the way it made me feel was definitely not innocent.
I told myself I was cold. That the house's heating was shit and I needed an extra layer. That it had nothing to do with wanting to feel close to him, to have some piece of him here with me.
Yeah, right.
I crawled into bed still wearing it, pulling my blanket up to my chin. My aunt would probably think I'd lost my mind if she saw me, but her bedroom was downstairs and she went to bed even earlier than usual tonight.
I closed my eyes and tried not to think about that moment on the bench, about how close we'd been before his phone rang. About how much I'd wanted it, wanted him, in a way that didn't make sense for someone I barely knew.
Sleep came eventually, and with it, more dreams of flying.
The next morning I gave the jacket back to my closet and tried to act normal. Coffee with too much sugar, toast I barely tasted, my aunt asking if I slept okay.
"Fine," I lied.
Campus felt wrong without Kaelen there. I checked the bench where we'd sat yesterday, but it was empty. I checked also he cafeteria, and no sign of him. I even walked past the literature building between classes like some kind of stalker, but nothing.
My phone stayed silent all morning.
By lunch I'd checked it maybe thirty times, which was ridiculous. He didn't owe me constant updates. We weren't dating. We weren't anything, really, except two people who had weird matching eye situations.
But I kept checking anyway.
Chemistry was impossible to focus on. The professor could've been speaking ancient Greek for all I absorbed. My notebook filled with doodles instead of notes: spirals and geometric patterns and, embarrassingly, his name written once in the margin before I scribbled it out.
My phone buzzed during the lab portion and I nearly knocked over a beaker grabbing it.
"Phone away, Ms. Clarke," The professor said without looking up.
I waited until she turned around before checking the screen.
Kaelen: "Family problems. I’m okay. Can I see you tomorrow?"
Relief flooded through me, way more than was appropriate. He was fine. Whatever happened, he was okay.
I typed back: "Of course. Hope everything's alright."
Three dots appeared, then disappeared. No response.
I shoved the phone in my pocket and tried to finish the lab, but my hands shook a little as I measured out the solutions. Why was I this worried about someone I'd known for less than a week? Why did his absence feel like something physical, like a missing piece I hadn't known I needed?
This was not normal behavior, Annabeth.
Mara called that evening while I was pretending to do homework.
"OH MY GOD," she said before I could even say hello. "You need to hear this."
"Hi, Mara. I'm fine, thanks for asking."
"Shut up, this is important. My cousin, the one from Riverside, remember? She just told me about something insane that happened there."
I put her on speaker and went back to my biology textbook. "Let me guess. More guys with glowing eyes?"
"Better. Claw marks."
"Claw marks."
"HUGE claw marks. Like, bigger than bear claws, bigger than anything they've seen before. They found them on a barn outside town, just these massive gouges in the wood siding." Her voice pitched higher with excitement. "And get this, they were way too high up. Like, whatever made them would've had to be flying."
Something cold slid down my spine.
"Birds have claws," I said, keeping my voice steady. "Could've been an eagle or—"
"Annabeth, these things were the size of dinner plates. What eagle do you know with dinner-plate claws?"
"Maybe they're measuring wrong."
"Or maybe," Mara said, drawing out the word, "there's something out there that isn't supposed to exist. Dragons, Annie. What if dragons are real?"
I laughed, but it came out forced. "Dragons aren't real, Mara. They're mythology."
"So were giant squids until we found them. So were gorillas. Just because science hasn't documented something doesn't mean it doesn't exist."
"That's... that's not how this works."
"How do you explain the claw marks then?"
"I don't know. Hoax? Someone with fake claws trying to start rumors?"
"You're so boring sometimes. But I miss you anyway."
An I missed her so much as well. We’d been together since, like, forever. And when she’d left for university in another State my heart had broken so hard. Was that the reason why I’d been acting so weird and my mind was creating a strong connection with somebody I almost didn’t know at all?
Maybe that was it, and my obsession with Kaelen could be explained with how much I missed my best friend.
We talked for another twenty minutes, Mara spinning theories while I shot them down with increasingly weak arguments. By the time we hung up, my head hurt and that uncomfortable feeling in my chest had grown into something closer to anxiety.
Claw marks. Flying creatures. Eyes that changed color.
None of it was connected. None of it meant anything.
Right?
But that night I couldn't sleep.
It was past midnight and I'd been lying in the dark for over an hour, my mind racing through everything. The dreams. The heat. Kaelen's impossible healing. My own eyes doing that thing in the mirror.
A sound outside made me freeze.
Not a car or a dog or any of the normal night noises. Something else. Something that made every hair on my body stand up.
I got out of bed and went to the window, pulling back the curtain just enough to see out.
The moon was nearly full, hanging huge and bright over the rooftops. The street was empty, the neighbors' houses dark. Everything looked completely normal.
Then something passed between me and the moon.
Something big.
I saw it for maybe two seconds, a massive shape with wings spread wide, silhouetted against the white light. Too large to be a bird, too solid to be my imagination, too impossible to be real.
I blinked.
Gone.
The sky was empty again. Just the moon and scattered clouds and the ordinary darkness of a Tuesday night in Emberdale.
But my heart was slamming against my ribs, my breath coming short and fast, and some part of me deep inside, some part I didn't understand and couldn't name, knew exactly what I'd seen.
Even if my brain refused to accept it.
I stood at the window for a long time, waiting for it to come back. Waiting for proof that I wasn't losing my mind.
But there was nothing. Just me and the dark and the certainty that everything I thought I knew about the world was wrong.