Anyways, due to that her fans voted for her book in the Best of 2012 Debuts, she promised to write 3 scenes (because her book won 3 times). As she promised, Courtney released a scene with Will and Ellie. The scene is about when Will first sees Ellie for the first time.
Though if you haven't read this book, I recommend you don't read this ... but if you want to, go ahead!
I wasn’t sure if I could subject my heart to this. If Frank Meyer was wrong, I would be ruined. I was certain of it. She’d been gone forty-five years, four months, and eighteen days. I’d counted the hours, the minutes, the moments since I’d seen her last. Since I’d seen her smile. I wouldn’t be able to take it if Frank was wrong and I wouldn’t see her smile today.
As I navigated the halls of the sprawling high school, I became too aware of how long I had spent in solitude, avoiding human contact where I could, hunting the demonic alone. I had an excellent sense of direction, but it took me some time to find Frank’s classroom. When he’d shown up at my hotel room in Chicago last night to tell me that he’d found her, he’d explained a few things. He’d taught Economics at this school for almost two decades and was about to retire. In the first week of class this year he’d seen her among the other freshmen students and recognized her instantly, but he was careful to be certain that it was her before he sought me out. He told me he had to be sure.
Still, I doubted him. It had been so long…
“Will.”
I looked up ahead to see Frank leave his classroom and head toward me. He was a wizened old man now, but when he smiled, he looked exactly like the boy I knew when I first met him. He stared at me for a moment, bewildered and blinking as if I were a mirage.
“I can’t believe you came,” he said.
“Neither can I.”
“And I don’t think I’ll ever get used to you looking the same as you did almost fifty years ago,” he laughed.
I humored him with a shrug. “You look good, Frank.”
He started walking and beckoned for me to follow him. I noticed one of his legs was stiff and he appeared to walk with some pain. “Yeah, well, I’m not what I used to be. I don’t hunt much these days. Thinking I might retire from that too, when I’m done teaching. Almost lost my leg a few years ago to a lupine.”
“Sorry to hear that,” I said.
“You’re back in town, though. You can take over for me.”
“I’m not sure how long as I’ll stay.”
Frank drew a long breath and exhaled slowly. “I promise you, it’s her. I wouldn’t get this wrong.”
He led me outside and into the sunlight. Across the green lawn dotted with trees were students intermingling after classes had ended, waiting for their rides, or lingering to spend time with friends before departing.
“She’s around here somewhere,” Frank said distantly. “She’s usually picked up by her mother.”
But I had already spotted her before he finished that sentence and all the breath had been stolen from me. She was there, seated on the grass beside a blond-haired girl in the shade of a tree. She was laughing. Her smile crippled me. I struggled to stay standing and to not make a scene, but my knees wanted to buckle from my overwhelming emotions. She looked just as I remembered her. Her hair was a gleaming waterfall of cherries and dark chocolate, a color so unreal that sometimes I’d had to touch it to prove to myself it wasn’t some vision of dark fire. She was beautiful.
I was so used to restraining myself from touching her, because she wasn’t allowed to be mine, but the need I felt to hold her was crushing. She didn’t know I loved her. I’d never told her, and that was one of my biggest regrets since I lost her. I wanted to go to her now, to tell her how much I loved her, missed her, feared for what had happened to her, but I set my jaw and talked myself down. If I did that, she’d think I was a maniac. I wasn’t human and I didn’t know how to pretend to be one of them, to replicate their habits and social rules. I’d learned to treat every public situation like a fight, so I would remain still and quiet. This was my ward, this balanced hesitation and silence, and I would not move until the moment was right. I could make no more mistakes.
“What is her name?” I asked. My voice was so small, but Frank still heard me.
“Ellie.”
I repeated her name in my mind. Ellie. She was alive. She’d come back to me, as I’d prayed every day for so long. I tilted my chin and gazed toward the sky, watching the clouds drift overhead, and I whispered, “Thank you.”
“Her grandmother and I are old friends,” Frank said. “But I haven’t told her who Ellie is. I wanted you here first.”
I couldn’t tear my eyes from her face. “She looks happy.”
“She is,” he replied softly. “I don’t believe she’s begun to wake up, yet.”
“Strange,” I said. “She usually has the visions by now. Her memories should be coming back to her.”
“She’s different this time,” Frank said, tearing me from my trance.
I looked over at him, unalarmed. She was always a little different every time she came back. So many factors were involved. She was still the same person, but she was shaped by the way she was raised by her human parents, the environment she lived in, and by childhood experiences. Her soul remained the same, regardless of anything.
“She’s human, Will,” Frank continued, as if we’d just had a silent conversation. He always knew my thoughts. “She is so human. I’m afraid for her.”
“What do you mean?”
He fell quiet a moment to carefully choose his words. “She doesn’t remember anything. She has no idea who she is. When I said hello to her for the first time, there was no recognition on her face. None. I think something happened to her after being gone for so long.”
As I watched her—Ellie—I had a feeling that Frank was right. She was different. I couldn’t remember if I’d ever seen her so happy, so untroubled. She didn’t look like the fierce warrior I had known for five hundred years. She looked human. If she didn’t remember Frank, then I feared she wouldn’t know who I was. If she didn’t know me, then I would break. She had to know me. She had to know what she meant to me.
“What if she doesn’t remember me?” I asked.
Frank looked away, but wore the ghost of a smile. “She will. But she won’t until she sees your face.”
“I can’t go to her, yet.”
“No,” he agreed. “Not until her memories wake up. If you said anything to her now, she’d never believe you.”
The truth in his words threatened to break my heart, but I held myself together.
“Have you seen Nathaniel since you got into town?” Frank asked.
I shook my head. In truth, I probably hadn’t seen him more than once in almost twenty years. “I came straight to you. Does he live here now?”
“He just bought a house on a lake about twenty miles north.”
I felt a hollow ache of shame when I thought of seeing Nathaniel again. He’d raised me, been as a brother to me, and he’d been there for me at my lowest point. But when he’d tried to drag me out from rock-bottom, I’d pushed him away. I’d pushed everyone away. Losing her was my dishonor and I believed that I didn’t deserve to be helped. Where had I been when she’d needed my help?
“I wouldn’t have been able to find you if I hadn’t called him first,” Frank said and caught my attention. “You were lost, but Nathaniel has always known how to find you.”
So Nathaniel had kept tabs on me. I supposed I wasn’t exactly surprised to hear that. He’d always looked out for me, even when I didn’t deserve any kindness from him. After everything that happened with him, Ava, and Marcus… I just couldn’t bear myself around them.
But she had come back to me, after I thought I’d lost her forever. I couldn’t lose her again. My heart couldn’t take it even one more time.
“She’ll be okay,” Frank said. He put a hand on my shoulder. “Her grandmother and I will keep an eye out for her, too. Go see Nathaniel. You need family as much as you need her.”
A vision struck me of the last time I saw her, when the others held me prisoner and they brought her to me, dead in Ragnuk’s jaws. “What if they come for her?”
“I don’t think Bastian knows she’s here,” Frank assured me. “There are a lot of reapers here, but there have been a lot for a few years. It’s nothing out of the ordinary. She’s safe for now. You need to help yourself first, before you can help her.”
Awesome, right?! Now, Courtney shared ANOTHER scene, though it was only a teaser with Caden in it! :D
“You need the shower?” Cadan asked me.
“Not yet,” I grumbled. “I want to just lay here for the rest of my life.”
He huffed a short laugh. “All right. I’ll be out in a few.”
I must have drifted off because I opened my eyes what seemed like seconds later and he was already out. He was bare from the waist up and ruffling through his bag for a shirt. I tried not to stare too hard, deciding then and there that reapers just automatically came with Photoshopped chest, arms, and abs. Ridiculous.
“All yours,” he said without looking at me.
I grabbed the baggie filled with my shampoo and stuff, and before I disappeared into the bathroom, I caught a glimpse of Cadan’s muscled back out the corner of my eye. My breath caught. Burn scars shredded down his back, a marbled and gleaming slash of them. They mirrored Marcus’s scars almost exactly and I knew only divine fire could cause such a permanent injury. Cadan wore scars from angelfire.
He glanced over his shoulder at me before tugging a shirt over his head. “Don’t forget that I know what we’re about to walk into,” he said, understanding what I’d been staring at. “I never fear anything unless I have a good reason to.”
I said nothing, or rather I could think of nothing to say, and I closed the bathroom door behind me. I paused for a minute, absorbing what I quickly began to understand. Only angels could wield angelfire, and the only angel Cadan knew besides me was Antares. She had done that to him, nearly killed him.
When I left the bathroom, I plopped onto the edge of my bed and Cadan turned the TV off from his seat on his own bed. He moved to sit across from me and rested his elbows on his knees, peering into my face studiously.
“It’d be stupid to ask if you’re okay,” he said softly.
I gave him a pathetic smile. “Good thing you’re not stupid.” I waited for him to respond, but he was quiet. “Would it be stupid to ask if you’re okay?”
“I’m fine, I promise. And everything else will be fine too. Antares will be where I left her. It’s been a few years, but I’m sure she’ll remember me.”
“You left that big an impression, huh?” I joked.
“In a way.” His tone was serious.
“What did she have that you tried to kill her for?” I was just as grim that time.
“I didn’t want it,” he replied. “Bastian did. He wanted the grimoire. She didn’t have it, but I thought she was lying. Bastian ordered me to bring him the book and I’d been tracking her down for years so there was no alternative, and I was desperate. Of course she beat me to a pulp, but she’d tossed me beyond the reach of her bindings and couldn’t finish me off. I was even luckier to walk away alive from Bastian after he was through disciplining me.”
What do you think about the scenes? :)
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