#predictable plot is predictable

Chapter 48

“You—” My voice breaks, and I clear my throat. Try again. “The earthquakes. They’re you?” 

He nods, looks wary. 

“Even the big ones?” I ask, and I can feel my eyes going wide. “All of them?” 

“I’m so sorry.”

How boring and predictable. 

“Come on.” He takes my hand in his and tugs me toward his bedroom. 

IT’S STILL BEEN FIVE GODDAMNED DAYS. SLOW THE FUCK DOWN. 

“Because it reminds me of how I got it, and I don’t want you anywhere near that world. And I sure as hell don’t want that world anywhere near you.”

Chapter 48 summary: First, Jaxon bites Grace, which is something akin to having an orgasm. And then they start making out. They take a brief pause to establish that it’s Jaxon who is causing the earthquakes… and then resume sucking face. Except that it’s the exact opposite of sexy. I’m 15 all over again, going to English class, and forced to walk past the “it couple” of the week making out in the middle of the hall. 

They finally go into his bedroom, where I’m somewhat relieved that no hanky panky happens. Instead, she sits down and starts spewing out bad joke after bad joke. She pushes his hair back, and he tells her that thinking about his scar only reminds him of how he got it, and how he wants to keep her far away from that reason. 

Chapter 49

“I can’t imagine you hurting your brother on purpose.”

 He turns on me then, eyes showing that yawning, empty blackness I’m coming to hate so much. “Then your imagination isn’t good enough.”

They’re vampires. It’s already been off-handedly mentioned that they have an intense political system. I can think of a few reasons. 

“So am I right in guessing that Hudson was not exactly responsible with his power?” 

“A lot of young vampires aren’t.” 

“That’s not an answer.” I raise a brow, wait for him to look at me. It takes longer than it should. “And you strike me as very responsible.”

He almost killed you because he popped a boner. That’s not being responsible. 

“Add in the fact that a lot of people got an up-close-and-personal look at my power and no one’s happy. And can you blame them? How do they know I won’t turn like my brother did?”

To be fair, the fact that he can think about his brother’s plan and go “wow, that’s completely and utterly fucked up” says that he’s already doing much better than Hudson. 

I tangle my hands in his hair, pull his mouth down to mine. And give him the only thing he’ll accept from me.

Chapter 49 summary: They make out for a little bit more before he slowly begins to tell her what happened. First, he kind of hems and haws and refuses to give her any actual details. But he eventually starts to spill his guts. 

He tells her that Hudson was slated to be the next king of the vampires. And that vampires inherit powers from their parents, and each new generation is more powerful than the last. So his generation is crazy strong. 

But Hudson was out of control. He had this plan in mind to make vampires into the number one species. And in order to do that, he had to genocide… not only only the werewolves, but the dragons, the witches… the humans. Obviously once the genocide word is thrown around, Jaxon started to have doubts about his brother’s mental health. He tried to go to their parents, but literally nobody would listen. So Jaxon did what he had to do. He murdered a bunch of Hudson’s followers, and then Hudson. 

He pointedly tells Grace to stop looking at him like he’s a victim. He made his choices, and he’d make the same choices again in a heartbeat. He has no regrets whatsoever. 

Chapter 50

“That’s impossible—he wasn’t even on the branch with me.” 

Jaxon narrows his eyes in an are you kidding me kind of way. “He wasn’t underneath the chandelier with you, either.” 

“So what? He got one of the shifters to half break the branch before the snowball fight, knowing it was going to be windy?” 

“More like he got one of his dragon friends to start the wind that caused all the problems. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you, Grace. The dragons can’t be trusted, and Flint absolutely can’t.”

Let’s pretend for two seconds that what Jaxon is saying is true. That Flint is the cause of the branch breaking and the chandelier falling. 

Exactly what purpose would killing this random human WHO DIDN’T EVEN KNOW THAT DRAGONS ACTUALLY EXISTED serve?

While I admit that Jaxon is bringing up some good points, his idea of Flint trying to murder Grace has more holes than Swiss cheese. 

“If you’re well enough to be up here, you’re probably well enough to be in class, don’t you think?”

Touche. 

It’s honestly kind of refreshing to see an adult in a YA novel who calls the protagonist out on her BS and is an actual parental figure. 

“First period should be about half done right now…”

Despite this conversation with Jaxon having taken up like 2000 chapters, less than 30 minutes have passed…?

“Give me one reason not to ship your ass to Prague, Vega. And make sure it’s a good one.”

Chapter 50 summary: They make out some more (ugh. Is every chapter from here on out going to start like this?) before Jaxon stops and says that he wants to talk about her safety. He then spins this tale about how Flint is the one who is actually trying to kill her. That he used his powers to chuck Flint under Grace when she fell out of the tree; Flint hadn’t dived to save her. 

And it’s not as though Jaxon isn’t raising good points. But as I said: the math about why the werewolves and dragons want Grace dead isn’t adding up. 

Chapter 16

...but one wrong move and it can all go to H-E-double-hockey-sticks real quick.

Are you for real right now? Was this actually written by somebody who is literally just twelve?

The tree branches began to rustle and move before a crack sounded as one of the limbs at the top fell and a handsome young man suddenly tumbled out of the tree and landed at Charles’s feet.

The young man landed on his butt, with his legs stretched out in front of him and his dark hair disheveled, looking like he had just been awoken from a long nap. He looked up momentarily at Charles. Not many people realized it, but the boy looked just like what Charles had looked like when he was a teenager.

If the idea is that Zade plucked teenage Charles from the past, then it's 100% lost on people who miss that this is supposed to represent teenage Charles.

I was messing with a particular kind of magick, which I hadn’t quite yet mastered. Chaos magick, is both strong and volatile, as it’s name implies and is by nature very unpredictable. It involves pulling power from sources that are, to a certain extent, uncontrollable—kind of like trying to ride a wild horse. In either case, you can do it—and if you really know what you are doing and you do everything right it may go off without a hitch, but one wrong move and it can all go to H-E-double-hockey-sticks real quick. I wouldn’t be “lost forever” as Charles put it (that was there for dramatic flare) but lots of things could go very wrong—and even I really didn’t know just how wrong they could go.

[…]

I struggled to bring it all back together and bring the energy and focus back to what I had to do. My head was pounding; I finally knew that whatever was going on was bad—really bad—but I also knew that I had to struggle to make it through somehow.

Zade: If you don't know what you're doing, this can go wrong quickly.

Zade: I didn't know what I was doing.

Zade: EVERYTHING IS GOING WRONG. ABORT TRICK!! ABORT TRICK!!

“I turned around, and she . . . she . . . uh . . . she just collapsed in my arms,” Zeb offered, still stunned, with glazed eyes. He seemed somewhat upset that I was hurt—which surprised me. Maybe he didn’t hate me after all.

You can not like somebody but still be upset at the thought of anybody getting physically hurt to the point that they need an ambulance.

That’s the last thing I personally remembered from that day. Later, after I’d had some time to rest, I pulled out the memories of what everyone else saw and what happened. When you “pull out” memories using magick, they pretty much feel like they are your memories—but you’re also seeing yourself from that other point of view. This means that you’re only seeing what the other person saw, though—so you might not get a full picture of the information you’re looking for.

I have to say that I don't hate this as a plot device for the first person narrator to get info.

“I am also her . . . ,” he paused, glancing at Mac. “I’m her father.”

Pretends to be shocked.

“No. You need to bring her here as fast as you can. Tell them whatever you want. Just get her down here, and bring that boy, Mac, with you. I may need him, too.”

Dela doesn't actually need Mac; this is just a cheap plot device to get them alone in Tennessee.

Charles nodded confidently. “Needed.”

Chapter 16 summary: Zade goes up to do the new illusion. She's using actual magic to make it look like stage magic. And boy, let me tell you that it is beyond complicated for a fucking magic show. Even a big headline event in Vegas. She uses “chaos magic”, which even she admits she doesn't fully know how to control. But she makes waves in the stage dive pool, then this lightning starts to appear. A bunch of sand shows up, which “makes” a glass statue of Zade. An apple tree grows, full of apples, and then drops a boy down. The boy tosses apples to audience members before he chops the tree down, and “transforms” it into a wardrobe. The statue is supposed to go into the wardrobe, and live Zade comes out. But somewhere around here, Zade gets struck by lightning. She manages to finish the illusion, but collapses into the arms of Zeb shortly after the final bow.

It's after this point, the narration then switches to Zade telling us that she pulled memories of what happened from people's heads. Obviously, everybody was freaking out. Somebody called 911, and EMTs showed up, but they had no idea what was wrong with her, so they got her over to the hospital. Mac and Charles drove over to be with her.

At the hospital, Charles confessed to the doctor that he's Zade's father. Mac is insanely surprised by this, and learns what a fool he'd been in refusing to listen when Zade said that she wasn't sleeping with Charles. Also, the random witch who fought Zade in the parking lot earlier showed up, and made a point to be seen. But that never goes anywhere, so I don't know what the point was. The doctor tells Mac and Charles that he doesn't know what's wrong with Zade.