Blue Moon (the Immortals, #2)

The second installment of the Immortals series follows Ever Bloom, a sixteen-year-old immortal with psychic abilities, including hearing thoughts, seeing auras, and receiving people's life stories through touch. Her boyfriend, Damen Auguste, a six-hundred-year-old immortal, brought her back to life and made her immortal after a car accident that killed her parents, younger sister Riley, and dog Buttercup. Now living with her aunt and legal guardian Sabine, Ever trains with Damen in manifesting objects and telepathy. Despite having loved each other across four hundred years of Ever's reincarnations, they have never consummated their relationship: Damen's ex-wife Drina murdered Ever in each lifetime before they could. Ever killed Drina in self-defense weeks earlier, but her insecurity about Damen's centuries of romantic experience still holds her back.

A charismatic British transfer student named Roman arrives at Bay View High, quickly winning over Ever's closest friends, Miles and Haven, along with the rest of the school. Ever alone feels instinctive distrust whenever he is near. Around the same time, Damen begins showing alarming symptoms: headaches, sweating, and episodes where his eyes go blank with no recognition of Ever. He fails to create a portal to Summerland, a mystical dimension accessible only to the spiritually advanced, something he has done effortlessly for centuries.

Ever agrees to spend the night with Damen after Miles's opening night in Hairspray, finally committing to consummating their relationship. At the play, Damen struggles to manifest a simple bouquet of flowers. He goes to pull the car around afterward and never returns. Roman claims to have seen Damen speed away. Ever searches desperately but finds no trace of him.

When Damen reappears at school Monday, he is cold and cruel, calling Ever a stalker. For the first time, she can read his thoughts and see his aura, both signs that his psychic defenses and immortal powers are deteriorating. He moves to sit with Stacia Miller, the school's queen bee, flirting openly. Roman orchestrates a social revolution, pushing all the lunch tables together and dissolving the clique system into one harmonious group with Ever as the sole outcast. A viral video of Ever falling into a lingerie rack earns her the nickname "Spaz." Miles and Haven distance themselves, joining the new order.

Isolated, Ever visits Ava, a psychic who previously helped her communicate with Riley's spirit. Ava helps Ever build a new psychic shield, a mental tool that allows her to tune others' thoughts in and out at will, and accompanies her to Summerland. There, Ava becomes distracted manifesting luxury goods and vanishes. Ever encounters Romy and Rayne, identical twins who guide her to the Great Halls of Learning, a temple housing the akashic records, a permanent record of everything ever said, thought, or done.

Inside the Hall, Ever views Damen's history on a crystal screen. His father was an alchemist in Renaissance Florence, working to create an elixir of immortality. Three intruders murdered both parents while the young Damen hid and survived. Years later in a church orphanage, Damen met Drina. When the Black Plague struck, he re-created his father's elixir to save her, then shared it with the remaining orphans, unknowingly granting them all immortality. Overwhelmed by jealousy watching Damen and Drina's centuries-long relationship, Ever demands the crystal fast-forward. The images stop on Roman gazing triumphantly upon a very aged, dead Damen, then go blank before Ever can learn how Roman kills him.

On a second visit, the Hall shows Ever pressing a finger to a crystal during a blue moon and traveling back in time. She realizes she could prevent the accident that killed her family and begins to believe this is the right path, reasoning that Damen disrupted the natural order by making her immortal. She also receives instructions for an antidote to counter Roman's poison.

Learning the next blue moon is tomorrow, Ever gathers ingredients, entrusts the antidote materials and elixir recipe to Ava, and shares an emotional farewell with Sabine. She and Ava break into Damen's house to switch his poisoned elixir with untainted bottles, but Damen catches them and pours the remaining juice down the drain.

At school the next day, Damen arrives visibly deteriorating, gaunt and silver-haired, and the student body turns against him. Ever realizes Roman has been controlling the school through mass hypnosis and breaks the spell by shouting and clapping. She delivers emotional farewells to Miles and Haven, then rushes Damen to Ava's house and feeds him her last elixir. From his dream state, he murmurs: "You left me," words Ever recognizes as a prophecy of what she is about to do.

Ever goes to Roman's empty house and pours his elixir down the drain. She writes herself a note with warnings, including "Don't go back for the sweatshirt," "Don't trust Drina," and "Damen" with a heart. In Summerland, she manifests Damen for one final dance, enters the Great Hall, and presses her finger to a crystal showing her old life. Everything goes black.

Ever wakes in Eugene, Oregon, back in her old life at Hillcrest High. Her boyfriend Brandon's kisses leave her cold, and a crumpled note in her pocket references names she does not recognize. On a family camping trip, Riley tells Ever their dad already retrieved her forgotten sweatshirt, preventing Ever from going back for it. Then time freezes. Riley tells Ever she cannot change the past, that the accident is the family's destiny, and that she must find Damen before it is too late. Time resumes, and a logging truck crashes into their car.

Ever wakes in her present-day room, her family lost again. Sabine has baked brownies using Ever's mother's recipe. The smallest brownie bears an "E" and the largest an "R," exactly replicating Riley's childhood habit of marking the treats. Ever recognizes this as the sign Riley promised to send from the other side, confirmation that going back was never meant to work. She races to Ava's house.

Roman blocks the door to the room where Damen lies dying. Inside, Rayne crouches beside Damen within a protective circle of salt. She reveals that Ava betrayed them by fleeing with the elixir and that she and Romy have been protecting Damen since Riley asked them to watch over Ever before crossing over. Rayne urges Ever to wait for Romy, who is bringing a properly prepared antidote, but Roman insists his antidote requires just a drop of Ever's blood. With Damen's breathing failing, Ever chooses Roman. She cuts her wrist, gives her blood, breaks the circle, and forces the liquid down Damen's throat. He stops breathing, then revives.

Roman reveals the cost: By adding her blood, Ever has created a permanent biological trap. Any exchange of DNA between them, through kissing, sharing elixir, or physical intimacy, will reactivate the poison and kill Damen. Roman explains he was the youngest orphan Damen saved from the plague and loved Drina his entire immortal life. When Ever killed Drina, he came seeking revenge. He hints that an antidote to this curse may exist but warns that only he knows the formula; killing him would eliminate any hope of reversal.

Damen awakens fully restored, with no memory of anything since Miles's play. Ever tells him only that he was very sick but is now better. As they drive away, she carries the secret that they can never be physically intimate again. When Damen asks where they go from here, she says they can go anywhere they want, choosing to savor the moment before facing what she has done.