Текст книги "Elegy"
Автор книги: Tara Hudson
Соавторы: Tara Hudson
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Текущая страница: 2 (всего у книги 17 страниц) [доступный отрывок для чтения: 7 страниц]
Chapter
FOUR
An hour later, the awkward, interrogation-themed tension had almost dissipated. I guess a few peanut butter M&M’s and more than a few sips of stolen wine just had that effect on people. It also didn’t hurt when Jillian told them that my pajamas were previously worn by the actress now prancing around in the chick flick that we were only half watching.
“I can totally see the resemblance,” Mya said, using a bottle of Mrs. Patton’s finest merlot to draw an invisible line between the woman on the screen and me.
“Yeah,” I muttered awkwardly. “My famous aunt just loves to share her outdated clothes.”
“Outdated?” Chelsea breathed. “They’re freaking gorgeous. Is that silk?”
Chelsea sat in the chair next to mine, and she moved forward to touch my sleeve. Without thinking, I yanked my arm back before she had the chance. Jillian must have seen the small, insulted O that Chelsea’s mouth made, because she darted forward.
“Amelia has touch issues,” Jillian said defensively, leaning around me. “You know, like a phobia.”
“Oh.” Chelsea gave me a smile that was equal parts polite and weirded-out. Kaylen, however, looked intrigued.
“Really?” she asked. She sat up straighter in her chair. “How does that work, exactly? With Joshua, I mean.”
My mouth started flapping open and closed like a fish’s. How did I even begin to answer that? Luckily, before I had to craft some believable lie, Jillian faked a loud yawn.
“Bor-ring,” she grumbled. “New subject, guys. Please.”
I could have kissed her. Instead, I gave her a sly wink of gratitude.
“Okay,” Kaylen said. “No more phobia talk. How about a game of truth-or-dare?”
Jillian and I shouted no at the same time, almost as loudly as Chelsea, Mya, and Elyse cheered yes. With the rest of the party on her side, Kaylen grinned triumphantly.
“Four against two. It’s totally happening.”
I groaned loudly and glanced at Jillian. She shrugged, as if to say, No use fighting this. I sank into my plush seat, waiting until the very last minute to join the other girls in the cross-legged circle they’d formed around the coffee table. Once there, I folded my arms and prepared myself for the inevitable questions from Kaylen. But to my surprise, Mya jumped in with the first challenge.
“Truth or dare, Jilly?”
Obviously Jillian hadn’t expected that, either. She blinked a few times and then said, “Uh . . . truth, I guess.”
Mya exchanged meaningful looks with Chelsea and Elyse before turning back to Jillian. “Are you in love with Scott Conner?” Mya asked bluntly.
Jillian blinked even faster, as did I.
I knew that Joshua’s quiet friend Scott liked Jillian; his feelings were written all over his face, every time he looked at her. But I had no idea that Jillian might feel something for Scott in return, especially not after her misguided crush on Kade LaLaurie this winter.
Now, watching the red stain of a blush creep up her neck, I knew it must be true: Jillian liked Scott back.
“No,” Jillian muttered, after far too long a pause. “Of course I don’t like Scott. He’s like . . . a brother to me, or something. And he’s not even that cute. I’m mean—floppy hair is over, right?”
Instead of answering her, the other girls whooped and laughed in triumph.
“Liar!” Elyse crowed. “You do! You totally like him.”
Chelsea pointed an accusatory finger at Jillian. “You’ve got a crush on your big brother’s bestie. Admit it.”
“No,” Jillian spat. She chucked an M&M at Chelsea, who caught it deftly and popped it into her mouth. Somehow, this offended Jillian even more. She folded her arms over her chest and scowled at her friends.
“Fine. So I sort of like Scott, okay? I didn’t used to. But after we got back from Christmas break, he just . . . he started to look better to me. Cuter. Funnier.”
I heard what Jillian didn’t say: that Scott Conner, compared to a creep like Kade LaLaurie, looked like Prince Charming. Not that Scott needed the comparison—he’d always been a nice guy. But now, Jillian actually valued that quality. I couldn’t wait to tell Joshua.
Jillian’s girlfriends, however, continued to tease her mercilessly. And for once, she couldn’t seem to muster up any sharp comebacks. So she scowled harder and flopped angrily against the footrest of a theater chair.
“Traitors,” she hissed halfheartedly, after the last bit of laughter quieted. Then she turned to Kaylen. “Don’t think you’re going to get out of this, just because I’m embarrassed now. Truth or dare, Kaylen?”
Kaylen flashed everyone a smug half grin. “I always take the dare. You know that.”
“Oh, I know.” Jillian grinned back, but her smile wasn’t a happy one. “That’s why I already have your dare picked out.”
“Bring it, Jilly.” Kaylen curled her fists and flexed her arms into a strongman position. “I’m not afraid.”
When I saw Jillian’s smirk, I wondered whether Kaylen should have been.
“Okay, if you’re so brave, then why don’t you go get us another bottle of your mom’s wine?”
Kaylen had already started to beam confidently, when Jillian added, “And one of her old pageant tiaras. A big one. Which you will wear for the rest of the night.”
The other girls started cackling, but Kaylen paled faintly. I would bet anything that those tiaras, with all their sharp edges and cold sparkle, represented the worst of Kaylen’s fears. Just the thought of stealing one had her broken out in a visible sweat.
Despite the jealousy I’d felt toward Kaylen, despite the fact that she’d thrown herself at my boyfriend last fall, I suddenly wanted to protect her. To keep her from risking her mother’s wrath, and from having to see another tiara again, if she didn’t want to.
“Jillian, I think that’s one too many dares.”
I spoke as quietly as possible, but the other girls heard me. As Kaylen watched me, something in her eyes shifted from desperate to hopeful.
“Actually,” I went on, keeping my eyes trained on Kaylen’s, “I know that’s one too many dares. Kaylen will probably get caught stealing the tiara. And if she has to steal something, I’d rather have the wine.”
Faced with a choice between the humiliation of their queen bee and more booze, the crowd quickly chose the latter. As if to demonstrate, Elyse grabbed the bottle from Chelsea’s hand and tilted it back, draining the last few ounces.
“More wine, more wine,” she began to chant softly, once she’d finished off the bottle.
As Kaylen pushed herself up from the floor, her feigned look of boredom barely hid her obvious relief.
“Okay, okay,” she said, moving toward the doors. “I’ll get us another bottle.”
“Two,” Jillian called out, just before the doors clicked shut. Then she whipped around toward me.
“Thanks a lot, Amelia,” she said, dragging out my name sarcastically.
I shrugged, unbothered by the fact that I’d spoiled Jillian’s plans. It was just too bad if she momentarily hated me for it. I’d lost too many friendships to let Jillian ruin one of her own. Besides, Kaylen might be needy and a little self-absorbed, but that didn’t mean she deserved cruelty.
There was enough of it in the afterlife, I’d learned.
Oblivious to my motives, Jillian turned back to her friends, effectively cutting me out of the conversation. I shook my head and smiled.
Oh, Jillian. You are nothing if not yourself.
I settled against the foot of my chair, satisfied to listen in silence for a while. Whether or not I would make friends with these girls tonight, perhaps I’d found an ally in Kaylen.
Or at least I thought I had. Less than sixty seconds after Kaylen returned, passed the stolen wine to her friends, and flopped back into her place in the circle, she turned on me with a wide smile.
“Truth or dare, Amelia.”
My eyes narrowed as I stared back at her. If I was being really honest, I’d thought that Kaylen herself would give me the biggest break, considering what I’d just done for her. But no such luck.
Though I didn’t know her exact question, I knew its inevitable subject: the boy I loved; the boy I’d been through hell for, almost literally.
It should have been an easy choice. I should have picked truth, and then lied like crazy. Fibbed my way through the dark secrets about Joshua’s Seer heritage and my undead status. Provided some vague answers, like “yeah, he’s a good kisser,” or “no, we haven’t talked about what will happen to us after graduation.”
Instead, I lowered my head and flashed my darkest smile.
“Dare, Kaylen. I choose dare.”
Chapter
FIVE
Obviously, Kaylen hadn’t anticipated my response. She sputtered a bit, floundering to think up an appropriate challenge for a girl she barely knew, and secretly envied. Finally, after exchanging a few pleading looks with her friends, she settled on an old staple.
“It’s almost midnight, so I guess . . . I dare you to summon Bloody Mary in the mirror.” She glanced around the theater, trying to find the right venue, and then pointed to the powder bath. “In there. So we can hear you chant her name.”
I had to choke back a laugh.
My dare is to summon a ghost? One that doesn’t even exist?
Instead of outright mocking the dare, I put on my most intimidated face. “I don’t know, Kaylen. That’s kind of a creepy game.”
Beside me, I could see Jillian roll her eyes; she knew as well as I did that a little spinning and chanting in the dark didn’t scare me. Kaylen, however, was fooled: she preened and smiled.
“That’s the dare, Amelia. Unless you want to take it back, and answer a few questions.”
This time, I didn’t have to fake my reaction. “No, that’s okay. Bloody Mary’s just fine by me.”
I paused in the doorway of the bath, locked eyes with Jillian, and tried not to grin. Then I ducked inside and pushed the door shut behind me.
I just stood there for almost a full minute, shaking my head at the idiocy of this task. Most of these girls probably hadn’t played Bloody Mary in years. I couldn’t remember, but I was pretty sure I hadn’t played it in several decades.
Still, when I heard someone call out, “The lights are still on,” I flipped the switch.
Even with the thin strip of light filtering in from under the door, the room was surprisingly dark. I could just barely see the outline of my face in the mirror.
I shouted to the girls outside, “How many times am I supposed to spin?”
After a pause, someone answered, “Thirteen.”
“Thirteen?” My eyes shot open. “I’ll get dizzy and throw up.”
“That’s the point,” someone else said, followed by a chorus of giggles.
I groaned loudly. I suppose this was the true torture of the dare: self-induced nausea in a stranger’s bathroom.
Hurray for girly bonding time.
With a heavy sigh, I brushed the lip of the sink with my fingertips and closed my eyes again. Then I began to turn slowly, using the smooth porcelain edge of the sink to guide my spins.
One, I counted in my head, while calling, “Bloody Mary,” loud enough for the other girls to hear.
That first chant incited another rash of laughter outside the door, but soon I was too occupied by the task of staying upright to listen. Spinning in tight, measured circles proved much harder than I’d thought. By the fourth repetition, my feet began to tangle; by the sixth, my head starting spinning in full force; by the eighth, I wasn’t even sure if I could keep myself vertical.
Nine, I counted, starting a new circle. As I spun, I fumbled for the sink’s edge but lost my grip before it could steady me.
Ten.
I tried to plant my palm against a wall for a moment’s support, but my hand slipped and bumped roughly against the next wall in my rotation.
Eleven.
Maybe I’d tried too hard to ignore the girls outside the door. Or maybe I’d grown too dizzy to hear them. Those were the only reasonable explanations for why they’d suddenly stopped talking. Why they’d stopped making any noise at all. But that wasn’t possible . . . was it?
Twelve.
Actually, it was possible. The other girls had definitely stopped giggling or talking. I couldn’t hear the droning background noise of the theater’s surround sound, either. It was as if the world outside had gone weirdly silent while I spun.
In my final, dizzy rotation, I felt the strangest sense that—even in the unnatural quiet—something waited. Something watched.
Thirteen.
“Bloody Mary,” I whispered, ending my last turn with a desperate grab at the sink.
My feet skidded to an awkward stop and I bent over the basin, sucking in deep breaths as I tried to suppress a sudden wave of nausea. Below me, the drain seemed to circle itself, spinning and spinning around the center of the bowl. The sight of it made me even dizzier, so I looked up instead.
The new view wasn’t much of an improvement. My face moved in the mirror, shifting from one corner to the other. Fractured pairs of eyes danced like bits of colored glass in a kaleidoscope: green on the left side, green on the right; green above, green below.
Gray in the middle.
My vision abruptly corrected itself and I stumbled backward, away from the face in the mirror. Mostly because it wasn’t mine.
The pale skin and crew-cut hair; the cold, soulless gray eyes behind wire-rimmed glasses—that was Kade LaLaurie, smiling back at me from the place in the mirror where my face should have been.
Kade, the murderer; the crazy person; the dead guy who should have currently occupied a dark corner in hell instead of this bathroom mirror.
His nasty grin widened as he held one finger to his lips, soundlessly telling me to keep quiet.
As if I could even muster the will to scream right now.
I thought briefly about calling forth my glow. Even if I didn’t really understand how it worked, it hadn’t failed me before—especially when I’d needed it to incinerate demons. But a specter on the other side of a bathroom mirror? I had no idea how to fight such a thing.
Still, something about Kade’s continued, mocking smile helped me find my voice.
“What do you want?”
My whisper sounded harsher and stronger than I’d expected. Hearing it, Kade dropped his smile. With a cold glare, he cocked his head to one side and scrutinized me. I don’t know exactly what he saw, but his smile returned. He lifted one finger to the interior of the glass and tapped it ever so slightly.
Assuming that a fight would follow, I braced myself. But instead of attacking me, Kade suddenly vanished behind a pane of frost. The entire mirror iced over, hiding him from view until I couldn’t even see the obscured outline of his figure.
For a moment, nothing else happened.
Then slowly, letters began to appear in the frost, traced there by an invisible finger. As I watched, the letters scrawled backward to form words, starting with the bottom of some message and moving toward its beginning. Nothing about it made any sense until the last word completed itself.
At that point, I’m pretty sure I stopped breathing.
In even, flawlessly aligned block letters, the message read:
YOU
OR THEM.
ONE DIES PER WEEK UNTIL YOU JOIN US.
I understood its meaning perfectly: the message came from the darkness itself.
From hell.
Before my mind could process this fully—before I even had a chance to breathe—the ice melted, crashing onto the sink and floor in one noisy wave.
My feet were soaked, my hands were shaking, but I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the mirror. Kade had vanished, leaving nothing but the image of a pale, terrified girl in his place.
Chapter
SIX
I must have figured out a way to black out but stay conscious. That was my only explanation for why I suddenly found myself sitting in a theater chair, staring blankly up at Kaylen.
A very angry version of Kaylen.
“What do you mean, a pipe burst?” she demanded, crossing her arms and giving me a glare that bordered on murderous.
I shrugged. In my semidelirious state, I must have dragged myself out of the hellish bathroom and conjured up an excuse for the sopping mess. Excellent work on my part, all things considered.
“I don’t know, Kaylen,” I heard myself saying. “It’s your plumbing.”
Most of Kaylen’s guests snickered. But from the corner of my eye, I saw Jillian shift forward ever so slightly. Judging by her clenched fists, she knew something had gone wrong. At the very least, she knew a pipe hadn’t burst.
“I’ve got to go,” I said abruptly, pushing myself up from the chair. Without looking at the other girls, I moved toward the pile of overnight bags at the back of the room. “Jillian, can you take me home?”
“What?” Kaylen nearly shrieked. “You destroyed the bath mat, and now you’re making my best friend leave my party?”
I hesitated, glancing at Jillian. Thankfully, she looked more than ready to leave, too. I let my shoulders slump and put on my fakest, most embarrassed frown.
“I . . . I didn’t want to admit it, but I did get sick playing Bloody Mary. I tried to wash up in the sink, but I kind of overfilled it. I’m so, so sorry, Kaylen. This is just so embarrassing.”
The apology worked . . . a little. Kaylen still looked frustrated, but the rigid line of her mouth softened and she uncrossed her arms.
“Well, after all the wine and the spinning, I figured that could happen,” she conceded.
In a last-ditch maneuver, I decided to ham it up to the fullest. For Jillian’s sake, since she still had to see these people at school on Monday.
“I don’t want to ruin the party. And it was so important for me to make a good impression. But I feel kind of awful now. Like, I might get sick again.” I wiped the back of my hand across my forehead, as if the gesture would prove . . . something. Clamminess, maybe?
“So how about I mop up all the water,” I finished. “And then just go home?”
Kaylen’s eyes widened and she waved her hands frantically. “No! God no. I don’t want you puking on the floor, too.”
“Okay,” I said, hanging my head in fake dejection. “I’ll just go then.”
Evidently my pathetic but determined charade had thoroughly spooked Jillian. “I’ll get our stuff,” she chimed in, a little too eagerly. She practically dove for our bags, digging them out of the pile and then using them to usher me toward the door. Like I needed any additional prodding to get out of there, and soon.
After a perfunctory good-bye to Kaylen and her guests—all of whom looked a little dazed by the scene I’d just made—Jillian and I raced out of the room, down the stairs, and through the front door.
Neither of us spared the Pattons’ McMansion a backward glance as we drove away. We didn’t say it aloud, but I’m pretty sure we were thinking the same thing: we couldn’t move fast enough to escape the house that had gone from creepily gaudy to just plain creepy.
Jillian and I hadn’t been on the road for more than ten minutes before she swerved the car onto a shoulder and stomped on the brakes. She stopped so abruptly that I had to slap my hands against the dash to keep myself from slamming into it.
Jillian shifted into park and turned sharply toward me.
“What happened back there?”
I shook my head, frowning as I settled back into my seat. “I’m not entirely sure. An ultimatum, I think.”
Her brow knitted in confusion—an expression that reminded me so much of her brother.
“Explain, Amelia,” she said. “Please.”
And so I did; picking absently at my sleeve, I described my strange meeting in the mirror. When I finished the story, Jillian turned away from me. For longer than I’d expected her to, she just stared out the darkened windshield.
Finally, in a hushed voice, she asked, “Do you think they mean it?”
I raised one eyebrow. “Which part?”
“The death part.”
I studied her face for a moment, and then nodded. “Yes, I think they do. I think they really will kill people if I don’t come to them.”
Jillian flinched but still didn’t look at me. “When are they going to start?”
I sighed and began to rub my right temple. “I don’t know. They weren’t terribly specific.”
“How?” she asked bluntly, and then amended, “I mean, how can they kill people? I thought you said that they needed someone else to do their dirty work on earth.”
“If Eli and the redheaded girl from my dreams told the truth, then you’re right: the demons won’t do it themselves. They’ll need some kind of ghostly middleman. But as my little visit proved, they already have one, don’t they?”
“Kade,” she whispered, facing me at last.
I nodded again. “Kade.”
Jillian shuddered. Even in the dark, I could see her pale visibly. “That’s not exactly someone I want to see again, you know?” she murmured.
I didn’t blame her. The last time Jillian and Kade interacted, he’d drugged and pistol-whipped her, and she’d subsequently killed him with a mouthful of ground oleander seeds. Not a memory that would make for a very happy reunion.
I turned away from her to stare vacantly out the passenger window. “You won’t have to see him, Jill,” I said softly. “This is my problem. I’ll deal with it, in whatever way I have to.”
Jillian stayed silent for at least a few minutes. When she eventually cleared her throat, I thought she was ready to reply. To agree with me. But instead, she threw her car into drive and swerved back onto the empty road. We skidded, fishtailing wildly between the gravel on the shoulder and the asphalt.
Jillian grimaced as the tires squealed, but she made no move to stop again. Once the car righted itself, she began to speed like hell had already started chasing us.
“Jillian!” I shrieked. “What are you doing?”
“Making it my problem, too,” she murmured.
Gripping the steering wheel with one hand, she used the other to pull her cell phone from its little nook in the dash and dial it with one thumb.
“The road, Jill—watch the road!”
Jillian ignored me and put the phone to her ear. I heard the echo of a few rings, and then someone answer with a rough greeting.
“Meet us,” Jillian said flatly, in lieu of hello. “You know where. And who to bring.”
She didn’t wait for a response, didn’t even say good-bye. She simply ended the call and began typing wildly, still using one thumb. I could only say a prayer of thanks that she did so without looking away from the road.
Then, after finishing the text, she popped the phone into its cubby and turned back to the task of driving like a crazy person. Even then, with both hands on the wheel and both eyes on the road, she didn’t speak to me. Each time I demanded to know our destination, Jillian just shook her head and drove faster.
Despite my familiarity with the roads and forests in this area, I had no idea where we were going. I didn’t recognize the side streets we passed, nor did I find any help in the endless rows of indistinguishable pine trees that flew by outside the windows. It wasn’t until Jillian slowed to an almost legal speed that I noticed something familiar in the woods to our right. Something black and glittering that ran parallel to our path.
A river.
“Jill,” I repeated. “Where are we going?”
This time, my question was softer, more urgent. But this time, Jillian didn’t need to answer me. I saw our destination soon enough, when she turned onto another road.
Ahead of us, I saw the hulking outline of High Bridge. We were still a little far away—the route Jillian had taken from Kaylen’s house to the bridge was a strange, twisted one—but I could see the yellow tape and sawhorses that decorated the entrance.
Obviously, the county was in no hurry to take down the condemned structure. It made me wonder what the county officials would do if they really knew what lay beneath that crumbling monster.
Whoever Jillian had contacted had beaten us to the bridge: a green sedan waited on a gravelly shoulder, just above the steep hill that led to the riverbank. Jillian parked behind the sedan and flashed her brights twice before killing the engine.
She put her hand on her door, about to get out, when she thought better of it and faced me in the dark. She didn’t say anything—just watched me until she turned abruptly and exited the car, too fast for me to react. I sat there, blinking and confused. Then, for lack of any better ideas, I followed her.
Here, the night felt colder than it had at the Pattons’ house. I didn’t know whether that had something to do with the breeze now coming off the river, or whether this place just made everything seem chilly and unwelcoming.
Jillian stood a few feet ahead of me, facing the other car and rubbing her bare arms furiously against the cold. I closed the distance between us warily, still unsure of how Jillian intended to make my problems hers. The fact that High Bridge obviously played some part in her plans didn’t help my mood.
Nor did the fact that Joshua stepped out of the sedan’s passenger seat. He saw Jillian first and gave her the barest of acknowledgments. Then his eyes caught mine. Through the darkness, I could see the apology in them.
I tilted my head to one side and frowned. I had no idea what warranted the Mayhews’ strange behavior. At least, not until the driver stepped out of the sedan.
Scott Conner—Joshua’s good buddy and Jillian’s newest crush—had no business here. Yet there he stood, his shaggy hair sticking up in peaks and curls, as if someone had recently woken him up from a deep sleep. Which, I realized, had actually happened.
Although we’d never technically met, Scott gave me a shy, close-lipped smile. It was a kind look, gentle, but it was far too familiar. Too knowing.
I took an involuntary step backward, away from Scott. I was afraid of him, then—afraid of the boy who shouldn’t be smiling at me in a way that suggested he knew my secrets, and felt sorry that I had them.
Joshua confirmed my suspicions, speaking quietly although no one else was around to hear us.
“Scott knows, Amelia. About you, and what you are.”
Joshua gave me a few seconds to process this news. Then he turned and pointed to the ugly heap of metal and concrete behind him.
“Scott knows, and he’s here to help us bring High Bridge down. Tonight.”
