Perfect. Logan can read me like a book with or without touching my skin. I slink my arm around his waist, and we follow Gage up the stairs. It feels good like this, comfortable, but only because I know for a fact Gage isn’t going to hook up with anybody later tonight. I couldn’t handle not having Gage, or Logan, in my life. Just the thought of them with other people enrages me on an unnatural level. It’s too heartbreaking to think about, so I let it go for now.
Demetri’s palatial mansion is booming with the sound of violent piano clatter much like Marshall’s. I glance over at the oversized white and gold trimmed monstrosity fully expecting an empty seat, but there’s an old man playing his heart out.
“Lovely,” I say.
“Rachmaninoff.” Demetri appears by our side with my mother in tow.
“Excuse you.” I nod into him.
“No, Skyla,” Mom corrects. “That’s who’s playing the piano, some guy named Rachmaninoff.”
My mouth opens for a second. I vaguely remember the name from music class in seventh grade. I’m pretty sure she means the song and not the composer, although knowing Demetri the latter is very much a possibility.
“Got it.” I roll my eyes a moment. “So what are you two supposed to be?” My mother looks like an escapee from an asylum with her hair teased to the sky and her clothes all in tatters, while Demetri looks debonair with an upturned collar that rises high around his neck, and is that a…cape?
“Vampire.” Demetri fans his wings to the side.
Nice. “So you opted for no costume.” I don’t bother hiding my feelings.
“Watch the sarcasm,” Mom bleats. “You’re a guest in his home.” She curtseys into us. “I’m a cavewoman.”
I smirk. One who has obviously had her brains sucked out by a zombie. How else do you explain her inability to stay mad at the man who killed my father?
Tad stalks his way over in a ragged dress, slinging a club over his shoulder like it belongs there. God, talk about embarrassing. Must he explore his transsexual boundaries in front of my friends?
“This costume is itching the living shit out me, Lizbeth!” He gripes well over the music, and I take that as our cue to find the teen scene.
Mom and Tad decked themselves out as a couple of cave people, and that looks about right. I’d ask what she did with baby Beau, but when she turns around I find him in a papoose slung over her back.
We follow the stream of bodies out onto the expansive backyard that Demetri lit up with orange and black lights making everyone look as if they’ve already set one foot in the grave. I wouldn’t put it past him to arrange for the other foot to land inside as well.
Gone are the gorgeous flower arrangements and rose trellises, replaced with every tacky accessory from the local party supply shop, complete with cardboard cutouts of witches and ghosts staked along the yard.
A steady fog emits from the fountain, and bodies dangle lifeless from the weeping willows.
“Wow, my mom did a magnificent job of turning the Garden of Eden into a giant pile of gaudy crap.”
A slow song comes on over the speakers, and people migrate over to a makeshift dance floor under the canopy of bright orange twinkle lights.
“You mind?” Gage looks to Logan while taking me by the hand. “Just one dance, I promise.” His dimples wink in and out as he pulls me in.
“Just one.” Logan glares at him a moment before relenting.
I follow Gage’s sweet scent all the way down the stairs and into a thicket of bodies at least fifty deep. Logan will never see us, and I’m guessing that’s the entire point.
“I’m not going to lie, Skyla”—Gage breathes the words into my ear as he holds me close, his hips moving hard over mine—“I’m dying to talk to you. I’m dying to spend time with you. I need you more than ever. This separation is fucking killing me.” He seeps it out in defeat, and even his expletive sounds like a surrender.
“You have the visions, Gage. Hold onto those. I’ll be speaking with my mother soon, and everything is going to get straightened out.” I pull back enough to see him. The tangerine glow from above makes him look haunted, demonic, desperately broken. I blink away, too afraid I’ll remember him like this.
That kiss I shared with Marshall earlier floats to mind. It felt alarmingly final. I could feel it in my bones. That was it for us on some level. I cast a glance across the way at Logan, sitting slumped while talking to a few of the guys from the football team. Logan has defeat written all over him. And this newly erected wall of secrets seems to be an iron barrier that I’ll never penetrate. All arrows seem to point to Gage, and yet he, too, appears to be waving the white flag of surrender.
“Skyla”—he twitches a smile, his glory restored as a slow-spreading smile takes over his face—“I do know enough about the future to feel comfort. But there are holes, big ones. You could drop a refrigerator in them, a mountain. Some things happen that I don’t understand.”
“Tell me, we can figure this out together.”
“No.” He exhales as if he were holding a lifetime of secrets. “There are some things we should let play out, especially when it comes to matters of the heart.”
“Great. Thank you for going all altruistic on me and leaving me to my own devices.” I pinch my lips to the side. “But you know I end up with you, or you wouldn’t be smiling, right?” I try to coax it out of him.
He tips his head back swallows down a laugh. “I’m no fool, Skyla. I know if I tell you that’s the truth it’s only going to drive you deeper into Logan’s arms because the thought of losing him will kill you, and”—he averts his eyes to the sky—“maybe Dudley, too.”
“But you know what happens.” My chest quivers, tears try to crop up, but I take a deep breath and fight their efforts.
“I know what happens with me.” Gage latches onto my gaze and holds on, strong as steel. And for the first time he looks hurt, in pain. Now I’m not sure what to believe. All of the hope he held just a moment before has fleeted.
“I’m going to find out Logan’s secret tonight,” I whisper, sweeping my gaze over the ground
“Really?” Gage says it with a sly smile as if he knew I was up to something the entire time.
“Yes, really. But don’t say a word, or I’ll have to hurt you.” I dig a finger in his chest.
He leans in with his lids partway closed, and my stomach bottoms out.
“I’ll let you hurt me anytime, Skyla Messenger. Even a broken heart would be a privilege from you.”
“Gage.” His words settle in my chest like live coals. “I would die before I ever broke your heart.” I touch my forehead to his chest, polluting his white T-shirt with all of the crap Brielle slathered on my face. I pull back and admire the stain. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be,” the words rumble from him, deep and warm. “I’m just glad you’re here. I’m glad we get to be together, even if we are stealing a moment. So how are you going to find out whatever it is Logan’s hiding?”
“Marshall’s involved.” I make a face. “And before you say anything, I’m going to be careful. He would never let me get hurt.”
“I know.” He tips his head so far back the scar on his neck stretches, pink like bubble gum. Gage drops a kiss on my cheek, then one square on my lips. “I miss you. I miss your kisses in the worst way possible.”
“God, I miss that with you.” Gage and I are working ourselves into a sexual fervor right here on the dance floor. He presses me in by the lower back, and I can feel the bulge in his jeans far too eager to greet me.
“Skyla,” he pants hot into my ear, and my insides explode, forcing me to tremble into him.
Swear to God, I think I just had a Gage-gasm right here in Demetri’s backyard in front of all of East and West.
“Let me come to the butterfly room tonight.” Gage can hardly catch his breath. It’s becoming increasingly obvious that letting Gage come to the butterfly room tonight would lead to explosive actions that will involve prophylactics. Althou
gh, I do like the idea of Gage having his way with me.
“I can’t. Marshall is having his way with me tonight.” I gasp at my misgiving.
“What?” Gage pulls back as though I just dropped a bombshell.
“That’s not what I meant.” My fingers ride up to my temples. “He’s taking me to the Transfer.” I wrap myself back around Gage like a coil. “Otherwise, I’d totally be up for some serious alone time with you.”
“We are still technically dating.” He tries to hide the dirty grin blooming across his face.
“Never for a minute do I feel like we broke up.” An unexpected burst of sadness rips through me as I press my lips together to keep the tears at bay.
“Skyla.” Gage rakes my name across my cheek with the heat of a nuclear wind.
“Excuse me.” A male voice emits from behind him.
I look up fully expecting to see Logan smiling back at me, but I don’t. I see Cooper Flanders, our buddy from the faction war.
“Coop!” I leap out of Gage’s arms and into Coop’s, leaving poor Gage with a not-so-thrilled look on his face. I guess it was a little rude especially after all but declaring my love for him.
“What’s going on, man?” Gage and Coop exchange knuckle bumps.
“Just came by to say hi to Skyla. You mind?” He points over at me, ready and willing to hit some slow moves. The song has changed, but the pace remains the same.
Gage nods into me as if asking the question.
“I’m OK with it,” I say to Gage. His dimples dig in.
“I’ll see you in a minute.” Gage looks from me to Cooper as he heads off the dance floor.
“I would love to dance with you, Coop.” I pull him in, and we begin to sway to the music with a nice, platonic clearance between our bodies unlike Gage who practically dry humped me a second ago—not that I was opposed to the idea.
“Um.” Coop holds up our conjoined hand. “Sorry, but this thing is on.”
“Oh, right.” Crap. Cooper has Celestra blood, so, of course, he can hear me.
Not only does Coop sort of look like Logan, but that whole forgetting to shut the brain off thing remains the same. Coop’s sandy hair glows an eerie shade of peach under Demetri’s tacky lighting. His clear, sky blue eyes sort of remind me of my own.
“You clean up nice, you know that?” I lean back and take him in. Actually, his jeans look dirty, and, come to think of it, his shirt sort of looks like it took a soil bath as well.
“Yeah, well.” He glances down at his less-than-hygienic accouterments. “I sort went on a grave-robbing expedition, you’ll have to excuse me. But you look very nice, yourself.”
“Grave robbing, huh? Well, you chose the right night.” God, I hope Chloe doesn’t have him doing her dirty work, then again, she did mention Kate was in the mausoleum.
“I’m not sure it’s ever a good night for that.” He glances in the distance with a look of concern sweeping across his face.
“Did you heal OK?” I examine him further before averting my eyes. “Of course, you healed, you’re a Celestra. We always heal. So who do you think won the war? I mean my mother’s—”
“What war?” he whispers.
“What war?” Dear God, he’s got more in common with Logan than I thought. “Coop, what’s going on? What’s wrong?”
“All right, here we go.” He nods into me and swallows hard. “Skyla, I just met you in the Tenebrous Woods. I’m time traveling from two years ago in the past.” His forehead wrinkles with concern. “Is the country going to war?”
“No.” I shake my head. I had no idea the Coop asking me to dance was such a blank slate. “It’s a faction war.” I shake my head. “And I guess the reason you don’t remember me is because we haven’t technically crossed paths yet. I don’t know if I should get into it. Just know you kicked some ass—and your friend, Flynn, was OK for a while, too.”
He lowers his chin. “I don’t know if I’d call Flynn a friend.”
“You did, so I guess things must improve. What’s going on?” I glance around. Who knows what other oddities might be lurking around Demetri’s Halloween haunt. “What brings you to Paragon?”
“Primarily, you. Laken and I want answers. You seemed to know us. Laken said you tried to save her. Can you tell us anything else about that? Do you know how she got into the Transfer?”
“No. Just what I told her. I was being held against my will and forced to work with Ezrina. Marshall—the Sector that was with me, he let me know I was in another time. Nothing made sense. But I saw Laken, and something in me wanted to save her. It was my job to load her into the tank, and before I did, I tried to give her CPR. Stupid, right? I mean she had already been dead for who knows how long, and there I was trying to play the part of some Celestra superhero.”
His brows knit as he considers this. “Maybe that’s why.”
“Maybe that’s why, what?”
“Laken has her memory. They were unable to wipe it out completely. She remembers everything. I have a feeling it’s because of you. I don’t think what you did was stupid, Skyla. I think you saved her.”
A scream drills into the night—it lances through the music and rides over the laughter in the crowd, but no one pays it much attention because tonight is a night when blood-curdling screams are venerated.
Coop freezes.
“That’s Laken.” He bulldozes through the crowd and takes off toward the woods at the back of the estate.
I chase him as far as the lawn before my heels start to sink into the tender soil.
“Coop, wait!” I shout, but he meets up with a longhaired girl at the base of the forest and spins her into a kiss. The fog settles over them, and they turn into murky shadows before evaporating completely.
“Skyla?” Gage comes running out from the darkness. “Some chick just slapped the hell out of me.” He touches his hand to his cheek dumbfounded.
“Oh! I bet Laken thought you were Wesley. You’re a dead ringer.”
“That would explain the strange conversation.” Gage wraps his arms around my waist again and settles his cobalt eyes over mine. “Now where were we?”
“I believe it’s my turn.” Logan crops up, pulling Gage back by the shoulder.
The music switches gears to something way upbeat, and Logan makes a face.
“Oh, come on!” I try to pull him out onto the dance floor, but he doesn’t budge.
“Just my luck,” he laments. “I’ll catch the next slow dance.”
“Come on, Logan,” Gage teases. “Skyla, here, wants to see you bust a move.” He whips out his phone. “I’ll tape it, and we can play it back for the team.”
Logan shakes his head. “You wish.” He pulls me in and takes up my hand. You mind if I take a rain check? Maybe a private dance later, say in the butterfly room? The bowling alley needs me—three more people just called in sick.
“I’ll go with you,” I whisper. I don’t know why I felt the need to whisper since there’s only Gage in the vicinity, and this isn’t exactly a top-secret conversation.
“I get it.” Gage holds up his arms. “I’ll get lost.”
“No, wait—” Before I can properly protest, he’s drifting through the crowd.
“You’d better find him.” Logan brushes his fingers over the top of my brow with a look of resolute sadness. “I should have closed the damn place tonight. It’s dead, anyway.”
“I’ll remind you of that next year.” I push him in by the small of his back and sway us to a rhythm all our own.
Logan’s eyes widen before he frees a tiny smile. “I don’t want to think about next year. I’m enjoying this moment, right now.” That destitute sadness comes over him again. “I thought we held something big, Skyla. I thought we’d last forever.”
My stomach pinches at the use of the word “forever.” That’s sort of Gage’s self-proclaimed buzzword. I slip my hands down over the back of his jeans and into his pockets.
“We get happily ever after, remember?” I
bump my forehead to his and pull back. It’s almost as if Logan doesn’t remember a thing, and it scares me to death.
“Yeah.” He looks down and fills his lungs to capacity. “I gotta go.” His lips twitch as if he’s fighting a smile. “Do you think I could steal a quick kiss?”
“You bet. I hear if you kiss someone on Halloween night it means something spectacular is about to happen.”
“Really?” He ticks his head back a notch, slightly amused.
“No, not really. I totally just made that up, but wouldn’t it be great if it were true?” I give a soft laugh, raking my fingernails lightly over his back.
“Oh, I think it’s true.” Logan twirls me until we land further from the party, the fog acts as a privacy screen just for the two of us. Something in Logan wakes up, and he’s brimming with that sexy grin again. “We’re on our way to something spectacular, Skyla. I can feel it. I just have no damn idea how we’ll get there.”
I put my finger to his lips. Logan is getting ready to veer off the cliffside again, and I don’t want him to.
“This is real. Right here”—I pick up his hand and kiss it—“right now.”
“I want you to kiss me, Skyla.”
I lean in and land a peck on his lips. My biggest fear is I end up in a marathon make out session with each one of them tonight.
“Like you mean it.” Logan’s longitudinal dimple inverts. It’s the earmark of all of the suffering we’ve been through, the aching lust that had to be denied, the deception, the outright public denial we exhibited just so we could survive. Logan and I were rising like a kite, the long tail of the past glittering behind us like an indelible trail of where we once were and how we came to survive.
“I’ll kiss you like I mean it.” I crash my lips over his, and every blissful emotion detonates. The stars, the sun and moon, we outshine their glory—the banner over the two of us is eternal love. We have happily ever after in our grasp, we just need to reach out and clasp onto it—
He pulls back abruptly. “I’d better go.” He dots my forehead with a kiss. “Thank you for that. I know you don’t want have a ‘marathon make out session’ with each one of us tonight.” He gives a playful wink. “And if you do”—he holds up his hands like it’s a stick up—“turnabout’s fair play.”