“There’s something strange about everyone, Miss Amelia,” Varnie said quietly.
“What happened in there?” I asked, pointing to the room we’d left. Though I was quite sure I didn’t really want to know.
“Look, girls . . .” When Varnie had our attention, he looked uncomfortable, like he didn’t know what to do with it now that he had it. “This town is changing. There’s a bad mojo and it’s getting worse.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” That was Donny. Of course.
“Bad juju,” he answered, without really answering at all. “Darkness is gaining.”
“I’ve felt it too,” Amelia whispered, her eyes shining and trained on Varnie.
Donny, not as rapt as Ame, countered his logic. “Bad juju is forcing you out of town?”
Varnie sat on one of the moving cartons, his legs splayed in a most unladylike position under his skirt. “It’s hard to get clear here anymore. There’s a lot of stuff I just don’t want to see. I can’t get grounded.” He looked right at me. “Some energy is feral.” Why was he looking at me when he said that? “There’s a lot of stuff happening in this town that you don’t know about. Bad stuff. It’s practically a beacon to things that go bump in the night.”
His attention went back to Ame. “It’s been getting worse over the years. I used to think it could be stopped, but I’m not so sure anymore. The purveyors of dark . . .”
“You can drop the act, Varnie. We don’t believe you.” As if Donny’s bravado could undo the fear and the shivers that were affecting us all.
“So, what happened in there?” I repeated, nodding towards the room I hoped never to set foot in again.
“It’s you,” he answered. “Something about you.”
“What do you mean?” Ame asked.
“Something is attaching to her. Something dark and dangerous. It wants her. It wants her very badly.”
Me? The death cards. I thought of the three of them lying across the table, and then I thought of the skeletons and the ghouls in my dreams. My vision clouded until it was just a small pin of light. The pounding of my heart rushed into my ears, filling my head with the roar.
I sat down quickly to avoid falling. Donny and Ame joined me on either side, supporting my back.
I was obviously letting all these strange events get to me. There had to be a reasonable explanation. What would my father say?
He’d chastise me for getting involved with this esoteric gibberish. He’d get the doctor to prescribe me a heavy sleeping pill to avoid future sleepwalking, and then he’d remind me that boys were a foolish waste of my time.
I began to breathe easier. Yes, of course. This was all a series of unfortunate exaggerations of my too-fertile imagination. If only I’d listened to Father—
The afternoon sun was dimming, forming long shadows on the walls. I felt cold even though the temperature hadn’t changed.
“So you’re running away,” Amelia accused Varnie. “All this is happening . . . to Theia and to our town . . . and you’re just . . . leaving?”
He held out his arms like “what you see is what you get.” “Look, my whole life I’ve had to hide that I’m different. When I was nine, I spent eighteen months in the psych ward until I smartened up and told the doctors the visions were gone.” His voice lowered a little. “I was just a kid, ya know?” He let his eyes drift closed while he composed himself. “I’ve been running a long time, sugar. The only one who’s going to look out for Varnie is Varnie.” He pulled off his clip-on earrings. “The stuff I’ve been seeing around here lately I can’t unsee. I’m spooked. And you should be too.”
“Me?” Ame asked.
“You’re so busy pretending to be an amateur that you’ve passed by the realization that you’re talented. I’m kind of sorry I won’t be around to watch you discover it.”
“Good God. That’s it. We are out of here.” Donny got up and pulled Ame first, and then they both reached for me.
“Maybe we should let him finish,” Ame argued even as she headed for the door.
“I think Madame Varnie has done enough damage for the afternoon, don’t you?”
Varnie didn’t even get off his box. I waited for him to say something—explain or console or anything—but he just sat on his box and let us go.
When Donny dropped me off in front of my house, she repeated one more time that he was a fake, a phony, and that he rigged that deck to scare me. I nodded and pretended to agree with her.
The problem was that Varnie was correct. Something about me wasn’t right anymore. Something had attached to me in my dreams and wasn’t letting me go.
Part of me didn’t want it to.
CHAPTER SIX
Something tickled my nose.
I opened my eyes, surprised to feel the sun warm on my face. As I eased onto my elbows, I was startled to find Haden, my dream Haden anyway, lying beside me on a bed of soft green grass. He held another black long-stem rose, and he traced a lazy pattern with it on my arm.
“I thought you would never wake up.” He grinned and his eyes lit with mischief. He was dressed in his Regency-era finery again, though I noticed that today his fingernails were painted black.
My very own goth Mr. Darcy. Jane Austen would be so proud.
I bent my legs so that I was hugging my knees, uneasy about the afternoon with Varnie.
Haden smiled and presented me with the onyx rose.
It was hard to imagine this as dangerous when Haden smiled at me like that. Feigning shyness, I glanced away in an effort to hold against the strong tide of longing.
My dreamscape was very different in the sunshine. We were on the bank of an unfamiliar river with no labyrinth in sight. Instead, it looked as if someone had painted nature with Easter egg dye. Each blade of grass was a different shade of green—from hunter to turquoise. Oddly shaped flowers sprouted in small patches and mushrooms the size of footstools grew in primary colors with patterns like polka dots and zigzags on them.
The water in the swiftly flowing river was the color of a blue raspberry Slurpee from 7-Eleven. I wanted to dip my feet in, but like everything in the land of my dreams, it made me wary despite its enchantment.
“We’re alone,” I announced aloud as the thought crossed my mind. Not a ghoul in sight.
“I felt the need to be selfish of your time,” he answered.
I ignored the remark. I’d had enough empty flattery designed to tease me into his games. “I like it here. It’s beautiful.” I pushed myself up and strolled to the river’s edge.
Haden joined me on the bank, standing near yet not touching. Never touching. Feeling self-conscious of my nightgown, even more so in the light of day, I hugged myself tightly. Without looking directly at him, I gathered my courage.
Before the words would form, Haden offered, “I know you have questions, little lamb. What if we traded answer for answer?”
“What do you mean?”
“That’s your first. I mean, I’ll answer a question for every question you answer me. My turn now. When did you begin playing music?”
I regarded him with a sideways glance. “I don’t remember ever not playing the violin. I found my mother’s in a chest when I was three.”
My mother hadn’t been a virtuoso by any means, but I’d been told she enjoyed playing occasionally. She’d listened to violinists on CD, especially while she was pregnant with me. My father didn’t talk about her much, but he used that story to coerce me into extra practice now and then.
It was my turn for a question. So many things were unknown to me, where to start? “Are you real?”
“Yes,” he answered. His voice, rough like gravel, surprised me. I peered at him closely.
I wanted to look at him forever, I decided. It was foolish, I knew that. Appearances meant nothing, and they seemed to mean less lately, in this place. Things that should be beautiful were raw with the kind of horror normally reserved for Halloween.
But Haden was different. He could have
been a model, but there was a quality to him that film could never capture. It wasn’t his dark eyes or sable waves of hair that drew me to him. He was mystifying with his wicked charm and roguish charisma, of course, but it was his loneliness that pulled me the hardest, I think.
Perhaps I was the only one who saw it. Maybe I made it up. But Haden Black was the loneliest person I’d ever met.
I wasn’t sure he understood what I was asking. “I meant are you real here? Is this place real?”
He waggled his finger at me. “I know what you meant, but it’s not your turn now.”
“Well, then ask me something.”
He shook his head. “I don’t know what to ask first. I want to know it all. Everything.” His lips quirked into a shy smile and he looked earnestly at his feet.
Even though I’d promised myself I wouldn’t fall for his head games, he sounded so convincing. Everything inside me wanted to believe him. And as the water rolled past us on the sunny riverbank, part of his veneer faded. His body language changed—he seemed reticent and suddenly unsure of himself.
“So ask,” I prodded, a little in awe that somehow, despite all logic, the power dynamic of this relationship was suddenly in my favor.
“What is your favorite food?”
“Ice cream.”
“What flavor?”
I shook my head. “Tsk-tsk, Haden. It’s not your turn.”
“Have pity on a poor bastard, Theia.” There again was the smile. The one that filled me to near bursting with a sudden joy.
“All right, strawberry. My turn.” Giddiness fizzed like root beer in my stomach and spread from there until I felt effervescent. “When we’re at school, in the other world . . .” I was tempted to say “real world,” but the lines were so murky. “Do you remember this place and what happens here with me? Do both these worlds collide for you like they do for me?”
The reticence ate him up, and his good humor vanished. “I’m not sure this was such a wise game after all.”
The wind kicked up from nowhere, sending a bitter chill down my gown. And then it was gone just as suddenly as it gusted.
“Is that what this is? A game?” I asked.
“You’ve already asked your question.”
“You didn’t answer.”
“No, this isn’t a game.” He loosened his cravat.
Oh, but it was. The game frustrated me. Questions I needed answers for and answers that begged for a question hammered at me from inside my head, but I had to wait. Wait my turn.
The silence lingered like an aftertaste for too long. Restlessness built the agitation in me until it was a living thing—a third person in this conversation.
Finally, he asked, “Are you afraid of me?”
“Absolutely not, and yes, with everything in my heart and soul,” I blurted without thought.
He chuckled, and looked directly at me for the first time in several minutes. “I’m not sure that qualifies as an answer—it’s more like a contradiction.”
“Up is down, remember? Besides, everything about you is a contradiction.” Pondering my word choice a little more carefully, I added, “You won’t hurt me. How I know that, I can’t say. But the ways you make me feel, Haden—that’s what frightens me. I know you’ll be my undoing.”
The air grew more still than naturally possible, as if it were expecting something. “Oddly, that is exactly what I would say about you.” He caressed my face with his gaze. Adoring me, memorizing me. He stopped on my lips, remaining too long.
My turn again. “Why don’t you ever touch me?”
A wall went up, an invisible shield that locked him away from me. Not to be seen, but surely felt. “It’s not a good idea.”
“Why?” I stepped towards him but he stepped back.
“It’s my turn. Who was your first kiss?”
Heat rushed into my face. I flattered myself by thinking maybe he wanted to kiss me. I wished he wanted to kiss me. I hadn’t expected the question, and I’m sure he knew the answer. “I haven’t . . .” Squeezing my eyes closed, I began again. “I haven’t been kissed. Yet.”
“Why?” Haden stepped out of his invisible shielded zone before he remembered himself, like he’d wanted to reach for me. “Why ever not?” he asked, but then remembered his own rules.
Encouraged by his bewilderment, I asked, “Why is it a bad idea to touch me?”
“You obviously know I’m not like other boys. It’s not meant for our worlds to mix this way.”
“Yet here we are.”
“You forgot to answer me. Why haven’t you been kissed?”
I rolled my eyes at his innocence. “You obviously know I’m not like other girls. I’m shy and I don’t spend time with boys. My father is strict and—”
“That’s not why.”
He thought he knew me so well. “Fine. You tell me why I haven’t been kissed.”
I regretted the words and my tone instantly. What if he told me what I already knew? That I was lacking. Not interesting or pretty enough.
“You were waiting.”
My blood surged, and I watched his lips now. Studied them. Like they were the answers I sought. “Are you going to kiss me?”
“No.”
The slap of rejection wounded me, and I reeled back. I had to turn my eyes away. I couldn’t let him see how much hurt he could inflict upon me with just one word.
“You were wrong.” The weight of his hands settled on my arms psychically, though he hadn’t put them physically on me. It was a poor substitution, but once again, I met his eyes and was dazzled by the earnestness I saw there. “It’s true that I never want to hurt you. But I can’t promise you that I never would. I want to kiss you, Theia, but I won’t.”
“I want you to.” I ached for him. The longing, like a vine, coiled around me and stretched out towards him, wanting to twine us together. I needed more than a psychic touch.
I needed him.
“I can’t.” He ground out the words even though he moved closer to me.
We were close enough to make it happen right then. I angled my head slightly and whispered, “I want you to be my first.”
Our bodies tried to make the decision for us, bringing us impossibly close, our breath mingling and hearts thumping in unison.
“You’re so beautiful,” he whispered. “Sometimes I daydream about your heart-shaped mouth for hours.”
His will was breaking. It chipped off him little by little. He desired me and, surrounded by his scent, I desired to lose myself to him completely. Nothing else made sense but this. Yet he fought a war with himself, even though I offered myself freely. The anguish in his eyes triggered a flash of something I’d seen before. Something recent . . . something . . .
I gasped and stumbled backwards.
I’d seen the suffering in those eyes once before.
“You’re the burning man.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
The impact of waking so suddenly sent me scrambling out of my bed before I even realized I was awake. I glanced around my room wildly, trying to make sense of where I was. My heart slammed against my rib cage like a trapped animal desperate for escape, and I trembled violently as my conscious self met up with the rest of me.
There would be no more sleep for me that night.
After my pronouncement, Haden had recoiled from me in horror. In the blink of an eye, he disappeared—reappearing several feet away and telling me to wake up.
Haden could not possibly be the burning man. That man had died in front of me, and I had watched him turn to dust. If that had even happened. Everything was so confusing. Up is down, down is up.
What I couldn’t discount was the bone-deep awareness that Haden had suffered and that somehow it had something to do with me.
I couldn’t sit still. It was too late to try for more sleep, yet too early to get ready for school. The walls felt like a cage, and I suddenly hated everything in my room. Oh, I’d never really liked it much—it was fine for a catalog but not f
or a real girl. But now it mocked me. Where were my posters, my dirty clothes? A small concession was given by way of a corkboard with a few snapshots and movie tickets. The rest of the room was staged perfectly for a photo shoot or a real estate tour.
Empty of anything that defined it as real.
That was how I felt sometimes. I existed in a world made for show, not depth, not feeling.
And then along came Haden.
Haden stared at the bathroom mirror instead of going to class. The face looking back at him was what they saw when they looked at him, but his reflection lied. If they knew why he was here . . . what he planned to do . . . they would see him as he really was.
A monster.
He’d been waiting for this chance his whole life. To experience humanity. To be a part of it, to understand the feelings he’d been born with but never allowed to express. And now on this devil’s errand, he’d learned there was one more human experience he hadn’t known he was capable of.
A guilty conscience.
Haden cut class.
Disappointment colored my world gray again, and I worked solo on the chapter questions we were supposed to be doing together. If I could forget about him, even for a few minutes, I could get some work done. My mind was not swayed by the logic, though, and instead I thought of nothing but Haden.
I wondered if we shared the same dreams. And then I chastised myself. Just because I dreamt of falling down the rabbit hole like Alice didn’t mean I’d really found a gothic Wonderland at night. As real life put distance between me and my dreams, I found it easier to accept the difference.
Of course I dreamt about Haden. He was unreasonably handsome and the first boy to encourage conversation with me. I had a crush. I dreamt the boy I had feelings for had feelings back. And while I was at it, I exaggerated a little danger to add to his appeal. Honestly, it was more pathetic that I tried to make it more than it was.
In between classes, I stopped at the water fountain in the Main. As I waited my turn, I kept an eye out for Haden—but the lack of tingles and goose bumps probably meant he’d cut the rest of his classes too.