“What?” Jessica asked, moving beside Adam. One more inch would have put her directly under his chin.
He retreated a few paces, a minute smile curving his lips. “Let’s all give Zellie a little breathing room, why don’t we?”
The group backed up a bit. Adam circled the monument a few times.
“I wanted to make sure my reading was correct. Does anyone know if there are underground utilities in the area?”
The RA from the third floor stepped forward. “I don’t think so. Why would they dig under the cemetery?”
“Six point nine for a site like this is unheard of.”
Paul rushed toward Adam, and the thing in his hand lit up like a Christmas tree. He gave Adam a surprised look. “I’m going to ask some questions, now.” He turned on a recorder. “Let’s see if Zellie wants to come out and play with us. Could I have your silence, please?”
The wind was the only thing that refused to comply with Paul’s request. The eerie whistle lent an unholy feel to our meeting. I pulled my jacket closer as a sudden gust shot a chill through me.
Paul stood next to Adam. “Are you here with us, Zellie?” He waited a few moments. “Are you angry that you died here?”
Adam took his turn. “Are you trapped on this campus—”
“Do you know the girl who hung herself in the bell-tower?” Jessica butted in.
The look Paul shot Jessica was decidedly irritated. Hmm. Did they already know each other? He went to the edge of the woods. “Are there any other spirits that would like to make their presence known to us tonight?”
“This could be your only chance to ever be heard,” Adam added. “Show us a sign of your presence.”
I turned toward Cassie to ask her if she had met the IPS crew. She stared wide-eyed toward the trees, her gaze trained sharply on a densely wooded area. She worried her lip.
“What’s wrong?” I whispered, trying not to disrupt the investigation.
She looked at me, all sweet smiles. “I’m a bit tired. Are you ready to go?”
I hadn’t missed the desperation in her tone, but I didn’t feel like leaving. Curiosity had wiggled into my heart. “Don’t you want to see what they find?”
She gave a nervous laugh. “You can stay, if you’d like. I’m going back to the room.”
I followed Cassie because she wasn’t acting normal. I couldn’t help but worry about her, especially considering what she had been through. I had been a real jerk to her, but I wasn’t going to do that anymore. Despite how it seemed, I wasn’t the only one who had problems.
She pulled her jacket tightly around her shoulders and shuddered. It wasn’t that cold. Her skin was paler than usual. I couldn’t be sure, but she seemed freaked out.
“Cassie, what did you see in the woods?” I asked a few minutes later. We were almost to the dorm. When she frowned, I held up a halting hand. “Before you tell me you don’t know what I’m talking about, let me just say something.” I caught her arm to slow her down. “You are not hallucinating.”
She brightened a bit. “Did you see her too?”
I had the unwanted impression she wasn’t talking about a ghost. I wished I could lie to her. I wanted to tell her I had, that she wasn’t alone. “That’s not the point. Who did you see?”
Her expression fell. “Leave me alone, Rayla. I know you mean well, but patronizing me won’t help. I’m going to have to call my mom.”
“Why?” I blocked the path when she tried to leave.
“This doesn’t bode well for me. I didn’t really go to India when we were kids.” She eyed me warily and sighed. Her gaze hit the ground. “I was institutionalized.”
“That’s crazy.” She stared at me, hurt, as tears pooled in her eyes. “Okay, poor choice of words. What I meant was that you were just imaginative when we were kids. The stories you told me were amazing. They helped me deal with my mom’s disappearance. I don’t know what I would have done without them.”
We were at our door now. Silent tears streamed down Cassie’s face. She had trouble with the lock.
“Let me.”
She stepped aside, and I turned the knob. Rushing past me to the bed, she buried her face in my pillow. I sat beside her, not knowing if I should talk to her or leave her alone.
I placed my hand gently on her shoulder and to my relief she didn’t pull away. “You should know by now that you can trust me. I want to help.” I brushed her hair aside. “What can I do?”
She turned over, hitting the mattress. “Make them leave me alone!”
I tried to keep my shock over her outburst from showing when I answered her, “I’d love to, but I need to understand what is going on.” I had never seen her this upset. Our running joke was that she was part Vulkan.
She sniffed, searching my face for a moment. “One of them is playing with me as if he knows I can see him.”
Now, maybe we could get somewhere. “What does he look like?”
Her eyes focused on nothing in particular. “He’s short, about two and a half feet tall with scaly, purple skin, bright-white hair, beady orange eyes, a sunken nose, and sharp pointy teeth. I haven’t seen this sort of creature before, so I don’t know what to call him.”
I scrunched up my face. “Sounds really ugly.”
“He is. Some of my things have gone missing.” She sat up, pulling her knees toward her chest. With shaking fingers, she wiped her cheeks. “You know my grandmother’s broach—the dragonfly?”
I nodded. “I love that one.” It was platinum. The wings were lacy webs with two emeralds inset at the ends. The eyes were sapphire.
“I shouldn’t have brought it, but I hadn’t planned on wearing it. I wanted to have something that reminded me of Nana.”
“So you can’t find it?”
She looked at me sharply with haunted eyes. “I saw him take it!”
I hid my excitement over her revelation and smiled reassuringly. “Don’t worry. We’ll get it back.”
She grimaced. “I don’t want to go anywhere near that thing! He’s following me, taunting me with it.”
A thought just occurred to me. “How do you know it’s a he?”
Her mouth turned in a frown. “He’s got… parts, Rayla—disgusting, gross parts!”
I grimaced, not caring to know exactly how she knew that about him. “Sorry I asked—”
A knock rang out, jolting me. Cassie shook her head, so I went to see who it was the second time they knocked.
When I opened the door, Jessica shoved past me. “I can’t believe you left! I saw her!”
“Zellie?” I asked.
She shot me a dirty look. “Who else? Guess what? You’ll never guess in a million years.” As usual, she didn’t even give us a chance to respond before she plowed forward excitedly, “The IPS guys want to interview you.”
Cassie’s expression plummeted even further. “Whatever for?”
Jessica clasped her hands in front of her. “Your room is haunted! Can you believe it? How cool is that?”
I wondered how two freshmen had gotten such a great room. I kind of thought Mr. Lambert had paid someone off. Ghosts didn’t bother me, but I glared at her for Cassie’s sake. “How would you feel if you had to sleep in here every night from now on knowing that?”
She turned and looked at me. “You’re such a boob. She’s harmless. She just takes things. They say if you leave candy out for her, she’ll return your stuff.” Jessica’s expression brimmed with curiosity. “Have you lost anything lately?”
Eyes wide, cheeks sunken, Cassie couldn’t have looked more terrified. She glanced at me with a silent plea.
“Not that we know of,” I said. “You need to leave now. Cassie’s not feeling well.”
Jessica turned a confused look on Cassie. “You seemed fine earlier.”
Cassie wiped her glistening forehead with her sleeve. “I was, but I could use some rest, Jess. Do you mind letting yourself out?”
Jessica frowned. “What should I tell Adam?”
I p
ushed her toward the door. “We’ll have to talk to him another time,” I said. “Goodbye, Jessica.”
She huffed out of the room. I sat on the edge of the bed, touching Cassie’s shoulder. She still looked freaked out.
“Jessica was right about one thing: You did seem okay earlier. Did it follow you to the cemetery?”
She hugged herself, inching away from me. Was she shaking? “I saw something else tonight. I should say someone else that I hoped to never encounter again.”
“Who was it?”
She rolled onto her back and covered her eyes. “Oh, Rayla, if I start into this, I’m just going to end up locked up again.”
I bent close to her. “Look at me,” I demanded. She raised her gaze timidly. I locked mine with hers. “I will never let that happen. You are as sane as I am.”
She gave me a lopsided grin. “Considering what you’ve been going through lately, that’s not saying much. Maybe when Mom finds out we could go to the same institution.”
Given the situation, her joke filled me with a bubble of relief. “I’ll insist on being your roommate.”
She laughed hard, her eyes bright with tears that turned heartrending. “What am I going to do, Rayla? This is exactly why Mom didn’t want me coming here. My hallucinations stopped when we moved to Utah. We were only going to rent our place for the summer, so I could get some rest. But when I told Mom and Dad that I was cured all of the sudden, they didn’t want to upset my routine.”
I took in a slow breath. “Your stories were all true. Weren’t they?”
Her face held an unyielding seriousness. “Yes.”
I tried to wrap my brain around that revelation. She’d finally admitted it. “Who did you see tonight?”
She sniffed. “Do you remember when I told you about Nixlan?”
I nodded. I didn’t want to say anything that might keep her from telling me more about that strange, hidden world. I remembered every story she had ever told me in vivid detail. The thought that there might actually be a place so beautiful made me smile inwardly with delight.
I felt like a little girl again, imagining Cassie’s first encounter with her fairy friend. She had been playing in the woods when she noticed something shiny on the ground. She brushed the rotting leaves away from the half concealed object. Curious, she picked up the charm bracelet. She said it was so delicate that she thought the slightest breeze would shatter it to dust. When she swept some dirt off of one of the charms, Nixlan appeared in front of her.
Freaked out, she ran away with the bracelet still in her hand. A few days passed before curiosity got the better of her. She found the same spot and rubbed the charm.
Nixlan came again. She smiled at Cassie and told her not to be afraid. Cassie went with her to her home in another realm. She said that Nixlan had done a weird dance around a little waterfall, and the scene had rippled like a pond being disturbed by a pebble.
When it stopped changing, Cassie was looking through a garden gate into a magical land that glowed. All the plants had florescent veins running through them. She told me about a castle that was made out of crystal. Nixlan had befriended Cassie and would bring her to the fae realm whenever Cassie was upset or lonely.
I had been jealous of Cassie’s imagination when I was young. I couldn’t believe that the stories were actually true.
Cassie gave me an exhausted look before she spoke. “The last time I ever saw Nixlan was a few hours before we moved to Utah. She had taken me to her cottage and rocked me as I cried. I was so tired of moving. She was my only real friend.
“She fed me raspberry puffs that floated in the air and gave me the most wonderful elderberry punch.
“If I had known I would have never seen her again, I would have fought the horrible witch that came for her that day.”
I shifted excitedly. “As in bubbling cauldron stirring, cackling, flying on a broomstick sort of witch?”
Cassie laughed. “Of course not. Don’t be ridiculous.”
I shot her a look. “It was a logical question. If fae exist, why not witches?”
She ignored my question altogether. “I’m talking about her master. Nixlan was a servant to a princess that lived in the crystal castle. Ainessa would have been more beautiful than any woman I could ever imagine, if not for the murder in her gaze.
“Nixlan forgot to do something for her master before she left the palace for the day. Ainessa had come looking for her on horseback because I still had the summoning bracelet she lost.” Cassie laughed lightly. Her gaze focused on something a million miles away. When she spoke again, her words were soft. “She hadn’t been able to replace it. Only goblins make that sort of jewelry, and she had worn out her welcome with them millennia before. Anyway, Nixlan touched her charm on the bracelet before Ainessa could grab me, sending me home instantly. Ainessa’s shriek came through the void with me, though. She said she would search for me until the end of time, and when she found me, she would make me wish for death.”
I hid my shudder. “Do you still have it?”
She grimaced. “That’s why I’m so upset. That horrible creature took it, too.”
I inwardly smiled as previously unrelated dots started forming a picture. “So you moved to Utah right after that?”
“Mom was mad at me for wandering the woods when we had to leave. We took Daddy’s jet. I slept the whole way. I didn’t wake up until we landed in Moab.”
“You haven’t seen Ainessa again, before tonight, I mean?”
Cassie looked confused. “No. Why?”
My mind whirred, piecing things together. “Grace said I left some sort of sanctuary. Maybe whatever concealed me kept her from finding you and you from seeing them anymore? Your hallucinations completely stopped when you came to Utah, right?”
“Yeah. It’s the only place that I don’t see them.”
My eyes snapped her way. “Wait a minute. Why were you institutionalized then?”
She shook her head. “I cried for months after we moved because I couldn’t see Nixlan anymore. The bracelet didn’t work. My parents were worried about me and did what they thought was right. That was where I learned to hide my sight. I saw something fae every day in the institution, but I ignored it. It went away again when I came home. I hated going on vacations, but Daddy insisted every year. He said he didn’t want me to forget there was a whole world outside of Utah.”
I grinned. “This is great news. If I can get a call to go through to Aunt Grace, she might be able to answer a question before they start blocking the conversation.”
“What are you talking about?”
I shrugged. I was hoping there might be a sanctuary somewhere close. If I could sneak away with Cassie, maybe we could ditch the lords for good. “The fae have been scrambling my calls to her for some reason. She has to know something they don’t want me to find out.” I tried, but the call didn’t go through. I was about to set my phone down when I realized I had a message.
Zach’s rich voice sent shivers through me. “Hey, my love. I miss you. Want to hang together later? You’re it.” I reluctantly hit save. I’d have to call him in a while.
“First skipped message,” announced an automated female voice. I’d forgotten Aunt Grace had left a bunch of messages for me the night I came here.
“What are you doing?” Cassie asked.
I gestured for her to wait and went through each one carefully, listening for clues. Most were just Aunt Grace telling me to call her as soon as possible, but the later calls held a palpable urgency.
The last one was weird. “Rayla, if you get this, I want you to go to the nearest church and stay there! I don’t care if you decided to take a joy-ride with Cassie. I understand. I’ll explain things when you get home. It doesn’t matter which church you go to, just find one. Call me when you get inside. Don’t do anything or go anywhere else!”
Why a church? She’d said any church. Would all religions have sufficed?
“Well?” Cassie asked.
?
??Aunt Grace wanted me to go to church the night we came here.”
Cassie’s face scrunched up in a confused look. “I didn’t think she was all that religious. Why would she suddenly want you to find God?”
I rolled my eyes. Just because I hadn’t been to church for a while didn’t mean the man upstairs and I weren’t in contact. “What if the fae can’t go inside churches?”
Cassie shrugged. “I’d love to give you encouragement here, but I’ve seen them at Mass before.”
“Oh.” Then why had it been so important for me to find a church? Aunt Grace and Zach had both seemed astonished that I hadn’t been taken by the lords already. I really wanted to talk to Grace.
I was like a little bunny surrounded by circling coyotes. Which would be the one to get to me first?
“I’d better call Zach,” I said, dialing his number.
“Rayla,” Cassie said, her tone halting me mid-dial. “Something feels off about him.”
My heart plummeted. I hit end. I didn’t trust him completely, but he had seemed sincere about helping me the other night. “How so?”
“I can’t explain it, but I’ve seen fae creatures with him.”
“With him, with him, or by him?” There was a distinct difference in my mind.
She sat up. “He hasn’t talked to them or anything, but they stay around him like they…oh, I don’t know how to explain it.”
“Do they look like they’re spying on him? Zach told me he has had experiences with the fae. I thought maybe he could be the male version of whatever I am.”
She paused for a moment. “I guess that could be it. When did he tell you that?”
“At Roger’s. Speaking of, are you ever going to explain to me why you wanted to leave so badly the other night?”
She went to the window, gazing out into the darkness. “He was so charming. I felt cherished for the first time in my life. He told me he wanted to go somewhere private to talk. I thought he just wanted to get to know me better. I had no idea he had the biblical sense in mind.”
What a louse. “Are you kidding me?”
Her shoulders stiffened. “I’m glad you showed up when you did. I didn’t know how I was going to get out of it if he tried to take it any further.”
She should have known better. She was the only one that knew the real reason Brody and I had broken up. “Let’s see. You could have left the room, shouted for help, kicked him where it counts and bolted, grabbed something and bashed him over the head. I can go on for hours if you like.”
She turned around, her expression grave. “Every time I said something about heading back to the pool, he distracted me with flattery or questions that made me want to talk to him some more. I haven’t ever had someone that interested in me. It sort of scares me how fast he got me to relax around him. Just before you came, I took a drink of something weird.”
I gaped, walking over to her. “I can’t believe you did that! He could have raped you.”
She groaned. “I wasn’t thinking about that. He was so persuasive.”
“He’s a shark, Cass. You need to stay away from him.”
She gave me an ‘oh, really’ look. “What about Zach? I don’t see you avoiding him.”
I rolled my eyes. “He didn’t try to seduce me the other night. He didn’t try to get me drunk or wasted so he could do anything he wanted to me, either.”
She put her hands at her hips. “Just because he’s taking his time doing it, doesn’t mean that the end result won’t be the same. I’ve seen how he looks at you.”
I felt compelled to defend him. He had been a perfect gentleman at Roger’s. “Really, how’s that?”
She hesitated as if searching for the right words. It took her long enough to answer me. “Like you’re something to eat.”
I could tell he was attracted to me, but his glances had never been creepy. “When did that supposedly happen?”
She narrowed her eyes at me. “On the way to the game. You were looking out the window while he was taking in every inch of you.”
I moved to my bed. “Is it really so hard for you to believe that a good-looking man could want me?” She was acting like she had when the fab four were interested in me.
“Oh,” she huffed, face red. She sat at my desk. “I hate it when you make assumptions. You know how beautiful I think you are. My point is that he seems to be hiding something from you. I can’t really explain it. I just feel it.”
I had no doubt Cassie was feeling something, but jealousy couldn’t help the situation very much. She had given Zach the same sort of devouring looks the first time she had seen him that she was accusing him of giving me. What was the difference—the fact she didn’t know I’d caught her?
When she glanced at the floor, my pulse jumped. My bag was on its side, the edge of the book sticking out.
Before I could stop her, she reached down and took it out. “What’s this?”