Chapter X
Severance
Snap! Jane recognized the hollow sound in her ears, so painful that she winced her eyes closed, and she knew that she had teleported once more. She knew that when she opened them again, she would be standing before her old kitchen table, in her old kitchen, because that had been the image in the forefront of her vision when the library had gone blue. Gone blue. That was the phrase that came to Jane’s mind when she recalled the strange thing that happened to a place and all the people in it just before they flickered away into oblivion and made way for the place she wanted to be. The library and Dr. Sylfaen and all of his precious books and papers had gone blue and crumbled into nothing to make way for the pine kitchen table of Jane’s old life because, for a moment, Jane had imagined—envisioned—how her life had been different on her last birthday, the last she’d spent with her mother and father. She opened her eyes, fully certain of what she would see before her. She would be home.
And so she was. But the table was gone. She was in the kitchen of the little ranch style house she had shared with her parents, but the room was empty of any furnishings save the counters and cabinets that were mounted to the walls. She turned around to face the archway that led into tiny living room. Empty. She ran into the short hallway and flung open the door of the room that had been her bedroom. Empty. She pivoted on her heel to open the door across the hall, where her parents had slept before they died. Empty.
Jane searched the entire house (a feat that took all of about three minutes), hunting for some sign, the tiniest glimmer of proof that she had lived in this perfectly average house with her perfectly average parents in her perfectly average past life, but she found none. The furniture had been removed, the knick knacks packed away into boxes that now sat in a dusty corner of the Sylfaen attic. The house had been cleaned from top to bottom, though the air was stale now from being locked up for several months, and many of the walls had been repainted in a generic off-white. It was sterile and foreign. Even the stains of Jane’s former life had been scoured from the beige carpet.
She went to the front door and unfastened the dead bolt. I would never have gotten in if I had teleported into the yard instead of inside of the house itself, she pondered as she opened the door and surveyed the front lawn. It seemed dwarfed now, as she had become accustomed to the scale of the Sylfaen property. Everything seemed tiny—hardly large enough to accommodate three people.
The grass was too long, but that was not surprising, as no one in Jane’s family had ever placed lawn maintenance very high on their priority list. The only real change that she noticed was the addition of a sign, staked into the ground in front of the mailbox. For Sale, Jane read. Jane herself had authorized the sale of the house, as she had no use for it while she lived with Dr. Sylfaen, and she intended to use the profits from it to settle her parents’ remaining debts and finance her college education, if there was enough left over. She hadn’t expected to be so upset by the reality that it was actually on the market. Her hands shook as she registered the curious sensation of tears that seemed unable to form in her eyes, and she noticed for the first time since she teleported the long piece of torn fabric that she held in her left hand.
What the hell? Jane turned it over and over, but she didn’t recognize it, out of context as it was, for several seconds. Then it struck her like a brick wall to the forehead. Oh my God. My bag! She had forgotten, in her embarrassment and anger, that she had been holding it when she teleported from the library to her old house. Only the shoulder strap had made the trip with her, evidently torn with a great deal of force from the rest of the little purse. Jane could only imagine that the rest of the bag was lying somewhere in the middle of the library floor. She finally knew the answer to one of the questions she had asked herself: she now knew exactly what would have happened to Cris Marquez if she had still been holding him, kissing him, the first time she’d teleported.
Before she could shut them out, horrible images attacked her mind, most of them featuring Jane arriving on the back porch with whatever bloody piece of Cris she’d happened to be holding at the moment she vanished from the cafeteria. Jane’s stomach heaved and she shuddered violently, goosebumps by the thousands prickling every inch of her skin. She was going to be sick.
She darted behind the cover of a sparse azalea on the side of her old house and vomited. It was well past dark, but she was still quite visible from the street. Precisely as the thought crossed her mind, an ancient blue sedan slowed as it passed. An old man with a turned up nose called out the rolled-down window. “Goddam drunk teenagers! I’m callin’ the cops, do ya hear me?”
Oh, for God’s sake, Jane thought as she scurried further toward the back yard, still gagging as she sought better cover. I have to get out of here. Technically, she owned the house, so she didn’t think she could be prosecuted for trespassing, and she hadn’t consumed any alcohol that day (or any other day, for that matter), but she didn’t relish the idea of sitting in the police department, explaining how she wound up puking on an exterior wall of her former home. She definitely couldn’t risk running into Officer Harris, who had seen her less than half an hour before in Everword. When she was positive that she was not going to be sick again, she crept back to the front door and let herself in, fastening the lock and deadbolt behind her.
The back door would have been safer, but Jane no longer had keys to the house. Nobody did anymore, except for the real estate agent attempting to sell the property. The electricity had only been left on so that the agent could show it to prospective buyers, and it was doubtful that anyone would be looking at the house so late at night—no one would have any business in her house this time of day, and she hoped that nobody in the neighborhood had noticed the lights that she’d flicked on all over the house when she first arrived there.
The simplest solution would be to just teleport back to her house—the one she lived in now. Judging by the way her hands still shook as she held the torn remains of her bag, though, Jane wasn’t sure she could pull it off. She’d never teleported on purpose. As she turned the lights off, one by one, she dug her cell phone from her pocket. Thank God I listened to Uncle Mederick. She bet that would be the only time she’d ever think that.
She scrolled through the short list of names on her phone until she found his, pressed a button, then snapped the phone shut with a jerk before the first ring. I can’t call him. She was still too angry, too embarrassed…she couldn’t tolerate the thought of calling for him to rescue her from her predicament in front of his horrible guests. His horrible, beautiful guests.
There was a sharp knock on the door, and Jane nearly jumped up from the place where she sat huddled on the living room floor. Is it Uncle Mederick? How could he possibly know where I am already? Granted, Jane understood that there was a great deal she didn’t know about Dr. Sylfaen. She presumed that he, too, had a few special abilities, though she didn’t have the first clue as to what they might entail. She had eliminated teleportation, as he seemed to crave as much information about her ability as he could extract from her, but that still left a lot to the imagination. Maybe he can read my thoughts.
The knock sounded again, and the person outside tried the handle to see if the door was unlocked. “Is anyone in there?” asked a gruff, unfamiliar voice from the front step. Definitely not Dr. Sylfaen. There was a small click, and the beam of a flashlight penetrated the spaces between the vertical blinds in the living room window, which were drawn but not entirely closed. Jane dropped to the floor and rolled close to the wall beneath the window as silently as she could manage. It must be the police officer, checking to see if anyone is trespassing here. The flashlight moved away from the window but did not click off. From the sound of the shuffled footsteps outside, Jane assumed that the officer was checking out the yard, as well.
The next five minutes felt like five years. Jane made every breath as quiet and steady as she could, so as not to betray her hiding spot beneath the window; no part of her moved except fo
r her trembling hands. Finally, she heard the flashlight click off, followed by the unmistakable sound of a car door opening and closing. Jane rose to her knees and ventured a peek through the blinds. The officer’s car was rolling in reverse out of her driveway. Okay, she thought as she exhaled loudly, I still have to get out of here.
She sat back down in the empty room and re-opened her cell phone. When she scrolled to the number for the cottage, Jane wondered why she hadn’t thought of Cris before. He wouldn’t be there, of course; he would still be at the big house, but he would probably have his own phone with him. She’d never had a reason to call him before, as he was so seldom out of earshot, but she remembered his number clearly from when she’d written it down for Anna just a few days before.
Ring. He’s going to have to sneak out to come get me—he’s not allowed to use the car yet.
Ring. I wonder how long it will take him to get here.
Ring. Any wait is better than facing Uncle Mederick! How could he have invited people like that to the house?
Ring. Jane had nearly given up when he answered. “Hello?”
“Cris, it’s me.”
“Janie? Is everything okay? Why are you calling me from upstairs?”
At the sound of his voice, Jane began to relax. Now that she’d reached him, everything would be okay. Her best friend would help her, and she was going to be fine.
“Yeah, I’m okay. I need your help with something, though. Do you think you could steal my car and come pick me up? My keys are on my nightstand.”
Cris’s voice dropped a full octave. “Whoa, Janie, where are you?”
“I’m…at my old house. I need you to come get me.”
“How did you get there, if your car’s still at the house?”
Jane felt the pains quivering around her belly, warning that they would strike if she tried to reveal anything that she wasn’t supposed to.
After a pregnant pause, Cris made the connection without Jane having to say anything at all. “Oh yeah, okay. Are you alright?”
“I’m fine. Really. Do you know where my old house is?”
“Yeah. Give me thirty minutes. Forty-five, tops.”
“Thank you.” She was genuinely grateful, relieved that he would be there soon. She hung up the phone, hugged her knees to her chest, and rested her head while she waited.
The keys were on the nightstand, exactly where he’d put them earlier that afternoon. Cris thought he had sneaked into Jane’s room without alerting anyone that something was up. On his way downstairs, however, he was stopped by the booming voice of Jane’s distressed godfather.
“Cristobel!” he shouted, and his voice echoed through the second floor landing. “Cristobel, where is Jane?”
Cris wasn’t sure how Dr. Sylfaen had discerned that he knew where Jane was, but he figured that the fact that he had just left her bedroom was pretty incriminating. He held up the car keys. “I’m going to get her now.” He suspected that, if Jane had wanted to reveal where she’d gone, she would have just called her godfather.
“Is she safe?”
“Yes.”
“She didn’t call me.” Well, that confirmed Cris’s suspicion. “Bring her to me when you return.”
“I will…if she wants to see you.”
The old man’s eyebrows raised in alarm. He regarded Cris pensively for a moment, then nodded. With one long hand, he gestured for Cris to leave.
Cris had told Jane forty-five minutes at the most, and, according to her phone, it took him thirty-eight. She turned the lock on the knob when she let herself out, but she had no way of locking the deadbolt. Maybe the real estate agent will think he forgot to finish locking up. There wasn’t anything to steal inside, anyway. Everything is gone. As she closed the door, Jane had the distinct impression that she was closing more than a physical door—her accidental trip back home was the end of an era. No, it wasn’t even that. This was the confirmation that the era had long since ended. There was nothing left here for her to feel connected to. This was a severance.
She opened the passenger door and nearly fell into the tan leather seat. After all the time spent sitting on the floor, it felt nice. Jane knew that she should drive, but she was tired. Cris certainly wouldn’t mind doing the honors for her.
He looked at her for a long minute. His mouthed worked as he tried to find words that were appropriate for the occasion. “You, uh, you’re still wearing your party dress.”
Jane felt too fatigued to respond.
“You okay, Janie?”
She peered over at him through half-closed eyes. Crap, he’s really worried about me…what am I supposed to tell him? “I’m fine. Just exhausted.”
“Why did you decide to come here?”
Jane closed her eyes. She could think of nothing to say that wouldn’t endanger her. So she pressed her head into the leather headrest and prayed that he would stop asking questions and drive home. I hate that he’s worried, but there’s nothing I can do. Not tonight, anyway. All she wanted was her bed.
Her silence roused a resentful tone in his reply. “Fine, Janie! Maybe you’re tired, but you could at least tell me what’s going on with you. I think I deserve some answers.”
Jane didn’t open her eyes. “Yes, you do. I’m sorry.”
“You traveled here, like you did before.” It wasn’t a question. “And you won’t tell me how that’s possible. Why?”
Jane moved nothing but her mouth. “No.”
“What is that supposed to mean?” He reached for her hand, and her eyes tightened, but she did not pull it away.
“Please. Can we just go home?”
Cris remained quiet for several minutes. He turned her hand over and over in his own, tracing the lines along the sides of her fingers. When he spoke again, his voice was softer—it still carried the tension of his anger, but he wasn’t mad at her. “I’ll figure it out, you know. I don’t understand why you and Dr. Sylfaen think you have to keep all of these secrets from me, like I can’t handle the truth. I can. And I’ll find it on my own, if I have to. I know that you two can…do things that other people can’t. I’ve known that about him for a long time, and it’s never changed the way I feel about him.” Her eyes were still closed, but he plowed forward with his speech. “It won’t change the way I feel about you.”
“I’m so sorry, Cris. About all of this.”
“Why? Why should you be sorry?” He leaned closer to her, pulling one of his legs from the floorboard and folding it underneath him. “I mean, it’s not like this is a bad thing. It’s weird, sure, but nothing to feel sorry about. It’s actually kind of cool, except for you trying to keep me in the dark about the details.”
Jane squeezed his hand, the first indication that she had been listening. But instead of responding, her expression flashed abruptly from exhausted to terrified. She opened her eyes so widely that they reflected the streetlights outside, and her lips quivered with unspoken explanation.
“Janie?”
She doubled forward and pressed her forehead into the glove compartment.
“Jane, are you hurt?”
“I-I….” Her words were drowned beneath a pained moan as she wrapped her arms around her belly.
The motion reminded him instantly of the previous time she had passed out, the day they’d talked about Dr. Sylfaen. A thought struck him from out of nowhere. “Oh my God. You can’t tell me anything, can you?”
She gasped for breath, but her bewildered eyes answered his question.
“You can’t—I mean, you are physically incapable of telling me about this.”
Jane thought she might lose her fragile hold on consciousness if she tried to answer, but, amazingly, the pain attacking her body subsided a bit when Cris spoke. She ventured a small nod. The daggers were there, pressing against her in warning, but the stabbing was over. “Please. Please take me home now.”
“Okay.” He kissed her on the forehead and settled back into the driver’s seat. In moments, they wer
e pulling out of driveway and onto the lamplit street.
Jane watched as her old house, the empty ruins of her past life, faded into the darkness. She knew that she should have been sad, that she should cry. But now that Cris had managed to work out that she was incapable of speaking of her ability to him, she was hopeful that their friendship, at least, could survive her changes. She would worry about the rest in the morning, after she’d had a few hours sleep.
“Cris?”
“Yeah?”
“You really think it’s kind of cool? My…thing that I can do?”
“Definitely.” For a second, they were back to square one: two friends, flirting on the verge of something bigger, but friends first and foremost. Almost like the insanity of her sixteenth birthday hadn’t happened. Almost.
“Me, too,” Jane admitted with a nervous smile. They were quiet the rest of the way home.
When they pulled into the garage, Jane was asleep on her feet. Gregory was still up, and he walked up to the car and began to scold Cris for driving it, but he stopped, bewildered, when Jane opened the door and nearly fell as she tried to stand. She gave Gregory a quick hug goodnight.
She thought that Cris would see her to the door and then go home to the cottage. It was late, after all, and she was sure that Angelita had retired for the evening. Instead, he took her hand and helped her up the stairs. At the landing, Jane stopped.
“Cris, will you get something for me?”
“Yeah, what do you need?”
“My bag. I-I left it in the library. It’s kind of dark green colored, with flowers printed on it, and—”
“Yeah, I saw it at the party. Why don’t you just go in there to get it?” Cris asked as he shrugged toward the closed library doors.
“I don’t want to see them if they’re still here,” she whispered. “Please?”
He walked across the landing to the library doors, and Jane sat on the stairs while she waited for him. She could have fallen asleep right there.
Cris stepped into the now-empty library and scanned the room for Jane’s bag. He found it, torn open in the middle of the floor, its contents strewn in a haphazard circle around it. Wordlessly, Cris retrieved the remains of the purse.
Dr. Sylfaen opened the door that separated the library from his private suite. “Cristobel, is she home?”
He nodded in reply.
“Is she safe?”
Cris nodded again.
“Will she see me?”
“Maybe tomorrow.”
“Fine.” The old man retreated into his rooms, but Cris was sure he saw him frown as he closed the door behind him.
Cris went back to the landing and retrieved his dozing friend from the bottom step. “Come on, Janie.” He helped her up the rest of the stairs and into her room, where she collapsed onto the bed. Cris turned to leave.
“Cris?”
“Yeah?” He sat on the edge of the bed and brushed the hair that had fallen across her face behind her ear.
“Please don’t leave. I don’t want to be alone anymore.” She could feel sleep taking over her, but she couldn’t bear the thought of solitude after waiting so long in the dark of her former home. “Read to me?” she suggested.
“Alright.” Cris picked up a book from her nightstand. “This okay?”
“Sure,” Jane said without looking up to see the title. It wouldn’t matter. All she could see behind her falling eyelids was the shadow of her old house and the beautiful, terrible face of Evan Everword—the stranger from next door. Her beautiful stranger. Tomorrow, she thought. Tomorrow, I’ll make sense of this mess.
Cris walked over to his chair under the window, propped his feet up on the foot of her bed, and flipped open the paperback. As Jane watched him, the room rocked sideways and her head hit the pillow with a soft thud. She was asleep before he read the first word.
…to be continued in Flicker Blue 2: Jigsaw….
About the Author
In addition to being a reader of voracious appetite, Brea Nicole Bond is the author of the novella series Flicker Blue and the upcoming novel Reaper (Summer 2012). She resides in San Diego with her very supportive husband and two kooky daughters who insist on naming all of their pets after Harry Potter characters.
Like ‘Brea Nicole Bond’ on Facebook for news, release dates, and special offers—including a coupon to download Flicker Blue 2: Jigsaw for FREE—and read on for a sneak peek at Reaper….
The following pages are an excerpt from Reaper by Brea Nicole Bond…coming Summer 2012!