“I’ll try and remember to stay far away from the opposite gender,” I say. Marshall’s persistence never ceases to revolt me.
“Very well.” He looks to Gage, “Mr. Oliver, I take it you have command of the mountain? Ms. Richards tells me you’re a champion skier.”
“I know my way around,” Gage nods into his admission.
“Then I trust you won’t hesitate heading the campaign against East at the end of the week?”
“I’ll be there.” His cyan colored eyes make the sky wish it could emanate such beauty.
“And you, Ms. Messenger?”
“I’ll be on the bunny slope. I’ve never actually skied before.”
Gage takes in a breath as though I had actually confessed to something heinous.
“What?” I turn to look at him. “I thought you knew.” OK, so we didn’t exactly have a conversation about it, but I’m from L.A., what did he expect?
“I had no idea. But, for sure, I’ll hang out with you. I’ll be your ski instructor.” He digs a dimple into his cheek, and my stomach does a soft roll at the thought of Gage instructing me in anything.
“Don’t make a habit of it, Mr. Oliver. The team needs you, and if we’re going to bring victory back to campus, you’ll need to practice on the big boy slopes. Black diamonds for you.”
“Ooh, I want a black diamond,” I coo.
“No,” Gage shakes his head. “Trust me, you don’t. It’s the opposite of the bunny slope.”
Chloe rears her ugly head while Gage gives a quick kiss just under my ear.
“I have the sudden urge to count barnacles.” He gives a quick kiss before darting in the other direction.
Can’t she see his distaste for her? Chloe has become nothing more than an offensive odor to Gage.
I refocus my attention on Marshall. God forbid I accidentally make eye contact with Chloe. She’s a lunatic that way. Just one look and she’ll skin you seven different ways before eating you alive.
“And why couldn’t you ask someone else to join the ski team?” I ask. Like Logan I want to say, but I’m afraid to verbalize his name. It’s like conjuring up a demon.
“Look at you, seventeen and practically conjoined at the hip. You need to move about the country, spread your wings a little.”
“Let me guess, you’re prime flying territory?”
“Not a bad direction if I do say so myself. I can show you the world, the history of the world as it happens and an entirely new world if you like.”
“I’ll head your way under one circumstance.”
“Anything.” His features hone in on mine, transfixed on what that might be.
“You arrange for me to see my mother.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
The Lodge
After the ferry ride, we travel for miles on a bus up treacherous hillsides on a narrow highway that threatens to give way at any moment as evidenced by the sporadic landslides that occur in our wake. It’s frightening. I bury my head in Brielle’s shoulder as we twist and turn up icy slicks with no guardrail whatsoever protecting us from sailing to a certain fiery death. The only thing that keeps my sanity intact is Gage’s prophecy of Logan and me living to be a ripe old age. Still, it doesn’t convince me one hundred percent that we’re not going down. After all, Logan and I could be the only two survivors, ninety percent charred at that.
We take a hairpin curve and Brielle yaks into the paper bag she’s been clenching for the better part of an hour, prompting her to get up and meander towards the bathroom.
Ellis swoops in. I don’t give it a second thought before burying my head in his chest and mock weeping.
He lands what feels like a soft kiss on the back of my head.
“Did you just kiss me?” I spring up, suddenly unaware of the fact we’re on the death train from hell.
His cheek rises on the side.
“Don’t do that.” I’ve got enough people kissing me, and, for sure I don’t need to add Stoner Harrison to the list.
“Listen, I’ve got the room New Year’s Eve.” He gives a nod as though I should know what this means.
“Good for you, I hope you pack ‘em in.” The entire bitch squad to be exact.
“After the party, I thought you and me could go on a little adventure.”
“An adventure, Ellis? Really?” My head spins as the contents of my stomach start to boil from the residual odor Brielle left behind.
“Light drive. I need to get my stash.”
“No. It’s a bad habit. I’m going to break it for you. Trust me, you’ll thank me.”
“I’m not thanking you. Look, if you don’t take me, the ice queen will.”
“You can’t go with Chloe.” Who knows what kind of things she’s meddling with back there. “I’ll go with you.” I give an exasperated sigh and twist my neck to get a look at her snuggling into Gage, pretending to fear for her life. “Why New Year’s Eve?”
“I got the room. We can disappear, and no one will notice.”
“OK, but I’m not coming until the party is good and over.”
“I’ll be quick. I promise.”
“Ellis? Who’s the supervising spirit, you know, keeping the treble open?” The treble is the only reason Ellis has a never-ending supply.
His eyes widen then retract as though I wasn’t supposed to be privy to this kind of information.
“You wouldn’t know even if I told you.”
“Can I get a supervising spirit?” Really I just want one for my father, to bring him to me on Paragon.
“You or someone you know, has to ask them,” he pauses, “and when you do, they’re bound to you until you die.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means they give up their rest in the event you need them. It’s a huge deal.” He shrugs as though he didn’t understand it himself.
“How did you get one?”
“My dad gave me one as a gift for my sixteenth birthday.”
Normal people get cars if they’re outrageously lucky. Count’s get celestial spirit guides that approve felonious pot runs.
“Why do you need me if you have a supervising spirit?”
“They’re only good for trebles and shit. I can’t get back there without you. And I guess if you needed to go to the future you’d need one then, too.” He stretches his arms out lazily.
“So, your supervising spirit, it’s not a Sector, is it?” God, it better not be Marshall.
“Fem,” Ellis sighs hard as though he’s already divulged too much.
Brielle comes back and swats at him until he gets up. She clunks down in the seat, pulls her hoodie over her face and moans for the next hour as we twist our way up a near vertical incline.
***
Home for the next week is the Pine Pole Lodge Resort, a huge overgrown log cabin, the size of a mansion that proliferates out into a series of oversized log cabins.
I bounce off the bus and circle around to the front to take in the view. A crisp breeze knifes through my clothes as the sharp scent of pine fills my senses. Across from the resort sits another snowcapped mountain with a circle of evergreens that cut across the timberline like a string of black pearls. Just above that, it looks deliciously barren, like a perfect frosted cake.
“Gorgeous,” Logan lands next to me. Breath smokes from his nostrils like his insides were on fire.
“I suppose this is the part where I say yes, and you say, I meant you.” I’m onto his cheesy ways.
“Nope. I meant the view.” His lips twist into an obnoxious smile, inverting the slit on the side of his face. “OK,” he softens, “I meant you, but it’s hard to argue with facts.”
“Thank you.” I think.
“So, tomorrow night, New Year’s Eve,” he says it as though it’s never happened before.
“That’s right, count backwards—go to bed.” I leave out the kiss to die for.
“Sounds like a plan,” he warms my cheek with his breath.
“Alone,” I take a
step back. “I’ll be getting to bed alone.” I watch in horror as Chloe schleps Gage around by the hand. “She needs to be stopped.” I shake my head in disbelief.
“I can’t help you with that. But I can help you if you’d like to see your dad soon.” His eyes glisten with hope as he tries enticing me with the idea.
“I’d love to see my dad.” Although I don’t need Logan for that.
“He’s helping me out with some things, and I thought maybe if you wanted, you can come along.”
“When? Tonight?”
“No, I’ll be wrecked if I’m out all night. I’ll be hitting some rough terrain in the morning. Gearing up for the competition against East.”
“Sounds like Marshall made the rounds.”
“Did he ask you?”
“I can’t ski.” My admission suddenly feels like a newsworthy debriefing. “When are you going?”
“Wednesday, I’ve got the room if you want to join me.”
By the looks of things, I’ll be in their room more than I’ll be in mine.
“I’ll be there.”
Gage waves at me from afar. He’s got his mirrored sunglasses and baseball hat on. His black hair flares out the sides soft as feathers. It’s his night I wait for. That’s one night I’m certain I won’t be changing time dimensions or thinking about my father. At least I hope not.
Chloe steps in front of him and stretches like a cat in an effort to block my view. Mom did mention there’d be a murder mystery New Year’s Eve. Maybe Chloe can be the victim?
Hell, maybe I’ll arrange it myself.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Sleeping Arrangements
Brielle flicks on the lights, revealing a large cabin style room with a bed tucked in each corner. The faint smell of cigarettes and cleaning solutions lingers in the air as I take in the quaint amenities.
Since I was outvoted by a very aggressive Natalie, I don’t get to room with Kate after all. It’s Brielle, Emily, and Chloe for me, a twisted combination that will make for a very long week. Even though Michelle is technically supposed to be in Nat and Kate’s room, her poor confused self lands her suitcase in our room.
I toss my stuff on the bed near the balcony. Just as I’m about to flop onto the mattress, Chloe comes over and whisks my bag off.
“My bed. You can have that one.” She flings my duffle to the bed near the bathroom.
“Go ahead,” I say. “You stole my boyfriend, you might as well steal my bed.”
Brielle’s eyes round out in horror.
“I need the window, too” Emily lands herself opposite Chloe and whips out a drawing pad from her backpack.
Immediately I head over and pull up a chair as though some great movie were about to begin. I don’t want to miss a single minute of the haunted drawing hour. Emily has a house full of creepy paintings she whipped up that seem to depict the faction war.
“Messenger, I might be moved to kill you in the night,” she mutters, completely engulfed in her work. Her charcoal pencil hastens across the landscape of the page at pressured speeds. It’s like she’s possessed. She hardly seems to be paying attention to the task at hand, what with her eyes scanning the room every now and again in what amounts to a bout of genuine paranoia.
“What is it?” Brielle sits beside her and gasps.
“It’s the view outside our window. I want to capture it before the sun sets.”
Her hand jettisons across the notebook in hyper drive before she turns the paper around and shows her work off.
Holy shit.
“That’s amazing,” I whisper.
There’s more detail in that picture than the naked eye could possibly grasp from this vantage point. I go over and look outside. It’s accurate down to the odd detail of rust on the bottom of the yield sign on the highway just below us. The lake has a distinct U-shape that curves at the tip and a set of boulders with a small tree sprouting out from a crevice that actually I have to strain to see.
“So you’re an angel or something, right?” I ask.
“Skyla,” Brielle hisses.
Chloe chokes as though I had just omitted some foul bodily odor.
“Angel?” Emily scoffs. “You think I’m getting my superpowers from above?” her voice dips mockingly.
“Or below.” I shrug unsure of what the right answer might be.
Her dark green eyes slit right through me.
“It’s just something I do. This is years of honing the craft,” she relaxes. “If you want, later, I can do body art—”
I cut her off, “I want!”
Brielle and Chloe both look up at me suspiciously.
“It’s like a life page,” Emily shakes out her dark curls, “Only I use your body as the canvas.” She looks annoyed by the concept.
“What’s a life page?” I’m fascinated by this.
“You know,” she shrugs into her work, “you tell me things about yourself, and I get a vibe and draw out a map of your life.”
“Oh my God,” I’m breathless.
“Relax, Messenger,” Chloe rolls back onto the bed. “You’re beginning to sound like a groupie.”
“Maybe I am.”
Emily inspects me uneasily as though the idea of having a groupie, a female one at that, doesn’t sit well with her.
“We can make a party of it. I’ll invite a bunch of people to our room,” I say. Like Gage and Logan. I’d love to know what the future holds for the two of them, especially since theirs seem to be intrinsically related to mine.
“We’ll have music!” Brielle beams as though she were already taking over the endeavor in her mind.
“Just you guys and Nat, Kate, and Lex.” Emily doesn’t break her gaze with the outside world until she’s done with the picture.
“We can shave our legs together,” Chloe insists.
Figures. The one activity Chloe suggests, and it involves razor blades.
“Then it’s on,” Brielle shrugs. “After dinner.”
***
Chloe the control freak insists that I sit next to Marshall in the oversized barn of a cafeteria. The entire facility is laden with mounted heads of at least a dozen menacing looking creatures.
I study each one in detail, all so different, yet each one with the same hollowed out gaze. I wonder what made people stop and think it wasn’t appropriate to mount humans that way but that it was perfectly fine to decapitate a majestic creature and nail its cranium to a wall? Maybe it’s just that—preserving the art of the majesty. There’s nothing majestic about a dead human though, pretty gross actually. I wonder if that’s what finally drove Ezrina insane? All those corpses to tag and bag, and nothing else to do all the livelong day, after all, her lover had morphed into a ball of feathers.
Logan catches my eye, and I’m quick to revert my attention to Marshall sitting in front of me.
“See that one?” He points up with his fork at a demented looking wild bore with teeth hooked outside of its mouth. “Fought an entire herd once, each one the size of a small car. Fems love to inject themselves into unsuspecting land animals, wild game seems to be the chosen modality.”
“What do you mean inject themselves?” Something warm shoots up along my head. I swipe my hand over my hair and find fresh mashed potatoes on my fingers. “Who did that?”
I fully expect to see the bitch squad, instead I see Nat and Kate. Nat’s laughing with a spoon lodged in her mouth, and Kate looks equally amused.
“I swear she’s totally demented.” I clean the remainder out with my napkin. Two tables over I see Chloe sitting beside both Logan and Gage, and my stomach spins. “I hate her,” I hiss. “She, for sure, is demented. There’s no way anybody can be that evil.”
“You seem to be amassing quite the list of enemies,” he looks indifferent to the situation. “I also note you are rather Oliver deficient when Chloe is present.”
My eyes bulge unnaturally. “Yeah, well, she’s got him by the balls. She saw Gage levitate, and she threatened to call the auth
orities or the sci-fi channel if he doesn’t spend time with her.” I want to swallow my tongue at what a lame ass excuse it managed to mangle out. We both know the truth.
Marshall pulls his lips into a bleak line. He bares into my soul with those deep copper eyes.
“Don’t be foolish, Skyla. I’m apprised of the situation. You needn’t feed me the lie. I rather like this arrangement. More Skyla for me, less Oliver for you,” he motions with his fork before taking another bite. “The only stipulation I have before I turn you in is to have my cover blown—verbalized to my face. I’m being kind to you, Skyla, but I’m gathering she won’t be. Learn to control the lower quarter of your skull before vocalizing.”
Shit.
I can’t eat. I can’t breathe—all I can do is stare right at Marshall, dumbfounded and grateful. I know full well I’d better not piss him off, like ever, or he may lose his love of semantics. Freaking Chloe. Now I really do want to go over and drown her in her soup. Or maybe I can outdo Nat by sticking both her and Chloe in a giant vat of mashed potatoes—death induced by starch inhalation, dunk them in molten gravy when I’m through.
“Now, now, no need to look so devastated.” He leans over and slaps my cheek gently on either side. “You’re in dire need of color. My room—ten o’clock—arrive lively and agile.”
“What’s happening in your room?” I narrow in on him.
“I’ll braid your hair, and you can paint my nails.” He leans in and hisses, “What do you think is going to happen in my room?”
Even though I am feeling rather defeated, a burst of anger manages to rip right through me. It takes everything in me not to reach over and shake him.
“I seem to belong to everybody these days,” I force a weak smile. “But I’ll be damned if I’m going to add you to the list.”