by Meg Cabot
“I’m sorry,” he said. He slipped the tablet back into his pocket, then shrugged off his coat and wrapped it around me, pulling it — and me — close by the collar. “Is this better?”
A little bit shocked that he’d so missed the point of what I was trying to tell him — but undeniably much warmer. His coat weighed a ton and was practically steaming from his body heat — I nodded. He hadn’t let go of the collar.
It felt odd to be so near him. He definitely was no kindly uncle. He was, instead, very much a young man close to my own age.
And crackling with male sexuality.
I wondered if I should have just stayed in my line. Everyone in it was filing for the boat, which looked, now that I could see it up close, fairly comfortable.
“I didn’t mean just me,” I went on more slowly. “Everyone here is freaking out. They’re wet and cold, too.” I pointed towards the line of people who weren’t being let onto the ferry that had just docked. “What’s going on with them?”
He looked in the direction I’d pointed, then back down at me. He was still holding on to the collar of his coat, keeping it snug around my shoulders.
“You don’t need to worry,” he said. His expression had hardened again, however, and his eyes gone a stormy gray, as if this was a subject he didn’t like discussing. “A boat’s coming for them, too.”
“Well, they still deserve to be treated better,” I said, wincing as another man tried to make a break for the ferry line before a guard used force to subdue him. “It’s not their fault —”
He stepped even closer towards me, effectively blocking my view of what was going on in front of the ferry. “Do you want to go someplace else?” he asked. “Someplace away from here? Someplace warm?”
“Oh,” I said, feeling a rush of relief. He’d realized there’d been a mistake. He was going to fix it. I was going home. “Yes, please. ”
And then I blinked. Because that’s what human beings do, especially when they’ve been crying.
But when I opened my eyes again, I wasn’t home. I wasn’t standing on the shore of the lake anymore, either.
And what I’d been hoping was the end of the nightmare I’d been going through turned out to be just the beginning.
“Thee it behoves to take another road,”
Responded he, when he beheld me weeping,
“If from this savage place thou wouldst escape.”
DANTE ALIGHIERI, Inferno, Canto I
Instead of home, or standing by the lake, I was in a long, elegantly appointed room.
The horse was gone. The guards were gone. The beach along the lake was gone. All of the people — the people who’d been waiting in the lines — were gone, too.
The wind was still there, though. It caused the long, gauzy white curtains, hanging from the elegant arches along one side of the room, to billow softly.
But the wind was the only thing I recognized. Everything else around me — the white-sheeted bed topped with a dark, heavy canopy on one end of the room; the pair of thronelike chairs at the long banquet table sitting before an enormous hearth at the other; the ornate antique tapestries, all depicting medieval-looking scenes, which hung here and there on the smooth, white marble walls; even the white divan on which I was sitting — I had never seen before in my life.
I was dreaming. I had to be.
Except that everything — the sound of water bubbling in the fountain in the courtyard outside the arches; the softness of the fur rug beneath my suddenly bare feet; the smell of the burning firewood in the hearth — felt so real. As real as everything had felt a split second before.
Most real of all was him, sitting beside me on the divan.
“Better now?” he asked.
His voice didn’t sound like thunder anymore. Instead, it sounded lush, like the rug into which my feet sank the minute I sprang to them.
Which I did the minute he spoke.
What was going on? I lifted a trembling hand to shove some of my long — now dry — hair from my face, and caught a glimpse of something white. I looked down.
I was no longer wearing his coat, or my wet, chilly clothes. I was in some kind of gown. It wasn’t a hospital gown, either. It was closely fitted on top, with a skirt that almost swept the floor. It bore a vague resemblance to what the maidens in the tapestries on the walls were wearing. It would not have looked out of place at the annual cotillion held for the upperclasswomen at the Westport Academy for Girls.
This part I had to be dreaming.
But then, why could I feel my heart pounding so hard in my chest?
He’d risen from the couch when I had. Now he stood looking down at me with an expression on his face that I could only describe as concerned.
“Isn’t this what you wanted?” he asked. “You’re warm now, and dry. You did say you wanted to go away from there.”
I stared up at him, openmouthed, completely unable to speak.
I was a tenth grader from Connecticut who had just blinked and ended up in some eighteen- or nineteen-year-old guy’s bedroom.
Did he not see how this might be disturbing?
“You’ll be quite safe here, you know,” he assured me.
I used to think I was safe in my own backyard. And look how that had turned out.
“I don’t understand,” I said, when I finally managed to find my voice. Even then, it came out sounding more pathetic than ever. I needed to sit back down. I was pretty sure I was having some kind of stroke or something. “What’s going on? Where are we? Who are you?”
I guess the fact that I was able to speak at all must have made him think I was fine, because he’d jetted off towards the table.
“John,” he said, tossing the name casually over one of those impossibly wide shoulders. “I’m John. Didn’t I tell you that last time? I thought I did.”
John? His name was John?
Maybe I’d hit my head harder than I thought, and I had amnesia or something. Maybe I’d been at a costume party — that would explain the gown — and this guy was one of Hannah’s brother’s friends, and I’d just forgotten.
Only none of that explained what had happened in the cemetery with Grandma.
John. I’m John.
“How…how did you do that?” I asked him in a shaking voice. “One minute we were there, by the lake, and the next —”
“Oh.” He shrugged. “A perk of the job, I suppose.” He pulled out one of the thronelike chairs. “You must be tired. Won’t you sit down? And I’m sure you must be hungry.”
It wasn’t until he said it that I realized I was. Just looking at the mounds of ripe peaches, crisp apples, and glistening grapes in those gleaming silver bowls — not to mention the cool clear water in those crystal goblets, so cold I could see the condensation dripping from the sides — well, it wasn’t easy to stay where I was, especially feeling as wobbly on my feet as I did.
But my dad had warned me about situations like this. Maybe not this exactly. But not to accept food — or drinks — from strangers.
Especially young male strangers. Even ones I knew from before.
“Job?” I asked, staying where I was. My mind seemed barely able to grasp what was happening. Because far too much was happening, too quickly. “What job? I don’t understand. You still haven’t told me where, exactly, I am. And who were all those people?”
“Oh, out there?” Now those gray eyes, when he turned them towards me, weren’t stormy looking or filled with steel flecks or anything other than…well, regret. That was the only word I could think of to describe it. “I’m sorry about all of that. What I accused you of before — that was unforgivable of me. I’ve just never met a girl like you. At least, not in a long time.”
“A girl like me?” I echoed. I remembered what he’d said as he dragged me towards the other line…the rough-looking one. “What does that mean?”
“Nothing,” he said quickly. “I just meant I don’t often meet girls of your…nature.”
“What do you
know about my nature?” I asked. My voice was still shaking. I was pretty sure I was becoming hysterical, even though I was no longer wet and it was much warmer in the room than it had been down by the lake. “You barely know me. I was seven when we last met. You didn’t even recognize me down there until I told who I was, and even then you had to look me up on your little machine. What did it say about me on that —”
“I meant it as a compliment,” he insisted, letting go of the chair in which he’d wanted me to sit. He moved towards me, both palms facing out, as if I were a pony he wanted to calm. “And you haven’t actually changed as much as you might think. You still have the biggest eyes I’ve ever seen. They’re warm, you know. Like honey.”
His own eyes, I couldn’t help noticing, were the exact same color as the bowls holding all the fruit.
“You’ve changed,” I said. I didn’t mean it as a compliment, and he seemed to know it. He had to know it, if only because for every step he took towards me, I took a defensive one back…at least until I found myself hitting the divan. Now I had nowhere else to go, and stood looking up at him, my heart fluttering in my throat. What had I gotten myself into? I should never have agreed to let him take me from the beach.
“Actually,” he said, standing so close, I could feel the heat from his body. “I haven’t changed at all. Neither have you. You’re still asking for favors for others. The last time I met you, you wanted me to bring a bird back to life. Then your grandfather. And out there just now, you kept talking about everybody else. They’re wet and they’re cold. They deserve to be treated better. That’s what you said. Was I all right? That’s what you wanted to know when my horse nearly trampled you. Was I all right. Do you know how many times someone’s asked me that question since I came here?”
I swallowed. His face was just inches from mine. The smell of wood smoke was very strong. I didn’t know if it was coming from him or the fire in the hearth. Maybe both.
“I don’t know,” I said.
“Never,” he said. “And I’ve been doing this for quite some time. Everyone else always says, ‘I’m wet. I’m cold.’ No one’s ever inquired after my health. Not you, though. You care. Not just about birds and horses but about people. And because of that,” he said, leaning even more dangerously close, “I’m guessing a lot of people must care about you.”
For a moment, I thought he was going to kiss me. I was almost sure he was going to. His mouth was that close to mine, and he’d reached one long, muscular arm out as if he were going to wrap it around me.
I’d heard about people falling in love at first sight. What he’d said about my perception of him having changed was true: He was very striking looking, with that dark hair falling into his face, and the contrast with those very light eyes. He wasn’t handsome, necessarily, but he was someone who, if you saw him at the mall or someplace, you wouldn’t be able to look away.
At least, I wouldn’t be able to.
Except he didn’t kiss me. Instead, he turned out to be reaching for something on a shelf just above my head. It was a small wooden box. After he’d pulled it down, he lifted one of my hands and said, “Come sit with me. Just for a moment.”
My heart was still hammering from thinking he’d been about to kiss me. Not that I’d wanted him to kiss me. I didn’t even want to sit down with him. I just didn’t want to seem rude. Especially since he’d started pulling me back towards the table.
What could I do? It would be impolite to refuse to join him. He hadn’t tried to do anything to hurt me except yell at me for causing his horse to slip and possibly injure itself, and then get out of the line I was supposed to be in. And he did run this place, whatever it was. I was a guest in it. I had to do what he said.
Still, I said as nicely as I could as I took the chair he’d offered, “Listen, this has been very nice, and I hope everything works out with the job, or, um, whatever it is that you do. Thank you very much for the invitation to” — What time was it, anyway? I had no idea. There were no clocks anywhere, and the light outside the gauzy white curtains was pinkish, just as it had been down by the lake. The entire cavern seemed to be cast in a pink glow. Was it lunchtime? Or dinnertime? I had no idea — “eat with you. I’d love to stay, but —” While I’d been speaking, he’d placed the box he plucked from the shelf down in front of me, then opened the lid.
And there it was.
My voice trailed off as I stared at it. I’m not really a jewelry sort of person.
But this was different.
“Do you like it?” he asked. He seemed almost…nervous, in a way. Which, considering what a self-assured — one might even say authoritative — person he was, was unusual. “You don’t have to keep it if you feel uncomfortable about it or don’t like it.”
The stone landed with a soft thump against my sternum.
Because of course I’d nodded in response to his question as to whether or not I liked it. I’d been struck speechless with desire.
And then — naturally — he’d come up to the back of my chair to put the necklace around my neck.
I had never in my life seen anything as beautiful. The stone was the color of a thundercloud…smoky gray at the edges, then turning so dark blue in the middle, it was almost black. It was the complete opposite of the shiny white diamond solitaires and bright blue sapphires all the other girls in my school got from Tiffany on their birthdays.
Gray, I could just hear them all saying. Gray is so Pierce.
“It suits you,” he said shortly, his voice as rough as thunder again. He cleared it. “I thought of it the minute I saw you just now, down there. Only I never thought…well, I never thought you’d turn out to be you, or want to come here with me.”
I had no idea what he was talking about. Against the white bodice of my gown, the stone was the exact color of the Long Island Sound on a stormy day. It reminded me of the view I saw out my bedroom window back home.
“Do you know anything about colored diamonds?” he asked. I shook my head, still speechless with the beauty of his gift. He nodded and went on, “They come in just about every color you can imagine. Pink, yellow, red, green, black, gray…but they’re very rare. Any tone of blue, like this one, is the most desirable of all. Men have killed for blue diamonds. Stones like this are buried so deeply in the earth’s crust, you see, they’re almost impossible to find. There’ve been only two or three discovered that were anywhere near as large as this one.”
He reached from around the back of the chair to lift the heavy stone from where it dangled.
I still wasn’t quite sure what had happened to me. But out of everything — hitting my head; struggling in the pool; waking to find myself in a strange world covered by a pink sky made of stone; running into some guy I’d met when I was seven who turned out not only to possess the power to make dead birds come back to life but also to magically transport girls from one place to another — this was what finally sent me over the edge: that he’d just casually reached over to invade my personal body space as if he had some kind of right to.
I’m pretty sure he didn’t notice my suddenly blazing cheeks.
He went right on talking as if nothing were wrong. It was entirely possible, considering that the only company he was apparently used to keeping was horses, huge tattooed line bouncers, and seven-year-olds, he didn’t know anything was wrong.
But that didn’t make it all right with me.
“I’ve read that this diamond has special properties,” he said. “It’s supposed to protect its wearer from evil, possibly even help her detect it. Which is good because true evil often wears the most innocent of guises. Sometimes our closest friends can turn out not to have our best interests at heart. And we never have the remotest suspicion…not until it’s too late.” He was speaking with a bitterness that suggested he’d had personal experience in this area.
“I can’t think,” he went on, in a different tone entirely — now he sounded slightly amused — “of anyone who needs something like this more
than you.”
I still had no idea what he was talking about.
All I knew was that the stone, which I’d been watching him hold in those callused fingers as he spoke, had been doing something strange…turning from almost black in the middle to the palest of grays, the color of the downy fluff on a tabby kitten’s chest.
This was going way too fast for me. I had never even been to a movie with a guy. For all of Hannah’s efforts to get her brother’s friends to notice her — and dragging me along with her during most of her attempts — none of them ever had.
And now I was in this incredibly sexy guy’s room, and he’d given me this necklace, and I didn’t even know where my clothes were.
I ducked out from beneath his arm and said, leaping from the chair, “Well, thank you very much, John. But I should probably be going, because I’m sure my mother must be looking for me. She’s probably very worried. You know how mothers are. So, if you’ll just tell me how to get home from here, I’ll go.”
A part of me knew it was futile. But I had to try. Maybe there was car service. My dad always said wherever I was, if I called for car service, he would pay, even if it was from New Jersey.
“Then,” I finished, “you can get back to whatever it is that…you…do.…”
My voice trailed off as I watched the expression on his face go from mildly amused to grimly serious.
“What?” I said. I did not like the look on his face. “What’s wrong?”
“I’m sorry,” he said. He was frowning now. “Pierce, I thought you knew.”
And then I heard his voice reminding me of how I had tripped and hit my head, had fallen in the pool and drowned, and that’s why my clothes had been wet, and…