by Kelly Creagh
Just in case Charlotte, Trick, or both were watching, I gave up and fell into my usual chair. I forced myself to eat a fry. A moment later, a shadow eclipsed my burger.
“This is ground control to Major Tom,” came Wes’s voice. “Got your helmet on?”
“Don’t tell me,” I replied, already suspecting what was coming. Ever since I’d arrived at school that morning to find our usual meeting spot in front of the first-floor radiator as deserted as this lunch table, I’d been waiting for the other shoe to drop. Or, should I say, the last remaining buckle-lined black boot.
“She cornered me this morning,” Wes said, sliding into the seat across from mine. “Which is why I wasn’t there.”
Elbow propped on the table, I put my still-aching head in my hand.
“So why are you here now?” I asked, even though I could guess.
“I told her to let me talk to you before she did anything rash,” he replied. “Convince you to change your mind about letting her go in with Rastin. At least before we all go through with her plan to tell the counselor about you.”
“What about me?” I asked.
“That you’re not coping, and that you’re a danger to yourself, and we’re worried for your safety. And your mental health. From there, while you’re put under lockdown, she plans to go in without you.”
“You’re being serious.”
“It’s pretty hardcore,” Wes admitted. “Even for her.”
“So that’s it?” Lowering my hand, I leveled him with a glare. “You think I should be cool with letting Charlotte go in there with just Rastin? You and I both know who Rastin is more worried about.”
“Charlotte’s convinced you’re going to get yourself killed,” he said. “And now I’m convinced that, if she gets her way, she’s going to get herself killed. She wants to go tomorrow, after school. That’s the real reason I’m here. Because it comes down to this: there’s no way I’m letting her go back into that house with just Rastin. You don’t want her to go, and I don’t want her to go. And that is why you have to let me punch you.”
My head snapped up from my plate. “What?”
“That’s good,” he said. “That’s your really pissed-off look. You don’t wear it often, because it clashes with your Captain America thing. Keep it, though. Work with it. Feel the burn. But seriously. I’ve gotta deck you. There’s really no way around it.” He sighed. “I mean, I would let you hit me first, but I’ve got to be the one to start the fight or she’ll never buy any of this.”
“Are you even listening to yourself?” I asked him.
“Maybe if I’m lucky, she’ll still give me a chance when this is all over,” he said. “More importantly, though, she’ll be safe. Plus, she’ll never suspect that I’m planning on going with you to Moldavia tomorrow morning while she’s here at school. Think about it. It’s genius. Our parents will be at work, and we’ll both be suspended. By the way, you have to hit me back in order for the zero-tolerance rule to apply. Left side, please.”
I blinked at him, trying to sort through what, exactly, had just come pouring out of his deranged mouth.
A moment more passed. Then I tilted my head at him.
“Wait a second. Are you saying that . . . ? What do you mean by give you a chance?”
“I’m in love with Charlotte,” he said, his voice monotone. “But I’m not going to ask your permission to date her even though you two used to be a thing because that’s just weird.”
I sat back, flabbergasted. “That’s weird?”
“Just for the record,” he said, waving a hand between us. “I’m cool with the dancing. It makes me insanely jealous, but I’m developing some coping mechanisms. Like dancing with your girlfriend while you dance with mine.”
“Charlotte’s not your girlfriend.”
His eyes widened, blazing ice through my soul. “I’m working on it.”
“Wait a second.” I placed my hands on the table. “You mean to tell me this whole time you were never really into Steph—?”
“What would you have done?” Wes asked, cutting me off. “What would you have honestly done if I hadn’t told you I was planning to move in on Armand?”
I frowned at him, absorbing all of this. Was Wes playing a double agent right now or, in true Wes fashion, some kind of jacked-up triple agent? In other words, was this a setup that was supposed to throw me for a loop and get me to see reason? Charlotte’s reason?
That made no sense.
But Wes liking Charlotte? That made even less sense.
Except . . . it also made perfect sense.
Because if Wes had really liked Stephanie, if he’d really wanted to make a move, why inform me? He and I were friends, but Wes would have thrown anyone under the bus if it meant getting what he really wanted. But, apparently, who he’d really been after was Charlotte. He had been sitting next to her a lot lately. And hadn’t I caught sight of them dancing together at the competition?
“I’ll tell you what you would have done,” continued Wes when I didn’t answer. “You’d have sat on your ass and done your take-your-time 1940s good-boy thing. And not been aware of anyone else but Stephanie. So just like right now except Stephanie might not be your official girlfriend.”
“It was all an act,” I said, shaking my head at him.
“An act to get you to act,” he said, his face expressionless, his eyes dead serious. “Because I knew the quicker you moved on, the quicker Charlotte would be able to.”
I stifled a laugh. At him and the whole cold, calculated, and overthought game.
“How long?” I asked him. “How long have you had it for her?”
“Let’s just say I might have plotted your murder a few times while the two of you were dating. But, in my defense, so did Patrick, because that whole episode was weird and made you both insufferable.”
I burrowed my eyes into his, searching for his level of sincerity. Because, when it came to Wes, he always left you guessing.
“You’re saying the reason you haven’t moved in on Charlotte is because you think she still has feelings for me?”
“I don’t have to say it,” he snapped, genuine irritation—genuine hurt—backing his words. “She said it herself last night.”
“When?”
“Hello. When she said she’d go in for Stephanie. She feels bad for Steph, but more than that, she’s trying to protect you.”
I opened my mouth to tell Wes he’d read too far into that. But another question pressed past that one.
“Does . . . does Trick know how you feel?”
“Just you,” Wes said, swallowing, his jaw flexing. “It’s a delicate thing, you know? Just because we survived the dating of two members before doesn’t mean we will again. But Stephanie . . . once she entered the picture . . . Well, she changed everything.”
He was right about that. Stephanie had changed the whole dynamic of SPOoKy. Regarding the stuff with Charlotte, though, Wes didn’t have everything about her pegged. Having grown up with Charlotte, I knew her better than he did. She might have been protective of me, and maybe a little jealous of Stephanie for a while. But it was my belief that Charlotte’s animosity toward Stephanie had always been more about how Stephanie was changing our relationship—mine and Charlotte’s. And now that I knew about Wes’s feelings for Charlotte, I could see where she was coming from. I couldn’t exactly say I was super keen on the two of them dating. But what would Wes say if I told him the truth about me and Charlotte? That she had been the one to break up with me. Would he change his mind about this whole jealousy theory?
Maybe I would tell him. When all this was over, and we were all together at prom or something. For the moment, he and I had another issue. Namely, this half-baked plan of his.
“So, let me get this straight,” I said. “You think Charlotte will abort raising the alarm about me just because we ge
t into a fight? Why don’t we just tell her that you convinced me to let her go without us, and then you and I skip school in the morning?”
“Because, Lucas, you’re a damn Hufflepuff.”
“What?”
“You’re a horrible liar.”
He had me there.
“Still,” I argued. “Won’t a fight just help her case if she does go to the counselor?”
“Think about it,” he said. “This is strategy, so I know that’s hard for you, but I need you to try.”
I scowled at him, my hand twitching toward becoming the fist I might just end up throwing after all.
“Her goal is to sweep you off the board,” he said. “Only problem is, if you don’t go along with the program, she’s got to nix her own rook while she’s at it. But if you sacrifice your knight to her bishop, meaning me, then we can storm the castle while the queen is in chemistry.”
“You’re an idiot.”
“She needs Rastin,” Wes said. “However, she’s also willing to go in without him and try reasoning with Masks R Us directly if that’s what it takes to keep you safe. Which means that, if you don’t get put into a mandatory time-out, her next step will be to tell the authorities about Rastin’s involvement just so he won’t be able to help you. That’s her plan B. But. If you’re already preoccupied with being in trouble, then she’ll stick with her plan A and go straight to Rastin after school tomorrow. Thing is, you and I will have already been in and out.”
I huffed a laugh at him. “And starting this fight. That’s supposed to help your case with her . . . how?”
“I don’t have a case with her,” he snapped, shaking his head at me. Like he thought I was as stupid as I was oblivious. “And I don’t expect to get one, either, until Steph is back. So I’ll worry about that later. Now, are you game . . . or not?”
“You’ll seriously go with me and Rastin?” I asked him after a pause. “Tomorrow?”
“No Trick, no Little Lottie. No muss, no fuss. Rastin opens the door. We special ops in. You Ocean’s Eleven her out, and we worry about figuring out a way to stake the vampire later.”
It sounded good to me. It sounded like maybe, if we could get Rastin on board, it could even work. At the very least, it was something—a plan.
“I’m in,” I said.
With that, Wes stood from the table. Taking the cue and deciding to trust him even if his plan was insane, I stood, too.
“Quick,” said Wes. “I’m a method actor. Give something to work with.”
“What?”
“Piss me off, Lucas.”
“Uh . . . Charlotte’s bra size is thirty-two C. Her favorite one has pineapples on it?”
“And that works.”
What that, he pulled back his fist and, no-holds-barred, took his shot.
Pain erupted in my jaw, ricocheting in and through my head so that the unanimous shouts of surprise that arose from the cafeteria hit my ears as a dull roar. The thought that he hadn’t needed to hit me so hard, or that he could have possibly just pretended, entered my mind first. And stoked the rage I’d felt the night before back into full flame. I swung at him. At his right side instead of the requested left. He took the punch, not even trying to block. And it felt good—so good—to land the blow that I hadn’t been able to last night. Even if the target had changed.
Wes hit me again, and somewhere I heard Charlotte screech my name. Not Wes’s. Mine.
Wes closed in on me again, his face twisted with an anger too real for me to buy that this was all fake.
He shoved me hard, and I toppled backward, into a table that went sliding, its occupants scattering with shouts, screams, and spilling sodas.
I pushed off from the table—and dive-tackled Wes. He slammed to the floor under me while chants of “Fight!” chorused from the crowd gathering around us.
“People really do that?” Wes grunted, his hand shoving my face back.
“Apparently,” I growled, elbowing him in the nose.
“Kind of sad, really,” he snarled, flipping me scary-easily onto my back before delivering a second punch—one that caused my lip to split. “Like getting your ass kicked twice in as many days.”
I latched on to his shirt, and gritting my teeth, I rolled us. Getting him under me, I slammed him down amid rising cries and screams—causing his head to bang the linoleum.
“Ouch,” grunted Wes through a cringe. “That tickles.”
Inserting a knee between us, he kicked me off, and I went pedaling backward before sprawling flat.
We both hopped to our feet, blood running from his nose and my lip. But then Patrick appeared over Wes’s shoulder, both hands catching Wes’s coiled arm. Wes didn’t pull or lower the punch though. Not until, with a blur of blonde, Charlotte came flying between us.
Immediately, Wes lowered his fists, no longer bothering to try to fend off Patrick, whose pull he began to follow instead.
“What’s wrong with you?” she screeched at Wes, almost making me feel bad for the guy. And maybe I would have. If our fight had turned out to be as fake as he’d said it was going to be.
Charlotte had enough time to turn around and gape at me before Mr. Corey, the lunchroom monitor, grabbed me, yanking me back from Wes.
Charlotte’s expression, tortured as it was, made me hope Wes would turn out to be right about one thing at least.
That our fight, fake or not, really would buy Charlotte’s silence.
For at least one more day.
SIXTY-NINE
Stephanie
I didn’t see him the rest of the night or, so far, this morning either. He’d not been back since the rain had started.
After last night, after the fading of the strange phenomenon and the dissipation of the snow, I hadn’t encountered a single one of his masks. Just like him . . . they’d all vanished.
While I couldn’t say where the masks had gone, I sensed that he—Erik—had gone to the other Moldavia. And that he’d done so because he wanted to be away from me.
After I had implanted that heart inside of him, an odd change had taken place inside of me, too. I didn’t just think he’d gone to the other Moldavia—I knew it. Because now, I carried within me an internal signature of him, a strange buzzing awareness of his presence and, more loosely, his whereabouts.
Something had happened between us—to us—in the conservatory.
But the rose couldn’t have brought about the change. Not on its own.
Something else had occurred. Something I couldn’t make sense of. But then, the clarity that I was missing would only come to me when he did.
So, I spent the day walking through the whole of Moldavia, waiting for him. To come to grips with the fact that I’d seen exactly what he was.
Disgust and terror should have caught up to me by now—sent me into the tailspin I’d been so worried would overtake me. But the moment that heart had found its home, all my fear of losing control, of losing my mind, had fallen away. Something inside of me had clicked.
Last night, he’d left me standing there in the conservatory. I’d let him go, too, stepping aside as he’d brushed passed me. Because, well, he had let me go. Released me when I’d needed him to. And the way he’d caught my elbow, keeping us connected that way . . .
While I did believe he’d wanted me to remove the rose, I also now believed he’d held me those few extra moments for the same reason he’d allowed me to touch him in the first place.
How long had it been since he’d experienced any tenderness?
That question repeated itself the most during the quiet hours that passed between the sunless dawn and the early afternoon, all part of the same unending night.
Then, just when I thought I’d have to stoop to calling out to him in order to get him to come back and speak to me, another shift took place in my chest. One that told me h
e’d come back and that he was near again.
Jumping up from the velvet-upholstered balloon chair on the second floor, I hurried down the hall and to the top of the grand staircase. Stopping there, my heart hammered at the sight of him standing below in the foyer.
He still wore the split iron mask whose name I’d yet to ask, even though I didn’t really need to. Wasn’t it obvious which part of him this mask represented? The divide itself. That narrowing rift between his worst self and his best.
“You’re back,” I said.
“Yes,” he replied.
“You were gone for an entire day.”
He only nodded, causing anger to wind through my confusion.
“It was so quiet here. Your masks . . . they’re all gone now. Not that I missed them, but for a while I felt like I might go crazy.”
“Yes,” he said again through a soft laugh that kept me from breaking and unloading on him, berating him for abandoning me to this empty tomb of a house. Because that “yes” held too much understanding. I’d been alone for one day. Him, though . . .
“Why?” I asked.
This time when he spoke, he angled toward me. “All morning it has rained. The snow that has fallen on this side of Moldavia for over a century has begun to melt. Previously, the moths could be found around any corner on the property. Yet they have vanished. There are now live roses growing in the conservatory. My masks are, as you have already observed, nowhere to be found.” He gestured to his chest. “My plague of blood is gone. What is more, I feel your presence in this house. I can tell where you are. No heart has ever done so much. Because of that, I am certain it all bodes something catastrophic.”
I folded my arms, doing my best to keep my expression impassive. To wear my own mask. So, apparently, he didn’t have an answer for what was happening to his world. Only that it was something he was experiencing, too.
“What makes you so sure it can only end badly?” I asked. “The heart. It . . . stopped whatever was happening last night.”
“I warned you yesterday,” he said. “It won’t hold. For me, no false heart ever has. And this intermingling of our spirits. As beautiful—as blissful—as it is, can it not be assumed that the inevitable consequences can only match in severity?”