Tristan didn’t say anything.
“But if it is true, Tristan, then it’s not fair to use him like that. It’d be leading him on.”
Would it really? Tristan wondered. Maybe Ivy was afraid to admit her attraction to Will.
“What are you thinking? What are you cloaking?” Ivy asked.
“I’m wondering if you’re being honest with yourself.”
Ivy walked briskly across the shop, as if she could walk away from him, hanging up the costumes, tossing misplaced objects into their bins. “I don’t know why you think the way you do. It’s almost as if you’re jealous,” she said.
“I am,” he replied.
“You’re what?” Her voice sounded frustrated.
“Jealous.” There was no point in trying to hide it, Tristan thought.
“Who said that?” Ivy demanded.
“Who said what?” Tristan asked.
“Who said what?” a female voice echoed, the same voice that had sounded frustrated a moment ago.
“Lacey!” Tristan exclaimed. He hadn’t seen her come in.
“Yes, sweetie?” Lacey was projecting her voice so Ivy could hear it, too. Ivy glanced around the room.
“This is a private conversation,” Tristan said.
“Well, her half was private,” Lacey replied, still projecting her voice. “When your chick speaks inwardly, I can hear only your part. Talk about frustrating! This year’s romantic smash, and I’m missing half the dialogue. Ask your chick to speak out loud, okay?”
“Your chick?” Ivy repeated aloud.
“That’s better,” said Lacey.
“Is she that purplish blob?” Ivy asked.
“Ex-cuuuse me?” Lacey said.
Tristan could feel a headache coming on. “Yes, that’s her,” he told Ivy.
“A blob?” Lacey spit out the word.
“That’s how you look to Ivy,” Tristan said. “You know that.”
“How does she look to you?” Ivy asked Tristan.
He hesitated.
“Yes, tell us both, how do I look to you?” Lacey asked.
Tristan tried to think of an objective description. “Like … five foot something … with brown eyes, I think … and a roundish nose, and sort of thick hair.”
“Good job, Tristan,” Lacey remarked. “You’ve just described a bear.” To Ivy she said, “I’m Lacey Lovitt. Now I’m sure you can picture me.”
Tristan could feel Ivy’s mind searching, trying to remember who Lacey Lovitt was.
“The country-western star?”
A plastic turkey was hurled across the room. “And to think I bothered to come back to warn the chick.”
“Why does she keep calling me the chick?”
“I guess it’s movie star talk,” Tristan said wearily.
“You were a movie star?” Ivy bent down to pick up the thrown turkey. “So you’re pretty,” Ivy said quietly.
“Ask Tristan,” said Lacey.
“Is she?”
Tristan felt trapped. “I’m not a good judge of those things.”
“Oh, I see,” Ivy and Lacey said at the exact same time, both of them sounding irritated. Ivy paced one way, Lacey the other.
“How did you throw this, Lacey Lovitt?” Ivy asked, squeaking the turkey. “Can Tristan do it?”
Lacey snickered. “Not with any kind of aim,” she said. “He’s still learning to materialize his fingers, to make himself solid. He’s got a lot to learn. Luckily he’s got me as a teacher.”
She moved closer to Ivy. Tristan could feel Ivy tingle when she felt Lacey’s fingers resting lightly on her skin. Through Ivy’s eyes he saw the long purple nails slowly appear on her arm.
“When Tristan slips back out of your mind,” Lacey said, “he’ll look and feel solid to me. But unless he materializes himself, like I just did, he’ll be just a glow to you. It takes a lot of energy to materialize. He’s getting stronger, but if he uses up too much energy, he’ll fall into the darkness.”
“He’ll look and feel solid to you?” Ivy repeated.
“He can hold my hand, see my face,” Lacey said. “He can—well, you know.”
Tristan could feel Ivy prickling.
“But he hasn’t,” Lacey said bluntly. “He’s totally hung up on you.” She picked up a hat and spun it on a fingertip, lifting it above her head. To Ivy she looked like a lavender mist with a mysteriously spinning top hat. “You know, I could have a lot of fun haunting this place. I could get the old ladies some real publicity come Halloween.”
“Don’t even think about it,” Tristan said.
“Forgive me if I forget that you said that,” Lacey told him. “Anyway, I’m here to give you the skinny. Gregory’s picked up some new drugs.”
“When?” Tristan asked quickly.
“Tonight, just before he got here,” Lacey replied, then said to Ivy, “Be careful what you eat. Be careful what you drink. Don’t make it easy for him.”
Ivy shivered.
“Thanks, Lacey,” Tristan said. “I owe you—even though you did sneak in and listen to what was none of your business.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
“I’m the one who owes you,” Ivy said.
“That’s right,” Lacey snapped, “and for more than just that! For the last two and a half months I’ve had to listen to enough heaving and sighing over you to fill three volumes of bad love poetry. And I’ve got to tell you—”
“Lacey’s never been in love,” Tristan interrupted, “so she doesn’t understand—”
“Excuse me? Excuse me?” Lacey challenged him. “Do you know that for a fact?”
Tristan laughed.
“As I was saying …” Lacey moved closer to Ivy. “I just don’t know what he sees in you.”
Ivy was stung into a moment of silence. At last she replied, “Well, I know what he sees in you.”
“Oh, puh-lease.”
Ivy laughed and picked up a top hat, spinning it on her own fingertip. “Tristan’s always been a sucker for girls with their own way of doing things.”
P3-7
Tristan lay quietly, listening to Eric’s breathing and conserving his own energy, watching the sky outside the bedroom window beginning to lighten. The numbers on Eric’s clock radio glowed: it was 4:46. As soon as Eric showed signs of stirring, Tristan planned to slip inside his mind.
He had checked on Eric Friday night, several hours after his visit to the mall, and Saturday night as well, after Eric came home from a drinking binge. Lacey had repeatedly warned Tristan about time-traveling in a mind confused by alcohol and bent by drugs. But it had been twenty-four hours since Eric’s last beer, and Tristan was willing to take a chance to learn just what kind of dirty work Eric had done for Gregory.
He had lucked out when he arrived in Eric’s room early Monday, discovering on one of his shelves an old book about trains. Materializing a finger, he had paged through the book, searching for a photo of a train that looked similar to those that ran through Stonehill’s station. Now he watched Eric sleep, waiting for his chance to show him that picture and slip in on a shared thought. With a little more luck, he could ride the thought into a memory, the memory of the night Ivy had been drugged and taken to the station.
He waited patiently as the digital clock flashed the passing minutes. Eric’s breathing was becoming shallow, and his legs grew restless—now was the time. Tristan nudged him awake. Eric saw the book on his pillow and pulled his head up sleepily, squinting at the picture.
Train, thought Tristan. Whistling. Slow down. Looks like an accident. Wasn’t an accident. Gregory. Blew it. Chick, chick, chick, who wants to play chick, chick, chick?
Tristan ran through as many thoughts as he could that were related to the picture. He didn’t know which thought was his ticket in, but he suddenly saw the photograph through Eric’s half-closed eyes. Eric seemed just alert enough to take a suggestion. Tristan pictured as clearly as he could a baseball cap and school jacket, the ones that Gregory had worn that
night, the ones that he had insisted Eric find.
Tristan felt Eric tense. For a moment he felt suspended in timeless darkness, then he pitched forward with him, his fist glancing off something hard. He was swiftly thrown backward, making him lose his balance, then was pushed forward once more. Every muscle strained—Eric was fighting with someone. A sharp punch to his stomach made him lurch. Eric twisted his head around—Tristan twisted his—and saw his opponent: Gregory.
Tristan saw the road, too, as he spun with Eric one way, then the other, beneath Gregory’s blows. He thought he was about thirty yards from the entrance to the train station. As he struggled with Gregory his feet kept slipping on small stones at the side of the road. Something sharp bit into his hand. Tristan realized suddenly that Eric was clinging to a set of keys.
“You dumb-ss.” Tristan felt Eric’s words slur in his mouth. “You can’t drive my machine. You’ll crash us and you’ll kill us both. It’ll be you, me, and Tristan forever, you, me, and Tristan forever, you, me, and Tristan—”
“Shut up. Give them to me,” Gregory said, ripping the keys out of his hand, leaving his palm raw and bloody. “You can’t even hold your head up.”
Tristan suddenly felt as if he were going to be sick. Trapped inside the body of Eric, he leaned on the Harley, holding his stomach and breathing hard. Gregory fumbled with something on the back of the bike. He was trying to tie something to it—the jacket and cap.
“We’ve got to get out of here,” Gregory said to him.
They struggled to climb onto the motorcycle. His leg felt unbearably heavy as he lifted it over the seat. Gregory shoved him toward the back of the machine, then climbed on the front.
“Hang on.”
He did. When Gregory hit the accelerator, Tristan felt his head snap back. His upper jaw crunched down on his lower, and his eyes felt as small and hard as marbles rolling inside his head. In that brief moment he saw a blur behind him. He turned just as the clothes tumbled off the bike, but he didn’t say anything.
They rode toward town, then up the long hill to Gregory’s house. Gregory got off and rushed inside. Now the motorcycle was in Eric’s hands—Tristan’s hands, though he had no control. He raced down the hill again, driving crazily. Suddenly the road snaked out from under the wheels, and Eric was on another path.
Were they in another memory? Had they somehow linked up with another part of the past? The road, with its sharp twists and turns, seemed familiar to Tristan. The Harley skidded to a stop, and Tristan felt ill all over again: they were at the spot where he had died.
Eric parked and got off the motorcycle, surveying the road for several minutes. He stooped down to examine some sparkling blue stones—bits of shattered glass among the gravel in the road. Suddenly he reached over and picked up a bouquet of roses. They looked fresh, as if someone had just left them there, and were tied with a purple ribbon, the kind Ivy wore in her hair. Eric touched one rose that hadn’t opened. A tremor ran through him.
One rose, unopened, stood in a vase on Caroline’s table. Eric’s mind had jumped again, and Tristan knew he had been in this memory before. The picture window, the brewing storm outside, Eric’s intense fear and growing frustration were all familiar to Tristan. Just as before, the memory ran like a piece of damaged film, frames spliced out, sound washed over by waves of emotion. Caroline was looking at him and laughing, laughing as if nothing in the world could be funnier. Suddenly he reached for her arms, grabbing her, shaking her, rocking her till her head flopped like a rag doll’s.
“Listen to me,” he said. “I mean it! It’s not a joke! Nobody’s laughing but you. It’s not a joke!”
Then Eric groaned. It wasn’t fear that rippled through him now. It wasn’t frustration and anger burning out of his skin, but something deep and awful, despairing. He groaned again and opened his eyes. Tristan saw the book of trains in front of him.
The book looked blurry, and Eric passed his hand over his eyes. He was awake and crying. “Not again,” he whispered. “Not again.”
What did he mean? Tristan wondered. What didn’t Eric want to happen again? What didn’t he want to do again? Let Gregory kill? Let himself get out of control and do Gregory’s killing for him? Maybe they had each done some of it and were tied together in a guilty knot.
Tristan struggled hard to remain conscious and stay with Eric through the rest of Monday morning. He had slipped out of Eric’s mind the moment he was fully awake but accompanied him to school, guessing that the memories that haunted Eric would lead him toward some kind of confrontation with Gregory. He was caught off guard at lunchtime when Eric moved quickly through a crowded cafeteria toward the table where Ivy sat alone.
“I have to talk to you.”
Ivy blinked up at him, surprised. His pale hair was matted. Over the summer, he had grown so thin that his white skin barely seemed to cover the bones of his face. The circles under his eyes looked like bruises.
When Ivy spoke, Tristan heard an unexpected gentleness in her voice. “Okay. Talk to me.”
“Not here. Not with all these people.”
Ivy glanced around the cafeteria. Tristan guessed that she was trying to decide how to handle this. He wanted to slip inside her and shout, “Don’t do it! Don’t go anywhere with him!” But he knew what would happen: She’d throw him out just as she had the last time.
“Can you tell me what this is about?” Ivy asked, her voice still soft.
“Not here,” he said. His fingers played nervously on the tabletop.
“At my house, then,” she suggested.
Eric shook his head. He kept glancing left and right.
Tristan saw with relief that Beth and Will were carrying their lunch trays toward Ivy’s table. Eric saw them, too.
“There’s an old car,” he said quickly, “dumped about a half mile below the train bridges, just back from the river. I’ll meet you there today, five o’clock. Come alone. I want to talk, but only if you’re alone.”
“But I—”
“Come alone. Don’t tell anyone.” He was already moving away from the table.
“Eric,” she called after him. “Eric!”
He didn’t turn back.
“What was that about?” Will asked as he set his tray on the table. He didn’t seem aware of Tristan’s presence. Neither did Beth or Ivy. Maybe none of them saw his light because of the sun flooding through the cafeteria’s big windows, Tristan thought.
“Eric looks kind of crazed,” Beth said, taking the seat next to Will and across from Ivy. Tristan was glad to see a pencil and notebook among Beth’s clutter of dishes. Through her writing, he could communicate with all three of them at the same time. “What did he say?” she asked. “Is something wrong?”
Ivy shrugged. “He wants to talk to me later today.”
“Why doesn’t he talk to you now?” Will asked.
Good question, thought Tristan.
“He said he wants to see me alone.” Ivy lowered her voice. “I’m not supposed to tell anyone.”
Beth was watching Eric as he made his way toward the cafeteria doors. Her eyes narrowed.
I don’t trust him, Tristan thought as clearly as possible. He had guessed right: Beth and he matched thoughts, and a moment later he was inside her mind. Then he felt her pull back.
“Don’t be afraid, Beth,” he said to her. “Don’t throw me out. I need your help. Ivy needs your help.”
Sighing, Beth picked up the pencil next to her notebook, and stirred her applesauce with it.
Will smiled and nudged her. “It’d be easier to eat with a spoon,” he said.
Then Ivy’s eyes widened a little. “Beth’s glowing.”
“Is it Tristan?” Will asked.
Beth dried her pencil and flipped open the notebook.
“Yes,” she wrote.
Ivy frowned. “He can talk to me directly now. Why is he still communicating through you?”
Beth’s fingers twitched, then she wrote quickly: “Because Beth still li
stens to me.”
Will laughed out loud.
Beth’s hand moved toward the page again. “I’m counting on Beth and Will to convince you—don’t take chances with Eric!”
“Counting on me?” mumbled Will.
“It’s too dangerous, Ivy,” Beth scribbled. “It’s a trap. Tell her, Will.”
“I need to know the facts first,” Will insisted.
“Eric asked me to meet him at five o’clock, by the river about a half mile below the double bridges,” Ivy said.
Will nodded, tore the tip of a catsup packet, and spread its contents evenly on his hamburger. “Is that all?” he asked.
“He said to come alone and to look for him by an old car that’s back a little from the river.”
Will methodically opened a second catsup packet, then a mustard one. His slow and deliberate actions annoyed Tristan.
“Tell her, Will! Talk sense to her!” Beth wrote furiously.
But Will would not be hurried. “Eric could be setting a trap for you,” he said to Ivy thoughtfully, “maybe a deadly one.”
“Exactly,” wrote Beth.
“Or,” Will continued, “Eric could be telling the truth. He could be running scared and trying to give you some important information. I honestly don’t know which it is.”
“Idiot!” Beth wrote. “Don’t do it, Ivy,” she added out loud, her voice shaking. “That’s me telling you, not Tristan.”
Will turned to her. “What is it?” he asked. “What are you seeing?”
Tristan, inside her mind, was seeing it, too, and it shook him just as badly.
“It’s the car,” Beth said. “As soon as you mentioned it I could see it, an old car sinking slowly into the mud. Something terrible has happened there. There’s a dark mist around it.”
Will took Beth’s trembling hand.
“The car’s slipping into the ground like a coffin,” she said. “Its hood is torn off. Its trunk … I can’t see—there are lots of bushes and vines. There’s a door partway open, blue, I think. Something’s inside.”
Beth’s eyes were big and frightened, and a tear ran down her cheek. Will wiped it away gently, but another ran over his hand.
“The front seats are gone,” she continued. “But I can see the back seat, and there’s something …” She shook her head.
Kissed by an Angel/The Power of Love/Soulmates Page 35