The Forbidden Doors Box Set

by Cortney Pearson

  “Hey, guys!” Joel calls. “Pizza!”

  Todd grins. “Pizza is my bat signal.”

  He shuffles past to retrieve a stack of paper plates from the cupboard behind Joel.

  I can’t help but return his smile. Todd dives in, helping Joel as if he’s just another part of the family. Something tells me he’s a permanent fixture around here.

  We all load our plates with slices of steamy pepperoni and something with bacon crumbled over most of its surface, and I follow Todd and Piper back into her room.

  It’s like something ripped from the Pottery Barn catalog—teal, chevron-striped bedspread, decorative pillows, preppy-looking desk. The corner with a fold-up music stand on display, along with posters of old guys holding clarinets, is the messiest part about it.

  Todd plunks down on a furry, hot pink chair, Piper on her bed, leaving me the white desk lined with nail polish bottles in every color.

  “Todd,” Piper says, “this is Everly James. She moved in across from Joel and me. And is currently living with me for a few days.”

  “So I hear,” says Todd, giving me the jerk of his head and taking a bite. He gestures to the window’s closed blinds. “Sierra’s outside,” he adds.

  “Still?” Piper’s eyes widen.

  Todd rises and peers through the gap in the blinds out at the darkened window. “She’s standing by that big tree and staring at your apartment.”

  Piper chews her lip. “I wonder if she saw something again.”

  What, is she a Peeping Tom?

  I chew with questions tripping over every bite of pepperoni. “Okay, you have to tell me. What is going on with her and you?”

  She and Todd share a meaningful glance. Todd gestures as if to say, it’s your call.

  Piper shrugs. “Nothing.”

  “Let me guess,” I say. “That’s code for ‘It’s complicated.’”

  “Pretty much.” She stares at her plate.

  “But you—Joel told you why Layla and I are here, right?”

  Again, Piper and Todd exchange a look.

  “The crows?” I prompt.

  Todd’s eyebrow lifts. “Crows?”

  “Joel told me,” Piper says.

  “And? What do you think?” I ask. “You believe me?”

  “We believe you,” Piper says, her voice small.

  I stare at her, unsure how to read her uneasy posture and the confused glances she keeps receiving from Todd. Clearly, she hasn’t told him any of this. I work to figure out the best angle of approach.

  “What I don’t get is, why?” I ask. “You guys are awesome, inviting us over. But what makes you so accepting of it? Anyone else would check us into the nearest psych ward.”

  Piper inhales sharply and chokes on her pizza.

  “Where did you move here from?” Todd asks in an obvious attempt to change the subject. He returns to sit in the fluffy pink chair.

  “Shady Heights.” I fight the knot of annoyance in my gut. Always the same questions. I’m ready with my own banner of lies to cover the complicated parts whenever the why and wherefores begin to fire. Luckily, he’s not nosy.

  “Cool,” says Todd. “Piper and I went there last week.”

  The two give-and-take another wordless warning, like they’ve got some big secret and Todd was just about to spill the beans.

  “What is going on?” I ask with a small laugh. “Does it have to do with your old house? I’m not trying to be nosy. Really. It just seems like you’ve taken my word with the whole crow thing. Not many people would do that, and Joel implied it was because you guys knew what it was like to see things others can’t. And I’m just putting two and two together here.”

  “It’s just rumors,” Piper argues. “Nothing happened in my house. We just moved. It wasn’t a big deal.”

  I chew a bite of cheese, trying to keep pace with her randomly defensive statement. Insisting on buying all new everything when they had perfectly good furniture before sounds like a big deal. She’s doing me a solid by letting us stay here. But I know when I’m being lied to. What is she hiding?

  “Look.” Todd uncrosses his leg to put both feet on the floor. “It doesn’t take some freak haunting for us to believe and want to help you.”

  “Was there a freak haunting?” I can’t help asking.

  Piper scowls at Todd. “The point is, we believe you,” she says. “Can we talk about something else?”

  “Sorry, I just thought…” What am I doing, interrogating her like this? Maybe Layla was right in that look she gave me. “Sorry, Piper. I never meant to back you into a corner.”

  “It’s okay,” she says. “I don’t blame you for wanting answers. I just…can’t give them to you.”

  Can’t? “I really love your room,” I say, searching for the first thing that comes to mind and cursing myself for not having more tact. Next thing I know she’ll be kicking me out to sleep by myself back in fourteen.

  “Thanks,” she says. Awkward silence swims between us before my phone buzzes.

  “Ugh, Jerry,” I murmur.

  “Who’s Jerry?” Todd asks.

  My phone buzzes again. Not a text, but a call. I stand and head for the bedroom door. “Sorry, guys. Give me a second.”

  When I pass through the living room, Layla and Joel sit a cushion away from one another, their empty plates abandoned on the nearby end table. Layla faces him, clasping one of the striped pillows, with her leg tucked beneath her. Their conversation pauses.

  “Where are you going?” she asks.

  I wave my phone at her to let her know who it is and step outside. The cold air stabs straight into my bones, but I swipe my screen and fold my elbows close to my sides.

  “Hi, Jer.”

  “Hey, beautiful. I’ve been thinking about you.”

  His low voice is as familiar as ever. A prick of guilt stabs in. I haven’t thought of him all afternoon. I shiver, wrapping an arm around my chest. “Oh?” is all I say.

  “Where are you?”

  My jaw begins to quiver. “Standing outside. Layla and I are staying at a…friend’s house tonight.”

  “How was the job hunt?”

  “Oh.” I know it’s the last thing he wants to hear, but I’m not going to lie to him. And I’m not going to tell him about my nightmares suddenly becoming reality. “I found this bookstore that I’m dying to work at. I can’t seem to peg anyone down to ask for an application though.”

  “Maybe that’s a sign.”

  “Please don’t start,” I say, flaring instantly. “I’m staying here, Jerry. I know you don’t like it, but until my mom calls me, until she apologizes, I’m not coming back. I won’t be the first one to give in. She has to learn she can’t keep trying to control my life.”

  “I get it. You need to make a stand.”

  I breathe in relief, my breath puffing before my face. “Yes, exactly.”

  “So make that stand in the same town that she’s in.” His voice is elevated and defensive. A new stream of heat eddies through me, blocking out the cold.

  I rub my eyebrows, pivoting on the porch so the moon glares down at me. “I’m tired of this. I’m tired of arguing every time we talk. Can you please accept that I’m just ready to be done with that chapter of my life? It’s like I’ve read it over and over, and I know exactly what happens next. I’m ready for the next page.”

  “One that doesn’t have me in it.”

  “I never said that.”

  “But you are saying it.”

  I close my eyes, and my jaw shakes. My breath puffs out at every labored exhale.

  “I’m not going to wait forever,” he adds.

  “Maybe you shouldn’t.” I don’t know what else to say.

  “Whatever,” he snaps, and the call clicks off.

  I wrap my arms closer aroun
d my chest and imagine the angry flash in his eyes, so different from the mysterious, inviting gleam there the first time I met him. I close my eyes and remember it, the corner of Barry’s—a local haunt my parents specifically forbade me from going to.

  Jerry got me a drink, and I was lost in him that first night, in our conversations about drummers who played in movies and the art class he was taking, in the way he took my phone and typed his number in, how his mouth felt in the dark when he kissed me.

  I was hopeless after that. Jerry was a thrill, a rebellion. Something my parents couldn’t forbid me from because they didn’t know he existed. But he promised he would be there for me. And the night I left, I went to his apartment, only to find he skipped town in breach of his probation. He left without even telling me, right when I needed him. So I called Layla instead.

  Jerry is right; I could go just to see him, since he can’t come here. But the thought of going home puts up all kinds of blocks in my chest.

  With a steadying breath, I go back inside. The heated air seeps instantly through the coldest parts of me, and my brows lift.

  Layla and Joel now share a cushion. Joel’s hands tenderly cradle my cousin’s face as he guides her lips to his.

  That didn’t take long. The sight bothers me that much more. Did she even try talking to him about this paranormal stuff going on before locking lips with him?

  I stride past and into Piper’s room. Piper jumps from Todd’s lap like a sprung trap, and something tells me they weren’t far off from making out themselves.

  “Sorry,” Piper says, her cheeks reddening. Todd slinks back, running hands through his loose curls.

  “Never apologize for kissing,” I say, forcing a smile despite the agitation in my gut. I retrieve my coat and messenger bag and dig for my keys. I need to get away, just for a minute. “Joel and Layla are out there doing the same thing.”

  “Really?” Piper says, shocked.

  Todd pulls her to him again. My fingers find my keys, and I sling the bag across my shoulder. “I’ll give you guys some privacy.”

  Layla notices me this time, breaking away from Joel long enough to ask, “Where are you going?” Joel’s arms are still around her, his eyes clouded with desire.

  “I just…I’ll be back.”

  I hurry to my car, not caring about crows, not caring about cold, just needing to get away.

  six

  I drive toward the outskirts of town and the freeway, my eyes stinging with unshed tears. Tears I refuse to let fall.

  I pull over within the white line, palms sweaty against the steering wheel while Birdy croons softly from my radio. A painful lump rises in my throat, and I lower my chin to my chest. I feel like getting away, like driving until the sun rises and hiding from the crows, from Piper and Todd and all the confusion. But the road stretches on.

  “I didn’t have this problem coming here,” I say, resting my forehead on the back of my hands still gripping the wheel. My thoughts backtrack to another time I sat in my car, conflicted like this. To before I came to Cedarvale.

  Jerry was okay with remaining a secret from my parents, especially after I told him how manipulative my mother was. He texted rendezvous suggestions that I was quick to erase before Mom did her routine scans on my phone usage. I met him at Barry’s to repeat our first night there, and each meeting grew more heated than the last. I wasn’t sure what entranced me more, his kissing, or the idea that a nineteen-year-old guy wanted to be with me.

  My only mistake was gushing about him in my diary. I should have known nothing was off limits for my mother.

  The worst part of this is the guilt trip he keeps slapping on me. He ran off with a group of people in search of some get-rich-quick scheme and didn’t tell me. He left right when it happened, right when I needed him. And he has the nerve to try and make me feel bad for leaving?

  I turn the car around, full of anger, frustration, loneliness and loss. This is such a mess. I can’t go home. I have a life here. I’m doing this all on my own. I’m proving wrong every hateful word my mother said to me that day.

  But I don’t want to go back to Joel’s. I suppose I could go to my apartment and try to pretend how not terrified I am of being there alone with the crows.

  I just drive. Somehow through my meandering, I pull up at Terekhov’s and shift into park, letting my little beater idle there. While the other buildings on the street are dark and shut up for the night, lights above Terekhov’s large window gleam yellow behind their shades, and someone stalks along the shelves.

  Energy pent up, I suddenly want nothing more than to feel the cold. To feel something.

  A crisp hint of smoke wafts through the stiff, chill breeze. Clouds shift above, and it’s strange how this air makes me feel different than I did before, how the smoke transforms who I was into who I am in this moment. Leaves sprinkle the sidewalk, their muted colors making death and decay look beautiful. I feel like one of those leaves. Once on a tree, in its place, then plucked and discarded, and left to drift where the wind blows it.

  “Everly?”

  I wheel around. Nikolay Terekhov ambles from the dark alleyway between his store and the formal dress shop beside it. His shadowed face pales in the moonlight.

  “Nikolay! What are you doing here?”

  He burrows his nose into his coat. “Taking out the garbage.” He gestures behind with a thumb before taking in the sight of my idling car. “What about you?”

  “Running away,” I say hopelessly.

  “In this cold?”

  He joins my side, our backs against the car doors, and lets his body curve with the car’s shape until he stares up at the vacant moon. I do the same, the metal chilling the back of my neck.

  “You don’t like the cold?” I ask.

  “Russia is always cold,” he says, his breath puffing out. “I prefer the heat of a fire or sunlight that actually does its job.” He laughs.

  “Cold reminds me I’m alive.”

  “That’s what you would call morbid.”

  “It does! Heat is too comfortable.” I think of Jerry and the stupid things I did because I let myself get too warm.

  Nikolay steps away from the car to face me. Night shadows his eyes, but his voice is kind. “Is something bothering you, Everly?”

  I sigh. “Sorry. You must think I’m crazy—or a stalker or something.”

  “I think you’re upset by something, and you don’t know who to talk to about it.”

  I meet his direct gaze, taking in the line of his narrow nose, thin, intriguing mouth, and the redness touching his pale cheeks. Who is this exotic boy, and why is he sharing a cold night with me? How could he possibly care about my problems?

  His gaze doesn’t break from mine, and I tell him. Jerry, my parents, the crows, all of it. Nikolay listens with the intensity of a priest taking my confession.

  “Everly,” he says when I finish. He stares at his shoes before lifting his lids. “Would you come inside with me for a moment?”

  I do a mental backtrack. I just spilled my guts to him. I can’t imagine why he would want to spend another second in my company.

  “Not to seem rude, but why? It’s late. I should be getting back.”

  He sniffles. Hands in his pockets, he glances down the street before answering. “It sounds like you still need that job.”

  A disbelieving laugh leaks out. “You do job interviews at dark-thirty?”

  “So it would seem,” he says with a smile. He guides a hand toward the store entrance. The sign in the window pronounces the place closed.

  The bell tinkles, and Nikolay closes the door behind me, locking it with the same chain of keys he used earlier. The sound shortens my spine. What am I doing locking myself in a building at night with two men I don’t even know?

  I clear my throat. “Maybe I should go.”

  Nikolay re
moves his coat. His suspenders dangle at the waist, no longer on his shoulders. “It’s only a precaution,” he says with a wink. “We do not bite.”

  The puffy white cat prowls out from behind the register, now covered by a green casing to protect it from dust.

  “You again,” I say to it, pressing my hands to my stomach. The tension drains from my shoulders at the sight of the cat.

  “You have met Sherlock?” Nikolay deposits his coat on the counter and stoops to retrieve the fluffy white animal with eyes almost as blue as his.

  “He’s yours?”

  “Guard cat,” he says with a grin, stroking the cat’s long fur.

  I reach for his soft, purring back and scratch his head behind the ears. My fingers accidentally brush Nikolay’s and I draw back, cheeks heating. “Looks like a good job for him.”

  Sherlock springs from his arms and pads his way to the iron, twisting staircase, fluffy tail pluming straight up. We follow, and Nikolay mounts the stairs, turning to talk to me every few steps.

  “Much of our fiction is upstairs. This is also where the offices are, and where you will need to check in every day.” He must not know I came up here once, or that I saw that door up here. I’d almost forgotten about it with everything else going on.

  “You’re talking like I already have the job.”

  He pauses at the top of the balcony, his eyes gleaming. “Just being optimistic. If you would like to sit…” He points to a pair of leather arm chairs that overlook the main floor. My gaze drifts further back, to where I found the door. “And wait here, please, while I speak with my father.”

  Russians are so polite, I think, watching him turn down a hallway lined with doors.

  Instead of lowering myself into the armchair, I walk the balcony’s perimeter. The marbled floor is prettier from up here, the full picture imprinting in my brain of hushed shelves and their mysterious auras.

  Footsteps and male voices rumble in a brief spurt of laughter. Nikolay comes into view at the hall’s end, smiling beside a man so like him the two could be twins if it wasn’t for the obvious lines of age on the other man’s handsome face and the graying color of his hair.