I glanced over her shoulder at my mom, who was skimming the paper while eating a late lunch at the island. She paused from taking a bite of her sandwich, brow raised as if to say, Why haven’t you told your best friend about last night yet? Instead, she said, “Lainey’s been here since noon, waiting for you.”
“Are you okay?” Lainey searched my gaze.
I exhaled a slow breath. “It’s not something I’ll ever forget, but working out helps with the stress of it all.”
When I caught Mom’s nod of approval, I knew she felt better about letting me go this morning. She’d tried to stop me until I explained that I needed the exercise to work through things and to get rid of the grogginess from the PM medicine she’d given me. Before I left, I’d made her promise never to give me that medicine again.
Mom lifted the paper. “There’s an article about Mr. Holtzman, Inara.”
“What does it say?” I peered around Lainey’s shoulder. Did they have a suspect?
She skimmed her gaze down the fine print. “It says he was found in the sanctuary, and that the circumstances of his death are being investigated, but no arrests have been made at this time.”
The image of the birds trying to defend him from other predators flashed through my mind, making my heart ache. The ravens! I tensed. “Does it say what will happen to his ravens?”
Mom skimmed some more. “The Wildlife Preserve has offered to take them since they’ve had experience fostering ravens.”
My body slowly relaxed. The ravens were so loud last night, their pain and sadness echoing through the woods as the coroner drove away with Freddie’s body. “I’m relieved to hear they’ll have a new home and won’t just be tossed into the wild. I’ve heard good things about the Wildlife Preserve.”
“I would’ve freaked if I’d been the one to stumble upon a murder scene. I’m so glad you’re okay.” Lainey squeezed my shoulders. “First the library, now this—”
My grip on Lainey tightened, tension ebbing through me.
“What about the library?” Mom asked, alarmed.
Lainey glanced over her shoulder and said in a casual tone, “Oh, just Nara having to be tortured with library research recently.”
Nice save, Lane.
Turning back to me, she continued, “If you had just answered my texts, I wouldn’t have had to wait at your house for the last two hours. Though while I waited, I’ve learned all kinds of things I didn’t know about you.” She paused and glanced at Houdini now leaning against my leg. “Like the fact you have a dog, and that Drystan is teaching you self-defense.” The last she said with narrowed eyes.
Both Mom’s eyebrows were raised now. Great. I’d told her we were running together. Nothing more. With her back to my mom, Lainey whispered, “I texted him and asked what you guys were doing at the park.”
I waved my hand, feeling the burn in my shoulder and stomach muscles. “It’s only my second day. Drystan thought it would be a fun addition to the running. Did you know he does parkour?” I asked, changing the subject. The last thing I needed was my mom to freak out because I felt I needed lessons in how to defend myself.
“What’s parkour?” Mom and Lainey said in unison.
“It’s easier if I show you.” I walked over to the laptop Mom used for bills, then sat down at the kitchen desk and opened the laptop. I typed in “parkour video” to pull up a couple for them to watch.
When the videos were over, Mom said, “Wow, that’s pretty amazing. Reminds me of that opening chase scene in the remake of Casino Royale.”
I nodded. “That’s exactly what parkour is, just like in that scene…well, except there’s usually not bad guys involved.” Oh, the irony of that comment…
“Drystan can do all that stuff?” Lainey’s eyes were wide. “No wonder he’s one big muscle.”
“Yep, he can do that. He says it’s a state of mind, a way of living your life in a constant state of natural motion.”
“Matt’s going to want to do that crazy stuff once he learns Drystan can teach him how.” Lainey shook her head and snorted. “He’ll probably break his leg.”
Did I detect a bit of worry in her tone? Like she cared if Matt got hurt? “Drystan will be glad to have someone to experiment with.”
“Matt’s not doing those insane acrobatics.” Worry flitted across Lainey’s features. When she saw me watching her with a sidelong look, she flipped her hair and continued in an airy tone, “I mean, it’ll totally ruin the impact if he escorts me into the dance on crutches.”
I raised an eyebrow. Lainey wasn’t as unaffected by Matt as she let on.
“You’re not doing dangerous stunts like that, are you?” Mom glanced at the screen once more, looking worried.
I shook my head in fast jerks. “No way. Drystan has shown me concepts, but I don’t have the muscles to do extreme stunts. He’s just teaching me some of the moves as another way to stay in shape, that’s all.”
Mom visibly relaxed. “Well, then. I’m suddenly less concerned.”
I pinned Lainey with a knowing look. “So you came over here and waited for two hours just to yell at me for not answering your texts?”
Lainey gave a sheepish smile, then retrieved an oversized duffle bag she’d set by the front door. “Well, that and the fact we need to pick out masks.”
“Masks?” Mom had returned to her stool and was crunching on a baby carrot.
Bag in hand, Lainey returned to my side, beaming at my mom. “Yes, for Saturday’s winter dance.”
“You have a dance coming up, Nara?” Mom’s attention shot my way. “Why didn’t you tell me? We need to get you a dress.”
Thanks, Lainey. I kicked Lainey’s foot before standing. “I didn’t mention it because I’m not going.”
Mom looked perplexed. “Why not?”
Really Mom? I frowned. “Because I’m not going without Ethan.”
“Ah,” Mom said, nodding.
“I told Nara we can all go as friends. She’s just being stubborn. But she at least promised to help me pick out my outfit,” Lainey beamed, then slid a ‘you did promise’ gaze my way. Without missing a beat, she tugged me toward the stairs. “Hurry up and get a shower, Nara, so we can start trying on all these masks.”
I eyed the bag. “That’s full of masks? What’d you do, buy one of everything?”
Lainey nodded. “I knew getting you to drive with me forty minutes to the specialty store would be near impossible.” She shrugged and glanced down at the bag. “I’ll just return them once you help me make a decision.”
Ugh, I had promised I’d help her pick her outfit. As I jogged up the stairs, I was glad I’d already hidden Ethan’s and Freddie’s books back under the mattress before I left to meet Drystan. Lainey followed fast on my heels, dragging her bag of masks up the stairs behind her.
Trying on masks with Lainey meant I’d be busy the rest of the day. It wouldn’t be just about the masks. She’d want to discuss hair and makeup and probably Jared. All I wanted to do was take a long shower to ease my sore muscles, then read my grandmother’s journal from front to back. While I gathered a clean set of clothes from my drawers, the conversation I’d had with Gran after my practice with Drystan had left me itching to pull out the silver-paged journal. She’d said her sister only wore gold, but that hopefully Margaret mentioned the necklace in her journal since she’d asked Mom to give it to me when I was old enough.
Lainey bouncing excitedly on my bed drew me out of my musings. I headed for the shower with a sigh. I definitely wasn’t going to get to read my grandmother’s journal until after dinner.
Fifteen minutes later, I came out wearing a t-shirt and yoga pants while pulling my semi-dried hair into a ponytail. Lainey grabbed my hand and tugged me over to sit on my bed, her expression subdued. “I called my dad while you were in the shower to find out if he could get any information about that poor man who was killed.”
Every fiber in my body froze. “What did your dad say about Freddie’s case?” I whispered
, almost afraid to hear.
She squeezed my hand. “I know it’s little comfort, but the early findings from the autopsy is that Freddie died from the blow to his head when he was thrown through the glass door. Nara, he was already dead when he was impaled on that tree branch. My dad did say that they’re scratching their heads over how his attacker got him up there. Other than Freddie’s fingerprints and yours from your time there the day before, they only found one other set at the crime scene.”
My breathing started up again. At least Freddie hadn’t suffered through that kind of brutal, deliberately malicious torture, and thank God they’d found fingerprints. “Did they find a match to the prints?”
She shook her head, sympathy in her gaze. “Not yet. Remember the prints have to be in the database for them to find a match.”
I was so thankful Freddie wasn’t aware what his killer had done with his body. He’d be sickened if he knew his raven sanctuary had been defiled in such a way. I think Freddie would have approved of the Wildlife Preserve taking his ravens in. I didn’t know if the birds understood what had happened last night, but they did understand death. They needed to get away from the place where their caregiver had violently died. It was no longer their sanctuary.
I squeezed Lainey’s hands. “Please thank your dad for finding out some of the details. It helps relieve a little of my anxiety. At least they have a lead of some kind.”
Lainey smiled, then yanked me into a quick hug, whispering in my ear, “Now you need a distraction.” With a quick flip of her wrist, she unzipped the big bag on my bed with a flourish and said, “Let’s get incognito, baby!”
When it came to distraction from one’s worries, spending time with Lainey was like getting a shot of not-a-care-in-the-world medicine. It wasn’t that Lainey was the perkiest person in the world, it was more that she made you care about what she cared about. It was like her enthusiasm somehow rubbed off on you.
We tried on every single Mardi Gras style mask: some with swooping feathers, others with dangling pearls and silver beads, ones that you had to hold with a stick and the kind that strapped to your face with an elastic band. The masks’ colors were various mixtures of white/ice blue, white/silver, and all white.
Then we moved on to hairstyles, figuring out which ones worked best with the masks we liked. Lainey stayed through dinner—Mom ordered pizza and made a salad—and by the time Lainey left, my heart still ached over Freddie, but it wasn’t the same stabbing kind of pain. It was more of a dull, steady burn.
As I helped Mom put away the clean dishes from the dishwasher, she paused from wiping the water from the bottom of a coffee cup with the hand towel. “I know you said you aren’t going to the dance, Inara, but maybe you should consider going just for fun. It would keep you from dwelling, and right now I think keeping your mind occupied with positive thoughts is a good thing.”
I slid the stack of plates into the cabinet. “I had fun primping with Lainey, but I’m not going.”
Mom frowned. “After what you’ve been through recently, I don’t think Ethan would object to you going. You need to get out and have some fun.”
If Ethan knew what had happened, he’d be on my doorstep in a matter of hours. A part of me wanted to call him, to tell him I needed him holding me close, to hear him promise me everything would be all right. I’d tell him everything that had happened, even down to the hidden picture that disintegrated as soon as I tried to draw it in his journal. I concentrated and tried to recall the details of the picture, but it had already faded. All I remembered was that it featured ravens.
“Inara?” Mom’s hand touching my shoulder, drew me out of my reverie. “I was saying that I’m supposed to go out of town at the end of the week through the weekend, but I’m going to cancel my trip.”
I shook my head. “Don’t do that. I have Houdini.” He lifted his head from his bed by the door when I said his name.
Mom pressed her lips together. “I think I should stay.”
“Aunt Sage should be back by then, too,” I said.
Her eyebrows shot up. “She will be? Why hasn’t she texted me?”
I shrugged. “I know she was going to some gem show while she was on vacation, so she probably got caught up in it. You know how she can be about her jewelry business.”
Mom nodded and smiled. “She really can immerse herself. When did she say she’s getting back?”
“At the end of the week.”
“I’ll give her a call.” Mom put away the coffee mug, then turned and squeezed my shoulder. “I won’t make plans until I’ve spoken with Sage.”
Once the dishes were done, I took Houdini out, then claimed loads of homework, bolting upstairs as fast as I could. I snuggled under my covers and checked my phone, hoping for a surprise text or voice mail from Ethan, but there wasn’t one.
With a sigh of disappointment, I turned on my bedside lamp, then retrieved my grandmother’s journal from my nightstand. Two hours later, I’d read up through my first birthday, and while I loved the insight into my grandmother’s thoughts and observations about people, my stomach had knotted since I hadn’t run across any journal entry related to the necklace she gave my mother…and there were only three pages to go.
I sighed and turned the page, then sat upright, my grip on the book tightening when I read the preface to her next journal entry…
Today was a very strange, yet memorable day. My emotions ran the full spectrum from shock to sorrow to confusion to bewilderment, then finally to hopefulness.
Chapter Twenty-Two
My focus snapped to the date in the upper-right-hand corner of my grandmother’s journal. It had been written when I was a little over a year old. I quickly turned to the next page to read her entry.
Richard had a morning meeting in Washington, D.C., and since it was going to be a lovely April day, I decided to go with him. While he presented his pitch to the corporate bigwigs, I thought Inara would enjoy going for a stroll along the Potomac. Elizabeth and Jonathan had finally taken a vacation, and I was determined my granddaughter would have a wonderful time without them.
It was around two in the afternoon by the time I parked and put Inara in her stroller. The place was packed with people laying out on blankets in the grass, kids flying kites, kicking soccer balls, and throwing Frisbees. Airplanes taking off from Dulles zoomed over every so often. Inara spent her time pointing at the planes and craning her neck to watch people zip past on skateboards, rollerblades, and bikes. She giggled when they did extra tricks just for her. I pushed her stroller slowly along the wide sidewalk, enjoying the busy energy of the place. The flowers were in full bloom, and every so often I stopped and pointed out my favorites among the clusters we ran across, rambling about the best time of year to plant and how I couldn’t wait to start a flower garden with her when she was old enough to help.
“What were your favorite flowers?” I whispered wistfully. Planting a flower garden with my grandmother sounded wonderful. My heart constricted that we never got to do that.
When Inara suddenly went quiet, I thought maybe she’d fallen asleep. I pulled the sun canopy back on her stroller to check and saw that she was staring with vivid fascination at the sky. I thought she was looking at the airplane that had just taken off, climbing high in the sky, but her gaze was locked on the one huge area of blue where no clouds covered the sky. “What are you looking at, sweetheart?” I asked.
She pointed up, speaking in baby words that made no sense to me, but made total sense to her. By her expression, I could tell she was asking me something, so I squatted next to her. “What do you see?”
As she pointed toward the sky once more, I had just looked upward when I saw the airplane suddenly lift and then tilt in the air. At the same time it rolled to the right, its left wing was completely torn away, ripping off as easily as tissue paper.
I was glad I was squatting because my legs gave out. I fell to my butt, watching in shocked horror as the plane plunged down and into the Potomac.
Screams echoed all around us as people reacted to the crash. Most began running toward the water’s edge to see better, while others dialed 911 on their phones. There was even a couple who screamed they had family on that plane. Inara began to cry, reacting to the screams and fear on people’s faces.
I stood on shaking legs and picked her up. Pressing her baby face close to mine, I cooed in a calming voice in her ear, “It’s going to be okay, sweet baby.” All I could think was…all those people, gone in an instant. A sickening feeling dropped in my stomach, spreading to my limbs, but I had to keep it together and be strong for Inara.
She arched her back and screamed, clearly terrified by the chaos. I started to pull her close once more, when a man’s hand gently palmed the top of her head.
“Be calm, little one. All will be well,” he said in a soothing, deep voice.
Inara instantly quieted, and as she stared at the man standing beside me with avid curiosity, the tears in her bright green eyes dried. I turned, my gaze traveling up his custom-made suit to his unusual golden gaze. He was Viking-tall with an arresting, sculpted face, framed in short blond hair that curled slightly on the ends. He looked to be in his late thirties, but his eyes held a Zen-like calm and wisdom. He was so beautiful, I was surprised no one else had spared him a glance, despite the pandemonium going on around us.
“Thank you for calming her,” I said. Somehow, even as sirens blared and people continued to run around screaming for someone with a boat to help the survivors from the water, the reassuring tone in his voice had settled my nerves too. I still felt worry for the people in the plane, but the panic that had gripped my stomach disappeared.
Once he lifted his hand from her baby fine hair, Inara smiled and babbled something completely incoherent to the man. He returned her smile, then looked at me as if he’d forgotten I was there, when I said, “I think she likes you.”
Lucid, YA Paranormal Romance (Brightest Kind of Darkness Series, Book #2) Page 20