by L. L. Muir
Until a girl his age had pulled up in a green BMW and caught him with his mouth hanging open. Her clothes marked her a Somerled, but her car was anything but simple. What was up with that?
He wouldn’t call her pretty, but she had a look that said one of these days she’d be beautiful. Her nose was kind of cute and boxy on the end. Her eyes were so dark you couldn’t tell where the iris ended and the pupil began. There was something warm and melty about those eyes, like chocolate in the bottom of a black cup. Her face was what his mom would call heart-shaped.
She styled her light brown hair the same as every other American female did—long and straight. It swung like a heavy drape when she walked.
And she wasn't overly hot, or at least he'd never be able to tell with all her white layers of clothes. Her pants looked like white jeans. She wore an off-white t-shirt that showed in the V of her same-colored sweater. Her rough-looking coat was kind of the same color of pencil lead. Her boots looked like moccasins and matched the fringe of her scarf, both of them the shade of raw leather—like the inside of an orange peel. A She-eco-nut. Just like the rest. Just like you’d find all over the world.
But she wore plain pretty well. Whether or not it was the confidence in her walk, or her steady gaze when she’d finally noticed him, he couldn't say. One thing was for sure, though. She’d gotten his attention and he was never going to get it back.
Especially when she teased him with crop circles and secret meetings in the middle of the night.
The tall one finally moved away from her and walked toward the center of the circle. His movements were slow, deliberate. Bent corn stalks tugged at his robes as he passed over them, but he kept going until he reached the center.
Jamison was relieved there wasn’t an altar in sight.
The Somerleds cleared their throats, then began...singing...kind of. It was more like the sound an orchestra makes when the musicians are warming up, only with voices.
A choir? Some stupid kind of choir practice at 3:00 in the morning? Something that couldn't be sung in a building somewhere, but in a crop circle?
Jamison smirked. How lame. Oh, he was going to kill Ray.
The noise sharpened, the voices blending better. He'd stay and watch for another minute, then he was going to bed. Ray could live until morning when they met up at school. If this was his idea of a joke, he’d be dead before first period.
Jamison glared out at the scene, disgusted that he’d lost sleep for this. He didn’t know what he’d been hoping to see, maybe a body being buried or some blood-drinking ceremony, but not this. Okay, the crop circle was pretty cool, but that was it.
He was about to turn away when the man in the center suddenly started getting taller and taller. Only he wasn’t growing—he was rising in the air!
With the lights from the far side of the circle it was clear there was nothing lifting him up—definitely a David Blaine kind of thing.
But then, twenty feet in the air, nearly straight out from the tree house, he...exploded.
Fiery pieces of him flew in all directions and disintegrated, like a meteor burning up in the atmosphere. But there had been no sound. The singing had stopped short when the guy exploded.
Holy crap! They blew him up!
"Holy shit!" Ray's voice rose through the drop door and none too quietly.
Immediately, light hit the tree house—not small lights but more powerful beams, like cop flashlights. The Somerleds started moving back into the corn, heading not in the directions from which they came, but toward the trees! Some started to run.
Jamison's heart splashed into his bladder and he thought he'd piss his pants. He hurried to the hole and leaned over.
"Get out of here!" he hissed. "They're coming."
But Ray had already noticed. He was nearly sitting on Burke's head as the two climbed down as fast as the awkward rungs would allow. If Jamison tried to follow, he'd get to the ground just in time to welcome the neighbors to his back yard.
Crap!
Would they come looking in the tree house?
He peeked out the window. Long robes didn't seem to be slowing anyone down. They looked like a search party after escaped convicts and they didn’t appear concerned about the fence, either. Did they expect to run right through it?
Hell yes, they'd come looking in the tree house.
Suddenly he remembered the other trap door, but this one opened onto the roof. Jamison had "remodeled" when he'd inherited the hideout. Although with no handholds of any kind, and nothing to keep one from falling off the roof, the opening had only been used to hide contraband when Grandpa started huffing and puffing his way up the tree.
Jamison moved beneath it, thankful to still be deep in the shadows where the flashlight beams didn’t reach him.
No go. Crap crap crap. He’d remembered the hole being so much larger.
The side window was barely big enough, but all he needed. He thrust one leg through and found a fat branch for his shoe. With a bit of maneuvering he found enough footholds to make his way to the roof and eased himself onto it, flattening as best as he could. The wood was cold and would have been smooth if not for decades of bird droppings, leaves, and sap sealing out the elements as well as shingles would have.
"Come out, come out, wherever you are." The taunting voice came from far below. The clubhouse was over six feet tall, so now that Jamison was on the roof his mind did the math and he froze. He was too high. He would die if he fell.
"Please, God, help me!" Ray wasn't acting. He wasn't joking. He sounded terrified, but Jamison couldn’t help; he couldn't move. His mom would have to call the fire department in the morning and they'd come after him with a cherry picker, like a stupid cat.
All he could do was listen.
A deep laugh rumbled up to the canopy of dried leaves that waited for just the right breeze to pry their grasps from the high branches. "Don't you just love Desperation Prayers?"
"Oh yes," a woman answered. "They're like dessert, like the cherry on top. I bet I’d like cherries."
"Get your hands off me!” It was Burke’s voice. “Let me go, you mother—"
"Now, now. Is that any way to talk? We're going to help you, son."
"I don't need help, you sick—"
"Stop that. You'll only feel worse for it in the end." The woman's voice and Burke's were moving away.
"Yes, and you have enough to repent over already, don't you think?" The deep voice laughed again. "Come along, Ray. Do you mind if we call you Ray?"
Ray couldn’t be fond of cops, not with the candy store in his pockets he’d shown off to Jamison that day. Maybe that was why he sounded so terrified. Maybe he thought he'd be arrested.
But that wasn't right. They weren’t trespassing. They were on Jamison’s property, or at least they had been. If the Somerleds called the cops, Jamison would set them straight. They had no reason to arrest anyone. If anything, those guys should be charged with kidnapping.
But Jamison couldn't defend anyone stuck in a tree. He wanted to get down--he was freezing--but there had been so many of them. Some could still be waiting for him to show himself.
Forget that. I’d rather freeze.
He heard murmurs beneath him, getting closer, getting louder. Although he was expecting it, vibrations sent a wave of panic through him when someone dragged himself up through the hole, into the clubhouse.
"Cool."
More vibrations.
"Yeah, but look at the view."
Heavy steps shuffled toward the big window.
"Uh, oh. Not good."
"Not good is right."
"Well, we've cleaned up messes before." The small search party moved around the room, tossing around magazines, snooping through the long wood boxes that served as storage and seating for generations of little boys’ butts.
"Are you going to come out, Jamison?" The words pushed through the wood.
Hell no.
He wasn't even going to breathe unless they climbed out, s
queezed through those twisted tree limbs, and crawled onto the roof. They had no proof he was there. No proof.
He held his lungs open so air could come and go as it pleased, but he wouldn't rustle a friggin' leaf!
"Do you think he's here?" one whispered.
Jamison smiled in relief—they didn't know for sure!
"He has to be. Why would those two be here without him?"
"I don't know. Skye said Ray's been watching her closely. If he knew about the tree house, he could have come without Kenneth's grandson."
"Uh oh."
"What?"
"Another trap door."
Jamison felt pressure on the hip that covered the escape hatch. He held still, not pushing back, but not giving way. In his bladder, Jamison’s heart moved over to make room for his Dew. If he pissed his pants, would they think it was rain?
"A seventeen-year-old couldn’t fit through there."
"But he could be on the roof... You on the roof, Jamison?”
CHAPTER TWO
Moments earlier...
The silence was broken by a “Holy shit!” and it took Skye a moment to realize she hadn’t imagined it.
From inside the deep circle of flattened cornstalks the only thing visible, besides the star-dotted sky, was the row of trees marking the end of Kenneth’s property. Nestled in the branches of the second tree was the old clubhouse. Dangling beneath the clubhouse, and to either side of the giant trunk, were the spot-lit faces of two wide-eyed teenagers.
No!
Chaos erupted around her. The Final Host moved as one toward the trees. Some broke into a run. She had to go along. What excuse could she offer if she didn’t?
A twisted ankle?
Her ankles didn’t twist.
Too tired?
Her kind didn’t need rest.
Too distraught over losing Warren?
Perhaps. Though losing people was the one constant of their existence. In fact, they’d be losing her in a matter of weeks.
Her turn to stand in the center of the circle had never bothered her before, but two days ago a lot of things changed. Two days ago she’d felt a tug in her empty chest and looked up to see Kenneth Jamison’s handsome grandson looking back at her. Two days ago she’d slipped easily into the character of the sixteen-year-old girl she was supposed to resemble. Of course she didn’t feel mortal; she’d never feel that. But she’d felt something. And in a body with no sensation, feeling something was monumental.
Unfortunately, that something was being smothered by dread.
Step by step she dragged her feet through the cornfield but instead of leaping over the fence with the others, she stalled. She couldn’t bear it. Young Jamison would have noticed her in the circle. What a freak he must believe her to be.
If he’d seen.
There was a chance he hadn’t recognized her in the darkness, from that distance, and that slim chance kept her from joining in the chase. If she came face to face with him now, he’d fear her, and she dreaded seeing that emotion mar his strong face. Even worse would be finding disgust in his big brown eyes.
While they’d watched each other over the fence for the past two days, she’d gotten a good look at him. His brows were much darker than his golden blond hair with their ends bowed up like the edge of a bird’s wing. His flat cheeks rippled into dimples when he’d laughed with his mother, and his straight white teeth only made his Texas tan stand out that much more.
So foolish! What she should worry about was losing his cooperation, not his approval. Making an enemy of Jamison Shaw would jeopardize her assignment, and all she could think about was his dimples?
Ridiculous! She was impervious to everything. She felt nothing. The emotions of mortals were things she watched from a distance, manipulated when necessary. They did not manipulate her.
Why, then, did she suddenly feel emotion? What would the others say? Was she flawed? Would they call for a replacement and send her to the center of the circle early?
Fear. This is fear.
She sagged against the fence and nearly laughed in relief. Those of the Final Host had nothing to fear; that was the entire point of The Arrangement.
Her thoughts calmed. Everything would happen as it was destined to happen. Jamison, and the strange connection she felt with him, had a purpose. She needed only to wait and see what that was.
She heard Ray Peters pleading for God’s help and found a gap through which she could watch the proceedings. He was on the ground, held firmly by three of her robed “cousins.” Shock had him shaking like a junkie in withdrawals and she pitied him, even though he half-deserved a good fright. She’d warned him to mind his own business, first kindly, then sternly. She wondered if at that moment her warning was replaying in his head—“Curiosity killed the cat. Curiosity killed...the cat.”
She took a deep, bracing-but-unnecessary breath and looked back to where the other captive sat.
It wasn’t Jamison!
A very black-haired Burke Costley struggled and spit, but his captors only laughed and interrupted when he began cursing. If he meant to punch empty air he was succeeding nicely. He probably saw six robed men, not three, and he was fighting the wrong three.
Clearly he was far too wasted for adrenaline to sober him up. The fight drained quickly, turning his arms to sagging rubber and he slumped to the ground in a loose pile next to his well-recognized beanie. Burke was soon carried away like a baby, and Skye had little doubt that if left to himself, he probably wouldn’t remember anything in the morning.
As Ray was led away his army fatigues churned beneath him, but there was no need. He barely touched the ground, thanks to his escort.
The yard was quickly emptying of white robes, except for the circle of men surrounding the base of the tree, as if they might shake the mighty trunk until Jamison dropped from the branches like a ripe peach. Thank goodness that wasn’t an option; from that height, they’d end up with peach jam.
Skye had assumed, when she’d first seen Kenneth’s grandson, that he noticed her only because of her apparent age. After all, she’d been given plain, non-memorable looks. But as she’d moved throughout the compound, and he’d gone in and out of his grandfather’s house, the connection between them had become real.
It was this connection that made her sharply aware of his presence over nearly thirty feet above her. Too bad she hadn’t been so aware of him before the ceremony began. If she hadn’t been so saddened to be losing dear Warren perhaps she would have felt that tug and warned the rest. An interruption would have been welcomed; it would have supplied an excuse to keep Warren for an additional day.
Lucas and Jonathan began climbing the tree. If the situation weren’t so serious, their struggle to find the elusive footholds in billowing skirts would have been funny. The two were aware of Skye’s assignment and that Jamison could not be handled as Ray and Burke would be. But what would they do? Jamison must not resist. If he struggled and fell...
Skye had always wished she could taste peach jam, but she suddenly scratched it from her wish list.
She turned her back; she couldn’t watch. Lucas and Jonathan would keep him safe. Besides, she and the boy would both be embarrassed if Jamison fought like Burke then found her watching it all for entertainment.
Conversation was apparently unaffected by gravity since she couldn’t catch a word that was said. She strained to discern a voice other than Lucas and Jonathan’s, but got nothing.
Leaning back, she slid down the fencepost until the ground hit her rump and she folded her bell sleeves over her knees. Nothing to do but wait and count stars.
Two robed figures vaulted over the fence to land beside her.
“Too weak to clear the fence, Skye?” Lucas chucked her under the chin and pulled her to her feet so abruptly she nearly took flight.
Jonathan looked at her closely. “More likely she didn’t wish the young man to know of her participation. It might have played against her, and she is working under a time constr
aint.”
She gave Jonathan a generous smile. He was a great reader—minds, faces, auras—he read them all. Clearly. Subjectively.
“Well, then, you have little to worry over, my dear.” Lucas began walking along the fence, toward the house. “He wasn’t up there.”
Skye had begun to follow, but stopped. “What do you mean, he wasn’t up there?” she whispered a bit loudly.
“He. Wasn’t. Up. There. Jonathan walked around her to follow Lucas. “No heat traces of him on the ground, either, so relax.”
Of course she couldn’t relax! She happened to know Jamison had been up there. He was still up there. The question was what should she do about it?
Perhaps he was asleep, under a blanket they hadn’t checked. Perhaps he’d missed it all. But that wasn’t likely. Lucas and Jonathan were anything but subtle. They wouldn’t have tiptoed up the tree, taken a peek and come back down. They would have stomped through from corner to corner and bellowed out the windows.
Jamison wasn’t asleep. He’d seen it all, and now he was hiding. She couldn’t blame him. She’d hide if she were him, if she’d seen what he’d seen then heard his friends being taken away.
She had a choice, which was odd since she never had choices to make, only clear-cut objectives. There was no owner’s manual to tell her to report any strange connections she felt with her mortal counterparts. She had no clear obligation to correct Lucas when he claimed Jamison wasn’t up there. After all, her senses could be wrong. She wasn’t supposed to have such a sense anyway. Who was to say she wasn’t imagining something up there? It was over the property line, unhallowed ground. It could be a demon.
It could be, but it wasn’t. It was only Jamison.
Only Jamison. If only it were that simple.
CHAPTER THREE
“There’s the bell. You’d better get going.” Jamison’s mom gave him a subtle squeeze and turned toward the parking lot.
He hoped she wouldn’t look back because he wasn’t moving an inch until Ray showed up. Screw first period.