Amber looked out into the street, half expecting the White Lady to be there, having followed them from the cemetery on foot or, as seemed more likely, simply materializing out of thin air. But the empty street was a most welcome sight.
Amber had no idea how long they sat like that, but the burning in her lungs subsided, and her breathing eased. And then she began to laugh. It started out as a soft chuckle at first, but it grew into full-fledged, hurt-your-belly, unable-to-stop laughter. Drew tried to shush her at first, but his efforts only made her laugh harder, until he gave up and joined her. Though part of her worried that they’d wake her parents—hell, the whole neighborhood—she needed to release the tension that had built up inside her, and she didn’t care. But the porch light didn’t come on, and the front door didn’t open. No neighbors stepped out of their houses to see what all the commotion was about. It was as if she and Drew were the only two people in the world, and it was wonderful.
Eventually, their laughter ended, and she began to shiver, partly from the night chill but more, she suspected, as an aftereffect of all of the intense emotions she had experienced that night. She tried to make herself stop shaking through sheer willpower, but her efforts had the opposite effect: the harder she fought to control her trembling, the worse it became. It became so bad it felt almost as if she were having a seizure.
She tried to say something to Drew, but she was shaking too hard to speak. He seemed to understand anyway. He took her in his arms, held her close and tight, and she gave herself over to the trembling and let it run its course. It seemed to take forever, but he continued holding her, and his reassuring strength and warmth comforted her until the shaking diminished and her body grew still. He didn’t let go of her then, and she made no move to draw away from him. Instead, she wrapped her arms around him and held him as tightly as he held her.
After a time, he reached up, took hold of her chin between his thumb and forefinger, and tilted her head up so she was looking at him. He gazed at her a moment, his eyes seeming to glitter with the same cool light as the stars above, and then he leaned down and pressed his lips against hers.
Amber was taken by surprise, and at first she stiffened as Drew kissed her, but she soon relaxed and found herself kissing him back. The two of them had been friends since grade school, and she’d never considered him anything more than that. She’d never imagined that she would be sitting there with him, kissing him after fleeing from some horrible spectral apparition that had manifested in front of them in a graveyard in the middle of the night. No, if she were to be honest with herself, that wasn’t true. Well, the part about the ghost was, of course. She hadn’t imagined something like that factoring into any romantic scenarios she might have conjured between herself and Drew. But from time to time, she had wondered what it might be like if the two of them were more than friends.
And she had imagined kissing him, although she hadn’t gone so far as to practice on her pillow, as one of the teen magazines she read had advised. She was pleased to discover that the reality was turning out to be much nicer than the fantasy, and she wondered why it had taken the two of them so long to admit their feelings for each other.
I wonder if we’ll stay together, she thought, knowing it was premature to go down that road but unable to help herself. What if we got married and had kids? Wouldn’t it be funny to tell them their mom and dad got together because they were scared by a ghost in a graveyard?
Their kiss continued and deepened, and Amber felt Drew’s moist tongue tease against her lips. She hesitated. This wasn’t the first time she’d kissed a boy. That was Bobbie Ehrnhardt at summer camp last year. But she hadn’t let Bobbie put his tongue in her mouth, for it had seemed less romantic than, well, icky, to be frank. But the thought of doing it with Drew didn’t seem so bad. In fact, it felt natural.
Up to this point, she’d been kissing him with her eyes closed, but she opened them now because she wanted to see the expression on his face when she opened her mouth and extended her tongue to meet his. His eyes were already open, and they were gazing at her. Not with love, not with anything even approximating warmth. They were cold, those eyes. Cold and hungry. Cold and hungry and blue.
Drew’s eyes were brown.
She let go of him, put her hands on his shoulders, and shoved. He released his grip on her, and she scooted away. He didn’t seem upset, though. Rather, he appeared amused.
His blue eyes glittered with an internal light, and the voice that came out of his mouth next wasn’t Drew’s, though the face still was.
“Surprise, surprise,” Greg said.
Amber woke with a start, sat up, and looked around. She was in her hotel room, on her bed. Drew and Trevor were over at the desk in the corner, Trevor sitting in front of his open laptop, Drew sitting on the edge of the second bed, close enough to see the screen over Trevor’s shoulder. As far as she knew, she hadn’t made any sound upon awakening, but both men turned to look at her.
“Are you all right?” Drew asked.
His eyes were brown, just as they should be, but even though Amber knew that what she’d experienced hadn’t been real, she couldn’t help suppressing a shudder at the sight of him.
She forced a shaky smile. “Guess I dozed off.” Spread out on the bed next to her were a half-dozen pamphlets she’d picked up at the Historical Society during her visit there with Trevor. She’d been reading over them while the boys researched cleansing rituals online, more to have something to do than because she thought she’d find any useful information in the pamphlets.
She did her best to keep her tone casual, but Drew must have detected something amiss, because he frowned. “Have a bad dream?”
Trevor was frowning now, too, and both of them wore expressions of concern. She didn’t have to be a mind reader to know what they were thinking. They thought she’d had another “vision,” and they wanted to know what it was, hoped it might provide a little more insight into the bizarre events that had occurred since they’d returned to Ash Creek. At first, she was going to tell them, but she stopped herself. Did her dream qualify as a vision? Both Drew and Trevor had experienced theirs while wide awake, and theirs had both dealt with the past of the Lowry House. Her first dream, the one in which she’d been Little Eyes, fell into this category, but this latest one hadn’t had anything to do with the Lowry House in any way, shape, or form. In fact, it had been only partially based on reality. Back in high school, she and Drew had gone to the cemetery to locate and take a photo of Lucille Dessick’s headstone. But Trevor had gone with them, and they’d visited the cemetery during the daytime. There’d been no apparition of the White Lady, and while the three of them had later driven past the Dessick farm in the weird-looking aquamarine Toyota Corolla that Trevor owned, they hadn’t witnessed any manifestation of Lucille’s spirit there. She and Drew hadn’t run all the way from the cemetery to her house in a panic, they hadn’t collapsed laughing into each other’s arms on the porch, and they hadn’t kissed. Hell, the entire time they’d known each other, they hadn’t so much as held hands.
Amber had been through enough therapy in her life to have heard that old cliché poking fun at Freudian theory: Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. Well, sometimes a dream was just a dream. Besides, she wasn’t comfortable telling the guys about it. Especially Drew.
She hoped her smile appeared more genuine this time.
“Nope. As a matter of fact, I didn’t dream at all.”
THIRTEEN
“You know, one of the reasons I became a freelance writer was so I didn’t have to wear a tie.”
“Stop tugging at it,” Amber said. “You look like a little boy who can’t sit still in church.”
Trevor, who hadn’t realized that he’d been pulling at his tie to loosen it, did as Amber said. To give his hands something else to do, he picked up his knife and fork and cut off another piece of the rubber chicken on his plate, popped it into his mouth, and chewed. And chewed and chewed and chewed. He swallowed, with no l
ittle amount of difficulty, and took a large gulp of his iced tea to wash the mouthful down.
“It never fails. Whenever I attend a banquet, no matter what entrée I order, I always end up wishing I’d picked something else.”
“It’s an inalterable law of the universe that banquet food is always lousy,” Drew said. “If it’s any consolation, my fish is dry and tasteless.”
“My eggplant Parmesan is good,” Amber said. As if to illustrate, she put another piece in her mouth and chewed. She then pointed to her dessert with her fork. “But not as tasty as that cheesecake looks!”
Trevor smiled. “Look at the three of us sitting here like real grown-ups. This is a long way from Flying Pizza, huh?”
Both Trevor and Drew wore suits—charcoal gray and navy blue, respectively—and Amber had on a lovely green dress that left her shoulders bare and had a neckline just low enough to reveal a hint of cleavage. She wore her hair up, and with the addition of earrings, a silver necklace, and understated makeup, she looked quite beautiful. More, she looked like a strong, confident woman, unlike the Amber they’d been reintroduced to yesterday. Despite their current situation and all of its dangers and uncertainties, she seemed to be thriving. Then again, maybe she was thriving because of those dangers. Crisis situations could create trauma, but they could also jolt people out of their old patterns of behavior. Somehow, though, Trevor doubted that Drew would recommend an encounter with a murderous otherworldly force as an alternative form of therapy.
Not that Drew’s mind was on professional matters at the moment. Despite their earlier decision to stick together, Amber had kicked him and Trevor out of her room when it was time to start getting ready for the banquet. Drew had protested, but Amber insisted that she wasn’t about to get dressed with the two of them around, and besides, they needed to return to their own rooms to put on their monkey suits.
Trevor had doubted that she had come over all shy around them—after all, she could have gotten ready in the bathroom and kept the door closed. He figured that Amber hadn’t wanted Drew to see her until the banquet started. Trevor was hardly a man of the world, but he knew enough about women to know that they liked to maintain a bit of mystery about them and that they liked to control the first impression they made on a man after they’d spent a significant amount of time making themselves look good.
Her efforts had paid off. Drew had been nervous that something bad might happen to her while the three of them were separated, but when she walked into the banquet hall—arriving later than both Drew and Trevor, naturally—the stunned expression on Drew’s face, which he, of course, had attempted to cover, proved that she’d succeeded. He had barely taken his eyes off her the entire meal. And she was doing an excellent job of making him think that she didn’t notice. Trevor never failed to find it funny that Drew, a trained observer of human behavior, was so often clueless about Amber’s feelings for him.
He wasn’t jealous of his two friends. He was a red-blooded, hetero male and recognized how attractive Amber was, and he cared deeply about her but in a brotherly way. Ever since the three of them had met as kids, she and Drew had only had eyes for each other, and that was fine with him. He just wished they would acknowledge their feelings for each other and get on with it. Of course, if they did, that would give him one fewer thing to tease them about. He smiled.
“You find something amusing?” Drew asked.
The two of you, he thought. Aloud, he said, “Just wondering what the kids we used to be would think of the adults we became. That we all became.” He glanced around. The three of them were the only ones sitting at their table, but most of the rest of the tables in the hall were filled. There’d been a good turnout. Their graduating class had close to two hundred people in it, and at a quick guess, it looked to him that around eighty or so had come this weekend. People were eating and talking, but quietly, their voices hushed and expressions subdued. “Why is everything so down? Do they miss being teenagers that much?”
“It’s not that,” Drew said. “Word about Sean’s and Jerry’s deaths has gotten around, and it’s cast a pall over the proceedings. People are already prone to contemplate the passage of time at events like these, which in turn leads to thoughts of mortality. The deaths only serve to strengthen those feelings and bring them even closer to the surface.”
“I wish the alumni committee would’ve canceled the rest of the weekend,” Amber said. “All these people together in one place like this . . .”
“It’s like fish in a barrel,” Trevor said, “just waiting for someone, or in our case, something, to come along and start shooting.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” Amber said.
Speaking of the alumni committee, they all sat at a table toward the front of the room, near a large drop-down screen that displayed a looped presentation of a collage of yearbook photos. When the banquet began and the presentation started, it was accompanied by the Verve’s “Bitter Sweet Symphony,” which Trevor found an odd choice, considering that the song had come out a couple of years after they’d graduated. It seemed a little downbeat for a celebration, but then, maybe that was why it had been chosen, for it seemed to fit the melancholy mood of the evening. He was thankful that the song had only played once and didn’t continue playing while the presentation proceeded along its endless course.
Greg sat with the members of the alumni committee, all of them—not counting him—former big wheels in high school: captain of the football team, head cheerleader, band field commander, valedictorian and salutatorian . . .
“Never thought I’d see Greg Daniels hobnobbing with the in-crowd,” Trevor said.
“Things change,” Drew said with a shrug. “People change.”
“Maybe so, but that much? Besides, isn’t the stereotypical dynamic of events like this that people revert back to type? I mean, look at that table. The cool kids are still sitting with the cool kids, like this was the high-school cafeteria instead of a banquet hall. The only difference is that Greg is sitting with them.”
“I told you about our conversation in the lobby,” Drew said. “How he struck me as having at least some of the features of a sociopathic personality. Sociopaths are masters of manipulation. They can make you like them and think it was all your idea.”
“Well, right now, he’s not making me think he likes us,” Trevor said. “He hasn’t so much as stopped by our table to say hi.”
Drew smiled. “Feeling neglected?”
“Hardly. But we need to talk to him about the night the Lowry House burned down. And as much as I’m enjoying sitting here with you two and trying not to choke to death on this god-awful excuse for chicken, we can’t ask Greg any questions if he’s sitting all the way on the other side of the damn room.”
“If he doesn’t come over before the meal’s finished, we’ll try to catch him before the dance starts,” Drew said.
Amber had been silent for the last several minutes while they’d been talking about Greg, but now she spoke. “Is it really that important that we talk with him?”
Trevor and Drew turned to look at her. Although she’d only gotten three-quarters of the way through her eggplant, she pushed it aside and began working on her cheesecake. She kept her attention focused on the dessert and spoke between bites.
“We’ve been over this before, but we all remember that he didn’t go with us to the Lowry House, and he wasn’t there when the emergency crews arrived. I don’t see how he could have anything important to tell us.”
Trevor detected a studied casualness in her tone, as if she was working hard to make it seem as if what she was saying wasn’t that big a deal, when in reality it was. The question was why it was a big deal.
She went on after another bite of cheesecake. “And if that’s the case, why drag him into this mess if we don’t have to? What if by talking to him, we cause the force, entity, whatever it is, to notice him? We might end up putting him at risk. Just because we’re desperate for answers doesn’t give us the rig
ht to place other people in danger.”
Drew frowned as he looked at Amber, and Trevor could guess what his friend was thinking. She made a good point, but it was the way she was making it. She didn’t look at either of them as she spoke, and she didn’t look in Greg’s direction.
“I’d say talking to him was a calculated risk,” Drew began, “except that we have so little data about what’s going on that we can’t gauge the danger. We could be putting him at risk by not talking to him.”
“And none of us spoke with Sean or Jerry,” Trevor pointed out. “But that didn’t keep either of them alive.”
“Is there some other reason you don’t want to talk with Greg?” Drew asked. Now it was his turn to speak in a calm, casual manner, and Trevor wondered how often his patients had heard that same tone of voice.
Evidently, Amber recognized Drew’s tone for what it was, for she dropped her fork into her plate with a clatter loud enough to make people at nearby tables look in their direction. Amber turned to glare at him.
“Are you suggesting I’m lying?” she asked.
Drew sidestepped the question. “The dream you had about the massacre, the one in which you were Little Eyes . . . Greg was in it, too, wasn’t he? It was a disturbing dream, and it would be natural for you to associate him with it, not just the events of the dream but the emotions it evoked. You could find talking with him uncomfortable for that reason.”
Drew sounded both rational and empathetic, but it was clear from the angry expression on Amber’s face that instead of reassuring her, his words were only making her angrier. Trevor decided to step in before things got any worse.
“I’ve been thinking about your dream, Amber. At first, I assumed it was the result of some sort of psychic contact, some connection you made with the past. And then, when Drew and I had similar visions that dealt with the history of the Lowry House, I figured we were following in your metaphysical footsteps.”
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