by Stacey Jay
I didn’t think Mom had noticed my early departure, but I guess she has.
“Thanks.” I hope she knows I mean for more than the car.
“You’re welcome.” She smiles. “Just try not to wake me up on your way out. I might have to work a double tomorrow, so I’m going to sleep in until nine or so.”
I nod and hurry down the hall to the bathroom. I start the shower and strip off my dirty clothes, dumping them outside the door and closing it again. Then I stand there, waiting for the steam that will signal that the water is finally warm enough. It takes a while. Like always. I spend the time staring at the pink tiles and their flower decorations.
Forty minutes later, after a long, hot shower, I wrap my towel around my chest and tiptoe to my room. The dryer is running and mom’s doorway is dark. She’s probably asleep, as I should be soon. It’s nearly one in the morning. I’m only going to get six hours, and that’s if I fall asleep the second my head hits the pillow. After everything that’s happened, I know I should be exhausted, but I’m not. I’m wired, and even after I’ve changed into my striped pajama pants and a cami, I don’t turn off the light.
Instead, I walk to my easel and check on the canvas I prepped this afternoon. It looks good. I’ll be able to start tomorrow on the fairy I’ve been sketching. Or maybe I’ll do something different. I’ve been on a mythical-creature kick, but I’m starting to feel like it might be time for a portrait. Maybe that self-portrait I’ve never been brave enough to attempt. I didn’t think I could stand to look at myself in the mirror that much, but maybe I can. Maybe I’ll even see something in myself that I’ve missed.
Things I’ve missed.
The thought hits me strangely. I feel a tug at the back of my brain, the nagging suspicion that I’ve forgotten something important. Something I saw, something I heard? I can’t remember. But it’s there, lurking below the surface of my mind.
I turn from the canvas to my gallery wall. All the best things I’ve painted since I was twelve are hanging here. It’s the one sight that always makes me feel hopeful, and it’s my best thinking place. If I stand back and let my eyes track from the tree on the mountain, to the boy on the hill, to the unicorn dying by the water, my mind calms and I think more clearly.
Usually. Not tonight.
When I get to the unicorn, I get a sick, spinning feeling, like the déjà vu in the kitchen but a hundred times worse. Something’s wrong. I move closer, lift my fingers to the unicorn’s face—the one I spent hours getting just right—and shiver. Nothing looks different, but somehow I know that someone’s been in my room, looking at this painting. Not Mom. A stranger. Someone I don’t know has been in here, touching and searching and poking their nose into the most private parts of my life.
I whirl away from the wall, scanning the rest of the room. Everything’s still in the place it was when I left. My homework is stacked on my desk, my closet door is half-open, and my comforter explodes in horrible ruffles except for a dent on the right side, where I sat while I was putting on my shoes. I cross the room, check out the closet, open my dresser drawers, even get down on the floor and peek under the bed. Nothing’s different, but the feeling that someone has been here only gets stronger. I know I’m being weird, but I can’t seem to calm down.
Finally, after a fruitless search of my backpack and desk, I force myself to turn off the light and crawl into bed, but the irrational fret-fest only gets worse. I could swear someone else has been sleeping in my bed, lying her head on my pillow, dreaming her own dreams in this place that’s supposed to be mine.
Mine. Not mine. The voices … What if they’re not what I’ve always thought they were?
It’s the thought kernel I’ve been waiting to pop open, and it calms me. I reach for the journal by my bed, the one I use to write and sketch things that I dream and don’t want to forget before I wake up. I turn past a quick line drawing of the high school crumbling into ruins beneath a night full of menacing stars, and find a blank page.
Ghost, demon, some kind of possession, I write. Ripples in the air, claws tearing the world open to find a person who will listen to the voices scream.
I close the book around the pen and set it on my nightstand before curling under the soft flannel sheets. I’ve never been able to listen to the voices. They overwhelm me before I can even think about trying to understand them, but maybe I haven’t been trying hard enough. If they really are ghosts or something, they might want me to listen. Ghosts in stories always need the living to intercede on their behalf, to pursue justice or right a wrong or do something that puts their soul to rest.
Things that scream like that are beyond rest.
But I’m not. Not yet. I’m safe, my eyes are heavy, and my muscles are aching with exhaustion. Finally even the disturbing feeling that someone’s been in my room isn’t enough to keep me awake. I sleep, and dream of the boy from my painting, the one on the lonely hill where the sky bleeds like night is murdering the day.
The wind is punishing and the boy’s brown curls blow around his head, flying into his dark eyes, but I know the stinging hairs aren’t the reason for the tears streaming down his cheeks. He’s miserable, as sad a person as I’ve ever seen, as sad as my own reflection on the days when I wonder if I’ll make it through another day.
Still, he’s beautiful. Like an angel fallen from heaven. When he lifts his eyes to mine, I can’t breathe. His pain and beauty wrap around my ribs and squeeze.
I forgive you, I want to say, though I don’t know for what. But before I work up the courage to speak, a man in a brown robe appears behind the boy, and the grass between us splits.
The earth opens like the mouth of a hungry baby bird, and the man shoves the boy between the shoulders. The boy falls into the newly formed pit, and I scream, but there’s no sound. There’s nothing but the wind and the hungry ground gobbling as it rolls over the boy like water. I fall to the ground and claw at the grass, but it’s too late. He’s gone. I feel it like a knife shoved into my heart.
“I forgive you,” the man in the robe says to me, the echo of my own thought making me lift my eyes. His are a blue so pale they look watered down, but that doesn’t make gazing into them any less terrifying. This isn’t the first time he’s killed. Or the second, or the third, or the hundredth.
“Come with me.” He reaches for me, but I scramble away. His hand is too clean. It should be caked with dirt and blood. It should be marked by what he’s done.
My thoughts take hold of the dream and dig deep. I watch with horrified satisfaction as the man’s flesh peels away from his fingers. I see muscle and bone and all the hidden things I’ve stared at in my anatomy book to learn the truths of the bodies I draw, and soon his hand is nothing but raw tissue that sends blood raining down onto the grass.
But the man in the robe seems to feel no pain.
“And neither will you, dear,” he says. “Peace will be yours if you put yourself into my keeping.”
He reaches for me again, but this time his hand is a giant’s hand. His fingers reach out, out, out, until they arch over me like the beams of a house built of nightmares. The blood rain falls onto my face, slips between my lips, and I fall to the ground screaming. But not because I’m scared or horrified. Because the blood is sweet and I want more. I want to tilt my head back and let it flow down my throat.
I want to laugh and dance and celebrate the safety of becoming one with the darkness.
I wake up in the middle of a deep breath and barely hold in the scream pushing at my lips. I swallow and shiver and try to calm my pounding heart.
Morning light shines in my window, and the yellow ruffles on the bed are soft cotton-candy sunshine floating in the middle of my room. There’s nothing to be afraid of. It was just an awful dream. There’s no blood, no evil monk or whatever he was, no dead boy.
I rub my eyes and turn to look at the gallery, taking comfort in seeing the boy standing on his hill, thinking maybe I’ll paint him again. But up close this time. Up close
with something in his eyes other than pain. Maybe hope or laughter or … love.
The thought makes me blush and look away, as if the boy’s a real person who might be able to read on my face the silly things I’m thinking. I’m ridiculous, but it feels good to smile, so good that the secret silliness is still wrinkling my lips when I look out the window.
And see Dylan’s face. And scream the scream I thought I’d swallowed.
SEVEN
Romeo
Damn! Caught. I wave my hands and hold up Ariel’s purse, trying to stop her scream before her mother comes running. I should have ducked down the second she opened her eyes, but I couldn’t resist the urge to watch her wake. She was strangely compelling, all soft with sleep, hair fuzzy and tangled, smiling that smile.… That smile, the one that makes her look so young and innocent and good.
Standing there with the dew soaking through my shoes, I was possessed by the desire to make sure that she stays that way, that she never knows what it’s like to be poisoned by her own mistakes. The need came from a genuine place, separate from the fear that kept me awake most of the night, reliving every terrifying step into the cave.
Now the fear is back.
I have only three days. Three days to transform the sight of me from something that makes Ariel scream to something that makes her smile that smile. It might be impossible, but I have to try. I have to do more than try. I have to succeed, or I am lost, and the world along with me.
Screw the world, I think, but the thought doesn’t feel as true as it once did. I don’t want the Mercenaries to win, I know that much.
“I came to bring your purse. I only want to talk,” I whisper, hoping Ariel can hear me through the window. The glass looks thick, but I don’t want to shout and risk disturbing her mother if she hasn’t already been disturbed. “I’m sorry,” I mouth.
She presses her hand over her lips and glances at her bedroom door, watching it for a tense moment before throwing off the covers and stepping out of bed. She’s wearing a tight white shirt with thin straps that reveal the scars on her arm, and loose striped pants. The pants ride low on her hips, exposing a strip of pale skin and the curve of her stomach. The bit of skin mesmerizes me. I can’t keep from imagining what it would be like to run my hands over her sleep-warmed body, over those long arms—one perfectly smooth, one beautifully damaged.
She really is beautiful. Despite the scars. Or maybe … because of them. She’s a walking reminder of how precious and fleeting life can be. No one lucky enough to be pulling in breath should take that for granted. No one should hold back when they can reach for what they want with both hands.
Want. I’m suddenly drowning in it. I want to touch her so badly that it hurts, that it makes my tongue sluggish, and I sputter when she throws open the window.
“What are you doing here?” she demands.
“I—I …”
I want to touch you. I want to curl into bed beside you and see if you can teach me to dream something that won’t make me wake up screaming.
“I …” I shake my head, hoping to jostle free a few words I can actually speak. “I—I—”
She grabs the purse from my hand and sets it on the floor inside. “My mom will freak if she sees you outside my window,” she whispers, casting another anxious look over her shoulder before turning back to me. “There’s a lock on the fence gate. How did you get over?”
Breathe. Concentrate. “I climbed.” I stare at a spot over her shoulder and tamp down the last of the ridiculous weakness. I can’t remember ever feeling so damned needy, even when I was a child and my father set fire to the nursery after my brother’s death.
The plague doctor told my parents that boiling sheets and possessions in hot water might keep the infection from spreading. Instead, my father burned everything. Every piece of furniture in our shared nursery, every article of clothing, every wooden whistle and block and all my brother’s carved animals. Even the blue blankets our mother had embroidered. We’d gone to sleep with them every night since the day we were born. How I ached for that blanket when it was gone. Almost as much as I ached for my brother. I went to sleep each night after the fire with my tiny fists pressed to my chest, wondering if I would die from the aching.
But even that wasn’t as strong as this desire to wrap my arms around Ariel’s waist, press my face into her stomach, and beg for some kind of comfort.
Pathetic. Weak. I’m losing what’s left of my mind.
I have to focus. I can’t let this sudden need for human connection distract me from my course. There will be opportunity for connection in all its forms at a later date, in another body, after I’ve won my place among the Ambassadors. I know Juliet was careful not to use her borrowed bodies for selfish pleasures, but I don’t have to do the same. As soon as I’m safe, I can find a dozen girls as lovely as Ariel—lovelier—to hold me in their arms. The thought should offer solace, but it doesn’t.
I lick my lips, taste my own desperation, and hope she can’t see how close I am to the edge. “I needed to see you.”
“Why?”
“I was worried you might not have made it home.”
“I did. Obviously. I …” Her eyes drop to the wet grass at my feet. “Everything’s fine.”
Everything’s not fine. You hold the fate of the world in your hands, and the person sent to help you is being eaten alive by his own fear. Damn Juliet’s nurse. I was fine before she forced me into that cave. Her “motivation” has only brought me closer to failure.
“No, it’s not,” I say. “You’re mad at me.”
“I’m not mad at you.” She doesn’t sound convincing.
“Are you sure? You weren’t very happy with me when you left last night.”
“I … can’t really remember.” Her eyes meet mine, apprehensive, uncertain. “I know we argued, and I have a feeling I should still be mad at you for something, but … it’s fuzzy.”
I take a breath, finally feeling it’s safe to smile again. She doesn’t remember. Thank mercy for small favors. “I’m sorry. You should be mad. This is my fault,” I say, pouring on the charm that seemed to be working before I made the mistake of introducing alcohol into the equation. “We were drinking port. It’s fortified, a lot stronger than normal wine. I should have warned you.”
“Oh.” Her fingers tug at a tangled lock of hair. “I didn’t know.”
“Again, my fault. Forgive me?”
The edge of one lip curves. “You didn’t hold a gun to my head and make me drink.”
“I also didn’t chase you down and make sure you got home.” I brace my hands on the windowsill and lean in, tipping my head back to look up at her, struck by how much this moment reminds me of the night I stood beneath Juliet’s balcony.
Maybe that’s why I’m such a useless mess. That was one of my last nights as a relatively innocent boy in love. The friar and I spoke the next day, and the slow seep of poison into my heart began. Even now the effects linger, forcing me to lie and deceive, to pretend a love I don’t feel for a girl who deserves better than this.
Better than me.
“Are you okay?” she asks. Her fingertips brush the back of my hand, inciting a wave of pleasure-pain that skitters across my skin. Pleasure to be touched, pain to know I am so unworthy of her compassion.
“Fine.” Not fine. But I can’t remember the last time fine was a word that applied to my existence.
“You must be cold.” She peeks over her shoulder one last time. “Come inside.”
“Thanks.” I pull myself up on the sill and hop down beside her, close enough to feel the heat of her body, to smell the lavender lingering in her hair. “I really am sorry,” I whisper, not wanting to frighten her away. “I could hardly sleep. I was worried about you.”
“It’s okay,” she says, swaying closer. I hold my breath, the possibility that she might brush against me making my heart beat faster. “I’m sorry too.”
“For what?” I ease her hair over her shoulder, letting my
fingers hover near the skin at her neck. I hold her gaze, waiting for permission to touch her again.
Her throat works and her lips part and her mouth drifts closer to mine, and for a dizzying moment, I think she might kiss me. Instead she lets out a breathy laugh and shakes her hair back around her face. “For being weird.” She steps back, crossing her arms, as if suddenly uncomfortable in her thin top with the thinner straps. “Let’s just forget about it.”
“Forgotten.” I drop my hand and force a friendly smile. “Want to go get breakfast?” Hopefully getting Ariel out of this bedroom will help me pull myself together. “I’m craving something deep fried and covered in sugar, maybe with some syrup on top.”
“Sounds healthy.”
“We’re young. Who cares?”
Her mouth curves again. “I could eat. Where do you want to go?”
“Wherever. Your choice.”
“I don’t care, just not the Windmill.” She captures the same lock of hair and gives it another tug. “I don’t want to see anyone who might know about … you know.”
She doesn’t want to see anyone who might know about the bet. I nod. “We’ll go someplace else. And before the day’s over, I’ll make sure everyone understands that the bet’s off and I’m an idiot. Especially the idiot part.”
Her smile tries to stretch, but she traps it with her teeth. “Sounds good.”
“Then let’s go eat.”
“I need to get dressed first. Do you want to wait for me out—”
“No.” I don’t want to be apart from her for a moment, not until I know we’re firmly back on course. “I’ll turn around. I won’t look.”
She lifts a dubious brow, but I see the spark of trouble from last night in her eyes. “You promise?”
“Do you … want me to promise?”