“No way!”
“Yes way. He knew I was psychic. Luke was something else—I can’t remember what he called it. Astral something? And he said you were freakdom off the charts.”
I felt oddly flattered.
“I think that’s why They’re after you, Dee. Not they, the Thornking-Ash people. They, like capital ‘T’ They. I mean, it seems like an awfully big coincidence that you should be a major freak and They should want you this bad.” His red-brown eyebrows furrowed. “Maybe They can hear your freakdom in your music. Didn’t this all start at the competition?”
It started with Luke.
I put my hand on the door handle. “So, why do they want people like us at the school? Lowercase ‘T’ they.”
James opened his door. A rush of humid air, smelling of rain, flooded into the car. “Apparently a lot of people like us get really messed up in life. Normandy’s kid was a concert violinist at age fifteen, and he killed himself. They set up this school to help us deal with it, I guess.”
I shook my head. Of all the things I’d heard this week, this turned out to be the one thing that was too big and distant to really comprehend. A freak school for the musically talented.
“I can’t process this right now. Let’s go before we get soaked.”
Together, we hurried across the silver parking lot into the ugly, flat hospital. It looked like a giant white box that someone had squished down in the center of an equally ugly concrete parking lot. A vaguely artistic soul had painted the doors and window frames bright teal, but it didn’t make the hospital any less flat or ugly.
Inside, it smelled like antiseptic and old people. The low ceilings and chemical smell seemed to squash all thoughts out of me, making me aware of only the smallest, most inane details. The short squeak of my shoes on the tile. The hum of a fax machine. The whistle of air from the vent overhead. The tinny laugh of an actor on the waiting-room television.
“How can I help you two?” The receptionist behind the counter smiled brightly at us. I stared at the bright pattern on her uniform; it was like one of those hidden picture images where, eventually, if I stared long enough, I ought to see a sphinx or a farmhouse.
James kicked me. “What’s your Granna’s real name?”
“Uh. We’re here to see Jane Reilly.”
The receptionist tapped efficiently on the keyboard and puckered her lips as she read the information on the monitor. “She’s not allowed to see any visitors but family.”
“I’m her granddaughter.”
The receptionist eyed James.
“I’m her pool boy,” James said. He crossed his fingers and showed them to her. “We’re like this. Very close. Like family.”
The receptionist laughed and told us the room number. We headed down the hall, sneakers still squeaking, vents still whistling, looking for Room 313. We followed the door numbers past motivational photographs plastered along the walls, and then Mom’s hissed voice announced Granna’s room. I froze in the hall, and James hesitated behind me.
“This is not normal.” I had to strain to hear her voice, but Delia’s voice was clearly audible.
“She fell. What’s not normal about that?”
“No. This is all wrong. This is like—like—”
Delia’s voice was taunting. “Like what, Terry? Like the dreams you used to have? Back when you wet the bed?”
“I didn’t wet the bed,” Mom hissed furiously. “That was where their feet were. They always had wet feet.”
“Right. I thought you said back then they were dreams.”
“You said they were dreams. Mom said they were dreams. I never said that.”
Delia laughed. It wasn’t a pleasant sound. “I didn’t tell you they were dreams, Terry. I was dying, remember?”
Mom hesitated. “I remember—damn you! Stop smiling! You’re part of this, aren’t you?”
“Don’t be stupid.” Louder, Delia said, “You can come in, Deirdre.”
James and I exchanged looks, and I followed him in. Mom and Delia stood on opposite sides of the single hospital bed, all color absent from their faces in the green-white lights of the room.
Mom looked hunted. Her eyes darted to me.“Deirdre. I didn’t know you were coming over right now.”
“James brought me,” I said unnecessarily, pointing to him.
“I’m going to go get something to eat,” Delia said musically. She flashed a rack of teeth at Mom. “Unless you need me for anything.”
Mom glared at her with an expression that clearly said drop dead in three different languages, and Delia vanished. After she’d gone, I peered around Mom to see Granna, and saw only a mass of tubes and machines. My voice came out more accusing than I meant it to. “I thought you said she fell.” I pushed my way further into the room, joining Mom by the side of the bed; she slipped away from me like a bubble of oil touching water.
Granna lay perfectly still, blankets pulled up tidily, hands laid stiffly on either side. There were no visible injuries, nothing to say what the faeries might have done to her or what “elf shot” might be. But she wasn’t awake, either, and a heavy sensation of slumber or unconsciousness seemed to ooze from the hospital bed.
I spun to face Mom. Behind her, James hung his head, seeming to analyze Granna’s condition faster than I could. “What’s wrong with her?”
Mom’s voice was efficient, her emotions still carefully locked away. “She’s in a coma. Nobody knows why. She didn’t fall. She wasn’t sick. She’s just in a coma, and they don’t know when she’s going to come out. They’ve done a bunch of tests like MRIs and stuff and so far everything’s coming back normal. But we’re still waiting on some of them. They say she could just sit up at any minute.”
Or lie like this for another hundred years. I looked down at Granna, quiet as the dead. I couldn’t seem to feel upset; it was as if I were watching a TV show starring myself and my family, and the real me sat safely outside the television set. I wondered if it would be like the day the cat attacked: emotion would catch me later, when my guard was down.
The room faded; twilight. I was outside, staring at muddy clothing in a ditch, all crumpled up in angles that made my gut squeeze, the water of the ditch half-covering them. It took me a moment in the faded light to realize that it was a pile of bodies, limbs twined in a macabre puzzle. A tight white hand pulled on my arm, grasping it firmly below the newly glinting torc. Its owner, a tall young man whose brown hair bore a shocking streak of gold, said, “Come on, Luke. Come on. They’re dead.”
I just stared at the bodies, feeling cold and mercifully empty. In a way, I was relieved that I had no tears for my brothers; if I cried, I’d be blind. I’d have to spend hours making the drops so I could see Them again. Hours wondering what They did while I was oblivious to Their presence.
“Luke. There’s nothing you can do.”
“If I’d been here—” Here, instead of doing Her bidding—
“Then you’d be dead, too.” The brown-and-gold-haired man pulled harder on my arm. “Come away. We’ll make you forget.”
“I’ll never forget.” Luke closed his eyes, and the broken bodies still burned a painful image behind his eyelids.
“Deirdre, James is talking to you.”
It took me a moment to separate reality from Luke’s memory; to trade the smell of mud and death for the antiseptic smell of the hospital. Embarrassed, I blinked myself free and turned to face James by the door. “What?”
“I said, ‘I’m sorry I can’t stay,’” James repeated. “I have a gig this evening with the pipe band. I can’t get out of it.”
Mom’s face suddenly clouded. “Deirdre. Gig. The Warshaws’ party. That’s tonight.”
“I thought it was Sunday.”
“Today is Sunday. I can’t believe I forgot about it.” She paced, looking apprehensive for the first time. James raised an eyebrow at me behind her back, bewildered, but I understood Mom’s consternation. She always had every aspect of everyone’s life planned o
ut and categorized in some invisible mental ledger; for her to forget a detail meant that she really was shaken by Granna’s condition—and to admit she was shaken wasn’t acceptable.
“How are you going to get there? Delia’s gone to do whatever she’s doing—Dad was going to pick me up late tonight after work. I don’t have a car here.”
“I’ll take her.” James’ voice interrupted her pacing.
“No. You have your gig.”
I shook my head, imagining going to a party and barfing while Granna lay in the hospital. “Mom, it’s not that important. I’ll tell them I can’t make it. They can just play CDs on the stereo or something. It’s just a dumb party, and Granna’s here in the hospital.”
She stopped pacing and stared at me. “The Warshaws have planned this for months. You can’t back out. This isn’t going to change because you’re here.” She pointed at Granna, finger shaking slightly. “If only Dad didn’t have to work so late—”
Irritation bubbled up in me at how she clung stupidly to her damn schedule. “If you’d let me get my license, I could drive myself places. What a crazy idea, huh? A sixteen-year-old with a driver’s license?”
Mom pursed her lips at me. “Don’t be ridiculous, Deirdre. We both know you’re not ready to be driving on your own.”
James didn’t need to be psychic to sense the shit that was about to go down. He edged toward the corner of the room.
“That’s crap,” I told her. “I can parallel park better than you can! You just want to control every piece of my life. Of course you don’t want me to drive! How’d you be able to monitor my every fricking waking move?” I was terrified that I’d gone too far, but I couldn’t seem to stop. Why was I doing this now? Shut up, Dee, shut up. But I didn’t listen to myself. “I’m tired of doing everything your way. I’m tired of everything being planned out for me.”
Mom’s face hardened. “I can’t believe how ungrateful you are. Can’t you see how lucky you are to have parents who care about your future? I care enough about you to make sure that you do something with your life.”
“Because you didn’t,” I snapped back. “Because Delia did everything you wanted to do.” Oh God, I didn’t just say that.
Her face stayed exactly the same. “Do we need to have this conversation right now?”
“We never talk, Mom. You never ask how I feel about anything. You just push me all the time, and it’s stupid. We should’ve had this friggin’ conversation a long time ago.”
“So, what do you want me to say? Delia stole my life? Delia gets everything? You could be everything I couldn’t be—I push you too hard—I’m an overbearing mother—there, you happy?” She half-turned away from me and began to dig in her purse. “I’ll call Delia. Maybe she’ll come back and take you.”
I was still shaking from standing up to her, and shocked at my outburst. I didn’t know what was wrong with me, yelling at my Mom over Granna’s body. Her fingers hesitated on the cell phone—I think she was as excited about calling Delia as I was about riding in Delia’s car.
“No. I’ll call Luke. He can probably give me a ride.” I took out my phone and punched in his number, willing him to pick up, needing him to pick up. I just wanted out of this room and away from my family. Even away from James, who was standing in the doorway trying to look as if he hadn’t noticed our argument. I wanted away from everything that was my life right now.
“Hello?” The effect of Luke’s voice was slightly distilled by the distortion of the phone, but it still made me ache to be near him.
“Luke?”
At Luke’s name, James looked away.
But Luke’s voice pulled me away from the image. “I’ve been thinking about you.”
I thought about the dead bodies in the ditch. “Me too.” I couldn’t say much more in front of my unsympathetic audience. “Um. I’m at the hospital. Can I ask a favor?”
Luke agreed immediately and promised to see me soon. James mumbled some sort of goodbye and escaped from the room before I could think of what to say to him. And Mom just stood there, arms crossed, studying me.
I braced myself. “Okay, what, Mom?”
“Wear your blue cardigan set.”
I had been standing by the hospital entrance for twenty minutes when I saw Bucephalus cut through the pouring rain, a dark mass in a gray, formless world. I shivered, part nerves, part anticipation, part sheer relief, and watched the old Audi pull up under the concrete overhang, dripping water onto the slick-dark asphalt.
As I ran to the car, lightning flashed, brilliant and overwhelming, and a second later, thunder beat the air, momentarily deafening me. I slid in and slammed the door on the storm.
As the car started to move, a curious feeling of release overcame me, like a release from pain that I hadn’t known I’d had. I couldn’t help but let out a huge sigh.
“Sorry it took me so long.”
The moment I heard his voice, right there with me, I didn’t care how wrong he was for me. I was just so glad to be in the car with him that it was hard to imagine anything else mattered. I knew it was selfish, but I didn’t care.
I turned my face toward him. He looked back at me, unsmiling, with dark circles beneath his eyes—his battle scars from the night before. “Hi, pretty girl.”
I told the truth. “I’m really glad to see you.”
“You don’t know how much I needed to hear that.” He sighed deep enough to match mine. “Where to?”
“Home for my harp first. And my friggin’ blue cardigan set.”
“Brought you a present,” Luke said. Without looking away from the road, he reached into his pocket and dropped Granna’s ring into my hand.
“You got it out of the sink?!” I slid it back onto my finger; now that I knew how useful it was, it wasn’t nearly as ugly. Still running my finger absently along its edge, I looked out at the rain. Wind buffeted the car. Light filled it, brief and brilliant, and I cringed a second before the thunder boomed. “Great night for a party.”
Luke glanced in the rearview mirror, though there was nothing behind us but a wall of gray. “It’ll be over in time for the party. All this lightning, though.” His face darkened. “Puts a lot of energy in the atmosphere.”
I guessed what he was thinking. “Like the sort Eleanor could use to pull another vanishing act?”
“It’s not the vanishing I’m worried about,” he said ruefully. “It’s the appearing.”
Was that why he kept glancing in the rearview mirror? The thought kept me glancing in the passenger-door mirror the entire way to the house, though there was nothing to see but the spray from the tires.
We pulled into the driveway. “Do you want to wait out here while I get the harp and change?”
Luke peered over my shoulder at the empty house, barely visible through the sheet of rain. “I don’t want you to be by yourself. I’ll come with.”
We jumped out of the car and ran to the back door, where I fumbled with keys, rain pouring over my fingers, and got us inside as quickly as possible. Sliding into the kitchen, I looked over at Luke and groaned.
He looked down at his soaked shirt and said, his voice mild, “Well, you did take three years to unlock the door, so what did you expect? Where’s the dryer? I’ll throw it in while you get changed.”
The idea of him shirtless stuck my tongue to the bottom of my mouth, so I just pointed toward the laundry room and retreated to my room, where I rejected the frumpy blue cardigan Mom would have worn in favor of a fitted white button-down and a khaki skirt. I liked to think it was an outfit that said professional but sexy. As opposed to Mom’s blue cardigan set, which said something more like frigid puritan music geek.
I returned downstairs, picking my way carefully in the rain-gray darkness. It was weird to be home without the rest of my family. Without the hum of the TV, or Delia’s loud voice, or the constant whir of Mom’s standing mixer, the house seemed very still and empty; the only sound of life was the slow, rhythmic pulsing of the dryer
in the kitchen. I thought of Luke standing down there, waiting for me, and the same thrill of nerves I got before playing in public trembled down my arms.
I didn’t trust myself with him.
I moved into the dim kitchen and picked out Luke’s pale form. He was leaning his hands on the counter, looking out the window. Without his shirt, I could see how his body truly was—how every inch was muscle, a perfectly tuned, deadly machine. Shallow scars traced a mysterious map across his shoulders, leading my eye to the enigmatic gleam of the gold band around his biceps. I knew he heard me come in by the subtle tilt of his head, but he stared out into the rain for a few seconds longer before turning.
“That was fast.” When he turned, I saw the largest scar of them all; a huge, white, amorphous shape near his heart. I didn’t bother to disguise my curiosity and closed the space between us; my eyes narrowed when I saw just how large the wound must have originally been.
“What’s that from?”
He didn’t reply, but his eyes wore the same dead expression they’d had after I’d read his mind. I reached out with careful fingers and touched the raised, uneven scar tissue, felt the shiny skin. As I did, I fell into a memory.
It was one I’d seen before, back in the tomb. But this time I got a longer look. His back to an old wooden building, Luke held his wicked dagger point against the skin on his shoulder, lightly tracing a careful line down to the torc, as if trying its strength. Beads of blood raised up in its wake and I shuddered at the expression in his eyes—like there was nothing behind them. The next cut was stronger but still unflinching, slicing into his skin and skipping over the torc. And the next was stronger still. But of course it was madness. If he was trying to rid himself of the torc, it was a fool’s errand; the torc itself wasn’t affected by the knife. It stayed solidly around his biceps as he tore his arm to ribbons, a viscous blanket of red obscuring each new slash and covering the gold of the armband.
Finally, Luke lowered the knife, hand trembling, and I sighed with relief. But too soon. Fast as a viper strike, he dug the blade into his own chest, twisting it viciously. His hands slid from the grip at last, and his head fell back against the building, his body twisting and arching.
Lament: The Faerie Queen's Deception Page 14