No, old man. It will be mine. But he quoted the old Dark Territory lullaby. “Good night, Father. May the ruin of your enemies fill all your dreams.”
“The doctor will be here soon, and I’ll be as good as ever,” Oberon said. “Maybe even better.”
“Of course you will.”
As Orias left, his gaze drifted to the bottom left panel of the door. One last section to cover with his writing and his father would be his prisoner until the end of time.
Chapter Thirteen
Aimee followed her classmates as they filed into the school auditorium. She was normally half asleep during morning announcements, so she had no idea it was Career Day until teachers passed out worksheets and told everyone to take notes on all the professions the various guest speakers would be presenting. To Aimee, it all seemed like a major waste of time. She had no idea what she wanted to do in life, and she doubted having some people come in and talk about their lame jobs would help.
She’d enjoyed acting in the play, but somehow she couldn’t see herself moving to L.A. or New York and going to a million auditions, hoping to be discovered. It would be cool to be a painter, or some kind of artist, but she could barely draw stick figures. She liked music, but she couldn’t play any instruments, and singing in front of people made her so nervous she felt like she would hurl. And after years of watching her dad strut around in his stupid suit on his stupid cell phone, the thought of having some corporate job made her feel equally ill. So, she wasn’t very excited about Career Day.
A row of steel chairs lined the stage behind a single microphone and podium. The kids took their seats, and Aimee scanned the audience for Raphael. She found him in the front with all his friends, up near the stage, and they exchanged a quick smile before he turned away and sat down. Someone gave her the elbow, and she turned to see Dalton sliding into the seat next to her.
“What’s up, hot thang?” Dalton asked playfully.
“Finding a career, apparently,” Aimee said with an apathetic shrug. As Mr. Innis took the stage, the general commotion around them wound down to silence.
The principal nervously spun his key ring on his finger a few times as he stepped up to the mic, then stuck his keys back in his pocket and cleared his throat.
“Uh—hello? Can you hear me?”
“Yes!” a few kids yelled back. They sounded bored and annoyed already.
“Good. Great. Okay, so welcome to Middleburg High’s twenty-seventh annual career day! I have a wonderful bunch of guests here to talk to you about their various jobs. They’ve taken time away from their busy schedules, so I know you will all pay close attention and give them the respect they deserve. First, please welcome Cheung Shao . . .”
Zhai’s dad stepped out from one wing of the stage in an expensive-looking suit. He gave a stiff little nod to the audience who responded with polite applause.
“Mr. Shao is the owner, part-owner and/or president of several companies, including Shao Construction and Middleburg Materials Corporation,” Innis announced. “Thanks for joining us.” The principal shook Mr. Shao’s hand, who then took a seat in the row of chairs, and the process was repeated with each of the guests. “Next we have Dave Ingram—most of you know his son Beet.”
Aimee could see Beet sitting next to Raphael—probably turning red as Innis continued.
“Mr. Ingram owns Body Builders Auto Repair, and he’s going to talk about something many of you boys will be interested in—careers in automotive maintenance.” He glanced, just for a moment, at the row where the Flatliners were sitting. Aimee was sure it wasn’t his intent to single them out so blatantly, but there was some rude laughter in the audience. She looked over to her right. Of course, it was Rick and some of his buddies. She shrank down in her seat, embarrassed to be related to such a jerk. Oblivious to their derision, Mr. Innis shook Mr. Ingram’s hand and directed him to his seat on the stage.
There were also a realtor from Banfield Realty, the new pharmacist from Lotus Pharmacy, a foreman from Middleburg Materials, a hair stylist from Solomon River Salon, a manager from Middleburg Couture, the bank manager and his secretary, and one of the waiters from Spinnacle. Just when Aimee felt her eyes starting to glaze over, the principal introduced his last guest.
“Now, I’d like a big welcome for a newcomer to Middleburg. I met this amazing young man recently, and he made quite an impression on me. He’s only a bit older than some of you, but he’s already gotten himself a degree in business from Cornell, and he’s just arrived back in town after a long absence to manage his father’s, um . . .”
Innis paused and cleared his throat, suddenly uncomfortable.
“To handle his father’s estate. He has also started a new business venture downtown, Morningstar Inc. Please welcome Orias Morrow.”
As the young man took the stage, Aimee sat up straighter in her chair. It was him—the guy she’d seen through the window, the guy with long, dark hair and piercing blue eyes.
Next to her, Dalton was shaking her head. “Well, well. I thought the stories I heard about him were exaggerated. I guess not.”
“Why? What did you hear?” Aimee asked, unable to stop looking at him.
“Just that he’s like, tall and way beyond hot. You know Myka, Emory’s girl? She just got a job at Morningstar as a part-time receptionist. She said she feels like she’s going to faint every time he walks in. I can see why.”
Aimee shrugged. “He’s all right,” she whispered. But she couldn’t take her eyes off him. His hair was tied back in a neat ponytail, and he looked comfortable in his white business shirt, open at the collar, designer jeans, and a sport coat that hung perfectly on his broad shoulders. And his countenance (and oddly, that’s how she thought of it) was heartbreakingly, breathtakingly beautiful.
“Aimee?” Dalton elbowed her again.
“What?” She came back, as if waking from a pleasant dream.
“Were you even listening? I said, do you know who his dad is—or was?”
Aimee shook her head and reluctantly turned away from the young man to look at Dalton.
“Who?”
“Oberon.”
Oberon. She could still see his chiseled face turn all creepy because of the way he’d looked at her just before he abducted her. And she remembered the way he looked when he changed, too—those great, dark wings, the glowing red eye, the black, leathery flesh.
“I told Myka not to take the job,” said Dalton. “I told her to stay as far away from him as possible, but she says he’s paying so much she couldn’t pass it up.”
Slightly lightheaded, Aimee only nodded. She looked at Orias again and then forced her gaze back to Principal Innis, who’d finished the introductions and turned the mic over to his first guest.
Mr. Shao stepped up to the podium and started speaking, but try as she might to resist the pull, Aimee’s gaze wandered constantly back to Orias Morrow. She heard nothing the other speakers said, but when it was Orias’s turn, his words touched her heart.
He spoke of his childhood and told them, a haunting sadness in his eyes, how his mother had died when he was very young, after which he and his father became estranged. How he’d been to Middleburg only twice before and had always remembered it fondly. He told a few funny stories about his college years, eliciting delighted laughter from everyone in the crowd, and then segued to the present day. His voice was rich, warm and sincere when he told them how, after receiving word of his father’s death, he’d come back to settle his business affairs, with no intention of staying.
But (and Aimee could have sworn he looked right into her eyes as he said this), “I fell in love . . . and found I could not leave this quaint, charming little village.”
He finished by telling them about his plans for Middleburg—that in addition to looking after his father’s investments, he was starting some new ventures that would create many new jobs within the community. He
took his seat again to thunderous applause.
When all the guests had finished speaking, it was lunchtime. Most of the kids filtered out the back doors of the auditorium, heading for the cafeteria, but some stayed behind to ask questions. Already there were at least two dozen students—most of them girls—lining up to talk to Orias. Aimee stared at them with a vague sense of unease.
“You coming?” Dalton asked, “Grandma packed me some peach cobbler today—you play your cards right, you might get a bite.”
Aimee glanced at Dalton and gave her a distracted smile. “Okay,” she said. “I’ll catch up. I just need to . . . ask someone a question.”
Dalton gave one of her trademark, squinty-eyed looks of concern, but Aimee was already making her way down the aisle, toward Orias.
Everyone else had left the auditorium but Maggie remained in her seat, her hands gripping the armrests until her knuckles turned white.
Even now, she didn’t trust her eyes, didn’t believe what she had seen, what she was still seeing.
The moment Orias Morrow stepped onto the stage, Lisa Marie and Rhonda Marris had started whispering to one another about how hot he was. That was Maggie’s first impression, too, but as she stared at him, his figure began wavering like a mirage. It took a moment for her to register what was happening.
His shoulders grew even broader, his height even greater. His perfect face and arresting eyes, already stunning to behold, became terrible in their beauty. And behind his head, a shape formed, round and roiling and dark, like his own private black hole—one that had the power to draw a multitude of souls into its void. A halo, the color of a moonless midnight, encircled his head.
Maggie had blinked. She’d closed her eyes, she’d looked away, but each time she looked back at the handsome young man she saw the same thing. And then she ventured a glance at Rick. He looked the same as he had on her doorstep, with the twisted form of some dark, grotesque beast. The students sitting around her looked different, too. There were shapes around them, little swirling clouds of color. She’d looked through enough of her mom’s stupid new-age books to know that what she was seeing were their auras. Lisa Marie’s and Rhonda’s were both a matching shade of pink. Principal Innis’s was a bright, sunny yellow. She didn’t know if there was a name for what she saw when she looked at Rick and Orias Morrow, but Lily Rose’s words came back to her.
“Good sight to have. Lets you know who you got to watch out for.”
So Maggie made herself look at them. And again, she felt the invisible presence of the harvest crown surrounding her head, compressing it, caressing it, swimming around it, lap after golden lap, a circle of electric energy.
As crazy as it was, she couldn’t deny what she was seeing. It was real. And it meant something. She knew Lily Rose was right. If she paid attention, and waited and watched as she adjusted to this strange new gift of hers, she might be able to figure it out.
Maggie heard scarcely a word of the career presentations. She only realized they were over when half the girls in the school descended upon Orias, like insects drawn to a bug zapper.
She felt a sudden pity for all of them. With terrible certainty, she knew he could make any of them do whatever he wanted.
Aimee Banfield was the last girl in line, and she was impossible to miss. Her aura was twice as big as anyone else’s. It swirled close to her head, a chaotic mix of pink and yellow and deep violet, but further out, it was a pure, bright white. The more Maggie stared, the brighter it became, until she had to squint just to look at it.
As Maggie watched, Aimee stepped forward to stand in front of Orias, but she didn’t say anything, not a word. Neither did Orias. He simply looked into her eyes and extended his hand, and Aimee took it.
To anyone else, Maggie knew, it would have looked like an innocent handshake, but she saw the black halo surrounding Orias throb and swell, diminishing the healthy colors surrounding Aimee. The swirling black shadows from Orias’s dark halo polluted Aimee’s radiance, swarming into her aura like a flock of bats. Orias stared at Aimee for a second longer, his eyes locked on hers, and then he released her hand. Still silent, she pulled her hand back from his—a little too quickly, perhaps, as if his touch had burned her. Without a word, she turned and walked up the aisle, away from him, toward the back doors.
Slowly, Orias looked up, his glance sweeping the auditorium until it came to rest on Maggie. And she heard, inside her head, as clearly as if he were sitting right next to her:
You see me, Maggie Anderson? Well, I see you, too.
She shrank back in her seat, trying to escape the scathing beauty of those hypnotic eyes, and inside her head, she heard him laughing. The ghost crown contracted again, painfully this time, as if trying to expel the horrible, ringing laughter, but the sound became louder, more maddening. Desperate to escape it, Maggie got to her feet and hurried up the aisle, almost tripping as she ran up the steps in her high heels. She burst out the doors and into the hallway, her hands clamped over her ears. Only then did his mocking laughter fade.
Maggie sighed in relief and lowered her hands. She looked up, ready to head to the lunchroom, but what she saw made her hesitate.
Aimee Banfield stood near the window, staring vacantly out at the white, swirling snow. And within the glow of her aura, there remained a groping, seething blackness.
Maggie knew some kind of connection had happened between Aimee and the newcomer, and she knew it would be bad—very bad—for Aimee. Maggie’s conscience dictated that she say something to her former best friend, to warn her. But then she thought of Raphael, remembered his kiss, the feel of his lips pressing against her own, and how badly she wanted that feeling again.
Maggie glanced at Aimee once more, then hurried away.
After school, Aimee and Dalton went to Miss Pembrook’s classroom for the first-ever meeting of the Middleburg High School History Club. They sat at a long table in the back of the classroom while, up at her desk, the teacher was explaining a homework assignment to her last straggling student; the rest were outside in the hallway, yelling and slamming lockers.
“Well,” Aimee said, smiling at Dalton. “This is it. History club. We’re officially nerds.”
“Speak for yourself,” Dalton said. A shadow of her old, mischievous smile crossed her face, then disappeared again. “Remind me, how did you talk me into doing this again?”
“It was easy—because I’m your best friend and you looooove me,” Aimee joked.
Dalton laughed, but it was hollow. It broke Aimee’s heart to see how depressed she had become since things got weird with Ignacio. Dalton had already confessed to Aimee how hard she was falling for Nass—and then his old girlfriend or whatever she was had to show up. It was obviously a complicated situation, and it wasn’t Nass’s fault. Even Dalton didn’t blame him. Still, it wasn’t easy for Aimee to watch her friend get her heart stomped on.
Miss Pembrook finished with her student and came over to their table, smiling over a huge stack of books she was holding. She set them down with a weighty thud, and Dalton coughed at the little puff of dust they expelled and gave Aimee a dirty look.
“Well,” Miss Pembrook said. “Look at us! Three beautiful historians. I’m so glad you two decided to sign up. We’re going to have a blast.”
She handed a big, antique-looking book with a worn cover of embossed leather to Aimee and another to Dalton, then took a third for herself and sat down.
“So . . . what are we supposed to do?” Dalton asked, making a face as she tried blowing some of the dust off the book.
“Sorry about that.” The teacher said. “Just go through the book and look for any mention of Middleburg.” She reached into her book bag and took out a stack of index cards, which she placed on the table with a few sharpened pencils. “Whenever you find something, copy down the quote, the book title, au
thor and page number—write it all on an index card. If the quote is too long to fit, just write the book title and page number.”
“And why are we doing this exactly?” Dalton asked.
“Well, this is research for my college dissertation on the history of Middleburg.”
Dalton crossed her arms. “Oh. So we’re doing your homework for you?”
Aimee winced. She knew that look, and she braced herself for a battle, but Miss Pembrook remained as cool and sweet as ever. “You’ll get something out of it too, I think,” she said.
Dalton was skeptical. “Such as?”
Miss Pembrook’s smile widened as she took a heavy book from the middle of the stack and put it on the table in front of the girls. It looked to Aimee like it had to be about a thousand years old. Its binding was cracked, and the leather had become dark and brittle with age. Carefully, the teacher opened it to a page she’d marked.
“Do you recognize this building?” She asked, pointing to a drawing of a church on one of the fragile, ancient pages.
“Sure,” Dalton said. “It’s Middleburg United Church.”
“Wrong,” Miss Pembrook replied. “This church was built in the late twelfth century in Israel, near the Sea of Galilee. It’s unlike any of the other churches constructed at that time, and historians have no idea who built it.”
“But . . .” Dalton’s brow furrowed. “That’s impossible. It looks just like our church.”
“You’re right,” Miss Pembrook said. “But I’ve been there. I’ve studied them both. They’re exact replicas. Same floor plan, same everything. Now look at this.”
She opened a folder and took out a modern, color photograph of another church. This one, too, looked exactly like Middleburg United, but Aimee could tell the landscape surrounding it was different. It seemed to be built on a broad, sloping hill, with misty green mountains in the background. A caption at the bottom of the picture read: CHRIST TEMPLE, ANXI, FUJIAN PROVINCE, CHINA.
“No way,” Dalton said, and Aimee could tell she was getting interested.
GHOST CROWN: THE TRACKS TRILOGY - Book Two Page 21