I sighed. “Fletcher, I know you heard what I just said.”
The bed shifted again. “What did Wiley want to talk about?”
“That night.” Fletcher and Wiley didn’t like each other so I didn’t want to go into the details of our conversation. As soon as I had brought up Wiley’s name, I regretted it, but there was no one else I could talk to about it.
“I’m not surprised. He likes you. You know that.”
Was there a slight tinge of jealousy in his voice? I hoped so. “It doesn’t matter who likes me, does it? I’m only supposed to mix with my kind and I’m the only Bandigo in existence.” If I followed the rules of being a creature, I was destined to be single forever.
Fletcher placed his hand on my back again. This time it sent warm, tingly sensations down my spine. “It’s probably for the best.”
I sighed impatiently. “What does that mean? How is being alone for the rest of my life for the best?”
Fletcher moved his hand from my back and rested it gently on my waist. “Because I can’t think of one single person, Human or creature, who would ever be good enough for you.”
If it were possible for me to melt, I would have liquefied into a puddle on his bed. I rolled over to face him. “You are.”
He touched my cheek, rubbing it gently with his thumb. “I told you. You have to forget about that. We can’t happen.”
All the warm and fuzzy feelings rushed away. I was angry with myself for not giving up the first time he told me the two of us would never be.
I lay with Fletcher for about an hour until he fell asleep and then I snuck out through the kitchen while his mother vacuumed the living room. I didn’t know if Fletcher was right about us, but he was right about the lair. Somehow I would have to go back and ask for help. The sooner the better. He was wrong about the other thing though. I couldn’t just sit around waiting for Rose to die. That meant taking the risk of turning full-Wendigo and possibly hurting my family or someone else. I had to get rid of Rose.
I couldn’t bear the thought of going home to my bedroom with its boarded-up windows that blocked out the sunshine. Instead, I sat on Imani’s front porch waiting for her to come home from school. Nestled on the swinging bench the Hughes had on their porch, I hoped her mother wouldn’t see me. I hadn’t officially met her yet and I was sure she’d want to know why some stranger had made herself comfortable on their private property.
Imani came strolling up the walkway about ten minutes after dismissal time. She removed her ear buds and narrowed her eyes at me. Adele’s boisterous voice blasted from the iPhone. She was Imani’s absolute favorite. “Hey, what happened to you today?”
I remembered that she had texted me earlier but I had never responded. I’d meant to text back that I was sick, but I had forgotten.
“I didn’t feel well this morning.” That wasn’t exactly a lie. “But I feel better now.”
Imani plopped beside me on the swing, setting it in motion again. She settled her backpack onto her lap. “There was no you. No Fletcher. I was all alone.”
“Sorry.” School would suck without Imani or Fletcher so I knew how she felt.
She unzipped her back pack and pulled out a small purple spiral notebook. The cover was worn and cracked as if she’d had it for years. “Anyway, I have a humongous bone to pick with you, Ms. Moss.”
I racked my mind for anything I could have possibly done to her. I came up with nothing. “What?”
Imani pulled a pencil from behind her ear. “Why didn’t you ever tell me about Ms. Melcher? How she just mysteriously disappeared one day without a trace. The best part of moving to a small town is a small-town mystery. Haven’t I told you that I want to be an FBI investigator?”
“No.” Maybe she had, but sometimes she talked so fast, I may have missed it.
“Well, I do. Tell me everything.”
I didn’t want to talk about Ms. Melcher. The whole situation was weird and unfortunate. For a while I’d tried to stay hopeful that she would turn up, because I felt like somebody should, but I’d almost given up on that.
I played with a stray string on my dress sleeve. Anything to avoid eye contact with Imani. I didn’t want to tell her about the warning I got before Ms. Melcher vanished. “Didn’t your father mention it? I’m sure he knows about it.”
Imani rolled her eyes. “No, he didn’t. He doesn’t like to talk police business with me. He doesn’t want me to go into law enforcement like him. He wants me to be a doctor so when I take any interest in his work, he shuts it down. So you tell me. Please.”
I wrapped the string around my finger and pulled it tight until it hurt. “There’s not much to tell. She was a really cool teacher. A good one who made class fun but we still learned. She wasn’t like that hot mess we have now.”
Imani scoffed. “My biology class at my old school was way more advanced than this. This class is a joke. What else about her?”
“She always wore boots and she just had this edge. You just knew that even though she was a teacher, she was a total badass. Then one day she didn’t show up for work. She hadn’t called or put in for a sub or anything. Her parents hadn’t heard from her which wasn’t like her. At her house there were no signs of forced entry or anything out of place. It was like she just disappeared into thin air.”
Imani scribbled all this information into her notebook as if she were going to do something with it. If the police couldn’t find Ms. Melcher, what made her think she could?
“Imani, I know you heard about the animal attacks that happened last year. Most people think Ms. Melcher was another victim and they just haven’t found her remains and some people think she just had it with this life, ran away and started over. That happens sometimes.” I left out one important detail. That I had seen a purple haze around Ms. Melcher just before she disappeared. Since I was a Banshee, the haze was a sign that something horrible was going to happen to her. Fletcher decided to warn her and things went left because he’d totally gone about it the wrong way. Everyone thought he was threatening her and he had been suspended.
“Somebody told me about what happened between her and Fletcher just before she disappeared.”
I sighed. So she already knew. “I don’t know—”
Imani flipped back a few pages in her notebook. “He actually went to her and told her that she was going to die. Why would he do that? How would he know? Don’t you find it suspicious that shortly afterwards she was never heard from again?”
I didn’t find it suspicious because I knew the truth, but everybody else had a field day with the wild stories, calling Fletcher a psycho and spreading the rumor that he had Ms. Melcher tied up in his basement.
“Fletcher’s weird, you know. I don’t know why he did what he did, but he didn’t do anything to Ms. Melcher.”
Imani bit her lip scribbling furiously across the page. What was she writing? “I know Fletcher didn’t hurt her, but maybe he’s a psychic or something. Anyway, something fishy is definitely going on and I’m going to find out what it is.”
Somehow, I had to get Imani’s mind off this. The last thing I wanted was her poking around and investigating. Deep down inside, I knew that Ms. Melcher’s disappearance had something to do with creatures. Imani could never, ever find out about us.
Part 2
The Gemini Curse
Chapter Six
Imani came over to hang out that Friday afternoon. It had been ages since I’d had a friend come over just to spend time with me. I suggested we go to Imani’s, but her mom didn’t want company until their house was all unpacked and put together the way she wanted. I understood because my mother would have been the same way. Maybe our mothers would become friends.
The two of us lay stretched across my bed. Imani opened her hand filled with pink and red Starbursts, offering me one.
“No thanks. I don’t like sweet.”
She chose a red one for herself. “That’s right. I forgot. You have to be the only person I know who doe
sn’t eat candy, cookies or anything. You’re a rare breed, Arden Moss.”
My heart raced at that comment. “What?” I snapped. How could she know? Maybe she was a better detective than I’d thought.
“I said you’re a rare breed.”
I bolted upright. “What do you mean by that?”
Imani’s eyes widened and I immediately felt bad. She held her hands up. “That . . . you’re different? Chill. It’s just an expression.”
“Right. Sorry.” It was stupid of me to have gotten so defensive. Of course she hadn’t meant it that way.
She sat up and placed her lap top on her crossed legs. Imani had this amazing habit of getting all her weekend homework out of the way on Friday afternoons while I let it hang until the last minute on Sunday nights. She worked while I read Gone Girl and fiddled around on my own laptop. Before I knew it, a few hours had passed.
Imani stood and stretched her long limbs. “I need a break.” She walked over to the doors that led to the balcony and before I could stop her, she whipped the curtains back, revealing glass doors covered haphazardly with wooden planks. “What the . . .”
“Uh . . .” I struggled to think of an excuse for it. What could I say? “During the last storm a branch came through the glass. We haven’t gotten it fixed yet.”
“Hmmm,” Imani said, placing her hands on her hips. I imagined those investigative gears cranking in her head. “The glass isn’t broken, though.”
Dammit. Think, Arden. Think.
“Okay, my parents did that so I won’t sneak out over the balcony.”
Imani smirked and looked me up and down. “They’re worried about you sneaking out?”
“Yeah,” I replied, my voice croaking. I wasn’t convincing at all, but Imani seemed satisfied with that.
She came back to the bed and picked up her laptop. “Are they worried that you and Fletcher are going to have a midnight rendezvous or something?”
“Imani!”
She smiled slyly. “Come on. I’m not stupid or blind. I see the way you look at Fletcher. You are seriously crushing on him.”
I shrugged. It didn’t make sense to lie to her. Imani was good at picking up on those things. Besides, it was nice to have someone to have girl talk with. “Maybe a little crush but the feeling isn’t mutual so it doesn’t matter.”
She wrapped a braid around her index finger. “I wouldn’t be so sure about that.”
I shook my head. “Fletcher doesn’t like me like that. He said so himself. More than once.”
“Arden, I don’t know a lot about boys, but one thing I do know, is that nothing they say means anything. And Fletcher is so strange, who knows what’s really going on in that head if his. He’s a cutie, though.”
Yes, he was but I didn’t want to talk about Fletcher and unrequited love anymore. “You’d better finish your work.”
She lifted the lid of her laptop, stared at the screen, and then slammed it shut.
“What’s the matter?”
Imani scrunched her face. “I have to write a short story for Mrs. Amparo’s class and I don’t even know where to start. I suck at writing and she wants two thousand whole words with a beginning, a middle, and an end. Isn’t that insane?” Imani stared at her laptop as if she were angry with it.
I placed my book on my nightstand, toying with a thought in my head. I could help Imani out, but I would also be breaking an oath I’d made. Would it really be against the rules if nobody knew but me? Finally, I decided that it wouldn’t hurt any. “I have a story.”
Imani’s face lit up. “Yeah, you’re good at writing. Give me an idea.”
“You could write about a school, only it’s not a normal school. Underneath this particular school, there’s a lair. A monster’s lair. All sorts of creatures, things you’ve only heard about in movies or books live there.”
Imani nodded, grabbing her laptop and lifting the lid. “A monster’s lair underneath a school. I like that.”
“There’s this girl who thinks she’s Human. She’s thought that all her life. Then one night she gets stolen from her bed by this boy with wings and taken to the lair. There she finds out what she really is—a mix between a Banshee and a Wendigo. A Banshee is a Death Fairy. She can predict death as well as cause it just by thinking about it. A Wendigo is a creature that craves Human flesh. It survives by devouring people. It can never get enough of it.”
To keep my hands busy, I folded Imani’s empty Starburst wrappers into tiny origami swans. The new biology teacher had taught us how to do that the other day. I was still trying to figure out what origami swans had to do with biology, but it had been better than watching Mrs. Lang try to convince Mary-Kate how ridiculous she was to believe in the theory of creationism. I was pretty sure teachers weren’t supposed to do that anyway.
“Good stuff. Go on,” Imani urged as she typed.
“Weird things started happening to the girl after that. She couldn’t stop craving meat. She ate a raw crayfish in her biology class in front of everyone. She barks, and howls, and claws the floors at night. She stopped getting cold, even in the winter. She thinks the creatures, they call themselves Takers, aren’t that bad. They don’t hurt people on purpose, only when they have to. She actually feels sorry for them because they’re confined to living underground. The Takers taught the girl a lot of things. She let her guard down and was ready to be one of them but then everything changed.”
Imani stopped typing and looked up, totally engrossed in the story. If only she knew it wasn’t a story at all. It was my nightmare of a life. “What changed?” she asked.
I paused, pretending to think so it would seem as if I were making the story up as I went along. “The Takers wanted her to do something horrible. They wanted her to use her growing Banshee powers to kill someone.”
“Why would they want her to do that?”
I focused on the swans again. Anything to keep from looking Imani in the eyes. “They don’t really care about the girl. They only want to use her as a weapon. If there’s ever a war or an attack, she would be there greatest asset. At the height of her powers she’ll be able to think someone’s death and it would happen. She’s just a tool to them.”
Imani unwrapped her last Starburst. “Wow. That sucks. Who wants to be used like that?”
“Exactly. So anyway, when she refused to kill the girl, the Takers got mad at her and said they wanted nothing more to do with her. Even called her a traitor. She left the lair and never looked back but a little later she realized she needed the Takers’ help. In order to squash the Wendigo side of her, the side that’s the most dangerous and uncontrollable, a Giver has to die, an Angel to be specific. See, this specific Angel is the girl’s Gemini, which is a whole other story, but basically it means as the Angel dies, the girl will get stronger. She has no idea how long that will take or what she should do in the meantime. Something horrible happened that can never happen again.”
Imani stopped typing and frowned. “What happened?”
I looked everywhere but at Imani, wondering if I should continue. “The animal part of her, the Wendigo, almost made her kill someone very, very important to her. She can’t take that risk.”
I looked at her again and she stared at me for a moment as if waiting for more. “You just thought that up right now?”
Nope. I nodded.
She smiled, impressed. “That mind of yours is brilliant.”
I wondered what she would do if I told her the truth. Would she keep my secret? Would she call me a lunatic, run away, and never speak to me again? I could never risk finding out.
When Mom called from downstairs, I hopped off the bed, disturbing my bevy of tiny origami swans. She and Dad lay snuggled together on the living room couch under a blanket getting ready to put on a movie. I liked when they did things like that and I hoped they would never fall out of love.
The rest of the house was quiet. Paige was spending the night with a friend and I wasn’t sure where Quinn was. Probably in her
room working on a project or something.
I stopped at the bottom of the stairs. “Yeah, Mom?”
“I’m glad you’re having fun with your friend, honey, but it’s getting late. It’s time for her to go now. It’s dark so your father will drive her home.”
Mom wasn’t worried about the time at all. She was worried about what I became at night and that I might hurt Imani. I was too. I should have thought of that earlier.
Dad kept his eyes on the TV where the movie was starting. They were watching a chick-flick. Definitely Mom’s pick. “We do have to shut down soon,” he said.
By “shut down” he meant seal me in my room.
“Okay.” I moped back upstairs since there was no argument to be had. I wasn’t ready for Imani to go, but she had to for her own good.
Imani was busy typing away on my bed. She bit her lower lip in deep concentration.
I fiddled with the doorknob, hating to disturb her. “It’s getting kind of late so one of my parents will drive you home.”
Imani kept typing. “Why don’t I just sleep over? My parents won’t care. I can borrow some PJs.”
“No!” I hadn’t meant to shout. “I mean, you can’t.”
She looked up from her laptop, frowning. “Why not?”
Because I might eat you.
“Um . . . because I have a dentist appointment very, very early in the morning.” I was so bad at lying and Imani was sometimes a walking lie detector.
She rolled her eyes as she stuffed her books into her backpack. “If you don’t want me to spend the night, just say so. You don’t have to insult me by lying.”
Flashes of the night I’d crept into Quinn’s room raced through my mind. “Imani, it’s not that I don’t want you to sleep over, it’s just that . . .”
“It’s just what?” She stared at me expectantly, but I had no reason I could give her. She looked from me to the boarded-up balcony doors and for a moment I thought she was figuring it out. Putting two and two together. I shouldn’t have told her that story.
Dust and Roses: Book Two of the Dust Trilogy Page 4