Aven's Dream

by Alessa James

  “I apologize if I’m frightening you. I never meant for that, either,” he continued. “So many things I never accounted for,” he muttered more to himself than me.

  I slowed my breathing and wondered if he could sense the prickle of anxiety that coursed through my veins. Suddenly Will’s unwillingness to answer any of my questions made more sense.

  “Why did you come back here if it isn’t safe?”

  “I received … a message that the individual looking for me had returned here. I followed, and that’s when I noticed you,” he said, his tone again betraying regret.

  Before I could ask what he meant by noticing me, he continued, his eyes far away.

  “When I first saw you, I thought it was coincidence at first. Then I realized I was being invited to play a game.”

  I blinked, trying to digest Will’s meaning.

  “A game? What do you mean?”

  “You, Aven. You’re the game.”

  I smiled weakly.

  “You’re joking, right?”

  Will looked away.

  “No. Someone’s been watching you, stalking you.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  “You haven’t had any strange feelings, even unexplainable ones … like someone was following you?” Will asked with a serious expression.

  I frowned.

  “You mean Scott Adams, the psycho from the party?”

  Will’s knuckles cracked, and his eyes darkened. Finally, he shook his head.

  “Not someone from school. A stranger.”

  “A-after Mr. Anderson’s class, the day before you came to school, I had a funny feeling.” My stomach pitched as I remembered a man standing across the street in the pouring rain. “And when I went to lunch with Sean … I saw a man. It almost seemed like he was watching me. Crazy, huh?”

  I laughed and rolled my eyes, thinking of all the sleepless nights since moving to Winters. Maybe I was going crazy from lack of REM sleep. I waited nervously for Will to crack a smile.

  “How could I have been this stupid?” he muttered under his breath.

  His expression was suddenly livid, making his blue eyes nearly glow with rage.

  “Okay, now you’re scaring me, but I’m still not sure what I should be afraid of.”

  Will sighed.

  “This individual, the one who wanted me to come back here, has taken … an interest in you.”

  I shook my head.

  “That doesn’t make any sense. Why me?”

  “Because you possess a quality that attracts notice from a certain population.”

  “Sure I do,” I muttered.

  Will paused and appeared to debate something.

  “Why do you think that boy invited you to his party?”

  “Jason Everett?” I shrugged. “I don’t know. To pour pig’s blood over me?”

  Will stared at me, his expression less than amused.

  “Sorry. Bad joke,” I muttered.

  “Scott asked his friend to invite you to the party. I think, at this point, you can imagine why.”

  I shifted uncomfortably as I recalled the terror I felt just before Will’s arrival on the balcony.

  “But how did you know what was going to happen?”

  “Because Scott Adams may well be a Neanderthal in his own right, but I don’t believe his actions that night were entirely of his own creation,” Will said enigmatically.

  I shook my head.

  “Okay, Will. No offense, but time to cut the crap. Are you telling me Scott was possessed? ’Cause if you’re going to start talking demon possession, I’m out of here.”

  Will scanned my face, perhaps trying to gauge my reaction.

  “I’m telling you he was manipulated into doing something that he may very well have been capable of on his own.”

  “Manipulated?” I repeated skeptically. “You mean like brainwashed?”

  “Like mind control.”

  I bit my lip and stared at him.

  “So, you’re saying that this guy who is looking for you is capable of mind control?”

  “You think I’m crazy now, don’t you?” he challenged.

  I wasn’t about to say it, but I was more likely to believe in mind control than demon possession. But judging by the way he was looking at me, I suddenly had the distinct impression that he was actually hoping I would think he was crazy.

  “Let’s assume that I don’t think you’re crazy,” I said carefully. “There’s still some stuff I don’t understand. How did you get to the party just in time?”

  Will laughed, but it was a humorless sound.

  “I got lucky.”

  I shivered again.

  “And Scott Adams and the other two? Three against one. How did you do that?”

  Will gritted his teeth and said nothing. I scowled and pressed on, even if any details he gave me were strange, frightening, and probably highly edited.

  “What about the balcony? How did we get from the balcony to the back of the house?”

  Will smiled crookedly, appearing amused again.

  “I seemed to have opened the floodgates with you, Aven,” he said.

  My heart hammered disjointedly at the sound of my name on his lips, and my knees felt weak as Will studied me. I frowned. What was wrong with me when I was around him? It was seriously disturbing.

  “Do you feel all right?” he asked. When I nodded, he shook his head, seeming disappointed again. “I tell you that you’re part of someone’s sick game, people are following you, your classmates are under mind control—and you barely flinch.”

  I looked down. The answer was: I was probably going to have a major meltdown when I got back to the house. But it was oddly comforting to know that Will had been following me around, protecting me from a danger I hadn’t even realized was there.

  “Believe me, I’m probably going to have an epic freak-out by the time I get back to my house,” I admitted. “It just doesn’t seem real, you know?”

  “I wish I had been able to keep it from you.”

  I shook my head vehemently.

  “No, it’s better that I know. I was starting to think I was going crazy. I don’t know which is worse—imagining that strange men are following me or actually having strange men following me. This guy you’re talking about—what does he want?”

  “He wants to destroy me,” Will said in a numb tone.

  I shuddered and tried not to let my fear show.

  “Why?”

  “Because that’s what he does.”

  “And what do I have to do with it?”

  “He thinks toying with you will provoke an emotional reaction. He thinks I’ll make a mistake.”

  I wanted to ask how what happened to me would affect Will, but I decided not to.

  “What happens now?” I asked quietly.

  My voice sounded empty.

  “For you, nothing. I’ll stay here until I’ve finished things, and then you can go back to the way things were before I came here.”

  Nodding, I looked down and smiled wryly. It made sense that the only reason a hot guy was following me around was because I was being stalked. Why me, though? All Will had given me was a vague half answer. When I looked at him again, he appeared to be lost in thought. I tried to focus on the matter at hand—some psycho stalker who had taken an interest in me. Well, that was if Will’s chilling assertion was correct, but I couldn’t see why he would lie.

  “Who is he—the man I saw?” I ventured, feeling the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end as I visualized a blurry image of the figure standing on the street in the pouring rain, watching me.

  “I’ve already put you in enough danger telling you any of this. The more I say, the worse it is for you.” He looked at me searchingly. “But I felt I owed it to you to say something.”

  I smiled.

  “Thank you. I mean, it’s better that I know.”

  Darcy whined, and I looked over at him. We had been in the park for longer than I had realized, and it w
as almost dark. Besides, I had homework to finish, and my dad would be home soon. But these concerns suddenly seemed distant and inconsequential in light of Will’s revelations.

  “Should I go to the police?” I asked, trying to keep my voice from shaking.

  Will’s jaw hardened into stone.

  “They can’t help you, but I promise—I swear—I won’t let anything happen to you.”

  But what about him? He was, after all, a nineteen-year-old guy, not some bounty hunter. I thought about his absence from school the week before, and my stomach dropped.

  “What about last week while you were gone?”

  “I made arrangements. Trust me. I wouldn’t have left if I thought anything was going to happen to you because of my presence here. And I’m not leaving again until I know you’re safe.”

  My heart leapt at this. He wasn’t leaving. I almost breathed a sigh of relief. I couldn’t help myself. Then I shook my head. I had never had so many contradictory feelings about one person. Usually I had a pretty instantaneous read on people. Will Kincaid? I didn’t get a feeling about him—I got a million feelings at the same time. He was emotional overload.

  “When you didn’t show up in school, I thought you weren’t coming back,” I admitted, unnerved by how much this upset me.

  Will gave me a sharp look.

  “It would have been better for you if I had never returned here.”

  I frowned. I was afraid of how I felt around Will Kincaid—I wasn’t afraid for my safety.

  “And the party? What would have happened then? Are you saying Scott Adams wouldn’t have been a creep rapist if you hadn’t come back?”

  “Don’t say things like that, Aven. Not unless you want me doing something that I couldn’t bring myself to regret later.”

  The look in Will’s eyes was cold, calculating. His fingers were stretched across the wood of the bench, and in the low light, I couldn’t tell for sure, but the wood seemed to be on the verge of snapping under his grip. I shook my head, trying to clear my thoughts, which were again muddled.

  “It’s getting dark,” I pointed out.

  Snapping out of his trance, Will released his grip on the bench as I got up and walked over to Darcy. When Will joined me, I looked up at him.

  “When you said you made arrangements the week you were gone, what does that mean?”

  “It means someone was watching over you in my absence,” Will said.

  “Someone?” I asked dryly.

  “Someone who owes me.”

  I waited for him to relinquish any further details about my protection detail. He didn’t, and I sighed. As we walked toward my house, Will’s eyes flitted toward the edge of the woods the same way as the first time he had accompanied me home from the park. It was hard to believe that so little time had passed since then. It felt like I had known Will forever. In reality, I still knew almost nothing about him. When we stopped in front of my house, I suddenly remembered dinner on Friday.

  “Are you still coming over on Friday?” I asked. “Because you don’t have to if you don’t want to.”

  “Am I still invited?” Will asked, his brilliant smile less assured than before.

  Of course, his voice alone could have charmed a cobra.

  “Yes! But should I warn my dad about strange stalkers?”

  Will shook his head.

  “Aven, I’m trusting you with information I shouldn’t be telling anyone. You have to swear to me you won’t say anything, not even to your father. Your friend Sean, either.”

  I nodded solemnly.

  “Under one condition …”

  “And what is that?” Will asked, an exasperated expression forming on his face.

  “Whatever you do, don’t show up on your motorcycle,” I said.

  “No motorcycle? That’s all I have to do to buy your complicity? You might be surprised. A motorcycle might not make the top five if your father knew everything about me.”

  His tone made me shudder as I walked up the stairs, and I hoped he hadn’t noticed. He watched as I let myself into the house. Closing the door, I flipped the lock and hurried to stare out the window, following his retreat until he disappeared into the deepening darkness.

  Chapter 9: Meeting

  Even the stubbornly gloomy skies of Winters couldn’t dampen the thrill that coursed through me when I woke up the next morning and realized that the conversation with Will the evening before hadn’t been a dream. I instantly felt more at ease than I had in weeks, despite Will’s unsettling confession. His presence, while making linear thought nearly impossible, had managed to focus all of my energy into a single beam.

  During dinner the night before, my dad had watched with curious amusement while I stirred the food around my plate, joking that any other day I could calmly eat dinner with a herd of buffalo running through the kitchen. I had smiled uneasily, making up an excuse about a quiz in Trig, which wasn’t an outright lie.

  As I rushed to get ready, anxious to get to school, it was impossible to ignore the reason why. By seven-thirty, when Sean drove up, I was already waiting for him on the steps. I flew to the car and threw my bag in the backseat before pulling on my seatbelt and waiting impatiently. I only stopped to look at my chauffeur when the car didn’t move. Sean stared back at me expectantly.

  “Details, Casey,” he said gravely, tapping the dashboard. “I want details.”

  I rolled my eyes.

  “There’s nothing to tell,” I said. “Seriously.”

  It wasn’t a lie, at least not as far as Sean’s line of questioning was concerned. There wasn’t any interest on Will’s part—at least interest in anything other than keeping me non-stalked.

  “You expect me to believe that?” Sean moaned.

  “Yes, I do. Really. We talked for a while. That was it.”

  “Boring,” Sean sighed. His tone was rife with disappointment. “I kinda thought he had a thing for you.”

  “Not in this lifetime,” I muttered, casting Sean an ironic smile.

  Still, I fought back my own sense of regret as I said this. Maybe, ridiculous as it was, I had been holding onto some hope, too. But, protector or not, Will and his intentions toward me were far from romantic. Besides, even if I had a thing for him, I wasn’t alone. Every girl in school thought he was hot. It just figured that when I finally noticed a guy, it would be with someone completely out of reach. Sean nudged me.

  “Hey, did you hear there’s supposed to be an extreme storm blowing in?”

  His eyes were bright as he said this. Ever since I had met him, Sean had been telling tall tales about monster storms rocking Oregon’s coast with one-hundred-mile-an-hour winds. The closest thing to a hurricane on the West Coast, he had assured me. The last time had been when Sean was fourteen, so I hadn’t really thought about the possibility of witnessing one any time soon. I was really hoping it wouldn’t be so bad as far from the coast as we were.

  “How big?” I asked cautiously.

  “Epic.” His tone was gleeful. “It’s never happened this early in the season. Global warming, right?”

  “Hmm, more rain. Sounds like fun?” I offered, my tone unconvinced.

  Sean grinned at me.

  “When is it supposed to get here?” I asked.

  “Weather report said it’s supposed to hit the coast Saturday night.”

  I wondered how bad the storm could possibly be. Considering Sean’s tendency toward exaggeration, anything was possible. It was difficult, though, to imagine Winters getting any grayer or rainier than it had been so far. I was pretty sure that people in Southern California would have declared a state of emergency by now.

  On the way to first period, I realized that I actually was nervous about the quiz in Ms. Kluman’s class. One quiz wasn’t worth much, but math was my weakest point academically. As it was, I was a year behind the normal math curriculum compared to most of the students in my honors and advanced placement classes. It was true that I sucked at math, but I also found it harder to co
ncentrate on things I found boring—math being high on that list. I smirked. Maybe that was why it was so easy to focus on Will. He was anything but boring.

  I sat down as Ms. Kluman began passing out the photocopied quizzes, and I was relieved to find that most of the problems didn’t appear to be as impossible as I had expected. But there was no way I was going to solve the extra credit. The more complex the equation, the less chance I had of making it through the problem without an error that would throw off the entire answer.

  In Health Sciences, I waved at Lizzie and realized I was relieved to have another friend in school. Her appearance had changed, not dramatically, but enough for me to notice. I noticed a little bit of make-up, and her outfit seemed a little more flirty than usual. Her style and overall appearance wasn’t as ostentatious as Allison Monroe’s, but I thought her personality—mainly the fact that she wasn’t a complete bitch—made her a far better match for Sean.

  “You look great!” I whispered as I passed her.

  She blushed.

  “You think so? I hate myself for getting so excited.”

  I shook my head.

  “Don’t worry. Sean will love you.”

  I moved to my seat and waited for Mr. Morgan to start droning on straight out of the textbook. Something told me that Health Sciences could be far more entertaining with a teacher who didn’t seem perpetually on the verge of collapsing into a stupor. Every student in class knew that Mr. Morgan had been recycling the same material for years. Sean told me that some kids had copies of tests from a decade ago that Mr. Morgan still kept in circulation.

  I dutifully copied down notes, but eventually my thoughts wandered to Will. I didn’t even know what his other classes were, and suddenly I realized he probably didn’t care much about his classes here if he was going to go back to Canada. He would simply disappear. No matter what, he would leave. I wondered if he would even remember me after he was gone. The thought was oddly disturbing. I barely know him, I reprimanded myself fiercely. I tried redirecting my thoughts to a more productive subject, only looking up from my notes when Mr. Anderson paused in his lecture to copy down the homework assignment on the blackboard.