by Tracy Clark
Finn waited for me at my locker. He wore a condemned look, miserable and slouchy. I walked straight up to him and wrapped my arms around his body, latching my fingers at the small of his back. Heavy arms draped around my shoulders as he buried his face in my hair. His heart slammed against my chest. Something was very wrong. I could feel it radiating off him in the waves of colors that mixed together in a confusing blend, like milky paint spilling from his body.
“Last night was awful. I’m sorry, Finn.”
“No. You’re not to be sorry. It’s all on me.”
The bell to first period rang shrill and insistent. I wasn’t ready to leave him.
“Come on.” He took my hand and led me to the greenhouse. We slipped inside. The world outside ceased to exist behind the doors. This was our chrysalis, warm and muffled. Finn had a reckless, wild look about him. He stared at me a long moment as I hopped up to sit on the potting bench. He stepped in between my legs, then grazed his lips over mine, a brushstroke of desire and anguish. What was wrong with him? Every color he had was unclear. Emotional grime tinted his aura.
He leaned in close, making my heart ram against my chest. “Innocent Irish lad jaunts over to America and look what happens to him.” His eyes flickered with mischief, but there was a hint of something so sad, too, that it made my stomach cave in on itself. “Why’d I have to fall in love with you?” he asked.
My heart went off in my chest like a confetti bomb. Little mini-hearts floated into my bloodstream. “Love?”
He practically glared at me. “You know I am. Mad in love! It’s fookin’ insane. I talked to my mother last night after what happened at your house. She’s angry at me for becoming so involved and for sneaking into your room and jeopardizing you. I know—I’m not good for you. I have to go home, Cora. My flight for Ireland leaves tonight.”
Tonight. I couldn’t breathe. He may as well have kicked me in the heart.
Finn closed his eyes. His head tipped back.
“Why did you tell your mom about sneaking into my room?” I asked.
“Something happened to me last night. I felt things—physically, emotionally—that I’ve never felt before. I wasn’t myself. It was so strange. It was like I lost control. I shouldn’t have done what I did.” He shook his head, casting off the memory. “My mum’s made the arrangements. You have no idea how controlling she can be. I have to go home.”
Worry radiated from my center, up to my chest, closing off my throat. I swallowed hard. Had I done something to him? I was simply trying to give him love last night, from my soul to his, but maybe because I was this silver aberration I had inadvertently affected him badly. My love felt like a weapon.
I stared, disbelieving. Our parting sounded like a choice right now. His choice. I knew good-bye would eventually come, but it was too soon. He was breaking my heart. My voice was small and shaky. “Do you want to leave?”
“Cora.” His hand cupped my cheek, and he shook his head sadly. Gone was the boy who was open to me. Globes of self-protection floated in his aura. “What difference does it make what I want? You always knew I’d be going back.”
“When I go there—”
“If you go. And if you do, it won’t be for me. It’s time to say good-bye, Cora.” One tear snaked down his cheek.
An aching freeze started in the middle of my chest, spreading outward like cold fingers. My breaths were a puff that barely came out. I was slowly icing over, numbing my heart to the pain. “Go then.”
Finn looked down at the floor for too long. When he looked up, his eyes were full of things he’d never say to me. He reached for me, desperate. “Maybe someday—”
“Don’t say ‘someday’ to me!” There was no way we would see each other again. I tried to push him away. “Go,” I whispered again, but then found myself grabbing his neck, my fingers tugging at his dark hair. I pulled him against me. Even when his good-bye was the truth, I couldn’t deny my need to feel him close before he was gone.
“Just leave,” I cried in his ear, clutching his T-shirt. His hands found their way to my skin, ran possessively up my back. He slid my hips forward, stealing a gasp from me.
“Go away,” I moaned, with my legs wrapped tightly around his waist. Tears mingled with warm kisses that tasted like love, staining our lips.
“I don’t care if you go,” I said against his mouth. Then, the truth I couldn’t hold back any longer. “I love you.”
“I’m not the same person since I met you. You’ve affected me forever.”
“You’re so mean. It was cruel to tell me you love me and then tell me you’re leaving.”
“I’m so sorry.” His words were spoken in a choked voice against my collarbone, but my heart recognized the truth. The empty promise of us. “I have to do this now, but someday things may be different—”
I shook my head solemnly and whispered into his hair, “There is no someday. People leave me, Finn. They don’t come back.”
Twenty
I
had a phone number and an e-mail I knew we would rarely, if ever, use. I had one text that said Finn would miss me, that he felt weaker with every mile away from me. His last text had simply said, “Good-bye.”
Two long weeks without him.
In that time, I delved into my research about silver auras and ended the school year with plans to go search for my mother as soon as I could. My head was busy, but my traitorous heart replayed memories of clove-scented kisses and the limitless depth of Finn’s gaze. How he ensnared everything in me when he was near. I had my own light, but Finn returned it to me, magnified. His eyes were a mirror for everything beautiful in me, things I didn’t see in myself until he reflected them back. With Finn, I was my truest self, a girl who knew what she wanted and went after it. I liked her. I vowed not to let her go, even if he had.
My father barely let me out of his or Janelle’s sight. The final week of the school year was miserable, amplified by the fact that I could barely concentrate on final exams. As soon as the last test was over, I walked numbly through the throng of kids with excited, summer-is-finally-here balloon colors around their bodies. I just wanted to be alone.
If I walked long enough and hard enough, I might be able to expel the ache in my chest. Maybe I’d get distracted by a vine exploding with purple flowers, clambering up a stone wall. I’d notice how the stray cat darting across the street had markings identical to a leopard. Marvel at the surprising beauty of a child’s pair of red patent-leather shoes clipped to a clothesline, collecting sprinkler-water in the toes. Maybe, if I kept my mind busy with these things, I could stop myself from thinking of the boy who took my heart to a moss-covered island five thousand miles away.
Ireland was a thief.
Eventually, I sat down on a bench in the park. Water immediately seeped into my jeans, pressing cold against my skin. Perfect. I leaned forward on my thighs and watched an ant heft a comparatively huge crumb, struggling to get where it needed to go. I had a sudden, mean impulse to put my foot down in front of it, to halt its progress the way my father always did with me.
A camera flash burst in my peripheral vision. Maybe it was a birthday party in the park pavilion, or a student taking close-ups of the miniature roses around the fountain. But when I looked up, I saw the pulsing, flashing white aura of the man who had stalked me. My breath stilled.
He was in close conversation with a woman wearing sneakers and a tracksuit. I shivered but stared, almost defiantly. The alarm ringing through my body was a welcome cloak over my heartache. I watched him, bent on understanding what he was, why he affected me so badly. His eyes met mine and a half smirk played on his mouth. He tore his gaze from mine, reluctantly it seemed, to refocus on the runner. Her small dog yanked frantically against its leash.
I couldn’t take my eyes off the man’s aura. It was so unusual, so startlingly void of the color that radiated from everyone else. It was beautiful and strange, like the albino redwood. It captivated me yet my blood ran cold with fear. W
hat was he? Was I witnessing the heavenly aura of an angel on earth? Is that why I saw him in the hospital when I was on death’s door? When Mrs. Oberman died? If so, why did he keep appearing to me? If he was the messenger of my death, would running make any difference? Wouldn’t Death be able to find me anywhere?
The woman’s hands waved animatedly, gesticulating as if pointing directions to a lost tourist. The man listened and nodded. The cloud of his aura reached out to her like an embrace. In response, her aura narrowed to a point in front of her chest and beamed toward him.
So slowly, like the taffy-pullers at the boardwalk, the man dragged her aura into his own. His eyes closed briefly. He sighed with a rapturous look of content as his own light brightened and enlarged.
One of the woman’s hands reached up instinctively to cover her heart, right over the leak she couldn’t see but could surely feel. It did nothing to stop the flow of energy leaving her body. She swayed a bit. He didn’t reach out to steady her, though she was obviously struggling. She reached toward him.
He took a step back. His hands stayed tucked stubbornly in his armpits.
I jumped to my feet. I wanted to run to her, help her. I wanted to run away and save myself. But my legs wouldn’t react to either thought. I was inexplicably frozen in place. I could only watch the terrible beckoning of her energy into his.
His gaze moved to mine and held. The sounds around me faded, the warble of pigeons, the squeals of kids jumping in puddles, everything receded so all I could hear was my heart beating hard in my ears. I felt a tug at my own chest, and an infusion of energy when our auras collided that I knew instinctively was coming from the woman.
It was as though he had shared a bite from his fork.
I shuddered with revulsion. Her terror coated my skin like oil.
He smiled.
The dog growled.
The woman stumbled.
I watched in horror as he siphoned her energy, her very soul, into his own. Her aura dimmed, then finally snapped from her like a rubber band. The white shroud around him burst like a solar flare as she fell to the ground.
The air around her went still.
A breath, held forever.
He stepped toward me, a shadow of a man obscured by his own white light. I held out my hands as if to stop him, but he kept coming closer, closing the distance between us in a few steps. The sensation I had while lying in the hospital helpless, of being pulled from myself, came rushing back to me.
“Stay away from me,” I shouted, panic making my voice shaky. I’d just watched a woman die. I didn’t want to die. “I’m not ready!” My own silver aura popped and sparked wildly. It burned coming out of me.
His eyes longingly devoured my aura. “I’ve waited too long for this,” he said, so low I barely heard him. “It’s folly to deny myself. We can search for another like you. Ready or not…”
My chest jerked violently again as he greedily tugged my light from me. I couldn’t breathe or move. My entire body grew weak and numb so that I couldn’t feel my hands or feet. This couldn’t be happening. My vision faded in and out. A fiery hole burned in my chest, burned my heartache to ashes, and spread throughout my body. Would the world forget I existed when the wind scattered me to the stars?
His ravaging halted seconds later when someone ran up to us, asking if we knew the woman on the ground, if we knew what had happened to her. The man’s eyes turned angry, but he covered it with a quick look of alarm. “Oh, good Lord. We should call an ambulance!”
Dizzy, swirling, I faltered. She didn’t need a freaking ambulance! She was already dead. He towered over me, radiating stolen light. This man with the white aura, he was no angel. You killed her, I wanted to say, tried to say, but my voice was gone.
He was evil. I knew it with everything inside of me. I’d witnessed a murder. One I could never prove. He never touched her, just like he never touched me. His menacing gaze was the last thing I saw of him before a crowd gathered and swallowed him up.
Only then did my legs obey. I backed away and ran. Faster, harder, farther than I had ever run before, with only one thought: I’m not safe. If someone can do that to people, kill with an invisible, evil hook of their aura into another’s, then none of us are safe.
Twenty-One
E
rratic silver sparks flared from my body as I ran. I was a girl on fire and had to remind myself that no one could see the flames. Except perhaps him, the man whose aura flared pure white, who had the ability to drain people of their life’s essence, who affirmed that mine was different, and who would have killed me, too, if he could have. He had tried. I was lucky to get away.
As soon as I reached my bedroom, my energy plummeted to my ankles like wrinkled socks. He took from me! His body had lapped up my silver aura like a greedy cat. Why? I knew without a doubt that people gave and took energy from each other every day. I could see it. I could feel it, and anyone paying attention to how their body responded around certain people probably felt it, too. But this was different. My breath came out in ragged, shivery bursts.
This was death.
He knew what I was, confirmed it with his venomous whispers before he tried to rip me from my body. I looked in the mirror. I had to know if my aura was affected, diminished somehow. Would I be able to see if I had less of it? But I saw a petrified girl with dark curls stuck to her sweaty face, freaked green eyes, and the same vibrating band of silver around her body. Too wobbly to stand any longer, I sat on my bed.
My arms prickled with fear. Had he been trying to kill me that night in the hospital? And if so, why hadn’t he succeeded? I had been weak, defenseless. I remembered only the sensation of coming out of myself, of crossing my arms over my body, before he backed away and disappeared. Faye had talked about people taking energy from others, but nothing I’d read online or in her books mentioned people who killed doing it. Her ominous warning sailed like a banner across my brain: There are those who want nothing more than to find someone like you.
He’d said something like that: We can search for another like you.
Apparently, I had fallen asleep at some point, still dressed, shoes squeezing my feet too tightly. The pillow draped over my head, and I tossed it aside only to have it hit my dad sitting next to my bed in the moonlight. I peered at him from between the streamers of my curls and started to sit up, but he stopped me. “No, baby. Don’t get up.” Tenderly and slowly, like he might never get to do it again, he brushed my wild hair out of my face. Even in the dark, his parental love was a rope of light, reaching for me.
“I have a surprise for you.” The crack in his voice was thunder to my heart. “I’m sending you to Chile with Mari and Dun.”
I was wide-awake at that point. “Really?”
“Your grandmother, she’ll—she’ll take care of you while you’re there.” Dad bent over and hugged me. “I love you. I hope you know that, always.”
My mind was racing. “It’s a great surprise, Dad. Thank you. But you’re not coming, too?”
I really wanted to meet Mami Tulke. I wanted to look into her eyes and watch her aura when I asked her about the phone conversation with my dad. I wanted to find out what she knew about my mother. But this sudden trip was too uncharacteristic of my father. “I need you to be straight with me. Why are you suddenly agreeing to this, and why aren’t you coming?”
“I can’t. Not yet, anyway. Remember I told you in the hospital that I’m on a team studying some mysterious deaths? Well, they’re on the increase. And it’s not confined to one place. These deaths are happening all over the world, including here in Santa Cruz.”
Yes. I’ve seen people drop dead like that. It’s beyond terrifying.
“Unfortunately, I’m needed here,” he said, “for the time being. We hope to rule out a virus, but the clock is ticking. It’s only a matter of time before someone in the media connects the deaths, and that would cause widespread panic, especially when we don’t know what’s causing it.” He leveled a serious look at
me. “I’m trusting you not to say anything. I’m telling you because you asked, but I don’t want you to think my work is more important than you. Nothing is. I’ll come to Chile as soon as I can.”
Despite the deep chill in my bones that wouldn’t leave me, I found myself getting excited when, two days later, my uncle Eduardo showed up with Mari and Dun to take us all to the airport. Janelle insisted on going to see us off.
The opportunity to get out of town was too good. It didn’t mean I wouldn’t be on guard in Chile, though. There were two fears I harbored: the killer with the white aura, and the fact that I had dug up a dangerous mystery in the forest. From the harrowing visions I saw in the key, death was the method most used to smother the truth.
The key nestled against my chest under my shirt. I didn’t know what the Light Key meant, but I wasn’t letting it out of my sight. My mother had held it and, somehow, it was like having her hand over my heart once again, like in the picture.
Grace was a constant presence in my thoughts. What happened to her? How would I ever find out? People who disappear do so forever, she had written. Who else was disappearing and who was responsible for the disappearances? Was it people like that man? It seemed to me, if I had the answer to that, I’d be one step closer to knowing her fate.
Uncle Eduardo parked at the drop-off curb at the airport. He gave Mari and me big, squeezy man-hugs and a hearty handshake to Dun.
“I’ll just go in with you,” Janelle said, absently twisting a button on her cardigan. “To see you safely to security.”
“Afraid I’ll sneak off to Ireland?” I asked without needing an answer. Janelle squeaked in surprise when I pulled her into a hug. “You don’t need to escort me to security. Just tell him you did.”
When I drew back, Janelle cupped my cheek and looked into my eyes, probably the most intimate gesture we’d ever shared. “I trust you, Cora.” Then her voice lowered. “But I’ve been in love, too. I can see you’ve been hurting pretty badly since Finn returned to Ireland. You’ve been so withdrawn, not yourself. Just don’t—” She stopped herself and smiled ruefully. “Well, like I said, I trust you.” To prove it, she hugged me again and slipped back into the car.