Darkest Fear

by Cate Tiernan

  In less than a second my skin turned cold. “What?”

  Jennifer read from the newspaper. “ ‘A suspicious death was reported last Tuesday after hikers found a . . . body.’ ”

  I realized I had quit breathing, and I forced myself to inhale.

  Jennifer gave a concerned glance at my face, then went on. “This happened a bit upstate, close to Woodstock. It says, ‘The body has been identified as twenty-six-year-old Margaret McCauley. The cause of death was trauma to the chest. Upon autopsy, it was discovered that her heart had been removed. Police suspect that it was a ritual killing, but have no leads. Relatives of Ms. McCauley could shed no light on motive or suspect.’ ”

  A minute passed as I digested this. Once again, the ridiculous notion of the Talofomé popped into my mind, and I shook my head.

  “That seems weird, doesn’t it?” Jennifer’s voice was soft.

  I nodded, then cleared my throat. “Really weird. What day was that from? I’ll look it up online.”

  “It was from Monday. I’ve been meaning to call you ever since I saw it.”

  “Okay. Thanks. I’ll look it up, see if I can find out anything else.”

  “Okay. I’m sorry, babe. Should I have not told you?”

  “No, of course you should have told me.” I tried to give a reassuring nod. “Of course you should have told me.”

  “Okay. I better run. I have my Saturday lab.”

  “Right,” I said. “Thanks. I’ll talk to you soon. Have a good lab.”

  After we hung up, I lay on my back on my bed, looking up at the pale coral watered-silk fabric that was gathered under the half tester. When my heart stopped pounding, I sat up and flipped my computer open again. It took only a couple of minutes to search the online archives of the New York Times, and I soon found the article. Not really an article, just an inch or two of type. I made a note of the reporter’s name. I had to talk to Matéo about this.

  My thoughts were interrupted by my bedroom door flinging open so hard that it crashed against the opposite wall. I jumped, my heart lurching all over again.

  “Oops,” said Alex, standing there and flashing his bad-boy grin.

  “How about knocking?” I said. It was true, what I’d told Jen—Alex and I had fallen into an easy friendship. Because we weren’t going to date, we didn’t have to worry about appearances or seeming cool. I found that beneath his smooth, practiced charm he was actually smart, caring, and funny. And really full of himself. As a boyfriend, he would have broken my heart. As my pseudo-someday-possible cousin-in-law, he was comfortable.

  “I was going to. I don’t know my own strength.”

  My nerves were jangled and upset and I didn’t want to deal with him right now.

  “I’m here to ask you to come with us,” he said, casually sitting next to me on my bed. “We’re going to the river.”

  “Oh, I can’t, sorry,” I said, trying to look bummed. “I have work. Is Matéo here?” I wasn’t on duty today, but my schedule changed sometimes. No one would know.

  “No, he’s going to meet us later. Call in sick,” Alex suggested.

  “Oh gosh, no. My personal integrity won’t let me.”

  Alex chuckled and leaned back against the headboard. “Fellini was fun last week.”

  I looked at him, feeling myself calm down. I wanted to talk to Matéo about this new killing, but not at a river with a bunch of other people. “Yeah, it was. They’re having an Iron Man double feature next Sunday. Let me know if you’re around.”

  “Will do.” He turned to face me, and it was odd, because here we were, almost lying on my bed, facing each other. It was kind of like being with Jennifer, until he leaned over and kissed me. I’d thought he was leaning over to whisper or something; we’d firmly established the only-friends thing. My pulse quickened even as I pulled away from him, eyes wide.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  “It has occurred to me,” he said cheerfully, “that we can be friends . . . with benefits.”

  My eyebrows rose up into my hairline.

  “You’re not seeing anyone. I’m not seeing anyone. We like each other but don’t want an actual relationship,” he went on. “We’re over eighteen. Why shouldn’t we do the wild thing? I mean the regular wild thing, not the grrr wild thing.” He made one hand into a claw and swiped gently at the air.

  I was speechless, my few pathetic, failed dates having in no way prepared me for this situation.

  “You’re beautiful. A strong, beautiful girl. A haguara. We could have exciting times together—in any form.” He quirked one eyebrow suggestively, a smile on his handsome face.

  An image of two jaguars racing through the woods flashed into my mind. Then the gold jaguar caught the black one . . .

  Alex leaned in again, and I drew back quickly in true terrified-virgin style.

  “Ah, no,” I said clumsily. “It’s really better if we’re just friends.”

  “Look, I’m okay simply being a placeholder until you meet someone more suitable. That would be fine.” He propped his head on his hand, grinning: the most reasonable of men.

  I bet. I was so in over my head. My mom would have known how to handle this gracefully. What would she have done? I pictured her smiling, confident face.

  “No, I don’t think so; it’s not a good idea; thanks anyway” was the best I could come up with.

  Aly appeared in my doorway. “You coming, sweetie? We’re going to pick up Popeyes chicken on the way.” She saw my face and her eyes narrowed. “What’s going on here?”

  “Nothing,” said Alex smoothly, sitting up. “Just trying to convince Vivi . . . to come with us.”

  Aly looked at him suspiciously.

  “I wish I could go,” I said, trying for sincerity. “But I have to work.” I knew Aly would want to know about what Jennifer had told me, but something in me wanted to talk to my cousin first.

  “Call in sick,” Aly said.

  “You’re going to the river?” I asked,  deflecting her.  “It’s November.”

  “It’s seventy-eight degrees,” Alex said drily. “But it’s nice that it gets dark early.”

  Less chance of being seen.

  “Wish I could,” I said again.

  “Some other time,” Aly said. “Come on, Alex, quit bugging her.”

  Alex winked and made the call me hand signal. I rolled my eyes at him and he laughed, then headed across the hall to knock on Suzanne and James’s door. “Get a move on! Ten minutes! Also, we need your car!”

  After that first time, I had never been to the river again, though everyone else went every couple of weeks. Sometimes Matéo looked at me like he thought I was being a sissy, but what could I say? Even if I wanted to be fully haguari, which I didn’t, there was still the nakedness issue: Everyone shucked their clothes first so they wouldn’t get lost or torn. I mean, no thank you. I wanted to stay right here in my cocoon, not taking risks.

  In fact, since the first time I successfully changed by myself and changed back, I hadn’t done it again. Nothing upsetting had happened to force a change, and I’d stopped practicing. It was all getting a little too close, and I’d wanted to step back toward regular personness.

  It had been relatively quiet recently, until this news item from Jennifer: There had been no weird attacks, no one showing up at my house in Sugar Beach. I was getting more settled here every day. Soon I would really have to decide if I was going to move here—if I was, I probably needed to sell my parents’ house. That would be weird. Jennifer would be upset. Though I did think of Matéo’s house as being a cocoon, I knew that every cocoon had to split eventually and let the adult emerge. My time was coming.

  After everyone left for the river, the house was quiet and there was no faint, subtle pulse of energy that told me someone was near. No one was home except me. Glancing at the clock, I saw that Coco should be home any minute. I went back online and searched for the reporter who’d written the news report. His name was Nicholas Tareynt
on, and the paper listed his e-mail address.

  With trembling fingers I sent him an e-mail:

  Hello. I wanted to talk to you about the murder that happened in NY, outside of Woodstock, I wrote. Please e-mail me. It’s important. Viviana Neves.

  Shutting my computer, I knew I had to distract myself. Who knew when he would get back to me? If I didn’t hear from him in the next couple of days, I would try calling the paper, I decided. I slid off my bed, went to the bathroom, and splashed water on my face.

  What had Alex been thinking? He’d been thinking that I was a good shot for no-strings sex, I admitted wryly. And if I were experienced, as he assumed any eighteen-year-old probably was, it might not be a bad thing. But I wasn’t, and there was no way my heart could handle anything like casual sex, even with an easygoing friend like Alex.

  I pushed up one of my French windows and wandered out onto the balcony. Matéo had hired a tree service to trim back the branches of the magnolia—it would be hard for someone to jump from the tree to the porch again. The autumn sun shone on my skin, and I slanted my face toward it, closing my eyes. It was a beautiful day. I should go do something. Go somewhere. At least until someone else came home.

  In the end I wound up driving to Audubon Park, which was uptown, right across Saint Charles Avenue from Tulane and Loyola Universities. There were running paths and benches and kids’ playgrounds, and a small lagoon that had ducks and turtles in it. Enormous live oaks, still fully leaved, made pockets of shade. I parked on Saint Charles in front of the entrance and locked my car.

  The main entrance had two big gateposts with manicured flower beds all around them. A three-tiered fountain marked the center of a large circle lined with tree-shaded benches. Two teenage girls wearing Rollerblades sat on a bench, laughing, and on the other side a woman held her toddler up to drink from a water fountain. A man jogged up, his border collie on a leash, and the dog jumped joyfully into the fountain, splashing and leaping and drinking while the man laughed at him.

  Past the fountain was the paved road that cars had once been allowed to drive on but that was now blocked off and reserved for bikers and pedestrians. On such a beautiful day it was almost crowded, and I checked for bikes before heading out on it. Everything had gotten so confusing. On paper my life sounded simple: live at cousin’s house, work at coffee shop. But in some ways I’d never felt this pulled in so many different directions, never felt so incapable of knowing what to do. I needed to figure out my life.

  A quick walk in the park should take care of that, right?

  Suddenly I felt overwhelmed and lost—I had left my life in Florida and settled here, but I was in limbo, waiting for some unknown shoe to drop. I was no closer to knowing who had killed my parents or Matéo’s parents, no closer to understanding the weird situation with my mom and dad and Matéo’s mom. I had no idea if I wanted to go to Seattle next fall or ever, or if I wanted to stay here. Being haguari automatically felt like being sentenced to be a freak, except I saw every single day that that wasn’t true. For so long I’d felt I didn’t fit in anywhere, but I did actually fit in well with my cousin and Aly and their friends. I fit in just fine—and that would be perfect if I wanted to change much more often.

  I just didn’t know a single damn thing about myself.

  Hot tears came to my eyes. Without deciding to, I broke into a run, easily passing casual joggers, moms with strollers, little kids on bikes. In high school I’d longed to be on the cross-country team, but I’d felt I couldn’t take the chance of suddenly being weird in a locker room or on a bus. Now I ran smoothly and almost silently on the pavement, feeling my lungs pumping, my heart beating only slightly faster. My hair streamed out in back of me because I hadn’t thought ahead to put it in a ponytail. Or to put on shorts or a sports bra. I held my arms up in front of my chest, trying not to look too obvious.

  This is what you call running away from your problems, I thought, and gave a small laugh even as tears spilled from my eyes and ran down my cheeks. My legs were pistons in my jeans and I pushed myself to run faster and harder until I was whipping by everyone, even grown-ups on bicycles. The little map at the front of the park had said the path was just about two miles long—I lapped it twice, until my face was burning, my lungs aching, and my legs felt like warm rubber. Clouds had moved in, and it was late afternoon, starting to get dark. The park’s old-fashioned iron streetlamps came on. My shirt was stuck to my back with sweat and my hair hung in long, stringy strands. Gradually I slowed to a jog, then a walk, then stopped, hanging over from my waist feeling like I might faint. My hair dragged on the ground, my long hot jeans had rubbed my skin raw in places, and I wanted to throw up, then cry, then die. In that order.

  “It’s too much,” I whispered, gasping. “It’s too much. I can’t do it.”

  It took me a few moments to notice the blurry hand parting the curtain of my hair and holding a water bottle under my chin. I stood up quickly, sweeping my hair back. My chest was heaving, sweat ran down my face, and I was still crying.

  Rafael stood in front of me, holding the water bottle. “Drink this.”

  Wordlessly I took it and drank. The water was cool, and it felt amazing, making a lovely, soothing trail down my throat to my stomach. I wiped some of the condensation off the outside of the bottle and patted my forehead with it, then drank deeply again.

  When I handed it back, it was almost empty.

  “Thanks.” I was panting less but felt itchy and hot and tingly all over. Maybe I should go lie down in the fountain like the border collie.

  “You can run amazingly fast,” said Rafael. He brushed his arm against his forehead, and I saw that he was a sweaty mess too, his hair wet and spiky, his tank undershirt stuck to him transparently, showing the dark hair on his chest, his sharply muscled chest and arms. He was just so beautiful and he would never be mine and it almost made me hate him.

  I nodded.

  “What were you running from?” he asked.

  “Nothing. I was just running.”

  He shook his head. “No. When someone runs like that, they’re trying to get away from something.”

  I wasn’t going to talk to him about it. We got along at work because we didn’t interact very much. For weeks I had tried to train myself to not find him attractive, but of course I still did, so I’d given myself permission to lust after him physically but not emotionally.

  I was such a mess.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked.

  He nodded toward a shiny blue bicycle leaning against a bench. “Just riding around. I usually circle the park and go up by the river, then ride home. You want some more water?”

  “No, that’s okay. Thanks. I forgot to bring some.”

  Across the road from us, a determined toddler was insisting on pushing her own stroller while her parents walked behind her, helping her steer without her knowing. It was cute and I watched her, feeling Rafael’s eyes focused on me.

  “Do you want to get something to eat?”

  That got my attention and I looked at him. “What?”

  “Do you want to go get a po’boy at Domilise’s?” he asked. “It’s not far. Do you have your car?”

  An image of us sitting close, eating and talking and laughing, me gazing at him with adoration, flashed painfully into my mind. Far off I heard the soft, low rumble of distant thunder. The soft smell of rain came to me, and I inhaled.

  “Yeah, I have my car, but . . . that isn’t a good idea,” I said. “We have to work together.” Totally the right call, like with Alex earlier, but it didn’t feel like the right call. It felt sad and lonely.

  Rafael frowned, but he had only himself to blame.

  “Well, I’m going to go,” I said, and turned to head to the front of the park. “Thanks for the water.” As if on cue, a fat raindrop fell, splashing against my cheek. The next one landed on my head and seeped beneath my hair. Perfect. It was probably a mile back to my car. In the rain.

  Rafael’s voice stopped m
e. “Vivi, we—I want to—”

  Blinking against the quickening raindrops, I turned to see him wearing the same tortured expression he’d had the night we’d kissed. He just looked . . . upset. Frustrated. Uncertain. The next moment, his face cleared and he closed the space between us. Looking determined, he held my shoulders and kissed me. Just like before, all my nerve endings lit up. I was getting kissed a lot today.

  It should have been disgusting because we were both gross and sweaty, but instead it just felt very . . . primal. Like nothing could stop us. Like nothing else mattered. Soon we were pressed tightly together from knee to mouth, and if I could have, I would have crawled inside his skin to be closer still. I didn’t know what drew me so strongly to him, but whatever it was ran darkly and powerfully through my veins. My hands slid up his hard, wet forearms, then to his muscled shoulders. His skin was warm and silken and he just felt . . . perfect. A perfect fit. My ideal. There was no one who would feel better than this.

  It rained steadily and gently as night fell around us like a curtain. At some point Rafael pulled us deeper into the darkness beneath the patchy shelter of a thick-branched oak. I stumbled on a root and he caught me against him, mashing my chest against his, our hips hard against each other. Despite my relative lack of experience, I felt I knew what to do, what I wanted to do, and I did it. I held the back of his head with one hand, feeling the short, soft hair against his skull. Boldly I pushed my other hand beneath his damp shirt, feeling his skin, smooth and wet from rain. He shivered and made a sound against my mouth and I smiled.

  I was strong, I was a haguara, and I leaned into him till his back was against the tree. Threading my other hand beneath his shirt made the wet fabric bunch up, and I ran my hands anywhere I wanted. Harder and harder I kissed him, and he kissed me back just as hard. Then his hands were under my shirt, smoothing across my skin. I shivered too because of the rain and my feelings and the cooling night air. His hands ran across my bra and with deft skill he unhooked it. That should have made me pause, should have made me consider what I was doing, what I had never done with any boy before. But all it did was stoke the fire, the desire inside me.