Ghost Hold

by Ripley Patton

  “Let’s go,” I said, slipping out from under his arm and heading to his car, where I made a point of climbing in the back and letting Passion sit next to him in the front. If Marcus was going to be that pig-headed, so could I.

  “Where’s Samantha?” Passion asked as he revved up the engine. “I was hoping she’d ride with us.”

  “Nah. She always goes ahead to get things ready,” Renzo explained. “And Lily is driving Eva and her groupie in her car.”

  “Oh,” Passion gave a sigh of disappointment.

  As we pulled away from the curb and the Porsche pulled out as well, I didn’t miss the flash of a third car’s lights, obviously following farther behind us. Leo’s car had never left the McMansion, and it gave me some comfort to know he was still on duty. We weren’t completely on our own.

  What had Marcus been thinking? Did he assume that because he had guns, we’d be fine? Or was he so obsessed with talking to his long lost Samantha that he thought it was worth the risk? Or maybe, once again, there was some crucial piece of information I was missing that would help all this make sense. A piece of information he was withholding from me.

  I had no idea. And as we drove into the night, the moon rising early over Indianapolis, I rolled down my window and let the winds of fate swirl around me.

  29

  THINGS GET WORSE

  We picked up Dimitri and he climbed into the back beside me, the lights of the Porsche hitting us like a spotlight through the rear window.

  “Those your boys back there?” Dimitri asked.

  “They don’t belong to me,” I said grumpily, and he laughed.

  “Then you’re doing something wrong,” he said, and I was pretty sure he was right.

  We took off and soon we were out of town and driving on a wide highway, the lights of other cars flashing past us and the Porsche humming behind us. I tried not to fall asleep like I always do on long car rides, but I must have zoned out or drifted off, because the next thing I knew Dimitri and Passion were in the middle of a conversation about Alexander James’s art gala.

  “It’s a real big deal this year,” Dimitri said, “because he’s finally managed to purchase this collection he’s wanted for years. It only became available in the last few days, and I guess the paintings are going to officially change hands at the gala.”

  So, the unveiling wasn’t going to be of his special PSS collection then, but of some new acquisition.

  “Who’s the painter?” Passion asked perkily.

  “Stephen Black,” Dimitri said. “He’s the guy who painted The Kaylee. You’ve seen it, right? Anyway, I guess his widow finally decided to unload his entire body of work. Isn’t that incredible timing?”

  “What did you say?” I asked, turning my head in what felt like slow motion. My eyes panned past Passion’s face, noticing the look of shock frozen there, then went on to fall on Dimitri’s, the look of excitement and elation on his in stark contrast.

  “I said Alexander James is buying this collection at the gala tonight,” Dimitri reiterated for me. “And the deal’s only been in the works for a couple of days.”

  I could guess exactly how many days. I could guess it right down to the exact hour in fact. I’d be willing to stake my life on it that this deal had been struck on Wednesday afternoon about half an hour before I’d been summoned to Mr. James’s office. My mother had come begging for him to find me, and she’d cut the only deal she could, with the only thing she had that he might want. And Alexander James had jumped on that business proposition like the bastard he was.

  Which would have been bad enough, but that wasn’t all.

  He’d located me, the missing girl, thirty minutes later. I’d walked right into his office, but he hadn’t told me about that deal, and he hadn’t called my mom, because the legal paperwork for the sale of my dad’s collection probably hadn’t gone through yet. Which was exactly why he’d given me the generous offer of not informing my mother of my whereabouts until Monday—when the deal would be sealed.

  Every painting my dad had ever painted except The Other Olivia was about to become the property of Alexander James and his precious Hold. And he’d screwed over both me and my mom to get it. He’d never cared about me, or my hand, or redeeming himself over my sister’s loss. This had been his game all along. He’d wanted to take everything I had left of my father from me.

  “Stop the car,” I said to Renzo.

  “What?” Dimitri said.

  “Stop the car.” Was I whispering? Was I mumbling? Were the words coming out of my mouth some foreign language no one else could understand?

  “Olivia, it’s going to be okay,” Passion said, forgetting to use my fake name, her face gone white as a sheet.

  “Stop. The. Car. STOP THE FUCKING CAR!” I screamed, surging forward and trying to grab Renzo around the neck from the back, but Passion caught my gloved hands, holding them, squeezing them.

  “What the fuck?” Dimitri yelled.

  “Stop the car, please,” Passion pleaded with Renzo. She was literally blocking me from climbing over the seat and throttling him. “Stop the car,” she said again, almost a sob. “She’s having a panic attack.” And it was true. A truer thing had never been said.

  Renzo swerved, throwing me off Passion and into Dimitri’s chest, and then we were on the side of the interstate and I was clawing at the car door, fumbling at the handle, throwing it open and stumbling out. The cool night air hit me like a smack in the face, but it didn’t clear my hysteria. If anything, it made it worse, made me feel sharper, made me know harder what a complete idiot I’d been and that I’d ruined everything. For my mother. And for me. My choices had led to this complete and utter ruin.

  I walked to the shoulder of the road, halfway between the Mercedes and the Porsche which had pulled up behind us, its light blinding me from looking the way I needed to look. The way I needed to go. Back to Indy. Back to stop my mother from throwing everything away for nothing.

  “Is she okay?” someone asked from behind me.

  “Olivia,” Marcus called as he opened his door, his silhouette stretched huge and gruesome in the light of the oncoming traffic. “What’s the matter?”

  Voices.

  “Why does everyone keep calling her Olivia?”

  “Shouldn’t we help her?”

  “Let her brother do it. She’s completely wacked.”

  “Olivia,” Marcus said, grabbing me, taking hold of both my arms. “It’s okay. Are you still sick? Do you need to throw up?”

  He sounded concerned. But he didn’t know anything.

  “No,” I said, shaking my head. How could I make him understand? “She’s selling it all,” I said. “He’s taking it all. Tonight. That’s why he let me go.”

  “Who’s selling what?” he asked, confused. “I don’t understand.”

  “My mom,” I said. “She’s selling my dad’s art to pay for him to find me. She’s giving it to him at the gala tonight. Right now.”

  “What are you—” He froze, understanding dawning in his eyes. “You mean Alexander James?”

  “Yes,” I sobbed, burying my head in his chest, feeling his arms come around me like they should have in the first place. “We have to go back,” I cried shamelessly into his shirt. “You have to take me back. I have to stop her. Please. Please help me stop her.”

  “Shhhh,” He stroked my hair with his hands, crushing me to him. “It’s going to be all right. I promise. Calm down. It’s going to be okay.”

  “No,” I gasped and shook my head, gripping his shirt in both my hands and wiping my dripping nose on it at the same time. “We have to stop it. We have to go back.”

  “Listen to me.” He took my face in his hands and made me look at him. “Going back won’t accomplish anything. He’s probably told his security specifically not to let you into the event. Even if we went back, the deal would be done before we ever got there. We can’t stop this by going back. We can only stop it by going forward.”

  “B
ut how?” I cried, tears streaming down my face.

  “I don’t know.” His eyes were on mine, dark and true. I hadn’t seen him look at me like that since the night in the bathtub. “I have no idea, but I promise you, I will help you fix this.”

  “I don’t believe you.” I tried to pull away from him. “You always lie to me.”

  But he wouldn’t let me go. I was trapped. Forever trapped by him and his lies and my own stupidity.

  “Let go of me!” I screamed, struggling against his hold, battering my fists against his chest and kicking at his legs. The harder I struggled, the harder he held me, until I was pinned against him, crying and limp.

  “I’m sorry I hurt you,” he murmured, and I could hear the rumble of the words through his chest, accompanied by the Thu-bump of his amazing heart, just like I had so long ago on a hill overlooking Umlot Memorial Hospital when I’d first fallen for him. “I should have told you about your sister as soon as I’d guessed,” he went on. “I should have been there for you in that moment, but I was too afraid.”

  “I’m afraid now,” I whispered. “I’m so afraid.”

  “Me too,” he said, squeezing me until I could barely breath. “Because I think I love you.”

  “What?” I looked up at him. I could not have heard that right. He had not just told me he loved me while I threw a hysterical tantrum on the side of the road with people watching who thought we were brother and sister.

  “I’m pretty sure I love you,” he said again, only a little louder, looking down at me.

  “What about Samantha?” I blurted.

  “What about her?” He sounded completely confused.

  “I thought—I mean she seemed really important to you. You’re not in love with her?”

  He stared at me, his eyes first puzzled, then almost amused. “Um, no. I’m not in love with Samantha. It’s—I—don’t be mad at me, okay, but I didn’t tell you everything about my connection to the James family.”

  “Of course you didn’t,” I said stiffly, starting to pull away.

  “Olivia, please,” He pulled me back. “I’m trying to come clean here. I’m trying to tell you the whole truth.”

  “Okay, tell me.”

  “Samantha is my cousin. And Alexander James is my uncle. He’s my mom’s brother.”

  I stood there for a moment, absorbing that. Samantha and Marcus were cousins. They’d grown up together in The Hold. And when he, and Danielle, and his parents had left, she’d wanted to leave with them, probably because she was six and didn’t understand their disenchantment with The Hold. But I understood why he had to make sure. Why he needed to talk to her.

  “And what else?” I said.

  “There’s nothing else,” he answered. “That’s it. No more lies or surprises. I’ll tell you anything you want.”

  “Anything?”

  “Fire away.”

  “Do you only think you love me? Are you pretty sure you love me? Or are you absolutely positive?” I asked. “Because it’s kind of an important distinction.”

  “I think I’m pretty positive I love you.” He grinned down at me.

  “Good, because I’m pretty positive I love you.” I looked into his chocolate brown eyes. “I want to kiss you so hard right now.”

  “That would be nice,” he said, “but probably very confusing for some of the bystanders.”

  And that’s when I remembered we were on the side of an Indianapolis interstate with six people looking on.

  I glanced behind me and saw Dimitri and Renzo standing on one side of the Mercedes, confused and concerned looks on their faces. Passion was leaning against the bumper, and she gave me a tentative, questioning smile when I caught her eye.

  I turned and looked past Marcus to the Porsche, its lights now off. Yale, Jason, and Nose were still sitting in it and looking on, their faces interested but carefully neutral.

  “We’ll figure this thing out with your mom and the paintings,” Marcus said, pulling my attention back to him. “Samantha has lots of sway with her father. Let me talk to her, and we’ll see what we can do. This isn’t over yet. Not by a long shot.”

  “Okay.” I nodded.

  “But come in the car with me,” he said. “I want you near me.”

  “What about Passion?”

  “She’ll be fine,” he said, taking my hand and turning toward the Porsche.

  “Hey,” I turned back, calling out to Passion. “I’m going in the other car. I—we’ll see you there.”

  “Okay,” she called back, waiting for a minute and then ushering Renzo and Dimitri back into the Mercedes. I was pretty sure there’d be a discussion in that car about what had just happened, and I didn’t envy Passion having to explain it.

  Marcus opened the back door of the Porsche for me, and I climbed in next to Jason.

  “Hey,” Jason said in way of greeting.

  “Hey,” I said back, as Marcus crammed himself in next to me and shut the door.

  When I turned to Marcus, he took my face in his hands, his eyes sparkling and speaking to me almost as well as his lips did when they fell on mine.

  And then we kissed a lot, which might have made the other guys in the car a little uncomfortable.

  But neither of us really cared.

  30

  THINGS GET COMPLICATED

  About fifty miles northwest of Indianapolis, a huge forest of giant oaks and hemlocks rose out of the flat, over-farmed landscape in front of us. The trees looked completely out of place in the Midwest, like some dark, magical woodland had been plucked right out of an old English fairy tale and plopped in front of us. I could see the twinkle of other headlights between the braches, and when I rolled down the window, I could hear voices, drifting to us on the cool night wind.

  Yale followed Renzo’s Mercedes into the park, navigating the small winding road to an old brick gatehouse and through the open gate, even though a sign clearly stated that the park was closed for seasonal trail repairs. We pulled up into the dark parking lot, populated with ten to fifteen other cars. Yale turned off the engine and we all sat, looking at Marcus, waiting for him to tell us what to do.

  “Let’s do this,” he said, throwing open his car door and pulling me out by the hand after him.

  Passion, Renzo, and Dimitri were getting out of the Mercedes next to us.

  “You okay?” Passion asked, brushing up against my shoulder as we walked away from the cars.

  “Yeah,” I answered, feeling such a jumble of emotions that I didn’t know whether to smile or cry. “He’s going to do something about the paintings. We’re going to talk to Samantha.”

  “Good,” she said nodding, “I can too, if you think it might help.” Then we were suddenly standing in a group of about thirty people, all teenagers like ourselves, girls and guys, none of them with obvious PSS that I could see—but that was easy enough to hide. Everyone was talking, loud and excited, and I caught sight of Lily briefly, but I didn’t see Samantha anywhere.

  “Okay, everyone, listen up,” Renzo barked, standing on a large rock, his pirate patch gone, his PSS eye piercing us into silence. Dimitri was standing next to the rock, his arms piled high with the black cloth I’d noticed him pulling out of the Mercedes trunk when we’d first parked. “We have robes for you to put on,” Renzo explained. “Dimitri will be handing them out. If you don’t want to wear one, that’s fine. Go back to your car and wait for the rest of us to come back because the robe is only the beginning of what we’re going to ask of you tonight. This is the Eidolon, and it’s a sacred ritual, so deal with it.”

  Sacred ritual? I glanced at Marcus, but he wasn’t looking at me. He was scanning the crowd for Samantha.

  “Here you go,” Dimitri said, holding out robes to us and eyeing me cautiously as if he thought I might whack out again.

  “Where’s Samantha?” I asked.

  “She’s waiting for us further up the path,” he said, nodding to a trailhead that started beyond Renzo’s rock perch.

  �
��Oh, okay,” I said, taking a robe. It was more like a cloak or a cowl than a robe, black and heavy with a large hood and wide sleeves. It didn’t have an opening at the front but simply pulled over your head. And they must have been one size fits all, because Passion and I were swimming in ours while the guys’ robes barely fell below their knees.

  I pulled my hood up over my head, and noticed others doing the same, and in a matter of moments the parking lot looked like a convention of Sith Lords.

  “Next step,” Renzo said, now cloaked as well. “Get rid of all your phones and electronics. Lock them in your cars. We’re not going to frisk you, but trust me when I say you’ll be sorry if you bring them.”

  “I’ll take the phones back to the car,” I said to Passion, pulling mine out. She handed hers to me, and I grabbed the keys from Yale. None of the guys had brought phones apparently, or they’d decided to risk taking them. I mean, what was sneaking in a phone compared to sneaking in a firearm? I knew Marcus was carrying because I’d felt his gun holstered inside his jacket when we were making out in the back of the Porsche. At this point, I was assuming the only one who wasn’t armed was Yale.

  Phones and keys in hand, I wound my way back to the car through a sea of robed strangers, and unlocked it to toss the phones in the glove box. Then I relocked the car and stepped away from it, ready to wade back into the crowd. It was pretty cool wearing the robe, the way it flowed around my legs when I walked and gave me a feeling of anonymity and power that my normal clothes just didn’t.

  “Hey, Anne,” someone said to my left, and I turned to see Eva’s pale, freckled face peeking out at me from her hood, a taller robed figure standing behind her and holding her hand.

  “Hey, Eva,” I said, smiling in greeting. This must be her college boy I’d heard so much about. I glanced at up at him, his hooded head turning so we could finally see each other clearly.

  “This is Grant,” Eva said, beaming, as she introduced me to my best friend’s brother. “And this is Anne.” She introduced me to him. “She’s new to Indy. Her family just moved here.”