A Phantom Enchantment (14 page)

Jean-Claude sneered. “Articulate, and he can hold his liquor,” he said. “A worthy combination.”

“You better
ferme
your
bouche
before I shut it for you,” Flynn said.

But Jean-Claude, who towered over Flynn, just quipped, “I am trembling in your formidable presence.”

We were teetering on the brink of a very deep shithole, and I racked my brain for anything to defuse the tension. “Everyone just calm down,” I said, pulling out the “temporary dé-tente” card they always used in the movies. “Look, both of our teams made it through to round two. Which is incredible. So why don't we call a truce and save all these feelings of aggression and competition for the showdown in April? Come on, we don't need to cause a scene after Mademoiselle spent so much time planning such a beautiful event.”

Jean-Claude seemed to soften a bit, but Flynn still looked like he needed to pummel someone. “Can you get him out of here?” I asked Owen.

“I can try,” he said. He put an arm around Flynn, who shrugged off his best friend in anger.

“I'm sorry it had to be this way,” Jean-Claude said to Elise. “But like you said, you weren't looking for anything serious.”

And then Elise told him to eff off.

Jean-Claude and Yseult sauntered away, looking smug, and Elise turned back toward me. “Why, Emma? Why are you doing this to me again?”

“What are you talking about?”

“You know what I'm talking about! You stole Gray our sophomore year, and now you move in on Owen before we had even officially broken up.”

“Elise, listen to yourself. You just said that Jean-Claude broke up with you. How could he break up with you if you were still with Owen?”

“Owen and I agreed to see other people,” she said. “We didn't break up.”

“Well, maybe he wants to see me.”

“You don't do that to a friend.”

“I'm sorry, Elise,” I said, sick to my stomach over the whole thing. But as I watched Elise wiping away crocodile tears, I realized what was really going on. “No, you know what? I'm not sorry. You can't stand not being the center of attention, not having every guy fall madly in love with you. But you're the one that pushed Owen away. And then Jean-Claude dumps you, and you suddenly want him back? That's not fair to Owen. Or me.”

We both looked up and saw Owen walking toward us. His face expressed all the grace and generosity of a saint. And then a strange moaning sound came from the ceiling. Everybody looked up, and someone screamed as the Christmas tree began teetering, looking like it might topple to the ground.

“The tree!” someone shouted. “It's coming down!”

Everything seemed to lurch into slow motion as dancers scattered from the dance floor and hundreds of glass ornaments pelted the tiles, their impacts sounding like torrential rainfall. The stampede toward the back exit created a logjam, keeping us trapped near the tree. I looked up to the top of the stairwell where the gold angel had hovered just seconds before. But now I saw a demon standing there. A demon that looked an awful lot like Gray.

The last thing I remembered was reaching out my hand toward Owen as if I could somehow pull him to safety, and then we heard the creaking grow louder and louder until the final explosive thud as the tree came crashing to the ground.

C
HAPTER
14

F
ive of us in total were rushed to the emergency room. Although from the look of things, the entire student body of Saint-Antoine was at the hospital, wanting to get in on the gossip and spectacle. My wounds were superficial—lacerations on my face and arms, mostly from glass shards on the floor. Flynn's were about the same as mine. Another couple had received severe contusions from falling branches.

But Owen had borne the brunt of the fall. The tree had pinned him to the ground, and Monsieur Crespeau had been forced to cut branches away with a chainsaw so the medics could pull out Owen's body. They'd rushed him to the hospital since he was losing so much blood, and although his condition sounded grim, a nurse came to my room to tell me his injuries were not life threatening.

When all was said and done, Owen had suffered a fractured rib, a broken nose, and multiple cuts and lacerations. Somehow, Elise had made it through the ordeal unscathed.

When I was finally given the green light to leave my bed, I asked the nurse if I could visit Owen and found him laid up in his bed with Flynn and Nurse Elise at his side. He looked so vulnerable lying there in his hospital gown, connected to IVs and an oxygen mask.

“He's heavily sedated,” Elise told me, placing a proprietary hand on his arm. “But he's going to be okay.”

“Thank God,” I said.

“How are
you
doing?” Flynn asked.

“I'm okay. They want to keep me overnight for observation, but mostly I'm just scary-looking.”

Flynn smirked. “You can say that again. That's gonna leave a scar,” he said, tracing one of the cuts on my face.

“You're no beauty yourself,” I said.

“Chicks dig scars,” he said. Damned if that wasn't true.

“How long do you think they'll keep him here?” I asked Elise. I don't know why I was deferring to her, but she did have a pretty convincing Florence Nightingale routine going.

“A few days, probably,” she said. “The doctor said something about blunt trauma.”

“That doesn't sound good,” I said. “I can't believe the tree fell on him. How do you think that happened?”

“Just a freak accident, I guess,” Flynn said.

But I wasn't so sure. I thought about the ghostly image of Gray I'd seen at the top of the stairwell. Probably just a hallucination brought on by my terror. Still, I'd been having these feelings for weeks now, some sixth sense that someone was following me, watching me, and that this presence bore me ill will.

We stayed in the room for about an hour until the nurse told us we had to leave. Somehow Elise convinced her that she was Owen's girlfriend and was allowed to stay. But Flynn and I went back to our respective hospital rooms. I barely slept at all. Finally, I drifted off sometime around four
A.M.
but was awoken just a few hours later by a stream of hospital attendants coming in and out of my room. All I wanted to do was check on Owen, but it seemed to take hours for them to get my discharge papers ready and release me. Flynn succeeded in getting discharged before I did, so he came and waited for me and we went together to visit Owen.

Owen had been moved in the middle of the night to a room in the IC unit, but the one thing that hadn't changed was Elise's presence. There she sat, still by his side as if she'd been his ever-present girlfriend for all these months. I really didn't care anymore. I was too happy to see Owen sitting up and smiling, making some hilarious face when he tried the protein smoothie Elise was trying to make him drink.

“I swear this has spinach in it,” he said.

“It does,” said Elise. “And bananas, blueberries, avocado, sweet potato, soy milk, and psyllium husk.”

“Sillum what?” Owen asked.

“Husk. Tons of fiber. It's from this great juice bar I found on Rue Quincampoix.” Then she pulled out a cardboard carrier with two clear plastic cups filled with mint-green liquid. “Look, I got you guys bubble tea.”

She handed Flynn and me our teas, complete with blue tapioca balls at the bottom.

Flynn said, “Oh, we didn't warrant the protein smoothies because our injuries weren't severe enough?”

“Be grateful, dude,” Owen said, grimacing as he tried to stomach another swig.

“Why are you being so nice to us?” I asked.

“Well,” Elise said, “because I want to apologize. I know I've been a bitch over these past few months, and I've disappointed you all by defecting to the dark side, but I'm willing to work extra hard to make it up to you. Here's what I propose. You have to put together an opera in less than four months, complete with songs, singers, costumes, and sets. Now I'm not saying you should just give me the lead after everything I've done, but you know I can sing. And you know the part of Christine would look incredible on my transcript if I get into Berklee. But this isn't about me. This is about putting on the best opera we can. And you guys need me.”

Flynn was nodding traitorously, and I gave him an evil look. “What?” he said. “She's right.”

I sighed, feeling irritable and tired and desperate for my own bed. “Look, you guys do what you want to do. I'm going to my room to try and get a little sleep. I'll be back later tonight. Owen, text me if you need anything. I love you.”

I said those last three words with the casual air of one saying “God bless you” after a sneeze. Still, it meant a lot for me to utter those words to him.

“Wait, I'll come with you,” Elise said. “I've got to grab some things from the hostel for Owen.”

“I can do that, man,” Flynn said.

“No,” Elise said. “I'm happy to do it. Remember, this is payback time.”

“Thanks, Elise,” said Owen. And the sincere look in his eyes made me want to cry.

I really didn't feel like walking back to school with Elise. I wanted to be on my own. But Elise insisted on accompanying me, so I had no choice but to talk to her, even though I was still fuming over what she had done last night.

“Didn't Owen look so adorable all helpless like that?” she said.

“I prefer when he's able to walk around and move his head, but that's just me.”

“You're still angry,” she said. “About last night.”

“Yeah, I'm angry.”

“I know,” she said. “It wasn't fair, what I said to you. And it wasn't just because Jean-Claude ditched me. It's just . . . well, I still have feelings for Owen, Emma. And when I saw the two of you dancing, I went a little crazy.”

“Yeah, you did,” I said, quickening my pace. It was really cold, and Paris didn't seem quite so magical as it had last night.

“I know. I'm sorry. But I figured out what my problem is with relationships. It's that I can't stand being alone.”

I stopped and stared at her. Elise didn't break her façade of invincibility very often, so when she did, one took notice. “Elise, nobody wants to be alone—”

“No, you don't understand,” she said. “I can't be alone. I don't know how. It's like, I'm terrified that any second a guy is going to get sick of me and leave. So I don't let them get too close, and I always keep another guy in reserve. That way I can't get hurt. But with Owen, I really regretted it. Jean-Claude's kind of a douche.”

“You think?” I said. “Look, if you never let anyone in, you're never going to experience anything close to love.”

“Don't you think I know that?” she said. “Why do you think I'm fighting for Owen now? I want to fall in love, I do. But how can I believe in love when my own parents can't stand the sight of each other?”

“Just because your parents got it wrong doesn't mean you will.”

She sighed and shook her head. “Sometimes, Emma, it's like I can feel myself becoming my mother. Did I tell you she cheated on my dad? I worry that I'm incapable of being faithful. What if I'm just like her?”

“Elise, that's ridiculous. The mere fact that you're worrying about it means you won't make the same mistakes she did,” I said.

She smiled slightly. Once again, I was the one making her feel better instead of the other way around.

When I got back to my room, I was so exhausted I felt like I could have slept for a week. But even through my bleary eyes, I saw the thing I feared most. The mirror had been uncovered again. My mind immediately went to Monsieur Crespeau, but he usually cleaned during the school week, and after the drama last night, chainsaw and all, I couldn't imagine he'd be making his rounds this morning.

Something in my gut told a darker story. I felt Gray's presence in the room, like that loneliness from earlier in the year but more visceral, and then he seemed to pass right through me like a cold chill. Fear was my first emotion, but it was quickly replaced by anger. Why was Gray haunting me like this? Why wouldn't he let me go?

“Someone could have died in that accident!” I said out loud. “Owen could have died. I could have died!”

I knew I sounded insane, but I also knew Gray could hear me. Whatever he was, it was no longer the loving and generous person I'd fallen in love with. He was something twisted and dangerous now. “Go away!” I shouted. “Leave me alone. I can't love you anymore. Not like this. You have to let me go so you can be free. And I can be free. You're killing me!”

I was nearly crying, torn apart by my emotions, which seemed to take form in the air, swirling around me in an ever-sickening vortex. “Let me go, Gray,” I sobbed. “Let me remember you the way you were. So I don't have to fear you. So we can both move on.”

I didn't understand how this mirror had come to be the portal through which we were able to cross into each other's worlds, but I knew it had to stop. And there was one way to make sure it never happened again.

I grabbed one of my black boots from the closet. “I'm sorry, Gray, but I can't do this anymore.” I heaved the boot into the air and brought its heel down upon the mirror, cracking the glass right down the center. I struck it again and again, whaling away at the mirror until the surface was completely shattered into a spiderweb of fracture lines and shards of glass littered the floor. And then the room stilled, and I felt peace descend on me like a warm blanket. I took a deep breath and held it, listening intently, hearing nothing but my own heartbeat. I dropped the boot and shuffled to the bed, collapsing onto it like a stone.

A line from Tennyson's “The Lady of Shalott” echoed through my head as I fell asleep that night: “The mirror crack'd from side to side.”

Yes, it had. I had finally broken the love spell I'd recited and tossed into the Seine. But I had forgotten one thing about the Lady of Shalott.

It was only after the mirror broke that her true curse began.