Aven's Dream (13 page)

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 was 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.

E
ven 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 concentrate 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.

At the nutrition bell, I walked to Lizzie’s desk and told her I would see her after fourth. Then, I headed to Mr. Blake’s classroom to spend nutrition. The door to the journalism room was unlocked most of the time, which allowed students to wander in and out during the day to finish projects for the paper. When I got there, the classroom was empty and dim. Mr. Blake had probably gone to the teachers’ lounge before third period. I was relieved for the solitude as I clicked on a row of lights at the back of the classroom. Setting down my bag on a back table, I took out my copy of Hemingway. With any luck, I would have
For Whom the Bell Tolls
finished by the weekend. I sat down and flipped to chapter thirty-seven.

Time running out
. Hemingway’s book, described as his greatest work on the back cover, was classified as a war novel depicting the death of an ideal. Maybe I wasn’t focusing on Hemingway’s central message, because I found the story of the two lovers much more pressing than any political statement. My cheeks burned as my eyes continued to move across the page. Required reading had, up until this point, been less than descriptive in certain areas. The curtain always dropped just in time.

“
What do you think of Hemingway
?”

I turned at the sound of an unfamiliar voice and found a man sitting on the edge of Mr. Blake’s desk. His manner was relaxed, almost languid. I suddenly regretted only turning on one row of lights, since the stranger remained partially obscured in the shadows. From where I sat, I could tell only that he was young, early twenties at the most, almost young enough to be a student. But something about him told me he wasn’t. His clothing was casual. Jeans and an informal button-up shirt, leather jacket. His dark—almost black—hair was pulled back into a ponytail, but I couldn’t make out his features very well. I shivered when I realized he was wearing a pair of sunglasses.

“I’m sorry. Have we met before? Are you one of Mr. Blake’s student teachers?” I squinted, still disarmed by his spontaneous appearance.

“Yes, I am,” he said, sounding pleased with himself. Without moving, he seemed to sink deeper into the shadows. “And who might you be, my dear?”

He took off the glasses, and something at the edge of my consciousness clanged. He was oddly familiar, and I strained to remember from where. Is
he a student teacher?
I wondered. At least half a dozen of them had observed the class during the first week of the semester. I tried to get a better look at him, but it was useless. He was too far away, and the classroom’s windows let in very little natural light, as high up on the wall as they were.

As the moment stretched out, something about the stranger began to feel off, creepy. He hadn’t moved from where he sat on Mr. Blake’s desk, but the room felt like it was shrinking, becoming almost claustrophobic. My breath hitched in my chest, and I desperately wanted fresh air. The nutrition bell was going to ring in a few minutes, and relief flooded through me at the thought. When I tried to stand, I couldn’t get myself to move, like I was struggling against a current.

Watching the man across the room, I remembered one of my earliest memories from childhood. It had been an ordinary afternoon during the summer when my parents had taken me for a walk in a state park for a picnic. I had wandered to the edge of the field we had settled in when I came upon a snake—a rattler—coiled tightly, the diamond pattern of its scales fascinating. I remembered becoming completely still, some primitive instinct immobilizing me before I could reach out to touch it. My dad had raced up behind me, carrying me from danger before I had even realized there was any. The feeling of inertia was the same now.

“Your name, love,” he prompted again, his voice more commanding this time.

“Aven.”

I hadn’t meant to answer him.

“
Aven
,” he repeated. “Delicious indeed. You realize Aven means fair radiance, don’t you?”

My mind went blank at his words, and I sat perfectly still as the man stood and began moving toward me in slow motion. I watched, spellbound, as he approached. Seconds or minutes later, a deafening crash shocked me out of my trance.
An earthquake
, my memories from Southern California told me. Screaming, I dived under the desk. Then I heard someone calling my name. I couldn’t comprehend looking up to find Will’s face above me, his perfect features twisted in a mixture of fear and blood-chilling rage. In seconds, his arms were gripping me, lifting me from under the desk. I sagged against him like my bones had turned to mush.

He pulled me to him and gripped me so securely that I thought I would faint. My arms wound themselves around him, and without realizing it, I tightened my grip. He smelled so good, and the contact with his broad chest made me dizzy. Suddenly I didn’t want to let go. Not that Will was giving me much choice in the matter. His hands came up to my shoulders, and he shifted me until he could stare into my eyes. Our bodies were still touching, and every inch of mine was burning. Just then I realized that Will was holding me upright.

“Are you all right?” he asked, searching my face for something.

My eyes darted around the classroom.

“Where did he go?” I gasped.

I looked toward Mr. Blake’s now-vacant desk and then to the main door of the classroom, which was pushed in the wrong way and hanging from a single hinge. I turned again and saw broken glass on the floor behind me. One of the windows above the long counter lining the back wall of the classroom had been shattered, which must have accounted for the crash moments earlier.

“Did you see who was here with you?” Will asked with an undercurrent of desperation.

“You didn’t see him? There was a man here. A few seconds ago. At least I think it was a few seconds ago,” I muttered, again unsure of myself. “He showed up while I was reading. He said he was a student teacher …”

Will froze. His tone was guarded when he spoke again.

“What else did he say to you?”

“N-nothing, really. He asked if I liked Hemingway …” I looked around for the book I had dropped. “And he asked my name.”

Numbness began creeping over me as I thought over what had just happened.

“Did you tell him?” Will asked, his features still taut.

“I-I didn’t mean to.”

And
that
scared me. My name had just popped out of my mouth, like I couldn’t control it.

“Did you recognize him?”

I nodded slowly.

“I thought he
seemed
familiar for some reason, but I couldn’t see him very well.”

Will let out a shaky breath.

“You’re not hurt?”

I shook my head, but he looked me up and down again like he was making sure. The nutrition bell rang, the sound of it making me jump.

“What’s going on?” I demanded. “Wait a second. Was
that
the guy you were talking about?”

I thought it over. I had imagined someone older, scarier.

“It was. I’ll walk you to class, and from now on, I want you to tell me
exactly
where you’re going to be.”