Dark Star (8 page)

“That doesn’t mean it couldn’t have.”

And with that, he vanished, leaving behind nothing but empty air.

I stared into the space where he’d been. When he didn’t reappear, I let out a little growl of frustration and stalked out of the kitchen.

I considered hunting him down. He lived in our house now; he couldn’t avoid me for long. But I didn’t think he’d be any more forthcoming if I pressed the issue. Instead, I went up to my room and sat on my bed, my legs drawn up against me. I closed my eyes, going back over the evening in my mind, detail by detail. Tink pulling me into the ladies’ restroom. The smell of the makeup she’d applied, the touch of the brush on my cheek. Laughing our way to the dance floor. And then the alley: her red dress and the cuts on her ankles.

I didn’t know when I fell asleep, but when I dreamed, I dreamed of Tink.

She stood on the dance floor, alone. It was hot, everything close and confining. She needed space, needed to clear her head. She would go, she told herself, just step outside. She would taste the sweet night air. She would only leave for a moment—

Someone in the darkness. Watching.

A sharp rush of wind. The flash of her dress as she turned. The curve of her throat in the moonlight. It had brought her out here. It had been waiting. It had—

It.

I woke panting, staring out into the half-dark of my room, where starlight pushed through the blinds. I pulled the blankets tight against me and listened to traffic moving outside. My breath felt sticky, incapable of leaving my lungs. Because it hadn’t just been Tink. In the last flickering colors and flashes of the dream, I had seen something else.

The pale, bloodless face of Kelly Stevens.

When I called Tink the following afternoon, she repeated what Leon had told me, insisting that she’d only fainted.

It was probably the heat, she said. She’d felt crowded and dizzy and went outside for fresh air.

“I can’t remember a whole lot about it,” she said.

“What about your ankles?” I asked. “You fainted and just woke up with stigmata?”

“Yeah, you’re hysterical. Thanks for the sympathy,” she grumbled.

“I’m sympathetic! I’m just worried about you,” I said. My dream had been troubling me, that sense of something waiting. Watching.

It could have meant nothing. It could have just been a nightmare, conjured up by my anxiety and the shock of the evening. But I didn’t believe that. I hadn’t forgotten Leon’s words, or the frantic, frightening surge of Knowing that had sent me into the alley.

Tink sighed. “I think I landed on a beer bottle. I’m lucky I’m not still digging out glass.”

Exactly as Leon had said. Somehow, that didn’t reassure me. But I didn’t know how to press the matter without explaining about my Knowing, and when I asked about the man who found her, she sounded genuinely confused.

“I thought you found me,” she said. “Can we please stop talking about this? I’m traumatized enough, and what’s worse, I’m sick. I feel terrible. I might even be dying.”

As it turned out, she had the flu. Or possibly bronchitis—she wasn’t certain. She stayed home from school the entire week and spent her days wrapped up in blankets, eating chicken soup and watching soap operas.

The next time I called her, she could barely croak out her words.

“You really do sound like death,” I told her.

She coughed into the phone. “I’m just bummed I have to miss the Halloween party at the Drought and Deluge.”

“Maybe you could still come to Gideon’s party,” I suggested. “You won’t even need a costume. Just start coughing and call yourself the plague.”

“I can’t do that, either,” she sighed. “Mom’s still pretty upset about Friday. She’s not letting me out of the apartment. And before you ask me again, it was really nothing. I got light-headed, that’s all.”

I still wasn’t reassured. Once Mom had heard about what happened, she’d forbidden me from ever returning to the Drought and Deluge. Which meant, whatever had happened to Tink, it wasn’t as simple as fainting.

Not that anyone would tell me. Mom insisted I shouldn’t worry, and Leon refused to talk about it. Whenever I tried to bring it up, he told me to let it go, and then conveniently found somewhere else to be.

But the thought wouldn’t leave.

“If Tink isn’t upset about it, I’m not sure why you are,” Gideon told me on Wednesday night. I’d once again invaded his home, since Mom and Leon had both left before dinner, and Gideon offered me spaghetti. If there was one thing I appreciated about the Belmonte family, it was their food. I had no idea how Gideon was so thin.

“She wouldn’t talk about it if it did upset her,” I said. “You know how she is.”

“Tink the turtle,” he said, nodding.

“I think you mean ostrich.”

“Turtle sounds better.” He lowered his voice, even though we were in his room and all three Belmonte sisters were safely ensconced upstairs playing video games. “Is this something you know, or something you Know?”

“It’s just a feeling,” I hedged. I wasn’t certain myself. “You said yourself your feelings aren’t always right.”

I didn’t answer. Gram had always reminded me of that, too. Knowings could be wrong, she said—or at least our interpretations of them. She would tell me to focus, to feel, to listen to what my senses were trying to tell me. It was all there, waiting, she’d say.

But I hadn’t been able to sort out my senses. I was missing some piece.

My gaze drifted to the window well, where the edge of darkness crept in. The window was open, and the cool air brought with it the smell of rain and crushed leaves. I thought of Tink lying in the alley, the trail of blood that wound down her skin. Maybe it wasn’t really a Knowing after all—just the memory of one. My mind playing tricks on me.

“You’re right,” I finally said, turning away from the window. “I should probably just forget it.”

***

I didn’t forget it.

It wasn’t my fault. I tried to set my uneasiness aside. I concentrated on other things, like the test coming up in Chemistry, and the fact that I’d scheduled my next driver’s exam and I still couldn’t corner back.

But at school, Tink’s absence left a gap. Someone would mention her, and my thoughts would drift back. I’d recall the scent of bleach, the silence in the alley, that tremor of fear in my lungs. So I didn’t forget—I was just quieter about it.

Then, during Precalc on Thursday, Mr. Alvarez asked me to stay after class.

I hadn’t been paying attention. I’d been thinking about Gram, what she might have done. Her Knowing hadn’t been as strong as mine, but she’d been able to focus it better.

Of course, she also didn’t need to deal with irritable math teachers. I watched with dread as the rest of the class filed out.

“Torture by mathematics should be a felony,” I grumbled to my friend Erica, who shot me a consoling look as she darted out of the line of fire.

Apparently, Mr. Alvarez had heard me. Seated at his desk, he paused with his coffee cup raised halfway to his lips. “It would be a lot less painful if you just did your homework,” he said. He took a sip, then set his mug down on a stack of papers. “You’re a smart girl. You simply lack patience. Not liking something doesn’t mean you’re not any good at it. But that’s not what I wanted to talk to you about.”

I waited. Talking too much tended to earn you extra quizzes with Mr. Alvarez, and even though class was over, I wasn’t taking any chances. It was also best not to make eye contact. I kept my gaze fixed to the top of his head. There was chalk in his hair.

For a long moment, he didn’t speak. He just sat there, tapping his fingers against the desk. I risked meeting his eyes. He was watching me with an expression that wasn’t quite a frown. Finally, he said, “How’s Brewster doing?”

That meant Tink. Mr. Alvarez was one of those teachers who called everyone by their last name.

“She’s fine,” I said. “I mean, she’s sick, but it’s not a big deal.” According to her, anyway. I wasn’t sure why Mr. Alvarez cared, since she hadn’t had class with him all year, and according to her, she never would again.

His eyebrows snapped together. “You’re sure?”

I bit my lip. Tink’s mom must have notified the school about her fainting episode. Tink couldn’t be happy about that.

I watched Mr. Alvarez. He was difficult to read, but I sensed his concern was genuine—and strangely tinged with alarm. His eyes were troubled, and there was a grim, foreboding look on his face. I couldn’t determine what it was, but he was worried about something. And given his history with Tink, it was probably something horrible. Like he thought she partied until dawn every night, and her weekends were filled with drugs, gangs, and orgies.

I hurried to dispel this notion. I found myself repeating Tink’s words. “It’s just the flu. She’s really fine.” Not that I believed that; I just hoped he would.

“Glad to hear it,” he said, but now he looked downright ominous.

And then—as my mother so often accused me of doing—I said the first thing that popped into my head. “Fainting runs in her family. And, um, she’s diabetic.”

Tink was going to kill me.

At least that got a reaction. He interrupted his frown in order to blink at me. “She’s not diabetic.”

“I meant anemic.”

Now he probably thought I was on drugs.

Instead of suggesting I take a trip to the nurse’s office, however, he gave me the ghost of a smile and went back to tapping his fingers. “I’ll let you go before you dig yourself any deeper.”

I passed Brooke Oliver on my way out. “Careful,” I warned. “He’s scarier than usual today.”

She looked at me like I was demented. I decided not to mention it to Gideon.

***

At lunch, Tink was still on my mind.

There was a reason my Knowing had flared up that evening at the Drought and Deluge, a reason I’d known I needed to help her. There was a reason I’d had that dream. Where most people saw coincidence, Gram saw connection. Patterns, she would tell me. Patterns in the universe. Events that merged, ideas that overlapped.

I thought back to my conversation with Tink: her assurances that nothing was wrong, her cheerful tone when she talked about missing school. That catch I’d heard in her voice now and then. The things she wouldn’t say. There was something… .

The Halloween party at the Drought and Deluge. Two were being held: one on Saturday, when the club would be its usual twenty-one plus, and one on Friday, for sixteen-and-up. The same crowd that had been there last week.

I closed my eyes, recalling the way my frequencies had suddenly cleared, the way my Knowing had screamed within me. Proximity was a factor with Knowing. Not the only one—but physical closeness helped. I couldn’t properly focus on what had happened at the Drought and Deluge while sitting at home.

Gideon’s plate clattered down beside me at our table. “Save your nap for Chemistry. We’re watching a movie.”

“I wasn’t sleeping, I was thinking,” I said. I pushed my coleslaw around with my fork. “How upset would your mom be if I missed the Halloween party?”

Each year, the Belmonte family threw a big Halloween bash. Gideon’s father converted the yard into a haunted garden, complete with fake gravestones, electrical skeletons, and flickering lights. He decorated the house in orange and black, with cotton cobwebs that dangled from ceilings and door frames. And every Belmonte was expected to be in costume, including the various Belmonte pets.

Gideon frowned. “Bad idea, Audrey.”

I crossed my arms and leaned back in my chair. Gideon might not have a Knowing, but he knew me, and I could tell from his tone of voice that he’d already guessed what I was up to.

“Something happened to Tink at the Drought and Deluge,” I argued, keeping my voice low. No one at the nearby tables was paying attention to us, but I didn’t want to chance starting more rumors. “I mean—something she’s not saying.”

“And so it makes perfect sense for you to go back there,” Gideon retorted. “What are you going to do? If there’s a problem, I’m sure your mom will look into it. Or tell the cops.”

But aside from warning me away, my mother hadn’t said anything. And she couldn’t be everywhere at once. Minneapolis wasn’t a small city, and there was St. Paul to look after, too, and the suburbs.

“I’m going to find out,” I told Gideon. “I think I can help.”

I had to go with instinct on this one. And if there wasn’t anything to it, if I was wrong, at least I’d know.

Gideon was less convinced. “Help how? You don’t even know what happened.”

“Hence going to find out.”

He hesitated, leaning back in his chair and giving me a dubious frown. “You sure you’re not just out to prove something?”

I matched his frown. “Like what?”

“I don’t know, that you’re a badass like your mom?”

He had me there. I would’ve liked nothing more than to have been parceled out a share of my mother’s abilities, and he knew it. “Well, there’s nothing like having a superhero in the family to make you feel inadequate,” I admitted. “But that’s not what this is about.”

“You swear?”

“I swear. It’s just—it’s something I need to do.”

Gideon sighed noisily, shaking his head. “Then I suppose I’d better go with you.”

Fall announced its presence overnight.

I woke Friday morning to the wind beating against my window and a dense cloud cover blotting out the sun. A cold rain began before Gideon arrived to pick me up in the morning, and by the time school was over, the streets and gutters were full of wet leaves. Thunder rumbled, low and ominous as night fell. The sky looked bruised. Suitable weather for Halloween, I thought.

By six that evening, I was beginning to wonder if it were some kind of sign. As a rule, I didn’t believe in omens, since nothing in life had taught me that nature was a better predictor of the future than my own intuition, but I began to feel a hint of unease. Still, it was only a storm. I wasn’t about to change my plans because of a little water.

Mom had been complaining about the storm since I arrived home. Being a Guardian meant going out even when the weather was nasty, but—as my mother often told me—that didn’t mean she had to like it. Fall and winter had the effect of making the Guardian lifestyle seem a lot less glamorous, even if the cold didn’t affect her the way it did me.