Endless (Shadowlands) (8 page)

“I don’t understand,” I said, grasping Joaquin’s jacket as I tried to calm my racing thoughts. “How long were we gone? How long were we in there?”

“Three seconds,” Bea replied. “What the hell did you see?”

Joaquin and I locked eyes. I shook my head. I’d run for at least five minutes. Maybe ten. After three years of cross-country races I knew how to judge the length of my run.

“He wasn’t there,” I said, unable to imagine trying to explain what had gone on inside the mist. “He wasn’t…He wasn’t there.”

Joaquin held me to him, his arms locked tightly around me as the rain consumed us. Then, through my wet lashes, I saw a flash of pink, and suddenly Krista was running through the muck in our direction.

“Krista? What’s wrong?” Bea called out.

“The mayor sent me to get you. She’s losing it, guys,” Krista said, gasping for breath as she braced her hands over her knees. “You better come back. Like, now.”

Standing under the same white party tent we’d used for Krista’s anniversary party almost a week ago, which had been erected over the flagstone patio behind the mayor’s house, we could hear the patients inside getting ready to move out. Between the pane dividers on the French doors, I saw the mayor hovering over a map of the town with a few visitors, explaining where to go as a group headed to the front door. The clinic was emptying.

“Dude, your boy’s on the prowl,” Fisher said, tilting his head toward the side of the house.

Joaquin walked around to see better, and I automatically went with him. Jack Lancet, one of Joaquin’s more evil charges, was pacing outside one of the east-facing windows, looking through the panes with a creepy smile on. The man had been executed after murdering three helpless children.

“Sonofa—”

Joaquin stormed right over to him, grabbed him by the back of his coat, and flung him away. Lancet hit his knees, muddying the front of his pants, and looked up at Joaquin with pink shame painted across his cheeks.

For a split second, I felt sorry for him. He looked sad, almost disgusted with himself, as he cowered in the rain. Part of me wanted to go help him up, offer him a kind word. But then my logical side kicked in.

The guy is sick, Rory. Sick. He hurt—killed—little kids.

It was that one word that wedged itself inside my chest, though, and stuck, like something jagged and raw.
Sick.
Who was to say what made people do the things they did? Was it nature? Nurture? Their own logic? Their needs and their longings? What had made me kill Steven Nell that day? Why was it my instinct to lash out and take his life rather than to turn the other cheek?

This horrible ache settled deep inside me, and I longed for my mother and the comfort of her words in a way I hadn’t in a long time. At the same moment, I wished like hell that Tristan had made good on his promise to be there for me, to be trustworthy, to teach me everything I needed to know. He’d been doing this for so long that I was sure he had the answers to my deep, dark questions.

What if he’d been telling the truth in that note? What if there was still a chance…?

Suddenly Jack Lancet looked me in the eye and laughed. I felt my face harden, my jaw clench. It was as if he’d read my mind and was laughing at my naive hope.

Tristan was evil. I wouldn’t give him the chance to fool me again.

“Get the hell out of here,” Joaquin growled at Lancet. “We don’t want any trouble from you.”

Lancet pulled his lapels up around his chin and scurried off in a zigzag line, his laughter carrying back to us on the wind. I peeked through the window and saw two boys playing video games, a few little girls—including Darcy’s charge—busy with a tea party, and a handful of others reading books and stacking blocks. Krista’s makeshift playroom. Suddenly I went dizzy.

“I think I’m gonna be sick,” I said, touching a hand to my head.

Joaquin gently took my hand. “It’s okay. They’re safe. For now, anyway.”

Still, I made sure to watch Jack Lancet until he was finally down the hill and out of sight. When we rejoined our friends on the patio, Krista was lifting a cardboard box onto the table.

“Before you go in, everyone, take one of these.” She was very authoritative suddenly, very in-charge, and I remembered my mom once saying that in times of crisis, we find out what we’re really made of.

My mom. I shuddered as I heard her voice again, warning me to stop on the bridge. Had I really just imagined it? Or had she somehow been there?

“Rory? Here.”

I blinked. Krista held out a compact black walkie-talkie to me. It had red buttons on the side, and a short, rubber-encased antenna. Beeps and static sounded out as my friends fiddled with their new toys.

“Everyone, make sure you’re set to channel one,” Krista told us, holding up her walkie and pressing one of the side buttons to show us how to change it. “These have a really good range, so we should be able to stay in touch no matter where we are on the island.”

“And modern technology finally gets its hold on Juniper Landing,” Kevin said with a grin.

I wasn’t even going to touch the irony of that.

Suddenly the back door opened and a few of our new visitors streamed out, including Myra Schwartz, who offered me a wave and a smile, which I happily returned. She was looking stronger, the cut on her forehead covered by a gauze bandage.

“Hurricane watch!” she said. “Can you believe it?”

I had no clue what she was talking about, so I shrugged in response. Luckily, she kept walking and headed across the bluff and down the hill with the others.

“Hurricane watch?” Fisher said under his breath.

“That’s what the mayor’s come up with to explain the lack of cell service. Big storm moving up the coast, taking out power lines and cell towers.” Krista rolled her eyes.

“Not bad,” Bea said with a thoughtful frown. “Explains the weather, too.”

“Let’s get in there,” Krista said, glancing over her shoulder as the mayor walked into her office. “She sent me to get you over half an hour ago.”

We formed a single line, headed down the side of the living room toward the office. People slipped into jackets and gathered up purses and bags, a few gamely checking their phones. I felt a shiver as my eyes met Selma Tse’s. She and her brother brushed by us on their way out the door.

“Odd time of year for a hurricane, isn’t it?” Selma said to her brother.

“Yes. Very odd,” he replied.

They narrowed their eyes at us but moved slowly and surely out into the rain.

“I really don’t like those two,” Lauren grumbled behind me.

“Join the club.”

Krista shoved open the door to the mayor’s office and stood back to let us in. Joaquin and I were the first inside. The mayor was busy shoving papers into a canvas bag. She looked up as we entered, startled, and dropped the bag to the ground at her feet.

“Do you knock?” she snapped, going red around the collar.

“Sorry,” Joaquin said sarcastically, raising his hands. “Krista said you were losing it, so we came.”

“Did she?” The mayor eyed Krista shrewdly.

“Joaquin!” Krista whispered.

I eyed the canvas bag as the others filed into the room behind me. The mayor kicked it farther under her heavy oak desk until it was out of sight. With one tug on her suit jacket, she was back to form. She eyed each of us as we stood in a long line in front of her. Finally, Krista closed the door and joined us, crossing in front of everyone else to come stand by Joaquin and me.

“Where are we with the search for Tristan and Nadia?” the mayor asked.

The wind whipped the tall grasses outside the window as three black crows swooped toward the rocks cawing and cackling wildly. Every soul who had been up at the bridge with us turned to eye Joaquin and me. My heart throbbed inside my temples as I felt that cold finger run down my neck one more time.

Joaquin cleared his throat. “I think we can safely say we’ve looked everywhere.”

A collective breath seemed to be released in the room. Apparently no one wanted us to admit what we’d done. Suddenly one of the crows landed on the porch railing behind the mayor. It turned its head in that awful, robotic way and seemed to focus its glinting black-eyed gaze on me.

“And you haven’t found them? How is that possible?” the mayor demanded, slamming a hand down on her desk.

Everyone flinched. Another crow landed next to the first, its wings flapping noisily.

“They must be on the move, ma’am,” Fisher said in that deep, authoritative voice of his. “Staying one step ahead of us.”

“If anyone could do that, it’s Tristan,” Kevin put in, picking at his nails.

“I just wish she’d said something to me,” Cori said quietly, looking at the floor so that her braids fell forward over her cheeks. The third crow cawed and came to perch next to its friends. “I wish I knew what she was thinking.”

“It’s a good question,” the mayor said, slamming closed a heavy leather ledger atop her desk. The sound startled the birds, and they whooshed away, bleating angrily as they disappeared into the clouds. “What is Tristan
thinking
? What’s his endgame?”

I stared at the book beneath her skinny fingers. Suddenly my whole body was on fire with clarity. “I know how we can find out what he’s thinking,” I said. “Or at least, what he was thinking before he ran.”

The mayor’s face screwed up in consternation. “How?”

“His journals.”

I watch the never-ending line of visitors as they make their way, bleary eyed and clueless, down the hill toward town. The captives have been released, which means each and every one of those fresh, new visitors is now free to roam the island—to roam right into my waiting clutches. How, oh, how will I decide who my next victims will be? It feels good, having the freedom to choose. It won’t be long now before the deed is done and I can reap my rewards.

It’s not as if the watchdogs can stop me. Not a chance. I’m unstoppable. I’ve got pure evil on my side.

Now that I’ve touched her, I know everything about her, and still I can’t stay away. The feelings I have when I’m with her terrify me. I promised myself I wouldn’t let this happen again. Not with a visitor or a Lifer. But Rory is different from anyone who has crossed my path in a hundred years. I know it’s bad for me, bad for her, bad for everyone, but I can’t stay away. I keep going to the house on Magnolia to keep watch, to just sit and stare with the mere hope of glimpsing her. The pain when I’m not near her, the anticipation of seeing her again, of hearing her voice, of seeing her smile…it’s unbearable.

I slammed the journal shut and tried to stop the tears before they spilled over. The last thing I wanted to do was to cry for him, for us, for what I’d thought we were going to be. I turned my face toward the window of his bedroom, pressing my eyes closed as tightly as I could and biting down hard on my lip. I hated him. I hated him for doing this to me, to my family, to everyone he’d known and loved and cared about for centuries.

A knock sounded on the open door. I quickly swiped at the wetness under my eyes and turned around. Joaquin stood framed by the doorway. Strewn around me were dozens of journals, some lying open, some piled in stacks. The coverlet on Tristan’s bed was twisted from the many times I’d changed position over the last few hours as the other Lifers had slowly put their books aside and melted away, tired of reading, hungry for dinner, or just plain unconvinced that this plan of mine would come to anything. I’d been alone and brooding for most of the afternoon.

And now Joaquin was looking at me with pity in his eyes.

“I think it’s time to take a break.”

I pushed myself up against the pillows, sniffling. “I can’t,” I said shakily, grabbing another book. “There’s something in here. I know it. And I can’t stop until I find a way to save Darcy and my dad.”

“Rory,” he said.

“Joaquin,” I shot back, glaring at him.

He took a deep breath and crossed his arms over his chest. “There’s something I want to show you. Something I’ve never shown anyone before.”

I slammed the latest journal closed. “You’re not going to give up, are you?”

“Have I ever?” he asked, cocking one eyebrow. “Come on, I know you’re at least a little curious.”

I said nothing. Just stared.

“Come on.” He let his hands slap down against his legs. “Your eyes are practically crossed. You haven’t eaten since this morning, if then. You’re not going to help your dad and Darcy any if you can’t think straight. Take a little break.”

I heaved a sigh. He was right, of course. My brain was foggy, my eyes were dry, and my stomach was one big, empty knot. Back home I was always the one carefully carbo-loading before a big race, getting plenty of rest the night before an exam. I knew what my body could and couldn’t handle, and if I was being honest with myself, it couldn’t handle much more of this without giving out.

And in a strange way, it was nice to know that he cared about me. Joaquin had never let me down. He cared about me. And that meant something. It meant a lot, actually.

“Fine,” I said as I swung my legs over the side of the bed. “But then we’re coming right back here. I’m close to something. I can feel it.”

“Don’t worry,” he said with a slow smile, his hand grazing the small of my back as I slipped by him. “This won’t take long.”