Harbinger (21 page)

24

I STARED AT KEL
in shock.
He’s not dying
. I was elated and relieved and confused all at the same time.

“Is he gone?” he asked again. “Faye?”

Wait. He’s not dying
.

Kel reached up to touch the tears streaming down my cheek and I shoved him off my lap.

“Don’t touch me.”

Kel groaned as he hit the ground. I almost felt bad for him.

“I’m done playing games.” I backed away, listening for any sound of Freddy coming back. But there was only the cicadas’ incessant shrilling.

Kel showed me his hands, covered with splotches. “It’s not a game. I swear. I have lupus. The rash, the fever, they’re real. My body doesn’t like the sun. But Faye, we have to talk about yesterday. You have to let me explain about—”

But I’d stopped listening.

“You don’t like the sun,” I repeated. I heard the words whispering in my mind.
The Harbinger is shielded from the glare of day.
The pieces were starting to fit together. “Your hoodie and sunglasses. Your gloves.”

“Look, we don’t have time for this. That Taker will be back any second.” Kel sounded desperate and small, huddled there on the ground. He didn’t look like he could end the world.

“Faye, I didn’t mean to follow you. I mean, at first, I didn’t mean to. It’s just that I’m used to doing stuff at night, when I can pretend like I’m normal and I don’t have to walk around wearing twenty layers of clothes.” He took a shallow breath and rushed on. “And they don’t give me those knockout pills, ’cause they’d interfere with my other meds. That’s how I caught up with you in the Compass Rose the other night.”

I’m so stupid.
I thought he’d just found a way around the pills. Or thrown up like I did.

“But that first night I just stared out the window, wondering if I was ever gonna fall asleep. And I saw you climbing down that ladder and . . . I followed you.”

The moon will know them.
I inched backward, ready to take off if I needed to. That little voice still echoed in my head.
For me.
The prophecies were a warning
for me
. So I could stop what was coming. So I could stop the Harbinger. But the thought that it was Kel was too epically ironic. I groped for another explanation while the words of the tarot cards screamed in my head. Kel had hidden things from me. Betrayed my trust. But I didn’t want him to be the Harbinger. “Then why did you take off your gloves and stuff during Free Time?”

“I know, it was stupid. But I had to find a way to talk to you, and causing a flare-up of my lupus seemed like the only option. I couldn’t stand you looking at me like . . . like you are now. I did play it up a little, faking that seizure.” Kel winced as he tried to sit up. “But trust me, my joints feel like fire every time I bend them.”

For the Harbinger will carry pain with them through the lonely places of the Earth.

“Trust you? How could I trust you?” But there’d been a moment, in the library, when I
had
trusted him. When the two of us had been a we. I could still hear the way he’d whispered my name. Our bodies melting into each other.

“Please, Faye. I’m so sorry.” His hands stretched out to me, opened palmed, plaintive. I relaxed my runner’s stance a little. Green sparks shimmered in his deep hazel eyes, and looking into them, I wanted to believe him. I wanted to do more than that.

He reached out for me and I let him take my hand. Then the threatening buzz swarmed in my ears and I was thrust into another of Kel’s memories.

He was up by the Screamers again, but I could tell by the moon that it was a different night. And that wasn’t all that was different. The grass in the middle of the statues, the place I’d been kneeling in the first vision, was gone. In its place was a wide, deep pit. Kel stood at the edge of the hole, and through his eyes, I stared down into the frightening scene.

I watched myself crawling blindly through the mud, my fingernails scraping at the red dirt. Digging. And the others were there too. Nami, Damion, Zach, and Maya. All of us. Our eyes staring and empty.

“Nothing,” Kel whispered to himself. “Every night they dig and still they find nothing.”

I jerked away and I was back in the bright sunlight. I fought to clear the horrible image of us scrabbling in the mud like animals. “What— What’s going on?”

“I followed you. All I wanted was to catch up with you so I could talk to you again. But . . . but, you were sleepwalking or something. You all were.”

“Why are you doing this to us?” I tried to keep my voice steady, but I could hear it verging on hysteria.

“No.” Kel sounded desperate for me to believe him. “No, Faye, I’m not doing anything. Please! I don’t know why this is happening. I was trying to find out, like you. I wanted to keep you safe.”

“How? By stalking me through the woods? By watching me and the rest of our drugged-out Family thrash in the mud? Why didn’t you just tell us? Why didn’t you tell me?”

Through the trees, I could hear distant voices, calling out for us.

“I was scared. I was afraid they wouldn’t believe me. That they’d think I was crazy.” Regret mingled with the pain on his face. “You’re right, I should have told you yesterday up in the library. That’s why I left the diary and tarot cards for you last night. So you could see them for yourself. So we could trust each other.”

Why would he do that if he’s the Harbinger?

“No more secrets. Please, Faye.” Kel reached out for me, and more than anything, I wanted to take his hand. Tiny red lines veined through the creases of his palm. Red stains showed under his broken fingernails. But Kel said he hadn’t been sleepwalking. And he hadn’t been digging in the vision either.

Ice inched up my spine as I asked the real question. “Why are your hands red too?”

Kel looked down at his hands and I understood. He’d gotten his hands muddy so he’d blend in with the rest of us. He’d faked it. Just like he’d faked the seizure.

“Poor, sick Kel. You’re still putting on a show for us all.”

When he finally looked up at me, there was no denial in Kel’s eyes. He hadn’t wanted any of us to know.

Freddy ran through the woods toward us, Nurse right behind him. Kel slumped to the ground, playing sick again.

I took a step back, bracing myself against a tree.
Why Kel?
He’d been the only thing at Holbrook I’d dared to trust. My arms and legs trembled, barely holding me up.

Together Freddy and Nurse threw a blanket around Kel and maneuvered him onto a stretcher. Nurse slid a needle into his arm, and I saw him flinch.

If I was right— If I was the only one who could stop this—

Kel’s eyelids drooped, his eyes pleading with me as they took him away.

Then I had to stop Kel and whatever he was going to do.

No, not Kel. The Harbinger.

Kel wasn’t the only student missing from dinner that night. The cafeteria was only about half full. Where was Dr. Mordoch keeping them all? Under house arrest?

The whole room seemed to be holding its breath. Dr. Mordoch didn’t say anything about the fight, but she no longer wore her patronizing smile either. With so many students to punish, I thought she might be celebrating, but her face looked pinched and gray.

My Family kept glancing at Kel’s empty seat and then at me. Tears pounded at my eyelids, but I refused to let them out. I just concentrated on keeping my face impassive as I forked burnt baked beans into my mouth.

Once I was drugged and back in my stuffy room, I couldn’t hold it together anymore. The day was still raw, like a bruise on the surface of my mind.

“God, I’m hungry. I couldn’t eat any of that tuna crap at lunch . . . Do you know how many other animals die in those fishing nets? Dolphin-safe, my ass. And if you’re a shark or a turtle, you’re really screwed. Seems like if you’re not cute and cuddly, no one even gives a shit about you.” Maya rambled, almost on automatic, as she picked at a hangnail. She glanced at me out of the corner of her eye, as if judging what kind of mood I was in. “Not that I really wanted to eat it. I mean, it was bad enough having to sit there and breathe in that awful fish stink. And then baked beans for dinner? That’s not a meal. Aren’t you still hungry?”

Not even a little.
I could still taste the panic in the back of my throat when I thought Kel was dying. And the nightmare flashes of Freddy’s life. And the vision of us all digging in the dirt.

Nausea flooded my body and I ran to the bathroom, puking up the little dinner I’d eaten and whatever was left of my sleeping pill. My hands shook as I rinsed my mouth out at the sink, but at least I felt a little more in control. I couldn’t risk another nighttime sleepwalk. Or meeting Kel out there in the darkness. I’d deal with the Holbrook Consequences when they caught up to me.

“Sorry.” Maya looked a little shocked as I came out of the bathroom. She pulled her knees up, hugging them to her chest. Curiosity and concern both showed on her face. “You all right?”

Concern had won out, but not by much. Before I could answer, she rushed into her next question. “What happened to Kel?”

I sat down on my bed, aching head in my hands. I should tell her about Kel. About the tarot cards and the Harbinger.

“Nami was pretty worried about you guys.” Maya actually came over and sat on the end of my bed. “I guess she’s had some first aid training, but she said she had no idea what was going on with Kel. And then one minute you were arguing with Freddy, and the next you were both just standing there with these weird looks on your faces. I didn’t know what was going on.”

Sitting on my bed without any of her rhetoric or posturing, I was struck by how breakable she looked. I could see the shadow of veins just under her almost translucent skin. She sat there looking at me, knees tucked, arms wrapping her slight frame. How could I tell her any of this? She wouldn’t have any better idea what to do with it than I did.

All I said was, “Kel’s okay.”

Maya looked like she wanted to ask more, but she shrugged and accepted my half answer. “Faye, I don’t wanna go to sleep. Something’s happening to me . . . messing with my head. I don’t want any more nightmares or whatever they are. I don’t want to hear that music. And I really don’t want to wake up on the floor again.”

This was the first time she’d mentioned the music, and now it was me that wanted to ask more questions. But she was scared enough as it was. And I was scared too.

“It’s gonna be okay.” I wanted to hug her, but I wasn’t brave enough.

“You go to bed and I’ll stay up. You won’t have any more nightmares.” I couldn’t bear to tell her what I’d seen through Kel’s eyes. About us digging in the red dirt. But I could make sure it didn’t happen again tonight. “It’s too hot for me to sleep anyway.”

A half hour later, Maya’s little snores filled the dark room. My feet hit the floor. I pulled the folded page out of my sock and slid the window open a crack. Grabbing the diary and the pen, I finished copying down the messages from the tarot cards, rereading them in order this time. Trying to put together the pieces of the story.

First the Past. The dreamer waking from a nightmare. The divided lovers. The boat and the six swords beneath the waves.

Stronger than the others the Harbinger

peers far into the Future There men

will feast off of the Earth like maggots There The

Circle will fail the Family Two quarrel and the

Harbinger alone slaughters

the lambs Forging a new Path and journeying

the sea of time To finish what has begun

I reread the middle section.
There The Circle will fail the Family.
I shivered.
Is it talking about my Holbrook Family?

Then there were the three middle cards that connected the Past and the Future. What had Rita said about The Circle card? Something about it going nowhere. Round and round. Round and round. But looking at the card, the woman seemed powerful as she stood there at the edge of the water.

Next to The Circle card sat the blindfolded Harbinger, swords crossed, sitting in front of the sea. Last was the crowned figure of The Path, wielding a sword and balancing the scales. How did these cards make a bridge across time? I flipped them over.

Look carefully for the Harbinger is shielded from the glare of day

But the moon will know them Peer into strangers’ eyes

for the Harbinger will carry pain

with them through the lonely places of the Earth

When the hour arrives the Harbinger

will smother the sickness that is humanity

Only the Harbinger can wash this world clean

And finally the Future. The disapproving moon. The glaring sun. The grim reaper in front of an open grave.

In the dark of the pregnant moon with

the sun as midwife Autumn will be born

in an ocean of blood Death will be Autumn’s

twin and its mercy will cradle the Earth