Languish (9 page)

I jumped, throwing my hands up to protect my eyes. Bianca shrieked and stumbled back. The hawk landed in another tree, powerful claws digging into the bark. His eyes glittered over his beak. Did hawks attack people? Weren't they supposed to be asleep in a nest somewhere? I swallowed and edged back. He gave a piercing, whistling cry that shivered around us.

“Please don't eat me,” I muttered.

He lifted off the branch and then dove for Bianca. She shrieked again and knocked her friends aside as she took off at a dead run. They scrambled after her, also screaming. The hawk circled over my head once and then lifted farther into the dark sky until he disappeared.

I stepped off the path into the wilting ferns and hazel bushes, letting them hide me from view. I had definitely had enough of people today. When I found Jo, we were going home. I didn't care how hot the rock star guy might be.

I stayed parallel to the path so I wouldn't get lost, heading toward the caves, where people usually went to make out at these parties. I could see the candles burning between the trees. They were in tall glass containers, usually with pictures of saints on them. They were the cheapest ones the convenience stores in town sold. The smell of smoke tickled my nostrils.

Before I could climb over the huge moss-covered boulders tossed around the caves, an old woman crossed my path. She stopped to dig in the dirt, pulling out pale roots and dropping them into a basket full of acorns. She looked like something from a fairy tale. Her hair was white, her eyes were like black raisins, and she was smoking a corncob pipe. She wore layers of ratty old gray shawls. She stopped foraging to stare at me.

You know, for the woods in the middle of the night, it was getting awfully crowded.

I tried to smile. “Um, hi.” She looked like someone's grandmother, but she was probably homeless. I didn't know what to do. Did I ignore her? Did I give her change from my pocket? Was that an insult?

She solved my internal dilemma.

By screaming.

A lot.

I lifted my hands, palms out, as if she had a gun. Her hoarse scream bounced off the trees, off the rocks and the nearby stream. It made my teeth hurt.

“I'm not going to hurt you!” I had to shout, but I wasn't sure if she could even hear me. For someone who looked about a hundred years old, she sure had a set of lungs on her. I backed away.

“You'll get us all killed!” she hollered. “Want Himself to break our bones and suck out the marrow?”

“Um, no?”

“Then go! Get away!”

That was when she started to throw things at me.

She flung the roots out of her basket and they tumbled to the ground, looking like pale, disembodied fingers. She plucked up the acorns and whipped them at my head. The first one bounced off my left cheekbone, narrowly missing my eye.

“Hey! Ow!” Three more followed. “Shit!” I dove behind one of the rocks while she continued to pelt me with acorns. She had wicked good aim. “Stop it!” I fumbled for my cell phone, dialing Jo's number.

“Hello?” She sounded cranky.

I was crankier. “Where are you?”

“In the caves. Is someone screaming?”

“Yes!” I poked my head out. An acorn grazed my hair. “Get out here!” I wasn't sure what she could do to help, but since it was her fault I was here in the first place, she could get walloped with bits of the forest at my side. It was only fair.

“Where are you?”

“Right outside.”

I hung up and saw a shadow block the candlelight for a brief moment. “El?”

“Over here.”

Jo ran toward me, ducking acorns. She hunkered down beside me, her long hair trailing in the dirt. “Um, Eloise?”

“Yeah?”

“What the hell?”

“Worst night ever.”

“I'm getting that.” She picked up one of the acorns and threw it back. “Why are we throwing acorns at an old woman?”

“She started it!” I inched to another boulder, in the direction of the path. “Where's the rock star?” I asked.

“Couldn't find him,” she said, frustrated. “He disappeared.” She shook her head. “Just as well, I guess. He'd really think I was a nutter if he saw us right now.”

“You
are
a nutter.”

“You're the one getting beaten up by Granny over there.” She tilted her head. “Is she yelling about deer?”

“I have no idea. Count of three and we make a run for it?” I suggested. “One, two … three!”

We ran. An acorn pinged off the back of my head and then we were on the path, on the other side of a copse of pine trees and out of range. I rubbed my head where I felt a bruise throbbing. Mean girls, wild hawks, and crazy old women were officially too much for one night.

“I'm going home,” I muttered. “Because this party just sucks.”

• • •

Mom and I lived on the second floor of a small brick building near Rowanwood Park. The walls were crammed floor to ceiling with her paintings and photos, with masks and books of every description. Jo's parents' house had silk wallpaper and matching furniture from a catalog; under the framed pictures, our walls were magenta. And Jo soon learned that all the books were in order of subject matter; the CDs sorted by mood; and if you forgot to use a coaster on the antique chest we used as a coffee table, you'd get lectured. And then lectured some more.

Which was still nothing to the lectures I'd gotten when Mom caught me trying to pick the chest's lock with a bobby pin. It had been locked for as long as I could remember; it was the only thing my exhibitionist mother was rabidly private
about. Irresistible, right? But the stupid lock held tight no matter how much I tried to jimmy it.

Our cat, Elvis, meowed impatiently at the window leading out to the roof. Mom was on a date with some guy whose name I didn't know. I hadn't met him yet, which meant he wouldn't last the month.

“Okay, your highness,” I muttered when Elvis batted my hand. We had access to the roof, which the landlord let us use as our private balcony. When I opened the window, he streaked out, racing to the spot where the crows usually hung out. They were safely asleep in a tree somewhere, and Elvis sat on his haunches and sulked.

I flicked on the strings of Christmas-tree lights that draped over the railings. There was a plastic patio set in the center and one of those dining tents for shade. Two chairs were tucked inside, and dozens of silver-shot scarves hung from the ceiling poles, like some Berber desert palace. Mom was into all things Middle Eastern right now: belly-dance music, Afghan silver bracelets, and statues of ancient Egyptian gods. The planters around the tent were empty, except for a few dried-up stalks of mint and basil that hadn't survived the drought. Even the lawns on the fancy side of town were brown from the water shortage.

“Eloise.”

I squawked like a chicken being plucked bald. I had the most attractive reactions; I couldn't think why I didn't have a hundred boyfriends eager for my company.

Still, when you found someone hiding in the shadows of your roof garden, a little screeching was healthy. Elvis hissed and darted past me to the safety of the apartment. Fat lot of good he was to me.

“How did you get up here?” The fairy lights caught the silver of his sword hilt. A
sword
hilt. “Did you
follow
me?” It was the guy from the ice cream parlor. His eyes were just as green, just as intense. I didn't think I could beat him to the window, but I edged toward it surreptitiously. If I screamed, would someone down on the street hear me? My heart felt like a plucked guitar string. It was actually vibrating in my chest with fear. I did
not
want to be run through with a theater sword on my own patio.

“I won't hurt you,” he said softly, looking as awed as he had in the parking lot. He was still wearing a tunic, like an extra out of some medieval movie.

I glared at him. “Then go away. My mom's just in there, you know,” I lied.

He raised his eyebrows. “Lady Jasmine is out front, kissing a man in a leather coat.”

“You know my mom?” Fear receded a little under a rush of hot indignation. I tried to cast a glance over the side of the rail to the sidewalk. I couldn't see her, but I did see an entire flock of sparrows perched on the edge of the garbage bin.

“I know your family. The blood of the Hart is famous.” The mention of blood made me decidedly nervous. “We honor Antonia's lineage.”

I gaped at him, well and truly confused. “Okay, you know my aunt too?”

Aunt Antonia, the Hart wild child, had taken off again and we didn't know where, but that was nothing new. Every spring, she left town and wouldn't tell us where she was going. Sometimes we got postcards; sometimes we didn't. Mom said Antonia had been like that since their sixteenth birthday. Mom might look like the boho free spirit, with her tattoos and combat boots, but she was actually the dependable twin. Go figure.

“Have you seen her? Where is she?”

“Hiding until Samhain, as usual.”

“What?” He said it so matter of factly, as if he was making sense. “Look, who are you? Because I'm this close to screaming.”

“Your pardon, lady. I am Lucas Richelieu.” He looked like he was about to kiss my hand so I snatched it behind my back. “We must go,” he said again, urgently. “Anyone can see you now. ‘Tisn't safe.”

“But going off with some stranger in leather pants is?” I crossed my arms. “Go away, Lucas Richelieu.” He looked so taken aback I nearly laughed. “You didn't really think I was just going to blindly go off with you, did you?” He'd obviously never met my mother, even if he did know her name. Not falling for pretty boys was one of the first lessons she'd ever taught me. “You're pretty, Lucas, but not so pretty that I'm going to turn into a drooling idiot.”

He sighed, aggrieved. “This was much easier in the old days, when girls were educated.”

“Hey. I'll have you know I get As. Well, mostly.” I wrinkled my nose. “How old are you anyway? Eighteen? Nineteen?”

“One hundred and eighty-seven.”

“Of course you are.” I shook my head. I certainly wasn't going to be able to complain come Monday that I'd had a boring weekend. He didn't say anything else, only whirled suddenly when a crow landed on an empty planter. He pulled his sword out of its scabbard.

I stumbled back. “Easy, Conan. It's just a bird.”

“A crow,” he said tightly. “And a cousin of sorts.”

He said something else in a language I'd never heard before as another crow joined the first, and then another. And another. I'd never seen any at night before. I assumed crows went off and slept somewhere, dreaming crow dreams. But maybe they were nocturnal like owls? That was going to bug me; I'd have to look it up in one of Mom's encyclopedias. We'd had our Internet shut down again when we couldn't pay the bill.

“Eloise?”

“Yeah?”

“Take this and go inside,” he said very carefully, very slowly, knees bent as if he was about to launch himself into battle. He shoved a necklace at me, and I noticed his hand was covered in burn blisters over the old scars. They were
red, fresh. I expected the pendant to be hot, but it was cold, normal. “Go!”

I wanted to tell him he was overreacting, even for a head case, but there was desperation in his voice, enough to have me slipping a leg over the windowsill.

Crows lifted out of the park like a raucous storm cloud, settling back down over the empty planters, the tent, the chairs, the twinkly lights—every available surface that might provide some kind of perch. I shivered despite the rational part of my brain telling me it was just a bunch of birds. But if there really was something weird about them, shouldn't I be out there helping him? I was stepping back onto the roof when he turned his head, barely, toward me. “Don't.”

I climbed inside, kneeling on the window seat, where Elvis was hissing, his every hair on end.

Outside, Lucas swung his sword once, twice.

Crows cawed indignantly, a few flying toward the quiet of the park. He was repeating some kind of rhyme, but I couldn't make out the words.

A crow landed on the ledge in front of me. I'd always liked the crows.

I didn't like this one.

His eyes were too yellow, wrong somehow. Elvis swiped out a paw, missed. I could have sworn the crow laughed. A few more joined it—enough of them that I slammed the glass shut and slipped Lucas's necklace over my head. It was heavy, made of iron nails twisted into the surprisingly
delicate shape of a leaping stag with some sort of leaf in its antlers.

One of the crows pecked at the glass so viciously that it cracked, blooming like a frost flower. I almost missed seeing Lucas blur, as if he were a watercolor painting soaked too long. He wavered, shimmered, and leaped off the roof.

The crows fled.

“Shit, oh, shit.” I rushed outside and peered over the railing, holding my breath. I didn't want to see his broken body on the pavement below. I had to call 911.

I peeked.

He was gone.

“That's impossible,” I said out loud. I leaned farther out but there was still no trace of Lucas, just a hawk riding an air current.

Disappearing boys in medieval costumes on top of crazy crows and crazier old women. Clearly
I
was crazy too. Because I should be snuggling under my blanket, dreaming about Robert Pattinson, not on the roof inspecting the balcony for crows and weird cute guys swinging medieval weapons over their head. But there was nothing here: no ladder at the side of the building, no window washer's scaffolding, nothing to explain Lucas's vanishing into thin air.

Nothing.

Only moonlight and the neon glow of the bar sign down the street. All perfectly ordinary; so ordinary, in fact, that
I might have imagined the whole thing if it weren't for the iron stag around my neck.

I went back inside and sat on the lumpy couch, staring out the window. Maybe I had the flu. I felt my forehead. I was kind of warm; it could be a fever-induced hallucination. Of course, the stifling heat inside the apartment could explain my clammy skin just as easily. So maybe it was heatstroke.