Pawn (Nightmares Trilogy #1) (27 page)

I smiled. So Dad had sent me another
one after all.

“It’s a dream catcher,” I told Mr.
Wentworth, holding it up for him to inspect.

Mr. Wentworth fingered the pendant
delicately, almost reverently. A small smile crossed his lips. His
touch made the feathers clink together, creating a soft melodic
sound like wind chimes.

“So it is,” he said in a voice just
above a whisper.

I looped the necklace over my head.
The chain was long, and the dream catcher rested just below the
center of my bra, gleaming in the dim overhead lights. There was no
note in the box, but I knew the purpose. Dad thought the dream
catcher would ward off the messages from the underworld.

“Thank you,” I told Mr. Wentworth,
tearing my gaze from the pendant hanging around my neck.

Mr. Wentworth nodded, oddly transfixed
by the dream catcher. Silence stretched between us, comfortable and
patient. I had a lot to digest and nothing more to say. My father’s
longtime friend continued to gaze thoughtfully at the gift he’d
just given me.

“He bought that in Hawaii two
Christmases ago,” Mr. Wentworth informed me.

“Were you with him?” I asked,
surprised.

“Yes. He joined Jamieson, Melina, and
me for the holidays.”

The admission made me both
relieved and jealous. Every Christmas and Thanksgiving since the
divorce, I’d wondered where Dad was while Mom and I ate takeout
Chinese or overcooked turkey. I felt better knowing Dad hadn’t
spent the holidays alone, but hated that he’d chosen Jamieson’s
family to be with. In fairness to him, he didn’t have many friends
and
he was the only person in his family
still alive besides me.
It seemed unfair
somehow that, of all people, Jamieson Wentworth saw my father more
than I did.

“Thank you,” I said again. “I’m not
very hungry and I should probably get going.”

“Of course, Endora. At least let Henry
make you something to go. I know how your mother feels about
cooking.”

“Henry? Mr. Haverty?” That was when I
finally realized that he and Mr. Haverty had been calling each
other by their first names all evening. They knew each
other.

“Don’t look so shocked,” Mr. Wentworth
said with a chuckle. “I have been coming here to meet your father
for years; however, I was surprised to learn you were a frequent
customer as well.”

“Just in the last week,” I
muttered.

Mr. Wentworth, James, flagged down Mr.
Haverty, Henry; and ten minutes later I had a turkey club to go in
one hand and the ornate box in the other.

I said goodbye to Mr. Haverty and told
him I would probably see him soon. While I had no more planned
meetings at the Moonlight, I knew I’d be back. He seemed to know
it, too.

Outside in the parking lot,
Mr. Wentworth hugged me goodbye and told me to call him if I needed
anything, even if it was just to talk. I promised that I would,
although sharing any more of my deep, dark secrets with Jamieson’s
father didn’t hold much appeal. Mr. Wentworth promised me he had
his people looking for Dad,
which I
interpreted as private investigators.
One
good thing about being associated with so many criminal attorneys,
besides the get-out-of-jail-free card I hoped I never had to play,
was that they knew a lot of PIs.

“Either way, we will find out what
happened to your father,” Mr. Wentworth told me.

“Thank you.”

Mr. Wentworth started moving towards
his Escalade, then called over his shoulder, “I know Jamie can be
difficult, but she really misses you, Endora,” as though it were an
afterthought.

Right. All those Facebook
posts painting me as a modern- day harlot really screamed, “I miss
you,” I thought, but I just nodded and smiled. Like the diner, the
parking lot was not well
lit,
and I couldn’t be sure if he saw the gesture
before climbing into the driver’s seat.

Chapter
Seventeen

The clock over the
Bug’s
dashboard read
9:15 p.m. As I expected, my cell phone
was
bursting
with new text
messages.

Mandy: I’m REALLY sorry about this
morning. R U mad?

Devon: Call ASAP. Want 2 know
details

Kannon: Wanted to say
hi


Mom: Where are you?

Mom: Two nights in a row,
Endora?

Mom: Call me.

Since Mom’s messages were the most
pressing, I called her first. I’d meant to call her on the way to
the diner but had forgotten. My apologies fell on deaf ears. When
she asked where I’d been, I lied and said out with Devon. Next, I
responded to Mandy, promising her that she had nothing to apologize
for. I, better than most, understood that stress makes people
cranky. And between gearing up for AP exams, prom, and the fiasco
with Kevin, Mandy had been under a lot of stress lately. I also
offered to pick her up for school the following morning to prove
that our friendship was still intact. Then, I decided Devon could
wait and called Kannon.

“Hey,” he answered on the first
ring.

A television blared in the background
and the sound of two people bickering filled the phone’s receiver
before quickly tapering off.

“Sorry, my sisters are fighting
again,” he told me. “How was your day?”

How was my day? Strange? Strange was a
relative term considering that lately nothing in my life was
normal. “Enlightening,” I finally decided on.

Kannon laughed. “Public school must be
more interesting than private,” he joked.

“Not school. I met with James
Wentworth - you know, Jamieson’s father? He had something to give
me from my dad.”

“Does he know where your dad is?”
Kannon asked.

“No, but he thinks…he thinks Dad might
be dead,” I replied miserably.

The tears finally came. Saying those
words to Kannon made them real in a way that talking to Mr.
Wentworth had not. Just one tear at first. Followed by two, then
three, until finally I was sobbing so hard I had to pull over on
the side of Route 140.

“Where are you, Endora? I’ll come get
you,” Kannon said, sounding alarmed.

“No, no,” I sobbed. “It’s late and my
mom is expecting me. I have to go home.”

“You can’t drive when you’re this
upset. Tell me where you are,” he demanded.

“I’m fine,” I said, repeating the
phrase several times to reassure both of us.

“Okay,” he finally agreed. “But I’m
staying on the phone until you get home. We don’t need to talk
about your dad. We can talk about anything. You won’t believe what
Terrence did at practice today.”

The sobs gave way to a slow
trickle of tears as Kannon filled me in on Terrence mooning the
girls’ softball team as he
ran past their
practice field
. And how, as a result,
their coach put Terrence on equipment duty indefinitely.

Slowly, I eased the Bug
back onto the highway and started for home. Kannon kept up a
running commentary about his day. He told me about his mother
burning the meatloaf, but how
everyone
ate it anyway, proclaiming
how good it was the entire time. He recounted helping the twins
with the model of the solar system they were making for the science
fair. One twin had managed to get Mercury tangled in her hair,
necessitating an emergency haircut. I laughed at the appropriate
moments, feeling detached and wishing some scientist would figure
out teleportation.

“I’m home,” I told Kannon when I
pulled into my driveway twenty minutes later.

“What would you say to playing hooky
tomorrow?” he asked. “Spend the day, just the two of us. If you
want to talk, we can. If not, well, I have some other
ideas.”

I smiled, really smiled at that. I’d
never skipped school before. Whenever I stayed home sick, my mother
called every hour on the pretense of making sure I had everything I
needed. On occasion, she would even drop by at lunchtime. But
Kannon’s idea sounded like a good one. Facing my friends and
pretending that everything was fine when it most certainly was not
seemed daunting.

“Sure,” I agreed before remembering
Mandy. “Oh wait, I can’t. I told my friend Mandy I would pick her
up in the morning.”

“Can’t someone else pick her
up?”

I thought about that. Devon would
grumble and make smart-assed comments the entire time, and probably
make me take her to dinner, but she would pick up Mandy for me.
“I’ll ask Dev.”

“Good. I’ll meet you at your house in
the morning,” Kannon said.

“Okay,” I agreed.

“Goodnight, Endora. Dream
well.”

I touched the dream catcher resting
against my chest. The gold was cold, chilled by the April evening
air. I smiled again. “I will,” I told Kannon, knowing for the first
time in over a week I wouldn’t dream at all.

Mom was sitting at the kitchen table
when I walked in. Despite trying to make as little noise as
possible, her dog-like ears heard me the minute I eased the door
closed.

“Endora, it is nearly ten o’clock,”
she chastised me from her chair.

“I know, Mom,” I said patiently,
remaining in the foyer since my eyes were red-rimmed from
crying.

“Just because you are eighteen now
does not mean you can stay out until all hours of the night without
calling.”

Ten o’clock was hardly all hours of
the night, but I let that one slide. She was right, though; I was
eighteen. And if I weren’t so tired and depressed, I might have
pushed the argument.

“There are rules in this house,
Endora,” Mom continued from the kitchen. “You are supposed to call
and check in with me.”

Story of my life, I thought, rules. We
lived by the rules, we died by the rules, just like the Skulls. I
was so tired of my mother and all her damn rules that I
exploded.

“Dad is dead and all you
care about are your
damned
rules
,” I shouted, stalking to the kitchen
to meet the confrontation head-on. The fact I’d been crying no
longer mattered; the cat was out of the bag.

When I reached the kitchen table, I
stopped abruptly, hands on hips, and glared down at my
mother.

“What did you say?” Mom demanded,
rising from her chair. She didn’t sound angry like I’d thought she
would. Instead, she sounded scared.

Mom and I were nearly the same height,
but in that moment she seemed to tower over me. I shrank under her
intense scrutiny, all my anger giving way to alarm. She took a step
forward, gripped my shoulders with two claw-like hands, and started
shaking me. “What did you say?” she repeated, eyes
blazing.

“Dad is missing and they think
something happened to him,” I stammered, unable to repeat the words
verbatim.

“Who is ‘they’ and how do
‘they’ know this?” Mom’s pupils grew
to
impressive proportions,
her fear becoming
more transparent by the second.

“Mr. Wentworth,” I
admitted.

“You spoke with James?”

“He called and asked to have dinner
with me,” I said. “He told me Dad is missing and he has private
investigators looking for him.” I saw no point in adding that Dad
had also failed to show up for our dinner date and that I hadn’t
heard from him since. My mother’s uncharacteristic display of
emotion heightened my own anxiety over the situation. There was no
reason to make matters worse by adding that tidbit of
information.

“What else did James tell you?” My
mother’s eyes searched me suspiciously, finally coming to rest on
my necklace. She grabbed for the dream catcher at the same time I
stumbled several paces backwards, safely out of her reach. “Where
did you get that?” she demanded, pointing to the pendant. For a
brief second the fear turned to horror, and I had the unsettling
feeling she was going to make the sign of the cross and say
something ridiculous like, “Back, devil child.” She didn’t. Mom
just stood there mute, one finger quivering in the air between
us.

“It was a gift,” I said, clutching the
dream catcher to my chest protectively.

“From your father,” she guessed, tone
flat now.

I nodded defiantly.

“When did you see him?” she asked,
sitting back in her chair, resigned.

“I didn’t,” I admitted, relaxing
slightly now that Mom had regained her composure. “Mr. Wentworth
gave it to me tonight.”

A faraway expression filled Mom’s
features. She still stared straight at me, but no longer saw me as
if caught in a memory.

“Mark isn’t dead,” Mom muttered, more
to herself than me.

“I hope not,” I said, the tears from
earlier returning. “I hope my last memory of my father isn’t from
that day in the courtroom.”

The accusation was harsh,
even if she did deserve it. My father had cried the day the judge
all but terminated his parental rights. Mom had practically dragged
me from the courtroom, kicking and screaming, when I tried to run
to him. On the car ride home, she’d explained
in her matter-of-fact manner
that
her actions weren’t done out of cruelty but rather a need to
protect me. “From what?” I’d demanded. To this day, I still don’t
know the answer to that question.