Running Shoes (The Shades of Northwood) (22 page)

Jack shrugged.
If he had known any of this might happen then he would not have
dragged her into his world, even for a moment. So, why had he?
Because he thought showing her the other side would be less
dangerous than telling her. Less dangerous for him. He hadn’t
wanted to think too much about the fact he was putting Katie in
harms way.

When the
silence between them had grown enough that Katie was positive he
wasn’t going to answer, she thought back a few minutes and went
through everything she had heard in the hospital car park,
everything Dina had told her. The older girl had no reason to speak
the truth but they hadn’t sounded like lies or doped out ramblings.
Asking more questions wouldn’t change the answers, talking about
things wouldn’t make them any less true. There were just the cold
facts.

Jack was
dead.

People were
ghosts.

There was a
murderer trying to kill her in her dreams.

Dina was dying
just a mile or so away.

Katie fell
something break inside her – it was a physical sensation of
snapping the ropes that tied her to reality. She felt oddly
detached from everything. She fell forwards to her knees and
vaguely felt Jack run over to her and drape his leather jacket over
her shoulders and guide her over to the seating area. It was as
though Katie could command her body to move but she couldn’t coax
it into feeling anything. Shock had taken her over so completely
and so quickly.

“Come on.
You’re freezing, let’s go inside.” Jack helped her up the stairs
and through the door at the top. It led to a pavilion-style
building with changing rooms and function rooms. He sat her down in
one of the cushioned chairs by the door and hip-bumped the door
shut. “There.”

Katie pulled
the jacket tighter around her and buried her face in it, smelling
the comforting smells of old leather, years of wear, Jack. There
was something else too. Something sharp and acidic. Something she
refused to give a name. Then she looked at the green eyed boy
crouched in front of her, barely recognising him. his face was
familiar enough, his name rang in her head like a bell – she just
wasn’t sure she knew him anymore. “You’re dead,” she managed
through chattering teeth. “But you’re still here. You’re a ghost
and you couldn’t tell me so you took me to your ghost world so I
could see for myself and now you’ve condemned me too.”

“You were
always going to die young. That’s why you’re here.”

“Oh.” Under
other circumstances that would have brought more tears and wild
accusations.

“It’s a long
story, if you want to hear it.” There was nothing but time now
anyway. Katie nodded. “Some people who die before their time,
mostly the ones who are too precious to lose, are brought here –
they move here, go to the academy – because they can die here and
know that they’ll come back.”

“How -?”

Jack pressed a
finger to her lips and continued with his speech. “As long as they
don’t screw with the natural order of things then they can come
back as ghosts. Some people adjust really well and decide to live
in this dimension. Like Jaye does. Me – I live in the world meant
just for ghosts and I can come into this world whenever I want but
I have to find a living person to draw energy from to give me a
body.”

Jaye was a
ghost too?

Thunder was
rumbling in the distance and rain started battering the windows
hard enough to make them rattle in their frames. Katie looked up
and flinched as the first flash of lightning turned the sky silver
for a heartbeat. She grabbed Jack’s hand.

She wished he
hadn’t told her any of it. The fact she was here mostly because her
own death was hovering in her future somewhere alone was enough to
terrify her. Jack also wished he hadn’t said anything; there would
be such trouble. It was against the rules for anyone under eighteen
to be told the secrets of Northwood.

“I saw you get
killed, Jack, I watched as hat evil sadist virtually flayed you
alive. I stood there, not even able to help, and watched you try to
run away.”

“You can’t
change the past Lady Katie. I knew you were there though.”

“I can’t affect
the past right? But he can hurt me.”

Jack smoothed
her hair back from her head and rubbed a thumb across the cut,
feeling Katie jerk beneath him as he sent nerves jangling. It
wasn’t something he could fully explain any more than he already
had. One look at Katie told him that she wasn’t waiting for an
explanation. She was reminding him. Warning him. Things that could
get her when she slept, could leave scars when she was awake,,
might mess with the natural order. It wasn’t as scary as it might
be if she weren’t so damned detached. Even scary things were
blunted at the edges, dulled in intensity

“I don’t want
to know any of this!” she cried, slapping her hands over her ears,
trying to ward off the echoes of their words. Reality had
definitely picked its moment to come slamming back into her body.
With it came the flares of pain from her cuts, the trembling from
fear and cold.

“If you let me
take it away, I can,” Jack offered. Tears shone in his own eyes but
he wouldn’t let them fall. His shame at seeing Katie so upset
because of him had fuelled his guilt but cowboys did not cry.
Hadn’t his uncle told him that when he had turned his back on his
family 150 years ago.

“You’ve taken
so many of my memories away.” She remembered that. Sort of. There
were holes in her memory and, something made her believe Jack was
responsible. Was it the dark crackle of energy creeping through the
room? Jack’s silence was more convincing than any confession. What
she had learned tonight… these were ones she had to keep. All the
magic in the world wouldn’t have taken that knowledge away. “If I
forget this then I only have to learn this crap all over again.
It’s not gonna be any easier a second time.” She touched the hand
still covering the cut on her forehead and then knocked his Stetson
off to trace the perfect round of dark skin on his forehead.
I
wish I could have stopped it.
Whose words they were was unknown
and nor did it matter. The words hung between them like a blanket,
glowing and warming the pavilion the way only wishful thinking
could. Katie shrugged off Jack’s coat and dropped it on the floor
as she got up to stretch her legs.

“Lady Katie,”
Jack began. Then he fell into silence. He couldn’t say what he
wanted to say without sounding fake or clichéd. It was always so
hard to say the important stuff. He stepped up behind Katie and put
a hand in the small of her back, allowed his hand to melt through
her t-shirt, felt the tensing of her spine and then as it loosened
fractionally as her flesh remembered his non-predatory touch. Her
nerves had been so badly fried over the last few months that any
skin to skin contact with a man set her on fire. Any move could be
an attack. “Let me take this away. You can forget the last hour,
you can forget me.” It was a tempting offer. To erase from her mind
the boy who had brought so much pain over the last week.
It’s
been so much longer than that.
Longer? Katie didn’t care. Part
of her wanted to get rid of Jack and everything that came with him
– the blood and death, the nightmares, the world-changing knowledge
he’d just dumped on her – and go back to a normal life in her
normal town with normal friends. It wasn’t normal any more, she
knew that, but she would not know that. And everyone would be free
to carry on pretending. Win-win. On the other hand, evil was
stalking her now and she couldn’t fight it if she was alone.

“No.”

“Katie..?”

“No, Jack! I
won’t let you do it.” The rain lashed down outside. They watched
the storm clouds swirl, rumble, flash with silver, swirl and gather
power once more. It was a beautiful thing to see. But it was a tiny
bit frightening to think of all that thunder and lightning just
trying to find a living person to finish the circuit and feed it
all into the ground. It was a it like Jack, she thought. A ball of
energy and light searching for a life to feed off so he could
manifest. Dina had been the conductor, much to her cost. And, a few
nights ago, Katie had been filling that role. Dear God, she had
thought she was going to die then. What the hell had Dina felt?

She turned to
Jack and looked at him carefully. Nothing in his perfect face held
anything but worry. The sweetness of the moment might have made
Katie forget why she was angry with him. A flash of lightning and a
crack of thunder so loud it might have been overhead brought her
back from that edge of forgive and forget. “Stop doing that!”

“What?”

“That. Trying
to make me give in to you by looking pretty.”

“I’m
pretty?”

“I know stuff
now and… I need you to be honest with me now. If I le you take this
knowledge away from me, would it change anything?” Whatever the
answer was, it was drowned out by the storm whipping itself into a
frenzy. Katie had the most absurd mental picture of a tornado
spinning out of the storm, Wizard of Oz style, and sucking her and
Jack and this whole town into its spiral, finally dropping them
into a bright fantasy world where the sun always shone. It made her
smile. If only things were as simple as the movies. “I need to know
why my friends are all dead or dying right now; I need to know why
I hate you now; I need to know that my nightmares really are out to
get me; I need to know –“ Katie ran out of breath and, as she drew
in another lungful of sweet zingy oxygen, she realised she had run
out of anger. All that was left was a huge emptiness in her
stomach. “I need to know why you didn’t save me that night?”

That was one
thing that had been bothering her since she had had that flashback
in the hospital. There was no feeling, nothing at all, and then
feeling came back and her muscles reacted to the foreign agent Dina
had so thoughtfully provided. Blue eyes – not green – had held her
down, held her until the tremors had passed.

“And why did
you let it be Leo?”

CHAPTER
TWELVE

The
bitter-sweet aroma of fresh coffee with lots of milk and sugar was
drifting through the house on Newton Street at dawn that morning.
Adam was at the kitchen table with his hands around a steaming mug
and puzzling over some impossible crossword clue in yesterdays
paper when Katie tried to sneak through the front door. She headed
straight for the kitchen where the smell was coming from, craving
the sweet heat, although she had never drunk coffee and was not
about to start. A caffeine buzz really wasn’t a good idea. When she
saw Adam already sat down, Katie turned to tiptoe away.

“Katie,” he
said, clicked his pen shut and closed the paper over it.

Uh oh. She
instantly feared trouble. Sneaking home at dawn was bound to have
gotten her into the mother of all rows with her parents. But Adam
wasn’t her dad, was he?
For the foreseeable future, he’s the
next best thing.

She pivoted and
looked at him sitting there so calm and relaxed. He stared at her
without moving, just smiling slightly. It made her feel ashamed in
some deep and wordless way. So much so that head down, shoulders
limp seemed like the best response. “I know I’m really late back.”
Or really early, depending on how you looked at it. “But I spent
all night at the hospital and I just needed to clear my head and
–“

“Stop. You’re
old enough to make your own choices. Sit.” She did. “Don’t be sorry
for testing the limits. You’ve probably got more freedom now than
you’ve ever had. I only want you to be safe.

“I need food.
Reddy Brek good for you?”

“I… fine. With
honey, please.” Honey was one of the few non-processed items they
always kept in the cupboards. Strangely, most of them liked it on
or in something or other.

“On or in?” he
asked just as the thought popped into her brain. Freaky timing.
Katie expected nothing less of the residents of this town. Adam
stood up and reached up to the top cupboard where they kept the
cereals. Katie watched him potter around the kitchen, clattering
crockery and measuring milk like a professional chef. His perfect
muscles stretched, popped, retracted and curved under his muscle
shirt. Nothing ghostly about those. Katie looked down at herself,
aware that her hair was frizzy from the storm and her dress was
still damp and streaked with dirt. She ran fingers through her hair
and scraped it back into her scrunchie, noting the
pulled-to-the-limit feel of the elastic and vowing to find a new
one some place. Then she grabbed a shirt off the ironing pile and
putting it over her dress to cover the worst of the grime. It
smelled of jasmine and fresh air. “Surprise me.”

“Looks better
on you than me.” Katie felt herself blush and was glad that Adam
had turned back to the cooker. “I don’t have the legs for it.”

When the
porridge-like cereal slid onto the table and Katie dug in, she
realised that she was suddenly hungrier than she could ever
remember being. Some toast and a yoghurt the previous morning, a
hastily eaten oat and grain bar at the medical centre about
mid-afternoon and that was her total intake over the last 24 hours.
“It’s good,” she spat around mouthfuls. “You should be on emergency
food support or something.”

“The EFS. Nice
idea but not a real thing.”

“Invent it.”
Funny how a hot sweet meal opposite a gorgeous, funny, older guy–
and shouldn’t she just stop thinking of Adam that way? - could make
all her troubles seem that much further away. They had always
managed to make each other laugh when things had been getting too
dark, too serious. “Honestly, Reddy Brek could stop world hunger.
Sweeten the politicians up, that’s for damn sure.”

“You like
politics?”

She shrugged.
The name of the current Prime Minister was about the extent of her
political knowledge. Dad used to flick the Parliament Channel on
the TV and she half listened to some of the debates but it all
seemed a bit like a dog chasing its’ own tail to her. But it
affected her life even though she was too young to have a say about
it. “More a grudging acknowledgement.”