Sing Sweet Nightingale (21 page)

What is that buzzing?

“Answer it, Hud,” Horace grumbles from the bed.

It’s dark, but my phone is lit up, K.T.’s name flashing on the screen below the time: 12:45 AM. I fumble with it for a second, my fingers about as nimble as bricks. Somehow, I catch the call before it goes to voicemail. She wouldn’t be calling at this hour unless something bad had happened.

“What’s wrong?” My voice is scratchy and lower than usual.

“I’m sorry.” K.T. sounds breathless, and her voice is thick, like she’s been crying or trying not to cry. “I didn’t want to wake you up, but I—”

Her voice cracks, and I hear her sniffle.

“K.T., what happened?”

Horace’s face appears over the footboard, his bushy eyebrows furrowed.

“Maybe it’s nothing. I almost didn’t call because, you know, maybe I imagined it after everything you told me. But then I started thinking…you know, what if I
didn’t
imagine it?”

“Imagine
what
?”

She takes a deep, shaky breath and finally says, “I had this weird dream, Hudson. This door opened in my wall and there was this library, and this guy with auburn hair and violet eyes tried to get me to come with him.”

My heart stops, and I jerk upright, ignoring the twinges of pain from my body.

“You didn’t, did you? K.T., tell me you didn’t follow him.” My heart thumps faster and faster. Above me, Horace’s eyes widen.

“N-no, but when I refused he said I had two choices. Follow him willingly, or he’ll take what he wants anyway.” The tears must start falling then because her voice gets heavier and rises about an octave. “Can they do that, Hudson? Can they take what they want like that?”

“I don’t know.”

But wait…that’s not true. I taste honey before the memory surfaces. Calease was impatient once with a boy who asked too many questions. She ripped what she wanted out of his head, and the boy died. She wasn’t entirely satisfied because the talent was incomplete, but obviously they
are
capable of it.

“Wait. Yes, they can.”

She starts crying harder. “I don’t know what they want! What can I possibly have that they want?”

“It doesn’t matter. The important part is not letting them get it.”

But how the hell can I do that? She needs a collection at least as big as the one I have here, and I bought out both New Age stores within decent driving distance.

“You’re gonna have to spend tomorrow night at my place. And maybe Monday.”

“What? I can’t! There’s no way my parents are going to let me do that.”

“So lie. I can keep the demons away from you, but you have to be here.” At least until all the extra stones I ordered come in and I can send her home with her own arsenal.

She’s quiet, but eventually she swallows. “Yeah. Okay. I’ll figure something out.”

“Call me if anything else happens. Anything weird at all. Whatever time it is.”

“Yeah, sure. Um, thanks, Hudson.”

I say goodbye and hang up, dropping the phone to the mattress.

“Guess I missed the party,” Horace says, holding up the broken pieces of stone.

Nodding, I take a broken piece of amethyst and pinch it between my thumb and forefinger. It used to be a deep purple color. It’s almost gray now, like the color has been leached out of the stone. Before I’ve exerted much pressure, the crystal shatters. A few big chunks break off, and the rest crumbles into pieces so small they’re practically dust. Not a good sign.

No one delivers on Sunday, so what we have has to last at least another day. I hope the new shipment comes in before everything else shatters and leaves me with more wounds than I can heal.

Eighteen

Mariella

Sunday, August 31 – 12:12 PM

I open my eyes and try to sit up, but as soon as I move, my stomach tries to jump into my throat. Collapsing onto my pillow, I put one hand on my stomach and one on my head. Why do I feel like someone closed my head in a grand piano? Maybe because someone in the house can’t get the tuning right on a set of speakers. Did my parents get a new system or something? That feedback is ridiculously aggravating.

My head throbs, each heartbeat thudding through my body like a bass drum. I can’t open my eyes because there’s too much light in the room. It burns and makes the throbbing worse.

Someone knocks on my door. “Honey, did you want—”

The voice cuts off as the door opens.

“You’re still in bed? Mari, are you okay?” My mother walks over to the bed and presses her hand to my cheek. “You’re a little chilled. Do you want some soup? Or some tea?”

Thinking about food makes nausea climb up my throat. I lift my hand and sign “no.” The feedback changes pitch, getting an octave higher. Wincing, I sign, “What is that noise?”

“Noise?” Her head tilts to the side, and she listens. “What noise, honey? I’m not sure what I’m listening for.”

I close my eyes and bite back a groan. She can’t hear it. Great. So either my headache is so bad it’s making me hear things or…I don’t know what.

“Do you feel sick?”

Yes. Awfully sick. But I don’t want to see a doctor. Moving my head hurts too much, so I sign “no” and add “tired.” I try opening my eyes again—slowly—and this time the burning isn’t quite so bad. I can see why it seemed so bright at first. In addition to the gleaming light from Orane’s gifts, sunshine is streaming through my thin curtains. What time is it?

I try to move my head toward the clock, but the slight motion sends the room spinning. I close my eyes and sign “time?” instead.

“It’s noon,” my mother says.

My eyes pop open.
Noon
? I’ve slept since midnight? I always wake up after leaving Paradise. I haven’t slept more than an hour in
years
. And suddenly I sleep for
twelve
?

“Didn’t mean to oversleep?” My mother smiles at me, but there are creases around her eyes. The sudden change worries her. I haven’t overslept since middle school.

“I’ll give you some time to wake up and we’ll do a late lunch, okay?”

I lift my hand and sign “yes.” Hopefully my stomach calms down by then. She brushes my bangs off my face and kisses my forehead before heading for the door, then stops with her hand on the doorknob.

“Last chance to change your mind about new school clothes,” she says with a tight smile. “If we don’t hit the mall before tomorrow, it’ll be too late.”

What? I have at least two weeks before I have to go back to school…don’t I?

I sign “no, thank you,” and my mother shrugs, playing off her disappointment.

“All right. Lunch in an hour, okay?”

As soon as she’s gone, I grab my phone from the nightstand and check the date.

August 31.

What?

Ignoring the lingering uncertainty in my stomach and breathing through the way my head starts spinning, I lurch off the bed and stumble to my computer to double-check. My phone
has
to be wrong.

My computer says the same thing. Sunday, August 31.

Staring at the calendar, I try to backtrack over the past two weeks.

Focusing on the entire period brings up bits and pieces—dinners with my parents, Scrabble games, books I’ve read—but no matter how hard I try, I can’t fit them into an actual order. The moments are jumbled in my head like puzzle pieces in a box. Except none of them fit. There are gaps that don’t make sense and time I can’t account for.

My pulse picks up, each beat surging through my body like a spark of fire.

Calm down
, I tell myself.
Start with last night
.

I think back to my time with Orane, waiting for the familiar wash of lavender and rush of longing—

And get nothing.

It’s like I’m looking through a blizzard at night or a thick, soupy fog. I can almost make out shapes and shadows in the distance, but when I get closer, they vanish into the mist.

My breathing gets shallow and fast, and the throbbing in my head gets worse, going from bass drum to jackhammer.

Fine. Don’t start with recent memories. Go back to the last thing you remember for certain
, I decide.
Go back to the last moment you can pinpoint for certain on the calendar
.

Day by day I go back, staring at the box on the calendar until I’m absolutely sure all I see is fog. Finally, when I reach the seventeenth, a memory filters up. We had pizza that night, my parents were talking about Julian and Aunt Jacquelyn, and my father challenged me to a game of chess after dinner. I let him think he might win.

I thought finding a moment I could pinpoint might help figure this out, but it doesn’t. It makes me realize that the last two weeks—
exactly
two weeks—are gone. Lost in the fog that’s settled into my head.

My eyes burn, tears fighting to leak out and roll down my cheeks.

I fold over my legs, my hair creating a curtain around my face and filtering out some of the light.

What is happening to me? Did I fall? Is that why my head hurts so much? But then my mother would have said something. She wouldn’t be surprised to see me in bed, and she would have checked on me earlier. Right?

Unless she doesn’t know. Maybe it happened last night. Or maybe something went wrong when I came back from Paradise. But in the decade I’ve been visiting Orane’s world, nothing like this has ever happened. I think.

It doesn’t make sense!

Pushing my hair out of the way, I dry my eyes and sit up. As I do, my gaze locks on something sitting on my nightstand that I don’t recognize at all—a purple stone about the size of my palm.

Where the hell did that come from? It’s not glittering with the light of Paradise, so I know it’s not from Orane.

I stare at it, trying to remember. Nothing comes. Almost nothing.

For some reason, I keep wanting to glance at my dresser. There’s nothing out of place there, but I stare at it, trying to figure out what’s pulling my attention. Finally, I get up and open the top drawer. There, half-buried in a pile of socks, is a black statue of a rearing horse, slightly taller than the length of my hand.

Where did this come from? And what the
hell
is it doing in my sock drawer? And why did I almost remember putting it there when everything else about the past two weeks is gone?

Carefully, I reach forward and untangle it from a few stray socks. As soon as my hand closes around the statue, the feedback I’ve been hearing since I woke up shifts. Louder, higher-pitched, more insistent. I wince. Before I can drop the horse back where I found it, the sound changes again, the feedback slowly replaced with a much more pleasant sound. It’s almost like the long ring of a small bell, or maybe a high note on a cello.

Something shimmers in the too-bright light coming from Orane’s gifts. For a moment, I see a face. It’s blurry, almost impossible to make out, but I get the sense of overwhelming size and a comforting smile. Surrounding the vague form, all I see is darkness. There’s a voice whispering in the black, but I can’t make out the words or remember why darkness would feel warm and safe.

Keeping hold of the statue, I move toward my dresser and pick up the purple stone—I think it’s an amethyst. The noise shifts again, the feedback fading further into the background as the soothing chime takes over. Bringing the stone closer to my eyes, I look at the way the color shades from deep purple at one end to pale lavender at the other. It’s pretty. It reminds me of Orane’s eyes.

It’s not until I pull my gaze away from the stone that I realize my head doesn’t hurt quite so much. I take a deep breath; my nausea has begun to recede.
Finally
.

Rubbing my thumb over the cool, smooth surface of the amethyst, I try to shake off the lingering unease crawling like ants along the lining of my stomach.

Does it matter if I can’t remember the last two weeks? Probably not. It’s summer, and nothing much happens in the summer. It’ll be fine. Orane will help me figure it out as soon as I get back to his world tonight.

At least, I hope he can help me.

Nineteen

Hudson

Sunday, August 31 – 7:02 PM

As soon as I walk in the door, I know something is wrong. Mariella is staring at me with wide eyes, her entire body trembling.

My stomach clenches. Fear. That’s flat-out fear in her eyes.

What the hell did her demon say to her last night? I thought we’d gotten past this. I thought we’d reached some sort of weird middle ground where we could be civil, if not friendly. I’d started to believe I could tell her my story and try to change her mind about the dreamworld.

“Come on in,” Dana says. “Everything should be ready in a minute.”

Mariella’s eyes shift to her mother, and creases line her forehead. She looks at me again and flinches when she meets my eyes, but not as much as the first time. I try to tell myself I don’t care, but I do. More than I thought I would.

At least now confusion seems to be overtaking the fear. Kind of.

“Mari?” Dana calls as she heads back to the kitchen. “Can you and Hudson finish setting the table? He should remember where everything is.”

Only because I’m watching so closely do I see the split-second slackening of her jaw and the way her nostrils flare. Surprise and then confusion. The lines around her eyes deepen, and then it’s all gone. Her face is a blank mask wearing a fake smile.

Mari waits for me to go first and watches me once I step into the kitchen. Does she want to see if her mother is right? What is this—a test?

Grinding my teeth, I head straight for the cabinet with the plates, open the door, and glance back at Mari. The creases are back, but the confusion has morphed into frustration.

Her lips thin as I ask her, “Do you want to carry the plates or the bowls?”

It takes a second, but she cups her hands together and moves them out. Bowls it is, then.

As soon as I get close to her, the tingling is back, the pin-prickly sensations that being around Mariella always causes. The same moment I feel it, Mariella jumps, her hands clenching as she looks around. Trying to figure out what’s happening? Yeah. Me too.

The tingling is as strong as it was before, but she relaxes around me faster than she did the night we met. Mariella has the amethyst I gave her in her pocket, but when she takes it out and looks at it, she stares at it with this intense concentration it really doesn’t warrant.