Sing Sweet Nightingale (30 page)

“We know he gave you all those glass baubles on your dresser. And that pendant.”

How does Hudson know any of this? Orane said that all the others who knew the secret of opening a doorway between the worlds had died in the war. But maybe not all the human participants were wiped out. Maybe a few survived to pass down the stories to their children.

But how did they find me? And what do they want?

I hold myself motionless, not daring to move until I know exactly where this is going. If they think they’re going to use me to get back into Paradise and start another war, they underestimate what I’m willing to do to protect Orane. I’ll die before I let them hurt the man I love and the world he’s trying to protect.

“And we know what happened to your memory, Mari.” Hudson takes a deep breath. “But I don’t think you’re going to like it.”

With barely more than a second’s pause, Hudson launches into a story that makes no sense and is all too familiar. A doorway made of light, an angelic being who promised friendship and aid, a promise, a talent—it’s like my own life. And it should all be impossible.

Each word Hudson utters is like an expertly wielded fillet knife peeling away the layers of protection I’ve constructed between the waking world and Paradise. My heartbeat becomes erratic and unreliable as Hudson tells me a story too awful to comprehend. One that ends with a newspaper article about the murder of a four-year-old boy named J.R. Hudson’s little brother.

If it
is
true, that makes it more likely that Hudson is on the wrong side of everything Orane has tried to protect for centuries. I don’t need to be holding this article to keep the memory of J.R.’s bright, innocent smile. If that had been
my
brother, I’d want revenge, too. But understanding why he’s looking for revenge doesn’t mean I’m going to be the one who gives Hudson the key. Hudson doesn’t know the whole story, and I
will not
let him unravel Paradise.

I shove the paper back into Hudson’s hands, cringing when it crumples between our palms. My hands are quivering so much that signing is nearly impossible, but I finally manage to tell him, “This is crazy. You’re making it up.”

“It’s as crazy as glass birds that glow like floodlights,” Hudson mutters, closing his eyes and rubbing them with the heels of his hands.

Cringing, I try not to glance at my birds. He’s right—they’re brighter now.

“You don’t remember, but it happened to my sister, too,” K.T. says.

She tells her own tale of woe and reveals her family’s tragedy—her sister Emily’s inexplicable, four-year-long coma. When she reaches the present, K.T. shifts, taking my hand in hers before I can pull it away. Her blue eyes bore into mine.

“Mari, I watched her fade away the same way you’ve been fading for years. If you don’t listen to us, to what Hudson is trying to tell you, the same thing is going to happen to you.”

I yank my hand away, but I can’t run. Hudson has moved closer, and the two of them have literally backed me into a corner. They shift forward as the chime in the background turns into a whine, closer to the feedback noise I heard earlier. K.T. doesn’t seem to notice, but Hudson stiffens and looks around, his jaw tight.

“Mariella, we’ve known each other since preschool, yet you can’t name a single time we’ve spoken before yesterday,” K.T. says. I think. Her voice sounds far away. All I can hear is the whine.

Hudson’s lips move, and he bolts out of the room. K.T.’s eyes follow him, but she doesn’t move. Locked in place—and keeping me trapped—she keeps talking.

“Don’t you think that’s strange?”

I can’t think about
anything
with that noise! My head jerks to the side, and the muscles in my face twitch. The louder that noise gets, the harder it is to keep from shoving K.T. out of the way and running from the room like Hudson did. He had the right idea, but it’s like K.T. doesn’t even hear it.
What
is happening?

Oblivious, K.T. passes me a thick book open to a page of pictures. My hands are shaking so hard I can’t hold on to the scrapbook, and it takes a second for my brain to make sense of what I’m seeing. It’s almost as though I’m looking at pictures of…me.

Hudson bursts back into the room with another bag and a large amethyst geode. My nightingale pendant pulses, the glass warming up so fast it burns my chest. I bite back a scream. Hudson shoves the geode into my hands and dumps a bunch of rocks onto the bed with me. The lights in the room pulse brighter, and the sound changes, the harsh whining feedback fading and the high-pitched chime taking over again. K.T., caught up in his mania, jumps up and opens her backpack, pulling more rocks out and adding them to the growing pile.

The light pulsing from Orane’s gifts is no longer the glittering iridescent glow I’ve seen for the past ten years. It’s become an orange so vibrant it looks like my room is on fire. Everything is washed out except for the sparks of blue shooting up my arms from the contact with the geode, and the multi-colored energy emanating from the rocks on my bed. Whenever the orange glow meets any other color, light explodes and sparks fly.

I can’t move. I can’t breathe. I can’t even blink. My eyes are wide open and locked on Hudson’s as this tornado of colors and energy swirls around us.

Body screaming in pain, I try to shove the amethyst away. Hudson’s hands close over mine, and he won’t let me move. Making my eyes as wide as possible, I silently plead with him. His face is the only thing I can make out in the room—maybe because he’s touching my skin.

Please, let me go
, I try to beg.
Don’t do this
.

“Hold on, Mari.” His voice is a whisper, but I hear each word clearly. “Just hold on.”

From the moment Hudson’s hands cover mine, locking me to the amethyst, the edge disappears from the energy. It’s like I’ve become a spectator instead of a participant, watching the light show instead of suffering as the energy whips through me like lightning. I don’t feel it, but Hudson is convulsing like he did when he first stepped into the room. Like he’s become a buffer between me and the swirling lights.

Then, as suddenly as it started, the light pulses one last time and begins to disappear, pulling back into Orane’s gifts like a genie being sucked into a lamp.

Within seconds, the light is back to how it was before. Almost. Orane’s gifts still glow orange, but the light is far less intense. Like someone turned the brightness down.

Hudson’s head drops so low he almost smacks his forehead against the amethyst.

“Jesus. The day I don’t have to do
that
anymore…” He rolls his shoulders and shudders before his head lifts. His hands never loosen their hold on mine.

Without looking away from me, he tells K.T. to go into the guest room next door and find twenty-six stones hidden along the wall. My eyes widen. She disappears without a blink or a question.

“I’ll let go of you,” he says as soon as she leaves. “I’ll let go
if
you promise to sit exactly where you are, with that amethyst in your lap, and listen—really
listen
—to what I have to say.”

I want to spit in his face and slam this amethyst into his head for thinking he can control me like this, but I’m not that stupid. He’s fast and doesn’t hesitate to use his strength to his advantage. But he’s also willing to tell me what he knows. Letting him talk might give me information to take to Orane. Assuming every word out of Hudson’s mouth isn’t a complete lie.

As soon as I nod my agreement, he slides his hands off mine, his fingertips trailing along my wrists, the backs of my hands, my fingers. Sizzling warmth spreads up my arms until it buzzes in my chest like a kaleidoscope of butterflies has taken residence there. I suppress a shiver and close my eyes to block him out. That shivery sensation in my chest is something I’ve never felt under Orane’s touch, but it wasn’t disgust. It felt…nice. Good, even.

I don’t like it.

Hudson paces the room, hands clenching like he’s on the verge of punching something. Or someone. It never crosses my mind he might hit me. It never occurs to me to be scared. Angry, yes, but never scared.

When he speaks, his voice is lower than before. Rougher.

“If we’d let that light hit you, you wouldn’t have remembered who we are. That demon of yours would’ve wiped your slate clean again.”

I tense, and my hands tighten on the geode, itching to chuck it at his chest.

How
dare
he? Demon?
Demon?!
Orane is so far from a demon he makes angels look demonic. He’s kind and good and giving and—

“Don’t look at me like that, Mari.” Hudson has stopped moving. “I know you want to throw that thing at my head, but don’t. Not yet.”

Actually, I think now is a perfect time
.

Gripping it tighter, I lift the geode off my lap. His lip twitches, and in one step he’s back in front of me, sitting on the desk chair and pressing his hands down on mine.

“You stopped listening. I know you did. And you promised you’d listen.” He raises one eyebrow, and his thumbs run along my index fingers. I have to suppress another shiver. “You also promised you would keep this in your lap.”

Before I can figure out how to respond, K.T. comes back into the room holding a blanket like a basket. Inside I see about a dozen stones larger than her hands and a couple handfuls of smaller ones. All that was in the guestroom? When did Hudson do
that
? K.T. looks between us, her eyebrows pulling together.

“Trouble?” she asks as she kicks the door shut.

“Nope. Not that kind anyway.”

“Oh.” Her expression relaxes, and she nods as though his answer makes perfect sense. Maybe it does to her.

“I think it’s your turn, K.T.,” Hudson says.

K.T. adds the new stones to the pile on the bed before clearing a space next to me. Picking up the book of pictures she shoved into my hands earlier, she flips through the pages and offers it to me. I try to pull my hands out from under Hudson’s, but he refuses to move. Finally looking at him, I narrow my eyes.

“I’m not sure I trust you to keep your promise yet, Mari.” Hudson’s lip curls into a crooked smile when I scowl at him. He doesn’t move his hands.

Glancing up, I take a deep breath and remind myself why I agreed to Hudson’s terms. They know too much. I need to find out exactly how much so I can pass the warning on to Orane.

I give K.T. my attention, shifting position slightly with Hudson’s approval.

Less than a minute later, I wish I’d ignored her.

The pressure of Hudson’s hands is all that’s keeping mine from shaking. Each breath burns, and I can’t remember how to blink.

The longer she talks and the more pictures she flips through, the more my mind whirls. It’s like I’m stuck on a spinning amusement-park ride that’s been amped up past its full speed.

K.T. is holding an entire life in her hands.
My
life. And I don’t remember a goddamn second of it.

When did I ever dress up like Santa Claus? And I thought I was terrified of that domed jungle gym in elementary school. Then again, I barely remember elementary school. I thought that was normal, but K.T. knows the stories attached to every single image in this scrapbook and the name of every person the camera captured with us.

Not one person looks familiar to me. I hardly recognize myself.

Chills radiate through my body from the center of my chest, leaving shudders in their wake. My eyes burn and my chest aches, but I can’t look away from those pictures.

It doesn’t make
sense
. Why don’t I remember?

“What about the party Saturday night?” Hudson releases my hands and pulls his cell phone out of his pocket, bringing up a picture and showing me the screen.

It’s me. A much more recent picture of me than the ones K.T. has.

I’m standing in near-darkness staring up at the sky; in the background is a house, and a bunch of people I don’t recognize. I start to shake my head to tell them I don’t remember this either, but something tickles at the back of my mind, an itch more mental than physical. Leaning closer, I zoom the picture in on my face.

Flashes. Sounds and images and emotions jumbled together in a nearly incomprehensible mess. Heat, closeness, and claustrophobia, and then cool breezes and open space. Blasts of noise, and then Hudson’s voice telling stories in the darkness. People staring and whispering, and then the comfort of observing from a distance.

Bit by bit, Saturday evening filters back into my head. The longer I stare at that picture, the more I remember. Hudson was so kind that night, and it was so nice lying on the grass, listening to him whisper Orpheus’s tale.

Like a crack in a dam, remembering that one night brings others in its wake.

It starts with a trickle, but soon the memories are rushing into my head, battering against me like rough waves. I gasp and curl over the amethyst, my hands digging into my hair like they might be able to keep my head from exploding. The weeks slam back into my mind in an instant, and I’m left gasping for oxygen in a suddenly airless room, trembling under the weight of things I never should have forgotten.

I remember all the times K.T. and Hudson reintroduced themselves. I remember the dinners with Hudson and Horace and the strange hints Hudson kept dropping—hints that all make sense now. I remember watching Hudson tear up the boxwood bushes in the backyard, and I remember K.T. inviting us to that party. I remember everything. Except my nights with Orane.

“Are you okay?” Hudson whispers.

Swallowing, I nod. I can hear Hudson’s voice, but my vision is too blurred for me to make out his expression.

Every day of the last three weeks is back, but I don’t have the nights. I don’t have a single memory from Paradise.

I focus solely on my nights with Orane. I get a whiff of lavender, but it doesn’t smell right. There’s a tinge to the scent like it’s burning. All I see is swirling fog filled with bursts of light and swaths of shadow. Tiny shocks run across my skin like a thousand little lashes. It’s nothing like Orane’s world.

Fear makes my already-pounding heart skip beats, but I can’t tell where the fear is coming from. I want to convince myself it stems from Hudson, from his presence in my room or some instinct that this is all a trick he’s playing on me, but when my vision clears and I look into Hudson’s dark eyes, the fear starts to fade. As much as I want to tell myself I’m scared of Hudson, I’m not. It’s thinking of Paradise that frightens me.