The Golden Spiral (19 page)

“And then to taunt me with it?” Zo clicked his tongue in disapproval, ignoring my words. “That borders on cruel.”

“You erased my sister! You destroyed my family!”

Zo looked at me with false sympathy in his eyes. “What happened to your family happened because of you. You
made
me do it. I wouldn’t have had to change the river if you hadn’t defied me. This is
your
fault.”

“That’s a lie. You’ve always done whatever you wanted. You can’t blame this on me.”

Zo shrugged. “Perhaps next time you’ll be more considerate of my feelings.”

“There isn’t going to be a next time,” I said.

I could see him out of the corner of my eye as I looked straight ahead, leaning forward slightly so the edge of the bench dug into the back of my legs. A tense silence filled the space between us.

“What do you want, Zo?”

“What does anyone want, Abby?” he countered. “To be loved. Peace on earth. The winning lottery numbers.”

I shook my head in disgust. “No one could love you.”

“Valerie does,” he said with a grin.

I couldn’t take it anymore. I stood up from the bench, wound tight with a rage that filled me to my core. “Stay away from me, Zo. Stay away from me, my family, and my friends.”

Zo frowned at me, his eyes tight. “I can’t do that.”

“Why not?”

He stood up next to me, so close that I could feel the heat from his body.

I took a step back, but his hand shot out and grabbed me by the back of my neck. I tried to twist away, but he held me tight, pulling me even closer to him.

With his other hand, he brushed the locket around my neck, tracing the shape but never touching my skin. “Because I need you, Abby. I always have.”

I broke out of his grip, but he reached out and caught my hand before I could escape. Without letting go of my gaze, he bent his head and lifted my hand to his lips. “I can see why Dante was able to snare you so easily. It makes me wish I’d met you first. Things might have been very different.”

I yanked my hand away as though I’d been burned. I backed away from him—one step, then two—slowly increasing the distance between us, my eyes never leaving his, my hand never leaving the locket at my throat.

Zo watched me go, a smile on his lips.

I turned and walked toward the opening in the trees that would lead me back to the heart of the park.

Behind me, the first notes of another melody lifted on the breeze.

My walk turned into a run. And I ran until I couldn’t hear it anymore—not the music or Zo’s mocking laughter.

Chapter

13

When Natalie opened the door, she was on the phone. “Oh, wait, she just showed up.” She mouthed the words
It’s your mom
and moved to hand the phone to me.

I shook my head vigorously, waving my hands in front of me. I wasn’t ready to talk to my mom just yet. I knew I wouldn’t be able to answer her questions and I feared I would just make things worse.

Natalie slanted a disapproving look at me, then returned to her conversation. “Uh, can she call you back? . . . No, no, she’s okay. . . . I will. Uh-huh. I will. Okay. ’Bye.”

The instant Natalie hung up the phone, my words spilled out in a rush. “You know me, right? You remember me, and we’re friends, right?”

She looked at me strangely, and for a moment my heart stopped. “Of course I know you. And, yes, we’re friends.”

I rushed forward and wrapped Natalie in a hug. “Thank you,” I said. “Thank you for still being you.”

Natalie patted me on the back. “Uh, you’re welcome. I guess. Abby, what’s going on? Your mom said you ran off—”

“I know. Listen, I can explain—well, not easily, it’s complicated—but I’ll try.” I peered past Natalie’s shoulder into her family room. “Is anyone else home?”

Natalie shook her head. “Robert’s off on a camping trip with the Scouts and Mom and Dad are visiting Grandma for the week.”

I sighed in relief. I was still shaken by my conversation with Zo; I wasn’t sure I was up to talking to anyone other than Natalie at the moment. “Can I use your shower?”

Natalie stepped back from the door, pulling me inside with her. “I thought you’d never ask,” she said, wrinkling her nose. “You look terrible. How long have you been in those clothes?”

“It feels like forever.” I picked at my T-shirt sleeve and frowned at the smell. I followed Natalie downstairs to her room. “I really appreciate this.”

She waved off my thanks, pointing to her bathroom. “Go. Clean up.”

I started to close the bathroom door behind me when Natalie called my name.

“I told your mom I’d drive you back home. Don’t be long, okay?”

I nodded. Closing the door behind me, I leaned my back against the wall. I could feel the burdens piling up on my shoulders. There were so many loose ends that demanded my attention. Dante was trapped in the darkness, and I couldn’t even start building the door that would free him for another week at least. Leo thought he knew how to help me stabilize the timeline and reduce the effects of the changing river, but not until this weekend. And now with Zo’s latest strike at my past and my present, I feared I was too late to fix anything. I shuddered, remembering my conversation with Zo and the feel of his lips on my wrist and how his black eyes had laughed at me.

Turning on the shower, I peeled off my clothes, stiff with sleep and sweat, and tossed them into the corner.

The hot water hit me like a fist, coating me in a sheet of fire. I hissed as my skin turned red; the steam rose in clouds around me. I ducked my head under the streaming water, letting the flow cover me like a baptism.

I leaned my head against the shower wall, the water washing over my back in waves. Breathing deeply of the steam, I closed my eyes and, finally, after days and nights of unrelenting heartache, I gave myself permission to let go.

The tears I’d held back for so long rose like a flood.

I cried for Dante, trapped. For my parents, unfairly divided. For my sister, lost before her time. For Jason, and our missed possibilities.

I cried until the stone wall that had been guarding my heart cracked open and crumbled to dust.

I cried until all my anguish, all my anger, all my pain had drained out of me and flowed away beneath my feet.

When I was sure that the water on my face was only the shower and no longer mixed with my tears, I twisted the knob all the way to cold. I gasped; the shock to my system was electric and exhilarating. The edges of my vision turned blue. I shut off the shower and stepped out onto the mat. The bathroom was still warm, almost humid, and I stood for a moment, dripping and shivering inside a cocoon of lingering steam.

I felt cleansed inside and out. The hot water had washed me clean; the cold tears had scoured my soul raw. I had passed through the fire of anger and been quenched in the water of anguish.

My resolve hardened into a solid blade of steel. Zo could do what he wanted, but I was not going to let anyone but me decide the outcome of my life anymore. I would take back what belonged to me—my life, my love, my family. I would find it and fix it and protect it. No one was going to take it away from me again.

I felt reborn.

I felt ready to face the unknown again.

And this time, I was going to win.

***

Natalie pulled into the nearly empty parking lot of Helen’s Café.

I looked around in surprise. “I thought you were taking me home.”

“I am,” Natalie said. “But first we’re going to Helen’s. You need to eat and then you’re going to tell me everything that’s going on.”

I swallowed, then nodded. The idea of telling someone the whole crazy story was oddly terrifying and comforting at the same time. Natalie was the only link I had left to the way my life was supposed to be. What if I told her the truth and she laughed at me? I didn’t know what I’d do if she didn’t believe me.

It wasn’t until we had settled into our booth by the front window, ordered lunch, and waited until our plates had arrived that I heard it.

Can you see . . .

The whisper sailed by on the breath of a breeze. I waved my hand past my ear as though brushing away a fly.

Dante . . . stop . . .

I frowned, looking around to see who might have said Dante’s name. Helen’s Café would hardly be considered crowded: just Natalie and me, an older couple tucked into a back corner booth, and a young guy in a green army jacket, hunched over his plate. The sidewalk outside had more people.

“Abby? Hello? Are you listening?”

I yanked my wandering attention back to Natalie. “What? Oh, sorry. Yes, I’m . . .”

In the way . . .

“Did you hear that?” I asked, rubbing at my ear. A buzzing sounded deep in my ear; it felt like the vibrations of a dentist’s drill.

“I heard me,” Natalie said with a fleeting smile. “It’s okay, Abby. You don’t want to talk about it until we eat. I get it.”

“No, it’s not that.” I frowned.

Do something . . .

“There! Did you hear that?” I half stood in the booth, scanning the café as though I could spot the sound as it traveled to my ear. My gaze snagged on the guy at the next table over. There was something almost familiar about him . . .

Natalie followed my gaze. “Do you know him?”

I waved my hand to erase her words. “Hang on.” I tilted my head and closed my eyes as though that would help me listen. It must have worked because as soon as I focused on that elusive whisper, I found it.

Sound crashed over me, close and hot, and I heard Zo’s voice speaking clearly.
I’m impressed . . . I didn’t think you could keep up.

And then it was gone, the sound whipped away on the tail end of an invisible sigh.

The silence that followed in its wake left me cold and disoriented. Natalie’s hand on my arm felt like a sun-baked brick, hot and scratchy.

“Seriously, Abby, what’s wrong? You’re scaring me.”

Zo’s name stuck in my throat, only the “o” sound escaped in a round exhalation. I had left him in the park just hours ago, but now somehow he was here, whispering in my head, his voice like the rough edge of a file against my mind. The sound conjured up an image of him sitting on a park bench, a guitar in his hands, and I felt goose bumps on my arms.

I could hear Zo as clearly as when I spoke with Dante on the dream-side of the bank. I feared it meant the barriers between the river and the bank were thinning, weakening. And no matter how you looked at it, that was bad.

Natalie pushed her water glass into my hand, and I instinctively wrapped my fingers around it and lifted it to my mouth. The cold sluiced through me, the ice cubes clattering against my teeth. The heat in my brain washed away but I kept swallowing until the glass was empty and I could feel a pillar of ice stretch from my throat to my belly.

I dropped the glass on the table, a few last ice cubes scattering like ghostly dice.

Natalie’s face tightened with worry.

I cracked my voice out of the ice in my chest. “I’m okay. Thanks for the water.”

Natalie’s worry deepened into disbelief. “You’re not okay. You haven’t been
okay
for a while now. Start talking. We’re not leaving until you tell me what is going on.”

 . . . all you can do is wait . . .

The voices were back, or maybe they’d never left. Now that I knew what to listen for—or more specifically,
who
to listen for—I could hear Zo’s voice clearly all around me, drifting in and out of intensity.

You think you know what’s going on, Dante. But you have no idea. Your confidence would be amusing, perhaps. If it wasn’t so pathetic instead.

“Stop it,” another voice said. Louder and closer than even the voices whispering in my ear.

It wasn’t Natalie’s voice, though. I opened my eyes to see the guy in the green jacket standing at our table, an unreadable expression flashing across his face. I knew that face. I knew that voice.

It was V.

 Chapter

14

Stop trying to listen,” V said again while all I could do was stare at him in shock and surprise.

“Who are you?” Natalie asked, frustration giving heat to her words.

“Shut up,” V snapped, barely sparing a glance for Natalie. He crouched down by our table, wrapping his hands together in a knot of obvious anxiety and strain. “I know you don’t have any reason to trust me, Abby, but hear me out. Please. We have to talk. It’s important.” He edged closer, but not too close. A thin sheen of sweat covered his forehead, darkening his hair to the blue-black of a raven’s wing.

“No.” It was the best I could manage past the anger blocking my throat. How could he be here—standing in front of me as though we were old friends, just wanting to visit, to chat. Like nothing had happened. But everything had changed since the last time I’d seen V—things were still changing—and seeing him now like this was more than I could bear.

“We have to talk,” V said. “But not here—”