The Power of Love (10 page)

“And the shrimp tails in his nose,” Ivy said.

“And those black things on his teeth.”

“Olives. I remember.”

It was the first time since the funeral that Philip had spoken to her about Tristan, the Tristan he had once played with. She wondered why her brother was suddenly able to do so.

“And remember how I beat him at checkers?”

“Two out of three games,” she said.

“Yeah.” Philip grinned to himself, then took off.

He ran up to the last mausoleum in a row of the elegant burial houses and knocked on the door. “Open up in there!” he shouted, then flapped his arms and flew ahead of Ivy, waiting for her at the next turn.

“Tristan was good at Sega Genesis,” Philip said.

“He taught you some cool tricks, didn’t he?”

“Yep. I miss him.”

“Me, too,” Ivy said, biting her lip. She was glad that Philip had rushed ahead again. She didn’t want to ruin his happy memories with tears.

At Tristan’s grave Ivy knelt down and ran her fingers over the letters on the stone—Tristan’s name and dates. She could not say the small prayer that had been carved on the stone, a prayer that put him in the hands of the angels, so her fingers read it silently. Philip also touched the stone, then he arranged the flowers. He wanted to shape them into a
T.

He’s healing, Ivy thought as she watched him. If he can, maybe I can, too.

“Tristan will like these when he comes back,” Philip said, standing up to admire his own work.

Ivy thought she had misunderstood her brother.

“I hope he gets back before the flowers die,” he continued.

“What?”

“Maybe he’ll come back when it’s dark.”

Ivy put her hand over her mouth. She didn’t want to deal with this, but somebody had to, and she knew that she couldn’t count on her mother.

“Where do you think Tristan is now?” Ivy asked cautiously.

“I know where he is. At the festival.”

“And how do you know that?”

“He told me. He’s my angel, Ivy. I know you said never to say
angel
again”—Philip was talking very fast, as if he could avoid her anger by saying the word quickly—“but that’s what he is. I didn’t know it was him till he told me today.”

Ivy rubbed her hands over her bare arms.

“He must still be there with that other one,” Philip said.

“That other one?” she repeated.

“The other angel,” he said softly. Then he reached in his pocket and pulled out a creased photograph. It was a picture of them that had been taken at Old West Photos, but not the same one she had been given. Something had gone wrong with the developer, or perhaps the film itself. There was a cloudiness behind him.

Philip pointed to it. “That’s her. The other angel.”

Its shape vaguely resembled a girl, so Ivy could see why he might say that.

“Where did you get this?”

“Will gave it to me. I asked him for it because she didn’t get into the picture he gave you. I think she’s a friend of Tristan’s.”

Ivy could only imagine what Philip’s active mind would create next—an entire community of angel friends and relatives. “Tristan is dead,” she said. “Dead. Do you understand?”

“Yes.” His face was somber and knowing as an adult’s, but his skin looked baby smooth and golden in the evening sun. At that moment he reminded Ivy of a painting of an angel.

“I miss Tristan the way he used to be,” Philip told her. “I wish he could still play with me. Sometimes I still feel like crying. But I’m glad he’s my angel now, Ivy. He’ll help you too.”

She didn’t argue. She couldn’t reason with a kid who believed as strongly as Philip did.

“We need to go,” she said at last.

He nodded, then threw his head back and shouted, “I hope you like it, Tristan.”

Ivy hurried ahead of him. She was glad she was dropping him off at Sammy’s for a sleepover. With Sammy back, maybe Philip would spend more time in the real world.

When Ivy arrived home she found a note from her mother reminding her that she and Andrew had gone to the dinner gala that was part of the arts festival.

“Good,” Ivy said aloud. She’d had enough strained conversations for one day. An evening with just Ella and a good book was exactly what she needed. She ran upstairs, kicked off her shoes, and changed into her favorite T-shirt, which was full of holes and so big she could wear it like a short dress.

“It’s just you and me, cat,” Ivy said to Ella, who had chased her up the steps and down again to the kitchen. “Is mademoiselle ready to dine?” Ivy set two cans out on the counter. “For you, seafood nuggets. For me, tuna. I hope I don’t get them mixed up.”

Ella rubbed back and forth against Ivy’s legs as Ivy prepared the food. Then the cat mewed softly.

“Why the fancy dishes, you ask?” Ivy got down a matched set of cut-glass plates, along with a crystal drinking glass and a crystal bowl. “We’re celebrating. I played the piece, Ella, I played the movement all the way through!”

Ella mewed again.

“No, not the one I’ve been practicing—and not the one you’ve been practicing, either. The ‘Moonlight.’ That’s right.” Ivy sighed. “I guess I had to play it for him one last time before I could play for myself again. I think I could play anything now! Come on, cat.”

Ella followed her into the family room and watched curiously as Ivy lit a candle and put it on the floor between them. “Is this classy, or what?”

The cat let out another soft meow.

Ivy opened the large French doors that led out to the patio at the back of the house, then put on a CD of some soft jazz.

“Some cats don’t have Saturday nights like this, you know.”

Ella purred through dinner. Ivy felt just as content as she watched Ella clean herself, then settle down by the tall screen doors, her nose and ears positioned to catch all the smells and tiny sounds of twilight.

After a few minutes of keeping vigil with Ella, Ivy dug a book out from underneath the chair cushion, a collection of stories Gregory had been reading. Moving the candle out of the draft, she rolled over on her stomach next to it and began to read.

It wasn’t till then that she realized how tired she was. The words kept blurring before her eyes, and the candle cast a hypnotic flicker across the page. The story was some kind of mystery, and she tried to concentrate, not wanting to miss any of the clues. But before the killer struck a second time, her eyes closed.

Ivy didn’t know how long she had been sleeping. It had been a dreamless sleep. Her mind had jerked awake suddenly, alerted by some sound.

Before she opened her eyes, she knew that it was late. The CD had ended and she could hear the crickets outside, a full choir of them. From the dining room came the soft bonging of the mantel clock. She lost count of the hours—eleven? twelve?

Without lifting her head, she opened her eyes in the dark room and saw that the candle, though still burning, was a stub. Ella had left, and one screen door gaped open, silvery in the moonlight.

A cool breeze blew in. The fine hairs along Ivy’s arms stirred, and her skin felt suddenly chill. It was Ella who had slipped through the door, she told herself. Probably the screen had been unlatched, and Ella pushed it open to let herself out. But the draft was strong, drawn across the room to the door behind Ivy. That door, which led to the gallery, had been closed when Ivy fell asleep.

It was open now—without turning around, she knew it. And she knew that someone was there watching her. A board creaked in the doorway, then another, much closer to her. She could feel his dark presence hovering above her.

Ivy quietly sucked in her breath, then opened her mouth and screamed.

10

Ivy screamed and fought him, kicking behind her with all her strength. He held her down on the floor, his hand pressed over her nose and mouth. She screamed into his hand, then she tried to bite it, but he was too quick for her. She started rolling her body back and forth. She’d roll him into the candle flame if she had to.

“Ivy! Ivy! It’s me! Be quiet, Ivy! You’ll scare Philip. It’s just me.”

She went limp beneath him. “Gregory.”

He slowly lifted himself off her. They stared at each other, sweating and out of breath.

“I thought you were asleep,” he said. “I was trying to see if you were all right without waking you.”

“I—I just—I didn’t know who you were. Philip is out. He’s staying over at Sammy’s tonight, and Mom and Andrew are at the gala.”

“Everybody’s out?” Gregory asked sharply.

“Yes, and I thought—”

Gregory rammed his fist into his palm several times, then stopped when he saw the way she was looking at him.

“What’s wrong with you?” he demanded. “What’s wrong with you, Ivy?” He held her by both arms. “How can you be so stupid?”

“What do you mean?” she asked.

He stared deep into her eyes. “Why have you been avoiding me?”

Ivy looked away.

“Look at me! Answer me!”

She swung her head back. “Ask Suzanne, if you want to know why.”

She saw the flicker in his eyes then, as if he suddenly understood. It was hard to believe that he hadn’t guessed what was going on. Why else would she avoid him?

He loosened his grip. “Ivy.” His voice was softer now, wavering. “You’re home alone, late at night, in a house where you were attacked last week, with the door wide open. You left the door wide open! Why would you do something so dumb?”

Ivy swallowed hard. “I thought the screen was latched. But it wasn’t, I guess, and Ella must have pushed it open.”

Gregory leaned back against the sofa, rubbing his head.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry I upset you,” she said.

He took a deep breath and laid one hand over hers. He was much calmer now. “No, I scared you. I should be the one apologizing.”

Even in the flickering candlelight, Ivy could see the weariness around his eyes. She reached up and touched the temple he had been rubbing. “Headache?”

“It’s not as bad as it was earlier today.”

“But it still hurts. Lie down,” she said. She set a pillow on the floor for his head. “I’ll get you some tea and aspirin.”

“I can get it myself.”

“Let me.” She put her hand lightly on his shoulder. “You’ve done so much for me, Gregory. Please let me do this for you.”

“I haven’t done anything I didn’t want to.”

“Please.”

He lay back.

Ivy got up and put on a disk with sax and piano music “Too loud? Too soft?”

“Perfect,” he said, closing his eyes.

She made a pot of tea, put some cookies on the tray along with aspirin, and brought it back to the candlelit room.

They sipped awhile in silence and munched cookies. Then Gregory playfully clinked his cup against hers in a silent toast.

“What is this stuff? I feel like I’m drinking a garden.”

She laughed. “You are—and it’s good for you.”

He took another sip and looked at her through the wispy steam. “You’re good for me,” he said.

“Do you like to have your back scratched?” Ivy asked. “Philip loves to.”

“Have it scratched?”

“Rubbed. When you were a little boy, didn’t your mother ever rub your back trying to get you to sleep?”

“
My
mother?”

“Turn over.”

He looked at her, somewhat amused, then set down his tea and rolled over on his stomach.

Ivy began to rub his back, running her hand over it in small and big circles, the way she did with Philip. She could feel the tension in him; every muscle was tight. What Gregory really needed was a massage, and it would feel better if he removed his shirt, but she was afraid to suggest this.

Why? He’s just my stepbrother, Ivy reminded herself. He’s not a date. He’s a good friend and kind of a brother—

“Ivy?”

“Yes?”

“Would it be all right with you if I took off my shirt?”

“It would be better,” she said.

He removed it and lay down again. His back was long and tan and strong from playing tennis. She began to work again, pushing hard this time, moving her hands up his spine and across his muscular shoulders. Ivy kneaded the back of his neck, her fingers working up into his dark hair, then she ran her hands down to his lower spine. Slowly but surely she felt him relax beneath her fingers.

Without warning he rolled over and looked up at her.

In the candlelight, his features cast rugged shadows. Golden light filled a little hollow in his neck. She was tempted to touch that hollow, to lay her hand on his neck and feel where his pulse jumped.

“You know,” Gregory said, “last winter, when my father told me he was marrying Maggie, the last thing I wanted was you in my house.”

“I know,” Ivy replied, smiling down at him.

He reached up and touched her on the cheek.

“Now …” he said, spreading his fingers, letting them get tangled in her hair. “Now …” He pulled her head down closer to his.

If we kiss, thought Ivy, if we kiss and Suzanne—

“Now?” he whispered.

She couldn’t fight it anymore. She closed her eyes.

With both hands, he pulled her face swiftly down to his. Then his rough hands relaxed, and the kiss was long and light and delicious. He lifted her face and kissed her softly on the throat.

Ivy moved her mouth down and they started kissing again. Then they both froze, startled by the sound of a motor and the sweep of headlights on the driveway outside. Andrew’s car.

Gregory rolled his head back and laughed a little. “Unbelievable.” He sighed. “Our chaperons have arrived.”

Ivy felt how slowly and reluctantly his fingers let her go. Then she blew out the candle, turned on the light, and tried not to think about Suzanne.

Tristan wished he knew some way to soothe Ivy. Her sheets were twisted and her hair a tangle of gold that had been tossed back and forth. Had she been dreaming again? Had something happened since he left her at the festival?

After the performance, Tristan knew he had to find out who wanted to hurt Ivy. He also knew he was running out of time. If Ivy fell for Gregory, then Tristan would lose Will as a way of reaching her and warning her.

Ivy stirred. “Who’s there? Who’s there?” she murmured.

Tristan recognized the beginning of the dream. A sense of dread washed over him, as if he himself were being drawn into the nightmare. He couldn’t stand to see her that frightened again. If only he could hold her, if only he could take her in his arms—

Ella, where was Ella?

The cat sat purring in the window. Tristan quickly moved toward her, materializing his fingers. He marveled at his growing strength, how he could pick up the cat by the scruff of her neck for a few seconds and carry her to the bed. He put her down and, just before the strength went out of him, used his fingertips to nudge Ivy awake.

“Ella,” she said softly. “Oh, Ella.” Her arms wrapped around the cat.

Tristan stepped back from the bed. This was how he had to love her now, one step removed from her, helping others to comfort and care for her in his place.

With Ella snuggled next to her, Ivy settled into a more peaceful sleep. The dream was gone, pushed deeper into the recesses of her mind, deep enough not to trouble her for a while. If only he could get to that dream. Tristan was sure that Ivy had seen something she shouldn’t have the night Caroline died—or that someone thought she had seen something. If he knew what it was, he’d know who was after her. But he couldn’t get inside her any more than he could get inside Gregory.

He left her sleeping there. He had already decided what to do, and planned to do it in spite of all of Lacey’s warnings: time-travel back in Eric’s mind. He had to find out if Eric was the one riding his motorcycle through Ivy’s dream, and if he had been to Caroline’s the evening she died.

As Tristan moved toward Eric’s house he tried to recall all the details he had seen earlier that night. After the festival, Lacey had accompanied him to Caroline’s house. While she had opened closets, looked behind pictures, and poked through things that were in the process of being boxed up, he’d studied the details of the house, outside and in. These would be the keys, the objects he could meditate on once inside someone’s head, giving him his chance to trigger the right string of memories.

“If you’re going to go through with this stupid plan of yours,” Lacey had said while digging between the sofa cushions, “go prepared. And get some rest first.”

“I’m ready now,” he had argued, his glance sweeping the living room where Caroline had died.

“Listen, jock angel,” Lacey replied, “you’re starting to feel your strength now. That’s good, but don’t let yourself get carried away. You’re not ready for the heavenly Olympics, not yet. If you insist on trying to slip inside Eric, then get some hours of darkness tonight. You’ll need it.”

Tristan hadn’t answered her right away. Standing by the picture window, he had noticed that there was a clear view of the street and anyone coming up the walk. “Maybe you’re right,” he’d said at last.

“No maybe about it. Besides, Eric will be most vulnerable to you at dawn or just after, when he’s sleeping lightly,” she had told him. “Try to get him just conscious enough to follow your suggestion, but not so awake that he realizes what he’s doing.”

It had sounded like good advice. Now, with the sky starting to glow in the east, Tristan found Eric asleep on the floor of his bedroom. The bed was still made, and Eric was still dressed in his clothes from the day before, lying on his side, curled in a corner next to his stereo. Magazines were scattered nearby. Tristan knelt down next to him. Materializing his fingers, he paged through a motorcycle magazine till he found a picture of a machine similar to Eric’s. He focused on it and nudged Eric awake.

Tristan was admiring the cycle’s clean, curved lines, imagining its power, and suddenly he knew he was seeing it through Eric’s eyes. It had been as easy as slipping inside Will. Maybe Lacey was wrong, he thought. Maybe she didn’t realize just how well he had developed his powers. Then the picture softened at the edges.

Eric’s eyes shut. For a moment there was nothing but dark around Tristan. Now was the time for him to think about Caroline’s street, to take Eric on a slow ride up to her house, to get him started on a memory.

But suddenly the blackness opened out, as if a dark wall had been unzipped, and Tristan went hurtling forward. Road came at him out of no-where and kept coming like the road in a video racing game. He was moving too quickly to respond, too quickly to guess where he was going.

He was on a motorcycle, racing over a road through brilliant flashes of light and dark. He lifted his eyes from the road and saw trees and stone walls and houses. The trees were so intensely green they burned against Tristan’s eyes. The blue sky was neon. Red felt like heat.

They were racing up a road, climbing higher and higher. Tristan tried to slow them down, to steer one way, then another, to exert some control, but he was powerless.

Suddenly they screeched to a halt. Tristan looked up and saw the Baines house.

Gregory’s home—it was and it wasn’t. He stared at the house as they walked toward it. It was like looking at a room reflected in a Christmas ornament; he saw objects he knew well stretched by a strange perspective, at once familiar and weird.

Was he in a dream, or was this a memory whose edges had been burned and curled by drugs?

They knocked, then walked through the front door. There was no ceiling, no roof. In fact, there wasn’t a furnished room, but a huge playground, whose fence was the shell of the house. Gregory was there, looking down at them from the top of a very tall sliding board, a silver chute that did not stop at ground level but tunneled into it.

There was a woman also. Caroline, Tristan realized suddenly.

When she saw them she waved and smiled in a warm and friendly way. Gregory stayed on top of his sliding board, looking down at them coldly, but Caroline beckoned them over to a merry-go-round, and they could not resist.

She was on one side, they were on the other. They ran and pushed, ran and pushed, then hopped on. They whirled around and around, but instead of slowing down, as Tristan expected, they went faster and faster. And faster and faster still—they hung by their fingertips as they spun. Tristan thought his head would fly off. Then their fingers slipped and they went hurtling into space.

When Tristan looked up, the world still spun for a moment, then stopped. The playground had disappeared, but the shell of the house remained, enclosing a cemetery.

He saw his own grave. He saw Caroline’s. Then he saw a third grave, gaping open, a pile of freshly dug earth next to it.

Was it Eric who started shaking then, or was it himself? Tristan didn’t know, and he couldn’t stop it—he shook violently and fell to the ground. The ground rumbled and tilted. Gravestones rolled around him, rolled like teeth shaken out of a skull. He was on his side, shaking, curled in a ball, waiting for the earth to crack, to split like a mouth and swallow him.