Valkyrie Rising (2 page)

I expected him to leave now that his mission was a fait accompli. But he stood there a second longer, elbows propped on the railing, like he too needed a moment to catch his breath before plunging back downstairs.

“What are you two doing up here?” Graham asked. We both jumped and turned in unison, a little too fast.

Somehow Graham had extracted himself from his entourage and made his way up the deck stairs without either of us noticing. He looked at me, then at Tuck, and his eyes narrowed in mock suspicion.

I squirmed, uncomfortable he’d found us like that—locked in private conversation when the whole world was downstairs. Especially since Tuck and I now shared a secret.

“I could smell you five feet away,” Graham said, glancing at me, but then dismissing the thought as he zeroed in on Tuck. “Is that why you’re hiding up here? Seriously—lay off the scotch.” He made a grab for the flask, but Tuck was slippery as an eel. “If you’re hung over during practice, I’m not covering for you again—I don’t care if you throw up.” But his smile told a different story.

“Oh, I would never do anything to compromise my athletic career,” Tuck said, parroting the serious, grown-up voice Graham saved for teachers and college interviews. Graham made a valiant effort to stay annoyed, but it was too late. He grinned and ran one hand through his hair. Only Tuck could manage him like that.

“I’m being serious,” Graham said, carefully avoiding the responsible voice. “I’m outta here at the end of the summer. And I’m telling you, senior year is harder—with college applications. You’ve gotta pull yourself together.”

“There’s gratitude for you,” Tuck said, catching my eye. “Without people like me for contrast, no one would recognize how perfect you are.”

Graham shifted impatiently on his feet, but Tuck kept right on talking, paving over his transgressions with a solid foot of bullshit. I tuned out until something caught my ear. “I already talked to Colette,” Tuck was saying. “She got me a ticket to visit for two weeks.”

That was hardly a surprise. “Visit Graham at Stanford?” I confirmed. Graham would be leaving for college at the end of the summer, but Tuck was a year younger than Graham and a year older than me. Which meant Tuck and I would be left behind together. Or, more accurately, Tuck would be left with the half of his friends who were also his age. It wasn’t like Tucker Halloway would hang out in our house every night once Graham was gone.

“Nope.” Tuck grinned first at me, then at Graham. “Norway.” Tuck was aglow with the good news, whereas I felt a bit queasy.

“You’re coming to Norway?” I asked in a very small voice.

He nodded.

That summer our mother was ushering a group of rowdy college students through a summer art history program in Italy, as part of her ongoing battle for tenure at UCLA. And we were being shipped off to Grandmother Hilda’s house in the country—eight full hours from Oslo.

“I thought I was getting away from you. At least for the summer.” It came out louder than I’d planned, like someone had turned on a hidden microphone. “When did this happen?” As much as I wouldn’t admit it, especially not to Tuck, it wasn’t actually unwelcome news. The tiny town we’d be trapped in could get slow after a week, much less two months.

“A couple of weeks ago,” Graham replied, shrugging.

“Fantastic.” I frowned, even though the addition of Tuck would probably be a good thing—no one was more fun than Tuck when he wanted to be. Still, I was annoyed to be finding out like this. It was another example of Graham not telling me things. Like I wasn’t a person who deserved common courtesy, but just one more planet that should slip obediently into orbit around him.

“Tell me what you really think,” Tuck said drily. “Really, don’t spare my feelings. You’re far too sweet.”

“Play nice,” Graham said to us both. “Next year I won’t be around to mediate.”

But the momentary lull in the universal battle for Graham’s attention was over.

A football whizzed through the air toward the side of Graham’s head. Without taking his eyes off me, he caught it in one hand and threw a perfect spiral back in the general direction of his friends, somehow still hitting one of them squarely in the chest. “It’ll be fun,” Graham told me. “You two can use this summer to practice world peace. You know. Get along.”

A deep voice called Graham’s name, and a girl shrieked with laughter so loud it could be heard above the music.

Graham’s attention snapped back to the party. My ten seconds were over. Duty called.

“C’mon. Tuck,” Graham said. “Everyone’s asking for you. And I’m not leaving you alone with Ellie and a flask of mystery liquid.”

“Mystery liquid?” Tuck waved his flask in the air. “This is thirty-year-old scotch!”

“Shh,” Graham and I hissed in unison.

“You realize the scotch is old enough to legally drink? I’m pretty sure that gives me some kind of immunity to local statutes.” He nudged my shoulder. “C’mon, Ells, you’ve got to start somewhere, and I promise it doesn’t get any better than this.”

Graham’s smile faded as Tuck slipped the flask between my fingers.

“She doesn’t want to,” Graham said. “You know she’s too young.”

It didn’t matter that he was right about the first part. It only mattered that once again he was speaking for me. And being a huge hypocrite. Everyone knew that he and Tuck had been up to far worse when they were my age—Tuck was barely eleven months older than me. Plus, it wasn’t like he was legally old enough to drink either.

But before I could object, Graham had already charged forward, disappearing down the stairs. His golden head was a periscope marking his progress as he submerged into the sea of people below.

Tuck slipped the flask into his back pocket and started to follow, but hesitated on the second step.

“You coming?” he asked.

I shook my head.

“Maybe that’s for the best,” he said. “If he was actually paying attention, Graham would realize how much he hates that dress.”

“What’s wrong with my dress?” I demanded, flushing pink at the thought that maybe I’d looked ridiculous all day, especially during the two hours I’d greeted pretty much everyone at the door.

“Nothing,” he said, flashing me a grin that I felt ten feet below my toes. “Let’s just say I won’t be the only guy who finds himself stopping to chat longer than he’d expected.”

I had no idea what to say to that.

Fortunately, Tucker never gave anyone the chance to sneak in the last word. He was in motion before the words had even left his lips, slipping down the stairs and into Graham’s wake.

I retreated back through the sliding glass doors and into the cool shadows of the kitchen. From the windows overlooking the pool, I could watch Tuck weave his way through the party. Sure enough, a senior girl latched onto him like a tick. I was disappointed when he leaned in close and whispered something in her ear. Whatever he said made her laugh so hard that her face pinched up until she almost looked less pretty. Almost.

A full ten minutes elapsed, and I was still watching Tuck. I swear he talked to every girl there. Which was no small feat.

Clearly, flirting with me, or whatever it had been, was about as noteworthy in his day as breathing and walking upright. Not that I expected anything otherwise. It really should have been a relief. Especially since we’d be in close quarters if he was coming with us to Norway. The last thing we needed was my ridiculous imagination tagging along and making me feel awkward around him.

After loitering in the kitchen long enough that the same person had walked through twice to use the bathroom, I decided to make an attempt to be social. Plus, I knew there was no way Graham was paying attention to the dwindling food situation. I grabbed a tray of sandwiches and made my way down the stairs and into the melee.

“Hold up.” A guy I’d never seen before shifted in front of me. Assuming he was hungry, I extended the tray.

“Want to sit with us?” He motioned toward a group of unfamiliar faces clustered around a table.

“There’s only one chair,” I pointed out, because it was the first thing that popped into my head.

He nodded. Apparently he thought we’d be sharing it.

He had to be from a different school—someone Graham knew from one of the dozen or more after-school activities that had dazzled college admissions officers across the country. From the way that boy smiled at me, he had no idea who I was. Or what Graham would do to him if he tried to sleaze all over me. Not that it necessarily would have stopped someone who had so clearly drowned each and every one of his inhibitions.

“Tempting,” I said. “But I’m busy.”

“What’s the hurry?”

I hesitated. There was no hurry. There was no reason I couldn’t sit and talk to him and his friends. Graham would never know. Except when I turned and finally looked the boy squarely in the face, something in me sagged with disappointment. His eyes were glassy from a day of drinking in the sun, comparing unfavorably to the way Tuck was always sharp, even when you knew he shouldn’t be.

“Want some help with that?” The boy reached for the tray, misreading my hesitation.

“No, thank you,” I said, turning away. “I’ve got it.”

“No, really, let me take it.” He grabbed for the tray again.

Even though he was annoying and harmless, I started to get mad. At myself, for stopping to talk to him. At Graham, for making me second-guess and worry about every little thing I did. And at Tuck, for lighting my nerves on fire in the first place. I could feel my temper snapping, threatening to break free, when the boy’s other hand materialized on my hip.

“Don’t touch me.” My voice was unnecessarily harsh, even to my own ears. I turned to face him, startled by the vehemence of my reaction, by the force of my own anger. But at my words, an odd shadow settled across his face. His eyes were distant and cloudy, like a fog had drifted across his pupils. They weren’t just unfocused like they’d been earlier; instead, they were utterly empty. As I watched, his jaw fell slack and he bobbed on his feet, putting his full weight on my outstretched arm. The same arm that was supporting the tray.

For one terrible moment, I thought he would knock me and all the sandwiches right into the pool. But a steadying hand caught my elbow. The tray was lifted from my grasp. “Can’t take you anywhere,” Tuck said. “Although I guess you had an equally incompetent assistant. Looks like I’m not the only one who appreciated that scotch.”

I shifted my eyes toward the boy, hoping Tuck would catch my plea for help. And of course he did.

Tuck looked at him, a smirk on his face. “Do me a favor and get a water from the cooler over there.”

But the boy just stared at me blankly for a full count of five. There was something unnatural about his lingering, vacant stare; it sent a glacier of ice-cold fear sliding down my spine. Had my rebuff been so harsh that I’d made him catatonic? Or maybe he was slipping into some sort of alcohol-related coma? But just as my panic reached a fever pitch, he snapped back to life, blinking furiously as if waking from a deep sleep.

“Sure,” he said. That boy might not have known who I was, but everyone knew Tucker Halloway. “Be right back,” he added.

“You came down,” Tuck said to me. “Are you staying, or are you catering?” He grabbed a sandwich off the tray. “Thanks, by the way. Famished.”

“Neither,” I said, stepping away and deciding right then to just leave Tuck to deal with the tray of sandwiches if he was gonna be snide.

“Don’t let that jerk chase you away,” Tuck said, following me through the crowd. “I’ll get rid of him.”

“Isn’t that what you just did?” I stopped and turned to face him.

“I mean for good.” The alcohol on his breath was surprisingly sweet, as was the look in his gray eyes. But I wasn’t going to be tricked a second time.

“I don’t want murder on my conscience, if that’s what you mean.”

“It’s not,” Tuck said. “Even I have my limits.”

“Good to know. Tucker Halloway’s limit is just shy of manslaughter,” I said. “Maybe we tie him up and stash him in the pantry instead?”

Tuck laughed. Usually that would make me feel ten thousand feet tall. But even his smile wasn’t enough to shake off what had happened. The memory of the boy’s vacant face had triggered an ominous, jittery feeling in my limbs, and it was building by the second. I wanted more than anything to be alone, away from the party.

“How about we tell him who you are?” Tuck said. “Unless you want an afternoon to be someone else. Graham’s too busy to play dad.”

Ordinarily I might have considered his offer. Or at least paused to ponder what Tuck would exact from me in return. Tuck never sided against Graham.

But I was too confused and distracted to navigate whatever maze Tuck was coaxing me into. I shook my head, looking up to find Tuck watching me closely. Testing and quite possibly trapping me.

“Did you notice anything weird about that guy a minute ago—about his eyes?” I asked.

“No, but I wasn’t the one gazing into them,” Tuck replied. It was my prompt to smile, to play along. And when I missed it, he surveyed me like a surgeon deciding where to cut. “You okay?” Concern creased his forehead. “You look weird right now. Did that guy do something to you?” The edge in his voice was a reminder that as reckless as he sometimes appeared to be, Tuck was every bit as intense as Graham. Protective vibe and all.