Kissing Midnight

by Rede, Laura Bradley

  But of course I can’t. She’s gone, and it’s my fault.

  The very least I can do is honor her final warning. I drag myself up off the floor.

  The least I can do is find the box.

  A few minutes later I’m outside Dev’s door, listening for any sign of life. My stomach is churning nervously. What if Dev and Delia are in there? What if they just moved their make-out session to Dev’s room to avoid me? The thought of walking in on them twice in one day makes me ill.

  But I have to go inside.

  I try the knob as quietly as I can. Locked. I feel around in the pocket of my jacket until I come up with the little metal lock pick Dev gave me the night of our first date. It feels like a century ago now. Oh, Dev, I think, I hope you taught me well. I slip the little piece of metal into the keyhole, prodding the lock gently, rotating the hairpin slowly until I feel it catch and something inside turns over.

  My stomach flips, too, my hand shaking so hard the lock pick rattles in the lock, but there’s no going back now. I turn the knob and the door swings open.

  I step into Dev’s room for the first time.

  It’s extremely neat for a guy’s room. It seems big, too, because he doesn’t have a roommate. (I can just imagine him charming some admissions person into letting him live alone.) The furnishings are sparse and luxurious at the same time: There’s a black bedspread on the neatly made bed and a sleek new laptop on the desk. One corner is dominated by a high-end stereo system, but other than that there isn’t much here that’s personal: no posters on the wall, no pictures on the desk. It has the look of someplace temporary, like he doesn’t intend to stay. Everything is new.

  Everything but the small wooden box on the table beside his bed. It looks much older than the furniture around it—maybe even older than the room itself. Now I understand what Jesse meant when she said there was a feeling about the box. It makes me step toward it cautiously, almost reverently.

  I rub my sweaty palms over the thighs of my jeans. I don’t want to go any closer, but it’s like the box is pulling me and as soon as I reach it, I see why.

  It’s exactly like Jesse described it, exactly like the door in my nightmare. The top is carved with intricate designs. There’s a brass handle in the shape of a human face, its mouth stretched in a perpetual scream, and across the top are the words “Bold, be bold, but not too bold or your heart’s blood shall soon run cold.”

  I feel like it already has. I’m shaking so hard, I feel like my knees may just fold under me. But I don’t have much time. Dev could be back any minute, and I have to know the truth. Be bold, I think. Daring myself to do it, I grab hold of the brass ring and tug.

  Instantly the box begins to shake. Shuddering like a living thing, it throws itself off the bedside table and falls. It hits the floor upright on one end and the box begins to grow, warping and stretching until it towers above me.

  It isn’t the cover of a box anymore.

  It’s an ancient wooden door, surrounded by a stone arch. The door from my dream.

  I stare up at it. This can’t be happening. But the door certainly looks real, every knot and crack in its weathered wood exactly as it is in my nightmares.

  And it feels real, too. I reach out and touch the carvings again, abstract swirls now as big as my hand, turning and twisting like a maze you could never escape. And all I want to do is escape. The feeling of dread presses on my chest until it’s hard to breathe. I would give anything to wake up now in a cold sweat, the sheets twisted around my ankles, safe and sound in my bed.

  But this isn’t a dream, and there’s no backing out. I need to see what’s behind that door.

  I reach out and grasp the ring of the door handle, heavy and cold in my hand.

  Part of me hopes it won’t open. Part of me prays it will be locked. But the door swings open like it’s expecting me, hinges giving with a loud creak, like the sound of a monster yawning.

  The room beyond is dark and unnaturally cold, so cold I can see my breath. I feel the hairs rise on my arms, a combination of cold and fear.

  I force myself over the threshold.

  The massive door shuts behind me with a bang that makes me jump.

  Then there is nothing but the steady sound of dripping, like the ticking of a clock. A putrid smell curdles the air. It takes a moment for my eyes to adjust to the dark and, once they do, I wish they never had.

  The room is full of girls. Dead girls. Hanging from hooks suspended from the ceiling, too many of them to count. Girls of every race and color and description, but each of them young and beautiful once, and each one dressed for a party: beaded flapper dresses, long Victorian gowns, modern miniskirts. They hang with their heads bent, their feet dangling, revolving slowly on their hooks.

  A strangled choking noise rises in my throat. I feel like I might be sick. “Oh my God,” I breathe. “What is this place?”

  A sudden light flares from the other side of the room.

  “This,” Dev says, “is my home.”

  “Dev!” I stumble backward a step as he takes a step forward, into the light of a torch set into the stone wall. It is Dev, but he doesn’t look like himself. The firelight casts his face in a strange glow, his high cheekbones underscored with darkness, his eyes ringed in shadow. He is standing on the landing of a wide stone staircase, dressed in a suit from a different era, dark and formal. It makes me think of my dream of the little girls playing in the meadow. There’s no question who Mr. Fox is now.

  He starts down the stairs, his polished shoes echoing on the hard stone floor. At the sound, something bizarre happens: All around me, the girls begin to squirm on their hooks, their silk dresses rustling like dry leaves. They let out a collective sigh, like the castle itself is breathing.

  I recoil, pressing my back against the closed door behind me, but Dev doesn’t seem to notice the girls at all. All his attention is on me.

  “You weren’t supposed to see it like this.” He sounds mildly apologetic, like I’ve walked into a messy room. “I wanted to tell you myself, first. But I should have figured you would find your way in.” His voice is quiet, almost gentle. “You really are smart, you know?” He tilts his head, studying me. “But it’s your gift, the fact that you can see the ghosts. That’s your big advantage.”

  If I weren’t so afraid, I would laugh. Advantage? Being able to see ghosts has never been anything but torture for me, and I would give anything to be able to unsee the horror all around me now.

  But at the same time, I know what he means. Jesse was my advantage. Without her, I could never have found my way to the truth, horrible as it may be. I’d give anything to have her help right now.

  But there’s only me. I have Dev’s full attention. His blue eyes study me almost admiringly, and I can’t help studying him back. He’s the same beautiful Dev he has always been—maybe even more beautiful, in some strange and sinister way, against the backdrop of all this carnage. His breath rises in front of him like he’s an ordinary person, but I know now that he isn’t.

  My voice comes out as a whisper. “What are you?”

  Dev chuckles. “I feel like I should be asking you that, Saintly. What are you? What has heartbreak made you? But…” He smiles. “Since you asked me first…” He strides toward me, his confident steps making the dead girls sway in his wake, and stops just a few feet in front of me. Backlit by the firelight, Dev looks sculpted, the dark lines of his shoulders elegant and strong, his smile white in the darkness. “You know me, Saint. I’m just an ordinary guy.” He shrugs. “Or I was four hundred years ago.”

  “Four hundred…” The thought makes me dizzy. I sway like the girls on their hooks, the room going liquid around me.

  Dev laughs at the shock on my face. “Are you trying to tell me I don’t look my age? Well, it’s pretty easy to stay youthful when you’re permanently frozen at twenty, and I pride myself on being flexible, fitting in, changing with the times. But four centuries ago, I was just an ordinary guy. That is, until I me
t an extraordinary girl. A demon girl.”

  Immediately, my mind goes to his old family friend. “Antoinette?”

  Dev shakes his head. “An is a demon—you’re right about that—and she’s pretty old. Pentaforms are shape shifters, and they can’t die until all five of their forms have been killed, so they tend to stick around for a while. But I’m talking about a demon with a lot more power than An. An ancient power.”

  The thought makes me cold. “But demons aren’t real.”

  Dev nods understandingly. “Sure. Fake. Like ghosts, right?” He grins. “Exactly what they want you to think, I’m sure. Well, a few centuries ago we were more…open-minded about the existence of things beyond our world. But even so, it took me a while to see my demon for what she was. I was in denial, I think.” His smile widens. “Maybe you can identify?”

  I don’t say anything, but I’m sure the blush burning on my cheeks answers for me. I should have seen through Dev somehow. I should have known something wasn’t right.

  Dev shakes his head sadly, like he can read my thoughts. “Don’t blame yourself, Saint. I know you girls always do. But the truth is,” he spreads his arms wide to indicate the girls spinning slowly around us, “I’ve had some time to perfect my game. And, to be fair, no one prepped you for this, right? They were too busy calling you crazy, making you doubt every instinct you had. When you think of it that way, it’s pretty amazing you figured it out at all. But you did. You saw through me, the way I saw through my demon lover once I realized some things are really too good to be true.”

  My only chance is to keep Dev talking until I can figure out an escape. “What did you do?”

  Dev shrugs. “What could I do? By then I was in too deep, infatuated completely. I begged her to make me immortal so I could be with her forever.” He looks away, momentarily lost in the memory.

  Cautiously, I reach for the doorknob. My motion sets the nearest girl swaying. The golden beads on her dress whisper like a warning, and I draw my hand back quickly as Dev turns back to me. “So,” I say, “you’re… immortal?”

  “No. It couldn’t be that simple, could it?” He gives the girl closest to him a little shove, and she rocks back and forth like a pendulum. “There had to be a catch, right? I’m conditionally immortal. I never age. Nothing can kill me. But every year I have to make a new girl fall in love with me and, at exactly midnight on New Year’s Eve, I have to get her to kiss me. When she does, she dies, and my lease on life is renewed for another year. Her soul is trapped here, and I go on with my life.”

  He says it simply, almost casually, but the horror of it hits me so hard that I want to sink to my knees right there on the bloodstained stone. “Every year? For four hundred years?”

  He nods. “That’s right. This—” he sweeps his arm to indicate the swaying forest of bodies “ —is only part of my collection.”

  Collection. I force myself to look, really look, at the girls around me. It isn’t easy. Their skin is gray. Their open eyes stare, unblinking, at the floor. They hang like lifeless corpses, except that, every once in a while, one will twitch—flex a hand, shrug a shoulder, quirk the slightest smile. A tiny girl a few feet away from me seems to wink at me and I shudder, but I refuse to look away. I force myself to look for things that make them unique, things that make them human—one girl’s cat-eye glasses; the confetti still sprinkled in another girl’s hair; the locket that hangs open around another girl’s neck, tiny pictures smiling out. Pictures of people who miss her and mourn for her. Details of a life that ended too soon. A life very much like mine. “They aren’t a collection,” I say quietly. “They’re people.”

  Dev takes hold of the nearest girl and spins her slowly around to face him. He looks thoughtfully into her face, as if he’s trying to remember her name. “They were once. Maybe still are, in a sense. I’ll be honest, I don’t let myself think about it much. Oh,” he adds quickly, “I did at first. The first decade or so was torture. I would cry for weeks afterward. There were times when I almost didn’t go through with it.”

  “But you did.” I don’t want to piss him off—there’s no telling what he’ll do—but I can’t keep the contempt out of my voice.

  “I did,” he agrees. “What else could I do?”

  “Die.”

  I’ve crossed a line. Dev looks at me sharply. “Die, sure, but not just die. Die and go to Hell. Do you believe in Hell, Saintly?”

  I think of the paintings in my grandmother’s church, of fire and devils. Ordinarily I might say no, but standing here in this forest of limp bodies, Hell seems all too real. “I thought this was it.”

  He laughs. “Oh, it’s a lot worse than this, trust me.”

  “Then why don’t you fight it? Force the demon to remove the curse?”

  “The demon is long gone.” He looks away, and for the first time I see real sadness in his eyes. “She was entertained by it all at first, but as soon as I stopped torturing myself over every kill, she lost interest and moved on. Demons have long lives but short attention spans.” He smiles at me sadly. “Besides, I prefer to work alone.” He reaches out and gives the girl next to him a push. She spins lazily, her long blue dress blooming around her. “It’s an art form, really, like music or dance. The more you practice, the better you get. There’s a technique to it, a certain rhythm. You develop an instinct.” His eyes meet mine, and there’s a shine in them I haven’t seen before, a predatory glint that scares me. “Everything’s about timing, isn’t it?” He shoves the girl again and she swings from side to side in a steady tick-tock. “You might think, being immortal, that I’d be immune to time. But no, not me. The clock is always ticking. You have to be careful not to start too early.” He takes a step and pushes another girl, setting her swinging, too. “You don’t want to give her time to fall out of love before the big date. But likewise you can’t start too late.” He sets a third girl in motion with a touch of his hand. “She needs to have enough time to fall for you. I’m very careful about my timing, Saintly, and most years—clockwork! But this year—” He pushes a fourth girl so hard that she bashes into the others, sending them spinning out of orbit, scattering like pool balls. “This year there was a fuck-up.”

  “Kayla,” I say.

  “Kayla. She died too soon. Was that just bad luck? Maybe. Or maybe,” he raises his voice to it echoes off the damp stone walls, “maybe she was killed by a spirit that escaped from here, a spirit trying to do me in. Well, it won’t work, will it?” He shouts at the seemingly lifeless bodies around him.

  The look in his eyes is so dangerous, I know I should keep quiet, but I’m too angry to shut up. “You talked about Kayla like you cared about her! You made me think you’d lost someone like I have! You lied to me!”

  “I didn’t lie!” He bellows it so loud that the torch light shudders at the sound. I cringe, and he catches himself. He forces a deep breath. “I never lie if I don’t have to. That’s my policy—stick to the truth as much as you can because trust is crucial. In this case, I fudged the timing a little because I didn’t want Kayla to seem too recent. I didn’t want you to think I was on the rebound, or to worry that you were taking advantage of me in a vulnerable state.” He smiles. “That’s what you would have thought, isn’t it? So yes, I shifted the facts. But I did care about Kayla. I care about them all, to a degree. They could sense it if I didn’t, and it wouldn’t work. That’s the trick of staying alive, Saintly. You have to care.” His blue eyes hold mine for a second. “But not too much.”

  Don’t care too much. I want desperately to follow that advice. How can I still care about Dev, knowing the awful truth? But I can’t just shut my feelings off completely, and those bright blue eyes still make me go weak. He’s a killer, I tell myself. He wouldn’t be telling you all of this if he intended to let you live. I put all the strength I can into my voice. “So what happens now?”

  Dev takes a step closer, close enough to touch. I can feel the heat of his body, even in this cold, cold place. Between us, the smoke
of his breath braids itself with mine. “I guess that’s up to you.”

  My stupid heart beats faster. I want to smash it with a rock. How can it betray me like this? But my heart hasn’t caught up to my brain.

  I force myself to take a step back. “I won’t kiss you at midnight.”

  He bridges the space between us with a step. I can feel the heat of his breath against my neck as he leans in to whisper “Oh, I think you might, if I wanted you to.”

  A shiver runs through me. I hold myself tense to keep from doing something stupid.

  He smiles and straightens. “But I wouldn’t ask you to, Saint. The truth is, you’re more valuable to me alive than dead. I have a proposition for you.” He tugs at the cuffs of his suit jacket. “Think of it as a business deal.”

  “I’m not making any deals with you.”

  “Come on, Saint. Hear me out. The thing is, I could use someone with your gifts, someone who can see spirits. See, there’s one disadvantage to being at this so long: the more girls’ ghosts I trap in this place, the stronger they collectively become.” The girls all around us stir, like trees in a subtle wind. There’s a whispering like faraway voices. “Every New Year’s I buy myself more time, but I also add another spirit to the mix and I can’t always hold them all. A few of the stronger spirits have broken free and—surprise, surprise!—they want to see me dead. A little rebellion, if you will. Of course, when they’re in here I can see them just fine, but out there in the real world—”

  “You can’t,” I finish. “That’s how they were able to kill Kayla.”

  “Exactly. But if I had you around, you could be my warning system and send the strays into the light.”

  I think of Jesse and my stomach twists. I won’t send another innocent away for Dev’s sake. “I won’t help you.”

  “Really?” Dev studies me skeptically, “Because I think you’d find the job has some truly amazing perks.”