Kissing Midnight

by Rede, Laura Bradley

He waves his hand almost casually, but the entire scene around us is transformed. Everything shifts. The hanging girls, the hard stone walls—they all melt away, and instead of standing in a cold, dark castle, we are suddenly in a grand ballroom. High, arched windows soar to the domed ceilings. Gilded frescos ring the chandeliers. White marble floors gleam beneath our feet. And all around us, the slowly rotating bodies have been replaced with dancing couples, dressed for a masquerade ball. Dev is still in his crisp black suit, but now he wears a black mask to match. I have a mask on, too—black and lacey—and a rose-colored fairytale gown. Dev looks me over approvingly. “You look lovely.”

  I don’t answer. Under any other circumstances, all this would be lovely, but right now all I can think of is how hard it will be to run away in this dress.

  But I don’t get a chance to try. Dev grabs my hand. “Dance with me.” It’s not an invitation, it’s a command. In seconds, we are swept up in the current of dancers spinning around us. Dev pulls me close, one strong hand in mine, the other warm on the small of my back, guiding me. It’s a formal dance, but it feels so intimate. To keep up, I have no choice but to give over and let him lead me—and my traitorous heart wants me to give over even more, to lay my head against Dev’s shoulder and forget all the horrors and heartbreaks, to go back to the way I felt just a day ago.

  But I can’t. Not now that I know the truth. I hold myself stiff and upright in his arms as he sweeps me around the floor.

  “Do you like it? This place?” Dev smiles down at me, warm and charming. “I thought you might. It’s a memory, one of a million parties I’ve been to. You’re a good dancer.” He spins me and catches me effortlessly. “It’s a survival skill for me, of course. Dancing. Music. Sex. They may not mean much to some guys, but for me any skill that might win a girl’s heart could make the difference between life and death. And so…” he gives me a roguish grin, “I practice.” He dips me smoothly. “I hope it shows.”

  I glare at him, but my face is burning with the memory of our night together. Yes, it shows. Four hundred years of practice has made Dev more than perfect, but it’s all just bait in a trap. None of it means a thing.

  “I practice other things, too.” The music shifts to something slower and Dev shifts with it, fluid as wine. “The demon who made me immortal gave me this castle, but I taught myself how to use it, how to make it shift to my will. I’ve found that the real world is like that, too. If you have enough money, enough charm, the right kind of looks, you can make it exactly what you want it to be.” He looks deep into my eyes. “We could be happy together, Mariana. Don’t you deserve a little happiness?”

  It’s tempting. I hate to admit it, but even knowing what I know, it’s tempting.

  But I don’t give in. “You were pretty clear that you like to work alone.”

  His grin widens. This is a game, and I’m playing my part. “Sure, but it gets lonely, too, having no one to share it with. Do you have any idea how good it feels to tell someone the truth? I think you understand that, Saintly.” He lowers his voice to a whisper. “You know what it’s like to keep a secret.”

  I stop so short he jerks to a stop with me. Around us, the couples swirl past like leaves in the wind. I put my hands on his chest and shove. “I am not like you!”

  “But you are,” he says smoothly, “in so many ways. We’re both strong. We’re both survivors.”

  “You’re not a survivor, Dev. You’re a killer. There’s a difference.”

  “Not to me, there isn’t.” He brushes a stray piece of lint from the arm of his jacket.

  “Well, there is to me. And I’ve never killed anyone.”

  “But you feel like you have, right?”

  For a second my mind flashes back to Jesse, to the way she pleaded with me not to send her into the light. “What do you mean?”

  “Your brother. You feel like you could have stopped him doing what he did, like you should have seen the signs.”

  It’s true. I should have seen the truth of Enrique’s depression, just like I should have seen the truth about Dev. I do feel responsible. I can’t look Dev in the eye.

  He sees he has me. “Back in the old days, there were two kinds of sins, sins of commission—things you did—and things of omission — things you fail to do. Two sides of the same coin.”

  “You don’t know anything about my brother.”

  “Fine.” Dev holds up his hands in surrender, but his eyes sparkle behind his mask. He knows he’s struck a nerve. “Then let’s talk about you. You’re magical. Powerful. It’s another thing we have in common and I’ll admit I underestimated you when we met, Saint, but I’m starting to see it now. You are a lot more powerful than I knew—maybe more powerful than you know. In fact, if you wanted to, I bet you could control this place, turn it into your heart’s desire.” He spreads his arms wide and the dancers around us seem to speed up. “Go ahead. What do you want, Saintly? What do you really want?”

  “Nothing,” I say, but I can’t stop myself. The image is already forming in my mind. The room blurs like a watercolor painting left out in the rain, the colors blending and bleeding. Then, just as quickly, it comes back into focus, even sharper than before. The couples are still spinning, the light from the chandelier sparkling off their clothes, like sunlight on swirling water. At first I think nothing has changed.

  And then I see him, standing at the top of the stairs.

  “Oh my God,” I whisper. “Enrique.”

  My brother looks up as if he heard me say his name. He looks exactly like himself, his brown hair falling in a flop over his eyes, his oversized headphones around his neck, his Converses unlaced. Exactly like himself, but so much better because he’s smiling, a smile I barely saw in the months before his death. A smile I’ve missed so much. This isn’t the dark ghost of my brother I saw at school. This is Enrique as I wish he was, as I want him to be.

  “Enrique!” I want to run to him and hug him and shake him by the shoulders and scream at him never to leave us again. I want to cry into the shoulder of his T-shirt and let the tears erase everything, like the last few years never happened at all.

  But I don’t. Because I know, deep down, that this isn’t the real Enrique. It isn’t even a ghost. It’s an illusion. A memory. A dream. And the price of holding onto it is too high.

  But I still can’t force myself to look away. “If I stay with you,” I whisper, “if I don’t kiss you at midnight, how will you survive?”

  Dev’s voice is soothing. “You let me worry about that, Saintly. The point is, we’ll be together.” He glances at Enrique. “Stay here and you don’t have to lose anyone ever again.”

  But that’s not true, and I know it. I wrench my eyes away from my brother. “Tell me the truth.”

  “Saintly, how I survive is my business.”

  “Tell me!” I yell it so loud, the couples around us falter. All over the room, people are cutting curious glances our way. The music staggers.

  But Dev doesn’t even have to say it. I already know. “Delia,” I say softly. “You’ll kiss Deals.”

  Dev’s expression hardens. “It’s you or her, Saintly. You can’t tell me you want to defend her. You saw her betray you.”

  “You betrayed me!”

  “I’m trying to save you!”

  “No,” I say, “You’re trying to save yourself.”

  I turn to walk off, but he grabs my hand. His voice is quiet, almost pleading. “I have to survive, Saint. I don’t have a choice.”

  I wrench my hand away. “But I do.”

  Behind the mask, Dev’s eyes go bitter cold. His expression is ugly, even on his handsome face. “I was afraid you might say that.”

  He raises his arms suddenly, and the ballroom shatters. The high-arched windows implode—no, not just the windows, the floors, the walls, even the people fracture like a smashed mirror and fall away in shards. My heart shatters, too, as I watch the illusion of my brother splinter into a million bits, but I can’t watch for long because
the glass is raining down on us in glittering pinpricks of pain. I throw my arms over my eyes and duck my head just as the floor beneath me collapses.

  For a second, I’m nowhere, free-falling through space. Then I hit another floor, hard. My body shudders with the force of the impact, my teeth rattling in my skull, and I feel like I will shatter, too.

  But I stay in one piece.

  I open my eyes.

  I’m kneeling on the hard stone floor of the dark castle. I’m back in my own clothes, and my jeans are soaked through with blood—mine? Or is it the blood that pools under the hanging girls? They’re back, but there are so many more of them now, they can hardly sway. The room is thick with them, and the dripping noise is growing louder and faster until it sounds like a rainstorm and the blood on the floor is rising, quickly, like a flood, soaking through my sneakers, my jeans, rising thick and warm to pool around my hips. The metallic smell of it fills my nostrils.

  I have to get up. Dizzily I force myself to my feet, every muscle in my body screaming in protest, but my feet slip on the blood-slicked floors, and I start to panic. I turn, looking for the door, but there are bodies on all sides of me, bumping dully against each other. They jostle me on all sides, frozen faces leering in and out of view. I can barely move, and the blood keeps rising. Soon it will be past my hips, my chest. I’ll be swallowed up, choke on it, drown in blood!

  Someone grabs my shoulder from behind, and I scream.

  “Saintly, it’s me!”

  I spin around. “Jesse! You’re alive!”

  “I wouldn’t say that.” She smiles wryly. “But I’m here.”

  I’ve never been more relieved to see anyone in my life. She’s more transparent than I’ve ever seen her, her image rubbed threadbare with exertion, but her hands feel solid and there’s a determined look in her cool gray eyes as she helps me to my feet. “This way.” Decisively, she leads me through the bodies as the warm blood swirls around our knees. It’s like elbowing our way through a dense crowd, but I keep tight hold of Jesse’s arm and soon I see the door. She has managed to wedge it open somehow, just a crack, and together we pull it open all the way and let a wave of blood wash us into the light.

  Chapter 23

  Saintly

  “Are you okay?”

  I nod numbly. “I think so. Are you?”

  We’re sprawled on the floor of Dev’s room, though Dev is nowhere to be seen. Behind us, the door to the nightmare castle is rapidly shrinking, transforming itself back into a box by some complex magical origami of its own.

  “Where is he?” Jesse says, “Is he still in the castle?”

  I shake my head. “I’m sure he’s not. He had some other way to get in, so he must have some other way to get out. He’s gone for now.”

  All around us, the blood is disappearing, too, as if the floor is parched earth eager to drink it up. Soon there won’t be any sign left of the whole bizarre scene.

  But I know what I saw.

  Jesse does, too. I can see the horror in her eyes. “We have to get out of here before he gets back.”

  So we haul ourselves up off the floor and we run, out the door and down the stairs and into the painful cold. We don’t stop until we reach the arch by the library. I crouch down in the doorway. My breath comes it painful puffs. My legs feel weak. “This is far enough.”

  Jesse’s eyes are full of fear. “Nowhere is far enough! Saintly, you have to get out of here. As far away as you can. ”

  “No.” I can hear the determination in my own voice. “I can’t leave Delia.” I force myself to my feet. “I have to talk to her.”

  “And tell her what? Saintly, what was that place? What the hell is going on?”

  I forgot, there’s so much Jesse doesn’t know. I decide to start at the beginning. “I walked in on Dev making out with my best friend, Delia.”

  “What?” Jesse looks every bit as shocked as I am. “But why would she? And why would he! Why would anybody—” She cuts herself off, glancing quickly away. Then she decides to say it anyway. “Why would anyone kiss someone else when he has you?”

  My breath catches a little. Jesse likes me. The realization makes me feel grateful and guilty and strangely happy all at once. I look down at the bricks of the walkway, my cheeks suddenly hot in spite of the cold. “Well,” I say, “he doesn’t have me anymore.”

  “Good.” Jesse nods with satisfaction. “But why would Delia do that to you? You really want to help her, after she turned on you like that?”

  “You helped me, after what I did to you.” I reach out and take her hand. It’s weightless in mine, insubstantial. Her image is gauzy and tattered. I can see the bricks of the library wall right through her. She looks like she has been through hell, and I hate knowing it’s my fault. “Jesse,” I say, “I’m so sorry. You were right, and I should have listened to you. I should never have tried to force you to leave.”

  Her image flickers like a guttering flame, but there’s real warmth in her smile. “You thought you were doing what you had to do, Saintly. I forgive you.”

  “Good.” I smile back. “I’m glad you’re still here.”

  “Me, too.” She runs her free hand through her hair, spiking it in ten directions. “I’m not really sure how I stayed, to be honest. I just kept thinking I couldn’t go yet, and it was like, at the last second, the light passed me by.” There’s a strange mix of relief and regret in her eyes, a wistful tone in her voice. “I guess it knew I needed to help you.”

  “Maybe it was me,” I say. “Dev said it was all in the intention. Maybe I didn’t really want you to go.”

  “Maybe.” The thought seems to please her, but she sobers fast. “So what are you telling Delia?”

  “I don’t know,” I say, “The truth, I guess.”

  “Which is?”

  I tell Jesse everything—about Dev and the curse and the escaped girls, the nightmare castle and the ballroom and my brother. She listens to every word, her gray eyes locked on mine. When I finish, she’s silent.

  I watch her nervously. “You believe me, right?”

  “Oh, of course I believe you. I’m a ghost. Who am I to doubt anything? But I’m afraid Delia won’t believe you. I’m afraid she’ll just think you’re crazy.”

  I rub nervously at my tattoo. She’s right, of course. We both know that Dev has the advantage—with my history, who would believe anything I say is true? It’s much easier to think I snapped and went off the deep end completely. “Well, then,” I say, “I’ll think of something else, tell her something horrible about Dev—that he hit me, or he’s addicted to crack, or, I don’t know, he hates Sondheim or something. Something that will make Delia drop him.”

  Jesse shakes her head. “Delia will just think you’re making it up. She’ll think you’re jealous.”

  “Then let her think it! Let her think it will break my heart to see them together. Let her think it will put me over the edge. I’ll beg her not to see him for the sake of our friendship and—”

  “He’ll never let you do it, Saint. He’ll never let you near her.”

  “Well, then, what am I supposed to do? I have to do something! I have to at least try!”

  Jesse shuts her eyes. I can tell everything in her wants to just get me out of here, to whisk me away somehow until the danger is past, but she knows I’ll never go. “Okay,” she says slowly, “But I’m coming with you. That way, if you have to tell her the truth—”

  “It won’t help to have you back me up. She won’t be able to see you. Besides, I need you to find the escaped midnight girls. Try to talk to them. Tell them we know what’s really going on, and that we’re trying to warn Delia, because otherwise—”

  “Otherwise, they’ll try to kill Delia.”

  I nod. “Like they’re trying to kill me.”

  Chapter 24

  Jesse

  “But they don’t have to kill you anymore!” The thought is more than I can handle. “You have no intention of kissing Dev. We’re on their side now
!”

  Saintly crosses her arms over her chest. “But they don’t know that, do they? Not until you go tell them.”

  It’s true. And it’s about the only thing that could make me part ways with Saintly right now. How can I leave now, after the way she took my hand, the way she said she was glad I didn’t go into the light? How can I leave her, knowing both Dev and the ghosts are out to gets us? The thought of letting her out of my sight, even for a minute, makes my chest constrict with worry.

  And I’m beginning to think Saintly doesn’t want to leave me, either. But she’s right, we’ll accomplish more if we split up, and time is running out. “Okay,” I say, “I’ll try to find Charlotte and the other ghosts.”

  Saintly looks relieved. “And I’ll try to find Delia. Maybe she’s doing set-up for the dance.” She looks toward the student union, but she hesitates, and for an insane second I have the urge to kiss her goodbye. Instead I say, “Be careful.”

  “I will.” She forces a shaky smile. “You take care of yourself, too, okay? And meet me back in my room, as soon as you can.” Then she turns and trots off over the snowy grounds.

  I watch her until she’s out of sight, then I set off in the opposite direction.

  For hours, I scour the campus, starting with the path where I saw Charlotte the first time and working my way out. I search the sculpture garden, wander through the quiet dorms, stick my head through the door of every classroom in the science building. I see a few living people—maintenance people scrubbing the floors, the occasional prof working in her office, a smattering of international students too far from home to bother to go back for the break—but no ghosts at all.

  It’s late now and there’s a storm rolling in. I can tell by the way the wind sharpens and the clouds seem to congeal above me. I don’t want to go back empty-handed, but I’m losing hope of finding Charlotte, and I’m eager to get back to Saintly. I need to see her safe. So as the first needles of hail slash through me, I turn back toward Saintly’s dorm.