My ears perked up the moment the words came to her lips and I clutched my right hand tightly beneath the covers. Only a few, select people knew the truth about my scar. It was pure luck that the fire in the woods burned my hand, camouflaging my mark.
“So, what’s his theory?” I tried to keep my voice steady.
“Just that it looked a little unusual for a scar. He said it actually looks like an ancient brand.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Brand? As in ownership of livestock?”
My mom let out a laugh, “Yeah, I guess so. He said it was similar to a mark of protection he researched years ago, but it’s just coincidence. He said maybe the heavens branded you for protection from the fire, and that’s why you were given the strength to not only survive it yourself, but to save Garreth as well. It’s kind of a nice thought when you think about it. You were both very lucky that night.”
I tried not to think about that night, when I thought Garreth was lost for good. It had seemed his time here on earth, eight amazingly short days, was up. But even though my guardian stayed earthbound, it seemed he was still lost.
Oblivious to my sudden silence, my mother kept on talking about Dr. Dean and his “theories” and how he thought there were answers to everything and everyone; like a blueprint mapped out for everyone since the beginning of time, and how my mom thought he was an amazingly deep man.
“He keeps every theory logged so he can refer back to it if he needs to. He’s so organized,” my mom continued.
“What do you mean ‘logged’?”
“Oh, he writes all his thoughts down in a journal.”
“Sort of like a diary? Isn’t he a little old for that?” I was beginning to yawn and it occurred to me that my homework was still sitting on my desk and it wasn’t getting done by itself.
“It’s more like a record book, with actual dates and times. Real-life accounts for strange phenomena. He’s been keeping the journal forever and it’s kind of battered and old looking. Hey, that’s a great idea for a Christmas present for him. Don’t let me forget that one.”
Bits and pieces of the conversation I had overheard in the bathroom at school came floating back to me and I wondered, could the book Brynn’s friends said she was hunting for be the very same journal my mother was describing? If it was in fact one and the same and Dr. Dean had some crazy notions about my scar, then I certainly would be an entry in that journal. Wouldn’t Brynn just love to get her hands on any information she could use against me? Especially if that information was surreal.
But what would Dr. Dean want with information like that? Was he just a studious adult nerd that liked to keep track of strange subject material? And what were the odds that his step-daughter was Brynn Hanson, of all people. It seemed too strange to be a coincidence.
There was something else, something I had overheard in the bathroom.
Shoot! What was it?
I wracked my brain for it to come back to me. It was just a snippet that didn’t mean anything . . . at least not until now anyway.
Then I remembered.
“Do you think he put her up to it?”
Who was “he”?
As the subject we were just on blended into a new one, I excused myself, responsibly saying I had homework to finish up. But before leaving her room, I lingered in the doorway.
“Mom?”
“Hmm?”
“Do you believe in guardian angels?” I asked warily.
A sweet, reflective smile appeared across her face.
“Of course I do, honey.”
I returned her smile and went to my room.
I felt the overwhelming need to talk to Ryan just then. He was the only person right now who I could talk to about this, the only one who understood how Brynn despised me. He knew how twisted and sick she really was, and the lengths she would go to get what she wanted.
My head was dizzy from thinking.
Brynn, Dr. Dean, my mother . . . how did this all connect?
An unsettling feeling washed over me. Whatever this puzzle was, it couldn’t be good.
Oh Garreth, I need you.
He was supposed to protect me but where was he? Suspended for underage drinking during lunch hour. Of all the idiotic things. I felt tight, scalding tears form in the back of my throat. I had no idea what to do about Garreth but if it came down to me helping him again, then yes, I would help him.
I looked at my hand and willed my mark to appear full and strong on my palm. I was so confused. Was I to be the one to save my guardian from here on out? Was I the stronger one now? I didn’t feel very strong. I felt lonely and hurt and confused. Then to make matters worse, let’s just throw Hadrian back into the mix. I was seriously beginning to think he was haunting me, with the feathers and all. I mean, face it. I’m a magnet for chaos. I had my doubts that had anything to do with Brynn unless she was striving to make me insane. Which, I suppose, did sound like her. No, face it. I was good at attracting the weird and unexplained and keeping it close at hand. Why couldn’t I just be normal?
I tried to cast aside my confusion and paranoia. Right now I had to focus on the task at hand.
Right now I needed to get my hands on that journal.
Chapter Thirteen
Sleep had not come easily.
In fact, it was hours before my body finally melted down and gave up. But even then it wasn’t restful. It was garish and unpleasant, full of strange dreams and even stranger faces. I felt like an unseen ghost, a whisper of someone else’s thoughts traveling through someone else’s nightmare.
Sitting up, I placed my hands over my eyes to filter out the light billowing in through my window. My sensitive eyes blinked painfully as the blinding yellow glow made a beeline for my sleep deprived head. Then I remembered, I needed to talk to Ryan today. But wading through the six hours of school would be torture, not that it wasn’t when I didn’t have something important on the threshold. But this, the waiting to talk to him, to tell him about the strange, old book and Dr. Dean’s hobby—this might get us somewhere and the closer we got to stopping whatever Brynn was up to, the better.
I couldn’t even begin to wrap my head around whatever Brynn was planning. I honestly thought I had been through it all after dealing with a dark angel last year. It seemed that Brynn and Hadrian had traded places this year. Now I was more concerned about a high-heeled, cheerleading menace than a malicious archangel.
There was no way I could stand waiting until after school to tell Ryan about Brynn and the book or my plan for us to sneak into Dr. Dean’s house tomorrow night and search for it.
Complaining to myself was only making matters worse. I needed to vent. As the overwhelming need to get things off my chest became more unbearable, a thought came to me. A soothing little piece of reassurance. Despite the few minutes left before I needed to get downstairs, I seemed to float effortlessly over to my computer. There was someone who would hear me out and not judge or look at me sideways. Someone who would just plain listen.
I drummed up the nerve before the fleeting moment of inspiration left me. Why not email Claire again? It had made me feel a million times better the other day and besides, who’s going to tap into the closed email account of a dead person?
No one, that’s who.
The deep breath I took filled me with confidence and once again my fingers flew across the keys, my heart and soul pouring out through their tips like never before. I had written to Claire the other night, but it wasn’t like this. Today there seemed to be a silent desperation within me that was lacking in the previous email. Finally, all the emotions I had stored up inside over her absence, her death, seemed to have boiled over, and now there was no stopping it. In my mind, I could picture Claire so clearly, as if she were in the room with me and because of this, the words flowed effortlessly.
I recounted the ever-growing personality change in Brynn. That, paired with the existence of a peculiar journal that has now lead to suspicions about the man my mother was dating, was
more than I could keep to myself. I had been reluctant to pull Ryan into the discussion but it felt right, so I revealed my daring plan (the one he didn’t know about yet). I only paused once to briefly question my hesitation about the plans with Ryan. I realized this made them more real. Solid. And now that I had told someone, now that I had told Claire, there was no backing out.
My fingers continued at the keys with driving determination. The dam had broken. I admitted that my feelings were being stretched thin between Garreth and Hadrian, and how I wished with all my heart she were able to answer me somehow. I would do anything to see her roll her eyes at my dilemmas, to give me the sound advice only she was capable of giving.
Glancing at the clock, I realized I needed to wrap things up. In closing I asked Claire to forgive me for not being a better friend. I knew deep down that I should have stayed at the rave with her and yes, maybe I would be dead instead of her, or maybe we both would have lived. Who knows.
My finger touched the send button and in a flash the lengthy note I had just typed disappeared and was swept away into the universe, taking a chunk of my pain with it.
Chapter Fourteen
“Are you serious?” Ryan’s face paled at my idea.
“It’s exactly what you said we should do,” I insisted. “Well, not in those exact words, but you did say we needed to find out what Brynn was up to. You have to admit, she may not be the only one in her family with strange habits these days.”
“Yeah, the whole journal thing doesn’t sit well with me either,” Ryan agreed, rubbing his chin with his hand in a very philosophical way. “How are we going to get Brynn out of her own house again?”
“We’re not, she won’t even be there.”
I proceeded to spill the details of my plan and after hearing my own voice say it out loud, I had to admit it sounded very Nancy Drew of me. I could see Ryan thinking it through, but his eyes still seemed a bit wary, which was only natural. My own insides were nervous. For one, I needed to create a diversion, somehow letting Brynn know about the party her friends were going to. Then, we needed to break into the doctor’s house, while he’s at my house getting it on with my mom.
Eew, bad mental picture.
I kept telling myself that this was the only way. Why would my mom’s boyfriend, an established doctor, keep a creepy journal about strange phenomenon? Why would he even have any theories about me and my scar in the first place? I didn’t trust him. Not last month, not last week and especially not now, and I especially didn’t trust Brynn, the evil stepchild.
I left Ryan at his locker quad, agreeing to meet under the tree at the end of my street tomorrow night. We were going to get to the bottom of this, I felt sure of it.
All of a sudden, my hand blazed so intensely, I had to cup it in my opposite hand. It was usually a warning when it felt like this, and so I began searching the groups of kids still lingering in the hallway with me. My ears listened intently for wings, thinking perhaps this was a strange reoccurrence of the black feather incident.
I craned my neck, trying to peer into the vast crowd near the stairwell doors. My legs suddenly felt rubbery and jellylike. I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the back of a very familiar head that unexpectedly turned. He walked straight toward me, causing everyone in his path to stop and stare. He wasn’t supposed to be here. We all knew that. Like any other high school, word travels quickly. People were whispering, but he seemed to float effortlessly past them. Keeping his stride, he seemed to have a hidden agenda, pausing only for a second to glance at me with his deep blue eyes. Then he looked straight ahead and kept walking.
“Whoa, did you see that?” someone’s voice broke the stillness around me.
“I thought he was suspended,” someone else whispered a few lockers down.
The air felt stifling and I had to get out of here. I needed air.
What did I do wrong?
Breaking through the groups scattered throughout the hallway, I pushed past anyone in my path, ignoring the rude comments left behind in my wake. I walked past Mr. Herman as he bent down, propping his door open with a worn wooden wedge, nearly stubbing my foot on his hand. He said something that sounded like my name and some reference to turning back around . . . I ignored him. I ignored them all and flung my arms out in front of me, pushing the glass double doors out of my way.
I walked to my car, never breaking my stride. With peeling rubber, I backed my little white car out of the parking space, put it in gear and drove beyond the school grounds, never looking back.
My mind replayed that day in the parking lot over and over again and still, I had no idea what I did to deserve this pain he was putting me through. He was the one who messed up, I kept reminding myself. He was the one. Not me.
Then why was he punishing me?
I didn’t stop until I reached the bend in the road. Autumn ravaged remains of green and gold flitted wildly past the sides of my car as I sped up the too-narrow pathway, now resembling an overgrown driveway. I lurched forward as my car came to a stop and I closed my eyes, willing the burning hot tears to stay put as I leaned my forehead against the hard steering wheel.
The world was still. Total silence. No birds. No rustling of leaves or branches. I opened my eyes and drank in the barren void surrounding me. Slowly getting out of the car, I stepped out onto the soft carpet of pine needles and ground mulch. Everything was brown and still. Charred stumps of trees flanked the desolate clearing as wild fern wilted with brown bending leaves scattered the ground.
It had been months since I was last here. Garreth and I had come back the day after the fire. It still held a feeling of magic that seeped through the ruin, still held the promise of new life rising from the ashes – but all I could see around me now was devastation.
Blackened bark curled and clung to the fragile trees that still stood, though the wooden trunks were dehydrated and petrified inside now. Practically everything here had died that night. I blinked and looked around, feeling heavy and lost, but I couldn’t will myself to turn around, get back into my car and drive away. I too felt hollow and burnt and tried to will my feet to leave this place but couldn’t. I belonged.
I turned to face the old chapel foundation that still stood here. My legs managed their way over the cracked twigs and gnarled roots of long dead trees. I stumbled past the long fallen tree Garreth and I had once used as a bench, now blackened and splintering. My feet stopped at the bottom of crumbled rock, steps that now led to a ravaged opening to nowhere. The chapel. I remembered her beauty. The stained glass triangles of color that had glinted in the sun were now broken and pulverized into glittering sand. The arched wooden door was missing and rusted metal hinges nailed to crumbling mortar was the only welcome. I carefully stepped up and stood in the doorway, feeling the painful loss of this place. Feeling its misery.
The red candles had all melted and bled across the floor in the fire. The altar where Garreth had revealed his true self to me had crumbled like the walls, which were no higher than my knees.
Sadly, I looked up at the large opening in the trees that resembled a gaping mouth. The flames had not reached that far. I closed my eyes, remembering the tower that once stood here, though I had only seen it once. I had come running to this place when I died, wild and frantic to save Garreth. Giving my life for his was easy. I would still give it if he were to ask.
And no matter how rotten things were now, I had to believe there was a solution.
I held my hand up in front of my face and studied the lines of my special mark, hopefully for the last time, then before I could change my mind, I made it disappear.
I was so lost in myself, I almost didn’t hear it.
The movement. The rustling.
That’s when I felt it.
Eyes staring at me.
I pivoted quickly on my heels and stared at the trees surrounding me. The coldness that swept across my arms pulled me out of my depression. I wasn’t alone and whatever was in these woods wasn’t friendly.
<
br /> My hand went numb just then and when I pulled it up to look at it, my mark had reappeared.
Wasting no time, I hurried back to the car, slammed the door and high-tailed it out of there. I drove backwards out of the lane, hearing the scraping of branches along the sides of my car and praying I wouldn’t hit a tree on the way out.
Chapter Fifteen
That night alone again in my room, my face fell into my hands and I pressed the heels of my palms to my eyes, pushing on them, willing them to pop out of the back of my head, so I’d have a decent excuse not to show up at school tomorrow. Facing Garreth’s new attitude was too painful. But of course my eyeballs stayed put, so instead, I drew a deep, cleansing breath into my lungs and held it. But when it was time to exhale, I couldn’t. It was stuck. Something had changed.
Then I felt it. A strange electrical impulse split the air behind me, worming its way up my spine.
Garreth?
It was familiar, yet not.
Different.
Alluring . . . dark . . . dangerous.
Then I knew.
I closed my eyes against the wish I had been stifling for so long.
Was it possible? A distinct flavor always seemed to float in the air when he was near, and it burned my tongue. It was deceptively sumptuous—the taste of darkness, of temptation; it immediately drew my eye to his tall, intimidating form.
I turned, acknowledging the presence in the corner of my bedroom faintly concealed in a shadow. I knew his dark eyes were waiting. I could feel them searing their way into me.
Reluctantly, I let my eyes roam, taking in more of the beautiful face that was silently assessing me, and knew that once I met his gaze, he would have me.
The moon broke through the thin vapor of the night and pierced its pearly light into my room. Hadrian stepped into its path, the glow washing over him with an almost magical light.
LEMNISCATE Page 6
