Infatuate

by Aimee Agresti

  “There were so many people all of a sudden joining in the second line, you know? It was out of control,” Dante explained, pulling something from his pocket, a green sprig that almost looked like mint. He handed it to me with a bottle of water. “Here. Mariette says this will help you get your strength back. It’s just an herb.” I took it, crunching on the leaves, which were more brittle than I expected and tasted of vanilla.

  “Not bad, thanks.” I smiled and searched for the words. “You guys, I’m so sorry for . . . everything. I don’t even know what to say.”

  “We’re fine.” Lance brushed it off. “It’s just, you know, good to have you back.” His tone was heavy, with the slightest crack in his voice. He pushed his glasses up. “But forget about us. It’s Connor you really ought to apologize to.”

  I put my hand over my mouth, stifling a misplaced laugh. But what they had told me just seemed so unfathomable. “I really punched him?” I whispered.

  “Dude, you’ve got a killer right hook.” Dante laughed.

  “Yeah, don’t get me angry, right?” I shook my head.

  Dante’s eyes darkened. “Hav,” he started, his fingers fidgeting and a pained expression sweeping across his face. “I feel so guilty. I got so caught up in Max’s birthday, I should’ve been paying better attention. I shouldn’t have lost you.”

  “That’s crazy, D.” I bumped my shoulder into his. “This was going to happen no matter what. I mean, it’s happening to all of us like some kind of hazing ritual, right?”

  Lance nodded. “Well, a little more serious than, like, some kind of fraternity hazing, but yeah. Everyone.”

  Dante raised his hand, looking sheepish. “Except . . .”

  “You don’t count,” Lance said. “That’s why you feel guilty.”

  I turned to him. “Why don’t you count?”

  “The night you went missing, we were talking to Connor, and he knows some stuff. Like he said, from what he’s been told, I’m kind of exempt from some of what you guys are being put through right now. It turns out I’m in, like, advanced-placement angel training.”

  “You’ve gotta be kidding.” I laughed. Dante always was an overachiever.

  “Yeah, so I guess I had this happen in Chicago, with Etan, you know?” He still sounded wistful when he said the name. Etan really had been his first love, even if he was trying to steal his soul. “So I’m kind of a level ahead. Max is too, actually. We’re supposed to aid the rest of you now.”

  “Wow. Lucky.”

  “Yeah. Lucky. I almost had my soul taken back then, as you may recall. But lucky,” he said.

  “Anyway,” Lance jumped in, “so Connor seems to know about our pasts and everything. He said Dante is a ‘born angel’ rather than a ‘made angel,’ and that’s why he’s a step ahead of us.”

  “What does that mean?” It had never occurred to me to ask Connor about our pasts—I’d always been too concerned with trying to learn about our future and survive our present.

  “Something about our souls finding our bodies and Dante’s soul being born in his body.”

  “Huh?”

  “I think my dad was an angel!” Dante glowed, proud.

  “You never knew your dad.”

  “I know. I think that may be why.”

  “Anyway, he said not to bother getting hung up on it, because we’ll be finding out more if we make it past this phase.” Lance caught himself. “When. When we make it past this phase.”

  “Ohhhkay.” I shook my head. “So did I miss anything else around here?”

  “Oh, yeah!” Dante said. “Totally insane killing spree. Like seven, eight murders in one night.”

  The sound of it made me shiver. “That’s awful.”

  Lance just adjusted his glasses with a serious expression and changed the subject. “And besides that, we’re doing a Mardi Gras float,” he said.

  “The whole volunteer program gets to do its own float and march in the parade,” Dante added. “We just started working on it today.”

  “So I think you’re all up to speed,” Lance said, standing. “Now as soon as you can tell us what you were doing that we missed, then we’ll have all the blanks filled in.”

  “Right,” I said with the proper sarcasm.

  “Oh, wait, I have one more question,” Dante piped up. “Who or what or where is Savannah?”

  Now I was really confused. “Uhhh, in Georgia?” I offered.

  “Yeah, but, I mean, what’s its significance?” Dante probed.

  “How should I know?” I shrugged.

  “That was apparently the last thing you said before you passed out,” Lance explained.

  “Oh.”

  “Let us know if anything comes back, okay? Because it will. Like it did for me.” Lance shook his head now as he recalled the horrors that had flashed back. “Maybe we can learn something.” I just nodded. They got up to leave.

  “No more gallivanting, Haven the Terra-ble,” Dante said, pointing at me in warning.

  “Oh, and call Joan,” Lance ordered.

  “Ugh.” I groaned. Joan, of course, her radar must be up. I wondered if there would come a day when I would need to tell her about all of this. It had begun gnawing at me lately: it was getting harder and harder to keep this secret from her. I didn’t have a lot of practice lying. My life hadn’t really been exciting—or rather, dangerous—enough to warrant lying about anything until this past year.

  “She called a bunch of times and we told her you had a bad cold and lost your voice,” Dante said proudly.

  “She bought that?”

  “Enough to not get on a plane and come down here.” Lance laughed.

  I would call, but first I had one more thing I had to do.

  Connor opened the door. I saw the army-green bruise tinting his left cheek.

  “I come bearing gifts,” I said in my sweetest voice. In one hand I held out a bag filled with ice, in the other, a tin of caramel popcorn.

  “As long as you’re not planning to throw any of that at me, c’mon in.” He laughed and swung the door wide.

  “About that—”

  “I’m past the icing stage. It’s healing fast. But this I’ll take.” He grabbed the tin, tearing off the lid and peering inside. “Hey, this is half-empty—”

  “I like to call it half-full. Best I could do on short notice.”

  “Half-eaten stale popcorn?” He pulled out a handful, hopping up to sit on his desk. “Not bad.”

  “I’m really sorry, I didn’t mean—”

  “Don’t worry about it.” He swatted my apology away. “Like I told the others, you got hit harder than anyone else here. It’s what happens when you’re the strongest. With power comes a certain burden, right?”

  “I’m the—?”

  “And you were probably depleted to begin with because don’t think I don’t know that you’ve been carrying the team on the levitation and soul extraction.”

  “I have?”

  “I know I’ve been tough on all you guys, but I believe in everyone. And in you, especially, Haven. I’m pretty invested in your success. If—” He shook his head, starting over. “No, when—when you make it through to the completion, you’re pretty much going to end up being my boss.”

  “What?” I actually let out a laugh, it sounded so ridiculous. “That’s funny.”

  “No, seriously.” He didn’t look like he was kidding.

  “That’s kind of awesome.” I meant to only think it, but it came out of my mouth.

  “But one day at a time, okay?” Connor said. “You know at some point soon, you’ll have to do battle against them.” I nodded. “We’ve got to learn as much as we can about how it’s all gonna go down. We’re all up to speed on the guy next door now.”

  Lucian. “Yeah,” I said, guiltily, for so many reasons.

  He put up his hands. “Hey, you were protecting your sources, fine, but now we’re on the same page, okay? We can keep you safe better that way. Got it?”

  I no
dded. “Got it.”

  “That marking gone?” he asked, pointing to my shoulder. I hadn’t even looked. I tugged at my T-shirt and tried to look over my shoulder. He leaned toward me, spun me around. “Yep, just a little red. You’re good.”

  “Thanks.” I couldn’t hide my relief.

  “Now watch it, okay?” I nodded again. “You’re certainly full of surprises.”

  “Yeah. I kind of wish I could go back to being boring,” I said as I opened the door.

  He smiled again. “Somehow I don’t think it’s possible.”

  When I felt I could fake sounding back to normal enough to pass Joan’s finely tuned ear for detecting trouble, I finally called her. She answered on the first ring, as though she were waiting by the phone.

  “How’s your cold, honey? I can’t believe you survive these Chicago winters and we ship you somewhere warm and then you get sick. What did I tell you about keeping up with your vitamin C, Haven? Are you eating, I mean, anything good for you? I need to send you more care packages. I was thinking of enrolling you in the fruit of the month club even though you’re not going to be away all that long but still—” She veered off on one of her tangents.

  “No, I’m fine, really,” I lied.

  “I’m sure you’re working yourself too hard,” she scolded lovingly.

  “Yeah, something like that.”

  “You treat everything like it’s life or death. Go easy on yourself.”

  “Thanks,” I said, my eyes rolling. “I will, promise. How’s everything at home?”

  “Fine, fine. The girls at the hospital say hi. Everyone still keeps asking if you’ve heard from colleges yet but I just tell them—”

  “No,” I said, bristling a bit. “When there’s news you’ll all be the first to know.” It still felt odd, this college charade, going through these motions of applying and waiting and wondering. It was impossible to imagine that I would be permitted to go to school, to go through that rite of passage that I had been so excited about for so long. But recent events had reminded me in no uncertain terms that there were aspects of my future that I had far less control over than college admissions.

  “I know, I know, it’s too soon, but we just all know you’re going to get in everywhere and they’re all pulling for you to not go far away. You know how it is, they miss you so. And I do too.”

  “I know you do,” I said softly.

  “I was thinking, what if I came in for Mardi Gras?” Her voice kicked up an octave and a decibel.

  “Oh, Joan, that’s sweet, but it’ll probably be super expensive and it’ll be crazy here. Maybe another time would be better.”

  “Oh, but I found some incredible fares, some kind of special promotion. And I’ve always wanted to go.” There was a pause, as though she was waiting for me to speak, then she just went on. “I know, I know, you’re worried it’ll be hectic with your work, but I promise to stay in a hotel and not get in the way . . .” When she got this way it could be difficult to dissuade her. But I vowed that she wasn’t coming to visit, even if it meant having to get her name placed on the No-Fly List to keep her away.

  She was still making her case when I heard my door open. I looked over but my eyes couldn’t make sense of what they saw: Dante stood there but he wasn’t all there; he was a translucent hologram of himself. He materialized fully and then flickered again.

  “Uhhh, can we talk about it in another couple days? Dante just came in and . . . he . . . doesn’t look so good.”

  “Oh no, honey, is he getting what you had?”

  “Who knows what this is.”

  “Give him my love. Take care of yourselves. I love you, sweetie.”

  “Love you. Bye.” I hung up the phone.

  Dante stood there, hands on his waist. “You can see me?” he asked in disbelief.

  “What’s going on with you?”

  He held an eyedropper and squeezed a bit of liquid into his hands, coating them and shaking out his arms and legs. “Can you see me now?”

  “Yes.”

  He squeezed more liquid, this time rubbing his hands all over his body, as though trying to shake off a swarm of bees. “What about now?” He wasn’t even a hologram anymore; he was his usual self.

  “Dan, yes. Stop that. Please.”

  He muttered a series of expletives, clenching his fists.

  “I can hear you too.” I laughed.

  “Gimme your charm, from Lance.” He wiggled his fingers at me, insistent.

  “Are you serious?” I took off my necklace and handed it over. “Are you going to use this power to rob people? Don’t make me your accomplice.”

  “Too late.” He coated the fleur-de-lis charm with an eyedropperful of the liquid. A thin trail of smoke sizzled from it. He handed it back to me. “Hold on to that charm and picture yourself invisible.” I closed my eyes, focusing, imagining my form and figure being erased by the air. It was the same power of thought I used to levitate things, but it was now focused through a different lens.

  “Whoa, Hav. You’re really good at this.”

  “Whaddya mean?”

  “Look in the mirror.” As he gestured toward it, I turned around and in place of my reflection, I saw only a dark, hazy smudge. A silhouette, a stain. It set my mind racing.

  “Wow, I’ve never looked so good,” I joked.

  “It’s funny,” Dante said. “I can cook this stuff up but it never works on me like it does on you. You’ve got skills, Hav.”

  “You’re not so bad yourself.”

  “Try to change back,” he said with the glee of a child watching a magician.

  “If I’m stuck this way, you’re in major trouble.” I laughed as I felt for that pendant and focused once more.

  “See, that’s what I’m talking about,” he said, gesturing to the mirror. I looked, and there I was. “Skills. It’s a good thing we didn’t lose you to them, to the other side.” He sighed. “I forgot, with all of this going on, that I’m really mad at you.”

  “You are?” I couldn’t tell if he was serious or if he was simply about to say something funny.

  “Yeah. I am.” That came out like a bullet, stopping me. I sat down.

  “When we went over there and found you on the doorstep and him there . . . Haven, I wanted to kill him.

  “But he didn’t do anything. At all. If anything he really is trying to tell us whatever he can find out to help—”

  “I know, I know.” He raised his voice, cutting me off. I had to look away. “I know. But the point is, I didn’t know that then. And I could have killed him; we all could have killed him. Lance could have killed him.”

  Dante gave me a few long seconds to let that sink in fully.

  “He wanted to kill him, Hav.” He said the words very slowly. “When he thought Lucian had hurt you. Just think about that.” He let himself out.

  29. You’re Kind of a Troublemaker

  Images flew at me as I descended into this hell: flashes of blood-splattered bodies in dark alleyways. A series of faces of guys and girls beaten, attacked, knifed. It was a show I wanted to turn off, a movie I wished I could walk out of. But I couldn’t make it stop. Even as these fluttered through my subconscious and I told myself, Wake up, Haven, you can just wake up, the terror took over. I wished I could claw it out of my head, scratch it from my eyes.

  My lids opened, but my breath and my heart kept racing, and my skin was slicked with sweat, matting my hair to the side of my head. There was no relief here in the familiarity of this darkened room or the comfort of this house shared with others like me—the visions were still there, playing on a loop. And somehow I knew that these weren’t nightmares but rather memories. These were scenes I had viewed, not fears concocted by an overactive imagination and rattled nerves. Besides the victims, everything else appeared in a complete haze; just this pack of vulture-like figures descending on bodies and pulling from them belongings or locks of hair or, worse, digits and eyes yanked from sockets, gruesome bits and pieces. It all a
ssaulted me just as the thrilling memories had earlier.

  I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to fill my head with anything else to root out this evil, but instead my mind fixed on another scene: a snapshot of the cemetery, a long line of shadowy figures queued up before someone whose face I couldn’t quite make out. They bowed before him, presenting him with these artifacts and scraps of people who had been left for dead. He stood in front of Lance’s newly constructed crypt, collecting them all in a black velvet pouch the size of a potato sack. By the end it bulged with so many trophies from these terrors.

  Pounding rattled the door. Only then did I realize I had been screaming. Lance burst in, arms poised for battle, in search of an assailant and easing up only when he realized I was alone. He ran up the ladder to where I lay, paralyzed, the screams ripping from my chest, and he grabbed my hand. Finally I felt the shrieking stop. I had run out of breath, but my eyes still couldn’t settle. My gaze bounced manically around the room, and I felt my eyes bug out as I looked at Lance, who squeezed my hand in his.

  “I know,” is all he said.

  “That crime spree, those murders—”

  “I know.”

  “I was there. I saw it all happen. I didn’t do anything to stop it.”

  “I know,” he said again, each time his voice growing heavier and yet more comforting.

  “But up until now I only remembered a weird excitement about that night.”

  He nodded wisely. “You’ve come out the other side,” he said softly. “But the visions will still haunt you, I’m sorry to say. They still haunt me.”

  “But did I actually . . . ?” There was no disguising the pure panic in my eyes, the tremor in my voice.

  “No,” he said with conviction, reading my mind. “No. We didn’t. We couldn’t have.” He sounded less certain now, adding with regret, “But I don’t know. And this has been worthless on this matter for me.” He pulled my phone from my bedside table and scanned the screen. “I haven’t gotten a single message with useful information about the night I was tagged. Maybe it’ll be different for you.” He held it out and I let him read it along with me: