Ephemeral (The Countenance)

by Addison Moore

  “Oh, Jen,” I go over and offer a hug.

  The scent of honeysuckle clings to her—makes me miss Mom who wore a gardenia perfume, thick and smothering.

  I feel something for Jen, for sure a sisterly bond. I touch my cheek to hers as she sobs into me, soft and steady like the silent bleating of a lamb.

  If Wesley hadn’t opened his big mouth about how fulfilling it was—what a release it was to be with someone—I wouldn’t be in this situation. She raises her head. “I can’t even see straight.”

  I’d ask why not, but I already know.

  I head upstairs, lost in the idea that Wesley shared his sex life with Blaine and inadvertently stuck a fork in his brother’s relationship. A heavy feeling comes over me because it just so happens the person Wes released himself with was Kresley.

  I try to open the door to my bedroom, but it’s stuck. I give another swift push, but for sure something’s blocking the way.

  Perfect.

  Jen, in her infinite state of mourning, probably trashed the place before securing her post as gatekeeper, and now she’s successfully barricaded us from our room.

  I give a short series of pounds and shoves before something heavy slides over enough for me slink my way inside and turn on the light.

  A tangle of limbs greets me from my bed, legs in the air, feet protruding in my direction, flexing back and forth—it takes a good ten seconds of wild-eyed staring for me to piece together that my mattress is being heavily defiled by none other than Carter and Flynn.

  “Holy shit!” I hiss, flicking on and off the lights like a siren. “Off, right now!” I scream, but they press onward undaunted by the spasm of electricity or my verbal assault. They’re like dogs that don’t have the wherewithal to understand it’s not appropriate to fornicate in mixed company.

  I swipe a soda can off Jen’s desk, shake it up real good before cracking it open and hosing them down.

  Carter falls off the bed, laughing hysterically and exposing parts of herself I haven’t even seen on my own freaking body. Thankfully, and rather unfortunately, Flynn snatches my pillow and covers his manhood.

  “Out.” I close my eyes. I have papers to write and math equations to sift through that I don’t even believe a scientific calculator can decipher, and now, I’ll forever have the image of Flynn Masterson’s ass, which looked like he managed to get an extra pair of feet to grow out of, ingrained in my questionably functional mind. It’s all a bit more than my tired, rewired brain can handle at the moment.

  Carter jumps into a pair of jeans and pulls on a T-shirt.

  “You get a date for Saturday?” A smile bounces on her lips as if it were completely acceptable to carry on a conversation from earlier when I had no clue what her girl parts looked like.

  “You’re still going with Jackson?” I’m a bit surprised by this, but truthfully, I was just with another guy myself for completely legitimate reasons. “I’m taking Wes,” I say, defiantly. Maybe by Saturday, I can have him convinced that I have my false memory restored. Wes can rival any passion that Cooper may have had tonight. Clearly Cooper’s affection for me was misplaced because I was grafting my tongue over his neck. Any red-blooded boy would have been aroused, let alone declared his love for me in the event I might have been moved to travel south of the border—well, except Coop. He doesn’t strike me as the say-anything-to-get-a-blowjob type. Coop could get women to drop to their knees in the freezer section of the grocery store if he wanted.

  I glance over at Flynn as he rummages for his clothes.

  There was something genuine about Coop tonight, like he might really be falling in love with me. But everyone knows you can’t possibly fall in love with someone in such a short time—that’s what infatuation and lust are for, not true love. True love is what Wes and I have.

  “Bring whoever.” Carter waves over at Flynn before heading into the hall.

  “Whoever?” I mock, shutting the door behind her.

  I take a seat at the desk and flip open my laptop, completely ignoring the fact Flynn just scooped up his jeans and strolled into the bathroom butt naked. The pipes twist with a squeak, and I can see he’s completely making himself at home now—taking a nice hot shower in an effort to sterilize himself. I’ll have to burn all the towels once he’s through.

  My cell goes off. It’s a text from Wes.

  Everything go OK with the Dr?

  I text back. Better than OK. It looks like my memory is on its way back.

  I hate lying, but in a way it’s true. I’m remembering my past with a startling clarity. Just today I was reminded how I used to bake with Lacey, how I used to help her pick outfits for picture day.

  Wes texts again. I knew you’d come back to me.

  I stare at his text for an unreasonably long period of time. The entire existence of our relationship weighs on the balance of those words.

  It’s starting to feel like I never left. XOXO I glide my fingers over my phone and hit send.

  Flynn emerges from the bathroom wearing nothing but jeans, his shirt wrapped around his neck like a towel. He sits over on my bed and plucks his socks off the floor as water beads down the curve of his back.

  “Found something I want to show you.” The words rumble out of him.

  “Are we back to that again?” I stare at Flynn in hopes there’s something legitimate behind his claim. Instead, I get the nagging feeling that’s his go-to line—after all, it worked once tonight.

  He drops to his knees and fishes for something underneath my bed. The entire while he’s gliding and writhing, I can’t help but envision his bare ass right through his jeans. It’s like seeing his hairy self, unlocked my infrared superpowers and now I see dead people’s asses—assuming, of course, Flynn was once dead.

  Flynn extracts his arm, emerging victorious with a black leather wedge in his right hand.

  I’m less than impressed with his triumphant find.

  “Not mine,” I say. It looks vaguely familiar, reminds me the ones my mother used to wear at the diner, and I clap my hand over my mouth. “Oh my God, Casper!”

  “Exactly.” He pulls it toward him and examines it. His features soften as he takes it in, rubs his thumb soft over the heel as if it were Casper herself. “So it is hers.”

  “I saw her wearing them the day she disappeared.” My chest heaves as I say it. “Where’d you find this?”

  “The woods.” He takes an unsteady breath.

  Knew it.

  “What are you going to do?” A thousand insane ideas fight for my attention. Call Wes, call Coop, her parents, the police, the FBI—NASA.

  “You’re the only one who believed her.” He grazes me with his tired eyes. “Everyone else thought she was a loon.”

  “How many people knew?” God, if she hadn’t given me the advice to stop telling everyone I could about Kansas, I’d probably be in the same position.

  “She told anyone who would listen, her teachers, friends, the guy at the store bagging groceries. She called the police once, but my parents accused her of having an overactive imagination, of hating them, and, eventually she stopped making it sound like she was being held at gunpoint.” He slouches heavily into the shoe. “She had everything a person could want. It was hard to believe the things she was saying.” His face crumbles as if right now, at this moment, he had chosen to believe, and it was too late. “You think she’s dead?” He maintains a fixed gaze on her footwear as though he might break if he looked anywhere else.

  “I don’t know. But it sounds like she finally found the answers she was looking for and someone wanted to make sure she didn’t share them.” There’s no way I’m telling him about my run-ins with the Spectators and Fems, that, yes, deep inside I believe there’s more than a good chance she’s been digested and is dissolving on the planet in the form of vomit or excrement. But maybe they’ve taken her and they’re keeping her alive? That’s what Coop believes happened to his mother.

  A wild thought bolts through me.

&nbs
p; “You said you were mostly Deorsum, but what about Casper?” I ask.

  Flynn looks at me a profoundly long time.

  His gaze drifts to the wall in front of us.

  If it’s the answer I’m hoping for, then Casper just might be alive.

  38

  Blood

  “She’s a Count.” Flynn looks down uneasy as if even suggesting Casper were another species of any kind was ludicrous. “I take after my mom, and she takes after my dad. It’s a crapshoot, and that, my friend, is how the crap landed.”

  We huddle together on my bed, after he rather unceremoniously wrestled a naked Carter right on this very mattress. There may or may not have been contraceptives involved. I guess we’ll know in nine months.

  “Casper’s a Count?” If that’s true, it refutes the theory on why the Counts themselves would take her. “Not unless…” I try to temper my insane premise with a lengthy pause. “Maybe she’s not related to you. Maybe she really was someone else entirely. There has to be something in you that believes her even a little.” I let the idea simmer a moment.

  “You think she’s Celestra.” He deadpans. Flynn knows just what that would mean.

  “Why else would they want her gone? To shut her up? They could have done that years ago.” I draw my cell quick as a gun. “I’m going to text Cooper. He needs to be here.”

  “Flanders?” He looks dismayed. “No thanks.” He gets up and sits at Casper’s desk. He drags his fingers in a circle over the dark stained wood as though that might somehow conjure her.

  “Too late.” I hit send and hope he’s not tucked in bed for the night. The scene with Flynn and Carter goes off in my brain, only this time the clothing deficient boy in question isn’t Flynn—it’s Cooper. I try to shake the image out of my head, but I see us playing out like some pornographic movie—involuntarily recasting Flynn and Carter with Coop and myself. I try to replace him with Wesley but it doesn’t work. Cooper buoys his way to the surface. I watch fascinated as he writhes over me with carnal passion, my legs wrapped around his thighs.

  My phone buzzes, startling me to attention.

  At the library with your other half. B right over.

  “He’ll be here in a minute,” I say, swallowing hard—still bothered by the errant fantasy.

  “So, what exactly is it that Super Cooper is going to do?” He lays heavy inflection on the sarcastic moniker. “Check the Spectator observatory to see if she’s in there?” Flynn seethes with annoyance.

  “You don’t care for him, do you?” I’m only mildly amused that Flynn finds the existence of Spectators an acceptable reality. These people are all so seemingly normal on the outside—well, as normal as you can get when you’re born into a family that has the ability to stock dollar bills in the bathroom as toilet paper and yet, they have no idea they’re trapped in a horror movie.

  Flynn takes a breath as though he were ushering out a bad memory and doesn’t say a word.

  I study his face for a reason why he, or anyone else for that matter, would be put off by Coop, but Flynn doesn’t give away his secrets. I consider touching him to pry into his thoughts, but I’m afraid he’ll mistake it for an invitation so I change the subject instead.

  “About the incident that permanently defiled my pillow—I bid you to move all future fornicating to your own room or that of your carnal suitor.”

  “Sorry.” He blinks a smile. “But I wasn’t going to do it on Casper’s bed.”

  “It’s nice that you have ethics.” I don’t mean for it to come out as bitchy as it does. “Just a suggestion, Carter’s room is only two doors down.”

  “Been there, done that.” He folds his arms across his chest. “Any other exotic locales you’d like to suggest?”

  “Beneath Asterion like some altar sacrifice. Who knows, magical things might happen.” Like I wake up in Kansas. Carter and Flynn could prove to be my surrogate ruby slippers.

  “I believe a virgin is needed to invoke the black magic voodoo you insinuate. And trust me,” he growls as he says it, “Carter is no damn virgin.”

  “Lovely,” I whisper.

  I take him in like this with the light from the computer casting an anemic glow over his skin. He looks sad, alone. A part of me wishes I could fix things for him. Bring his supposed sister back.

  “I want to tell you something.” I pause, reconsidering for a moment. Really I should be concerning myself with the prospect of homework, which I’m still not one hundred percent sold on doing since I’m still not one hundred percent sold on the idea that I’m not locked on a psych unit somewhere having a very bad hallucination. “This is for your ears only, and none of it’s a joke,” I whisper. “You don’t have to believe me, but just know that your sister did.” I start in slow and tell him about Kansas, Tucker and the fact his penis had its compass set to other girls bodies—how I was going to carve my initials in his chest just before I ate a mouthful of broken glass. Finally, I tell him about the angel that submerged me back onto the planet. I take a breath and segue over to the fact I followed Casper into the forest that day and leave it at that.

  Flynn doesn’t say a word, just alternates his gaze from me to the blackened glass of the window.

  “What about Cooper?” The words strangle out of him. “He going to come here and tell me he’s from New Mexico?”

  “Cooper’s mother disappeared years ago. Left with one slipper, took nothing else with her.”

  “Sounds like Cinderella syndrome,” he says it wry, but without the proper sarcastic inflection.

  “Sounds like that syndrome might be catching.” I nod over at the shoe still firmly embedded in his hand.

  “Cooper’s mom was a Celestra?”

  Crap. I’m pretty sure I wasn’t supposed to spout off about Cooper’s lineage. But there’s something about Flynn I trust and I know he cares about Casper. If Casper had any Celestra in her, it could mean the same people who took Cooper’s mom have her hostage as well.

  Flynn lets it sink in. “I heard something about her taking off, but that was gossip. You think they took her?” He looks dazed. “I thought you’d hightail this news to Wes. Why Coop?”

  “Wes.” I breathe his name in a sigh and shake my head.

  A light knock erupts at the door.

  “Come in,” I say, hoping it’s Cooper and not Jen or, God forbid, Wesley.

  Cooper’s sweatshirt covers most of the purple welt on his neck, but not all of it, not by a long shot.

  God—and he was just with Wesley. I wonder if he alluded to the fact my lips were responsible for the carnage? What if he secretly wanted Wes to see it?

  “What’s up?” He glances over at a bare-chested Flynn taking up space beside me, clearly unimpressed. “Looks like you’ve got some refuse you want me to dispose of.” He blinks a smile at his barb.

  “What’s the deal with the two of you?” Individually they seem like the nicest guys on the planet. How are they possibly averse to one another? “Flynn found Casper’s shoe. Same one she was wearing the day she disappeared.”

  “How do you know?” Cooper seems indifferent like he’s too distracted by his hatred for Flynn to delve into the situation or even care.

  “It is,” I say. “I noticed them just before she left the room that day. I know for a fact this is one of them.” I take it from Flynn. A long tear gashes through the leather as a living testament to the horror she went through. “Coop,” I whisper, “we need to find out if Casper had any Celestra in her.”

  “Bad news,” Flynn says, “she took all her blood with her.” He digs his arms through his T-shirt before pulling it over his neck. He doesn’t seem all that hot on pursing the lead on his sister anymore.

  I’ll have to pry into the tension later, find out for myself what’s really going on here. This all-out hatred has me more than slightly intrigued. Logically, I suspect a girl is at the epicenter of the turmoil, and yet, illogically this can never be the same girl. They seem to polarize when it comes to the female population
. I look over at Coop, and my stomach lurches at the thought of him with another girl.

  They might have a seething hatred for one another but for now I need to figure out a way to unite them. I’d like nothing more than to gash a wound so deep into the Counts, they’ll regret ever seeing my windshield-battered face.

  I pick up Cooper’s hand. “You’re looking for your mom.” It comes out soft like a melody. “And, Flynn, your sister is missing.” I pick his hand up in a unifying gesture. “I, myself, happen to have misplaced my sanity, and I’m interested in hunting down all three.”

  Cooper relaxes into me. “I need you, Laken—Marky needs you to help us find our mom. I’ll help you in any way I can.” His forlorn eyes signal he needs more from me than I’m willing to give. “I would do anything for you.”

  “Why would I need you?” Flynn raises his brows, mocking Cooper’s intent.

  “Does your sister ring a bell?” I’m shocked he had to ask.

  “I can try to find her on my own,” he shoots back.

  “Then you’ll have to infiltrate the Counts,” Cooper tells him with a curt tone. “See what they’re hiding.”

  Flynn blows a breath through his cheeks, exasperated at the thought. “Shit. I haven’t witnessed a New Moon howling session since I was forced to slaughter a rooster and eat it for dinner. I’m not into that crap.”

  “You don’t need to attend any New Moon ceremonies.” Coop darts it out. “I doubt they spill any secrets there anyway. Besides, Laken has Wes. He’s been around for years.”

  I shoot him a look.

  “Or not,” he corrects. He looks down lost in thought. “Come to think of it, I met him about a year ago. But Ephemeral’s huge, I don’t know everyone.”

  I take in a breath at Cooper’s revelation but decide to leave it for now. “So Flynn?” I start. “You’re going to come to my indoctrination Tuesday, right?” I give him a pleading smile, albeit weak and unconvincing. “Who knows what I might get to slaughter. There might even be a shiny red heifer with my name on it.”

  “I’d bring the barbeque sauce, but I’m averse to Counts with bad attitudes.” Flynn says, knitting his hands behind his neck.