And there, through the crowd: a flash of red departing.
“Tink!”
She rounded a corner. I saw the edge of her dress, a glimpse of blond hair, the light catching—and she was gone.
“Tink!”
I pushed forward. She’d vanished at the other end of the building, and the jostling, laughing throng stood between us. I moved through an obstacle course of limbs and tables and chairs. The music pulsed, a song that kept a frantic beat with my unsteady nerves. Urgency hummed in my veins. I had to reach her.
I heard a voice calling my name, but I didn’t stop. I stumbled against someone, muttered an apology, hurried onward. Dread clawed at me.
I rounded the corner where Tink had gone, and found nothing. Sudden stillness. An empty hallway arcing to the left. A light flickered overhead, across scuffed linoleum and faded green paint. Nearby, a janitor cart had been left unattended, mop handle jutting outward. There was a door marked employees only, but I dismissed that. Beyond, a neon sign with an arrow said exit. Tink had gone into the alley.
I ran.
This part of the Drought and Deluge was new to me, darker and dirtier. It was colored differently, like I’d crossed a threshold into a separate world. My footsteps sounded unnaturally loud, and there was a faint smell of bleach in the air. I pressed my hands to the exit door and stepped out into the alley.
Cool air rushed toward me.
The world was blue, shadowed and dim with the fall of night. It took me a moment to realize what I saw. At first there were only walls and pavement, the dark brick of the buildings adjacent to the club, and, somewhere nearby, the clamor of downtown traffic.
Then I saw them.
A man bent toward the ground, crouching, half-turned from me. I couldn’t see his face. But I saw the object his hands moved over: one small, slender foot, the knot of an ankle, the curve of a leg. Red fabric in his hands. Tink.
He stood, pulling Tink up with him. Her legs dangled over his arm. In the light spilling out from the open door, I could see the blood that rolled down over her feet, dripping to the ground beneath her. It wasn’t a lot of blood, but the sight of it sent a shock through me. I couldn’t tell how badly she was hurt. With her face tucked against his shoulder, I couldn’t see if she was awake.
The man turned. I didn’t recognize him. In my panicked state, I registered only disconnected features: tall frame, sandy hair, greenish eyes. I couldn’t guess his age—maybe somewhere past twenty. His shirt bore the logo of the Drought and Deluge. A troubled frown creased his brow, but smoothed as he looked at me.
“Friend of yours?” he asked, with just the slightest trace of an accent. His voice was calm, easy, but I didn’t trust it. Though a smile tugged at his lips, his eyes felt distant. “Or did the sweet night air draw you out here, as well?”
There was an edge to his words, a strange emphasis that I didn’t understand. Warily, I glanced beyond him. Save for the three of us, the alley was deserted. I wondered if anyone would hear me if I screamed.
Somehow, I found my voice. It trembled, but it was loud, echoing out into the darkness. “Let her go.”
He chuckled—a rich, low sound in the stillness around us. “I’m afraid you’ve got the wrong idea,” he said. His arms twitched, drawing Tink closer to him. Her head rested loosely against his shoulder, her hair still bright with glitter, but now I saw her face. Her eyes were closed, her lips slightly parted, her face ashen. Worry gnawed at me. She seemed so small there, thin and fragile, and the night was very dark.
“What did you do to her?” I gripped the edge of the door, trying to ignore the way my hands shook.
“I came out for a smoke,” he said. “She’s terribly lucky I did.”
Then Leon was at my side. “Audrey,” he said, and touched my shoulder.
I’d never been so glad to hear his voice. “It’s Tink,” I whispered.
“Hey, I’m just here to help,” the man said, shifting back as Leon took a step toward him. For a moment, they looked at each other without speaking. My lungs felt heavy, my breathing labored. Everything around me was gritty, but clear. I smelled garbage and blood and something acrid like burned plastic.
The man moved forward and transferred Tink into Leon’s arms. I watched her slide between them as though she were weightless, her blood inking both of their shirts. Her head rolled back, but she was only unconscious. In the light from the Drought and Deluge, I saw the untroubled rise and fall of her chest.
“Is she all right?” I asked. I hadn’t moved. Something about the alley felt off: a quality to the darkness, as though the night had grown edges.
The man gave me a long, measuring look, and a slow smile spread across his face. “Don’t fret, angel,” he said as he strode past me. “She seems ... mostly intact.”
“Get out of here,” Leon growled.
With a shrug, the man vanished into the corridor behind us.
Leon turned toward me, Tink cradled in his arms. I rushed forward, trying to remember what I’d been taught in martial arts about first aid. Airway, I thought. Airway came first. But she seemed to be breathing easily enough.
“I’ll take care of her,” Leon was saying. “Go back inside. Find Gideon. Have him take you directly home. Are you listening? Directly home.”
I shook my head, hardly hearing him. “I’m staying. Or— should we go to the ER?”
“You’re going home,” he repeated, his voice quiet but unyielding. “Don’t fight me on this.”
Incredulous, I stared up at him. “Don’t fight you? My friend is unconscious, bleeding in an alley, and you expect me to just abandon her?”
“Do you want to stand here arguing, or do you want me to help her?”
I balled my hands into fists. “I . . .”
“She’s going to be fine. I’m going to take care of her. But I need you to go. Home.”
Anger warred with concern. I hated the idea of leaving her— but I didn’t know how to help; I didn’t know what to do. I felt shaken, dazed. My Knowing had faded. The urgency and alarm that had drawn me outside was now only an echo, but the apprehension remained, a touch of fear crawling up and down my skin, a quiet terror that Tink wasn’t all right, that something horrible had happened to her, was still happening. I hesitated, looking down at the darkness that gathered beneath my feet.
“Go,” Leon said.
My resolve broke. With a final glance at Tink, I turned away and headed back into the club.
***
Gideon offered to stay with me until Leon arrived with news, but I wanted to be alone. I wanted to think. I’d tried to explain what had happened—my Knowing, the alley, the blood on Tink’s ankles—but I wasn’t even certain myself.
“You think someone hurt her?” Gideon asked, idling in my driveway.
“I don’t know,” I admitted, remembering the strange man with the Drought and Deluge shirt; something hadn’t seemed quite right about him. “She wasn’t gone very long.”
“And you’re sure you don’t want me to hang out?”
“I’m sure. I’ll call you later.”
Inside, in the big emptiness of my house, I listened to the silence.
The experience had shaken me in a way I couldn’t put into words. I still felt unease in my stomach, a flutter of nausea. I turned on the lights in the kitchen and stood in the yellow glare.
I didn’t know what had happened.
Tink had been dancing with me, moving in the crowd, all energy and motion. And then she’d been gone.
Or rather: I’d left her.
I shook away the thought and sat, waiting for Leon. It was too early for my mother to come home, and I thought of her out there, in the blur of night and traffic and whatever lay beneath the swirl of city lights.
Once again, Leon didn’t bother with the door. He just appeared in front of me in the kitchen, face somber, arms crossed. I blinked up at him. Though he assured me Tink was all right, my eyes drifted to the stain on his arm where her blood had dried on
his shirt.
“Did she say what happened?” I asked, shifting my gaze. The sight of blood wasn’t uncommon in my household, but that stain bothered me. Twin smears, small but vivid. I swallowed thickly.
Leon’s words drew my attention back to him. “Nothing happened,” he said. “She fainted.” His tone was cool, clipped, and for a moment I simply looked at him, confused.
“She...fainted,” I repeated.
“That’s what she told me. She says she doesn’t remember much.”
“And what, she just spontaneously started bleeding?”
“There was broken glass in the alley. I think she cut herself when she fell.”
Wounds on her ankles, I thought. A slash of red. A chill ran through me. “No,” I answered, shaking my head. “Something happened out there. I felt—something.”
He snorted. “Felt the need to run out into an alley at night without telling anyone where you were going.”
Trust Leon to turn this around on me. “Tink was in trouble.”
“Then you should’ve found me.” He paused, and for the briefest of moments, something I couldn’t name crossed his face. It might have been concern, or doubt, or maybe just weariness; I wasn’t certain. Then it was gone. His eyes narrowed. “You don’t go there. Ever again.”
That got my hackles up. I knew I should just let it go. I should thank him for helping Tink, at the very least. I owed him that much. Instead, I met him glare for glare and demanded, “Don’t you ever get tired of issuing commands?”
He didn’t hesitate. “More than you know.”
“Then maybe you should stop.”
“And maybe you should start thinking. What if she had been in trouble? What could you have done?” I opened my mouth to protest, but he continued before I could speak. His expression was grim, his eyes dark and focused. “We don’t always get to choose what happens to us, Audrey. Life isn’t a game just because you treat it like one.”
His tone sent a shiver down me. There was definitely more going on here than he would admit. “You told me she fainted,” I pointed out. “You said nothing happened.”
“That doesn’t mean it couldn’t have.”
And with that, he vanished, leaving behind nothing but empty air.
I stared into the space where he’d been. When he didn’t reappear, I let out a little growl of frustration and stalked out of the kitchen.
I considered hunting him down. He lived in our house now; he couldn’t avoid me for long. But I didn’t think he’d be any more forthcoming if I pressed the issue. Instead, I went up to my room and sat on my bed, my legs drawn up against me. I closed my eyes, going back over the evening in my mind, detail by detail. Tink pulling me into the ladies’ restroom. The smell of the makeup she’d applied, the touch of the brush on my cheek. Laughing our way to the dance floor. And then the alley: her red dress and the cuts on her ankles.
I didn’t know when I fell asleep, but when I dreamed, I dreamed of Tink.
She stood on the dance floor, alone. It was hot, everything close and confining. She needed space, needed to clear her head. She would go, she told herself, just step outside. She would taste the sweet night air. She would only leave for a moment—
Someone in the darkness. Watching.
A sharp rush of wind. The flash of her dress as she turned. The curve of her throat in the moonlight. It had brought her out here. It had been waiting. It had—
It.
I woke panting, staring out into the half-dark of my room, where starlight pushed through the blinds. I pulled the blankets tight against me and listened to traffic moving outside. My breath felt sticky, incapable of leaving my lungs. Because it hadn’t just been Tink. In the last flickering colors and flashes of the dream, I had seen something else.
The pale, bloodless face of Kelly Stevens.
8
When I called Tink the following afternoon, she repeated what Leon had told me, insisting that she’d only fainted.
It was probably the heat, she said. She’d felt crowded and dizzy and went outside for fresh air.
“I can’t remember a whole lot about it,” she said.
“What about your ankles?” I asked. “You fainted and just woke up with stigmata?”
“Yeah, you’re hysterical. Thanks for the sympathy,” she grumbled.
“I’m sympathetic! I’m just worried about you,” I said. My dream had been troubling me, that sense of something waiting. Watching.
It could have meant nothing. It could have just been a nightmare, conjured up by my anxiety and the shock of the evening. But I didn’t believe that. I hadn’t forgotten Leon’s words, or the frantic, frightening surge of Knowing that had sent me into the alley.
Tink sighed. “I think I landed on a beer bottle. I’m lucky I’m not still digging out glass.”
Exactly as Leon had said. Somehow, that didn’t reassure me. But I didn’t know how to press the matter without explaining about my Knowing, and when I asked about the man who found her, she sounded genuinely confused.
“I thought you found me,” she said. “Can we please stop talking about this? I’m traumatized enough, and what’s worse, I’m sick. I feel terrible. I might even be dying.”
As it turned out, she had the flu. Or possibly bronchitis—she wasn’t certain. She stayed home from school the entire week and spent her days wrapped up in blankets, eating chicken soup and watching soap operas.
The next time I called her, she could barely croak out her words.
“You really do sound like death,” I told her.
She coughed into the phone. “I’m just bummed I have to miss the Halloween party at the Drought and Deluge.”
“Maybe you could still come to Gideon’s party,” I suggested. “You won’t even need a costume. Just start coughing and call yourself the plague.”
“I can’t do that, either,” she sighed. “Mom’s still pretty upset about Friday. She’s not letting me out of the apartment. And before you ask me again, it was really nothing. I got light-headed, that’s all.”
I still wasn’t reassured. Once Mom had heard about what happened, she’d forbidden me from ever returning to the Drought and Deluge. Which meant, whatever had happened to Tink, it wasn’t as simple as fainting.
Not that anyone would tell me. Mom insisted I shouldn’t worry, and Leon refused to talk about it. Whenever I tried to bring it up, he told me to let it go, and then conveniently found somewhere else to be.
But the thought wouldn’t leave.
“If Tink isn’t upset about it, I’m not sure why you are,” Gideon told me on Wednesday night. I’d once again invaded his home, since Mom and Leon had both left before dinner, and Gideon offered me spaghetti. If there was one thing I appreciated about the Belmonte family, it was their food. I had no idea how Gideon was so thin.
“She wouldn’t talk about it if it did upset her,” I said. “You know how she is.”
“Tink the turtle,” he said, nodding.
“I think you mean ostrich.”
“Turtle sounds better.” He lowered his voice, even though we were in his room and all three Belmonte sisters were safely ensconced upstairs playing video games. “Is this something you know, or something you Know?”
“It’s just a feeling,” I hedged. I wasn’t certain myself. “You said yourself your feelings aren’t always right.”
I didn’t answer. Gram had always reminded me of that, too. Knowings could be wrong, she said—or at least our interpretations of them. She would tell me to focus, to feel, to listen to what my senses were trying to tell me. It was all there, waiting, she’d say.
But I hadn’t been able to sort out my senses. I was missing some piece.
My gaze drifted to the window well, where the edge of darkness crept in. The window was open, and the cool air brought with it the smell of rain and crushed leaves. I thought of Tink lying in the alley, the trail of blood that wound down her skin. Maybe it wasn’t really a Knowing after all—just the memory of one. My mind
playing tricks on me.
“You’re right,” I finally said, turning away from the window. “I should probably just forget it.”
***
I didn’t forget it.
It wasn’t my fault. I tried to set my uneasiness aside. I concentrated on other things, like the test coming up in Chemistry, and the fact that I’d scheduled my next driver’s exam and I still couldn’t corner back.
But at school, Tink’s absence left a gap. Someone would mention her, and my thoughts would drift back. I’d recall the scent of bleach, the silence in the alley, that tremor of fear in my lungs. So I didn’t forget—I was just quieter about it.
Then, during Precalc on Thursday, Mr. Alvarez asked me to stay after class.
I hadn’t been paying attention. I’d been thinking about Gram, what she might have done. Her Knowing hadn’t been as strong as mine, but she’d been able to focus it better.
Of course, she also didn’t need to deal with irritable math teachers. I watched with dread as the rest of the class filed out.
“Torture by mathematics should be a felony,” I grumbled to my friend Erica, who shot me a consoling look as she darted out of the line of fire.
Apparently, Mr. Alvarez had heard me. Seated at his desk, he paused with his coffee cup raised halfway to his lips. “It would be a lot less painful if you just did your homework,” he said. He took a sip, then set his mug down on a stack of papers. “You’re a smart girl. You simply lack patience. Not liking something doesn’t mean you’re not any good at it. But that’s not what I wanted to talk to you about.”
I waited. Talking too much tended to earn you extra quizzes with Mr. Alvarez, and even though class was over, I wasn’t taking any chances. It was also best not to make eye contact. I kept my gaze fixed to the top of his head. There was chalk in his hair.
For a long moment, he didn’t speak. He just sat there, tapping his fingers against the desk. I risked meeting his eyes. He was watching me with an expression that wasn’t quite a frown. Finally, he said, “How’s Brewster doing?”
Dark Star Page 6
