by L. E. DeLano
“Did you enlighten them about all the historical advancements and interesting facts you probably know about the country?” I ask. “Or did you just remind them again that you used to live in the United States before you came to live in the United States?”
“Neither. It’s useless to try to cram knowledge into a brain that’s not big enough to hold it,” he scoffs. “Would you like me to teach you how to spell Albuquerque?”
I eat another french fry. “I have to reserve my brainpower for calculus.”
He laughs, and I realize how much I missed his laugh. It’s good to have my friend back again.
“So, I’ll meet you at your locker after school?” he asks.
I feel my phone buzz in my pocket, and I pull it out, giving him a nod to answer his question.
“It’s Finn,” I say.
Ben rolls his eyes. “Surprise, surprise. His Spidey sense must have been tingling.”
I hit the answer button as I mouth nerd at Ben.
“Hey.”
“Hey. I’m just finishing up,” Finn says. “You want to come see my handiwork?”
I check the time, and I still have twelve minutes of lunch left.
“Sure. I’ll be right there.” I pick up my tray and stand up. “I have to go to the auditorium.”
“What a coincidence,” Ben says. “I’m fixing to walk right by there.”
I crinkle my nose as we toss our trash, then walk through the doors and out into the hallway. “Why do you say that?”
“What?”
“That you’re ‘fixing’ to do something. Is that a New Mexico thing?”
“I think it’s actually a Texas colloquialism that manifests itself throughout the Southwest.”
“Ooh.” I raise my brows. “Bonus Scrabble points for two big words in a sentence.”
“I even used a Q,” he jokes back.
Ben opens the door to the auditorium for me and I walk down the center aisle, looking for Finn. There’s a group of people painting backdrops, so I climb the stairs at the side and step up onto the stage. I see Finn on the other side in the wings and start toward him.
And then I’m pulled violently backward as a heavy steel bar full of lights crashes from the ceiling to the stage right in front of me and shatters, spraying me with flying glass.
28
Near Miss
“St. Clair!”
“Jessa!”
Ben and Finn shout my name at the same time, but I’m lying on my back and I have the wind knocked out of me. I couldn’t answer them even if I wanted to.
Ben gets to me first, since he was the one who pulled me out of the way. I look up at him with startled, slightly unfocused eyes.
“You okay?” He’s running his hands all over me, swiping off chunks of glass.
I nod because I’m still winded.
He glances down and makes a face. “Does it hurt anywhere?”
I push myself up on my elbows. “No.” My head drops back and I suck in a big lungful of air. By now Finn has reached us, and he kneels down next to me, kicking some glass out of the way before he does.
“Did you hit your head?” he asks, cradling it in his hand.
“No. Ben pulled me flat on my back.”
He looks over at Ben. “Thank you,” he says.
“You saved my life,” I add. “If that bar had hit my head, I’d be a goner.”
Ben makes a waving motion with his hand, like it’s no big deal.
“She’s right,” Finn says. His mouth turns down in a frown.
I waggle my brows at Ben. “Now who’s got the Spidey sense?”
He sits back on his heels, letting out a sigh of relief. “You must be all right if you’re making nerd jokes.”
“To tell you the truth, now that the adrenaline is leaving my system, I’m feeling kind of faint.” I look up at all the other students and adults who are now gathered around me. Mr. Green, the drama teacher, has come running from the back of the auditorium, along with the lady from the historical society, who was watching a scene rehearsal at the back of the stage.
“Oh, my dear!” she frets. “Goodness! Are you hurt?”
“No, I’m okay,” I reassure her.
“How did that happen?” Mr. Green asks. “Who was up there last?”
Finn makes a grim face. “I was. Chloe needed the lights adjusted, but she’s afraid of heights and asked me to do it. I thought they were secure when I moved them.”
“You have to retighten the bolts on the bar with a wrench if you’ve been moving them around and adjusting them,” Ben explains. “I worked lights for the last show. The mounting brackets on a lot of those are stripped. They can come loose if you don’t tighten them back down.”
Finn looks down at me, his face full of concern. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
I sit up completely, rolling myself carefully onto my knees away from the pile of broken glass. “I’m okay. Really.”
“I’ll grab a broom,” Ben says, jogging over to the cabinet backstage.
Mr. Green shakes his head, still not over this. “You got cut,” he says. “Your palm is bleeding.”
I look down, and he’s right. “I put my hand up in front of my face when the glass started flying,” I say. “It’s just a nick.”
“I want you to go to the nurse.” Mr. Green is adamant. “She needs to look you over.”
“All right.”
He helps me up to my feet, and Finn reaches out, gently grasping my hand and flipping it over to look at my palm. Then his eyes meet mine.
“I’m sorry, Jessa.”
“I can walk her to the nurse,” Ben volunteers quickly. “She’s still not too steady on her feet.”
He hands Finn the broom, and Finn looks like he wants to object, but I let Ben wrap an arm around my shoulders and off we go.
“That was freaky,” Ben says as he leads me out the door. “You really should take it easy. You might have shaken something loose in that nerd brain of yours.”
I look up at him. “I didn’t know you ran lights for the last school play.”
“It was last semester,” he says. “Somebody got sick, so I was just helping out.”
“You can let go of me now,” I say. “I can walk fine.”
“Just making sure.” He frowns at me, and then his face brightens. “Hey, the lady from the historical society remembers you. Eversor showed her your ghost story, and she wants to use it on her ghost tour.”
“Really?” I know it’s not huge, but I’m stupidly pleased all the same.
“Really. She’s even giving you credit for it, too. She gave me free passes, if you want to go.”
“That’s this Friday, right? I can’t imagine it’ll be a problem. I’ll run it by my mom and let you know.”
“Good.” He opens the door to the nurse’s office. “If she clears you, I’ll pick you up at six. We can hit dinner before.”
“Okay.” My forehead creases as I realize I just got maneuvered into a date. Ben is looking entirely too pleased with himself.
“Take it easy, St. Clair,” he says, putting his hands on my shoulders. “I mean it.”
“I’ll do my best,” I promise.
But I wonder how long that’ll last. Whoever is after me is getting braver—and closer.
The nurse lets me go with a Band-Aid, and Finn beats me to the doorway when our last class is done. He pulls me down the hall, out the doors and down the street to Mugsy’s, not even letting me stop at my locker.
He holds the door for me as we go in, and then he leans in and says, “You want to go someplace a little more … sparkly?”
I give an affirmative nod, and soon enough, we’re sliding into a high-polished chrome booth with cupcakes and glitter mousse on the table before us.
“Are you feeling all right?” he asks with concern. “That was another close call. Obviously our rogue Traveler is a lot closer to you than we think.”
“You think it’s someone in the school?” I ask.
“Possibly. Someone who could have maneuvered me into fixing that light bar.”
“Chloe?” I ask incredulously. “She doesn’t have a brain in her head.”
“Don’t judge a book by its cover.”
I load a spoonful of glitter mousse in my mouth so I won’t make a snarky remark about Chloe’s tight-T-shirt-too-much-makeup cover. Finn gives me a look that says he knew I wanted to say it anyway as he leans back in the booth.
“Chloe did suggest I call you,” he says. “She and her friends were arguing over who the original Avengers were. I told her if it was a nerd question, you could answer it.”
“Movie? Or comic book?” I ask.
“I don’t know. I just know I called you and because of that, you stepped onto the stage, right after Chloe sent me up to adjust the lights.”
“You could have texted me the question, you know,” I point out. “Why didn’t you just ask me when you had me on the phone?”
He looks embarrassed. “Because I wanted to pull you away from your lunch date.”
I roll my eyes at him. “And look where it got you.”
“Even if she isn’t the Traveler, Chloe could be the influential factor that pushed me into my normal position of having a hand in your demise. Anyone could have influenced her to suggest I go up there. Whoever set that in motion just didn’t count on Ben tagging along.”
“Ah, so you believe Ben is innocent now?”
“Not necessarily. He seemed to know an awful lot about those lights, didn’t he?” Finn reaches for a cupcake and starts peeling off the wrapper.
“He saved me, Finn.”
“There were too many witnesses,” he said. “Maybe he suddenly realized someone else could get hurt.”
“You’re grasping at straws.”
“Maybe,” he admits grudgingly. “I just think we have to carefully consider every single option. That’s all.”
I stick my finger in the frosting on one of the cupcakes. I’m not really hungry, even though it looks delicious. Besides, other me has worked so hard to stick to her diet. I’m looking really good.
“So let me get this straight,” I review. “Whoever is trying to kill me is a classmate. Or a teacher.”
“Or a lunch lady, or a janitor, or guidance counselor, or the guy who delivers the office supplies—who knows?” Finn expounds. “But they’ve got a way into the school now, so we need to be even more careful.”
“How can you watch out for somebody who could be anybody?” I ask.
“I don’t,” he says. “I just keep watching out for you.”
29
Hiding Out
It’s 5:40 on Friday and I really, really don’t want to do the ghost tour tonight. I have a feeling all Ben will want to talk about is Finn, and once I get back, all Finn will want to talk about is my night with Ben—especially since he’s still not entirely convinced about Ben even after he saved my life right in front of him.
I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror over my dresser, and I make a face.
“I don’t suppose you’d like to go out to dinner and take the ghost tour, would you?” I ask in a disgusted voice.
And as I stare just a little too long, I swear I see her—my—head nod, ever so slightly.
“Oh, it can’t be that easy,” I murmur. I’ve got a way out of this. I’ll go hang someplace else for a little while, until the evening is over. And it’s not like she’d have it bad—my arm is mostly healed and I’m out of my sling now.
I haven’t traveled anywhere since the soda-spilling debacle. Mario seems to have backed off and let me cool down—I don’t really harbor any hope that he’s letting me out of my job entirely. So I haven’t traveled and no one’s tried to kill me in two days.
In short, I’ve been living a plain old normal life. I look at myself in the mirror again.
I know I shouldn’t do it, but I put my hand to the glass anyway.
A moment later I am through, and my mother bustles into the room behind me.
“Are you still standing there?” she huffs.
“What’s going on?” I ask, turning to greet her.
“It’s time to get ready!”
My eyes widen as I take in the room around me, the striped wallpaper and the wainscoting.
“Jessamyn! Now! It’s nearly six!”
She stands imperiously at the foot of my bed, tapping her foot on the hardwood floor. My mother looks every inch the elegant Victorian woman—one who’s got an agenda. I look at her and can’t help but break into a wide grin.
I’ve seen my mom in work clothes, of course, but she has more of a dress-slacks-and-blouses kind of wardrobe. She might toss on the occasional sundress in the summer, but to see her all decked out in a fancy dress and lacy blouse is beyond surreal.
“Are we going somewhere?” I ask.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake! You have to start getting ready.” She throws a pile of undergarments on the bed. “Get your bath and then get all this on. Eleanor will be in to help you with the corset. We leave in an hour.”
“Where are we going?”
“Jessamyn! Are you awake?” She snaps her fingers in front of my face.
“The Bradleys’ ball is tonight,” she informs me. “Boyce will be around to collect us, and you had better be ready. You know how he hates to be kept waiting.”
I finally pull my thoughts together. Tonight there’s a ball celebrating the birthday of Elmira Bradley, the wife of a local barrister, and my fiancé and I will be attending. Mother had the dress brought in all the way from Charlotte, and everyone who is anyone in local society will be there. I planned to be bored out of my mind and counting the hours until I could sneak out of my house and meet up with Finn. No wonder I was eager to trade off. It’s a win for both of us, because I get to go to my very first steampunk ball.
I follow my maid, Eleanor, with a sigh and climb dutifully into the bath. Then afterward I take entirely too long to get into all the undergarments in front of me on the bed. Between all these pieces of clothing, plus a corset, plus a mountain of skirts, how did Finn and I ever become intimate? It must’ve been a monumental undertaking.
And I’ve done it again. Now I remember exactly how monumental it was. Pirate Finn was a determined man and I was an enthusiastic accomplice, on numerous occasions. I shake my head, trying to lose those memories so I can concentrate on getting all this stuff on my body the right way.
My mother arrives with an enormous box a few minutes later, laying it carefully on my coverlet. Eleanor has me brace myself against the post of my bed as she laces my corset so tight, I swear the blood vessels are bursting in my eyes.
“Mother?”
“What, Jessamyn?” She’s rooting through the drawer of my vanity, pulling out cosmetics.
“Can we loosen this a little? My stomach isn’t feeling well, and I’d hate to get sick all over Boyce.”
She steps over to me, pressing the back of her hand against my head. “You feel a little warm,” she worries. “But we really should go. If we decline now, the Bradleys will think we’ve snubbed them.”
Eleanor loosens my corset strings a bare millimeter and I can breathe better—marginally. I turn so that she can lower the ball gown over my head. She shakes it into place, and then moves behind me to fasten the buttons up the back. I stand before the full-length mirror and gasp aloud at my reflection.
The gown is beautiful. It’s long-sleeved, a deep-blue satin with gathers at the bottom to display the black ruffled lace underskirt. Another line of black lace lines the décolletage, and a blue satin choker with black lace trim completes the ensemble. Once everything is in place, Mother leads me over to the vanity and drapes me with a linen cloth to keep the cosmetics off my dress as Eleanor applies my makeup. She finishes off by dusting me lightly with a shimmering powder across my chest and face.
After, she gets my hair loosely curled and pushed up into a big, pouffy pile on top of my head, with a few artfully curled tendrils falling around my should
ers. One more dusting of powder and my mother pronounces me perfect.
Boyce arrives a short time later, and I grin widely when I see what we’re riding in. It’s a hydrogen carriage—and it really does look almost like a carriage, but horseless, of course. It’s a large, ornate, ungainly thing, suited only for short rides around town. He has another vehicle for longer trips, but this one is the status symbol, and it’s garish in the extreme.
Boyce tries to make conversation with me, but my thoughts are a million miles—or one reality—away right now. My mother ends up talking to him most of the way to the Bradleys’ house, and it isn’t until after the dinner is finished that Boyce and I find a moment to speak.
“I’d like to apologize,” he says. “It really was unavoidable.”
“What?” I take my eyes off the couples who are making their way to the ballroom and try to look interested. I can’t be blowing this Jessa’s cover.
“I want to apologize again,” he repeats. “For having to leave the ball early this evening.”
“Oh. I completely understand,” I say with a forced smile. “You do what you have to do.”
He looks at me curiously. “You’re not angry, then?”
“No, of course not. I’m sure you have a good reason.”
“I need to be in Savannah by morning or we’ll lose the deal on the new carriage engines. It can’t be helped.” He shrugs apologetically.
I try to look interested. “You’re working hard to secure the future of your business, Boyce. How can I be angry about that?”
He gives me a tepid smile in return. “Well then, I suppose I should have my dance before I take my leave.”
He leads me onto the dance floor, and luckily, although the dance is fairly complicated, involving clapping and circling and partner changes, I remember it well enough that I can hold my own. Boyce is not very talkative. He looks as bored with me as I am with him, and I realize that he always is. He’s only marrying me for my money, after all. I get the feeling he wouldn’t marry at all, if he had his choice. I feel sorry for him.
He returns me to my mother’s side, and with a short bow in her direction and a light kiss on the back of my gloved hand, he leaves. I turn to my mother.
