by Jenna Mills
My heart started to pound. My palms got sweaty. They were out of place reactions. There was no reason for the sudden sweep of unease—
And yet I pushed forward anyway, toward the front of those gathered, until I could see.
A doll.
Small, maybe six inches long, with blond hair and wide unseeing eyes.
Charred, and naked.
In a pile of ash.
I would have sworn that I could smell smoke, the odor fresh, the fire recent.
"...not uncommon," I heard someone saying, a woman, and when I glanced back, I saw a badge hanging around her neck identifying her as a tour guide. "People leave offerings all the time. It's their way of paying respect."
"But why burn her?" someone asked. A child—a little girl.
"Come on, let's keep moving," an older female voice rushed in.
"But Mom—"
"Sometimes fire is seen as a means of purification," the tour guide answered melodically. "Returning that which was to that which is."
The poetic answer seemed to satisfy the onlookers, and one by one, group by group, the gawkers wandered off, until it was only me, me going down on a knee and lifting my phone, switching to camera mode.
Moments, Aidan had said.
Sometimes you just know.
Sometimes you know it's a moment you have to keep, preserve, that it's important.
Even if you don't know why.
"Hey."
I jumped. I tried to hide the reaction, but there was no hiding from Aidan, especially when he stood behind me in broad daylight. I turned and smiled, carefully concealing the matchbook in my hand, but he'd already seen whatever he'd seen and he was reaching for me, his hand to my wrist.
"You okay?" he asked.
I could feel the wind. I just couldn't feel the warmth or the heat. Not even with Aidan touching me. Only the strangest, most unnatural stream of cold, seeping from the inside out.
"Perfectly," I lied. "And you?"
He ignored my question, studying me in that way of his, as if reading something, reading something I very much didn't want to see.
"A few more pictures," I said, "then we can head back."
Night 3
After Dark
It was wrong, and I knew it. Long hours after we returned from the cemetery, after we both showered and Aidan sequestered himself in the carriage house, leaving me alone to make phone calls and work on my story, I sat in the shadows of the front porch.
The oak trees swayed in the warm breeze. Spanish moss shimmied like an army of dangling spider webs. From inside, lights glowed through the windows. To the casual passerby, the house looked warm and occupied.
Silly, I kept telling myself, as minutes piled into hours. Nine o'clock. Ten. Eleven. And still I stayed where I was, in the corner with my back to the house, my knees drawn to my chest.
I knew I should go inside. Go to bed. That if he found me out here...
And yet...curiosity kept me outside.
And then it happened.
A little after eleven, a beeping came from inside—the security system. Activating for the night. Then, the rumble of the garage door, followed by Aidan's Mercedes easing out the long driveway.
Then he was gone.
I moved fast, like I'd planned, hurrying down the walk to my rental parked in the street, slipped inside, and turned the engine, keeping the headlights off. From the time I stood until the time I took off after him, less than fifteen seconds passed.
There was so much that could go wrong, and I'd tried to catalog all of it. The biggest hurdle would be getting back into the house—he had not given me the security code. But I had a plan for that.
A block ahead, taillights glowed through the darkness. I hung back, not wanting him to become suspicious. When I reached St. Charles Avenue, I finally turned on my lights and blended with traffic, working my way among the cars until I reached two back from Aidan.
There were so many reasons I should have turned around and gone back, more, I know now, than I knew at the time. But I didn't. I didn't turn around. I followed him.
Everything inside me rushed. I'd promised him. Promised him I wasn't here to snoop. Promised I wasn't here to dissect his secrets.
But that was before.
Before he locked me in the house the night before.
Before he followed me to the cemetery.
Before the matchbook—the doll.
No, I told myself. No.
The doll was not for me. About me.
It wasn't.
But the matchbook was.
And the question why fired through me.
Sloan, I thought. I needed to talk to Sloan, see what he could tell me.
What he knew.
Past the outskirts of the French Quarter, Aidan continued, until he reached a dark, quiet street, crowded by tired old homes with only the occasional passerby. There, he slowed.
I switched my lights back off and pulled over, until I saw where he turned. Then I followed.
Except he was gone.
I drove block after block, until the rundown residential area gave way to coffee shops and nightclubs, cafes.
And him.
I saw him, not his car, Aidan walking toward a darkened two-story building. It was wood, shotgun style, obviously old. He wore all black, much like he had the day before, at the Ninth Ward.
Research, I wondered—
A tall, thin woman stepped out, with long copper hair and tight clothes of all black. They talked. Both vanished inside.
Quickly, I parked and slipped into a nearby coffee shop, watching.
"You're not from around here, are you?" the waitress finally asked.
I laughed at myself. "That obvious?"
She was tall and pale and tatted and beautiful—I had on running shorts and a t-shirt, a ponytail and sneakers.
"Can I get you something?" she asked.
I ordered a coffee, then asked about the building across the street.
Her eyes widened. "You don't want to go over there, hon," she said, then told me why. It was a club, rad, happening, rumored as a hotspot for every kind of ecstasy imaginable—and so underground it didn't even have a name.
Not a place for a girl like me, in athletic shorts and a cute, preppy t-shirt.
But Aidan...
Two hours passed. He never emerged.
So I went back to the Garden District and sat down on the porch with my back to the house, my knees to my chest and the big grey cat at my side, and waited.
Black Fingernails
I wasn't alone. I knew that the second I awoke. I lay there, heart slamming, darkness bleeding from every direction. I'd fallen asleep. I hadn't meant to. I had no idea what time it was. My phone—
It was in my purse.
Which meant to reach for it, I had to move.
Instinct warned me not to.
Aidan, I thought. He was home. That's what I heard—
Somewhere beyond the porch, the bougainvillea rustled.
The wind, I realized. It was the wind that woke me, whipping through the gnarled branches of the oaks. Or an animal—
The cat. I saw him then, sitting beneath the window, his golden eyes narrow and glowing. The relief was immediate. I lay there a few moments longer, fighting off the drug-like stupor of sleep, before pulling myself up and staggering to the door. There I knocked, loudly. And jabbed the bell.
A few seconds passed. A few more. And I realized that maybe he wasn't home yet—
But then came the beep of the security system being deactivated, and the door yanked open, and he was there, Aidan, tall and dominating, his bare chest filling the doorframe, and his eyes, Oh God, his eyes—
"Kendall—Jesus God."
It all happened so fast, the way he moved, reached for me, pulled me from the night and into his house, his arms, the door slamming and him, him holding me, holding me hard, crazy tight, so crazy I could feel his heart slamming against mine, feel his breath so hot and burning again
st me.
Later, I would wonder. Later, I would wonder if that was all a dream, some little twist of fantasy my mind created and filled in. But in that moment it was real, so, so real. And the heat, it wasn't until the heat sank through me that I realized I'd been shivering—
"What the hell?" he said, pulling back to look at me—stare at me. "Where have you been—are you okay—what happened to you?"
I blinked up at him. I'd rehearsed this. I knew exactly what to say. But I never imagined he'd look at me as if he were in the middle of a nightmare.
"Nothing," I said, and even though I should have let go of him and stepped back, stepped away, I didn't. "I couldn't sleep and went for a walk. I-I saw you leave and realized I wouldn't be able to get back in without setting off the alarm. And...then the police would come and maybe the media, and I knew you wouldn't want that...again..."
He looked at me like he had no idea what I'd just said.
"I thought you'd be right back, so I sat down to wait. I must have fallen asleep—"
Slowly, he lifted a hand to my face, sliding his fingers along my cheekbone before pulling them back and turning them over.
I stared down at the dark substance against his skin.
"Did you fall?" he asked, and then he was reaching for my hands and turning them over, and I saw what he did, the rich black dirt smeared all over my fingers.
And I saw what he didn't, or at least what he didn't say anything about: the black polish on my fingernails.
Black polish I had not put there.
And everything inside me turned to ice.
I pulled back, stepped back.
Because I didn't know. Didn't know where the dirt came from. Who'd painted my nails.
Didn't know what went on inside the rundown club into which Aidan had vanished.
Didn't know why a car had followed me—
—Or why Sloan kept warning me.
Didn't know what was real.
Or who to trust.
Once you're in his world, you're in his story.
"Yes," I lied, swallowing against the burn in my throat. "I tripped on some roots."
Aidan's shoulders rose, and fell. His nostrils flared. And his eyes...it shouldn't have been possible for them to go even darker. But they did.
They did.
And for that moment, that one dangerous moment, I wanted to believe him. To believe in him. To believe in the turbulence glittering in his eyes.
But I couldn't.
Because someone had been there.
Someone had been on the porch, with me.
Someone had touched me.
Sprinkled me with dirt.
Painted my nails.
Black.
While I slept.
"That should never have happened," he said quietly, and God, sounded like he meant, and my confusion twisted even harder. "I told you—if you're going to leave, you have to let me know—"
"You were working."
"Let. Me. Know."
I wrapped my arms around myself, and nodded.
Three days.
Seven to go.
He wasn't trying to scare me.
He wasn't.
And yet the way he looked at me—the way he held me...sent something dark and jagged splintering through me, and for a heartbeat, I wasn't sure of anything. Wasn't sure he was even there. Wasn't sure we were together, in the same place and moment. It was like he was lost, falling, caught between two places and two times. Two people.
"I'm sorry," he stunned me by saying. "I'm so fucking sorry I wasn't here." And then he was slipping closer again, lifting a hand toward me again, his fingers brushing along my face. "That won't happen again."
Day 4
Necessary Lies
I lied to him. I knew it was wrong the second I conceived the plan. I knew it was dangerous. When I went downstairs on the morning of that fourth day, I knew I was about to mislead him, and that if he found out, he would never trust me again.
Worse, my assignment would be over, and all those doors I'd been trying to open would remain closed.
But when I found him in the kitchen, leaned back in an old farmhouse chair, with a laptop in front of him and Stella stretched in a slash of sunlight, doubt whispered all over again. Doubt because even though hours had passed, even though I'd used that time to focus on what needed to be done, to reach out to Sloan and the mysterious A, the second I saw him, something inside of me shifted—longed.
Longed for him to look at me again, the way he had the night before.
Longed for him to touch me again.
I made no noise, but he looked up anyway, ripping himself from his computer and locking in on me.
That was all. A look. He didn't get up from the table. He didn't cross the room. He didn't lift a hand.
But for a heartbeat, I could feel him all the same. I could feel his touch, the heat—
"Going somewhere?" he asked.
I knew what I had to do. I'd planned it carefully. I'd mapped out the details. As he'd suggested that first day, I'd outlined contingencies.
Manufacturing a smile, I breezed into the sunny kitchen as if the night before never happened.
"Brunch with Uncle Nathan," I said. That much was true. The deception didn't begin until later. "He's flying back to New York tomorrow."
Aidan's eyes remained guarded, as always. "Does that mean I'm off the hook for today?"
Only in a manner of speaking. "At least until this afternoon," I lied. There would be no afternoon with him. No evening, either. No night. I had no intention of returning until I had more answers, from more people.
I'd deal with his questions only when they arose.
Sipping his coffee, he watched me. It was so hard to imagine he'd had anything to do with the dirt on my face—and the black polish on my nails.
"You've got my number, right?" he asked.
I nodded.
"Call me if you need me."
"I will," I promised.
And I would.
But not because I needed him.
Charades
I met Uncle Nathan at a gorgeous historic restaurant in the French Quarter, The Court of Two Sisters. We ate brunch while a jazz band played. That was all true. After, though. After—that's when the lie began.
From my car, I sent a quick text.
Going to drive by the old neighborhood.
Be back in a few hours.
But I didn't go to Chalmette, didn't swing by my old neighborhood. I stayed in the Quarter, moved my car, then slipped into the mid-afternoon mugginess and started to walk.
Maison de R
I found the address easily enough, a swanky boutique hotel on the outskirts of the Quarter, in a tall, narrow building that once housed a bank. Four floors. A darkly-wooded lobby with a white-clothed restaurant off to the side, a courtyard lounge at the back. Guest accommodations upstairs, and a rooftop bar.
What I didn't find was Sloan. He didn't office onsite, but the front desk staff wouldn't tell me where he did, only that he always arrived late afternoon.
In no hurry, I fired up my laptop and updated my blog, responded to a few comments, sent another email to A, killed a good ninety minutes writing, then left and knocked out an interview with a bookseller, then a few librarians. None of them had much to say. Aidan Cross never came in or made public appearances. He didn't do workshops or cocktail parties or book signings.
And that was just as well.
By the time I returned to the Maison de R, late afternoon was slipping close to evening. There, I shot Aidan another text.
About to meet a few old friends
and go out to dinner.
His response appeared within seconds.
Text me on your way home.
Beautiful people milled about the industrialized-modern lounge, with its black tables and cream chairs, low lighting and exposed ceiling. From the edge of a three-tier fountain, I watched them, until at last the familiar blond ponytail drew my attention.
He worked the crowd as easily as he'd worked the book signing, moving from one group to the next with such an easy manner and smile, it was impossible to tell who was a longtime friend and who he was meeting for the first time. Men grinned broadly. Women smiled and blushed as he took their hands and brushed his mouth against their knuckles.
Finally, when he transitioned from bar to lobby, I slipped from behind the fountain and approached him from behind.
I never noticed the mirror—but he did, and through it he saw me and turned, that cool, languid composure momentarily disrupted.
"Kendall," he said, and it felt good, really, really good, to be the one in control, the one taking charge and making something happen, rather than the leaf being blown by one wind, then the next.
"Sloan," I said, smiling as I lifted my eyes to meet his.
During the time I'd watched him, he'd been smooth and polished, a well-rehearsed performer with his adoring audience, a role I could tell he played night after night. But for a second that was history, and I would have sworn he faltered—but only for a second, because from one breath to the next, he was reaching for my hand as he glanced around, a survey, I knew, of who might be watching.
"This is a surprise," he murmured, with what I recognized as a trademark kiss to the back of my hand. It had nothing to do with me, only him. "Does he know you're here?"
There was no point pretending I didn't know who he was talking about. "No." I spoke the word with confidence, but then made a show of glancing over my shoulder. "At least I hope not."
Sloan shifted into another mode, elegant host transforming into efficient bodyguard. "Then let's keep it that way." And with that, we were moving through the crowded lounge, toward the curved bar, through a swinging door and down an exposed brick hallway. At the end, another door led outside to a small private patio, with a bench and another fountain, hanging baskets of fern and dripping red flowers, and only the faintest echo of the piano from inside, leaking through a cracked window.
