The Guardian's Playlist

by J Powell Ogden

  “You’re so…small…” he breathed doubtfully into my forehead. We were close enough now, that I could feel gentle static radiating from every inch of him. My heart fluttered, and he gave me a worried look.

  “Catherine, are you—”

  “Just shut up,” I said, and then took a deep breath. “To boldly go where no man has gone before,” I murmured as I held my palms up on either side of me again. He grinned and placed his palms against mine.

  “Syfy Channel?” he asked, his lips turning up. I spread my fingers apart in a traditional Vulcan greeting, and he allowed his fingers to follow mine.

  “Live long and prosper,” I said solemnly.

  “It’s a little late for that, don’t you think?” he teased, still grinning. “God, you’re such a freaking geek.” His grin faded a little, and then he cleared his throat and asked, “Are you ready?”

  I nodded, keeping my eyes focused on his.

  He leaned forward then, and I was falling into his deep slate-gray eyes again, but this time he was asking me to. He wanted me to. But I pulled back abruptly, suddenly self-conscious.

  “Will you feel…everything? Like, you know…all the edges of me?” I blushed deeply. He was experienced and…well…ripped, and…um…his lips were like…amazing…and I was suddenly afraid I wouldn’t measure up. Like it mattered…like he ever thought of me in that way anyway…like, he was dead, right?

  He pulled back and studied me for a long moment.

  Then his eyes softened, and his outline began to blur. His voice drifted away from him and sifted into the misty rain. “No more secrets,” he murmured. He rested his weightless forehead against mine, and I longed to feel his breath on my face.

  “Don’t you know deep down…Catherine…” My name whispered past me and then curled silkily back around my ears. “I feel you every time you set foot in this forest, every part of you.”

  I gasped. Cool air rushed in to soothe my overheated lungs. He dropped his eyes guiltily, and his voice caressed the tiny curls at my hairline.

  “Don’t be mad…Catherine. I never could control it. I didn’t tell you because I thought you’d never come back. It’s just…what I am, now. I’m a part of this place and everything in it. And…” He lifted his soft gray eyes. “You’re beautiful.”

  Then he pulled his voice back, uncertainty clouding his features, waiting for rejection. “Are you still ready?”

  I nodded without breathing.

  “Then listen closely,” he whispered.

  He leaned forward again, and as his lips brushed past mine, my whole face vibrated with his hot static, and my nose became saturated with the intoxicating scent of Higher Dior. I closed my eyes as he pressed farther, and I opened my mouth to taste him, and he was sweet and salty. I breathed him deep into my lungs, feeling my whole body resonate with the essence of him. A trillion tiny pins and needles massaged my skin and the feeling only intensified as he settled deeper. My eyes burned. My nose stung. My lungs seized. My whole body rang out like a tuning fork. And then, just when I thought I would pass out, I opened my eyes and saw…light. It was warm, and it was pure, and it was completely unexpected, and it suddenly didn’t matter that my consciousness was collapsing. I wanted to stay in his light forever.

  Then he was ripping himself away from me, and I was gasping for air. I leaned forward on my hands while my body settled itself down. When I finally looked up, he was sitting a little ways away from me, with his elbows resting on his knees and his head cradled in his hands. I crawled the few feet that separated us, utterly spent, and knelt beside him.

  “So…since the very beginning, you’ve felt…every part of me?”

  He nodded without looking up. “It’s just way more intense and detailed when we touch,” he mumbled into his knees.

  I was quiet for a while, and he asked, “Do you hate me?”

  “No,” I whispered, “I was just thinking that it’s not fair that you can feel all of me, and all I feel when I touch you is static.”

  I reached out with the fingers of my wrapped hand to trace the angel wings of his tattoo. He looked up and covered my hand with his and the searing pain in my palm disappeared under a new wave of fuzzy vibrations. His eyes beamed earnestly.

  “I can feel your heart rate and breathing slow, and each muscle in your back and neck relax when I touch your hand. Can you feel it?” He trailed his fingertips back and forth across the bandana. “That’s how I knew I could take your pain away.” Then he grinned and said, “Usually your heartbeat speeds up when I get too close. I never could decide whether or not that was a good thing.”

  “It’s a good thing,” I assured him, grinning self-consciously back.

  “Mmmm. I’ll have to remember that. So…what did you hear?”

  “What did I hear?”

  “When we overlapped, Genius. Or did you forget?”

  “I didn’t—”

  “Catherine, you totally forgot, didn’t you?”

  “Hey! You might have been dealing with heartbeats and…whatever, but my whole body was ringing and buzzing like the rim of a wine glass you’d just run your finger over. And it was sort of hard to breathe.”

  He shook his head back and forth. “I can’t believe you! So you heard nothing?”

  “Um…no.”

  Then my cell phone rang. I dug it out of my bag and looked at the screen. It was Jason. He’d have to wait. A while. Like, forever, as far as I was concerned. I never wanted this moment to end. I tossed the phone back in my bag.

  “Can you at least tell me what you were thinking?” Michael wondered hopefully.

  “Um…I have no idea…nothing? Maybe?”

  My cell rang again. I rolled my eyes and dug it out of the bag again. It was my dad.

  “I’ve got to get this,” I said. I switched the phone to my left hand and held my injured hand out to him. He grinned and wrapped it up again in his left hand.

  “Hey, Dad,” I said. Michael began to trail the index finger of his free hand up and down the inside of my forearm, right through my jacket and sweater. I shivered. Maybe this wasn’t so unfair after all.

  “Hey, Bug. Just checking in. Are you still at Jai Ho?” he asked.

  “Mm hmm,” I mumbled. “I don’t know when I’ll be—”

  “You need to come home. Now.” An edge had crept into his voice. I sat up straight, and Michael’s hand froze.

  “Is everything alright?” I asked.

  “Cate. Come home. We need to talk.”

  I looped the straps of my bag over my shoulder and stood up. “Okay, okay. I’ll be home in a half hour. I need to finish something.”

  “I’ll see you when you get here,” he said and hung up.

  Another call flashed. It was Jason again.

  “Why did you lie to your dad?” Michael asked, standing up.

  “You heard that?”

  “Um…my hearing’s pretty good, too,” he admitted.

  “My parents wouldn’t want me out here alone. They’d just worry and—”

  “Catherine…so no one knows where you’ve been coming every day?”

  I shook my head. I guess I figured Michael knew that.

  “What if something happened?” he worried.

  “Come on. They’re waiting for me.” I didn’t want to talk about it. I’d deal with my parents in my own way. The steady rain had finally made its way through the sheltering pine boughs above us. My hair stuck to my cheeks in wet waves.

  “You shouldn’t lie to your parents,” he grumbled, and I raised my eyebrows.

  “Yeah…well. Look where it got me,” he pointed out. We walked in silence for a while through the misty rain, and then I remembered he hadn’t told me the message he’d tried to send me.

  “So what were you trying to tell me, when we…you know…”

  He grinned but shook his head. “Nope, I’ll keep trying. It’s a good message. Short. Simple. And you’d never guess it.”

  “Come on!” I pleaded. We were almost to the
forest entrance, and I’d have to wait until tomorrow to continue my interrogation if I couldn’t pry it out of him today.

  “Nope. I—” My cell phone rang again, and I pulled it out. It was Jason. Again.

  “I’d better get this, too,” I said.

  “Hey, Jason.”

  “Hey, Cate. What’s up? Why didn’t you answer your phone?”

  I glanced at Michael. “I was kinda in the middle of something.”

  Michael stifled a laugh.

  “Listen, Cate.” Jason sounded upset. “I just wanted to warn you that your dad might call. I was at Jai Ho looking for you, and when I didn’t see you and you didn’t answer your cell, I called your house and—”

  Oh shit.

  “You didn’t, Jason.”

  “Well, how was I supposed to know you were lying to your parents?” he shot back, defending himself.

  “What did you tell him?”

  “Just that you weren’t there.”

  Crap. I was busted.

  “They know,” I mouthed to Michael.

  “Got that,” he said back. It wasn’t going to be pleasant when I got home.

  “Why did you want to talk to me in the first place?” I asked Jason.

  “I wanted to tell you that Cherish was adopted.”

  “Yes!” Michael cried, bending his elbow and pulling his fist in. I smiled. Michael was happy and nothing else mattered to me.

  “I don’t know where she is yet exactly,” continued Jason. “Her records are sealed. But I think I’ll be able to find out.”

  “Thanks, Jason! You’re awesome! I forgive you for getting me in trouble.”

  “Well, I need to go,” he said brusquely.

  “Wait. What about the other thing?”

  He was quiet.

  “Jason?”

  “Cate…let’s get together and—”

  “Who was it, Jason?”

  Michael stiffened.

  “Cate…please don’t—”

  “If you don’t tell me now, Jason, I’ll just come over and bug you until you do. Then I’ll be in worse trouble.”

  Michael stopped and faced me, his face ashen.

  Jason sighed heavily and said, “The name on all of the Social Service complaint reports in Michael’s case was Anne Forsythe.

  PART THREE

  The Snare

  EIGHTEEN

  THE AMATEUR HEALER

  “CATE? ARE YOU still there?”

  “My mom?” I whispered, and then something snapped within me. It blasted apart all the reasons for all the love and all the respect I’d ever had for her, and without them I had no weapon to use against the fiery black tempest that fought to take their place.

  “Cate?”

  “Catherine, don’t…” Michael’s eyes were wide with alarm.

  “My mom is the one who dumped Michael into foster care and never looked back?” My voice was tight, and it was rising steadily.

  “How do you know she never looked back?” Jason asked reasonably. My blood rushed with deadly rhythm through my ears. My vision dimmed under an explosive red glare.

  “He’s fucking dead, isn’t he?”

  Michael winced as if I’d slapped him across the face.

  “Cate…where are you? Let me come and get and you, and we can talk.”

  “I’ve got to go.” My voice was hoarse, deflated. I hung up the phone and slammed it into my bag. When I looked up, Michael was standing between me and the only way out of the forest. So, here we were again.

  He stretched his hand out in front of him.

  “Wait,” he said.

  “Get out of my way, Michael.”

  “You need to think before you—”

  “I have thought about this,” I said. “I’ve thought about this since the day you fell, since I saw your body slam into the ground, since I watched your life drain out of your…” My voice caught in my aching throat. “How could she do that? How could she just abandon you like that? You were my friend—”

  “Catherine—”

  “She’s going to know what happened to you! She’s going to know every ounce of pain you ever suffered! I’ll make sure of that!”

  “Catherine…” he moaned. “Please, don’t! How could your mom have known?”

  God, I felt sick. “How can you stand to look at me?” I cried. “After what she did to you? How?”

  He took a step toward me and turned his palm upward, reaching for me. “I haven’t wanted to look at anyone else since that day I saw you on the bus. Even then I knew—”

  “Knew what? That I was the daughter of the woman who left you to rot?” I cried. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Give me your hand.” He spoke softly, taking another cautious step toward me.

  “Why the hell didn’t you tell me?” I cried again, backing away.

  He dropped his hand and fixed his grief-stricken eyes on me.

  “Because I didn’t want anyone else’s life turned to shit because of me!”

  “She can handle it! She handles everything! She’s a freaking machine!” I shot back. “Now, get out of my way.”

  He folded his arms across his chest and shook his head.

  Well, I wasn’t afraid of him anymore, and I took a deep breath and plowed right through him. God, he felt so good, and I almost turned around, almost. Instead, I stormed out of the forest through the break in the trees.

  “What about you?” he shouted after me. I spun around a few feet beyond the entrance. It was pouring now, and I was soaked to the skin. I shivered violently. “What will it do to you if you make her suffer? If you shove her face in this?” He tore his shirt off over his head, exposing all of his scars to the gray light of day, and then he paced back and forth helplessly just inside the forest boundary. He was trapped.

  “I don’t care what happens to me!” I shouted back.

  His lips curled angrily back from his teeth, and he stabbed his finger at me, “I never should have told you any of it! I should have kept my stupid mouth shut! I thought you wanted to help me, but you were just looking for someone to blame!”

  “Well I found her, didn’t I? And she’s going to pay!” I turned and stalked toward the Demon that was waiting for me.

  “Catherine! Please!” His voice was like sorrowful thunder. It shook the forest, but it couldn’t follow me. It was trapped, too. I was on my own, now.

  The ride home was precarious at best and almost fatal at worst. I could barely see through the driving rain, and the bone deep pain in my right hand made it just about useless on the gear shift. At the bottom of the hill, the car kicked up a huge wave of rainwater and hydroplaned sideways, almost careening off the road and into the river.

  When the Demon finally slid to a stop, I flicked on the radio and was rewarded with the tortured war cries of “Point of No Return,” a Starset battle anthem. The music was a match made in hell for my mood. Perfect.

  Jason’s Audi was parked on the street in front of my house when I pulled into the driveway. He opened his car door. I knew he’d come to stop me from taking on my mother in the state I was in, and him I couldn’t walk through, so I threw open my door and ran for the house, my feet squishing water out through the laces of my boots with each footfall. I reached the door just as he caught up with me.

  “Go home, Jason!” I spat under my breath. He was soaked from his short run from the street. Water trickled down his face from the spiky wisps of his hair above his forehead and beaded up on his leather jacket. He shook his head and stuck his arm in the doorway before it closed.

  “I’m responsible for this,” he muttered, as he slid uninvited into the house behind me. “I thought your dad might need some backup when you got home.”

  I scowled at him.

  The house was funeral home quiet. My mom and dad were sitting on the couch waiting for me; I walked in as far as the foyer and stopped. My boots released a lake of water, and rivers were rushing down my jeans to join it. Next to me, Jason wiped his wet arm acr
oss his face in a futile effort to dry it. Claire was on the stairs, waiting for the fireworks to start, and Cici was nowhere to be found.

  My heart pounded away in my chest, and I wondered if Jason could hear it, standing so close to me. I was sure he could hear the hitch in my chest that accompanied each of my runaway breaths. On the upside, I could barely feel the pain in my hand, which I’d tucked into my pocket to avoid more questions. I glanced down at my blood-free left hand, which thankfully, I’d had the presence of mind to wipe off.

  My mom jumped to her feet. “She’s freezing, Tom, let her change and—”

  My dad pulled her back down onto the sofa. “It can wait, Anne. Jason, I think you better go home. This is family—”

  “What, are you afraid he’ll hear the family’s dirty secrets?” I lifted my chin defiantly. “If he leaves, I leave with him!”

  I could feel Jason’s hand on my back. “Great. Let’s go,” he whispered into the dripping mass of my wet hair. Yeah, I bet he’d like that about now. He knew what was coming.

  My mom was on her feet again, with my dad immediately up and flanking her.

  “Don’t you dare talk to your father that way!” she shouted. “Now, where have you been?”

  Should I lie to them again? Half lie? Tell the truth? I couldn’t decide. They were all bad options, so instead I just looked away. What were they so mad about anyway? It was one time! One time they’d caught me in a lie!

  “Your father went up to Jai Ho and talked to that Raver.”

  Oh shit.

  “Ravi,” Jason corrected reflexively.

  My dad glared at him, and Jason pressed his lips together, but didn’t drop his ice blue gaze.

  “He said you come in almost every day,” my mom accused, “and study for about a half hour, get something to drink and then leave. That’s hours a day almost every day that we’ve had no idea where—”

  “You’re spying on me now?” I shrieked.

  “We wouldn’t have needed to spy on you if you had been honest in—”

  “I can’t believe this!” I shouted. “I get practically straight A’s! I don’t ask you for money! I’m not out doing drugs or drinking or piercing the odd body part or… or…” I shot dagger eyes at my sister. It wasn’t fair! I did everything I was supposed to do!