Whatever happens, I can’t let Cedric know he is the reason I have to sneak out without telling the rest of them what we are up to. I can’t let him know what we’re looking into, at least not until I am certain it is something at all.
I’ve already seen what just me looking at an image of his mother made him do. He may have apologized, but it doesn’t change the fact that this is a very sore subject for him. And one that has made me more than a little guilty, increasingly guilty with every passing day, ever since.
Kendall finally reappears and the Bob Ross impersonator is gone. I wish I had been paying more attention and actually got to see what became of him. Kendall is also carrying a drink, though from the color of it, I imagine he stole it from one of the girls. It is a furious shade of pink complete with a matching umbrella. Kendall sees me staring and jabs a finger at it while shaking his head.
“It’s non-alcoholic…Wednesday ordered it for me when she saw I was there to check on her.”
“Why’d she do that?” I ask.
Kendall shakes his head again. “She called me a little…well…she called me something I shouldn’t repeat. And then she ordered me this.”
He drags his finger along the top rim of the glass, and then sticks his finger in his mouth.
“Just sugar!”
I try to scan the crowd, but even in the stiletto boots I let Wednesday convince me to wear, I’m still dwarfed by most of the people here. Smoke billows out of a skull incense burner close to the wall, and several people vape nearby—adding a haze to the already crowded, heaving throng around us.
I swipe my phone out of my purse and check the time. Flynn should be posting any minute now, but I still see nothing.
The band suddenly switches from some very loud, very fast song to something low and slow. The crowd thins a bit as dancers move the dance floor to m sit down or flood the bar and order another round of drinks.
But I feel a touch on my arm, and Kendall is handing off his sugary virgin drink to Draven. Fitting. A virgin for a virgin.
Kendall grabs my arm and pulls me toward the dance floor before I can think back too much to the conversation where Draven told me that little piece of information.
I know what Kendall is trying to do, but I try to dig my heels to stop him dragging me off.
“C’mon,” he says, “We never did get to dance at Homecoming.”
I finally relent, and the sudden release of my dragging feet sends me stumbling forward into his arms. He catches me and gracefully transitions into a rhythmic sway almost akin to proper dancing.
For a second, I panic because I think I’ve lost my bag and my phone with it, but then I feel it pressed into my hand and turn to find Wednesday winking at me as she passes it my way. She grabs Mathilda by the hand and drags her into the fray as well, both their eyes already glazed over with drink. Even with most dancers sitting this one out, it is still crowded enough that it is difficult to make anyone out in particular.
I want to focus in on how Kendall holds me so close that I can feel his pelvis up against me, and how his hand grips me tight across my lower back. He’s a surprisingly good dancer, and under any other circumstances, I would happily lose myself in the way his body moves with mine.
But I know the moment when the next part of my plan is set in motion, because suddenly Wednesday is gripping my arm again.
Even with the music still playing, I can somehow hear her gasp. Mathilda turns to see where she is looking, but she doesn’t immediately register what Wednesday does, and now I do, too.
“I’m so sorry Octavia…I thought he was supposed to be coming here.”
She’s holding out her phone screen to me. There, on the screen, is a photo of Flynn and Jessica posted to social media. I know I asked him to do it, but still the look of them so close together that Flynn’s lips might even be brushing one of her perfect cheeks…
I don’t have to feign the rush of jealousy that runs through me.
Wednesday is frozen where she stands. Other dancers have to move around us, and they keep shooting us annoyed glares. Her fingers dig into mine like long, incessant claws.
Someone has texted her another copy of the photo. Then another. Word spreads fast in a school as small as ours, and I am sure everyone is especially excited to get a glimpse into what they think is the beginning of surely several failed relationships.
“What the hell is he thinking?” she shouts, tugging Mathilda up closer so she can see what we are looking at. “I’m going to kill that boy.
I wait just long enough until both Cedric and Draven catch a glimpse at their phones. Once they do, I bite my tongue so hard that my eyes well up with tears. I feel Kendall try to grab my arm beside me, but I pull away and dart into the crowd with Wednesday and Mathilda following close behind.
“Octavia, wait!” Wednesday cries. “I’m sure it’s just a misunderstanding.”
I weave a little on my supposed march forward, making sure to squeeze through the densest part of the crowd, while still making sure that both of the girls keep close enough for the rest of the boys to get confused by who to follow. I wait until I get the chance to skirt between a group of girls dressed in all black before I break Wednesday’s grip. Almost as quickly, I grab one of the other girl’s arms and move it to where mine was, at the same time, slipping Dr. Fashu’s ring from my finger onto hers.
I duck away from them, taking off my tall, pointed witch hat and stuffing it on some random head as I pass. I linger just one second by the door to make sure I’m not being followed, before I’m already out the exit door and stepping outside.
Hopefully my little ruse was enough to keep any of the others from finding me before I get the chance to slip away. Flynn will keep Jessica occupied enough not to notice that I am going off alone, and hopefully, if he understood the meaning of my hints, Draven will be joining me shortly.
32
Octavia
Nearly ten minutes have passed before I am relieved to discover that the tall shadow at the end of the alley is Draven and not some random wayward party-goer here to murder me.
That was seriously the only other alternative my brain was able to come up with in the moment he appeared. Seemed rational then, alone in the dark, crouched behind a cardboard box two blocks from the nearest public establishment. Now that Draven is here, beside me, not only does it not seem quite so dark, but I don’t even flinch when some random stranger does just so happen to walk by moments later.
“What’s this all about?” Draven grabs me by both shoulders and glances over mine down the alley. “You’re lucky I can spot that silver hair from a mile away.”
I fish in my bag for the paper Flynn gave me earlier today. Draven takes it from me and unwraps it so the light can catch it. “No,” I say, “I’m lucky that the others didn’t.”
He looks at the list.
“All the Voodoo shops in Manhattan?”
I nod, and motion down the alley further away from the jazz club we were just in.
“Let’s go,” I say, shaking his other hand free and starting out into the darkness. “You’ve seen it. We haven’t got a lot of time.”
For a city this size, the number of shops and addresses that Flynn was able to find for us is still smaller than I would have thought, but enough to take us late into the night. I know we can’t be gone too long or else the others will start to worry even more than they already have. I had to turn off my own phone, and I have Draven do the same, but not before shooting a quick message to everyone assuring them I am safe and will be home soon.
Of course if they really want to find us, all they have to do is tell Dr. Fashu and Jessica. I am hoping they won’t resort to that once they see Draven is gone too. I realize that there probably was a better way to go about this, but it’s done now and the closest shop Flynn found for us is only another five blocks away.
Two hours later after many quick subway rides and seven fake magic shops, Draven and I have about run out of polite conversation as
much as we have patience. The Halloween festivities only seem to be getting wilder and stranger the later out into the night it gets.
Most of the shops are closed now, which I find surprising given the fact that it is the biggest night for the occult in the United States. The last two shops we had to resort to just peering through the windows with our hands cupped around our eyes in order to see past the glare.
As of yet, I haven’t seen anything even remotely similar to the shop I saw in my vision. Everything that we’ve seen has either been some generic crystal and sage storefront, or something more like a head shop full of loose-leaf tobacco, vape pens, and a weed dealer sitting in the back pretending not to be dealing weed.
My phone feels like a lead weight in my bag, accumulating desperate, worried messages that I can’t read. Draven has even grown antsy as the night progresses. The once cheery, loud crowds have turned drunken and obnoxious. Several times Draven makes me cross the street just to avoid running into a group that looks a little too unsteady on their feet.
The air is crisp, that weather that is stuck somewhere in between fall and winter, where there is still something of the summer stench still ingrained in the pavement, not quite yet washed away by a fresh covering of snow. This costume was not meant for wandering around the city late at night, and these shoes were certainly not made for traipsing around uneven sidewalks with only an occasional streetlamp to offer an escape from twisted ankles.
Draven catches me by the waist when one such streetlamp is too far away to show the uncovered manhole halfway across the street. He picks me up as if I weigh nothing at all, and sets me down on the other side. I pause a second and lean over the hole to peer down inside.
The longer I stare into the darkness, the more I think I can hear the sounds of the sewers far down below; dripping pipes, squealing rats, the slosh of calf-deep soiled water. Draven’s grip around my waist tightens, and he pulls be back from the edge.
“Not tonight, Octavia,” he says, not-so-gently tugging me out of the road and back onto the sidewalk.
As soon as my feet are on the solid pavement again, I have to shake the creeping sensation that came over me staring down into that void. The night is suddenly even colder and the pain of these heels finally catches up to me. Draven sees me shiver and offers me his tuxedo jacket for what seems like the twelfth time.
I’ve refused this far because isn’t his fault I chose to wear little more than a glorified leotard and fishnet stockings. But everyone has their limits. We pause for a second for him to shrug off his jacket and pass it my way. The corner here is particularly dark, so I don’t dare keep my eyes from scanning the shadowy corners behind bushes, newsstands, and dumpsters for anyone who might wish us harm.
To be quite honest, I hadn’t realized how easy it would be to pick us off if we were followed. Most of the city keeps to itself, so even though you’re never really alone on the streets here, it isn’t as if anyone else is going to notice you’re being followed.
Draven must notice my hesitation, because he stops trying to forge on. “What are you thinking?”
“Just…” I glance up and down the street. “What if this is all for nothing? I never really thought…well the voodoo shop in the vision could be anywhere in the world.”
“Well it’s a bit late for that,” Draven says. He shoves his hands deeper in his pockets and shrugs up his shoulders against the sudden chill he is feeling, even as his tux is just starting to warm me up.
“Tell you what.” He reaches over and reaches into the breast pocket of the jacket to pull out the list of shops. He points down to the bottom three. “These are all we have left. There’ll be hell to pay when we get back, so we might as well go back with something worthwhile. Or, at least, having finished what we came out here to do.”
I can’t argue with that.
“Besides,” Draven says, suddenly so still that I almost run into him. I have to manage a one-foot jig to keep from colliding into one of his broad shoulders. But as soon as I see what he’s looking at, the purpose for his sudden halt, I see why he did it.
The tiny shop at the corner has a single, dark window peering out at the street. The name of the shop is painted in red lettering that should have been updated years ago: Old World Voodoo; home of authentic curios and relics of superstition.
I know at once that this has to be it.
33
Octavia
A thrill races up the back of my spine, banishing the rest of the cold and the pinch of my shoes.
Draven turns away from the dangling row of shrunken heads hung in the window behind the letters, and glances down at me. “Is this it?”
I scoot by him and step right up to the window to peer in.
The only light inside comes from the glow of a dying incense bundle in the corner. It’s been stuck inside the gaping maw of a human skull that makes the shadows dance eerily along the walls littered with artifacts of the ancient Voodoo religion.
“There’s only one way to find out.”
The hours on the shop window claim they are open until midnight, but the knob won’t budge when I try it.
Draven has come up behind me. He reaches over my shoulder and smudges a thick layer of dust from the glass in front of the hours sign.
“I don’t know,” he says. “Looks like this place hasn’t been popular in a long time.”
“I’m not ready to give up yet.”
I catch the look on Draven’s face in the dirty reflection of the window.
“That isn’t what I was suggesting.”
Draven gently tugs me away from the door and crouches down to get a better look inside the keyhole. I take several careful steps backwards to get a good look at this shop. There really is no telling yet if it is really the one from my vision, but it is by far our best bet yet. It looks like it’s been here long enough to actually have existed back when Cedric’s mother was alive, and the same couldn’t be said for any of the rest.
Besides, those shrunken heads in the window are almost too authentic.
I am so lost in staring into their empty eye sockets that I don’t realize Draven has been picking the lock until I hear him jangle the knob a few times and the door springs open with a loud creak.
At the exact same time, another door opens down the street and a tangle of drunks tumble out of a nearby bar with a burst of music from the band playing inside.
They turn and start teetering down the sidewalk in our direction, so before any of them can notice us through their drunken haze, I hop up the steps after Draven and into the shop. He slips in behind and shuts the door. It takes my eyes a couple seconds to adjust to the even dimmer light inside.
The first room where we find ourselves is cramped and tiny, the little space in the middle of the room taken up by a large table heaped with odds and ends; crystals, beads, bundles of incense—that sort of thing. There is just enough room for one of us to squeeze along the edges of it to get a better look at what they’ve hung on the walls.
The shelves here are lined with odd objects. There are the expected things, little Voodoo dolls with buttons for eyes and plastic molds of human skulls. They are so exactly what I would expect, that I know right away they are not what I first hoped they were.
After closer examination, all the things that at first glance appeared to be authentic, are most decidedly, not. I turn over one of the shrunken heads in the window. A small shiny gold sticker on the bottom reads, “Made in China.”
I turn to Draven, and he’s also turned over a pair of hand-dipped candles and found the same thing.
“So close,” I say, shaking my head as I let the shrunken head swing back into position with a gentle tap on the glass.
Something on the other side of the glass freezes, and as soon as I notice it, so do I.
“Draven…” I begin, but not before he hears it too.
At first, I think it is those revelers from earlier. I can hear them still, muted and dull through the shop windows. But their
shadows pass by and that sound still remains; a scraping, rattling sound at the door.
I stand right by the window, but I try to take a slow, careful step back out of the light before I am spotted. The doorknob rattles again, and then suddenly all the sounds cease. Whoever is at the door has just realized it’s already unlocked.
It creaks open so slowly I almost have time to duck down out of sight, but then what would be the point of that. Instead, I just grab the closest thing to me, which happens to be a piece of ornate driftwood carved to resemble a twisted face and brandish it out before me.
A man steps inside but doesn’t take his eyes off the floor.
He’s muttering to himself as one of his hands roves the edge of the wall until, just as he finally lifts his eyes to spot Draven and I huddling on the opposite side of the cluttered table, he flicks on a light.
It’s not so bright that it blinds me, but even the dull, faded yellow bulb makes me stumble back a step and blink furiously.
The man fares no better. He lets out a loud shriek and half stumbles back out the door. Whatever it was he had been carrying earlier falls out of his arms and onto the floor in a tumble of tomatoes and salami.
“Ah damn it,” he grumbles, bending over to scrape the contents off the floor and back into the sandwich bag. I can’t keep the look of utter disgust off my face when he straightens up and starts dusting off his jacket. “It’s been so long since we had visitors, I thought no one would even notice I’d gone out,” he says.
He continues by us, through the doorway into a tiny room beyond. The only thing there is a poorly executed mural of probably offensive Voodoo imagery. He sets the sandwich down by a register and starts picking off bits of grime.
Adapt: Book Two of the Forgotten Affinities Series Page 17
