The Hourglass Door

  “You can’t trust Leo. Haven’t you figured that out by now?” Zo sighed. “I can see that it’s pointless to argue with you, so I’ll just ask you one final question: Why? Why do we have to follow the rules? Keep the balance? Why—when we can have it all?” Zo took a step back, spreading his arms wide, embracing the night. “We have all the time in the world, my friend. And we can have all the life that goes with it, too.”

  I didn’t see where the switchblade came from, but suddenly Zo held a thin blade in his long-fingered hand. With one motion, he cut through the shadows, slicing Dante’s arm from shoulder to elbow.

  A ringing roared through my ears. I felt a scream stick to the roof of my mouth. My glass felt like a rock in my frozen hand.

  Dante groaned, clutching his arm and falling to his knees like a supplicant in front of Zo.

  “We’re not like them,” he said softly, gazing down at Dante with something like pity, or maybe disgust, on his face. He squatted in front of Dante to look him in the eye. “We’ll never be like them ever again, and the sooner you realize that, the better off you’ll be.”

  Zo stepped over Dante’s hunched form and sauntered toward the school. I watched him pull open the side door and slip inside without a backward glance.

  I tossed my glass to the ground and grabbed my skirts in the same motion. I was at Dante’s side before the door had finished swinging closed. “Are you okay?”

  I reached out for him, but he recoiled, hissing through his teeth. “No, please, Abby, don’t.” His eyes were black and flat with pain. The moonlight traced the grimace on his pale face. He held his left arm awkwardly with his right hand, his shoulders hunched inward. Sweat covered his face like a transparent mask.

  “Don’t be stupid,” I said. “Let me help you.”

  His eyes roamed aimlessly over the schoolyard as though he were looking at something else entirely. He lapsed into Italian, speaking quickly, urgently.

  “Slow down. I can’t understand you.” I touched his curved back with one hand and his wrist with the other, trying to be careful of the wound on his arm.

  He cut off midword. I could feel the strong muscles of his arm quivering with strain. He looked even paler, though I hadn’t thought it was possible.

  “Please. Abby.” He forced each word through clenched teeth. He looked from my face to my hand on his wrist. “Not. Now.”

  I pulled my hand away. “Sorry.” I felt something sticky and warm on my fingers and absently brushed my hand on my dress.

  “No—” Dante choked.

  I looked down and saw a smear of dark red blood on my hand, my dress.

  The edges of my vision blurred. I felt myself tilting. Don’t faint, I told myself sharply. Don’t be one of those girls who faints at the sight of blood.

  I drew in a deep breath and focused on keeping my hands from shaking. My skin seemed to burn where the blood was drying on it. No time for that now.

  I set my jaw and ruthlessly forced the growing panic into a locked corner of my mind. Distantly, I could hear the music cut short, and in the lull I could hear the ebb and flow of chattering conversation from inside the school. Then the opening drum riff of “Into the River” hammered through the doors and Zo’s voice rose into the night. Shivers crawled on my skin. I couldn’t take Dante inside the school. Not with Zo there.

  “Right. Come with me,” I said, helping Dante stand up.

  I felt like I was swimming in deep currents with dangerous rocks lurking just under the water. If I didn’t keep moving forward, I’d sink below the surface and drown. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I thought that Melissa had gotten the rumors all wrong. Dante wasn’t the dangerous one; Zo was.

  I slipped under Dante’s right arm so I could support him on his uninjured side. His body was fever-hot next to mine and he kept his left arm pressed tight across his stomach. I could feel his chest rise and fall with each labored breath. Together we stumbled the few yards to the door of the workshop adjacent to the parking lot.

  I stood on my toes and managed to retrieve the spare key from the lintel of the door frame. I bounced the key in my palm. “Thank you, Jason,” I murmured, unlocking the door with a click.

  The building was part workshop, part garage. The air smelled heavily of steel and oil. Huge, misshapen lumps of metal hunkered under dark tarps like sleeping dragons. I ushered Dante in and closed the door behind us. The moonlight filtering in through the row of narrow windows set high on the wall provided the only illumination. Luckily, I had spent more than one afternoon in the garage with Jason, watching him repair his truck or tinker with a new bit of machinery. Even in the dark, I knew my way to the office, where there was a first-aid kit. I had also spent more than one afternoon bandaging up Jason after he’d banged his finger with a hammer or cut himself on a sharp metal edge.

  “Abby?” Dante’s voice cracked along the edges. A shiver ran through his body. It wasn’t much warmer inside the garage. I was cold, and I was wearing a full-length velvet dress. Dante must have been close to freezing in his thin, long-sleeved T-shirt.

  “It’s okay,” I murmured. “Trust me.” I reached up to squeeze his hand that draped over my shoulder. The leather gloves he wore were cold and slick with what I hoped was only sweat. He clutched at my hand like a lifeline.

  Deftly I maneuvered us through the maze of cars and machines to the back corner office. Once inside, I felt it was safe to flip on the light. No one from the school would be able to see the office light unless they were standing behind the building.

  Dante blinked in the sudden light, his eyes still black and distant. “I told him . . . I warned him . . .” he murmured. “I was too late.”

  I helped him sit on the edge of the desk. “Okay, let’s take a look.”

  Dante didn’t resist as I gently lifted his left arm away from his chest and turned it toward the light. It was worse than I had feared. Zo’s cut had sliced through the fabric of Dante’s shirt and deep into the skin beneath. Blood stains bloomed on his shoulder and encased his forearm in solid red.

  Shock ran through me like lightning.

  “Not right . . .” he muttered, not looking at me. “Danger-ous . . .” He clenched his fist, and I saw that his fingers were coated in red. He wouldn’t stop shivering.

  I bit my lip. “This is bad, Dante. You need to go to the hospital. You’ll probably need stitches.” I moved past him, reaching for the phone on the desk.

  Dante’s right hand flashed out, gripping my wrist. His lips skinned back over his teeth in a snarl of pain. “No hospital. No doctors. No police.”

  Though my hands shook, my voice was steady. “What about Leo, then? You need help.”

  His face softened. “You can help me.” Some of the pain left his eyes, changing them from black to gray. He tugged me closer to him, groaning as the movement jostled his injured arm. “Please. I’ll be all right, I promise. I just need you to bandage my arm. I don’t need to go to the hospital. Please. I know you can help me.”

  I hesitated. The truth was, he couldn’t wait for Leo, he couldn’t wait for me to drive him to the hospital. He needed attention now. And I was the only one who could help.

  I swallowed, my heart beating hard and fast. “Okay,” I said quietly. “I’ll try.”

  “Grazie,” he said, letting go of my wrist.

  I focused on opening up the first-aid kit, concentrated on finding a clean towel in the stack of rags, telling myself that washing my hands in the sink was the most important thing I could do.

  I turned off the water and took a deep breath. “We’ll need to take off your shirt,” I said.

  Dante looked at his blood-soaked arm lying limp in his lap and then reached into the first-aid kit with his right hand. Plucking the small scissors from the kit, he handed them to me. “It’s an old shirt.”

  I stepped in front of him, detecting his familiar scent even under the copper-sweet smell of blood. Time seemed to slow down, as it always did when I was with him. The night stretched aro
und us in a silent, protective cocoon. Being so close to him made me a little dizzy. Not now, I told myself. Still, my mouth felt dry and I had to swallow twice before I dared open the scissor blades in my hand.

  I gently slid the blade underneath the cuff of his sleeve. “I’ll try to be careful, but tell me if I get too close.”

  He reached out and brushed my cheek with the back of his hand. “Grazie, bella. Grazie, il mio angelo.”

  I smiled swiftly and then looked down, concentrating on my task. The scissors ate at his sleeve with tiny, precise bites. As the fabric peeled away, revealing more of Dante’s wound, I felt a wash of hot anger flood through me.

  I shook my head. “Tell me why Zo did this to you.”

  Dante watched the scissors move steadily up his arm. “You heard,” he said quietly; it wasn’t a question.

  Embarrassment burned in my cheeks. “I didn’t mean to.”

  “Zo was—is—doing something dangerous tonight. I tried to talk him out of it.” He looked out the office window at the darkened garage. “This was his way of making his point.”

  “What were you guys talking about, anyway? Something about keeping the balance? Zo kept talking about ‘us’ and ‘them’—what was that about?”

  “It’s an old philosophical disagreement.”

  I stopped cutting and looked up at him in disbelief. “A philosophical disagreement,” I repeated. “What kind of philosophical disagreement leads to . . . to this?” I gestured to the narrow slash on his arm that was slowly weeping blood.

  “Oh, just the existence of the soul, the concept of time, the meaning of life itself—you know, the usual philosophical conversations that always seem to end in violence.” He tried to grin, but on his pale, drawn face it looked more horrific than humorous.

  I didn’t smile.

  Dante’s grin faded into a straight line. He looked away.

  “You’ll have to tell the police, you know,” I said. “You can’t let him get away with this.”

  “No!” Dante’s head whipped around. “No police. I told you that. This is between me and Zo. I can handle it. He won’t try anything like this again.”

  “You’re the victim here. What have you got to lose?”

  Dante flinched and I almost stabbed him in the shoulder with the scissors. “Hold still,” I said, snipping the last threads connecting sleeve to collar. “I’ll vouch for what happened. Just tell them the truth.”

  Dante looked a little sad. “The truth, cara, is more complicated than I can explain.”

  “And what is the truth?”

  “Ah, yet another philosophical discussion that could lead to violence.” He gestured to his wounded arm. “I fear I have already shed enough blood for one evening. Perhaps we could discuss it another day?”

  “This is serious. Why are you making a joke out of it?”

  His eyes found mine. “Because the truth is dangerous and I promised myself I wouldn’t put you at risk again.”

  “Again?” I remembered the white flashes of future time, the dark pressure in my chest. Maybe that had been Dante’s doing, but so had been the healing, the sweet taste of chocolate.

  Dante was silent.

  “So, what, you’re going to lie to me? To keep me safe?” I looked up at his face. “Safe from what?”

  Instead of answering, Dante pulled his shirt off, effectively distracting me from further questions.

  I didn’t want to stare, but it was too late. I couldn’t help it. My eyes drank in the sight of his long, lean body sitting on the desk before me. He wore a gray tank top, jeans, and gloves. I felt my heart slip inside my chest. The light did amazing things to his skin, turning it a deep shade of olive brown. Distractedly I thought that I had finally found something that matched the color of my dress perfectly. I could see the rhythmic pulse of his heart in the dark shadow nestled in the hollow of his throat.

  He reached up with his right hand and brushed his dark hair away from his eyes. His beautiful gray eyes. His eyes that were smiling at me.

  I blinked, coughing to cover my embarrassment at being caught staring. I dropped my gaze, my heart working to settle back into its normal rhythm.

  Dante chuckled low in his throat at my awkwardness.

  I tried to keep my hands steady as I wiped the blood away from his arm. Now that I had cleaned the wound, I realized it wasn’t as bad as I had first thought. There was still a little blood oozing from the puncture wound in his shoulder, but even that seemed to be closing up. The cut along his arm was shallower than I expected and ended well above the elbow. He probably wouldn’t need stitches after all.

  I fixed a square of gauze over his shoulder, taping the edges down. Then I unrolled a strip of gauze and began wrapping it around his bicep. The bone-white cloth made a sharp contrast against the dark olive of his skin. I brushed at the fine hairs on his forearm with my fingertips and felt his skin pebble with goose bumps. I wondered if the shiver on his skin was from the chill in the air or from something else. I hoped it was from something else.

  I cut the gauze and taped it down. “There. No stitches, but you’ll probably have a nice scar to show the ladies.” I laughed a little breathlessly. “I’ll admit, when I first saw your shirt, I thought Zo must’ve nicked a major vein to have spilled that much blood.”

  “I’m a fast healer,” Dante said, a strange catch in his voice.

  I turned around to finish repacking the first-aid kit. When I rinsed my hands in the sink, the cold water felt oddly warm on my skin.

  Dante’s hands were oddly warm on my skin as well. He slipped his hands over my shoulders and I jumped, whirling to face him in the tight enclosure of his arms. I hadn’t even heard him stand up from the desk, much less move behind me.

  “You’re an amazing woman, Abby. I hope you know that.” He gently tucked an errant curl behind my ear, his fingertips sliding down the curve of my neck. “Thank you for saving me tonight. May I give you a gift in return?” he asked, his voice smooth and low. He ran his palms down my arms, cradling my cold fingers in his warm hands.

  I swallowed. My heart did its sliding trick, this time adding a flip at the end. I felt a lift in my stomach. He was going to kiss me; I was sure of it.

  “Okay,” I whispered.

  He rubbed his thumbs along the inside curve of my palms. “Three gifts, actually—a secret, a question, and a truth.”

  “Okay,” I whispered again.

  “The secret,” he said softly in my ear, “is that today is my birthday.”

  “Really? Why didn’t you tell anyone? Happy birth—”

  Dante pressed a finger to my lips. “It’s a secret, remember? Now for the question: You may ask me how old I am.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “But I know how old you are. You’re seventeen. Eighteen now, I guess.”

  Dante didn’t smile. His eyes searched mine, intense and unflinching. “Ask,” he said firmly.

  “How old are you?” I said, feeling a little silly.

  “E così— the third part of your gift: a truth.” His eyes were the color of frost at dawn. “I was born in 1484.”

  I opened my mouth, but Dante looked so serious that my laugh came out as a dry gasp instead. I shook my head, sure I had misheard him.

  “I gave you this last gift because you asked for the truth tonight. And because you are someone who is brave enough to hear the truth.” He touched his forehead to mine and closed his eyes. “And because it is all I can give you right now.” His voice was a hair’s breath above a whisper.

  A sudden flash of insight raced through me. He knew I wanted him to kiss me. Hard on the heels of that realization was another one: He wanted to kiss me too.

  With a soft moan, Dante pulled away from me.

  Before I could say anything, he bolted through the office door, leaving me in the empty garage, alone except for his ruined, bloody shirt on the desk and the heat of his hands on my skin.

  Chapter

  11

  I locked the door behind me
and replaced the workshop key on the lintel. The air seemed colder now than it had before, cutting like a knife across my skin. I involuntarily rubbed my hand over my hip where Dante’s blood had dried on my dress. The fabric felt stiff and scratchy under my palm. I saw Dante’s footprints in the snow, leading away from the school, the gaps between the steps wide and uneven. He must have been running there at the end.

  I sighed, torn between wanting to follow his footsteps and knowing I needed to get back to Jason and the dance. I glanced at my watch and tapped the face with my fingernail. The hands had frozen in place, pointing to midnight. There was no telling how long I’d been gone. Jason would be worried about me.

  I gathered up my skirt and carefully picked my way over the icy parking lot to the courtyard in front of the school doors. I navigated through my thoughts just as carefully.

  What had Dante meant about today being his birthday? Had he really said he’d been born in 1484? It would mean he was more than five hundred and twenty years old. That was impossible. Completely and totally impossible.

  But then why had he chosen his words so carefully? He had treated the information like it was fragile. A truth that could break apart as soon as he spoke the words. A truth that could shatter our friendship.

  But . . . five hundred and twenty-five years old? My mind shied away from the number.

  My thoughts felt jumbled up in my head, everything unraveling the moment I tried to follow a single thought to its logical conclusion. I couldn’t make sense of anything.

  The one thing I was sure of, though, was that my lips tingled as though Dante had kissed me. I ran the tip of my tongue across the edge of my lip and the tingling intensified. I tasted again the ghostly sweet pink flavor of the Midnight Kiss I’d swallowed at the Dungeon. I guessed I would have to wait a while longer for my wish to come true.

  Valerie and V were kissing in the courtyard. He had her pressed against the school wall, his strong drummer’s hands curling around her hips. Valerie’s arms twined around his neck.