Of resignation.
I dropped my gaze from Melissa, back to the riverbank below me, and nodded. “All right,” I said softly. “You’ll watch.”
My desolation must have finally affected Melissa, because the breeze suddenly sounded like a sympathetic sigh. I thought, for a desperate second, that she might actually answer me—at least give me the courtesy of a no. But when the breeze sighed again, it sounded different, like the kind of noise someone makes when they know that the person they are looking at is dying.
I glanced up and saw that Melissa had vanished. Left me with nothing but an empty riverbank and a fading breeze that sounded an awful lot like, Good luck.
Of course, that might have just been a trick of the wind.
Chapter
TWENTY-EIGHT
I made it back to the Mayhews’ gazebo just in time to smell something delicious wafting out the open windows of the kitchen. Despite everything I’d been through that morning, the thought of lunch still set my mouth to watering.
My knock on the back door was quickly answered by Jeremiah, who looked a little cheerier than he had that morning. “Amelia, hi,” he greeted me, holding open the door for me. “Are you joining us for lunch, too?”
“I didn’t mean to intrude, Mr. Mayhew. I just . . . um . . . forgot that I left my shoes up in Jillian’s room. My mom will string me up if I don’t get her nice black heels back to her.” I blushed furiously as I followed him inside, feeling more than a little guilty about the lie.
Jeremiah didn’t seem to notice the deception. He nodded distractedly, moving through the back hallway toward the kitchen.
“Understood,” he said. “Rebecca wants to string Jillian up on a daily basis. But just so you know, you really are welcome to join us for lunch; I’m already feeding half the family anyway.”
He wasn’t wrong: inside the kitchen, Joshua and Jillian were once again sitting at the table, digging into a huge, intoxicating-looking bowl of their father’s crawfish étoufée. As were Annabel, Hayley, Drew, and Felix; apparently, they’d finished with their keg-fetching errand and were now starving. I didn’t see Rebecca anywhere—she’d probably already gone to her warehouse, to organize flowers for prom.
“I think I will join them,” I told Jeremiah, eyeing the étoufée lustfully. He gave me a distracted wave as he turned his attention to a stack of papers on what I’d come to think of as the business end of the kitchen island.
“No problem.” Then he looked briefly up at me. “Are you going with them tonight? To prom?”
I tried very hard not to look surprised. This was our cover story, then: that the young Mayhews and their dates would attend prom, instead of a diabolical dogfight. In a way, it was perfect. Jeremiah and Rebecca would be too distracted by the endless corsage orders to demand group photos from us before “prom.” They also wouldn’t be too surprised when their kids stayed out late tonight. I just hoped that the young Seers had thought to tell their older family members that we’d be putting on our formal wear in some other location; otherwise, someone might get suspicious that we were going to prom in jeans and hoodies.
“Of course,” I finally replied, flashing Jeremiah my most convincing smile. “Wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
Then, head down, I hurried to the table. All the seats were taken, but Felix—still trying to make up for the other night, I think—gave me his so that I now faced Joshua. He smiled warmly at me, but the expression was just a shade too brittle, as though Joshua had already started counting the minutes that we had left together. Which, like me, I’m sure he had.
Unaware of our little drama, Felix shifted to one side, waiting until Jeremiah seemed otherwise occupied to lean close to the table.
“Maybe we should all spend the rest of the afternoon preparing?” he whispered. “For prom and the . . . bonfire afterward? And maybe we could do that near ‘our’ fire pit?”
Judging by everyone else’s nods, they also knew what Felix meant—that we should go discuss tonight’s game plan. Then, after recruiting at prom this evening, we should go back to Robber’s Cave and start doing our Transfer Powder spells. I didn’t disagree, but I wasn’t necessarily ready to leave the Mayhews’ house. Not when I only had maybe an hour or two left to spend with Joshua, alone.
“Why don’t you guys go on ahead?” I suggested. “Joshua and I will be . . . at the cabins soon.”
Annabel shot me a mildly insulting look. “Um . . . Amelia?” she prompted, in a condescending tone. “You’re sort of a . . . crucial part of this whole ‘prom and bonfire’ experience.”
To my credit, I didn’t scowl or even smirk at her. I just shook my head and smiled lightly.
“I know that, Annabel,” I said patiently. “But I need a few minutes to myself. I’m sure you understand.”
Again, Annabel’s glare told me that she didn’t understand, or particularly care. That was just too bad, I supposed; I didn’t have enough time left in this day to waste it arguing with her.
“Go on ahead,” I repeated, and then made a shooing gesture at the rest of them. “You guys go start prepping. Joshua and I will hang out here for a while to help Jeremiah clean up, and then we’ll catch up.”
Looping Jeremiah into this conversation proved a smart move. As soon as he heard his name mentioned, Jeremiah agreed that this plan worked perfectly for him, since his mind was clearly on other things than cleaning his kitchen. Now that Annabel would look childish if she continued to argue, she had no choice but to round up her little coven and go.
Which was exactly what she did, albeit with no small amount of muttered grumbling. Eventually, though, the only people left in the kitchen were me, Joshua, and his dad. Joshua opened his mouth—probably about to ask that we be excused—but he shut it when he caught me eyeing the bowl of étoufée in between us.
“Here you go,” he said, ladling a few spoonfuls onto one of the clean plates stacked near the center of the table. “You look like you might need this first.”
I took the food from him eagerly, and began to dig into it. After a few bites, however, I couldn’t help but pause to glance up and share a wistful smile with him. Joshua and I had played this scene before, in the attic bedroom of Annabel’s home in New Orleans. That had been my first real meal, and chances were good that this would be my last. Somehow, I didn’t think I’d be able to choke down a sandwich tonight when my face-off with the demons was a mere hour away. As far as last meals went, though, this one was spectacular—every bit as delicious as I remembered it.
And for some reason, that reality suddenly washed over me. Before I knew what was happening, I was sobbing silently above my étoufée. Joshua’s eyes widened with alarm and, after checking to make sure that his father hadn’t seen, he pulled the plate away from me.
“Dad,” he said, “do you mind if Amelia and I go upstairs for a while? We’ll leave the door open.”
Still looking at his stack of papers, Jeremiah shrugged. “Fine by me.”
Yet another reason to love dads, I supposed. I breathed a sigh of relief, letting Joshua help me from my chair so that we could walk hand in hand up to his room. Before we crossed through the kitchen archway, however, I threw a final glance over my shoulder at Jeremiah.
Compared to how he’d looked during the last few days, he seemed calmer. Lighter. And I was glad for that: he deserved happiness and safety, just as much as his children did. Watching him now, I realized that although I didn’t know him all that well, I cared about him, too, as well as his wife; I wanted to make sure that Jeremiah and Rebecca were safe too.
Which, of course, meant that I would never see them again. Not after tonight.
Hanging my head, I followed Joshua up the stairs. Once we reached his room, he pushed the door almost shut behind us and then drew me into his arms.
“You okay?” he whispered into my hair, after a long silence. I nodded, sniffing a little.
“Yeah, just really weepy today. For obvious reasons, I guess.” I paused, and then a
dded, “I . . . I visited my mom this morning.”
Once again, Joshua demonstrated why I loved him. Instead of berating me, or feeling hurt that I’d visited her without him, he leaned back and smiled happily at me.
“I’m proud of you for doing that, Amelia. I really am. So . . . how did it go?”
I hesitated again, and then replied, “She’s coming to help. Tonight.”
Now I’d really surprised him. He leaned farther back until he held me at arm’s length. He couldn’t think I was joking, but he still studied my face, looking for some clue about why I’d invited her.
“I need her, Joshua,” I told him quietly. “I need her there . . . for support.”
He didn’t look like he believed me, probably because I didn’t sound very believable. But I’d already decided not to give him all the details. So although I didn’t lie, I didn’t tell the full truth, either.
Long ago, Joshua and I had agreed that we would fight the demons together—that I would tell him everything that I could. This part of the plan, however . . . I just couldn’t share with him. Not only would he fail to support it, but he might also volunteer for it. And I couldn’t survive everything to come if he did that.
“Okay,” Joshua finally said. “If that’s what you need.”
After a second’s more scrutiny, he pulled me to him again. I tilted my head back, gratefully accepting his kiss—partly because it meant that he’d accepted what little I said about the matter, and partly because I just wanted to kiss him.
Although it began sweetly, the kiss soon shifted into something stronger as it continued. The more passionately Joshua kissed me, the harder my pulse raced and the more my breathing sped. And suddenly—possibly even more than the night before—I wanted to experience that fire. That connection. I wanted him, both literally and figuratively, so that I could keep this moment as a memory—lock it inside my heart, to take with me wherever I went that night.
I thought Joshua would eventually close that door and carry me to the bed. But instead he abruptly ended the kiss.
“We can run,” he said fervently, bringing our clasped hands between us and clenching tightly. “Amelia, let’s just run. We’ll call my family, and tell them to stay away from the bridge, and then we’ll run away—to California, or Wyoming, or . . . hell, we’ll just pick a state with as few rivers as possible and settle there.”
Instead of arguing with him—countering his appeals with all the reasons that they were wrong—I shook my head and smiled sadly.
“We can’t, Joshua. I can’t.”
Almost as soon as I said it, his face fell. He nodded dejectedly, released my hands, and dropped into a seated position on the edge of his bed. I stared at him, feeling just as lost and unsure as he looked. Then I dropped as well, falling to my knees in front of him. I lifted both his hands, turned them over, and placed a kiss in each of his palms.
“If it makes you feel any better,” I whispered, “I don’t want to do this either. But I have to. I have to end the fight that started on the night of my eighteenth birthday. If you ask me, this battle has been a long time coming. And the only thing that will keep me going—the only thing that’s ever kept me going—is the fact that I love you. That I will love you, for as long as I still exist and even after that, if I can.”
What more could Joshua say? Like I’d just done, he drew my hands to his lips and kissed both of them. Then he bent forward and pressed his lips to mine one more time.
Chapter
TWENTY-NINE
Despite my patchy memory, I knew I’d always wanted to attend prom while I was alive. But I also knew that I’d never expected to be standing in front of its entrance—half dead, half alive, and dressed in stolen clothes—waiting to go inside and ask a handful of normal teenagers to fight evil with me.
I supposed I should be thankful that I’d had the forethought to change out of this morning’s dusty clothes and into my favorite pair of skinny jeans and the soft brown boots Gaby had picked out for me in New Orleans. Not prom appropriate, but certainly comfortable. At Joshua’s suggestion, I’d also thrown on a white cashmere top. Seeing the white threads now, I had to smile; I guessed Joshua would always have a soft spot for that color. Still smiling slightly, I turned to the Seers.
“How exactly are we going to do this? Get inside there, I mean?”
I gestured to the school gym, where crowds of fancily dressed students were now entering. The sun had already started to set, and we all looked too conspicuous milling around the Wilburton High School parking lot in our street clothes. Someone needed to make a decision about how we would accomplish our recruiting mission, and soon.
It didn’t surprise me that Annabel had her own overly confident idea.
“We just do it,” she said brashly. “Barge in and get as many people to follow us outside as we can.”
“Including half the faculty?” I asked, shaking my head. “If we just go ahead and crash the prom like we’re a freaking biker gang, we’re going to draw way more attention than we want.”
Annabel scowled at me, but I could tell that she also saw my point. We were still staring each other down when someone else interjected an idea.
“Why don’t we just wait here, and Amelia and Joshua go inside? They can pretend to attend the dance for a little while and then lure our friends outside to the keg.”
Everyone turned to Jillian, who was leaning against Scott’s car with her arms folded across her chest. Her suggestion was simple and therefore perfect. Why overwhelm our possible helpers with unfamiliar faces, when we could just give them Joshua? That way, we at least had a shot at recruiting the girls of Wilburton High.
Everyone else began to nod agreement. Yet Jillian herself didn’t look pleased with her own idea—she frowned heavily, and her eyes occasionally darted to Scott with a clear look of yearning.
“Why don’t four of us go?” I suggested with feigned indifference. “Jillian and Scott, me and Joshua? That way we can cover more ground once we’re inside.”
“Even better,” Jillian said quickly, and a little too eagerly. When the rest of the group gave their assent, she flashed me a small, barely concealed smile. I just nodded in response; it was the least I could do, considering what I would ask of her in a few hours.
As Annabel and her crew took their positions between Joshua’s truck and their nearby cars, I slipped my arm through Joshua’s and then glanced up at him. He smiled down at me, but the expression was tinged with too much sadness for me to return it. So I tugged him onward, looking back every now and then to make sure Jillian and Scott followed.
Although we made it across the parking lot without incident, we encountered our first problem at the entrance to prom. There, a vaguely familiar woman occupied the gym’s ticket booth, allowing those students who had prepaid inside and charging a slightly higher admission to those who hadn’t. When Joshua approached her with enough money for four tickets, the woman scowled down at him.
“Mr. Mayhew,” she said disdainfully, “I see you’ve put as much effort into tonight’s outfit as you normally put into your homework.”
I recognized her then: it was Ms. Wolters, Joshua’s surly Calculus teacher. I hadn’t seen her in person since I helped him through a differential equation last fall, although I’d seen plenty of her brutal homework assignments.
Joshua was still mumbling an excuse about our clothing when I plucked the money from his hands. Releasing my arm from his, I strolled up to the ticket booth with a saccharine smile.
“Ms. Wolters, is it? Joshua has told me so much about you—particularly about your class, in which he now holds the highest grade.”
The old woman eyed me suspiciously. “So far. But graduation is still a month off.”
“Well, with your excellent teaching skills, I don’t doubt that he’ll maintain that grade.” Then I leaned forward and lowered my voice so that only she could hear it. “And if he doesn’t . . . well, maybe the school board needs to know about that bottle of
booze in your desk drawer?”
I had no idea whether or not Ms. Wolters drank on the job—it was just a blind guess. And a lucky one, judging by the stricken look in her eyes. Still wearing a sickly sweet smile, I slid Joshua’s money across the counter toward her.
“Four tickets to the prom, please,” I said loudly.
Ms. Wolters’s hands shook slightly as she took the cash, but I didn’t feel the least bit sorry for her. I flashed her one more sugary smile—as a warning—and then rejoined my companions to move toward the prom entrance.
When we were out of earshot, Joshua whispered, “What did you say to her to make her shut up so fast?”
I laughed softly and took his hand in mine. “I just told her that if she needed help counting the bills, you could do it. Since you’re so good at math and all.”
Joshua laughed like he didn’t believe me, but he didn’t press the issue. Instead, he pulled me closer and guided me through the double doors into his high school gym.
Although it had started getting darker outside, it still took my eyes a moment to adjust to the dimmer interior of the building. Once they did, I let out a small gasp of awe.
On some level, I knew that Joshua and I now stood in the Wilburton High gym, staring at a spectacle made mostly out of Mylar and strings of old Christmas bulbs. But if I squinted just right, this place was pure magic—a fairyland of shimmering dresses, twinkling lights, glitter-strewn tabletops, and oversized arrangements of white carnations.
“Wow,” I breathed as Joshua and I wove our way through the already-crowded tables near the dance floor, with Jillian and Scott following closely behind. “Is the prom always this pretty?”
“I don’t know,” he called out above the thumping music. “I’ve never seen one before.”
I glanced quickly at him, surprised. “Really? You didn’t go to prom your junior year?”
“Really.”
“Why not?”