“Look—immediate seating,” she called out, pointing to the little table that a waitress had just cleared. As far as I could tell, it was the only open table in the entire café.
“Um, aren’t we supposed to wait in line?” I asked, still hovering outside the waist-high gate that separated the café from the rest of Decatur. Gabrielle laughed and plopped into one of the metal chairs.
“We’re still invisible, Amelia. Now get in here before we lose out to those tourists.” She pointed meaningfully to a nearby middle-aged couple who fumbled bags and bumped other patrons in their eager beeline toward the table. Feeling apprehensive and more than a little guilty, I slipped through the opening in the gate and edged my way through the restaurant.
When the tourists beat me to the table, I thought we’d surely lost our spot. But before they could even pull out their chairs, I saw Gabrielle do … something.
For a split second her appearance wavered like an image on a staticky old television set. When the effect ended, she leaned casually back in the chair, smiling broadly up at the couple.
“May I help you?” she asked them with arch politeness.
Both tourists blinked back in surprise at what must have been the sudden appearance of this gorgeous young girl.
“You weren’t … where did you …?” the man sputtered, obviously confused. But his wife recovered more quickly. She placed a restraining hand on his arm and then smiled apologetically at Gabrielle.
“So sorry, ma’am,” she said. “We didn’t realize this was your table. We’ll just wait for another one. Right, honey?”
When her husband started to object, she spun him around forcefully and dragged him back to the line. As they passed, I heard her mutter, “Don’t embarrass me, Charlie. She’s famous. Don’t you remember her from that one movie we saw last summer? You know, the one with all the car chases?”
As the couple rejoined the line outside Café du Monde, I heard Charlie’s faint, befuddled “No.” I watched them fade into the crowd and then turned a disapproving frown on Gabrielle.
“Well,” I said, sinking into the chair next to her and taking off my sunglasses. “You’ll be happy to know they think you’re some superfamous actress with carte blanche to steal any table she wants.”
“Excellent,” she crowed, clearly unrepentant. “If I’m playing the part, then I’m glad I can actually pull it off.”
Realizing that we had much more important matters to discuss than Gabrielle’s audacity, I leaned forward.
“So … how did you do that? Make them see you, I mean?”
“Glad you asked,” she said, waving to a pretty Asian waitress who was taking orders a few tables over. “Here’s your chance to try it yourself.”
“But … what?” I floundered as the waitress began crossing over to our table. “I have no idea what to do!”
Gabrielle shrugged one shoulder. “It’s instinctive, I promise. And it’s a lot like how you used to vanish. You just have to concentrate on being seen instead of disappearing. Stay visible while you eat, though. Otherwise it’ll look like the floating-breakfast show.”
“I don’t even know what that means,” I hissed. But I fell silent the instant our waitress walked up to the table.
“Order?” she demanded in a brusque, no-nonsense tone.
“I’ll have a small café au lait and an order of beignets,” Gabrielle drawled. She smirked in my direction. “Amelia? What would you like?”
Although the waitress looked like she thought Gabrielle had gone crazy, I still felt a dizzying wave of anxiety and pressure.
After all, I’d just lost the first living person who could see me (a fact that stung on so many levels and that I tried desperately to repress again). Now I had the opportunity to appear to an entire city full of living people.
If only I could figure out how.
Do I even want to? I asked myself. Maybe I just wanted to skulk into the shadows, running from the demons and avoiding the living like I’d originally intended …
But at that moment, my stomach growled so loudly it hurt. Suddenly, I couldn’t think of anything I wanted to do more than to talk to the woman who stood between me and my first bite of food in more than ten years.
I felt a strange current pass over my skin just as I said, “Um, the same?”
Upon hearing my voice, the waitress actually jumped. She turned, openmouthed, to stare at me.
She saw me now. A normal, living woman—not a Seer—actually saw me.
I’d done it. I wanted to appear badly enough, and I’d done it.
I gave the server my widest smile. “I’ll just have what she’s having. Is that okay?”
With her mouth still hanging open, the waitress nodded mechanically. Then she slowly backed away from our table, keeping her eyes on me the entire time. She only looked away when she reached the relative safety of the indoor portion of the restaurant.
“Ha!” Gabrielle clapped her hands together loudly. “Man, you learned way faster than I thought you would.”
I shrugged sheepishly. “What can I say? I’m really hungry.”
Gabrielle was still laughing when our waitress returned a few minutes later carrying two steaming mugs and two heaping plates of fried doughnuts. She dumped them unceremoniously on our table, maintaining as wide a berth as possible. While Gabrielle paid in cash, the waitress kept a suspicious eye on me, hurrying away from the table as soon as she could.
“Obviously, she didn’t think we were famous,” I muttered once she’d disappeared from view.
“You,” Gabrielle corrected. “She didn’t think you were famous. I, however, pull it off fabulously.”
When I turned back to see why Gabrielle’s voice sounded garbled, I found her tucking sloppily into the beignets. She couldn’t have been eating for more than a few seconds, but she already had powdered sugar smeared on her cheeks and dusted all over her designer clothes.
Despite everything—my heartache over Joshua, my distrust of the Callioux twins, my fears about what I’d become—I started laughing so hard I actually snorted.
“Oh, yes. You are the picture of couture perfection.”
Gabrielle took another huge bite of beignet and then grinned at me, showing her food in her teeth.
“I’m a vision,” she mumbled around the pastry. “And you know it.”
I couldn’t help but keep laughing, and the sight of all those white sprinkles on her priceless cape just made it worse. I only gained better control of myself when my stomach growled, louder and more insistent than ever. So I took a few gulped breaths, wiped my tears away so that the carefully applied makeup wouldn’t streak, and then gingerly picked up a beignet.
It was hot to the touch and slick with the pastelike mixture of sugar and grease. I could smell it too: sweet and doughy. I reveled in its scent until my head spun and then drew it to my mouth for a tentative bite.
The sugar burst across my tongue, followed by the rich, yeasty taste of fried dough. I took a few more greedy bites before I’d even had time to swallow the first, finishing the entire doughnut in seconds. The moment the beignet hit my poor, neglected stomach, I thought my eyes might roll back in my head.
“Oh my God,” I moaned, grabbing my second beignet. “I’d die twice if I could eat this every day.”
“I know, right?” Gabrielle spoke through another mouthful. “And you haven’t even tried the café au lait yet.”
With my pastry-free hand, I picked up the mug and took a sip of the coffee. Again I tasted heaven: smooth chicory and creamy milk, warm and strong beneath a sweet layer of foam. I dropped the second beignet so I could concentrate more fully on the café au lait, practically chugging it in three big gulps. Once finished, I reluctantly set down the mug and licked the last drops from my lips. Even with the caffeine jitters buzzing through me, I felt satisfied. Content.
I slid lazily back in my chair. “This,” I concluded, “is awesome.”
“Glad you approve.” Gabrielle chuckled low, popp
ing the last bite of dough into her mouth. “The best part is that you totally earned it. Now you just have to learn to go invisible again, and we’ll be set.”
“And how do I do that, exactly?” I asked, picking up the beignet I’d discarded earlier. Then I froze, thoughtlessly dropping the pastry to the ground.
“You just need the proper motivation,” Gabrielle said, dabbing at her cape with a wad of napkins. But she froze, too, when she caught the look on my face.
“Amelia,” she said. “What’s wrong?”
“I think I just found my motivation,” I whispered.
Gabrielle followed my gaze and then swore. At that moment she knew exactly why I needed to disappear. After all, the one person I wanted to appear in front of was the one person in the world I shouldn’t.
And he and his Seer family were now standing about ten feet away from us.
Chapter
TWENTY-FOUR
Everything twisted inside me.
It mangled and mashed together until I felt certain that the only thing I could do right now—the only thing I could ever do—was fly across the café, throw myself into Joshua’s arms, and apologize for the next thousand years.
Then when I finished apologizing, I would finally tell him I loved him. More than anything.
But instead, I closed my eyes and willed myself invisible.
The strange current rippled over my skin again, and I opened my eyes to see Gabrielle’s image blink out of, then back into, existence almost too rapidly to catch.
“Just to be clear,” she whispered once she finished going invisible. “We’re hiding from them, right?”
I nodded and kept my mouth shut. I felt pretty sure I would just start bawling if I tried to speak. It would have been better for my sanity, and my willpower, if I just looked away. Still, I couldn’t take my eyes off Joshua.
So many members of his family clustered together that I wouldn’t have seen him had he not stood aloof, slightly apart from his relatives. The rest of the clan seemed blissfully unaware of our presence as they debated whether to wait for a group of tables to open up outside or just go into the interior restaurant. Only Jillian threw worried glances over her shoulder at her brother.
I didn’t blame her: he looked awful. Worse than I’d ever seen him.
He hadn’t slept last night, I could tell. Dark purple circles ringed his eyes, which looked bloodshot, even from this distance. My breath caught in my throat when he rubbed a palm over his stubbled cheek and then dragged his hand roughly through his hair—a gesture I loved so much, now a part of his obvious misery.
Almost as if he could sense someone staring at him, he pulled a pair of sunglasses from his back pocket and slipped them on. Then he folded himself deeper into his winter coat, like he just wanted to disappear. Suddenly, it seemed horribly unfair that I could and he couldn’t.
Realizing that I’d inadvertently clutched my hand to my heart, I cleared my throat and turned to Gabrielle.
“Let’s get out of here, okay?” I croaked.
Gabrielle nodded, looking uncharacteristically serious. “Yeah, I think that’s probably a good idea.”
She slipped out of her chair without moving it, tilting her head to indicate that I should do the same—no point in going invisible just to alert the Seers to our presence with the scrape of a chair. I followed her lead, wriggling out and then skirting the neighboring tables to better avoid the Mayhews.
I’d almost reached Gabrielle, who waited for me by the café entrance, when I hesitated. Then, like a fool, I reversed course until I stood only a few inches from Joshua.
Stupidly, recklessly, I leaned in close enough to feel the warmth of his presence, to breathe in the sweet, musky scent of his cologne. These were things I’d wanted to experience in full since we first met. And now I had to act like a thief, stealing this moment from him.
I’d just reached out to grab his hand—to see if our connection had in fact disappeared—when I heard Gabrielle choking behind me. Apparently, I’d shocked her this time. I dropped my hand, but that didn’t deter me from lingering beside Joshua … waiting.
Waiting for him to notice me. To sense me, even though he could no longer see me.
I wanted some kind of recognition from him, some proof that our connection withstood what happened last night. I wanted to know that, whether I ran from or fought against the demons, there would always be something of us that survived.
I didn’t get that reassurance.
Without so much as a glance in my direction, Joshua sighed once and then followed his enormous family to the back of the café, where a large crowd of people ate standing up outside at tall, chairless tables.
Watching him walk away, I sighed, too. Then I turned around and slunk back toward Gabrielle, who ogled me from the gate.
“What the hell was that?” she said through clenched teeth. “I thought we were avoiding Lover Boy?”
I hung my head, feeling embarrassed. “We were. We are. Let’s just go.”
Thankfully, she simply nodded, slipping on her sunglasses and moving quickly with me out of the café. She didn’t speak until we’d made it halfway down the sidewalk. Then she smacked me on the arm.
“Where are your sunglasses?” she demanded.
I reached absently for my face and found nothing. No glasses.
“Crap, I left them in the café.” I turned to go back, but Gabrielle grabbed my arm and tugged me to a stop.
“Don’t go back there,” she said. “It will only upset you more.”
I shook my head. “The Mayhews were moving to the back of the café. I probably won’t even be able to see Joshua. Besides, we need to get those glasses back in the actress’s closet—one less thing that could get Felix arrested.”
“Bah,” Gabrielle grumbled. “Who cares about the stupid glasses? I’m sorry I even brought them up.”
“You can’t tell me you don’t know the exact designer and cost of those things.”
She grinned sheepishly. “Fendi. Three hundred and forty-five dollars. Before tax.”
“Now tell me you want to leave them for a stranger to own.” When she didn’t respond, I shook her hand off my arm and began trudging back down the sidewalk. “See you in less than two minutes, promise.”
By the time I’d pressed my way through the line outside Café du Monde, I’d already admitted my ulterior motives to myself. Of course I wanted to catch another glimpse of Joshua; I wasn’t made of stone.
But when I ducked back into the seating area and angled over to our table—where a waitress now cleared our mess—I couldn’t see the Mayhews anywhere.
Maybe they went inside, I thought as I covertly swiped the sunglasses off the tabletop. Couldn’t hurt to check …
I spun around, more than ready to slink my way into the interior restaurant, and then stopped short.
Alex stood less than a foot from me—eyes wide, expression alert. I hadn’t seen him earlier, when the Mayhews entered the café; he must have been buried deep in the crowd. Now he searched, hunted the area where Gabrielle and I had sat only minutes ago.
It’s nothing, I reasoned. This doesn’t mean anything.
But I went cold when he whispered, “Amelia?”
I pressed my lips together, held my breath, and kept so still I thought I could hear my phantom pulse pounding in my ears. Still, Alex inched closer. After another beat, he tried again.
“Amelia, are you there?”
I stayed silent, now biting the inside of my lips to keep them shut. This technique was especially effective when Alex leaned forward until only inches separated us.
“I know you’re here,” he whispered. “I can smell your perfume. Like peaches, right?”
Despite my resolve to stay silent, a tiny squeak escaped my lips.
I prayed that Alex couldn’t hear it above all the laughing and talking and plate rattling. But he immediately jerked backward, looking triumphant. Then his expression shifted to one of pleading.
“If you are here,” he said, louder now, “please stay and listen to me, just for a second. I think I know what’s going on with you. I think you’re afraid of something.”
I stayed motionless, silent, as he continued.
“I know I don’t know you that well, but I could see it written all over your face the other night. Something has you scared, and I think you’re trying to run from it.”
He took a step closer, and I jagged to one side. “I’m sure I look like a crazy person right now, talking to thin air; but I have to tell you: we can keep you safe. Me, Annabel, and Drew. Hayley and Jillian. Maybe even Josh. My group of Seers may be young, but we have the power to protect you.”
I started to move backward one step at a time, away from him. Perhaps Alex sensed my retreat, because he turned blindly in several directions, his arms flailing. I nearly shrieked when one of them hit me.
Or at least it should have hit me.
Like Felix’s this morning, Alex’s hand slid across me as if we hadn’t touched at all. I didn’t feel the pressure of the impact; and, judging by his expression, Alex didn’t, either.
“Think about it, Amelia,” he said, unaware of what had just happened. “Come back to us, and we’ll protect you. I’ll protect you.”
No, I whispered in my head. You won’t.
Then I spun around, running out of the café before I accidentally answered him out loud.
Chapter
TWENTY-FIVE
I didn’t speak to Gabrielle again for at least another twenty minutes.
When I approached her on the sidewalk, I complied with her request to go visible so that we could talk without sounding like disembodied voices. But otherwise I waved off her questions. Then I made some vague gesture, indicating that she could follow me on my blind quest to go anywhere that wasn’t Café du Monde. And if she didn’t … well, I didn’t particularly care at that moment.
Eventually, my quest landed us in a small park with a double alley of oak trees, where I found myself pacing frantically. Gabrielle silently watched me for a few minutes and then plopped onto one of the park benches that line the alley.