My turn to nod. I’m talking faster. “And you know Arizona—when she figures she’s right she doesn’t let go. Allyson too. They’re two immoveable forces. In the end, it has to end violently.”
“Maybe,” Phoenix said, almost too quiet to hear.
“It’s possible! Picture it. Just how unfeeling can we figure Allyson to be? Here’s a mom who didn’t stay home from work even when her autistic son ran away from school. You hear of unnatural mothers like her, you read it in the newspaper, you don’t expect ever to see one. But maybe this is Monster Mom in the flesh.”
“So they finally fight out by Hartmann.” Phoenix picked up the last threads of my latest theory. “Arizona is out there looking for Raven, Allyson tracks her there…”
“And accuses Arizona of knowing where the kid is, this is down to her, she’s one crazy girl hiding her brother from the authorities…”
“They struggle by the water’s edge. There’s an accident—Arizona slips and falls in…”
I’m nodding like crazy. This really could be the key to unlocking Arizona’s mystery. With three days to go, we were almost there.
“But Arizona can swim.” Phoenix put on the brakes. “She won medals in junior high.”
Now I was dead set on nailing Monster Mom. “She hit her head as she fell, went unconscious, sank right to the bottom.” I stopped as the rough path turned to paved sidewalk. “Don’t come any farther,” I warned.
“You want me to leave?” he asked with that lopsided half grin.
“Hunter will know if you come any farther. You have to go back to Foxton.” I pushed him away. He caught both my hands in his. “Go,” I gasped.
We kissed for a long time before he drew back.
“You’ll never guess,” he laughed, then broke off his sentence as if he was embarrassed.
“What?…Phoenix, there’s a car coming!” I heard it higher up the street, growing louder.
“Hunter says I can stay.”
“Stay here with me? Not go back to Foxton?”
“We know Kyle Keppler will come after you again. Hunter says I have to be here to take care of you.”
I stopped breathing, feeling my whole body glow. “The whole day? Is that what you’re saying?”
“And night,” he promised, putting his arm around my waist and drawing me behind some high billboards, boards, out of sight of the passing car.
Phoenix was there in my room, sitting on the bed, waiting for me. We’d said good-bye on the outskirts of town and I’d walked on alone. He’d already checked in with Hunter and the Beautiful Dead out at Foxton and was still at my house before me.
“You need to see Brandon about your car,” Mister Sensible insisted.
“Tomorrow,” I argued. I didn’t want any interruptions to our alone time.
“Now. They forecast rain. Call him—ask him to tow it in.”
Sighing, I took out my phone.
Brandon answered my call almost before the ring kicked in. “Darina, what’s up?”
“My car is what’s up.”
“Did you crash it?” He jumped to the obvious conclusion as if the idea amused him.
“No. It got smashed up. Your friend Kyle Keppler forced me off the road. His brother-in-law performed acts of violence with an iron bar.”
“Why would he do that?” The tone changed and Brandon’s question came back sharp and suspicious.
I glanced at Phoenix, who had gotten up from the bed and was standing by the window. “Kyle doesn’t like me; that’s all I can tell you.”
“That’s a whole heap of dislike, for two guys to do that to your car. Were you hurt?”
“No, I’m cool. But my car isn’t. I was hoping you could have it towed in for repair.”
Brandon didn’t hesitate. He checked that I was home and told me to wait. “I’ll pick you up. You can show me where the car is.”
Sighing, I came off the phone. “So how do I explain this to your brother?” I asked Phoenix.
“Say it has to do with Arizona.” He suggested that a halftruth would be enough. “Brandon knew about her and Kyle, remember.”
I nodded. “OK, that’ll work. He’ll think Kyle got mad at me for meddling somehow in his personal life. And Brandon will know the guy has a temper.”
“Believe me, Brandon won’t ask questions. He’ll take care of you, like he told me he would.”
With his last breath Phoenix had made his brother promise to be my protector. Brandon had held him in his arms and sworn on his life.
“And I really have to go with him?” I sighed as I put my arms around Phoenix’s neck. “When all I want is to stay here with you?”
He smiled, kissing me for what seemed like only seconds before the throaty roar of Brandon’s Harley engine interrupted us.
“Go!” Phoenix said, unpeeling my arms. “I’ll be here when you get back.”
I rode on the back of Brandon’s Dyna, using his broad back as a shield from the wind, feeling the flick of his fringed jacket against my arms. We drove toward Peak Road under the storm clouds that Phoenix had warned about. When we drew level with my car, he braked and pulled across the road. We both got off the bike and walked slowly, inspecting the damage.
“Kyle and Jon did this?” Brandon checked with me. The metal bar had crumpled the hood pretty good. The wind-shield was smashed and one of the side-view mirrors was hanging loose. “Those guys were out of control.”
I nodded. “It was scary.”
Brandon narrowed his eyes. “OK, I don’t need to know why.”
Trying to look helpless and innocent wasn’t easy for me, so my don’t-ask-me shrug wouldn’t have won any Oscars.
“I’ll handle this, Darina. You’ll get your car back good as new.”
“And that was it,” I told Phoenix, taking off my wet denim jacket and hanging it over the chair by my desk. “You were right—no questions, no lies.”
He was waiting by the window when Brandon dropped me off at the house, taking care to stay out of sight. By now, cold rain was falling and dusk had come before it was due. Phoenix’s plan to enlist Brandon’s help had worked. Brandon would tow the car to a garage, then pay a visit to Kyle’s house. He and Kyle would come to an understanding for Kyle to stay away from me from now on.
“Thanks,” I told Phoenix as he handed me a towel for my dripping hair. More sounds outside the house told me that Laura was home from work. “Wait here,” I whispered.
Downstairs, Laura was tired, so what was new? She kicked off her shoes and sat down with a beer. “The storm will get worse, I hear. So where’s your car, Darina? I didn’t see it in the driveway.”
“The windshield wiper came loose.” (True, actually.) “Brandon Rohr is going to fix it.” (Also true.)
“That’s nice. Did you eat yet?”
“I had pizza.” (Not true.)
“You should eat better, Darina.” (True.)
“So where’s Jim?”
“Out of state. He won’t be home.”
“You don’t need to fix a meal since I already ate.” I hovered by the foot of the stairs. “I have to work on my science project.”
“So go.” Laura sighed, putting her feet up on the couch and resting her head against a cushion.
I dashed upstairs. Phoenix lay beside me in my room. We listened to the raindrops against the windowpanes; we stared out at a black sky.
I was more alive than I ever remembered. We lay on our backs, our arms stretched above our heads, fingers intertwined, staring into each other’s eyes. I curled in toward him; he didn’t move. Then he kissed my forehead. I raised my face up toward him and let his lips touch mine. More alive and aching, kissing him, being kissed.
The rain beat against the window.
I wanted this to last, knew that it couldn’t. This was the way it would have been…
Before midnight the storm broke. It rolled in on a stronger wind that brought thunder and lightning that split the sky in two.
Phoenix sat up and swun
g his legs over the edge of the bed. He pressed a trembling hand against his forehead.
“What is it—the storm?” I was torn out of my paradise and suddenly afraid. An electric storm was the biggest danger the Beautiful Dead encountered here on the far side—it weakened them and robbed them of their powers, made them vulnerable to their enemies.
“I have a pain, here.” Phoenix took my hand and guided my fingers to the angel-wing tattoo below his shoulder blade.
“Is it bad?” I asked as I stroked his smooth, cold skin then leaned forward to kiss the wings once, twice, three times.
“You make it feel better,” he murmured. “Darina…”
“I know…you have to leave,” I whispered quickly. “The others are waiting for you on Foxton Ridge.”
He stood up and raised me with him, wrapped his arms around me, and breathed the words against my cheek. “I want to be with you, I swear. But—”
“I love you. Go.”
“In the morning, come out to the ridge. Wait for me there.”
Lightning forked across the sky; wind rattled the window frame. Fear made me shake from head to toe. “Go,” I begged. “Leave, before it’s too late.”
The storm raged all night long—rain and wind, a black sky shot through with jagged lightning strikes. I tossed in bed, telling myself by tortured degrees that Phoenix would have made it back to Foxton, would have met up with Hunter and the Beautiful Dead and by now they would be long gone from the far side, somewhere safe on the other side of the grave. I would go up there in the morning, once the storm had cleared.
Thursday and Friday—that’s all we have, I told myself. So how am I going to get up to Foxton without my car? I sat up in bed as thunder rolled overhead.
Now that I had no transportation, it was as if my legs had been cut from under me. Maybe I set out now, in the middle of the storm. I hitch a ride out of Centennial, get dropped off at the Foxton junction, walk up to the ridge, and be at the barn by dawn.
I climbed into my jeans and shirt and was pulling on my boots when Hunter appeared.
The room filled with silver light. He materialized by the window, the storm pounding against the panes.
“You shouldn’t be here!” I gasped, rooted to the spot. “Where’s Phoenix? Where are the others?”
“Safe,” he replied. In the shimmering light, I saw that he was shaking. Water ran from his hair, down his granite face. His eyes were so dark and sunken that for a moment I was scared he’d become one of the death-heads raised from limbo to terrify far-siders who strayed too close to the barn.
“You should be with them,” I whispered. If he stayed any longer, he would be too wounded and weakened to leave. “Why are you here?”
“I need you,” Hunter confessed. A flash of lightning tore the sky and made him shudder. He put one hand against my desk to steady himself.
This still didn’t compute. Hunter was strong and firm—unshakable. He shouldn’t be weak and trembling.
“Need me—how?”
“Come with me,” he pleaded. “Quickly.”
“Where?” I was ready to travel with him, if he still had the power. I prepared myself for the wings to start beating, for the light to surround me.
“To Foxton.”
“What for?” Here they came—the rush of wings, the strong gust of cold, wet air as Hunter opened the bedroom window.
“To find Lee Stone,” Hunter told me. He took my hand, surrounded by the storm of strong wings, and lifted me out of the house, into the night. “Lee didn’t make it,” he explained as the eerie force tore at my face, my hair, every muscle and bone in my body. “He’s still here on the far side. You have to come.”
When you travel with the overlord of the Beautiful Dead, you don’t fly or float, spin or drift. It’s as if you’re caught in the eye of a tornado, held there until you arrive in the place he wants you to be. Then you fall a million miles through blackness before you come around.
We were at the Foxton junction. It was still nighttime and the storm was as bad as ever.
I had to hold on to Hunter to be able to stand up against the wind blowing down from the ridge. He was still shaking, his eyes more black and sunken. Rain trickled down his temple, over the faded angel-wing tattoo where he’d been shot through the head.
“Lee was down here when the weather broke,” Hunter whispered, his shoulders hunched and teeth chattering like a man freezing to death. “The electric storm hurt him too bad—he couldn’t get back.”
Gasping, I took a look around at the row of fishermen’s shacks by the racing creek. All except one stood in darkness.
Hunter staggered through the wind and rain toward the single light. “I came looking after I sent the others back. Don’t worry, Darina—Phoenix is safe for sure.”
“But you’re not!” I cried. I stumbled over my own feet it was so pitch-black. “Every second you stay here, you get weaker!”
“I’m here for Lee,” he said through gritted teeth. “The guy staying in this shack—he found Lee where he’d fallen, down by the creek. He dragged him under cover before I could get to him. I guess he thought he was doing good.”
“Under cover—where?” Slowly I was getting my breath back, starting to think. It was clear I had to get Lee out of the rescuer’s hands and back in tow with Hunter. Then the two of them could get the hell out.
“He took him inside the house.”
“How long do I have?” I asked, calculating that I could hammer on the door and draw the man outside while Hunter stayed invisible and snuck in when the guy’s back was turned.
“Not long.” Hunter could hardly open his mouth to speak, he was so weak. I could only imagine what whisking me here had cost him in terms of energy. I saw that he was risking everything for Lee. “The lightning got to him. He passed out. Go, Darina!”
I stumbled forward, up the step onto the porch. My fist beat on the wooden door.
At first no one came. Inside the shack the guy was probably thinking that no way was he about to open his door to a second stranger on a night like this. Then maybe he thought someone had come looking for Lee, so the door gave a fraction.
I saw a pair of glittering eyes through the narrow slit. “Help—you’ve got to come!” I yelled, my hair plastered to my skull, rainwater streaming from me. “My car got stuck in the gully out at the junction. I need you to tow me out!”
With a little more time I would have beefed up my story; I know that now. The door stayed where it was.
“No can do,” a voice said. It sounded old and cranky. “I have my hands full with a young guy here. He fell in the creek.”
“Please!” I begged, trying to get a look inside.
“Don’t know if he’s alive or dead,” the old man said. “Can’t get a pulse or nothing, but I think he’s breathing.”
The door was closing in my face. “Let me look!” I said. “I trained in first aid. Maybe I can help.”
It got me inside, but Hunter was out there, still helpless. The shack was cozy, a relief from the cold wind and rain, but I needed to think fast if I was going to get Hunter hooked up with Lee.
Then my plans fell apart.
Lee lay on his back on a couch that doubled as the old guy’s bed. At first glance you would say it was a corpse for sure—his face ghastly white, his mouth open, eyes closed. One arm hung limply off the side of the couch.
We were too late—I felt my heart thud. Then Lee moved. He turned his head toward me. I think he recognized me.
“Go ahead—check him out,” the old guy urged. There was an open whiskey bottle on the table. I smelled the alcohol on his breath.
Thud and then a rapid thump-thump-thump. My heart was racing as I crouched down by Lee’s side. His eyes wouldn’t focus. I thought he didn’t know me after all. “It’s me—Darina,” I whispered.
“Darina. Tell Hunter I’m sorry.” His voice came out as a gasp, so slurred that I could hardly make it out.
“What did he say?” the old fishe
rman demanded, leaning over us with his lined, whiskery face, stinking of whiskey.
“I’m going to get you out of here,” I leaned forward and promised Lee. But it was too late. Lee Stone was one of the Beautiful Dead revenants who would never find out the circumstance surrounding his passing. The storm had caught him and drained him of all his supernatural strength so that now he looked like the corpse he really was, head back against the grimy pillow, one arm dangling. Where were those wings and death-heads, the force field that protected him? What could even Hunter do now?
Nothing. I knew the answer without having to speak it out loud.
“No, it’s me who’s sorry, Lee,” I cried. Confused, the old guy backed off. “Hunter tried to save you. He did everything he could.”
Lee’s eyes showed that he’d heard me, but now he was too weak to talk. I took his cold hand and as I closed my fingers around it I saw crimson blood running down his arm from a wound on his shoulder—sticky and already congealing even though it had only just appeared. And there was more blood oozing from his ribs and a thin trickle from the corner of his mouth.
I held his hand tight. Behind us the door flew open. A strong wind gusted and when it blew itself out, Lee had gone.
Lee’s weird half life/half death slowed to nothing but for those of us left, life raced on. Gently I laid his lifeless arm across his chest. The fisherman stood without speaking. First Lee’s eyelids flickered closed, the oozing blood faded. Then the light appeared—a silver glimmer surrounding the corpse, and wings beating, not fierce and wild, but soft. The glow was like a halo, slowly penetrating Lee’s whole body, dissolving it and making it glisten until gradually he disappeared. Lee’s would-be rescuer stared at an empty couch.
“You drank too much whiskey,” I told the old fisherman harshly, leaving him to his confusion. Let this be another of the weird rumors to creep out of the mountains down into the Ellerton bars and diners. A night of bad storms, a drunken man’s crazy tale…
I quit the shack to look for Hunter. I called his name along the dirt road, then down by the creek. I heard only the water rushing over boulders, felt the black current race at my feet.