“You’re certain?” I was still shaking, even though his arms were around me.
“Totally.” He stepped back and looked deep into my eyes. “Here comes Hunter,” he warned without turning around.
I stood on tiptoe to peer over his shoulder. Sure enough, Hunter, Jonas, Summer, Arizona, and Eve were walking through the meadow at the back of the barn, the silvery grass brushing their legs as they came slowly toward us. They looked exhausted.
“Are we all safe?” Phoenix asked, releasing me and standing by my side.
Hunter nodded. “I left Donna in charge of the baby up in the hayloft. Iceman is on his way down from Twelve O’clock Rock.” As he finished talking he leaned wearily against the truck.
“How many did we zap?” Arizona asked, sitting on the porch step.
“Only one—Jonas’s dad.” Hunter sighed, head back and eyes closed. “Thanks to Darina and the fact that she can’t follow orders.”
“I did warn you what she was like,” Arizona reminded him. “Hey, Phoenix, did you tell your girlfriend that every time we have to wipe someone’s memory it weakens the whole group? No, I guess you didn’t.”
“What does she mean?” I asked Phoenix.
His gaze flickered. “It takes a whole lot of energy for us to control a person’s mind that way, so we’re less strong, our hearing isn’t so good, stuff like that.”
“I didn’t realize,” I whispered.
Summer came forward and gave me the gift of one of her special smiles. “Don’t worry, Darina. Our powers get back to normal once we’ve rested.”
“Hey, Iceman, how was it up at Twelve O’clock Rock?” Eve asked the newcomer, who had just crossed the creek and was approaching the group.
He was the short, wiry guy, with fair hair cropped close to his head. I recognized him as the one I’d previously seen with Eve, Donna, and the baby.
“Nothing happening,” he reported. “Jonas, you OK?”
“Cool,” Jonas nodded.
“I’m sorry about your dad, man. I hope he doesn’t come back for a third round of punishment.”
“Yeah, he’s going to feel like he did twelve rounds with a professional heavyweight,” Arizona said, studying me for my reaction.
I couldn’t find any point to make in my own defense so I hung my head and stayed quiet.
“Hey, why so hard on Darina?” Summer had stayed by my side and spoke up for me now. “She was the one who came to warn us, remember?”
“And the one who didn’t get anywhere with Zoey Bishop yet.” Hunter spoke up, and of course he was against me, not for me. “We don’t need you driving out here and showing yourself to our enemies. It’s not helpful.”
In that respect, he was right. “I’m sorry,” I told him.
“Don’t be sorry. Be useful. Jonas, walk Darina to her car. She parked out beyond Angel Rock. Summer, Arizona, and Eve, get some rest. Phoenix too.”
I frowned and made as if to ask Phoenix to come with me, feeling my heart jolt and my stomach tighten at the prospect of leaving him again.
“Go with Jonas,” he told me softly. And he kissed me long and hard on the lips, even though Hunter was giving us his cold stare.
So that’s what I did—I kissed him back and walked away under the moon and stars, across rough ground with Jonas at my side.
We didn’t speak for a long time.
“I’m sorry,” I told Jonas at last. “I didn’t do it deliberately—let your dad see me, I mean. He had a gun. I was scared.”
“It’s cool.” Paler than ever in the bright moonlight, Jonas’s eyes seemed more hooded, the pupils enormous in his pale blue irises. “It would’ve happened anyway. My dad doesn’t care anymore. I keep expecting him to ride his bike straight into a rock—to end it all.”
“To be with you?”
“Yeah. That’s why he bought the Dyna—to be the same as me, to bring him closer.”
“You’re guessing,” I argued. “You don’t know for sure.”
“I’ve seen the way he rides and the look on his face. It’s death.”
I sighed, stopping for breath as we reached the summit of a smooth domed rock. “Doesn’t your dad have anyone else?”
“Only Mom. Since my crash the doctor’s been giving her medication. Right now she’s with her sister in Chicago, taking a break from Dad and everything.”
I didn’t need to ask what Jonas meant by “everything.” Given the fact that the inquest had just delivered its verdict, it wasn’t difficult to see why his mom had moved out for a while. “I wish I could do more,” I muttered.
We struck out along a ridge that would bring us to my car, each lost in our own thoughts until Jonas went off on a new track. “Hunter gives you a hard time.”
“He scares me,” I admitted.
“Summer has a theory about it.” Jonas walked with his hands in his pockets, kicking small stones against rocks as he walked. “Do you want to know?”
“You people talk about me?” I was surprised.
“Sure, we do. You’re our only interesting topic of conversation.”
“Apart from the god-awful things that happened to you all in the last twelve months.”
“They’re always the same. They don’t change. Except if you make them change for us, Darina. We depend on you.”
“Me?” Suddenly it hit me that what I had to do was huge—first help Jonas, then move on to Arizona, and so on down the line. It was too much. “So what’s Summer’s theory?” I asked, taking a jump sideways away from the high-octane responsibility.
“Summer believes Hunter is hard on you for a reason,” Jonas said.
“More than just because I’m an idiot who keeps on getting stuff wrong?”
“You’re not an idiot. Listen. Summer once saw an old picture that Hunter keeps in his pocket. It fell out when he took his shirt off to swim in the creek—a picture of a woman.”
“His wife, Marie?” I guessed.
“Yeah. You know the story? Well, Summer took a peek at the photograph. It was kind of brown and faded, but she could make out that Marie looked a lot like you—the same dark hair, the same eyes. Even the smile.”
“Wow.” I thought for a while. “I remind him of her. So why is he mean to me? Oh, I get it—it’s a painful memory and it’s turned him against me.”
“Even though it’s no way your fault,” Jonas agreed. “Which proves something about Hunter.”
“What exactly?” I asked urgently. Jonas and I were reaching the end of our walk. I could see my car windshield gleaming in the moonlight, about a quarter of a mile ahead.
“That he does still have feelings breaking through, even after all these years. That he’s not made of ice, although he wants everyone to believe he is.”
Hunter, the unfeeling overlord of the Beautiful Dead, the ruthless avenger. Or Hunter, who died to save Marie, the man who loved his wife more than his life.
Take your pick.
On Sundays Jim is usually home. It’s no big deal. He’s in the house and I try to ignore him.
But that Sunday, after I’d told Jonas good-bye and promised him that I’d try to visit Zoey again as soon as I could, it turned out I couldn’t keep out of Jim’s sight line for more than five minutes at a time. Apparently, my grieving time was up in his book.
First it was, “Darina, take the trash out for your mom,” then, “Have you cleaned your room?” and “How are you going to pay to get your fender fixed?” Yackety-yak, on and on with the banal, boring stuff, like he really wanted to nail me. But after four years of it, I’m pretty well immune.
“Darina, why can’t you try being nice, just once?” Laura asked when Jim drove to the store to buy milk and a newspaper.
“Why can’t he try being nice?” I snapped back. “He knows what I’ve been through.”
Laura was doing Sunday chores with the TV switched on in the kitchen and the dishwasher swirling and swishing in the background. Not looking her best, I’d say, in one of Jim’s gray-white sweats
hirts and a pair of faded jogging pants, with her hair scraped back and her face looking saggy.
That’s the bitch in me coming through, and maybe Laura picked it up in the way I was staring at her, because all of a sudden she grabbed a cloth and began to rub hard at invisible specks of dirt on the side of the refrigerator. “I can’t take this anymore,” she muttered. “You and Jim need to get along, or else I’m out of here.”The manic cleaning meant she was serious. “I mean it. I’ve had enough of the bad atmosphere between you two. Darina, I need you to acknowledge that Jim is the man I love and chose to live with. Also, that, even though you’re grieving for Phoenix, it still doesn’t make you the most important person in the world.”
“I’m not even the most important person in this room,” I argued. “Hey, I come way down the list: after Jim, somewhere around cleaning the house, and watching your favorite TV program.”
Laura stopped the polishing routine and stood with her back to me. “You’re so young,” she murmured, sighing as she stared out of the window.
Where did that come from? Her sideswipe made me step back.
Laura turned toward me with tears in her eyes. “You still think life is simple, don’t you, Darina? Either black or white, right or wrong.”
I frowned, then nodded. “So I have opinions. So what?”
Laura brushed the tears away and picked up her cloth again. “I guess I remember being that way when I was your age.”
“But not anymore?”
“No. Right now things are way more complicated than I ever dreamed. Most days I’m walking a tightrope—should I do this, say that, jump this way, or that? Every second of every day I’m just trying to keep my balance.”
“Because of Jim?” I asked carefully. “Or because of me?”
“Because of both of you. And you know what I do, Darina? I clean the house and I go to work in the clothes store, because that way I don’t have to think.”
I shook my head slowly, meaning that was no way to live. But we’d run out of time because Jim’s car door slammed and he came into the house with the news that the whole of Ellerton was buzzing again with rumors about Foxton Ridge, and that Laura needed to ground me for at least a week for wrecking my car…and how he didn’t want any more trouble until the wild ghost stories had had time to die down and the town could get back to normal.
No way is he going to ground me.
I got this mantra going inside my head and snuck out of the house late on Sunday afternoon, the second Jim’s back was turned. Or rather, the second he fell asleep in front of the television.
I bought gas at the station where Phoenix had died then drove by Charlie Fortune’s place, expecting it to be closed Sundays, and sure enough the security gate was locked in front of the window, the gleaming Harleys stored safely behind.
This didn’t put me off tracking down Charlie because I knew where he lived—in a block of apartments overlooking the mall. Also, I’d promised Jonas I’d work on solving his crash situation before his time on the far side was up—nine days from now.
“I’ll talk to Charlie tomorrow,” I’d promised in the moonlight, up near the tree line where the pines gave way to sage scrub and bare rock. “He just might let slip a tiny fact about the work he did to fix your bike.”
Jonas had concentrated all his hopes in the intense stare he gave me before he said good-bye. “Try everything,” he whispered. “But don’t be hard on Zoey next time you see her.”
I’d nodded and kissed him on the cheek. My heart was wrung out and aching for him. I’d touched the belt buckle in my pocket then driven off.
So, braving the garbage bins and dirty elevator at the entrance to Charlie’s building was no big deal, nor was the nasty graffiti or a big guy sitting in a rickety chair, staring me up and down as I walked along the balcony to Charlie’s apartment and knocked at the door.
“What’s up?” the guy in the chair wanted to know.
“I came to see Charlie.” I gave the insultingly obvious reply.
“Not home. Only Matt.”
I wished I could take back the knock on the door. I didn’t move away in time to avoid Matt, who opened it, saw it was me, and was about to slam it in my face, then changed his mind.
“Darina, good to see you. You’re looking good,” he said, his voice loaded with insult that contradicted the words he spoke.
I didn’t blink or give him the satisfaction of a response.
“Kind of pale and tragic. It suits you,” he added.
This made me want to get back at him. “I thought you were out at Foxton with Christian. Oh no, I remember now—your big brother reeled you back in.”
He bristled. “Is that what you heard?”
“Yeah. You boys are scared of ghosts.”
“But not you, huh?” Matt suddenly came toward me, edging into my personal space, forcing me back against the balcony railing. There was a four-story drop to ground level. “From what Logan says, you’re acting weird, Darina. You spend a lot of time up there, don’t you?”
“Where I spend my time is none of Logan’s business,” I muttered, trying to duck underneath Matt’s arm.
“But Logan would like it to be.” Matt sneered, trapping me again. “I’ve seen the way he stares at you lately. But I told him, Darina looks hot but underneath she’s cold as ice. I should know.”
This did it for me. I squared up to Matt Fortune and gave it to him straight. “Hard as it is for you to believe, not every girl is ready to fall at your feet. As a matter of fact, no single girl I know is taken in by the cheesy smile and the leather jacket, not after what you did to Zoey.”
Matt’s eyelids flickered. His nose was only inches from my own. “Why? What did I do to Zoey?”
I pushed against his chest. “OK, Matt, that’s exactly what I mean. You ditch her in front of everyone—at a party, for God’s sake. And you make a move on her best friend—also in public. Yet you don’t see it as a problem.”
“Oh, that,” he snorted. “Zoey’s a drama queen.”
“And I’m the Ice Maiden.” I pushed hard and got away at last. “Have it your way, Matt. Just tell Charlie I want to talk with him, OK?”
He laughed. “You want to buy a Harley?”
“Maybe,” I retorted, walking past the guy at his door.
“Charlie’s way too old for you, Darina!” Matt yelled after me. “And way out of your league!”
“Or maybe not,” the neighbor muttered with a wink.
I ran down the stairs feeling dirty, angry, and all of three inches tall.
I was home that evening, but my head was all over the place. I was up at Foxton Ridge hearing the barn door banging all over again and over at Zoey’s house. I was remembering happy times with Summer and the unspoken pressure Logan had been putting me under lately.
But most of all I was with Phoenix: hearing his voice, feeling his arms around me, drinking in how it made me tingle and shudder.
I paced inside my room, wearing out the rug.
Phoenix: with a lock of dark hair falling over his forehead; his eyes fringed with heavy lashes; his full lips and wonderful pale skin; the small angel wings tattooed on his perfect body between his shoulder blades…and restless, unable to find peace, like me.
“I love you,” I whispered, looking out of the window toward the dark mountains, seeing the neon crucifix way in the distance on the hill.
Laura knocked on the door and came in. She’d scrubbed up for the evening—makeup and hair, white shirt with a frill down the front, black pants. “I just took a call from Brandon Rohr. Didn’t you hear the phone ring?” I shook my head. “What did he want?” I asked.
“He said to tell you he’d found you a car.”
“Jeez.” I sighed.
“How come, Darina?”
“Don’t ask me.”
“Did he promise Phoenix he’d take care of you?”
I nodded. “I guess.”
“But where did he find the car? It’s not stolen, is it?” br />
I turned my stare on her and froze her out. “Oh yeah, definitely stolen. Like, he’d give his dead brother’s girlfriend a car that could get her thrown in jail.”
“I’ll ask Jim to talk to him,” Laura stated, closing my door as my cell phone began to ring.
It was Mrs. Bishop calling from their house. “Darina, I know it’s late but can you come visit Zoey?”
“Now?” I asked.
“As soon as you can. I wouldn’t ask, but it’s important.”
“Mrs. Bishop, what’s wrong?” Her voice was breaking up.
“Bob Jonson was here earlier, putting pressure on Zoey. He was sure Zoey could remember the crash, that she was faking her memory loss. I think he’s gone a little crazy. In the end Russell told him to leave.”
“That sounds bad,” I said. I pictured Jonas’s dad hammering on the Bishops’ door, his head still sore and his memory zapped.
“My husband threw him out. Zoey was beginning to relive some of the details, but all mixed up and not making any sense.”
“Oh, but that could be good,” I gasped. It didn’t have to be me who kick-started Zoey’s memory—I would be fine with whatever it took.
Her mom didn’t agree. “We don’t want her to relive the trauma without supervision. We called Kim Reiss to see if she could come round, but it’s Sunday so she’s out of town. That’s when Zoey asked for you.”
By this time I’d left my room and was practically out of the front door, reaching for my car keys on the hook.
“Where are you going?” Jim called, clearly ready to give me a fight.
“Mom, Zoey needs me,” I replied over my shoulder, deliberately ignoring him. “I’ll be there,” I told Mrs. Bishop over the phone. “Give me ten minutes.”
“Hurry,” she said. “I’m scared. Zoey’s falling apart in front of our eyes.”
I see him!” Zoey clutched my hand as I stood beside her wheelchair and pointed across the room. “Jonas is right here, in this room!”