“What do two and two make these days?” I shouted. This time I leaned over and opened the door myself. “It’s five, isn’t it? Get out, Logan. Just get out!”
I drove out to Foxton expecting another storm.The clouds over Amos Peak were so gray and bruised that I could almost smell thunder in the air.
“Not now,” I said out loud, swinging off the highway at Foxton and heading along the side of the rushing creek. “I have an appointment with an undead overlord, so enough with the electric storms already.” I was hoping to make myself laugh. I didn’t.
A gray-haired woman sitting on the porch of one of the fishing shacks watched vacantly as I drove by. Maybe my car was the only one she’d seen all morning.
Then I was out of civilization, kicking up dust along the dirt track, swerving close to the edge and looking down on a mess of boulders, sparsely scattered with pines that had been twisted and blackened by the forest fire. Spots of heavy rain hit my windshield. Two mule deer broke cover from a willow thicket, springing across the track and disappearing down a gully. I bumped and rattled on into the mountains.
“Give me ten minutes with Hunter,” I begged the sky. “No electric storm until he’s told me his new plan.”
The sky seemed to hear me. The rain stopped falling. But the mugginess hung thick in the air, suffocating me.
“Thanks,” I muttered, pulling off the track and leaping out of the car.
Right away, before I’d even reached the top of the ridge, I felt the force field around the house of the Beautiful Dead. Those pulsating wings, millions of restless souls—where once they filled me with dread, now they made me glad, and I ran on as far as the water tower before I stopped for breath.
I dragged air into my lungs, staring down into the valley, hoping that it was Phoenix who would meet me and take me to Hunter.
But it was Iceman, whom I hardly knew. He strode up the hill to the sound of unseen creatures fluttering and hovering, his tense gaze fixed on me.
“Hunter’s waiting,” he said.
I came out from the shadow of the water tank. “Is everything OK?”
He nodded. “For as long as the storm holds off. Phoenix and Arizona are checking the weather out by Amos Peak. Hunter’s in the house.”
Together Iceman and I ran down the slope. Though he was short, he was lithe—faster than me by far. He stopped by the mended fence until I caught up.
“Sorry,” I muttered. “Lungs—legs—no good.”
“You all right?” he checked.
“Yeah, go ahead.” We jogged the last few hundred yards until we came to the house.
There, beside the old truck, with Hunter waiting for me inside, I had a sudden attack of nerves. I looked at Iceman. “Are you coming in with me?”
“No. Hunter said for you to go in alone.”
“And what Hunter says we do,” I acknowledged, stepping up onto the porch with a fluttering stomach and racing heart. Stupid me: I almost knocked on the door.
“Come in, Darina,” Hunter said before I had the chance.
I turned the handle and stepped into whatever waited for me.
Hunter sat in the chair by the stove, his back turned, his long gray hair loose over his collar. Slowly he turned his head and I saw his chiseled features in profile—strong brow, nose, and jaw, pronounced cheekbones, hair swept back, with the blurred, faded death mark on his temple. Deliberately, it seemed, he didn’t look at me.
I moved forward into the room and waited. I noticed the layers of dust on the table, the cracks in the green plates on the shelf. Hunter’s history.
After maybe two minutes, still without speaking, he turned to face me. He gazed at my face like he was studying a map—the contours, the shaded areas, the shape of my lips, and the color of my eyes.
I was deafened by the silence, choked by the hundred years of dust. “Phoenix said you have a plan,” I croaked.
Hunter stood up and towered over me. “Are you strong enough?” he wondered out loud.
I didn’t flinch, even though he could hear my heart hammering. I met his gray gaze. “Try me.”
“Can you endure pain?”
I took a sharp breath but didn’t answer.
“You don’t know yet—you’re young.”
“I lost Phoenix,” I reminded him. “Do you mean worse pain than that?”
“Stand in the light,” he ordered. “Over there by the window.”
I did as he said, wondering if this was the room where Hunter had been shot all those years ago. Maybe there was dried blood on the floor. I let my gaze wander.
“No, Mentone didn’t shoot me here. It was out on the porch,” he told me in a clear voice.
I jumped and closed my eyes. Damn it!
“Marie didn’t see it happen. She was here in the house. Don’t tell me you’re sorry.”
“I wouldn’t do that.” I opened my eyes with a sigh.
“Why do you wear your hair short?” Hunter suddenly asked.
The personal question threw me almost more than anything else. “To be different,” I whispered.
“Oh, Darina, you’re different for sure,” he said, smiling as if I had amused him. “I’m going to take a risk,” he decided. “I’ve watched your dealings with Matt Fortune—a little clumsy at times, as Arizona predicted. But gutsy.”
“Thanks. I think.” The thudding at my ribs was lessening. I was able to breathe.
“The question is—is Matt the right guy?”
“Of course he is!” I cried, forgetting to be scared. “I can’t get him to admit it, but I’m certain he was mixed up in Jonas’s crash. Aren’t you?”
Hunter didn’t react right away. He thought hard. “Matt Fortune is a pretty extreme guy,” he said, more to himself than to me. “Difficult to like. But that doesn’t make him a killer.”
“So why does Zoey get nightmares about him?” I asked. “Why does he blow a fuse when I put pressure on him?”
Hunter frowned. “That’s the risk I’m taking—that you’re right on this, that Matt was involved.”
If my resolve was going to break, this was the moment. I felt Hunter’s gaze drill through me, looking for that weak spot.
“If you’re wrong, we waste Jonas’s last chance.”
I swallowed hard. “I’m not wrong.”
“Then this is the plan,” Hunter explained.
“What we need is to create a replica of the crash situation.”
Once Hunter had shared his plan with me, we waited for Phoenix and Arizona to come back from Amos Peak. Then he called for Jonas, Summer, Iceman, Eve, and Donna to join us in a “vital meeting”—his words.
The moment Phoenix walked into the house, I’d felt a rush of warmth, as if the sun had come out after months of rain. I bathed in his presence, my spirit at ease. Him too: his face lit up when he saw me.
“We need Matt there, riding the highway on his Harley as close to Turkey Shoot Ridge as we can get him,” Hunter said.
“That’s easy,” Arizona agreed. “We wait for him to lead the memorial procession on Tuesday.”
“Exactly twelve months after the event,” Summer added. She stood close to Jonas as if to support him. “So we’re cutting it pretty fine.”
“And what does Darina have to do between now and then?” Phoenix wanted to know.
“Lie low,” Hunter assured him. “Don’t worry, she won’t put herself into any more danger before Tuesday.”
Phoenix held my hand. His was big and broad. Mine was small, nestling inside his, our fingers laced together. “Then what?” he asked.
“Then she plays a catalyst role.” Hunter’s voice didn’t shift from the calm, authoritative note he always used. “Darina already knows what she has to do.”
“I’ll be part of the procession,” I told Phoenix. “Either following in my car or riding on one of the bikes—I’m not sure yet. We’ll all drive slowly out of town. When we reach the place by the neon cross, where the back road branches off, I’ll come alongside Matt a
nd challenge him.”
I felt Phoenix grip my hand tighter. “Challenge him?” he echoed. I could feel him trying to control his anxiety.
“I say something to him that will make him flip. Something linked with Jonas’s crash. I throw him so far off balance that he leaves the procession and chases me.”
“No way!” Phoenix protested. He stepped right up to Hunter. “I won’t let you do that—it’s way too dangerous.”
Arizona took half a step forward to tell him to back off. Summer put her hand to her mouth. Jonas and the others looked stunned.
Hunter tilted his head back, gathered himself, then silenced Phoenix by zapping his strength so that his legs buckled and he sank to the floor. “Any other objections?” he demanded.
Phoenix dragged himself onto his knees and I ran to him. “It’s OK—I’ve already said I’d do it. I want to do it—for Jonas.”
“Phoenix agrees with Hunter’s plan—don’t you, Phoenix?” It was Arizona who put the words into his mouth and carried us all forward. “How does it go from there, Darina?”
“I lead Matt a short way up the track to where Hunter’s waiting. There’s the three of us—Hunter, me, and Matt.” I took a deep breath before I delivered the crunch idea. “That’s when we travel back in time.”
“Exactly twelve months.” Hunter left Phoenix helpless on the floor and fixed his gaze on Jonas. “Same time, same place.”
“You take them both back—Matt and Darina?” Jonas checked. “They get to time travel?”
“Seeing is believing,” Hunter nodded.
“Does she know how much it hurts?” Summer interrupted. Doubtful glances flew around the room. Hunter was hitting more resistance than I’d ever seen before.
“I know. He told me,” I insisted. “This is my decision. I also know that we do this alone: Hunter, Matt, and me.”
When he heard this, Phoenix struggled to his feet. He swayed from side to side, trying to stay upright. “I want to be there,” he muttered through his pain.
“No, just Hunter, Matt, and me. Because it takes a huge effort to transport us back through time,” I went on, holding Phoenix by both arms to steady him. “The more people he carries back with him, the more it drains his energy and the more it hurts—you know that.”
“Darina’s right,” Summer said softly. “You do know it, Phoenix.”
He bowed his head, hating to give in but seeing there was no other way.
“So, Darina, Jonas’s eternal future is down to you and you alone,” Arizona said with her usual edge. “Wowee-zowee, Jonas, that sure makes a person stop and think!”
I spent the afternoon with the Beautiful Dead.
I say that without thinking twice about it, like it was normal. Like I’d done it all my life.
The sky had cleared and was an intense blue.The storm had passed us by. Or maybe my weather prayer really had worked.
Something bigger than a kite—an eagle maybe—soared over Phoenix and me as we followed Iceman to a hidden hollow beside the creek where a stack of logs was piled high, ready for winter fires.
“This is the best place to fish,” Iceman told me. “From the rock in the middle of the creek, early in the morning, just after the sun rises.”
I couldn’t resist stepping across stones to reach the rock, spreading my arms wide and inviting Phoenix to join me.
He shook his head. Since the argument with Hunter he’d been quiet, even distant—an emotional separation that was driving me crazy.
“It’s wonderful!” I cried, standing in the sun with the clear water whirling and bubbling around me. “Hey, I can see fish!”
Brown shadows underwater—round, unblinking eyes, fat, speckled bodies, and quick, flicking tails. I lay down on the rock for a better view.
When I looked up, Phoenix was with me and Iceman had disappeared.
“Why is Iceman called Iceman?” I asked with a bright smile that said You came across to be near me!
“He climbed mountains,” Phoenix told me. “Fourteeners—way above the snow line.”
“With crampons and ice axes and all that stuff?” Climbing a fourteen thousand-foot mountain in the snow wasn’t my thing, though I knew people who did it.
Phoenix nodded. “One day his rope broke and he fell. They never found his body. That’s why he’s here with us.”
I shivered and moved in closer. “Let’s talk about sunshine sparkling on the water, fat fish waiting to be caught. You and me.”
“Let’s not talk,” he said, kissing me instead.
Warmth, light, and love. Before Tuesday. Before I took the giant step back through time for Jonas.
On the scale of stuff that makes me nervous, this scored way higher than anything else I’d ever done. I could probably sky dive for a nine out of ten, take a flight in a spaceship for ten. But this—traveling back in time—was eleven for sure.
Tuesday after school. Jonas Day.
“Darina, you look awful,” Laura told me when I went to see her in the store after I drove back from Foxton. “Has something bad happened?”
I shook my head. I’d spent my paradise time with Phoenix by the creek, like ordinary lovers—sharing, smiling, holding, touching, not needing to talk. Wishing we were ordinary, not this crazy mix of real and unreal, human and half human.
“This is how it would have been,” I’d sighed, nestling against him. If you hadn’t got yourself killed.
“This is how it is,” he’d replied.
Then we’d done our sweet sorrow parting thing without the sweetness.
“I have to walk you to your car now.” Phoenix had stood up from the bank and offered me his hand.
“Says who?” I’d looked around and there’d been no one there.
“Hunter,” Phoenix had replied.
“Hunter!” I’d said in the same instant. The overlord.
Phoenix pushed out his bottom lip and grimaced. “He says it’s time to say good-bye.”
I’d stood up slowly. “Until when?”
“Until after Tuesday, when it’s over.” He’d led the way along the creek, occasionally glancing over his shoulder to check that I was following.
Again I’d felt a distance between us. I’d run to catch up. “Does that mean I can’t come here before then?”
Phoenix had stopped by a tall, smooth boulder whose granite surface sparkled with flecks of white. He’d leaned back against it, hands in his pockets, looking up at the sky. “Here’s the deal—from the way Summer explains it, we need to rest up. Every time, before something big happens, we keep a low profile, hoping that we don’t have to use too much energy, just concentrating and building up to what we have to do.”
“So time travel is big, even for the Beautiful Dead?” I’d quizzed, my stomach flipping and churning like the fish in the creek.
“Next to the first journey from limbo back here to the far side, it’s the biggest,” he’d admitted. “It takes a whole lot of power—that’s why Hunter only uses it after he’s tried everything else, a kind of end game.”
Deep breaths. Keep calm. I’d put on my brave smile for him. “What about you? Do you think that’s really where we’re at?”
Phoenix hadn’t replied. Instead, he’d put his arms around me and held me tighter than he meant to, his lips against the top of my head, rocking me gently back and forth.
“You didn’t crash your new car?” Laura asked me now, to account for how pale and shaky I looked.
I clicked my tongue against my teeth.
“You had a fight with Jim?” she guessed.
“No, honestly, Mom, I’m good.” I’d driven down from Foxton and drifted aimlessly into the store. Now I was beginning to wish I hadn’t. Besides putting myself under Laura’s Spanish Inquisition, I’d spotted a gang of kids from school pulling up in the parking lot, including Lucas, Jordan, and Matt. I dodged into a nearby changing cubicle to make sure they didn’t see me.
Laura didn’t let up. “Since when did you fight with Jordan?” she wan
ted to know, nosily peering through the window and jumping to the wrong conclusion. “I thought you two were close.”
“We are. It’s not her, it’s Matt.” And, with a neat, swift piece of topic-changing footwork that I was getting so good at, I let Laura into some of my reasons for keeping my distance from Matt Fortune. “He always made trouble between me and Zoey. Plus, he’s an asshole.”
“Darina!” Laura glanced around to see if any customers had overheard.
“He is. He made a fool of himself the other day, shouting and turning nasty when I said something he didn’t like.”
Laura’s jaw dropped. “What do you mean, he turned nasty? Was he mean? Did he fight with you?”
I nodded. “He just acted like a crazy person. Everyone was staring. Luckily, Brandon was there.”
Stung once, twice, three times. One, Matt was violent. Two, he publicly humiliated me. Three, Brandon Rohr was involved. Laura reeled from the shock. “When was this exactly? Where’s my phone? I need to call Jim.”
Feeling smug for distracting Laura, I made my way out of the store—only to bump into Logan, who was hanging out in the mall with Christian.
There was an awkward silence between Logan and me until Christian filled it with stuff about my new car and his next fight in the Senior High Middleweight League, coming up next Thursday in North Carolina.
“That’s two days after Jonas’s memorial deal,” Christian reminded me, as if I needed it. “My trainer gave me the time off to be there.”
“Along with the whole of Ellerton High.” Logan said he’d run into one of the school professors, who’d told him the teaching staff planned to attend—even Dr. Valenti. “Everyone loved Jonas,” he added. “We all miss him.”
I could have picked that up and run with it. You mean, not everyone loved Phoenix. Not everyone misses him? But I didn’t have the energy. So I smiled at Christian, wished him luck with his training, and walked on, making the excuse that I had to pick up a message on my phone. Which was true.
The text was from Zoey and it read, Mom driving me 2 mall. Meet at Starlite in 5.
I was stunned. I felt as if I’d already done the time jump and the Zoey in the message was the one I’d known before the crash. Zoey was coming to the mall on a Saturday afternoon. She wanted to meet up in the same old place.