“Tell me! The guy was an amateur. You put Jonas Jonson and me in a competition and I’d outride him every time.”
I held my breath. “Did you ever do it—race him, I mean? Did you win?”
“What do you think?” Matt gave me his so clever answer. “Face it—am I going to admit it to you, even if I did?”
“Oh, I get it—it’s illegal.” Reel him in, slowly, slowly. Accept the dirty hand creeping along my collar bone. “You’re talking speed limits and crap like that. So, did you anyway?”
Slow thoughts clunked through Matt’s brain, flashing up a security alert. High risk. Delete.
“Don’t answer that,” I laughed. But it was too late.
Matt stood up so suddenly that his knees crashed into the underside of the table and spilled the coffees. “You don’t trap me that way, you little ho!”
Whoa! The whole diner listened in. The nearest customers got up from their seats. The waitress picked up the phone.
“Shitty ho!” Matt yelled. Jealousy and now raw anger—so not attractive. He yanked me along the bench into the aisle and began to shove me towards the door.
How much money would you put on an ordinary Joe stepping in to save me? You’re right—keep your dough in your wallet. Gazes were quickly averted. Even the waitress held back on the emergency call.
We were out on the sidewalk, Matt was still yelling at me, the verbal abuse quickly turning physical as he shoved me against a row of shopping trolleys in the bay outside the grocery store.
“Nasty, little slut!” Matt was running out of insults, repeating himself and working up to the point where he would gladly step on me and crush my skull like a bird’s egg unless I made a run for it.
Shaken by his thick voice and violent strength, I managed to dodge between trolleys and duck out of the bay, then start to run to my car. Behind me I heard the wire trolleys crash and thought that Matt had entangled himself until I reached the car and turned to look back, which is when I saw Brandon dragging Matt free of the bay and holding him by the neck.
“You even touch her and you’re dead!” Brandon yelled and the whole world heard.
And now Matt didn’t look strong, he didn’t look cool. He was a puppet dangling in Brandon’s grasp, pressed up against the grocery store window, unable to say a word.
It was way past time to ask myself some basic questions. Am I out of my depth, not waving but drowning? Have I messed up so badly that now I’ll never be able to get the answers to Jonas’ questions?
Midnight is the hour for losing your nerve, especially after the latest fight I’d had with Laura two hours earlier.
“What happened to us, Darina?… We were so close… When did the whole thing fall apart?” Boo-hoo, I’m dying here!
I was still shaking from the Matt Fortune episode so I let her get to me. I was crying too and saying sorry and then Laura was saying sorry and we ended up clinging to each other and promising to try harder on both sides. She went out happy to a late night movie. I felt crappy.
Darina, you did this ail wrong, I told myself in the darkness of my room. You made an enemy out of Matt Fortune. You thought you were smarter and stronger than it turns out you are. You think you can handle communing with zombies, for God’s sake!
I was even asking myself whether it would have worked out better if I’d never heard the barn door banging out at Foxton, and never found Phoenix again. I pulled the pillow over my face, trying but failing to block out that stupid question. When I pushed it off again, I felt someone else in the room.
“Who is it?” I whispered.
Shadows moved along the walls. There was no sound—only the sense of quiet breathing and eyes watching. Maybe wings beating softly—I couldn’t be sure.
“Phoenix, is it you?”
“Do you want me to leave?” he asked.
I could hear him but not see him. “So now what—you’re reading my mind?”
“Yes,” he admitted. “If you want me to, I can go and never come back.”
“Phoenix Rohr, don’t you dare!” I jumped off the bed and switched on the light.
“You materialize, or whatever it is you do, right here, right now!”
I was looking in the wrong direction when it started to happen, so when I turned towards the door I saw a shimmery outline gradually filling in with detail—Phoenix’s lean body, his pale face and dark hair, and at last those all-seeing grey-blue eyes.
“Do you really wish you’d never found me again?” was his first, hurt question.
I’d never seen him like this—doubtful and holding back until I set his mind at rest.
“Me and my lousy thoughts.” I sighed. “I was lying alone in the dark. I was like a scared kid, that’s all.”
Phoenix shook his head and stayed by the door. “I can understand if you did.”
“No. I was feeling crappy. I didn’t mean it.” Please believe me!
“Darina, you’ve done so much already. But you still have a choice. If you wanted to step away now, no one would blame you. Hunter will come if I call him. He’s given the order that he’s the only one who can do the memory thing on you. He’d do it and you’d forget all about us.”
Now I was really afraid—not little-kid-in-the-middle-of-the-night scared. My heart was hammering against my ribcage. “And then what? How would Jonas get where he wants to be? He only has till Tuesday!”
“That’s not your problem.” Finally Phoenix came towards me and took both my hands. “If Hunter works on you, you won’t feel bad. And, like I told you before, you’ll still have those great memories of you and me before…” He faltered, looking so grave and gentle, his hands trembling as they held mine.
I looked deep into his eyes. “OK, Mister Mind-reader, what do you see?”
I want to be with you. I never want to leave you. What you say about love is true. It’s in everything we touch and see. Stay with me.
Slowly a smile appeared on Phoenix’s face and a light came into his eyes. “I understand,” he said.
9
We sat on my bed, Phoenix and I, and for what seemed like a lifetime there was no need to talk.
“Did you finally learn how to stop the world?” I asked at last.
“Would you like me to?”
“Yes.”
“One stationary world coming up,” he grinned and snapped his fingers.
“Make that with fries, no mayo.” We fell back laughing. In his arms, under his loving protection, I’d never felt safer.
“So, Brandon did his tough guy thing,” I told Phoenix, snuggled face to face, limbs intertwined. “I guess you saw what happened at the diner?”
Phoenix let go of me and lay on his back, one arm behind his head. “That’s what Brandon does.”
“Was that how come he ended up in jail?” I’d always been curious about this, but a criminal record is like an embarrassing illness—if you’re polite and well behaved you don’t ask. Now though, I wanted to know a little more.
Phoenix gazed at my ceiling. “Yeah, something like that.”
“For fighting?”
“When he was still at school, he got way out of line—with Mom, with his teachers—usually just kidding around. But by the time he left, he was angry.”
“What changed?”
Phoenix shifted position. Now he had both hands behind his head. “Brandon grew up, or he didn’t, depending on how you look at it. He was strong physically and he had a short fuse. A couple of guys wound him up real tight over a girl, lying and saying he was a cradle-snatcher, that she was under age. He snapped.”
“A girl!” I wasn’t expecting this. “I only ever see Brandon hanging out with guys—”
“That’s the reason,” Phoenix half smiled. “Currently, in his mind girls equal trouble. Mess with them and you end up in a correctional facility for nine months.”
“Whereas, if you mess with guys, you make sure you have bigger muscles and it all works out.” I got the picture. “Whatever. One thing’s for
sure—he’s living up to his promise.”
“To take care of you,” Phoenix rolled back towards me, leaning on one elbow and gazing at me. “I need you to promise me something.”
“Sure.”
“If you still want to be in on the deal, don’t trust Matt Fortune. Stay totally away from him—OK?”
“Sure!” Nothing easier. “He’s a jerk,” I muttered through gritted teeth. “He doesn’t have much of a brain, but enough to see where I was leading, at which point his guilty conscience kicked in and he lost control.”
Phoenix frowned. “Did you learn anything new?”
I nodded. “He wouldn’t admit it, but I think he raced Jonas on his Harley -maybe to big himself up in front of Zoey.”
Phoenix waited for more, looking at me as if he could sift through my jumbled thoughts and catalogue them into alphabetical order, which I guess he really could.
“I put the race thing to him as an idea and it pushed his buttons,” I explained. “That’s why he’ll never trust me again.”
“That, and Brandon.”
“Which leaves us nowhere,” I sighed. “Except, I got home with Matt Fortune’s paw prints all over me and I had to jump in the shower.”
“Sorry,” Phoenix said again. And we were silent, just holding each other again, until the front door clicked and Laura walked in with Jim.
I heard their relaxed voices, plus sounds that meant they were making a hot drink in the kitchen, with Jim saying the coffee would keep them awake and Laura saying that staying awake seemed like a good idea, then laughing in that certain way.
“We have to keep our voices down,” I warned Phoenix. “You can hear how thin these walls are.”
“I have something important to tell you,” he whispered, sitting up on the bed and swinging his legs over the side. I sat next to him. “Hunter has a new plan.”
“Good. Because I don’t.” I was hitting my head against a wall when Phoenix appeared, remember.
Letting his clasped hands hang between his knees, Phoenix thought long and hard. “Maybe good, maybe bad,” he warned quietly. “This new plan—he’s keeping it from us. I think it’s so we don’t discuss it until he’s ready.”
“Yeah, Hunter’s a true democrat.”
“He’s the overlord. He wants to see you,” Phoenix told me uneasily. “Tomorrow—early.”
“I’ll be there,” I agreed.
Then Laura and Jim came upstairs and it was time for Phoenix to leave. He kissed me hard on the lips then stepped back and went into himself, turning his concentration inwards—it’s hard to say exactly how. Only, I knew he was still visible but his mind had gone, and soon the shimmering thing happened again, and I lost the details as a haze gathered and the wings fluttered, until he dissolved and the room was empty.
There was no chance of sleeping after that.
I lay awake and focused on the night life outside my window—black squirrels scrabbling over the roof, redwood boughs creaking. At dawn a pair of blue jays settled on the porch rail below.
I got dressed quietly and waited for Jim to drive Laura to the store—my only way of getting out of the house without having to answer the usual questions and run the risk of either of them picking up the fact that I was extra jumpy this morning and then have them giving me the third degree.
Honestly, I was so nervous I couldn’t make my fingers fasten my shirt buttons or zip up my plaid skirt.
Anyway, I made my escape in the convertible and I thought I was clear until I was halfway down my street and Logan stepped out from behind the open trunk of his car.
“Why so early?” he asked in a cheery, neighbourly way. Sometimes Logan Lavelle is seventeen going on seventy.
I had to brake hard to avoid him. “Logan, I could’ve run you down!” I yelled. Not now, Logan, please!
“Don’t you know it’s Saturday? No school.”
“Ha-ha. So I’m up early. So what?”
“No, it’s good,” he said, wiping his hands on an old towel then throwing it in the trunk. “I need a ride into town to buy oil for the engine.”
I groaned inwardly. Hunter, the overlord of the Beautiful Dead had summoned me, and here I was, involved in grease and motor oil. But it was easier to say the usual yes to Logan than a suspicion-arousing no. “Jump in,” I told him.
“Did you do that science homework? And did you know Lucas finally agreed to date Jordan?” It was the old Logan, running on like a train, talking about nothing. “And guess what—Bob Jonson was here at my house until two a.m. I thought he was never going to leave.”
“Were he and your dad drinking all that time?” It was a short run into town and it wasn’t taking me out of my way through Centennial.
“Pretty much. My dad can hold his liquor, but not Bob. They had to call a taxi to take him home.”
“That’s not nice,” I muttered. I knew Logan could buy oil at the gas station so I pulled in. “It’s kind of muggy today—no wind,” I complained.
Logan ignored my weather comment. “The poor guy couldn’t stand up. They sat right under my window, drinking, talking, drinking. It was all about Jonas.”
“Poor guy,” I echoed. I need to go, Logan. Get out of the car!
“And stuff about Foxton,” Logan went on. Which is when I began to suspect an ulterior motive on his part. Logan studied my face closely as he went on with the next part of his speech. “It didn’t make much sense, but Bob’s convinced he can find Jonas up there on the ridge. He swears he’s seen him.”
“How drunk was he?” I muttered, pressing the button to unlock Logan’s door. No way was he about to draw me in.
Logan’s stubborn streak came into play. “Maybe there’s something in it. Bob Jonson would stake his life on it.”
“My shrink says that’s what we do—we imagine seeing people we’ve just lost. They pop up and we think they’re real flesh and blood. Sometimes we even talk with them.”
“Shrink?” This was the first Logan had heard of it and I intended for him to be shocked, to sidetrack him.
I nodded. “It was Laura’s idea. Because of Phoenix. Who’d have thought it -that she’d pay out for therapy?”
“Darina, I had no idea.”
“The point is, people with PTSD imagine things, and that’s what Jonas’ Dad is doing. He doesn’t need alcohol, he needs help.”
“Suppose it’s true,” Logan insisted, leaning back in his seat and turning his head towards me. Now he was definitely testing my reactions. “Suppose Jonas isn’t really dead.”
I shivered. “Logan, they buried him, remember. There was an autopsy -everything!”
He took a deep breath. “So what do you think is happening up there? Do we really have to start believing in ghosts?”
I closed my eyes. “Believe what you like, Logan. I have to go.”
“To Foxton?” he muttered under his breath.
I slammed my hand on the rim of the steering wheel. “What did you say?”
“Forget it. You spend a lot of time up there, that’s all.”
“How do you know? Are you following me?”
“Why are you mad at me, Darina? I don’t get it.”
“I’m not mad,” I yelled. “Logan, do you want to buy engine oil, or not?”
He made another tactical swerve. “Since Phoenix passed, you act like you hate all guys. You push me away, and you’ve known me all your life. You say something to Matt that turns him crazy—yeah, I heard about that.”
“I say something to Matt!” Now I was practically screaming. “You know something? This town sucks! You only have to breathe and someone is spreading bad rumours about you. Get out of my car, Logan. Now!”
His face looked stunned as he registered what I’d said. “I’m sorry, Darina—I didn’t mean…”
I breathed out heavily. “So what did you mean, Logan? Let me tell you something—Matt Fortune jumped on me and Brandon Rohr saved me. End of story.”
“Brandon Rohr.” Logan picked up a different trai
l. His eyes went back to being angry.
“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 grey 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 a zombie overlord, so enough with the electric storms already!”
A grey-haired woman sitting on the porch of one of the fishing shacks watched vacantly as I drove by. Maybe I was the only car she’d seen all morning.
Then I was out of civilization, raising dust along the dirt track, swerving close to the edge and looking down on a mess of scree and boulders, sparsely scattered with pines which 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, sprang across the track and disappeared down a gulley. 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.
“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, who 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.”