Eternity (23 page)

“We like telling stories,” Ali said with a shrug. “And we’re pretty good at it, huh?”

The sensation of cold gripped JD even tighter. “Leave us alone,” he said, inching sideways toward the front door. “Leave us the
hell
alone. What are we, some sort of sick little game to you?”

“A game? Hardly. You know as well as anyone that this is
dead
serious,” she said. With that, she stepped aside with a flourish, gesturing to the foyer. “Now get out, before Ty gets any more ideas.”

He didn’t wait for her to change her mind.

I wade waist-deep into a red sea. Above me, the moon cuts the sky with its sharp sliver. . . . Is the sky bleeding? Is this blood I’m marching through? No. Not blood, not sea . . . flowers. Swaying their scarlet petals. Tiny seeds eyeing me. Elegant stems reaching upward. A sharp sweetness all around me. A whole garden of them around my ankles, like children pressing toward their mother. I can feel their cool breath. Exhaling. They are alive. They are evil.

Em was swimming somewhere between the darkness of dreaming and the clarity of wakefulness.

I know this place, I know this hunger. I’m looking for something, something . . . What is it? I stumble through the sea of red, suffocating in its power. Dizzy. My whole body shaking.

Evil. Evil is everywhere. This is my last chance.

“Fire!” someone yells. “Fire!”

Suddenly all the flowers are on fire. The garden has burst into flames in front of me. The air is yawning with smoke and I am no longer alone. It is hot, hotter than hell. Hotter than . . .

“Fire!”

The sounds become more and more frantic. The yelling, the sensation of being choked by smoke and heat. The moon is raining fire. A high-pitched wailing, deafeningly loud . . .

Then, hands were on her—on her shoulders, shaking her fully awake. Someone was screaming.

“Emily! Wake up! Emily! Fire!”

She looked fuzzy-eyed into her mother’s face, etched with worry and fear, yelling into her ear as she tugged Em from her bed. The wailing pierced her ears and the smoke made her eyes water. She coughed, feeling the air come up raw through her throat. Was this it? Was the transformation happening already? Was she dying?

Panic tore through Em’s body and she snapped wide-awake, tingling with fever. She sat up, breathing hard, letting her mom pull her across the room.

“There’s a fire, Em—we’ve got to get out,” her mom said as they made their way down the hallway, which was slowly filling with smoke, coiling like dark snakes.

The fire was real. In her house. That was a fire alarm she was hearing. That was real smoke she was breathing in. It was sticking
to her. To her face, to her skin, to her sweatpants and tank top. This was real.

Fire.

“Come on! Get out!” Em’s dad met them at the bottom of the stairs, wild with panic. “Susan! Grab her!”

And just as Em and her mother slipped out the front door, she saw flames licking around the corner of the kitchen door.

Out on the lawn, the fresh air bit cleanly against her lungs. She gulped it down gratefully. It was damp and surprisingly humid outside; it contrasted with the dry smoke inside she had just escaped. She followed her parents to the shelter of the oak tree near the end of the driveway and turned to survey the scene. Here, the wailing was even louder. Two fire trucks were already zooming down the street, screeching to a halt in front of the house.

Seeing them reminded Em of Spring Fling, of Drea’s death, and made her stomach turn in terror. She crouched down, feeling too unsteady to stand up straight.

Her mom kneeled beside her and rubbed her back. “Are you okay?”

“Yes,” she said. She cleared her throat. “Yes,” she said again, a little louder.

There was the slipping, desperate sensation then—she’d woken from a dream and felt it instantly fading into the backstage of her consciousness. She squeezed her eyes open and shut as if she could seal in the memory.

In a trance, she watched the firefighters, heavy with gear, run toward the house with thick hoses. She watched her father put his arm around her mom and lead her across the grass. Watched the Founts, all four of them, come flowing out of their house. Watched JD scan the crowd and stop when his eyes fell on her. Watched the police car pull up behind the firemen and start asking her parents questions.

She saw it all, but couldn’t process it.

Her house was on fire. She could barely see any flames from her vantage point, but she could see smoke billowing off of it like steam rising from a teakettle.

There was movement on the side of the house and Em turned, expecting to see another firefighter emerge from the bushes. But it wasn’t a man in uniform who rounded the corner.

It was Crow, unmistakably—wearing a leather jacket and beat-up jeans—stumbling toward her. Ignoring the quizzical looks that followed him as he crossed the lawn, he came straight to her.

She stood up to meet him.

“You’re not hurt,” he said.

“I’m fine.”

He swept her into a hug, and she didn’t resist. She felt like a spectator, standing outside herself.

“I had another vision,” he whispered into her hair, and now she could smell the alcohol—whiskey, or maybe rum. “I saw smoke. . . . I had to come here.”

She pushed away, fully seeing what was happening from the outside. “Why are you here?”

“I told you,” he said, annoyed at having to repeat himself. “I saw this. I came.” Once again, she smelled alcohol on his breath. Beer.

“Hey—hey you.” A police officer approached. Em prayed he wouldn’t come too close.

Crow disengaged and turned to face the officer. “What?”

The police officer was staring at him suspiciously. “What’s your name, kid?”

“Colin,” Crow answered, shoving his hands into the pockets of his jacket. “I’m—I’m a friend.”

The officer, whose brass nametag read
D. GOUDREAU
, glanced to Em for confirmation.

She nodded, still in a daze. “It’s true,” she said.
Please cooperate,
she begged Crow in her mind.
Please don’t make things worse.

“And why are you here?” Goudreau’s pencil was poised above a small notebook. Em’s senses started to kick back in, one by one. The air was tinged with the chemical scent of firefighting foam mixed with acrid smoke.

“I was—I was just dropping by,” Crow stuttered. They all heard how feeble the excuse sounded. Em shifted uncomfortably from one foot to the other, feeling the night breeze whisper along her bare arms.

“You two boyfriend and girlfriend?” Goudreau asked.

Em sensed eyes on her; she looked up to see her parents staring at her and Crow from where they were standing in a clump with the Founts.

“No,” she said quickly. “Nothing like that.”

“Uh-huh?” The cop wrote something down in his little book, seemingly unconvinced.

“No, sir,” Crow said, speaking in a clipped tone Em had never heard come out of his mouth. “We’re just friends, and I was just coming over because . . . just to visit.”

The officer looked Crow up and down. “You were coming over in the middle of the night? Strange timing, huh?”

It
was
strange timing, that much was true. Em didn’t want to consider the implications of what Goudreau was implying.

“What do you mean?” Crow’s eyes narrowed.

“Just what I said. It’s a pretty good coincidence that you
stopped by
while there was a fire going on.”

“Look, you want to accuse me of something?” Crow took a menacing step forward.

“Crow, stop,” Em said, putting a hand on his arm. A snap of electricity went through her fingers. “Officer, Crow—Colin, I mean—Colin is just my friend. And he stopped by. That’s all.”

Mr. Winters appeared behind them. “Is everything all right here?”

“I’m just trying to figure out why this
friend
of your daughter’s is skulking around in your yard in the middle of the night,”
Officer Goudreau said. “Right before a fire almost takes down your whole house. Reeking like he just came from Eddie’s Tavern.”

“Well, I think the morning is as good a time as any to figure that out,” Em’s dad said, giving Crow a quick—and disapproving—glance.  “I think we’d all like to go inside and warm up.  Our neighbors have offered us their guest room for the night.”

Em turned to see her mom walking in the Founts’ front door, looking curiously in their direction.

But Crow wanted to have the last word. “Sorry to disappoint,
Officer
,” Crow sneered. “But I wasn’t at Eddie’s. But maybe you just came from there yourself?”

Goudreau reared his head, pissed off. “Don’t mess with me, boy,” he said.

“How about you not call me ‘boy’?” Crow countered. As he spoke, he pitched slightly to the left, like he’d been pushed by an invisible force.

Em’s father cleared his throat and Em dropped her head, mortified and angry. Why did Crow do this all the time? She wanted to slap it out of him—and pray he’d just shut the hell up.

“These goddamn kids,” Goudreau said, more to Em’s dad than to anyone else. Then, to Crow: “I’ll be in touch.” He stalked off into the night.

Once he’d gone, they made an odd, awkward trio—Em, her dad, and Crow, standing silently on the lawn. Firefighters milled
around the yard, shouting to one another and trudging back and forth between their trucks and the house.

“Well, the fire seems to be out,” Mr. Winters said. “Didn’t get upstairs, thank god. Just the kitchen and the laundry room, mostly. Dryer lint, they said.”

“That’s lucky,” Crow said. His voice was back to normal—slow, disinterested, and slightly slurred. He nodded quickly at Em and her dad, barely lifting his eyes from the ground. “Sorry for the trouble, Emily. You too, sir. See you soon.” Without another word, turned to leave. She was terrified he’d find more trouble tonight. Was he driving? What if he just wandered off to find another fight?

“I’m not even going to ask, Emily,” her father said as they watched Crow stumbling across their front yard toward the street. She felt like he was spiraling away from her, and had the powerful sense that she was on the brink of losing him to something terrible. The darkness was eating away at him; it was obvious. And Em couldn’t help but feel it was her fault. If she’d managed to get rid of the Furies, maybe he’d be getting better instead of worse.

“There’s been enough excitement tonight,” her dad went on, putting his arm around her shoulders and leading her toward JD’s house. She stole one final look behind her, but Crow had already been enveloped by the shadows of the woods.

The adrenaline was wearing off slowly. Inside, Mrs. Fount
fluttered around the kitchen, making tea and clucking about
the terrible luck
. JD, in sweatpants and a cardigan, had hopped up to sit on the kitchen counter. Em leaned in the doorway and tried to avoid eye contact with him, which was next to impossible. Every time she looked up, he was staring at her—and every time, she shifted her eyes away immediately.

She couldn’t get the visions from her dream out of her mind. How realistic they’d been—the flames, the smoke, the sense of panic.

“Thank you so much for the hospitality,” Em’s mom said. “We won’t really be able to assess the damage until tomorrow.”

“Don’t mention it, Sue,” JD’s dad said, coming into the kitchen with a pile of extra linens in his arms. “I’ll set up the guest room for you two down here. Em, Mel’s already gone back to bed, but you can have JD’s room.”

“Oh no, that’s fine,” she said hurriedly. “I’ll be fine down here on the couch.” No way was she going to boot JD out of his own bedroom. No way was she going to fall asleep on his sheets while he sat down here, probably hating her. No way in hell.

“I already set things up for myself down here,” JD said, cocking his head toward the den. “You look exhausted. You’ll get a better night’s sleep upstairs.”

She was too tired even to be offended by the fact that he said she looked tired. Of course that didn’t mean she would be able
to sleep. But at least she could lie down and think. For the first time that night, she allowed herself look him straight in the eyes. “Thank you,” she said. “I think I’ll head up now, actually.”

JD jumped off the counter. “I’ll make sure you have everything you need.”

Once they were out of earshot, Em turned to him and said in a low voice: “You don’t have to do this. I’m fine.”

He kept following her, up the stairs and into his bedroom. “We need to talk,” he said, closing the door behind him. “I’m glad you’re okay. But now that I’ve got you here, there are some questions I need you to answer. Not about the fire.”

“Does it have to be right now?” Em’s voice was trembling. “I’m so tired—I’ve been dealing with so much. . . . ”

“Yes,” he said, pushing his glasses up his nose. “I’ve noticed.” The way he looked right now . . . so focused, so concerned. It made her want to burrow into his arms and stay there forever. “And I think I know what’s been going on.”

No, you don’t,
she thought.
You can’t.

“But I want you to tell me,” he said.

She sat on the bed with a thud. “What do you mean?” She looked down at her hands.

“You’ve been keeping things from me. Big things.” He stood in front of her and took her face in his hands. They were bigger than she would have thought they’d be; his fingers spanned the length of her cheek. He smelled like something spicy. Like
Christmas. She couldn’t take it. His kindness. His hands. How good it felt to sit in his room.

The tears rolled up her throat like a bowling ball coming full-force toward its pins. She clapped her hand over her mouth to stifle a sob. Hot tears began to fall from her eyes.
Yes.
She nodded wordlessly.
Yes.
She leaned over against the pillows, cries smashing through her body. Her body curled in an effort to control the spasms that shook through her.

He sat down next to her. She felt his warmth. When he placed his hand on her shoulder, soothing her, stroking her, it was like her skin was melting beneath his touch.