Infatuate (36 page)

“Who knows what this is.”

“Give him my love. Take care of yourselves. I love you, sweetie.”

“Love you. Bye.” I hung up the phone.

Dante stood there, hands on his waist. “You can see me?” he asked in disbelief.

“What’s going on with you?”

He held an eyedropper and squeezed a bit of liquid into his hands, coating them and shaking out his arms and legs. “Can you see me now?”

“Yes.”

He squeezed more liquid, this time rubbing his hands all over his body, as though trying to shake off a swarm of bees. “What about now?” He wasn’t even a hologram anymore; he was his usual self.

“Dan, yes. Stop that. Please.”

He muttered a series of expletives, clenching his fists.

“I can hear you too.” I laughed.

“Gimme your charm, from Lance.” He wiggled his fingers at me, insistent.

“Are you serious?” I took off my necklace and handed it over. “Are you going to use this power to rob people? Don’t make me your accomplice.”

“Too late.” He coated the fleur-de-lis charm with an eyedropperful of the liquid. A thin trail of smoke sizzled from it. He handed it back to me. “Hold on to that charm and picture yourself invisible.” I closed my eyes, focusing, imagining my form and figure being erased by the air. It was the same power of thought I used to levitate things, but it was now focused through a different lens.

“Whoa, Hav. You’re really good at this.”

“Whaddya mean?”

“Look in the mirror.” As he gestured toward it, I turned around and in place of my reflection, I saw only a dark, hazy smudge. A silhouette, a stain. It set my mind racing.

“Wow, I’ve never looked so good,” I joked.

“It’s funny,” Dante said. “I can cook this stuff up but it never works on me like it does on you. You’ve got skills, Hav.”

“You’re not so bad yourself.”

“Try to change back,” he said with the glee of a child watching a magician.

“If I’m stuck this way, you’re in major trouble.” I laughed as I felt for that pendant and focused once more.

“See, that’s what I’m talking about,” he said, gesturing to the mirror. I looked, and there I was. “Skills. It’s a good thing we didn’t lose you to them, to the other side.” He sighed. “I forgot, with all of this going on, that I’m really mad at you.”

“You are?” I couldn’t tell if he was serious or if he was simply about to say something funny.

“Yeah. I am.” That came out like a bullet, stopping me. I sat down.

“When we went over there and found you on the doorstep and him there . . . Haven, I wanted to kill him.

“But he didn’t do anything. At all. If anything he really is trying to tell us whatever he can find out to help—”

“I know, I know.” He raised his voice, cutting me off. I had to look away. “I
know.
But the point is, I didn’t know that
then.
And I could have killed him; we all could have killed him.
Lance
could have killed him.”

Dante gave me a few long seconds to let that sink in fully.

“He wanted to kill him, Hav.” He said the words very slowly. “When he thought Lucian had hurt you. Just think about that.” He let himself out.

29. You’re Kind of a Troublemaker

Images flew at me as I descended into this hell: flashes of blood-splattered bodies in dark alleyways. A series of faces of guys and girls beaten, attacked, knifed. It was a show I wanted to turn off, a movie I wished I could walk out of. But I couldn’t make it stop. Even as these fluttered through my subconscious and I told myself,
Wake up, Haven, you can just wake up,
the terror took over. I wished I could claw it out of my head, scratch it from my eyes.

My lids opened, but my breath and my heart kept racing, and my skin was slicked with sweat, matting my hair to the side of my head. There was no relief here in the familiarity of this darkened room or the comfort of this house shared with others like me—the visions were still there, playing on a loop. And somehow I knew that these weren’t nightmares but rather memories. These were scenes I had viewed, not fears concocted by an overactive imagination and rattled nerves. Besides the victims, everything else appeared in a complete haze; just this pack of vulture-like figures descending on bodies and pulling from them belongings or locks of hair or, worse, digits and eyes yanked from sockets, gruesome bits and pieces. It all assaulted me just as the thrilling memories had earlier.

I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to fill my head with anything else to root out this evil, but instead my mind fixed on another scene: a snapshot of the cemetery, a long line of shadowy figures queued up before someone whose face I couldn’t quite make out. They bowed before him, presenting him with these artifacts and scraps of people who had been left for dead. He stood in front of Lance’s newly constructed crypt, collecting them all in a black velvet pouch the size of a potato sack. By the end it bulged with so many trophies from these terrors.

Pounding rattled the door. Only then did I realize I had been screaming. Lance burst in, arms poised for battle, in search of an assailant and easing up only when he realized I was alone. He ran up the ladder to where I lay, paralyzed, the screams ripping from my chest, and he grabbed my hand. Finally I felt the shrieking stop. I had run out of breath, but my eyes still couldn’t settle. My gaze bounced manically around the room, and I felt my eyes bug out as I looked at Lance, who squeezed my hand in his.

“I know,” is all he said.

“That crime spree, those murders—”

“I know.”

“I was there. I saw it all happen. I didn’t do anything to stop it.”

“I know,” he said again, each time his voice growing heavier and yet more comforting.

“But up until now I only remembered a weird excitement about that night.”

He nodded wisely. “You’ve come out the other side,” he said softly. “But the visions will still haunt you, I’m sorry to say. They still haunt me.”

“But did I actually . . . ?” There was no disguising the pure panic in my eyes, the tremor in my voice.

“No,” he said with conviction, reading my mind. “No. We didn’t. We couldn’t have.” He sounded less certain now, adding with regret, “But I don’t know. And this has been worthless on this matter for me.” He pulled my phone from my bedside table and scanned the screen. “I haven’t gotten a single message with useful information about the night I was tagged. Maybe it’ll be different for you.” He held it out and I let him read it along with me:

By now you probably have discovered the true nature of your time spent with the Krewe.

So it confirmed one thing: this feeling like we had been on a thrill ride with the Krewe when actually we had viewed this night of terror from the center of the murderous storm. But then it changed course.

If you can bear the horror of being with them again, the plan you are considering is worth enacting.

It was true. I had already been thinking it over. Now I felt I couldn’t
not
go.

“This plan,” Lance said, tapping the screen, “can I get in on it?” His piercing gaze told me that he didn’t intend to take no for an answer.

“I wouldn’t have it any other way,” I said.

Lance stayed in my room the rest of the night, curled up beside me until the morning sun streamed in the window. My eyes opened bright and strong to greet it. My body felt awake, finally awake, fully myself again. The dull ache of my shoulder was at last subsiding, but the horror of my dreams remained fresh.

Still in my scrubs, I sat down at the desk, pen in hand, and transcribed the words I’d been going over again and again in my mind.

L—

Please forgive me for the other night. Can we start over? I do want to help you. But first, I need your help: Can you find out where the Krewe will be taking their next victims?

And also, I just need to know, for me: What happened on the nights when Lance and I were both tagged? Did we hurt anyone? I need to know whether we actually took part in the Krewe’s activities.

With affection, H

I dressed and wandered over next door long before anyone else in the house was ready to start the day. The window hadn’t been repaired yet so a clear plastic tarp had been secured over the outside of it. I could see the candle inside, along with another one of those bottles. The door was locked and now that the project inside had been completed, who knew when it might be unlocked. The few passersby seemed to pay me no mind, so I quietly dug the Swiss Army knife out of my bag and sliced open a small flap. I reached my hand in, pulling out the bottle, and in exchange, I wedged my note beneath the candle. Hopefully he would find it.

I waited until I was safely ensconced in the comforts of our courtyard before shattering the bottle. Inside, I found two crisply folded sheets of parchment.

The first was dated the day of Max’s birthday:

H—

Sincerest apologies for being away, but I have much to tell you now. Metamorfosi Day is in the offing. It has been set for the day of Mardi Gras. Let the planning begin. I remain forever indebted to you for your help. I will understand if, at any point, you decide it isn’t worth it to you to do this for me. You’ve already given me more than I deserve: hope. Meet tonight? I’ll signal.

Yours,

L

I read it through twice before the inevitable happened and it began to warm my fingers. Then I held it a few seconds longer and, when I couldn’t take it anymore, let it fall to the ground, where it caught fire and crackled before quickly turning to ash and disintegrating entirely. Then I unfolded the next note, dated just a day later:

H—

I’ve heard from the denizens of this condemned world of mine that you have been tagged and I’m racked with worry and guilt. Please let me know that you’re okay. Your safety is all that matters to me right now. I will not rest until I know you’re well.

Love,

L

I studied it, committing it all to memory. So this is what it had taken to get a valediction like that: extreme danger and an imminent threat to the health and stability of my body and soul. At least the trauma of the past several days had earned me some sort of perquisite. I would take it. In a flash, that note, too, became ash.

Lance found me waiting for him in the courtyard. “You did it?” he asked as we set off along Royal Street.

“Yep.”

He sighed with relief. “Okay. So now . . . ?”

“Now we just wait for him to answer my note. And we’ll need to talk to Dante because if you can’t shadow—”

He held up his hand to stop me. “Not a problem. Just tested it.”

“Really?” I stopped walking for a moment to register my surprise, which wasn’t lost on him.

“See, you’re not the only one who can pull off these tricks.” He smiled.

“I’m glad, trust me. I certainly don’t need this thing with the Krewe to be a solo act.”

“Yeah, I don’t think you can be trusted to be left alone for a little while,” he said. The quick glance he gave me from the corner of his eye showed me he was kidding, mostly. “It turns out you’re kind of a troublemaker.” He smirked.

“I get that all the time.” I smiled back.

Lance looked different to me now after the horrors of last night’s dreams and the madness of the tagging. I felt the shift; I felt close to him, as though we had been in quicksand, pulled away from each other, and now we were on solid footing again. I thought of what he had said last night and wondered, was it possible that
he and I
had come out on the other side of what threatened us, too? Could it be that we had made our way through that turbulence? I hoped so, because I didn’t like the way my world looked without him. I hoped he had discovered the same about me. I wanted to know for sure, but it didn’t feel right to ask. For now I would just revel in this hope that a piece of me had returned.

We made our way through the French Quarter to the dividing line at Canal Street—near Dante’s favorite shopping spot—and on toward the Warehouse District. The crowds soon diminished but the area, happily, didn’t live up to the image conjured by its name. I had pictured deserted structures in disrepair and street corners populated by unsavory loiterers. Instead, it seemed most of the storefronts housed charming art galleries and up-and-coming restaurants. As Lance and I moved along, so did our conversation to lighter, less loaded topics.

“The idea is to illustrate a bunch of the places where we’re all working and make the joke that we’re working so hard we’re always on the graveyard shift. Then tie in the cemeteries since they’re such a focal point of the city,” Lance explained of the float designs the group had begun work on while I had regained my strength.

“So, judging by your speed at this sort of thing, it should take another ten minutes to finish, right?” I joked. He had apparently managed to wrap up work on the crypt yesterday morning. “We can totally catch a movie or something before tutoring.”

He rolled his eyes. “Sorry to disappoint you, but we’re working with the whole city-wide volunteer program, not just us—”

“Ohhh, so you have to dumb down your skills a little. No hammering nails with your bare hands.”

“Yeah, and you may want to cool it with the flying objects,” he swiped at me sweetly.

“Duly noted.”

It wasn’t until we reached the area’s outskirts that we happened upon a real warehouse worthy of the district’s name, a huge hangar-like monolith with sides that opened like garage doors. We slipped around back as Lance led the way in through a loading dock. The sound of drills, hammers, saws, and all manner of mechanized tools greeted us. Inside, the place teemed with our fellow interns—as Lance promised, not just from our house, but the entire group, all bustling with purpose, swarming around four multiwheeled platforms to be pulled by trucks on the big day. So far these four floats were all black. But surrounding them, our peers toiled on miniature versions of the city’s landmarks— from Jackson Square to the Superdome to the Lake Pont- chartrain Causeway. A banner unfurled on the floor read
NOLA NATIONAL HIGH SCHOOL VOLUNTEER NETWORK
stenciled in giant letters. Meanwhile, our fellow angels had annexed a corner of the space to work on scaled-down replicas of some of the more famous crypts in Saint Louis Number One.