Sing Sweet Nightingale (19 page)

Wait…
on
her eighteenth birthday?

Another memory of Calease’s surfaces, carrying with it the whiff of honey.

It’s
always
eighteen. Or, no, that’s not true. It’s always the age of majority in whatever culture the kid lives in. Fifteen in certain Latin American countries. Thirteen for Jewish kids. Eighteen for us. Whenever you’re seen as an adult in your culture, that’s when they hit. That’s what Calease was waiting for.

I was a week away from that deadline.

I have to clear my throat twice before I can speak. “I believe you.”

K.T.’s shoulders drop a little. She takes a deep, slow breath and shifts her weight, looking out over the backyard. “I was pretty young. I thought we were playing make-believe. Emily never talked about it again, even when I tried to bring it up, but I could see it in her eyes after that—she looked at everything around her as if it had lost its color.”

Everything
does
lose its color. They wrap you in their sickening light, and you can’t see the world for what it is anymore. It’s like an addiction, and only they have the drugs to keep you floating. Calease did everything she could to make sure I needed her more desperately than I needed my next breath. And she was very, very good at what she did.

Calease convinced me she could make me better, turn me into something extraordinary. She was trying to help, she promised. The thing is, Calease
did
help me. I never felt in control of my anger until she taught me how to manage it, lock it down, and make sense of it. I was never able to stay out of trouble until she showed me how. By the time my eighteenth birthday approached, I was firmly caught in her game.

K.T. rubs her hands on her jeans and fidgets with her bracelet again. “At first, I wasn’t sure anything was wrong, but then I left for summer camp. I was gone for a month, and when I came back…” K.T. clenches her fists and starts trembling. “When I came back, my sister looked at me like I was a complete stranger. She had no idea who I was anymore. It took two weeks before she remembered my name without me reminding her.”

I look out to where Mari is crouched next to a small garden, examining the labeled rows of herbs. “Why do you think the same thing is happening to Mariella?”

“She faded away the same way Em did. Mari’s been pulling away for years, but then she stopped talking in eighth grade.”

It’s hard to believe. Four years is a long time to lock your voice away. Staying out of fights was hard. How do you stop doing something as instinctive as
talking
?

“Mari knew who I was, though. Until we came back to school freshman year. Then it didn’t matter how often I reminded her who I was; it was like something erased me out of her head every night.” K.T. shudders, closing her eyes and hugging herself tighter. “I’ve already watched someone disappear once, Hudson. I
don’t
want to watch it happen again.”

Noise spills out from the house, and we both turn in time to watch a shrieking, giggling girl run out of the back door being chased by a guy with a handful of ice. I touch K.T.’s elbow and nod further out into the yard. This isn’t a conversation I planned on having somewhere this public. I may not be ready to dig in, but K.T. is. I don’t know if I can trust her, but I don’t think I have much of a choice. Even if she’s not tied directly to the demons, she’s tied to Mari. She might be able to help.

“Do you still want to know why I moved here?”

K.T. nods. Damn. I almost hoped she’d say no.

Swallowing the lump growing in my throat, I try to keep my voice steady as I tell her my story.

“The world your sister talked about? It’s controlled by demons. They make you think they’re your friend, but they take away the things that are most important to you. Whatever you’re really good at. For me, it was surviving. Fighting. It’s an instinct I’ve always had.”

“Art.” K.T.’s voice is so hoarse the word comes out as a croak. “Emily was an artist.”

“The demon made me promise to stop fighting. I did, but one day I had to choose between breaking my promise to her and risking my brother’s life.” I rub my hands over my face and head. My hands are shaking, and the burn in my lungs is back. Thinking about this is painful. Talking about it? Ten thousand times worse.

“You picked your brother?” K.T. asks.

Dropping my hands, I nod. “For all the goddamn good it did.”

K.T. is frozen—I can’t tell if she’s breathing. As hard as I try to control it, my voice is trembling so bad I barely sound like myself. I suck in a breath, ignoring the acid-like burn in my chest. I can still hear him screaming for them to stop.

“He tried to protect me. He caught a switchblade that was meant for me.”

“Oh my God!” K.T. sways on her feet. I reach out to steady her before she sinks. There are tears in her eyes, and her voice is quiet and shaky when she asks, “How did you get out?”

How? I lived through it and I don’t know. Instinct, I guess. Instinct and unadulterated rage. I try to explain, telling her what Calease said, and how I was pushed out of the dreamworld by the explosion that broke my pendant to pieces.

K.T. wipes her eyes and looks up, her lips trembling. “Did you kill her?”

The way she asks it, I can tell she’s hoping the answer is yes.

“I think. Maybe. As much as one of them can die anyway.” I exhale slowly, finally getting my voice under control. A little. “Everything with them is mental. I pulled everything she stole out of my head back, but I took too much.”

To give myself a second, I check on Mariella. She’s sitting in the grass studying her two presents—that ugly glass bird and the amethyst I gave her this afternoon. To me, it’s like she’s holding neon bulbs in her hands, one blue and one orange. I wonder what it looks like to her.

“You asked what happened to my eyes the day we met.”

K.T. nods when I look back in her direction.

“They used to be blue. Lighter than yours. They’ve been like this since that night.”

“But you can see?”

“Yeah. Everything you can and a ton more.” And now, to see how much weird she can take… “It isn’t exactly a coincidence I moved here.”

She opens her mouth and closes it, her eyes narrowed. “What do you mean?”

“I had a dream. About this town.” Her eyes widen. “And then, when I got here, I had another one. About you and Mariella.”

She looks away, her jaw set. It takes a minute for her to say anything, but when she does speak, the words aren’t what I expected.

“Why didn’t you tell me before?”

I almost laugh.
Is she serious?

“The same reason you didn’t tell me more about what happened to your sister. I wasn’t sure if you’d believe me, and I wasn’t sure I could trust you.”

K.T. glances at me, then out at Mariella. Her face is partially lost in shadow, but she seems to be turning over my words, trying to decide whether or not to believe me. When her right hand comes down to the bracelet on her left wrist again, I follow the motion. It must have some significance to her. Before I can ask, a voice cuts through the air.

“Hey, K!”

We both turn. A redheaded guy is jogging toward us, a tight grin on his face.

“I’ve been looking all over for you,” he says when he comes up. His gaze softens when he looks at K.T., getting a little hopeful when he says, “We’re going to pick up the pizza. You coming?”

She looks at the redhead and blushes. “Uh, yeah. I guess. Danny, did you meet Hudson? He’s starting school with us on Tuesday.”

Danny glances at me and flinches when he meets my eyes, swallowing a startled gasp. He recovers fast, his smile so tight I’m not sure if it can still be called a smile. “’Sup?”

I nod a greeting, trying not to laugh at how he’s puffing up. He’s tall by most standards, though he’s still about five inches shorter than me. He’s not muscle-bound, but not a weakling either. I could probably knock him out in one hit, but I guess none of that matters. This guy shifts closer to K.T. and seems ready to take me if I give him a reason to. Like he’s trying to protect her from me.

“I’ll meet you out at the car, okay?” K.T. says.

Danny’s smile drops a little, but he nods. “Yeah, sure.”

As soon as he’s out of earshot—leaving with a couple of backward glances—K.T. looks up at me.

“You meant it, right? That you wanted to help Mari?”

“I meant it.”

She sighs, her shoulders dropping as she runs her hands through her hair. “Let me know if you can figure out how. Nothing I’ve tried has worked.” K.T. bites her lip and glances out at Mariella. “And we don’t have a lot of time left.”

“What?” My heart drops like a brick into my stomach. “When’s her birthday?”

K.T. barely meets my eyes as she turns to follow Danny. “Two weeks from yesterday.”

Even in the warm summer night, I’m cold.

Two
weeks
?

Time is slipping away faster than I could’ve guessed, and I don’t have the first damn clue how to loosen the noose around her neck.

I walk toward Mari and have to concentrate to keep my hands from locking into fists. I want to punch something, but there’s nothing around except Mari.

She hides the amethyst in her pocket as I approach. Pointing at the party, she signs, “Sorry I ran.”

The knot in my chest loosens a little, and I smile.

“No problem,” I tell her as I settle next to her on the grass.

She may be an addict, but she’s not lost yet. I have twelve days and thirteen nights to make sure she survives. And I have help, someone who knows Mari and might be able to dig her out of her shell. We’ll need a plan and a lot of luck, but at least now I know what I’m up against.

Sixteen

Mariella

Saturday, August 30 – 11:15 PM

Back home, the feedback comes and goes at random intervals, switching between an almost-pleasant chime and an atrocious whining so fast it jolts me out of the few moments of peace I manage to find. Falling asleep is going to be so much harder than usual with the noise and the growing ache in my head.

Going to the party was a bad idea, but it wasn’t that awful after I escaped the heat and the noise and the stares of the crowded house. The quiet backyard was kind of nice, even after Hudson joined me.

He was much better behaved, not saying a word that hinted he knew things he shouldn’t, but he didn’t do anything to convince me he
didn’t
know either. He talked about inconsequential things like the constellations and the stories attached to them. I listened, but part of my mind was busy dissecting everything he’d said this afternoon. And last night. Worrying about what Hudson may or may not know gave me a migraine.

By the time I step into Paradise, my head is killing me. The piercing pain behind my eyes makes it hard to handle the light coming off my glass trinkets, tinting them a pale orange. The twilight of Orane’s world is soft, but it hurts my eyes. When the portal closes behind me, Orane is waiting. For the first time, he’s not smiling.

“Mariella.” He breathes my name out like a sigh, and his expression relaxes. Orane pulls me into his arms. I close my eyes; his lavender scent eases the ache in my head, and I take comfort in his warmth. Orane strokes my hair. Each touch erases more of the pain. “I worried I would not see you tonight.”

“What do you mean?” All I want to do is stay pressed against his chest, but I force my eyes open and look up at him. “Have I
ever
missed a chance to see you?”

“That is not what I meant.” The lines are back around his eyes. He places his hands on my cheeks. “Tonight something tried to keep you away from here.”

“What?” I’ve never truly understood how I can visit Orane’s world; trying to figure out what could keep me away is like an unsolvable puzzle.

“I struggled so much harder to bring you to me tonight.” He takes my hand in his and leads me to a red brocade chaise that appears under the willow tree. “Why was it so hard?”

“I don’t know.” I spent time outside of the house today, which is unusual for summer, but I leave the house all the time during the school year and he’s never had a problem bringing me through the portal. The one
unusual
thing about today was Hudson.

As we sit, I ask, “Do you remember the boy I told you about last night? Hudson?”

Orane stiffens. It’s a tiny motion, but I’ve known him too long not to notice when his mood shifts. Orane’s eyes narrow and darken, shifting closer to plum. “He was at your house again?”

I pull back farther and stare at him. “How did you know that?”

“A guess, Mariella.” He smiles and tucks my hair behind my ear. “Why else would you bring him up?”

“Oh.” I guess that makes sense. “I know you said I was overreacting, but I really think someone else in your world is bringing people here.”

Orane leans down and presses a kiss to my forehead. “Why would you think that?”

He’s tense. Waiting to hear what I’m going to say.

“He said something today when he saw me holding my nightingale. He said, ‘It’s amazing how fast something that seems like paradise can turn into a nightmare.’”

The hesitation is slight—less than a breath—but it’s there. A moment between when he should have said something and when he finally answers.

“If someone else has broken through the barrier, we must be more careful than ever,” he says, rubbing his hands along my arms. “Hudson may be a danger to everything we have been working for. You must avoid him if you can.”

Is he serious? I tell Orane someone might have
breached
the safety of his entire world, and his answer is “stay away from him”?

Why didn’t he immediately discount the possibility? The last time we talked about humans being capable of crossing between worlds, he said the number was nearly insignificant. Like the chances of snow in Bali. What are the odds of meeting someone who can survive the crossing? Not only someone who
can
, but someone who
has
.

More than Orane stressed the impossibility of others surviving—like my parents, who I’d hoped to bring with me to Paradise when I was younger—he swore no other of his kind would be capable of creating the portal.