Sing Sweet Nightingale (35 page)

She starts saying something about jeans, but then her head tilts to the side.

“Honey, where’d all these stones come from?”

Breath catching in my throat, I try to keep my expression calm even as my heart pounds. What the sun-dappled hell am I supposed to tell her about my new gemstone collection?

“Oh, those are mine,” Hudson says. “With all the renovations, I wanted a safe place to keep my collection. Mari offered to hold on to it for me.”

Dana grins. “That’s nice of you, Mari. Hudson, if you or Horace need to keep anything else safe while the work is going on, you let me know, all right?”

Hudson’s attention shifts to me. What started as painful pinpricks when I first met him has become a warm tingle of awareness whenever he’s nearby, whenever he’s focused on me. He’s most likely thinking about what I suggested yesterday, that he and Horace ask Mom if they can stay here for a while. But Horace wanted to wait, so neither of us is going to bring it up now.

“Thanks, Dana.” Hudson’s voice is hoarser than a moment before. “I’ll let him know.”

Heading to the bathroom to change into clothes that, thankfully, have
nothing
to do with Orane, I leave Mom humming as she hangs up summer dresses and dress shirts in my closet. Hudson offered to arrange everything that goes in the dresser, probably to keep Mom from discovering the strange new storage place for my once-precious glass figurines. I wonder if she’d even care. She never really noticed them before.

The best I can say about the clothes is they fit better than my old ones, but I’m so skinny that the jeans sag in all the wrong places and the shirt—which I think is supposed to be fitted—hangs like a peasant blouse. Gritting my teeth, I promise myself I’ll go find a bowl of ice cream or something. Out of its braid, my thick hair flows loose down my back—it’s probably the lone part of me that’s escaped Orane in decent condition.

By the time I come back into the room, the new clothes are put away and Mom is talking lunch options with Hudson. The conversation stops mid-sentence when I step into the room. Mom clasps her hands in front of her face, and I can tell she’s trying not to cry. It’s harder to read Hudson’s expression, but his eyes are a lot wider than usual.

“Very nice,” Mom finally chokes out, a huge grin on her face. “I’ll let you know when lunch is ready, okay? Something special, I think.”

Stopping to kiss my cheek, Mom skips from the room. I’m left alone facing Hudson.

His cheeks flush, just a touch of pink, and he smiles. “Blue’s a good color on you.”

“Good,” I sign, a little bit of the pain locked in my chest trickling away. Enough to let me smile back. “I’ll be wearing it a lot after this week.”

Hudson’s smile transforms into a grin, and his entire face lights up. “’Atta girl.”

This time, the expression doesn’t last very long. His attention keeps shifting between the drawer where my glass trinkets are hidden and my open bedroom door. When he finally tells me what’s on his mind, he switches to sign.

“Do you remember the story about my fight with Calease?”

I wish I could forget the images his story burned into my head. I nod, though. Considering my recent history, I know why he asked if I remember, but unless Orane literally rips those memories out of my head, I don’t think I’ll ever forget.

“My pendant was what helped me win,” he signs. “I think yours might be the key.”

This time, my eyes drift toward the drawer, too. We haven’t opened it since Friday night when K.T. shut everything inside. Contemplating opening it now is like considering sticking my hand in a cage of hungry rattlesnakes after playing with a rat. It’s asking for trouble.

But that doesn’t mean I can say no.

“What do you want to do?” I sign.

He turns around, adjusting a few of the stones before taking a deep breath and crouching down next to the bottom drawer. With his hands on the wood face, he pauses, muttering something I can’t quite hear. Then, in a flash, he yanks the drawer open, reaches in, grabs the necklace from a glass box in the center of the drawer, and slams it shut again.

The pendant pulses with a strong orange light; tendrils of it reach out for Hudson and me like tiny snakes. The soft chime of the gemstones’ energy that’s been a constant presence all day grows louder. Hudson is wearing all the gemstone jewelry he’s had for months, but…I pat my pockets. Oh, no. My stones are in my pajama pants!

Gasping, I grab an amethyst off the top of the dresser and hold it tight against my chest.

“What are you—?” Hudson’s jaw goes slack. “Damnit, Mariella! You took off
all
the stones? I gave you those for a reason!”

Heart pounding, I lunge across the room and pull the stones out of my old sweatpants. I stuff my new pockets with the stones he gave me earlier, slip the too-big, stone-bead bracelet on, and—turning my back on Hudson—even slip a few smaller ones into my bra. Just to be safe.

Behind me, Hudson is fuming. “Do you not get it? One second—that’s all it would take, Mari.
One
second. If you step out from under this shield at the wrong time—”

My face burning and my eyes watering, I have to take a few deep breaths before I can turn around to face him. I was so busy looking at the way my shirt fit and petting my own hair that I forgot—completely forgot—to switch the stones. Stupid. Careless. Idiotic. All the work Hudson has done to keep me safe from my own stupid decisions, and I put myself at risk like that?

“I’m sorry,” I sign as soon as he looks up at me. The pendant is on the floor in a circle of stones; I glance between that and Hudson’s face. Hudson’s tight lips and narrow eyes. He’s angry, and I can’t blame him. I’d be angry, too. I
am
angry. I’m mad at myself for being that shallow and stupid.

“Don’t apologize. I shouldn’t have yelled at you.”

His voice is muffled and rough. I have to look. He has his face covered by his hands, and the muscles in his neck are standing out like corded wire. I want to reach out and run a hand over his close-cropped hair or pat his back to let him know I’m here, but then he shakes himself off and sits up, a flush on his cheeks and a forced smile on his face.

“You’ve got plenty to deal with without me making it worse. Just…”

The smile fades, and he stares up into my eyes from his seat on the floor. In this moment, I get an inkling of how alone he feels, trying to keep everything together when none of us know what we’re doing. Abandoned by his family and mistrusted by everyone he meets because of the scars on his arms and the impossibility of his eyes, Hudson has every reason to tell the world to go screw itself, but he’s here. Putting himself in danger to make sure what happened to him and J.R. doesn’t happen again. That’s what he told me his reason for doing this is, anyway. But with the way he’s looking at me right now, I have to wonder if that’s all it is. And what I’ll do if there really is more.

Hudson clears his throat and looks away, adjusting the stones to keep the bursts of energy coming off the nightingale pendant at bay. “Try not to forget again, okay?”

I pull a couple more stones off the dresser and sit across from him. Waiting until his head finally tilts toward me, I sign, “Promise.”

He stares at me, his hand shifting like he’s going to reach out and touch me, but he doesn’t. Exhaling a long, slow breath, Hudson looks down at the pendant.

“What do you see?” His voice is even and calm—inflectionless, almost.

I wish I had Hudson’s talent for sketching, but if I tried to draw, it’d look like a lump of nothing. How do I describe what I’m seeing in sign, then?

“Orange energy moving around it like snakes,” I finally sign.

He nods. “What did you see before? Before you woke up.”

I try to explain the glittering light and the silver mist inside the bird. “It was beautiful.”

“Yeah. It’s supposed to be beautiful. They use them to spy on you, so they don’t want you taking it off. Ever.”

“It worked,” I sign, my nose wrinkling when I look at the pendant again. How had I been so blind?

“Worked on me, too.” He shifts closer to the pendant, his eyes narrowed like a general surveying a battle. “Okay, well, what I think we might be able to do is—”

As he speaks, he reaches into the circle of stones and pulls out the necklace, but when the nightingale clears the top of the stones, the power flares, lashing out and reaching straight for me. I scream, even though it makes no sound, and push away. The stones I’m wearing warm against my skin, but Hudson is already in motion. He pulls the drawer open, drops the necklace back into the glass box, and closes it.

“What we might need to do is come up with a different plan,” he mutters, breathing as hard as I am. “Part one of the new plan—don’t touch anything in that drawer until I figure out how the hell to neutralize it.”

I nod, my left hand pressed to my chest as though that will keep my heart from beating its way out through my ribs. “Should we get rid of them?”

He opens his mouth, then closes it again. Sighing, he shakes his head. “No. We need the pendant until Friday and I don’t want anyone else finding the other shit.”

Fair enough. “What’s part two of the new plan, then?”

Hudson takes another deep breath and collapses to the floor. Looking up at me, he shakes his head. “No goddamn clue. I’ll let you know when I come up with one.”

I almost want to go back in time.
Almost
. One thing I can say about living under Orane’s thumb is that it was a lot less confusing.

How long does it take a broken heart to heal? A year? Six months? Two months? However long, I’m sure almost everyone would agree that a few days is far too soon.

My heart is in pieces, pieces barely able to continue beating as a single unit. Each beat is painful, like a tiny heart attack, but it keeps me alive.

Somehow, though, Hudson has touched all the pieces of my broken heart. Even if he can’t put it back together again, the pain isn’t quite as bad when he’s around.

And he’s been around a lot.

For the week in between the worst night of my life and my birthday, Hudson and K.T. walk me through my own life. We pull out home videos and more pictures than I knew existed. Some of it comes back to me. Most of it doesn’t.

Hudson and K.T. never give up. They keep digging, asking everyone in the senior class to bring in elementary and middle-school mementos. As an explanation, K.T. volunteered to make a massive slideshow project for the graduation party at the end of the year. It works. Pictures and memorabilia and video clips uploaded from home collections pour in. It all helps, but at the end of the week, we estimate I’ve reclaimed less than a third of the memories I
should
have.

After Dawn got us the promised silver wire, Hudson spent every spare minute piecing together chokers, pendants, charm bracelets, anklets, rings, and belts of stone and silver. For a guy with scars all over his body and hands the size of a gorilla’s, his work is beautiful. Surprisingly delicate yet strong, the intricate twists and bends in the wire reinforce the grip on the pieces of stone they’re designed to hold. If I didn’t know why he was making it, I’d want to wear them all. As it is, I wish I didn’t have to.

Friday morning, we walk out of the house after breakfast. Hudson and Horace brought enough to stay for a week when they came over for dinner last night. It shouldn’t have changed anything for me, since Hudson has already been in my house every night for the past week, but it did. It isn’t a secret anymore. We had breakfast together with my parents and Horace, and now he’s smiling at me over the hood of his Camaro. My pulse picks up. I’m not sure if it’s from apprehension or excitement. When we slide into the car and I feel that increasingly familiar shiver I get when we’re close, I realize it’s a little of both.

It’s ridiculous. Even before Hudson “moved in” yesterday, we spent nearly twenty-four hours a day together. He and Horace were over for dinner every night and Hudson would leave for a couple hours before sneaking back into my room and sitting on the floor, making jewelry and formulating plans B through Z while we waited to see if Orane would attack. He hasn’t yet.

I thought I’d be glad of the reprieve, but instead, the silence makes me nervous. It makes me think Orane knows something we don’t. That he’s so sure of his victory that playing with us like this is a way of punishing us. Letting us grow hope.

Hope hasn’t bloomed very much, but something else has. Something centered on Hudson. He makes me nervous in a way Orane never did. He’s a puzzle—a challenge—but I know he expects these powerful, impossible things from me. He expects me to be that goddess-like creature he drew, and I don’t know if I can do it. Even wearing the jewelry he’s been giving me all week, I don’t believe I’m that girl right now.

“Happy birthday, Mariella.” His voice is lower than usual, closer to bass, and the words rumble through the car.

Hands trembling slightly, I force a smile and nod my thanks. No one mentioned it this morning, and I’m glad. Honestly, my birthday is the last thing I want to think about right now. My birthday is the deadline. Tonight is the war.

Yeah. Happy freaking eighteenth to me
.