Sing Sweet Nightingale (4 page)

Cupping my face in his hands, he runs them through my hair and gently presses a kiss to my forehead. His lips are warm and soft, and his long hair brushes my cheek.

“For centuries, we kept the borders closed in fear of war. And then I saw a little girl through a window I kept open. A lonely, sad little girl with a light inside brighter than the sun.” He smiles and leans down until the tips of our noses touch. “So, I broke all the rules and brought her here to teach her what I know. Little did I know that I would discover a love I never thought I might find.”

“I got lucky.” Grinning, I lift up onto my toes and steal a quick kiss. “I only had to wait a few years.”

Orane’s smile grows, and he gives me one last kiss, soft and sweet and pure, before I turn and step through the portal.

I open my eyes, and my head spins. The ceiling fan doubles, then triples, before the images merge back into one. My gaze lands on the digital clock on my nightstand as it flicks to 12:01 AM. Hours spent in Orane’s world, and one minute has passed in mine.

Clearing my throat, I wince at the rawness. A minute may be all that’s passed here, but tonight I’ve brought the ache of my hours-long concert with me. It’s usually not this bad. Years of practice have built up my stamina. Tonight, though, I challenged my range more than usual. Now, I’m paying for it. Despite the ache, I’d do it all over again for that smile on Orane’s face.

I sneak out of my room and down the wooden stairs without making a sound. My parents probably wouldn’t care that I felt like making myself a cup of tea in the middle of the night, but I don’t want to wake them. I turn into the kitchen and nearly scream when something moves.

My mother jumps and gasps, her hand flying to her chest and half of her glass of water splashing onto the floor.

“Oh, Mari,” she sighs. “You scared the bejeesus out of me.”

My pulse races, and I take a deep, slow breath to calm it down.

“Are you okay?” She puts the glass down on the table and dries her hand off on her yellow terrycloth robe. “You’re not getting sick, are you?”

I shake my head. I haven’t been sick in…years. I can’t remember the last time. I walk over to the cabinet where we keep our tea, take out the chamomile, and show it to her.

“Oh. Couldn’t sleep either?” she asks.

I don’t answer. She doesn’t expect me to, but that’s never stopped her from talking to me as though I might answer at any moment. I try to give her what responses I can, but it’s not enough. And I can’t even tell her
why
I can’t tell her why. Protecting Orane is too important.

She refills her glass, glancing at me as I wait for my turn at the faucet. “Do you want me to make it for you?”

Shaking my head again, I hold the teapot under the running water, swallowing to ease the rawness of my throat while I wait.

“So…ten days left until you start your senior year,” she says, smiling. Her hair—the same golden blond as mine—is braided, and her honey-brown eyes watch me carefully. “Are you excited?”

I nod, but only because it’s the answer she’s expecting. Until she mentioned it, I hadn’t thought about school. Or senior year. I suppose I’m excited. In a way. Senior year means I’m almost done with high school.

“Do you need anything for school? New clothes?”

This time, I can’t give her the answer she wants. I choose my wardrobe carefully. It helps me fade into the background. Giving up the hoodies and baggy jeans will attract attention I don’t want. When I shake my head, her smile wilts. I look away to hide my wince and place a hand over my stomach as though the pressure can stop its churning.

She tries to understand, she really does, but how can she get it when she’s missing so many pieces of the puzzle? And what choices do I have? If I explain the truth to her, I break my vow to Orane. I can’t do that. Not even for my mother.

“All right.” My mother sighs and shuffles closer, her slippers
shooshing
against the tile. “Clean up when you’re done, Mari.”

I nod, and she gently kisses my cheek as she passes.

“Good night, sweetie.”

Turning, I watch her disappear while I wait for the kettle to boil.

I’m glad we’ve finally reached this middle ground between what she wants and what I’m willing to give her. For a while, she dragged me to a string of neurologists, behaviorists, psychologists, psychiatrists, and psychics. None of them brought me out of my silence. They just slapped the label of “selective mutism” on my file and called me disabled.

I wanted to laugh at them.

If they knew how hard I worked, especially in that first year, to stick to my vow, they’d never dare call me disabled. Disturbed and dementedly determined, sure. Disabled, not so much.

My one concession after months of pleading from my parents—and permission from Orane—was sign language classes. My mother and I took classes together on SEE—Signing Exact English—and I agreed to use it for school and when absolutely necessary at home. There are very few moments I deem absolutely necessary. Protecting Paradise is too important to risk the smallest mistake.

The kettle’s whistle is nearly ear-splitting in the midnight silence. I snatch it off the stove before the noise can wake my father.

Several minutes later, I’m curled up in bed, sipping the tea. Even sweetened with honey, it’s bland and completely gross. It helps my throat, though, and that’s what matters.

I know I used to like chamomile, but I used to like a lot of things that don’t seem as appealing anymore. That’s one of the problems with Paradise: after you’ve stared into the sun, the afterglow makes it difficult to see anything else.

Three

Hudson

Wednesday, August 27 – 1:31 PM

I’ve heard about the culture shock of moving from a big city to a small town. It’s grossly underestimated.

“Have we moved into Stepford or something?” I ask Horace after the fifth casserole-bearing family drops by to introduce themselves.

Horace is a grandfather, but not mine. He’s spry for a seventy-eight-year-old guy who survived a brutal beating four years ago. His blue eyes flash with quick wit and observational skills worthy of a PI, but his hair is a halo of thin white curls from his ears to the back of his head. Though he’s eight inches shorter than me and looks frail as kindling, Horace is the single person I’ve met who can look me in the eye.

He’s also the only person who knows the whole story behind J.R.’s death. No one else has stuck around long enough to listen.

I saved his life four years ago. Now he’s saving mine.

“Don’t you start complainin’ now,” he grumbles. “You said we had to move. I asked where.
You’re
the one who picked this little bit of nowhere.” He stands at the edge of the truck’s loading ramp and huffs. “Swallow’s Grove: Population three.”

“Nah. At least thirty,” I say as I pass him with both of our mattresses loaded on my back. “We’ve met half of them already.”

Horace looks around, and his eyes narrow as he scratches the crown of his head. “You sure you picked the right place, Hudson?”

No. I picked this place based on a carved wooden sign in a repetitive dream. All I know for sure is that Trenton, New Jersey, wasn’t giving me any answers, and staying in the city where J.R. died was slowly killing me. But the old man packed up his entire life and bought a second house just because I wanted to follow a dream. I gotta at least
pretend
I know what the hell I’m doing. “Guess we’ll see.”

I barely make it inside the house when darkness edges into my vision. It happens like this every time the dream hits when I’m not already asleep. I can’t control it, and I can’t stop it.

I’m about to sink into unconsciousness.

“Horace!”

After all the shit that went down with Calease, I hate sleeping the way some people hate airplanes. Or small, dark spaces. Or spiders. Or being on an airplane in a small, dark space filled with spiders. At least I have a reason.

In the last three months, I’ve started having creepy dreams that give me a glimpse of the future. Or sometimes a portal will open up in the middle of the night and something will try to kill me. There’s no way to know which one I’m gonna get hit with each day. It’s kinda like playing Russian roulette every night with a drunk who hates you.

I straighten and let the mattresses fall behind me, my eyes already rolling back into my head. The mattresses thump to the hardwood floor, and I follow them down.

At first, this dream is shades of green and brown light, but the light shifts and splinters until I can make out shapes. Trees. Lots of trees.

Closing my eyes, I block out the images and focus on the way the world around me feels. It’s a little like standing in a really placid pond. If one of the demons is waiting for me, the energy will shift, like ripples moving through the water. I can sense it if I pay attention. But like the last five times I’ve had this dream, I’m alone.

Relaxing a little, I look around, cataloging each detail.

I’m walking through the same woods as before—a forest of maple, beech, and oak—when I almost trip over a low, wooden sign. Trees and little birds have been carved into the surface, the design surrounding the words “Swallow’s Grove.”

Yeah, I think.
Got that part already. I moved. I’m here. Show me something new
.

The dream responds.

For the first time, my feet carry me past the sign and deeper into the forest.

I keep walking until I reach a path leading to a Craftsman-style home with a wide porch and red trim. There’s a girl, with golden-blonde hair so long it brushes her thighs, standing on the path. An orange ribbon is tied over her mouth. Thick lashes frame her honey-brown eyes, and the rest of her face is a mix of soft curves and stubborn lines. A button nose, round cheeks, and large doe eyes set off a strongly angled jaw and eyebrows that cut nearly straight across her forehead. Her eyes bore into mine, but it’s impossible to read what she’s trying to tell me. I try to speak. I can’t make a sound.

She raises one arm, offering me something that glimmers. It looks like a glass bird. I reach out to pick the bird up off her palm, but when my fingers brush her skin, a shockwave shoots up my arm. I hear a crackling that reminds me of fire.

“Help her.”

I turn. There’s another girl a foot away from me, staring up at me with earnest blue eyes. The girl is short and curvy with brown hair that hangs past her shoulders. She’s wearing a silver ID bracelet on her left wrist, and her right thumb rubs it like a good-luck charm.

“Help her, Hudson.”

Tears run down the blonde’s cheeks as she pulls at the orange ribbon covering her mouth. Her lips move under the fabric, and her nails dig into her skin so hard she’s drawing blood. That crackling sound hasn’t gone away. I look down. Flames are licking their way up her legs.

My heart jumps. I reach for her, but leap back when the fire roars higher, engulfing her to the waist.

“Help her!” the brunette screams, pushing me into the blaze.

I ignore the searing heat and wrap my hands around her arms. Lifting her off the ground, I swing us both free of the inferno. When I place her on the path again, the ground under her feet bursts into flame. I grab her, trying to get her out of reach of the fire, but the flames have climbed up her arms and the heat blisters the palms of my hands.

Gasping for breath, I sit up so fast I almost crack my head against Horace’s.

“Whoa!” He jerks back and plops down on the floor, wincing when his ass hits the wood. “Damn. You all right, Hud?”

“Are
you
?”

He waves off my concern, and I examine my palms, fully expecting burns to cover the skin. There’s nothing. My palms look sunburned, but touching the skin doesn’t hurt. I flex my hands, but the color doesn’t fade. Rubbing my palms together makes the red brighter, and the resulting heat from the friction stings like salt water on an open wound. Right. Maybe not entirely unscathed then.

“Same dream?” Horace asks.

I huff out a laugh. “Yes and no.”

His bushy eyebrows pull together, but he doesn’t comment. “Need help up?”

I shake my head. Those fortuneteller dreams always leave me feeling like I’m hung over. This one was a helluva lot more intense than the others I’ve had.

Horace waits a minute, but his curiosity wins out fast. “So…the same and not?”

I try to explain what I saw; he hands me my sketchpad so I can draw the two girls and the house.

“You don’t recognize them, do you?” I ask once I’ve sketched them out.

“Do I look like I know many teenaged girls?”

“Your granddaughters?” Horace has one son—Horace Gregory Lawson IV, a.k.a. Greg—but that one son gave him
ten
grandchildren. And three great-grandchildren already.

“Who’re all in Florida and Colorado and North Carolina,” he says. “One of the younger ones—Nadette—she gets that same stubborn look on her face sometimes, but none of my girls look like either of those two.”