The Vanishing Game (29 page)

“After we left the gallery, Dixon said he didn't blame me,” I murmured in a low voice. “He was taken care of by a nice family and then adopted by his new mother.”

“Are you cold?” Noah moved closer and slid his arm around my shoulders.

“It hurts so much to remember that night. I wish you hadn't asked me to tell you.”

“We were all just a bunch of frightened kids, more scared of facing the unknown than of continuing to live with what was bad. After you left, and I cooled off, I felt rotten about how I reacted. And I wondered what happened to you. I worried about you, in fact, and thought about both you and Jack all the time. It wasn't until I connected with your brother that I found out where you went that night.”

Jack had grabbed our stuff and left Seale House soon after I did. He followed my tracks in the snow and once he found me, we stayed together during that long night. Early in the morning we caught a bus to Syracuse, where our mother's cousin lived. Melody was there, since she'd broken up with Erv a month before.

“Our mother took us to Bennington, Vermont, where she got a job as a restaurant hostess. She bought us some new clothes and enrolled us in school. We were with her about a year when she dragged us back through New York again and abandoned us for good.”

“At least you ended up with the Habertons.”

I nodded. “And during those years after leaving Watertown, I really tried to forget everything. But now I want to know. What happened to you, Noah, after that horrible night?”

“At first I stayed at Seale House.”

“How could you do that? You were a minor. I mean, who watched over you when Hazel went to jail?”

“She didn't go to jail. They didn't press drug charges
against her. Something about wrongful search and seizure. And the coroner ruled Conner's death an accident. Of course they didn't let her keep foster kids after that, so she put Seale House up for sale. It sold fast, and we made good money. To make everything up to me, she let me buy a new computer with all the accessories and programs I needed. She even paid for Internet access.”

This was surprising, and he saw it in my face. “Hard to believe, I know, though it kind of saved me. I became a computer hermit and tried not to miss all the kids who used to be part of my life. Mostly you and Jack, of course. A while later Hazel had that stroke. Don Iverson really stepped in then. Remember I told you he helped me become an emancipated minor, so I could live on my own? That was when she went in the nursing home.”

“I'm sorry about everything, Noah. I still feel terrible for you and all the kids.”

“It wasn't your fault. It was Hazel's. You have to know that by now.”

“But still …”

He turned to face me and his hands moved to my arms. “Hey, Jocelyn, let's make a truce, okay? Let's agree that what we did when we were kids doesn't matter anymore. The only thing that matters is what we do from now on. And where we go from here.”

A smile wavered on my lips as I tried to shove away all the sadness, grief, and guilt. He pulled me close to him, kissing me long and tenderly as the cool wind swirled
around us. A sense of calm threaded its way through me, and I relaxed. At last Noah released me, and we smiled at each other until he let go of my arms and his expression grew puzzled.

He raised his left hand, gaping at his crimson palm. I sucked in a startled breath as he grabbed my arm. The sleeve of my shirt was soaked with blood.

“What the hell is going on?” Noah said in a low voice as he pushed up my shirt sleeve.

I shook my head, unable to speak. We both stared down at the bloody bite mark on my arm. He pulled a white handkerchief from his pocket and wiped the wound. “Why does it look so much worse than yesterday?”

“Maybe it's infected.”

“We need to get you to a doctor.”

“No. A doctor would call my foster parents. I don't want them to know I came here instead of going camping.”

“But you can explain. They'd want you to have it looked at.”

“Let's give it one more day.” I pushed my sleeve down, trying to keep calm. “This will sound crazy …”

“Tell me.”

“In some weird way I feel like there's this connection
between me and Seale House. Maybe it's because of what happened.”

“You mean Conner?”

“Yes, of course. I caused his death. It doesn't matter that it was an accident. It never would have happened if I hadn't locked Hazel in the cellar. You said we should let go of the past, but I don't know if the past will let go of me.”

I recalled my first run-in with Conner, and how he'd bitten me in this exact same spot on my arm. Noah's worried face showed he had the same thought.

The darker clouds were moving in, and it started to rain. We headed to the car and drove away from the park, each of us quiet. Noah eventually pulled up at an ATM and we both got some cash. Then he drove to a drugstore, went inside, and returned with a sack of first-aid supplies. We decided to stop at McDonald's, since we knew their public restroom would be clean. Noah hauled my small suitcase inside.

He locked the door while I stripped off my blood-soaked turtleneck and tossed it in the trash. I rinsed the wound in the sink the best I could, and Noah opened the bottle of peroxide he'd just bought. He dumped it over the swollen bite mark, which smarted some, and we watched it foam.

He patted it dry with a paper towel. To his credit he tried to be a gentleman and keep his eyes on my arm. I knew this wasn't easy, since I was wearing a low-cut lavender sports bra. “Go ahead and look if you want,” I finally
said. “After all, the last time we were together I was flat as an ironing board.”

“Jocey …”

“What? It's not every guy I let see me in my underwear.”

“I guess I'm just privileged then.”

He coated the wound with a heavy dose of antibacterial gel and covered it with gauze. “Hold this in place.” He tore off a piece of surgical tape.

After Noah finished bandaging my arm, I grabbed a blue shirt from my bag. As I pulled it on he said, “You do have a great body.”

I slid my arms around his neck. “Thanks,” I murmured, kissing him and enjoying the way he kissed me back.

Deciding the restroom of a McDonald's wasn't the best place to make out, we left. The afternoon light was fading fast because of the thick clouds, and at that moment I longed for the warmth of sunlight and the cheer of blue skies.

Back on Arsenal Street, he said, “Let's go to the library.”

“Why?”

“I can pick up wireless there, and I want to do an Internet search for Beth. I don't know if there's a chance I can find her, but it's worth a shot.”

Soon we were inside the library at the secluded table where we'd solved Jack's earlier clue leading us to Dixon. While Noah worked on his laptop, I checked my e-mail and then pulled up the English assignment on my netbook. Finishing the essay was the last thing I was interested in,
but I'd promised Ms. Chen I'd get it done before spring break was over.

My foster parents had always been proud of the good grades I got, and I hoped this essay didn't drop my overall English score below a ninety because there was no way it was going to stand up to my usual work. I borrowed more facts about Mary Shelley from Wikipedia, stuffed them in, faked a couple of internal citations because Ms. Chen didn't like us to use Wiki sources, and then pounded out the last two paragraphs. Quickly proofing it one last time, I e-mailed it to my English teacher and then sat back with relief.

A couple of minutes later Noah closed his laptop. He didn't need to tell me that he'd found nothing on Beth. We left the library. Outside, twilight had draped its shadowy shawl across Watertown. We stopped at a drive-through taco place. By the time we finished eating and made it back to the small town house, I was tired and discouraged.

Noah pulled the Toyota into the garage and closed the door. He grabbed his flashlight out from under the front seat. “Stay here a minute while I look around.”

I slugged him on the arm, though not hard. He looked at me in surprise and I said, “Hey, Captain Solo, I'm a big girl now and can handle myself outside the Millennium Falcon.”

He laughed and we left the car, going inside. We checked through the empty rooms, both upstairs and down, before hauling our stuff into the front room. I grabbed a change of clothes and headed to the bathroom. Washing with cold
water by the small light of an LED and drying off with a T-shirt wasn't fun, but it did feel good to at least put on clean clothes. I pulled on a comfortable pair of drawstring pants, socks, and a sweater because the house was growing cool.

In the front room, I stuffed everything back into my bag, including the two tan envelopes with their pieces of clues. Then I gathered the worn quilts from the linen cupboard and started to spread them out. One of them reminded me of the quilts at Seale House. I laughed in disbelief and turned to Noah, who was changing the batteries in his flashlight.

“I just got it! Hazel used to live here, didn't she? That Toyota we've been driving around is hers, not some old girlfriend's.”

“You're the one who jumped to the wrong conclusion. I've been taking care of Hazel's stuff, and this is where we moved after Seale House and before I got my own place. I couldn't wait to get out of here. After she had her stroke, Don helped me put it up for sale.”

“So who bought Seale House, anyway?”

“A husband and wife. They paid a lot for it, since Hazel let them keep most of the furniture. They turned it into a bed-and-breakfast. It wasn't very successful, though, and eventually they tried to resell it. The place was on the market for about a year when the fire happened.”

I imagined bed-and-breakfast visitors trying to settle in for a stay at Seale House, only to have the walls go weird
or have someone bite them while they slept. Even if that didn't happen, there still must have been the sad feeling that lingered in the house because unhappy children had lived there, and one died in the cellar. I wasn't surprised the couple couldn't make a go of it.

A slow exhaustion seeped its way through me, and I grabbed a couple of sweaters out of my bag and fashioned a pillow. Noah pulled his quilts next to mine and lay on his side facing me. “If that arm of yours isn't better in the morning, we're going to the emergency room.”

I turned my head to look at him. “It's not hurting right now, so let's not worry about it.”

“Okay,” he murmured, leaning in for a kiss. The warmth and sweetness of his mouth on mine slowly overpowered me. I drifted away to a place of happiness, my thoughts becoming a blur and my worries fading. In one tiny corner of my mind, I admitted that for the first time I understood why everyone made such a big deal about kissing.

Yesterday's experience had been really great, but this was edging on fantastic. In fact, I'd never been kissed like that. Either the other guys I'd been with just weren't very good at it, or my intense attraction to Noah was coloring my judgment. Finally, when things were getting really steamy between us, I reluctantly pulled away and said against his mouth, “I'm not ready to go all the way.”

“Yeah, well, I think it would be good to have a real bed for that.”

This made me laugh. I looked at Noah through the
shadows; I'd always loved his voice and his eyes. Now I loved his lips too. Light-hearted, I began falling down the deep well of love. I hoped with all my heart that nothing happened to ruin it.

We kissed a little more, and by the time we finished I was more relaxed than I had been in days. I lay in his arms and said, “Noah?”

“Yes?”

“I want this to last.”

He reached up and stroked my hair. “It will, Jocey.”

We stayed like that for a long time, and I was on the verge of falling asleep when an old thought surfaced to pester me. “Noah?”

“Hmm?” he said drowsily.

“There was this article I read a while ago about twins. How they can almost share each other's thoughts. Think there's anything to that?”

His breathing was so slow that I wondered if he'd fallen asleep until he spoke. “I don't know. Most people would say that's not very logical. But I used to watch the way you and Jack acted with each other. Sometimes it was like you shared the same brain. He'd start a sentence and you'd finish it.”

“Yeah.” I exhaled, my eyes too tired to stay open. “I miss him so much. Except that now I'm with you, it doesn't hurt as bad.”

I turned in his arms and Noah pulled me close, his breath gently stirring my hair.

We both dozed off and slept for several hours. A while
later I woke. Noah wasn't beside me. I lay still, my ears straining at the muffled night sounds. I could hear rain falling outside and knew the cloud cover had finally released its heavy load. Pressing the stem on my watch, I saw it was a little past three. Maybe he'd just gone to the bathroom. I longed for the warmth of his arms around me and turned on my side, my hand sliding under my makeshift pillow.

There was a sharp sting on my thumb. I gasped and pulled out my hand. In the dim light I saw blood oozing from a cut. I sat up and tossed back the sweaters that my head had been resting on. Something dark glinted there. Hesitant, I reached down and touched the cold metal. It was the knife that had been part of Jack's clue. Fear swept through me, since the last time I had seen it was when I placed the black leather box inside my bag. How, then, had it gotten out of the container and ended up under my sweaters?

Memories surfaced of other times: the darkness of night at Seale House, when a kitchen knife—and even Beth's switchblade—had shown up under my pillow as if by magic. It was so long ago since those eerie incidents, I'd half convinced myself they'd only been bad dreams. Yet now I knew they must have happened, just as surely as I held this heavy steel blade in my palm.