When Rose Wakes (28 page)

They were twenty feet from the bottom of the stairs when she finally spotted Aunt Suzette pushing toward them through the crowd, her face contorted with grief and rage.
That’s what I need,
Rose thought.
Rage.

She thought it would drive back her fear, but it only made her want to scream more. A guy shoved a girl off to her right and the girl went down. Someone tried to help her and was knocked down as well. Rose tried to move sideways but the tide carried her toward the stairs and she couldn’t fight it. Several people up on the stairs ahead of her had glass sprinkled in their hair and tiny cuts on their faces wept blood. One big guy—one of Jared’s football friends—had a sweatshirt over his eyes and other boys protected him, moving him through the crowd in a huddle.

All around her there were questions, voices asking what had happened.
Is she dead? What did she fall from? Do you know her? Did you see the woman in the air? Where the hell did this storm come from?

Another glimpse of Aunt Suzette, who stood at the top of the stairs with people flowing around her. No one seemed to see her, just moved past her. Her eyes were narrowed but they gleamed gold in the dimming light of the cafeteria and the air around her shimmered slightly, as though it hummed with static electricity.

Rose tripped on the first step, slammed her shins against the stairs as she fell forward, but Dom and Jared hoisted her up immediately.

“Careful!” Dom said. “Let’s just… we’re almost out of here.”

Rose looked at Kylie, who glanced around her skittishly, all the spark gone from her eyes.

A hand snaked through the crowd, grabbed hold of the tail of Rose’s emerald-green sweater, and pulled. She fell backward. Jared and Dom tried to hold on to her but lost their grip and Rose flailed as she fell onto a cluster of girls, then dropped between them, smashing to the linoleum.

Panicked, she tried to rise. At the last second she saw the kick coming and twisted her head away. The heavy boot struck her shoulder, the impact making her cry out. He kicked her again, in the side, and she prayed nothing had broken. She scrambled to her knees, tried to lurch away, and he kicked her in the stomach, throwing her over onto her back, her skirt flying up.

Rose stared up in terror, pain burning through her, then turning to ice as he came toward her.

“Eric,” she said.

He smiled. “This time you won’t wake up.”

Jared slammed into him, taking them both to the ground, crashing into the legs of a bunch of juniors who fell on top of them. The pile thrashed. Rose stood, watching frantically as the guys began to pound on each other. The juniors crawled from the pile, leaving only Jared and Eric, who both sprang up. Eric grabbed him by the throat and lifted him off his feet, impossibly strong. He hurled Jared into one of the lunch tables and turned toward Rose again.

Aunt Suzette stepped in between Rose and Eric.

“How dare you?” she said. “You’re not worthy even to
look
at her.”

“That’s not what my mistress says,” the thing wearing Eric’s face replied.

A sudden wind gusted around Aunt Suzette, whipping at her clothes and hair. She twisted her hand in the air, gestured toward Jared, and the wind swept around behind him and practically lifted him from the floor, propelling him toward Rose.

“Your mistress is going to die,” Aunt Suzette told the wood spirit.

“Your sister is already dead,” it replied.

Aunt Suzette’s eyes went wide, golden light gleaming there, and she strode purposefully toward Eric. The construct—which Rose now understood to be a wood spirit—launched itself at Aunt Suzette, tearing at her, fists flying. She slammed it to the floor.

“Rose, get out of here!” she shouted. “Find somewhere to hide!”

“I’m not leaving you!” Rose said, thinking of Aunt Fay bloody and unmoving, a dead crow in her mouth.

Aunt Suzette spun on her. “You must. She’s going to get
in
!”

Rose took a step back, watching as Eric attacked again, and then she turned and fled. Grabbing Jared’s hand, she plunged with him back into the exodus. They threaded through clusters of shoving students.

With a thump, another window shattered, glass spraying across empty cafeteria tables. Rose glanced over and saw her just outside yet another window, black clothes
dancing in the wind, hair flying, golden eyes turned a sickly yellow. Her pale features were still and cold as marble, and she stared directly at Rose.

But she didn’t come in.

“Run,” Rose said to Jared.

They pushed through a cluster of freshmen and through the door, out into the hallway beyond the cafteria. Dom and Kylie stood against the wall on the left, scanning the crowd for them. Kylie shouted and beckoned to them.

Rose glanced back into the cafeteria. At the bottom of the stairs she saw Aunt Suzette and what remained of Eric. Her aunt had torn him apart. Part of him looked human still, but his clothes and his skin seemed made of leaves now, and his exposed innards jutted with small branches. Aunt Suzette had fistfuls of leaves.

“Run!” Rose said again, shouting it this time.

Then the four of them were running together. They shoved and pulled and made it to the west wing stairs. Rose remembered climbing these stairs with Jared, which gave her an idea.

“Come on!” she said, leading them all into the second-floor corridor.

Most of the students seemed to be heading for their homerooms or lockers or just gathering in the hall, freaking out, calling their parents or the police on their cell phones or texting their friends. Chaos reigned.

Rose turned right, toward the chemistry lab.

“Where are we going?” Dom asked.

“Chem lab,” Rose said, thinking of the heavy door, the shaded windows, and the cabinets at the back of the room where supplies could be locked up. “We need someplace to hide.”

“What are we hiding from?” Jared asked.

They were out of the throng now, almost to the door to the chem lab. Rose turned to answer, but instead she screamed. “Kylie, no!”

Too late to warn Dom. Kylie punched him in the throat, grabbed his shirt and lifted him over her head, then hurled him at the wall. Bones cracked and when he hit the floor his body made a wet sound. But he wasn’t dead. He blinked and tried to scramble away from her, but Kylie fell on him, tearing at him, fingernails suddenly impossibly sharp. Blood spattered the walls with every flick of her wrist.

Jared shouted and ran at her.

Rose stared, images crashing into her mind like a shower of broken glass. Kylie at Chloe’s party, making sure she had time with Jared. In gym class, Kylie urging her to have sex with him.
I know what I’d do,
she had said. When had this thing taken Kylie’s place? Had Rose ever even known the real Kylie? Had she ever had a friend, or had it always been a creature trying to lure her into fulfilling Maurelle’s curse? Would her aunts have known if Kylie had been human, that first time they met her?

Jared grabbed hold of the thing with Kylie’s face and
hauled it away from Dom. It threw him off with ease, as though he weighed nothing, and he slammed into the wall. Then it turned on Rose.

“Aren’t you going to hide?” it asked, the familiar, sparkling merriment in Kylie’s eyes.

Rose sneered. “I’m done hiding.”

It lunged and Rose stepped in to greet it. When Kylie grabbed her by the throat, Rose did not even try to tear its hand away. They twisted together and fell and rolled, and Rose fought back the grip of its other hand. Fragments of memories were coming together in her head, and inside of her she could feel the other Rose, the girl she had been all those years ago. The one who had known that her mother was a creature of glamour and enchantment, the one who had been proud to be her mother’s daughter.

Something warm flickered and then spread through her, her skin tingling as though bathed in static electricity. Rose fought, slamming a fist into Kylie’s temple. The creature had been strong enough to throw Jared across the room, but it struggled with her. It bucked and nearly threw her off, but they rolled again, slamming against the wall. Black spots appeared in Rose’s eyes, lack of oxygen weakening her. She clamped a hand on the wood spirit’s forearm, trying to stop it from choking her.

“You don’t belong here,” Rose rasped. “You’re not
her.
”

Her grip slid and Kylie cried out. She kept choking Rose but she looked down in horror at her own arm and Rose stared at the same spot, both of them surprised. The
skin of Kylie’s arm had sloughed off a layer like a molting snake, but it hadn’t been skin, really. Just dry leaves, like papier-mâché.

“This body isn’t real,” Rose said, her voice coming out a choked growl. “It’s a mask.”

Kylie doubled her efforts, using both hands to choke her. Rose couldn’t draw even a ragged breath now and she felt herself weakening. Her vision dimmed. But she reached up and grabbed Kylie’s face, fingers splayed across her cheeks and nose.
You’re not her,
she thought again.
You’re a scarecrow, nothing but make-believe.

Rose formed her fingers into claws and dug in. Kylie’s face came away as matted leaves mixed with soil, revealing nothing but damp, rotting compost underneath. The wood spirit released its grip, lurching backward, and Rose gasped for breath as she followed it. The creature that had been Kylie tried to scramble away but she caught it by the leg. It grabbed at fallen leaves and tried to plaster them back into place, and Rose saw that if she gave it a minute or two it would look just like Kylie again.

“No,” she said. “It’s over. I won’t let you.”

She tore the leaves away from its face again. As it fought her she pressed her hands tightly to its chest and its skin began to change, showing the texture and color of leaves.

It stared at her with wild eyes. “It doesn’t matter,” it said. “She’ll have you. Any time now, you’ll be hers.”

Rose hauled back and punched the thing, and its face
caved in with a wet crack. Its eyes collapsed inward and became acorns. A blow to its chest and its hollow body separated, leaves and dirt parting to reveal itself as nothing more than a dry husk.

“Oh, my God,” Rose said, covering her mouth and jumping back from the ruin of the creature.

The fight had carried her back into the main corridor that ran the length of the school. Now she looked back down the hall into the science annex and saw Jared kneeling by the still-unconscious Dom. Jared stared at the disintegrating leaf-corpse and then looked at Rose in confusion and fear. He shook his head, beginning to speak, but then he faltered, apparently at a loss for words. Others gathered around, staring in astonishment at the remants of the thing, and the mutterings began as they regarded Rose. What could she say? It wasn’t Kylie? It wasn’t human?

“I can explain,” she said, knowing how stupid the words sounded as they left her mouth.

“Rose,” Jared said. “What’s wrong with your eyes?”

He stood and started toward her, studying her as though mesmerized.

She reached up and touched the corner of one eye. “What do you mean?”

Jared smiled in wonder. “They’re gold.”

A shout of alarm came from down the hall, followed by a scream, and then a flurry of swearing—all cut off mid-sentence. Rose turned to see the students and teachers in
the second-floor hallway collapsing to the floor. One guy hit his head hard enough for the thunk of bone to echo all the way down the hall. As though struck by a wave, they all fell.

Rose took a step back, shaking her head. “No,” she said, turning to Jared. “Run!”

He made it two paces toward the stairwell door before he tumbled forward, sprawling on the linoleum. Rose trembled, glancing around frantically, wondering which way to run. Bodies littered the corridor, but they weren’t dead. She looked at the girl nearest her, uniform in disarray, one arm trapped beneath her, and saw that her chest rose and fell with regular breaths and her expression was peaceful.

They were all sleeping.

Rose could hear her own heartbeat thudding in her ears but other than the breathing of the fallen students, the hall was silent.

But the silence was broken by a long, slow creak, and she froze. Turning to stare down the length of the school corridor, she saw the door at the far end swing slowly open. In the dim fluorescent light, Maurelle appeared.

Rose couldn’t move. She stared at the pale woman—Maurelle of the Black Heart—and knew that there was nowhere to run where Maurelle would not be able to find her. A thousand years the twisted fey had waited for her death. Maurelle had crossed an ocean and been patient for centuries and even now she had tried to manipulate Rose into succumbing to the curse she had put upon her on the day of her christening. But the Black Heart had run out of patience. She had waited ages for this moment, and would not be denied.

Maurelle strode almost languidly along the corridor, stepping over sleeping students with a dancer’s flourish, her every movement suggesting that she was in a celebratory mood. As the Black Heart passed one classroom and then another she seemed to flicker in and out of sight, perhaps even in and out of reality. One step she would be there and the next she would not. Rose could only stare, riveted to the spot as she tried to think.