Abandon (30 page)

Just appeared out of nowhere, in his black jeans and T-shirt, like materializing in the Quad of Isla Huesos High School in the middle of a downpour and a fistfight between his girlfriend and her Fury grandma was something he did on a daily basis.

“Let’s go,” he said to me in a calm voice, wrapping an arm around my waist and lifting me off the ground to cart me away.

No
Hello.

No
Hi, Pierce. Nice right hook you have there.

No
It’s lovely to see you. Sorry about your counselor being killed last night. Yes, I see your grandmother is a Fury even though I told you none was after you. I guess I was wrong about that.

Just
Let’s go.

“I’ll be back for you,” I tossed over my shoulder at the thing that used to be my grandma. I think I was slightly hysterical. John carried me around the corner towards the entrance to B-Wing.

“No,” John said to me in the same voice he’d used that day in the jewelry shop. Like he was refusing beverage cart service. “You will not be back for her.”

“What do you mean?” I lifted the hair that had fallen into my face so I could see where we were going. “John, do you know what she is? She’s a Fury. You said there weren’t any Furies after me, but guess what. There are! My own grandmother is one. And she killed me! She knitted me the scarf I tripped over when I died. John, she’s been trying to hurt you since before I was even born —”

But he wouldn’t put me down, even when I squirmed, until we reached a portion of the breezeway that he seemed to feel was a safe enough distance from my still-screaming grandmother that I’d be out of danger — or she would. Even then, when he stopped and set me back down on my own feet, he kept me pressed up against a locker with his hands on my shoulders so I couldn’t get away.

“I know” was all he said, his expression grave.

I gazed up at him, shocked. “You know? About my grandmother?
How?
”

“Not about your grandmother,” he said, shaking his head. “Although it makes sense. I should have guessed. You were right about Furies being after you.”

“I knew it!” I burst out. “My necklace turns black when they’re around.” I lifted the pendant to show him. The diamond was still as dark as tar. “It did this with the jeweler
and
Mr. Mueller. I don’t care what you say, John, I think they were both Furies, too. This thing has not been wrong once. I just didn’t know how to read it. It’s too bad it didn’t come with a user’s manual or anything. Because knowing what all the different colors mean would be really bene —”

“Pierce,” he said. His expression was grimmer than I’d ever seen it. “The Furies killed Jade.”

My eyes instantly filled with tears. I dropped the necklace. The heavy diamond struck my chest with a thump. “Oh, John, no. My
grandmother
—” I was too upset to finish the sentence.

“No, not her. But if what you’re saying is true, they were probably friends of hers. It was three men who killed Jade. She said she didn’t recognize them. They were wearing masks.”

“Why Jade?” I asked. “Jade never did anything to anyone.”

Except offer them good advice and red licorice.

“Don’t you see?” His gray eyes looked haunted. “Jade died because they mistook her for
you,
Pierce. You’re always tearing through that cemetery on your bicycle —”

I lifted my anguished gaze towards his. “John. If Mr. Mueller was a Fury, then this isn’t even the first time they’ve hurt someone else because of me. Because…Hannah. What about Hannah?”

He stared back at me, speechless. The rain had picked up. Now it was starting to pour.

“I should,” I said in a small voice, “have let you kill him.”

“No,” he said, tightening his grip on my shoulders. “You were right to stop me. With the jeweler, too. It’s not
them
doing the killing, Pierce. It’s the Furies possessing them. I forget sometimes.”

“There must be some way we can stop them before they hurt someone else, John,” I said. “There
must
be a way.”

“They’re unstoppable,” he said. “You can break their bones, you can even kill the bodies they’re in. It doesn’t do anything.”

“But when I hit my grandmother just now —”

“If hitting them was any use, do you think there’d be any of them left?” he demanded. He kept looking around the corner, as if he expected my grandmother to show up there any minute. “Believe me, I’ve hit enough of them enough times, they ought to be extinct by now. But they always come back. They just find some new body to inhabit, some new weak-minded soul to corrupt.”

“Then what are we going to do?” I asked, reaching up to put my arms around his neck, desperate for some kind of comfort.

He buried his head in the place where my neck met my shoulder, clinging to me as tightly as if he were out there in the waves again, abandoned to the storm, and I was the one solid thing he’d found to hold on to. Instead of my finding comfort in him, he was looking for it in me, I realized. This frightened me almost more than anything else that had occurred so far.

“I don’t know why I ever thought just because you chose not to be with me,” he said, his voice muffled in my hair, “you would be safe from them, when all this time, you weren’t even safe from your own fami —”

“Shhh,” I said, unable to bear letting him finish that sentence. What could he possibly have done to make my
grandmother
hate him so much? “It’ll be okay. We’ll find a way —”

“No.” Suddenly, he straightened. But still he didn’t release me. He held on to my shoulders. “It won’t be okay, Pierce. They’re Furies. They’re on earth. And they’re after
you.”

“But the necklace,” I said, gesturing to it. I wanted to let him know that I could protect myself. I
had
protected myself. I just hadn’t managed to protect anyone else. “With a little more practice, now that I understand what’s going on, I’m sure I —”

He shook his head.

“Pierce,” he said. “I’ve been thinking about this ever since I found Jade. And there is
one
thing I can do to protect you from the Furies.”

I looked up at him, hardly daring to let myself hope. “Really? What?”

“I’m afraid you’re not going to like it,” he said.

“Why? What is it?”

He kissed me gently on my forehead, letting his lips linger there.

“Close your eyes,” he said.

“Why?” I asked in confusion.

“Just do it. I promise it won’t hurt,” he said.

When realization of what he was about to do dawned, I lunged. When he caught me, I kicked him. I pried at his rock-hard grip and pleaded with him. I struggled to escape.

“John,” I cried. “No. Don’t do this. Not
this
way. It’s what they want, my grandmother told me. Please, I’m begging you —”

But it was too late. He was too strong. I couldn’t get away.

And of course, eventually, I blinked.

One.

Two.

Three.

N
one of it
had changed. The gauzy white curtains in the elegant archways, blowing in the gentle breeze. The tapestries hanging from the smooth marble walls. The fire in the hearth. The fruit in the gleaming silver bowls on the long banquet table. Even the sky was the same. It was still pink, a perpetual twilit evening.

And the bed. The bed was still there, of course. It was still white-sheeted, canopied, and built for two.

I broke from his arms as soon as he released me — which happened the second we got there.

“No!” I gasped as soon as I opened my eyes.

I couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t believe I was back there, the place from so many of my nightmares.

“Pierce,” he said in that infuriatingly unruffled voice. “Don’t get upset. You know this is for the best.”

Don’t get upset? This is for the best?

I was even in the same dress.

Well, maybe not quite the same. But looking down at myself, I saw that I was wearing something remarkably similar to the gown he’d put me in — with his
mind
— the last time he’d flung me to this place. It was long and white and flowy. When I lifted a hand defensively to my hair, I felt something prickly in it.

“Flowers?” I pulled them from my head and hurled them to the floor in disgust. “Are you crazy? And stop dressing me! I can dress myself.”

“I thought you’d like it,” he said, seeming hurt. “You look very pretty.”

There was no response I could make to this except to burst out, “I’m going to kill you!”

He considered this. “You’re too late,” he informed me.

Then he crossed the room to one of his shelves, pulled a book down from it, went to the couch, sat down, opened the book, and began to read.

Just like that. Conversation over. Wonder what we’ll have for dinner later?

Well, if he thought this was the end of it, he was very, very mistaken.

I stormed past him on shaking legs, straight through the archway I’d taken to the hall to freedom the last time I escaped.

He didn’t try to stop me. He didn’t utter a sound.

I should have suspected something then. But of course, I didn’t. I had hope. Then.

They were still there…the staircases, exactly the way I remembered them. Looking back over my shoulder, I waited for him to say something.
Stop. Wait. Let’s talk about this. The Furies. What do you plan on doing about them if you get out?

But he didn’t say a word.

Lifting the hem of my idiotically long skirt, I plunged down the stairs, exactly as I had last time.

The door was locked. Of course.

I should have known he’d have thought of this. He wouldn’t be tricked a second time.

Still, I threw my weight against the door. I kicked and shoved at it.

When it became obvious it wasn’t going to budge, I took the second staircase, the one that curled upward. The door at the top of that one was locked as well.

Even then, I didn’t give up. I was all over the rest of the hallway like a sniffer dog at customs, my hands pressed to the walls for secret passageways.

I found nothing but an elaborate bathroom — complete with a sunken tub and a view over a pretty garden, where the flowers he’d put in my hair grew.

I scrambled out the bathroom window and raced across the garden, then attempted to throw myself over the wall. When I got to the top, I saw…

The lake. The same lake beside which, a year and a half ago, I’d stood and shivered with the rest of the dead.

There were no boats, of course. Except
the
boats.

And those were picking up passengers only on the other side of the lake, not on the one where I was.

When I returned — defeated, my dress torn and dirty from climbing the garden wall — to the room with the bed, he was sitting exactly where he’d been when I left, reading the exact same book.

“I hope you’re not planning on kicking me,” he said, not even bothering to look up from his book, “as hard as you did those doors.”

“I will,” I said, “if the next words out of your mouth are
Pierce, you just need to relax.
How long have you been planning this?”

“You know it’s the only way,” he said, turning the page. The fact that he’d ignored my question did not slip past me. “If you want, we can visit the stables later. I’m sure Alastor has gotten over his animosity towards you by now.”

I sat down on the couch beside him. I was starting to understand why, every time I’d seen him over the past year and a half, he’d looked so wild. I felt the same way, as if the castle walls were already starting to close in on me.

“John,” I said, reaching out and laying a hand on his arm. “Am I dead?”

He lowered the book and looked me in the eye. His expression was guarded. “No, Pierce,” he said. “Of course you’re not dead. The whole reason I brought you here was to protect you from the Furies, who are trying kill you. I thought you understood that.”

I was speechless. “Then back on Isla Huesos, I just…disappeared?”

“I suppose so,” he said, after giving it some thought. “I don’t really know. I’ve never rescued a girl I love from the Furies before.” He looked alarmed as he noticed my eyes were filling with tears.

“Don’t cry.”

“How can I not?” I asked him. “You just said you love me.”

“Well, why else did you think all of this was happening?” He set the book aside to wrap his arms around me. “The Furies wouldn’t be trying to kill you if I didn’t love you.”

“I didn’t know,” I said. Tears were trickling down my cheeks, but I did nothing to try to stop them. His shirt was absorbing most of them. “You never said anything about it. Every time I saw you, you just acted so…wild.”

“How was I supposed to act?” he asked. “You kept doing things like throw tea in my face.”

I glared up at him through my tears.

“This isn’t funny,” I said. “Do you know that if I don’t show up at my cousin Alex’s car at two o’clock today, my friend Kayla is supposed to call the police? She’ll do it, too. Who knows what kind of lies my grandmother is going to tell them when they ask? She’ll probably say you killed me and dumped my body in the ocean somewhere. My mother will never get over it.” I began to sob against his chest, just thinking about my mom. “She has no idea who you are.”

“Shhh,” he said, smoothing my hair with a rough hand. “It doesn’t have to be like that. Richard knows who I am. I can tell
Richard. I can have him tell your mother, if you want, that he knows me, and we ran away together and got married. I can even give him letters from you, if you want, to give to her —”

“John,” I said, lifting my head to look at him. “What century do you live in? Nobody writes
letters
anymore, let alone runs off to get married at seventeen. And if you give letters from me to Richard Smith to give to my mom, not only will my dad make sure Richard gets arrested for colluding in my disappearance, he’ll probably have him taken to some secret location to be water-boarded. Do you even know who my father
is?”