Infatuate (16 page)

“So, what’s up?” Lance asked.

“Oh, me, nothing, or, I mean . . .” I struggled to find anything, anything at all, that might make me sound like everything was fine and I was unbothered by this scene. “So, I just saw Emma, like, crying.”

“Yeah. She and Jimmy broke up,” Sabine said matter-of-factly, like I was clearly the last to know. “They’re so hot and cold . . . crazy.” She shook her head. “Come hang out. Lance is telling me all about life at Evanston High.”

“Yeah, it’s a pretty exciting place,” I said, no life in my voice. “I’m just gonna toss my bag, be right back.” But I knew I didn’t mean it. For some reason, my instinct was to retreat.

“Yay!” she said, perfectly friendly. She started the game up again.

Lance glanced at the screen and said, “Whoa! You’re about to die.” I let the door close behind me.

What was she doing in there? Why did I feel this way?
Remember what Dante said,
I told myself.
You’re just blowing things out of proportion. You’re not thinking clearly. You’ve had an intense few days.
I cut myself some slack, but it all chipped away at me.

Back in my room, I grabbed my camera and its peripheral cords. I scowled as I passed Lance’s room again, and continued on to the study room with the computers. I had it all to myself. I didn’t need to be wasting time playing video games or whatever Lance and Sabine were doing. I pulled up my e-mail first; among the highlights were three messages from Joan (she had written daily). Then I set to work printing those pictures from the other night and the one today of Mariette.

I had to inventory the souls around me and then start monitoring them. This was the only way I knew how to chart who might pose a threat to us. Slowly, I would learn who I could trust, who I should fear, and who would eventually need to be banished to the underworld.

I opened the few shots of the volunteer group as a whole and isolated in new files each tiny face seated around that dinner table from Friday night so I could print each on its own. If there was anyone here to worry about, I would need to know most urgently.

By the time I finished, amassing a thick stack of images, the outdoor sky had gone dark. Sabine still wasn’t back in our room. I tucked the photos into the bottom of the drawer in my nightstand and vowed to check them daily for any mutations or disfigurements, the telltale signs that indicated those in the pictures were losing their souls. Being an angel with no wings didn’t get you very far, but being a soul illuminator, as I had been dubbed, seemed to bring with it at least a tiny bit of power. I wondered if anyone else here shared that skill. I hoped not. I had only just gotten accustomed to the idea of being different and special, and now to suddenly find out that there was a whole houseful of
mes
here, well, it would be an adjustment.

It was nearly midnight when Lance came knocking on my door. I had left it unlocked and he let himself in and climbed up the ladder.

“Hey, what happened to you tonight?” he asked, lounging at the foot of my bed.

“Oh! I know, I totally got carried away printing.” I tried my best to sound normal, breezy, but it came out too excited. I opened the drawer and pulled out the stack, fanning the sheets.

He took them and flipped through the photos. “Anything yet?”

I shook my head. “Who knows, it could take a little while.”

He lay on his back, looking up at the ceiling. “Have you noticed people are kind of weird about how the three of us came into this together?”

I thought about River in the cabin and replied, “Now that you mention it, yeah, actually.”

“Sabine said it’s because everyone else lost someone in their battle.” He looked at me, those deep eyes spearing mine, that scar peeking out from behind his heavy frames.

“Wow.” I thought about how that would have felt. I couldn’t imagine life without either Lance or Dante. Even considering it increased my heart rate and made it more difficult to breathe. Then something occurred to me. “What about Jimmy and Emma? They came here together too.”

Lance nodded. “That’s true. But they started their first challenge with two other friends. Remember the song they sang up at the cabin? It was about them.”

“Oh, wow.” I sighed. “Did Sabine . . . lose someone?”

“She didn’t talk about it, but I can tell that she did.”

Now I felt even worse for having been so petty. It was so typically, disappointingly girlish for me to be the least bit upset that she was spending time with Lance.

“Anyway, she seems pretty cool.”

“Good thing you saved her from a pack of hungry gators then.” I smiled.

“You’re the one who got her off the boat. It was a team effort.”

I desperately wanted to stop talking about Sabine and yet I found myself asking, “Where is she now?”

“Watching some TV show.” He shrugged, as if the topic bored him. “Oh, wait.” He lit up. “I’m supposed to ask you a question. There’s some concert coming up she wants us all to go to. Zydeco or something.” He gave me a look that told me he
had
been paying attention to my trivia question the other night.

“Oh really?” I smiled back. “And what do you know about zydeco?”

“I know plenty: Creole origins, Clifton Chenier was the granddaddy of it.” He turned over and crept toward me.

“I’m impressed. What else ya got?” I said, just coquettish enough.

“He designed that crazy washboard sorta thing we saw the other night—”

“Is that right?”

“I can keep going. But I’d really rather listen to some.” He pulled out his phone and it was cued to a clip of a zydeco band playing “Happy Birthday,” washboards and all. He had me from the first few notes. “Happy birthday, Haven”—he looked at the time—“in two minutes and twenty-five seconds. I have something for you.” He lunged for me, giving me the kind of kiss—slow, sweet, nearly endless—that would have been enough. Then he pulled a small, red-ribboned box from the pocket of his hooded sweatshirt.

“Really?” I wasn’t so accustomed to getting gifts from guys. I wanted to savor this.

“It’s your birthday. What kind of boyfriend would I be to show up without a present?”

I slipped off the bow and lifted the lid to find a golden fleur-de-lis pendant nestled inside. “I love it, thank you.” I beamed at him, petting it delicately.

Lance adjusted his glasses, shy for a moment. “I’m glad you like it.”

“I mean, if it’s good enough for French royalty—” I twinkled.

“Right. And Charlemagne and that crowd—” he finished my thought and helped me free the pendant from its box.

“Then it’s definitely good enough for me.” I smiled.

“Here.” He gestured for me to turn around. I held my hair up above my neck as he unclasped my necklace, sliding the pendant on the chain and fastening it again. “I actually got it back home, which I think makes it even cooler, since these aren’t as easy to find there, you know?”

It secretly thrilled me to think of Lance spending time looking for something for me. I pulled it in front of the angel wing charm and looked at the two together.

“It’s so perfect.”

“Like you,” he said with a kiss.

When I had seen
Tour of Superdome
on the schedule for my birthday, I thought that sounded like a fine way to spend the day, even if I wasn’t the biggest sports fan. Who wouldn’t want to see that place? We would be hosting a huge group of area school kids to meet some of the Saints players and get a tour of the stadium, from locker rooms to skyboxes. I hadn’t expected that our visit, at least for the dozen of us, would begin at four in the morning. A uniformed security guard, cap pulled over his dark hair, had let us in, making no eye contact. He hadn’t said a word as he led us to the floor of the arena, depositing us there and giving Connor a nod.

And I certainly hadn’t expected this view.

“Two hundred fifty-three feet,” Lance informed me, grunting. His muscular arms were about to surrender at any moment.

“Well, at least we’re not at the very top.” I struggled to speak while still maintaining my slowly slipping grip. “We’re probably, what, two-thirds of the way?”

Beside me, on this long metal track below the central scoreboard, the rest of the group dangled.

“What’s two-thirds of 253?” Dante asked.

“That would be 168.67, rounded up,” Lance answered, instantly.

Every tendon and bone in my hands gripped with a ferocity I didn’t know they were capable of, but still I felt my sweaty palms sliding from the metal. I tried not to look down.

The official tour, the wrangling of children, the good times, all of that would come later this morning, Connor had informed us. First, we had some fears to conquer.

“C’mon! Y’all look so scared. The only way down is to jump,” his voice boomed in the loudspeakers, his commands richocheting around the empty stadium. “So you might as well jump. That’s the point of this, you know.”

It was a hard thing to get used to, this idea that we really couldn’t be hurt.

Brody went first, howling the whole way down. The
BOOM
of his body hitting the ground echoed in a way that wasn’t particularly encouraging.

“I’m goin’. Who’s with me? Birthday girl?” Dante asked in a cracking voice, his strength draining.

“Uh, strongly considering it,” I offered, sweat dripping down my face.

“Me too,” said Lance.

“I’m in,” Max said.

Sabine yelled and let go, with no warning. I found it shocking that she could be so helpless on the swamp boat and yet so gutsy here. So, I went for it too, gasping as I fell. For a moment, I enjoyed the speed and the wind and the rush of it. The air whipped at me, my nerves and skin tingling.

I had planned to land on my feet, but I hit the ground so hard, the impact knocked me over with enough force to make me roll several feet. I finally turned onto my back, panting and proud. I ached, but I was alive when I otherwise shouldn’t have been. A good lesson, to be sure.

13. I Couldn’t Stay Away

Dante and I had spent much of the next day elbow-deep in soil at the community garden in the Mid-City neighborhood. It was a relief to have a less strenuous day for a change. Half the kids who came over from the nearby elementary school had seen their homes flooded by Hurricane Katrina, though we never would have guessed that from their smiles and the joy they brought to digging in the dirt. I couldn’t help but think that if I had lived through that disaster, I would have had trouble pushing its memories out of my mind. I had experienced my share of trauma and I felt like I thought about it in some way every day. My horrors lurked at the back of my mind, hovering, always prepared to spring out. But they also, I supposed, pushed me forward.

With their small, curious hands, the kids built cylindrical tomato cages. We staked the structures into the soil, training the plants to grow up through the wires and out. On another strip of land, we planted basil, thyme, sage, rosemary, and a host of other herbs, and at the day’s end, we sent the kids home with packets of seeds, all donated by the New Orleans Botanical Garden. When the last of the students had left and we had cleaned up after hours of digging and watering, soil matted under our fingernails, Dante pulled from his pocket a few star-shaped, quarter-size, deep red seeds, a handful of turquoise pinwheels, and a trio of violet reeds the size of cigarettes. He nestled them all in a section of the garden camouflaged by a protective wall of begonias.

“Are those from where I think they’re from?” I asked.

He nodded, pushing each specimen into the soil and covering it up. “They’re the last of their kind—or at least, I’m not planning to go harvesting in the underworld to try to get more.”

“Will they grow here?”

“They’d better, because every
recipe,
every spell I know, requires some combination of these things.”

“Well then, abracadabra.” I waved my fingers over the soil. “Poof.”

“Thanks, yeah, I’m sure that did the trick.” He laughed.

Since Dante and I were on night watch later, we got to opt out of tutoring for the day. Connor picked us up and took us home. We showered and I walked Dante to Mariette’s, where he had promised to put in an hour or two in the evening, and then wandered back to the house on my own. I had had so little time to myself since arriving here, I felt like I saw the city differently when it was just me walking through it and I could breathe.

As I passed the LaLaurie mansion, the muted glow in the front window ensnared me: that candle. If I hadn’t been alone, would I even have seen it? Could I just ignore it? Would I dare try to go in? I stood out on the sidewalk staring at it for so long, I thought my gaze alone might extinguish it. But finally, since I knew I wouldn’t be able to stop thinking about it, I made my way up to the door. I placed my fingers on the handle and with only the slightest push it creaked open. I took a deep breath and stepped slowly inside.

It was perfectly silent, nothing like it had been that other day with so many machines rattling and roaring. The foyer grew dimmer by the minute as the sun set. The flickering votive beckoned me. And once again, I spied a corner of alabaster paper poking out beneath the holder. I pulled it out, unfolding it. Inside it read, simply:
Hi, Haven.

It was his handwriting again, I was sure of it. The blood rushed to my head and my heart.

I then felt the lightest tap at my back, like a leaf falling from a tree. Shivering, I touched my shoulder.

And found a hand there. Strong fingers perched gingerly.

I spun around and gasped.

Lucian.

He squeezed my shoulder. I could feel my eyes flashing supreme fear at him. Was it even him? Or was it the Prince? “Please don’t scream, Haven. Please,” he said with troubled eyes. But it didn’t matter. I couldn’t find my voice; the shock paralyzed everything. With one hand on my shoulder and the other on my arm he pushed me back, away from the window. Was I hallucinating? Dreaming? I had the feeling I had floated up and was watching myself but not actively participating in this scene. If I’d had full control, wouldn’t I have run, or fought him, or even yelled?
Wake up, Haven.
I found enough strength to struggle against him, wiggling my arms, kicking my legs, as he backed me to the wall. “Please. I promise I won’t hurt you.” This wasn’t the first time he had said this to me. He had to know I was terrified. He had to feel me shaking.