Infatuate (31 page)

I excused myself from work and called Lance on the way home. “Hey, I can’t talk now,” came his clipped voice. I was still fragile from the episode I’d just run from, and I couldn’t help that it showed.

“Well, just thought you might like to know that I found Sabine.”

“What?” Now he seemed to be listening.

“Passed out in the cemetery. Connor came to take her back to the house.”

“Why didn’t you call me?”

“I am calling you. Right. Now.” He was frustrating me. I had called hoping for comfort. I didn’t need this.

“Right. Sorry. I’m just . . . I’ve been worried.” He sighed. And after a pause, as though not sure he wanted to share it: “Did you hear about the bodies?”

I stopped in my tracks, wind swirling around me. “What?”

“Yeah. I heard there were a couple more around the city. Some of the guys here said they heard they were found in alleyways, courtyards, dumpsters . . .” He sounded distracted, his voice petering out. “So, I just couldn’t help thinking maybe she was one of . . . Anyway, just be careful, okay?”

25. I Can’t Handle This

Here’s how this is gonna work, guys.” Connor addressed us in his most serious, take-no-prisoners tone. He had ordered us all home, and we gathered in the levitation room. Sabine, still weak from all she had endured, barely conscious, and glistening from battling the rain and inner demons, lay in the center of the floor. “This is why I started you learning levitation from the very start. We didn’t have enough warning when this happened to Jimmy. There’s still time for Sabine. What you see here is a soul divided: there’s the real Sabine, and then there’s now another part, a vicious aspect, that was set loose by the Krewe. That part is threatening to take hold of her. She needs to fight it from the inside, or this’ll never work. But I need you all to perform an extraction from the outside, to help her along.”

He had us sit in a circle, evenly spaced around her. We all watched Connor hovering over her, each face around the circle wearing variations of the same terrified, confused expression. Slowly he moved toward the door. “You’re all going to focus your energies on her, as though you’re trying to raise her, like any of the objects you’ve been practicing on.”

“How do we know if we’re succeeding?” came Lance’s concerned voice. He sat opposite me and I felt that sting looking at him. It was as though I no longer existed to him and he had transferred all of that care to this other person, who quite literally now lay between us.

“I’ll be watching. If she lifts for any period of time, it’s that diseased soul being pulled out. We go until we run outta steam,” he said, like a coach. “This is grueling stuff, guys. But Sabine needs you, and one day each of you may need the same treatment.”

With that, he turned off the lights, so we sat in suffocating darkness. Finally, he signaled, with that same foreboding tone of someone proctoring a standardized exam: “Good luck. You may begin.”

Almost immediately, a flash flared and something hard and heavy smacked against the padded wall across from me, where Brody had been sitting. Footsteps rushed over and then Connor whispered, “You okay, man? . . . Okay, that’s why you gotta learn to control this. You’re done today. Hang back and rest.” Gazing around the circle now, I saw soft hazy light, beginning to connect from each person to Sabine, like spokes of a wheel.

I closed my eyes. The petty side of me thought of holding back. Would Sabine have given herself so fully to me if the situation were reversed? But I had no choice. It would forever haunt me if I didn’t try my hardest. And I channeled all my strength as I had so many times before in this room. I felt a pressure collect in my head behind my eyes. And then I felt a breeze behind me, blowing my hair around in my face. I let my eyes open a sliver: I was moving. A soft glow illuminated the space in front of me, where Sabine’s reclining form now hovered a foot above the ground. That light seemed to be pushing me, back, back, back until I reached the padded wall with a firm shove, but nothing like what had happened to Brody. Eyes closed again, I kept up until, without warning, I felt all my strength drain, the well dry. I toppled over, lying on the floor, as I heard Sabine hit the ground. I opened my eyes to a pitch-black room.

The lights went on—so bright, as if they were screaming at my eyes. I squinted and found everyone lying on the ground, spent.

“Good work,” Connor said. He helped Sabine onto her feet. She seemed so much steadier than I would have imagined. Maybe just because I felt so entirely depleted, I couldn’t fathom anyone having any energy at all.

“Where am I?” she asked as he walked her out. We all stayed in there until one by one, we regained enough strength to lift ourselves up and go back to our rooms. For me, it felt like hours. I was the last to go.

I heard the voices before I even opened the door to my room.

“But you told me to meet you. How can you not remember that?” Emma prodded gently.

“I told you, I can’t remember a damn thing,” Sabine responded, hostile and biting. “Why won’t you back off? I should be mad at
you
for not showing up. If I told you to meet me somewhere and you didn’t come, then maybe this is
your
fault.” I lingered in the hallway, wanting to hear more.

“I can’t believe you would say something like that.” Emma sounded hurt now. “Like I would want you to go through something like this? Like it’s not enough that I’ve already had this happen with Jimmy?”

“Whatever. Let’s just forget about it.”

I couldn’t wait any longer. I wandered in, pretending, of course, that I’d heard nothing. “Hi.” I addressed Sabine tentatively, as though approaching a tiger in her cage. Her weekender bag lay open, disgorging clothes and personal items, waiting to be stuffed shut. She and Emma stared at me blankly. “So . . . how are you feeling?” I tried.

“I’m fine,” she shot at me. She was dressed in jeans and a T-shirt and appeared freshly scrubbed since I’d last seen her.

“Good, that’s great,” I said. Emma gave me a wary look as Sabine knelt to zip her bag. I could tell she was going to make me ask. “Um, so are you going somewhere?”

“I need a break.” Sabine sighed.

“Me too,” Emma shot back at Sabine. She hopped off Sabine’s bed and let herself out, slamming the door.

I took her vacated seat on the bed. “So where are you going?”

“Look, Haven.” She softened, but only the slightest bit. “I need a couple days away from here, okay? I’m just not cut out for whatever’s going on. I don’t know what this morning was about. I don’t know what’s happening and I’m sick of feeling this way. I don’t want to be here.”

“That’s fine,” I said easily. “But I was under the impression we didn’t get to decide that, you know what I mean?”

“I’m sick of these rules. This is some club I’m trapped in that I don’t even want to be part of.”

“I know, I get it,” I said, though, honestly, I tried not to think that way. It seemed a waste of time to be frustrated. I always tried to channel those feelings into something that would do me good. “I kind of thought either we accept these rules or we’re drafted by the other side.”

“Whatever. I need to run away right now, and so I am going.”

“When are you coming back?”

“In a couple days,” she said, exhaling. She closed her eyes, about to level with me. “Look, I didn’t ask to be in this freak show. To fight anyone or earn any wings. My life was just fine without this.” She continued jamming things into her bag.

“My life was fine too.” I shrugged, a little on the defensive.

“I mean
really
fine. I had everything I wanted. I had friends and a boyfriend and much better things to do than go looking for ways to save other people’s souls and lives and things. I know that sounds terrible—” She stopped zipping for a moment and looked at me sincerely.

“No, it doesn’t,” I said, meaning it. “It sounds understandable and normal.”

“So I’m taking a couple days to go home and live my old life. I just need a break from this. From this version of me. I’m not like you . . .” She let it hang there and I didn’t know quite what she meant. And finally: “I can’t handle this.”

I nodded. But I couldn’t quiet that nagging feeling in my gut. “Watch yourself up there.” She slung her bag over her shoulder. The wide neck of her sweater fell low enough to see a hint of that fleur-de-lis peeking out as she turned to go without another word.

Knowing I now had the room to myself had the opposite effect than I would have expected. It suddenly felt claustrophobic. The emptiness closed in on me. I pushed open the window and heard muffled voices from outside. I climbed out onto the balcony into the cool evening air, breathing it in to clear my head as I leaned over the railing and gazed into the darkening sky. But something below caught my eye instead.

There they were: Lance and Sabine, standing in the courtyard, facing each other. He held her bag, and she had her hand on his wrist, shaking his arm, telling him something I couldn’t quite make out. He nodded and looked away, placing the weekender on her shoulder. Then he leaned in and kissed her, one arm around her waist. I stayed only long enough to see that the kiss was returned, enthusiastically. My stomach dropped, nausea setting in and filling the emptiness inside: I felt like I had lost something dear to me. I didn’t want to see any more. Even after these grave matters of life and death that had filled the day, I couldn’t help that this still stung me.

The next morning, Drew and I had just changed into our painting clothes at the cemetery when Lance pulled up outside the gates in a beat-up once-white pickup truck, its bed overflowing with tools, huge shovels, waste bins, tarps, and slabs of marble. Drew went along to start painting, giving me a look that said she knew the potential for awkwardness would be running high.

“So does this mean we’re gonna be coworkers again?” I asked, by way of greeting, as I neared him. We hadn’t spoken since that scene in the courtyard and my voice couldn’t quite decide on the proper tone to address him.

“I finished over at the LaLaurie mansion, so I’m building a crypt here.” He pulled a few rolled sheets of paper from his back pocket, smoothing them out on the hood of the truck. “It’s going to be one of the raised boxy ones, nothing too crazy, nothing like the scale of that one from the night of the ritual or anything.” He said the last few words quietly, as if sorry to have alluded to that night, as he gestured to the blueprints. “It’ll be more like maybe seven, eight feet?” He pointed out the dimensions on the grid, amid a sea of measurements and impossibly perfect handwriting.
And then as if reading my mind: “Shouldn’t take long.”

I helped him unload his supplies and then left him to get to work. I tucked myself behind one of the nearby crypts for just a moment to watch him dig out his space. He had gotten immensely strong. He then carried a slab of marble nearly his height under one arm, as though it were a gigantic skateboard. He set it between two sawhorses, wound up and smashed the side of his hand into it, chopping it somehow into two with a perfectly clean, sharp break. Then he carted over another slab and did the same thing. He did it all with such ease, as though it were made of flimsy Styrofoam, giving no indication that it might have hurt in the least. Of course, he should have broken his hand.

Watching Lance so easily and openly using these newfound powers incited my competitive side. I looked around, finding no one, and I went for it. I stood beside the tomb, focusing all I had on one of the paintbrushes. My stare was firm, unwavering. Within seconds, the brush flew into my hand, its wooden handle hot to the touch. Thrilled with my success, I got another idea. Setting my eyes on the trees drooping over the top of the cemetery wall in the distance, I left my work behind for a moment, turning that brush over in my hands. One tree in particular was just the right height, with plenty of its trunk visible amid its leafy branches. I chose a spot about twenty feet away and settled into position, staring down this target. Then, as though throwing a pitch, I wound up, lunged, and flung the paintbrush. It cut through the air and landed with a sharp
CRACK
against a part of the tree trunk exposed above the cemetery wall. The pointy handle wedged itself right in and appeared to be embedded nearly up to the head of the brush. Unless I wanted to climb up the tree, I’d be using another brush to edge the corners of the Degas family crypt I was working on today. I couldn’t help but be secretly pleased: my levitation power gave me hope. And though I hated to admit it, having Lance working nearby, being able to hear the dull crash of him fitting those pieces together and see him when I found a reason to walk past that spot, gave me a sense of comfort, even after all that had happened between us.

The evening could not have passed in a more mundane fashion: tutoring followed by the hotline, then returning to the house to look through those pictures (no new casualties, but Sabine’s image had failed to improve) and do laundry. But it all served to distract me from what was to come. Even after what I had encountered on my last trip next door, I still couldn’t quite manage to share my plans with Dante, or anyone for that matter. I knew I should—intellectually I knew that it was dangerous not to tell. Reckless, even. But I didn’t want to be talked out of going, it was that simple. And I also didn’t want to be saddled with chaperones. No one wanted to trust Lucian, and I could accept that, but I didn’t have to agree.

Standing on the porch, hand poised over the doorknob, I braced myself and gave it a jiggle. Unlocked this time. Slowly I turned it, pushing it open as it creaked back at me. I stepped inside, closing the door behind me as quietly as possible but steadying myself should I find the need to strike.

“Hey,” I heard from the space behind me.

Gasping, I whipped around, not expecting him to be so close by. He sat on the staircase, illuminated by the soft rays of light filtering in from the streetlamps outside.

“Sorry,” he said. “I promise, it’s just me tonight.”

“Good.” I exhaled but my pulse failed to slow.