Sing Sweet Nightingale (10 page)

And then he pulls away.

Cold hits me like a wave. All that wonderful, intoxicating, mind-warping warmth vanishes. I sway on my feet, my entire body numb and my limbs leaden. Breathing is impossible. My lungs feel like they’re carved out of marble.

I’m beginning to get rid of the awful emptiness when Orane smiles. He gestures toward the calm, aquamarine lake.

“Shall we?”

I shake off the last bits of the cold weight that possessed me. Smiling, I link my arm through his. “Lead the way.”

We glance at each other and sprint for the water, diving under the surface as soon as we’re out of the shallows. Dolphins and brightly colored fish with long, flowing fins surround us, creating a living obstacle course for us to dive under and curve around as we race from one end of the lake to the other.

In his world, the water is as breathable as air. Swimming here is what I imagine flying in the waking world might be like. We use currents in the water the way birds use currents of air, propelling ourselves at impossible speeds or floating and letting the underwater world pass around us. We play for hours until Orane takes my hand and tows me toward shore.

He stands and sweeps me into his arms, carrying me out of the water like a lifeguard rescuing a drowning girl. I suppress a smile and glare up at him.

“I can walk, you know.”

“Yes, but where is the fun in that?” He wiggles his eyebrows at me, and I start laughing, my hold on my false anger disintegrating.

Within seconds, we’re both perfectly dry. When he puts me down at the base of the willow tree, the air around me shifts and ripples again. Looking down, I watch my suit transform into a bright-orange, ruffled party dress.

Hmm…not one of his better choices.

“I don’t know if orange is really my color,” I tell him.

“No? A pity.” He smiles and shrugs. “It suits you.”

A snap of his fingers and the dress changes to black. Much more classic. I could do without the ruffles, but this is good.

With the appearance of a dress, I expect him to turn toward the opera hall, but instead he steps closer and picks up a handful of my hair, staring at it as he lets the golden strands fall from his fingers.

“Do you know what day it will be two weeks from tomorrow?” he asks.

I watch him playing with my hair and shrug. “A Friday?”

“Technically, yes.” He tweaks the end of my nose and shakes his head. “Not quite what I meant, however.”

I roll my eyes, but I can’t keep the smile off my face. What’s the date today? My mother mentioned that school starts on Tuesday; that makes it the beginning of September. So, approximately two weeks from the beginning of September is…

“My birthday?”

His eyes widen, and his mouth drops to an O. “So it
is
!”

I laugh and try to slap his arm, but he catches my wrist and locks it against my side, quickly doing the same with the other. His smile quivers.

“Eighteen already,” he says, his voice quiet but intense. “I never imagined the sad little girl I met all those years ago would become so important.”

“I didn’t think you were real for a long time,” I confess. “I thought you were someone I’d dreamed up.”

“A dream worth reliving every night for ten years?” he asks, chuckling and slowly loosening his hold.

“For eternity,” I whisper, winding my arms around his neck to keep him close.

“Good.” He leans down and brushes his lips against mine. “That is exactly how long I plan on keeping you.”

Seven

Hudson

Friday, August 29 – 10:45 AM

I’ll probably meet Mariella when school starts next week, but I don’t want to wait another five days. Plus, I had the same dream again last night—Mariella going up in flames. As disturbing as it was the first time, it’s gotten worse every time since. Night after night, I’ve watched her burn and haven’t been able to stop it once. Six times already. I’d rather not hit lucky number seven.

“Hey, I’m gonna head up to that New Age store I found,” I tell Horace after breakfast.

“Take the Camaro,” he says.

“I don’t mind driving the Camry, Horace.”

I love the Camaro—seriously, that car is a work of art—but Horace has had that car since it was built in ’69. I can’t make myself take it when he’s got a perfectly decent Camry with a hell of a lot less sentimental value sitting around.

Horace shakes his head. “Kid, you’re gonna need a car, and I’m gettin’ too creaky to be driving that thing anymore. I always meant to give it to one of the grandkids, but none of them seemed to like it much.” His eyebrows furrow. “Their loss, I guess.”

“What? Horace, you can’t just give me a car.” My own parents never bought me a car. If I hadn’t had driver’s ed in school, I wouldn’t have even gotten my license.

“Don’t argue with me! I’m taking the damn Camry, so you drive the Camaro or go buy your own damn car.”

He’s grumping, but I can see the twinkle in his eyes and the tremor of his suppressed smile. Tossing me the keys, he waits for a second, but I am at a complete loss for words. Is he really giving me his Camaro?

“Git outta here before it gets too late to go,” he calls as he heads upstairs.

I toss the keys into the air and let them fall back into my palm. The two keys on the ring are attached to an amethyst keychain I bought for Horace. Guess I’ll have to buy another one for the Camry.

Tossing the keys one more time, I head out to the Camaro.
My
Camaro.

The two stores I found are in opposite directions and in different towns, but the drive is nice. When the road rises, I can see the foothills of the Adirondack Mountains in the distance. When the mountains are blocked by trees, there’s the smell of pine and birch in the air and the babbling of creeks that run alongside some of the roads.

The first store I walk into is simply called “New Age,” and it’s what I’ve come to expect from this kind of store. They have a small selection of crystals; I buy most of them before getting back in the car and heading north toward a store called “A Stone’s Throw From Normal.”

When I walk in, I see two walls filled with bookshelves that, at a quick glance, don’t appear to be organized in any particular way. Running through the center are shelves, tables, and glass cases that create a slightly hazardous maze—a fact I don’t fully realize until I try turning around and almost knock a glass unicorn off its perch.

“Sorry, sorry!” a tiny girl says as she rushes out of the back room. She has short brown hair, and brown eyes behind oversized glasses. Looks like she’s about ten. “I keep trying to convince Mom to let me reorganize everything, but she says it would disrupt her chi.”

The girl takes the unicorn from my hands and places it inside a glass case.

“I think she’s just lazy.” She locks the case and turns back to me, a huge smile on her face. “Are you looking for something particular?”

I wait for her to comment on my eyes, to shy away or shriek, but she doesn’t. She smiles and waits for me to explain my presence in her store.

“Um, I’m looking for amethyst geodes and maybe some raw jet, black jade, spider jasper, and malachite.”

“Wow. That’s quite an order.” Her grin grows wider as she turns toward the one wall not filled with books. “Mom is going to be mad she missed you.”

“Well, she might get a chance.” I follow the girl, watching her carefully. There’s something off about the way she moves. “I need a lot. I’ll probably be back more than once.”

She glances at me over her shoulder as she extends her arm, automatically sweeping back and forth as though clearing away cobwebs. “I can show you what we usually carry, which isn’t anything larger than the palm of my hand. Except some of the amethysts.”

I realize what’s off. She can’t see where she’s going—at least, not very well. Her glasses, which are about half an inch thick, don’t seem to be doing her much good, but she must know her way around the store by heart because she ends up exactly where I need to be.

“How many do you want?” She sits down and picks up a small geode from the bottom shelf, holding it so close to her face it’s almost touching the tip of her nose.

“A lot.”

She looks up at me from the floor. “More than we’ve got here?”

They have about a shelf’s worth of raw amethyst, but I might need to set up protections for three different houses at some point—Horace’s, K.T.’s, and Mariella’s.

“Yes.”

“Awesome! Here.” She grins again and tosses me the geode in her hands.

I catch it, surprised by the accuracy of her aim.

“That’s the best piece we have,” the girl assures me, pushing herself to her feet and dusting her hands off on her jeans. “I take care of our inventory.”

That’s a weird arrangement if it’s her mom’s store. “What does your mom do?”

“Usually? Deal with customers. It’s easier for her to run the register, and she’s more what people expect when they come into a New Age bookstore. I’m a little too normal to fit the bill.”

“Or a little too little. How old are you anyway?”

“Fourteen. And yes, I know I look like I’m ten. And yes, I know I shouldn’t be left on my own, blah, blah, blah.”

“I never said that.” I smile. She kinda reminds me of what J.R. might have been like at this age, full of energy and humor. “I guessed you’re older than you look.”

She laughs and almost trips on a Buddha statue sitting in the middle of the floor.

“Oh, Goddess bless!” She sighs and straightens up, a frown on her face and her cheeks slightly pink. “I can’t see very well.”

“I noticed,” I admit, trying not to laugh. “It seems like you do pretty well, though.”

She smiles again. “Yeah. I’m legally blind, but I have days where I can almost see a foot in front of my nose. I’m Dawn, by the way.” She sticks out her hand, and I shake it.

“Hudson.” My hand engulfs hers entirely; it looks like her arm ends at the wrist.

“Wow.” Her already-big eyes get wider as she steps closer, her head tilting back to look at me. “You actually
are
that big? I thought my eyes were playing tricks again. How tall are you?”

“Six-foot-five.”

“Seriously?” She sighs. “I’ll be surprised if I ever break five feet.”

“Height is one of the least important things in life.”

“Yeah, but that’s because you have it.” She tilts her head back farther and frowns. “I’m so short I could practically disappear.”

With a personality like hers? “You could shrink to two feet tall and you wouldn’t disappear.”

She grins. “That is probably the nicest thing anyone has said to me in a long time.”

Really? She must have some crappy friends. “Maybe you should get out more.”

“Maybe,” she says, shrugging.

I grab a basket of tumbled amethyst stones and toss everything else I plan on buying in with them. Dawn watches me with wide eyes.

“Wow. You weren’t joking. That sounds like a lot.”

And it might not be enough. “How soon can you get more?”

“Um, a few days at least. Especially since the weekend is, like, tomorrow.”

I tell her how much I think I’ll need, and her jaw drops.

“Goddess bless. And you’re actually gonna
buy
all that?”

“Yeah.” I load a few more chunks of black jade into the basket and stand up. “And I’ll take all this today.”

“Oh my Gaia!” she shrieks. “You have no idea how—I mean, this means I can get—ahhh!”

She launches herself at my stomach, wrapping her arms around my waist and hugging tight. “Thank you, thank you, thank you!”

After she lets me go, Dawn takes half of my stones and helps me carry them to the register, chatting happily about suppliers and the special computer display she can afford to buy because of how much money I’m spending.

This girl has something special, something the demons might find appealing. There’s a brightness about her that can pull a good mood out of people like me.

Taking a shot in the dark, I switch to the filter that showed me as a white knight.

I knew it. Glowing with a glittering ivory light, her second self looks older, though not much taller. Her hair is still cropped to her chin, but her glasses are gone. Wider than ever, her brown eyes seem to take in everything, and her hands are held out like she’s feeling ripples in the air around her.

The image is there, but I don’t know what it means exactly. More importantly, it makes me worry she might become a target. Dawn is the same age I was when Calease showed up. The same age as Mariella when she stopped talking. I don’t know if the demons will ever find her, but just in case…

On my way out, I say, “Dawn, this may sound crazy, but if you start having dreams about an angel-like being who promises to be your best friend, don’t trust them.”

“Are you serious?” She puts her free hand on her hip and rolls her eyes. “I run a New Age store. I know supernatural beings only appear to mediums, unless they’ve been invoked. Showing up in the dreams of someone like me? Hellooo! Major red flag.”

I grin. This girl is going to be hell when she grows up.

“Well, not everyone is as smart as you.”

After stowing my new arsenal so the stones don’t crack against each other while I drive, I head back to Swallow’s Grove and aimlessly wind through town, looking for anything that might point me toward Mariella. There’s nothing. At least, nothing obvious.

Giving up for the night, I stop at the grocery store before heading back to Horace’s.

“Don’t forget. We got dinner with the Teagans tonight,” Horace calls as soon as I walk through the door.

“Yeah, I know,” I shout back.

I head into the kitchen, grab every mixing bowl and pot we have, and fill them all with the sea salt I picked up on the way home. I place the stones at careful intervals in the different bowls and begin pouring the salt over them. It’s a cleansing ritual I read about that helps strengthen the stones’ connection to their new owner. I need any help I can get.

“If I didn’t know better, I’d swear you were batshit crazy, Hud,” Horace says when he walks into the kitchen and sees my bowls of salt spread all over the place. “Guess it really is a good thing someone else is cookin’ tonight, huh?”