Kissing Midnight (26 page)

“I did,” he agrees. “What else could I do?”

“Die.”

I’ve crossed a line. Dev looks at me sharply. “Die, sure, but not just die. Die and go to Hell. Do you believe in Hell, Saintly?”

I think of the paintings in my grandmother’s church, of fire and devils. Ordinarily I might say no, but standing here in this forest of limp bodies, Hell seems all too real. “I thought this was it.”

He laughs. “Oh, it’s a lot worse than this, trust me.”

“Then why don’t you fight it? Force the demon to remove the curse?”

“The demon is long gone.” He looks away, and for the first time I see real sadness in his eyes. “She was entertained by it all at first, but as soon as I stopped torturing myself over every kill, she lost interest and moved on. Demons have long lives but short attention spans.” He smiles at me sadly. “Besides, I prefer to work alone.” He reaches out and gives the girl next to him a push. She spins lazily, her long blue dress blooming around her. “It’s an art form, really, like music or dance. The more you practice, the better you get. There’s a technique to it, a certain rhythm. You develop an instinct.” His eyes meet mine, and there’s a shine in them I haven’t seen before, a predatory glint that scares me. “Everything’s about timing, isn’t it?” He shoves the girl again and she swings from side to side in a steady tick-tock. “You might think, being immortal, that I’d be immune to time. But no, not me. The clock is always ticking. You have to be careful not to start too early.” He takes a step and pushes another girl, setting her swinging, too. “You don’t want to give her time to fall out of love before the big date. But likewise you can’t start too late.” He sets a third girl in motion with a touch of his hand. “She needs to have enough time to fall for you. I’m very careful about my timing, Saintly, and most years—clockwork! But this year—” He pushes a fourth girl so hard that she bashes into the others, sending them spinning out of orbit, scattering like pool balls. “This year there was a fuck-up.”

“Kayla,” I say.

“Kayla. She died too soon. Was that just bad luck? Maybe. Or maybe,” he raises his voice to it echoes off the damp stone walls, “
maybe
she was killed by a spirit that escaped from here, a spirit trying to do me in. Well, it won’t work, will it?” He shouts at the seemingly lifeless bodies around him.

The look in his eyes is so dangerous, I know I should keep quiet, but I’m too angry to shut up. “You talked about Kayla like you cared about her! You made me think you’d lost someone like I have! You lied to me!”

“I didn’t lie!” He bellows it so loud that the torch light shudders at the sound. I cringe, and he catches himself. He forces a deep breath. “I never lie if I don’t have to. That’s my policy—stick to the truth as much as you can because trust is crucial. In this case, I fudged the timing a little because I didn’t want Kayla to seem too recent. I didn’t want you to think I was on the rebound, or to worry that you were taking advantage of me in a vulnerable state.” He smiles. “That’s what you would have thought, isn’t it? So yes, I shifted the facts. But I did care about Kayla. I care about them all, to a degree. They could sense it if I didn’t, and it wouldn’t work. That’s the trick of staying alive, Saintly. You have to care.” His blue eyes hold mine for a second. “But not too much.”

Don’t care too much.
I want desperately to follow that advice. How can I still care about Dev, knowing the awful truth? But I can’t just shut my feelings off completely, and those bright blue eyes still make me go weak.
He’s a killer
, I tell myself.
He wouldn’t be telling you all of this if he intended to let you live
. I put all the strength I can into my voice. “So what happens now?”

Dev takes a step closer, close enough to touch. I can feel the heat of his body, even in this cold, cold place. Between us, the smoke of his breath braids itself with mine. “I guess that’s up to you.”

My stupid heart beats faster. I want to smash it with a rock. How can it betray me like this? But my heart hasn’t caught up to my brain.

I force myself to take a step back. “I won’t kiss you at midnight.”

He bridges the space between us with a step. I can feel the heat of his breath against my neck as he leans in to whisper “Oh, I think you might, if I wanted you to.”

A shiver runs through me. I hold myself tense to keep from doing something stupid.

He smiles and straightens. “But I wouldn’t ask you to, Saint. The truth is, you’re more valuable to me alive than dead. I have a proposition for you.” He tugs at the cuffs of his suit jacket. “Think of it as a business deal.”

“I’m not making any deals with you.”

“Come on, Saint. Hear me out. The thing is, I could use someone with your gifts, someone who can see spirits. See, there’s one disadvantage to being at this so long: the more girls’ ghosts I trap in this place, the stronger they collectively become.” The girls all around us stir, like trees in a subtle wind. There’s a whispering like faraway voices. “Every New Year’s I buy myself more time, but I also add another spirit to the mix and I can’t always hold them all. A few of the stronger spirits have broken free and—surprise, surprise!—they want to see me dead. A little rebellion, if you will. Of course, when they’re in here I can see them just fine, but out there in the real world—”

“You can’t,” I finish. “That’s how they were able to kill Kayla.”

“Exactly. But if I had you around, you could be my warning system and send the strays into the light.”

I think of Jesse and my stomach twists. I won’t send another innocent away for Dev’s sake. “I won’t help you.”

“Really?” Dev studies me skeptically, “Because I think you’d find the job has some truly amazing perks.”

He waves his hand almost casually, but the entire scene around us is transformed. Everything shifts. The hanging girls, the hard stone walls—they all melt away, and instead of standing in a cold, dark castle, we are suddenly in a grand ballroom. High, arched windows soar to the domed ceilings. Gilded frescos ring the chandeliers. White marble floors gleam beneath our feet. And all around us, the slowly rotating bodies have been replaced with dancing couples, dressed for a masquerade ball. Dev is still in his crisp black suit, but now he wears a black mask to match. I have a mask on, too—black and lacey—and a rose-colored fairytale gown. Dev looks me over approvingly. “You look lovely.”

I don’t answer. Under any other circumstances,
all
this would be lovely, but right now all I can think of is how hard it will be to run away in this dress.

But I don’t get a chance to try. Dev grabs my hand. “Dance with me.” It’s not an invitation, it’s a command. In seconds, we are swept up in the current of dancers spinning around us. Dev pulls me close, one strong hand in mine, the other warm on the small of my back, guiding me. It’s a formal dance, but it feels so intimate. To keep up, I have no choice but to give over and let him lead me—and my traitorous heart wants me to give over even more, to lay my head against Dev’s shoulder and forget all the horrors and heartbreaks, to go back to the way I felt just a day ago.

But I can’t. Not now that I know the truth. I hold myself stiff and upright in his arms as he sweeps me around the floor.

“Do you like it? This place?” Dev smiles down at me, warm and charming. “I thought you might. It’s a memory, one of a million parties I’ve been to. You’re a good dancer.” He spins me and catches me effortlessly. “It’s a survival skill for me, of course. Dancing. Music. Sex. They may not mean much to some guys, but for me any skill that might win a girl’s heart could make the difference between life and death. And so…” he gives me a roguish grin, “I practice.” He dips me smoothly. “I hope it shows.”

I glare at him, but my face is burning with the memory of our night together. Yes, it shows. Four hundred years of practice has made Dev more than perfect, but it’s all just bait in a trap. None of it means a thing.

“I practice other things, too.” The music shifts to something slower and Dev shifts with it, fluid as wine. “The demon who made me immortal gave me this castle, but I taught myself how to use it, how to make it shift to my will. I’ve found that the real world is like that, too. If you have enough money, enough charm, the right kind of looks, you can make it exactly what you want it to be.” He looks deep into my eyes. “We could be happy together, Mariana. Don’t you deserve a little happiness?”

It’s tempting. I hate to admit it, but even knowing what I know, it’s tempting.

But I don’t give in. “You were pretty clear that you like to work alone.”

His grin widens. This is a game, and I’m playing my part. “Sure, but it gets lonely, too, having no one to share it with. Do you have any idea how good it feels to tell someone the truth? I think you understand that, Saintly.” He lowers his voice to a whisper. “You know what it’s like to keep a secret.”

I stop so short he jerks to a stop with me. Around us, the couples swirl past like leaves in the wind. I put my hands on his chest and shove. “I am not like you!”

“But you are,” he says smoothly, “in so many ways. We’re both strong. We’re both survivors.”

“You’re not a survivor, Dev. You’re a killer. There’s a difference.”

“Not to me, there isn’t.” He brushes a stray piece of lint from the arm of his jacket.

“Well, there is to me. And I’ve never killed anyone.”

“But you feel like you have, right?”

For a second my mind flashes back to Jesse, to the way she pleaded with me not to send her into the light. “What do you mean?”

“Your brother. You feel like you could have stopped him doing what he did, like you should have seen the signs.”

It’s true. I should have seen the truth of Enrique’s depression, just like I should have seen the truth about Dev. I do feel responsible. I can’t look Dev in the eye.

He sees he has me. “Back in the old days, there were two kinds of sins, sins of commission—things you did—and things of omission — things you fail to do. Two sides of the same coin.”

“You don’t know anything about my brother.”

“Fine.” Dev holds up his hands in surrender, but his eyes sparkle behind his mask. He knows he’s struck a nerve. “Then let’s talk about you. You’re magical. Powerful. It’s another thing we have in common and I’ll admit I underestimated you when we met, Saint, but I’m starting to see it now. You are a lot more powerful than I knew—maybe more powerful than
you
know. In fact, if you wanted to, I bet you could control this place, turn it into your heart’s desire.” He spreads his arms wide and the dancers around us seem to speed up. “Go ahead. What do you want, Saintly? What do you really want?”

“Nothing,” I say, but I can’t stop myself. The image is already forming in my mind. The room blurs like a watercolor painting left out in the rain, the colors blending and bleeding. Then, just as quickly, it comes back into focus, even sharper than before. The couples are still spinning, the light from the chandelier sparkling off their clothes, like sunlight on swirling water. At first I think nothing has changed.

And then I see him, standing at the top of the stairs.

“Oh my God,” I whisper. “Enrique.”

My brother looks up as if he heard me say his name. He looks exactly like himself, his brown hair falling in a flop over his eyes, his oversized headphones around his neck, his Converses unlaced. Exactly like himself, but so much better because he’s smiling, a smile I barely saw in the months before his death. A smile I’ve missed so much. This isn’t the dark ghost of my brother I saw at school. This is Enrique as I wish he was, as I want him to be.

“Enrique!” I want to run to him and hug him and shake him by the shoulders and scream at him never to leave us again. I want to cry into the shoulder of his T-shirt and let the tears erase everything, like the last few years never happened at all.

But I don’t. Because I know, deep down, that this isn’t the real Enrique. It isn’t even a ghost. It’s an illusion. A memory. A dream. And the price of holding onto it is too high.

But I still can’t force myself to look away. “If I stay with you,” I whisper, “if I don’t kiss you at midnight, how will you survive?”

Dev’s voice is soothing. “You let me worry about that, Saintly. The point is, we’ll be together.” He glances at Enrique. “Stay here and you don’t have to lose anyone ever again.”

But that’s not true, and I know it. I wrench my eyes away from my brother. “Tell me the truth.”

“Saintly, how I survive is my business.”

“Tell me!” I yell it so loud, the couples around us falter. All over the room, people are cutting curious glances our way. The music staggers.

But Dev doesn’t even have to say it. I already know. “Delia,” I say softly. “You’ll kiss Deals.”

Dev’s expression hardens. “It’s you or her, Saintly. You can’t tell me you want to defend her. You saw her betray you.”

“
You
betrayed me!”

“I’m trying to save you!”

“No,” I say, “You’re trying to save yourself.”

I turn to walk off, but he grabs my hand. His voice is quiet, almost pleading. “I have to survive, Saint. I don’t have a choice.”

I wrench my hand away. “But I do.”

Behind the mask, Dev’s eyes go bitter cold. His expression is ugly, even on his handsome face. “I was afraid you might say that.”

He raises his arms suddenly, and the ballroom shatters. The high-arched windows implode—no, not just the windows, the floors, the walls, even the people fracture like a smashed mirror and fall away in shards. My heart shatters, too, as I watch the illusion of my brother splinter into a million bits, but I can’t watch for long because the glass is raining down on us in glittering pinpricks of pain. I throw my arms over my eyes and duck my head just as the floor beneath me collapses.

For a second, I’m nowhere, free-falling through space. Then I hit another floor, hard. My body shudders with the force of the impact, my teeth rattling in my skull, and I feel like I will shatter, too.

But I stay in one piece.

I open my eyes.

I’m kneeling on the hard stone floor of the dark castle. I’m back in my own clothes, and my jeans are soaked through with blood—mine? Or is it the blood that pools under the hanging girls? They’re back, but there are so many more of them now, they can hardly sway. The room is thick with them, and the dripping noise is growing louder and faster until it sounds like a rainstorm and the blood on the floor is rising, quickly, like a flood, soaking through my sneakers, my jeans, rising thick and warm to pool around my hips. The metallic smell of it fills my nostrils.