Jamison was relieved there wasn’t an altar in sight.
The Somerleds cleared their throats, then began…singing…kind of. It was more like the sound an orchestra makes when the musicians are warming up, only with voices.
A choir? Some stupid kind of choir practice at 3:00 in the morning? Something that couldn’t be sung in a building somewhere, but in a crop circle?
Jamison smirked. How lame. Oh, he was going to kill Ray.
The noise sharpened, the voices blending better. He’d stay and watch for another minute, then he was going to bed. Ray could live until morning when they met up at school. If this was his idea of a joke, he’d be dead before first period.
Jamison glared out at the scene, disgusted that he’d lost sleep for this. He didn’t know what he’d been hoping to see, maybe a body being buried or some blood-drinking ceremony, but not this. Okay, the crop circle was pretty cool, but that was it.
He was about to turn away when the man in the center suddenly started getting taller and taller. Only he wasn’t growing—he was rising in the air!
With the lights from the far side of the circle it was clear there was nothing lifting him up—definitely a David Blaine kind of thing.
But then, twenty feet in the air, nearly straight out from the tree house, he…exploded.
Fiery pieces of him flew in all directions and disintegrated, like a meteor burning up in the atmosphere. But there had been no sound. The singing had stopped short when the guy exploded.
Holy
crap
!
They
blew
him
up!
“Holy shit!” Ray’s voice rose through the drop door and none too quietly.
Immediately, light hit the tree house—not small lights but more powerful beams, like cop flashlights. The Somerleds started moving back into the corn, heading not in the directions from which they came, but toward the trees! Some started to run.
Jamison’s heart splashed into his bladder and he thought he’d piss his pants. He hurried to the hole and leaned over.
“Get out of here!” he hissed. “They’re coming.”
But Ray had already noticed. He was nearly sitting on Burke’s head as the two climbed down as fast as the awkward rungs would allow. If Jamison tried to follow, he’d get to the ground just in time to welcome the neighbors to his back yard.
Crap!
Would they come looking in the tree house?
He peeked out the window. Long robes didn’t seem to be slowing anyone down. They looked like a search party after escaped convicts and they didn’t appear concerned about the fence, either. Did they expect to run right through it?
Hell yes, they’d come looking in the tree house.
Suddenly he remembered the other trap door, but this one opened onto the roof. Jamison had “remodeled” when he’d inherited the hideout. Although with no handholds of any kind, and nothing to keep one from falling off the roof, the opening had only been used to hide contraband when Grandpa started huffing and puffing his way up the tree.
Jamison moved beneath it, thankful to still be deep in the shadows where the flashlight beams didn’t reach him.
No go. Crap crap crap. He’d remembered the hole being so much larger.
The side window was barely big enough, but all he needed. He thrust one leg through and found a fat branch for his shoe. With a bit of maneuvering he found enough footholds to make his way to the roof and eased himself onto it, flattening as best as he could. The wood was cold and would have been smooth if not for decades of bird droppings, leaves, and sap sealing out the elements as well as shingles would have.
“Come out, come out, wherever you are.” The taunting voice came from far below. The clubhouse was over six feet tall, so now that Jamison was on the roof his mind did the math and he froze. He was too high. He would die if he fell.
“Please, God, help me!” Ray wasn’t acting. He wasn’t joking. He sounded terrified, but Jamison couldn’t help; he couldn’t move. His mom would have to call the fire department in the morning and they’d come after him with a cherry picker, like a stupid cat.
All he could do was listen.
A deep laugh rumbled up to the canopy of dried leaves that waited for just the right breeze to pry their grasps from the high branches. “Don’t you just love Desperation Prayers?”
“Oh yes,” a woman answered. “They’re like dessert, like the cherry on top. I bet I’d like cherries.”
“Get your hands off me!” It was Burke’s voice. “Let me go, you mother—”
“Now, now. Is that any way to talk? We’re going to help you, son.”
“I don’t need help, you sick—”
“Stop that. You’ll only feel worse for it in the end.” The woman’s voice and Burke’s were moving away.
“Yes, and you have enough to repent over already, don’t you think?” The deep voice laughed again. “Come along, Ray. Do you mind if we call you Ray?”
Ray couldn’t be fond of cops, not with the candy store in his pockets he’d shown off to Jamison that day. Maybe that was why he sounded so terrified. Maybe he thought he’d be arrested.
But that wasn’t right. They weren’t trespassing. They were on Jamison’s property, or at least they had been. If the Somerleds called the cops, Jamison would set them straight. They had no reason to arrest anyone. If anything, those guys should be charged with kidnapping.
But Jamison couldn’t defend anyone stuck in a tree. He wanted to get down—he was freezing—but there had been so many of them. Some could still be waiting for him to show himself.
Forget that. I’d rather freeze.
He heard murmurs beneath him, getting closer, getting louder. Although he was expecting it, vibrations sent a wave of panic through him when someone dragged himself up through the hole, into the clubhouse.
“Cool.”
More vibrations.
“Yeah, but look at the view.”
Heavy steps shuffled toward the big window.
“Uh, oh. Not good.”
“Not good is right.”
“Well, we’ve cleaned up messes before.” The small search party moved around the room, tossing around magazines, snooping through the long wood boxes that served as storage and seating for generations of little boys’ butts.
“Are you going to come out, Jamison?” The words pushed through the wood.
Hell no.
He wasn’t even going to breathe unless they climbed out, squeezed through those twisted tree limbs, and crawled onto the roof. They had no proof he was there. No proof.
He held his lungs open so air could come and go as it pleased, but he wouldn’t rustle a friggin’ leaf!
“Do you think he’s here?” one whispered.
Jamison smiled in relief—they didn’t know for sure!
“He has to be. Why would those two be here without him?”
“I don’t know. Skye said Ray’s been watching her closely. If he knew about the tree house, he could have come without Kenneth’s grandson.”
“Uh oh.”
“What?”
“Another trap door.”
Jamison felt pressure on the hip that covered the escape hatch. He held still, not pushing back, but not giving way. In his bladder, Jamison’s heart moved over to make room for his Dew. If he pissed his pants, would they think it was rain?
“A seventeen-year-old couldn’t fit through there.”
“But he could be on the roof… You on the roof, Jamison?”
CHAPTER TWO
Moments earlier…
The silence was broken by a “Holy shit!” and it took Skye a moment to realize she hadn’t imagined it.
From inside the deep circle of flattened cornstalks the only thing visible, besides the star-dotted sky, was the row of trees marking the end of Kenneth’s property. Nestled in the branches of the second tree was the old clubhouse. Dangling beneath the clubhouse, and to either side of the giant trunk, were the spot-lit faces of two wide-eyed teenagers.
No!
Chaos erupted around her. The Final Host moved as one toward the trees. Some broke into a run. She had to go along. What excuse could she offer if she didn’t?
A twisted ankle?
Her ankles didn’t twist.
Too tired?
Her kind didn’t need rest.
Too distraught over losing Warren?
Perhaps. Though losing people was the one constant of their existence. In fact, they’d be losing her in a matter of weeks.
Her turn to stand in the center of the circle had never bothered her before, but two days ago a lot of things changed. Two days ago she’d felt a tug in her empty chest and looked up to see Kenneth Jamison’s handsome grandson looking back at her. Two days ago she’d slipped easily into the character of the sixteen-year-old girl she was supposed to resemble. Of course she didn’t feel mortal; she’d never feel that. But she’d felt something. And in a body with no sensation, feeling something was monumental.
Unfortunately, that something was being smothered by dread.
Step by step she dragged her feet through the cornfield but instead of leaping over the fence with the others, she stalled. She couldn’t bear it. Young Jamison would have noticed her in the circle. What a freak he must believe her to be.
If he’d seen.
There was a chance he hadn’t recognized her in the darkness, from that distance, and that slim chance kept her from joining in the chase. If she came face to face with him now, he’d fear her, and she dreaded seeing that emotion mar his strong face. Even worse would be finding disgust in his big brown eyes.
While they’d watched each other over the fence for the past two days, she’d gotten a good look at him. His brows were much darker than his golden blond hair with their ends bowed up like the edge of a bird’s wing. His flat cheeks rippled into dimples when he’d laughed with his mother, and his straight white teeth only made his Texas tan stand out that much more.
So foolish! What she should worry about was losing his cooperation, not his approval. Making an enemy of Jamison Shaw would jeopardize her assignment, and all she could think about was his dimples?
Ridiculous! She was impervious to everything. She felt nothing. The emotions of mortals were things she watched from a distance, manipulated when necessary. They did not manipulate her.
Why, then, did she suddenly feel emotion? What would the others say? Was she flawed? Would they call for a replacement and send her to the center of the circle early?
Fear
.
This
is
fear.
She sagged against the fence and nearly laughed in relief. Those of the Final Host had nothing to fear; that was the entire point of The Arrangement.
Her thoughts calmed. Everything would happen as it was destined to happen. Jamison, and the strange connection she felt with him, had a purpose. She needed only to wait and see what that was.
She
heard
Ray
Peters
pleading
for
God
’
s
help
and
found
a
gap
through
which
she
could
watch
the
proceedings.
He
was
on
the
ground,
held
firmly
by
three
of
her
robed
“
cousins.
”
Shock
had
him
shaking
like
a
junkie
in
withdrawals
and
she
pitied
him,
even
though
he
half-deserved
a
good
fright.
She
’
d
warned
him
to
mind
his
own
business,
first
kindly,
then
sternly.
She
wondered
if
at
that
moment
her
warning
was
replaying
in
his
head
—“
Curiosity
killed
the
cat.
Curiosity
killed
…the
cat.
”
She took a deep, bracing-but-unnecessary breath and looked back to where the other captive sat.
It wasn’t Jamison!
A very black-haired Burke Costley struggled and spit, but his captors only laughed and interrupted when he began cursing. If he meant to punch empty air he was succeeding nicely. He probably saw six robed men, not three, and he was fighting the wrong three.