Shadowlands (Shadowlands (Hyperion)) (8 page)

It came again, closer this time. Cackling. As quietly as I possibly could, I started to run. The sand beneath my feet made me stumble and I reached out, ready to fall, but my hand hit something hard. A scream rose in my throat until I realized it was just a railing. A railing to another set of stairs. I had no clue whether it was our house or a neighbor’s, but at that moment I didn’t care. I tore up the steps, taking them two, three at a time. All that mattered was getting inside. Getting away from him.

As I reached the top of the stairs, I heard the laugh again. It hovered in the mist, nearly on top of me. I scrambled across the wood planks and found that I was on the deck to our house. After fumbling for the key in my pocket, I managed to slip inside and close the door behind me, turning the lock as fast as I could. The gray fog swirled against the windowpane as I backed away, leaving a wet trail of condensation. Just on the other side of the glass, the mist moved in tiny, bursting pulses. As if someone was out there, standing just inches away from me, breathing slowly in and out. In and out.

I turned and raced up the stairs to the second floor, my heart pounding in my skull. At the top of the steps I heard a noise and paused, clinging to the wallpapered corner. But this time, it wasn’t laughter. It was something else entirely.

Taking a breath, I tiptoed across the hall and stood outside the closed door of my father’s bedroom. He let out a sob so pained I felt it inside my heart. My father was in there, alone, crying. Yet another thing I hadn’t heard him do since the day we’d buried my mom.

I stood there, my hand on the door, and listened. Listened until the fear faded away. Until I started to realize how irrational I’d been. How I must have imagined it all. How I’d let a natural weather phenomenon freak me out to the point of panic. None of that was real.
This
was real. My father’s pain. His finally breaking down.

This was real. And as much as it hurt, standing there in the hallway, listening in on his grief, it gave me hope.

After breakfast the next morning, I decided to walk into town and see if I could find a newspaper. There wasn’t a single TV in the house, and I needed to know what was going on with the hunt for Steven Nell. Maybe the cops had found him. Maybe everything was fine and we could go home.

Just as I put my hand on the knob of the front door, I saw something move in one of the windows across the way.

“What’re you doing?”

My hand flew up to cover my heart. “Darcy! You scared me!”

“Well, why are you standing there frozen?” she asked, looking me up and down from the bottom step like she couldn’t believe she was related to someone so weird. She reached back to tie her hair into a high ponytail with a sparkly black and gold band. “You looked catatonic for a second. Did you have another flash?”

“No.” I couldn’t believe she knew what
catatonic
meant. “I was just about to go for a walk—check out the town.” I yanked the door open and paused. “Want to come?”

She narrowed her eyes. I was sure she was thinking the same thing I was thinking. The two of us hanging out together twice in less than twenty-four hours? Looked like hell had finally frozen over.

“Sure,” she said finally, grabbing her purse from the table by the door and almost knocking over the family photo in the process.

“Should we tell Dad we’re going out?” I asked.

“He went for a run, like, an hour ago,” she said as she slipped on her dark sunglasses.

“Really?” I asked, following her out the door and across the porch. “Again?”

“What? Like that’s so bizarre?” she asked. She opened the gate and strode through, not bothering to hold it for me.

“Dad hasn’t gone out for a run in about five years,” I told her. Leave it to Darcy not to notice. “Now he’s gone twice since we’ve been here.”

She lifted a shoulder, walking backward up the sunlit sidewalk. “Well, good for him. Maybe it’ll chill him out.”

Then she turned, flinging her hair, and walked ahead of me. As we reached the corner, I glanced back at the gray house, half expecting to see Tristan’s face in one of the windows, but it was still. The place looked deserted. Even so, I quickened my steps, trying to make it look like I just wanted to catch up with Darcy, not like I was scared. A middle-aged man on a bike rode by with a surfboard tucked under his arm, and he rang his bell as he passed. On the other side of the street, a guy in his early twenties was watering his small lawn. I took a deep breath of the uniquely scented air and tried to relax.

“What is that smell?” I mused. “Is it honeysuckle? Lavender? I can’t place it.”

Darcy inhaled. “I don’t know, but it’s nice.” She trailed her hand along the top of a neatly clipped rosebush growing along the sidewalk. “It’s kind of…”

“Soothing,” I supplied.

She tilted her head, considering. “Yeah. Like aromatherapy.”

We walked a couple of blocks, past colorful Colonial homes with flower gardens and porch swings and peach trees, each one more stunning than the last. It was all very pretty, but almost too perfect. Like someone had come in and told everyone to get their houses ready for the postcard photographer.

“So you never asked me how it went with Joaquin last night,” Darcy said.

“How did it go with Joaquin last night?” I asked.

“Amazing!” she answered, bending slightly at the knee. “He’s a lifeguard. How hot is that? And he works at this bar down by the bay, so we have that in common.”

“That’s cool,” I said.

“He is
so
beautiful, and he totally ate up the whole story about us being from Manhattan. He was fascinated,” Darcy said, clasping her hands under her chin and then swinging her arms wide. “Thank god they made us from someplace cool and not, like, Kansas City or something. I can’t wait to see him again.”

Well, at least she’d gotten our cover story out there. Maybe now everyone would know and I wouldn’t have to answer questions about our supposed past.

“That’s great, Darcy, really.” I was glad that she seemed to have forgotten all the attention Joaquin had showered on me when we’d first gotten there. And her anger toward me for it. Apparently, her Darcy charm had worked its magic.

As we turned up a side street and headed for the center of town, a cold breeze sent a skitter down my spine and I had an overwhelming feeling that I was being watched. I turned around slowly, checking each of the windows, but most of the curtains were drawn. There was nothing.

While I stood, Darcy had walked ahead and was almost at the top of the hill. I hugged myself as I passed an old, overgrown playground. It had two swings, one slide, and a set of rusty monkey bars. The fence was broken, and weeds had overtaken the one bench meant for watchful parents. It was the first ugly thing I’d seen on the island, and my steps automatically slowed again. One of the swings creaked back and forth in the ocean breeze, its tempo even, like a ticking clock.

Up ahead, Darcy turned left and disappeared from view. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a scrap of tan corduroy fabric stuck to one of the rusty fence links. The exact same color as the jacket Steven Nell was wearing when he’d attacked me.

My throat constricted with dread. I whirled around, but there was no one there. Pressing my lips together, I tugged the scrap of fabric free. Sewn into the wide wale were two small, square patches. One was checkered white and blue. The other was blue around the edge, with a white square inside of the outline and a solid red square at the center. They looked like flags sailors used to signal to passing boats. Nell hadn’t had anything like that on his jacket.

I took a deep breath and blew it out. I had to chill. Steven Nell didn’t own the only piece of tan corduroy on the planet. I pocketed the scrap and took off at a jog after my sister.

Ten seconds later, I skidded onto Main Street, where I could see the general store at the end of the block. In the park at the center of town, two men played boccie while the minstrel boy sang a reggae version of “The Remedy” under the banner advertising that Friday’s fireworks display.

The boy bopped his head as he sang and played his guitar. He’d drawn a crowd, and one guy was playing air drums to the beat. I saw Tristan and Fisher approach the group from the opposite direction, and my heart skipped. Every time I saw Tristan, it was like I was surprised all over again by how gorgeous he was—his blond hair grazing those insane cheekbones, his deep tan, his strong-looking arms. He glanced over at me, then quickly trained his attention on the singer. I blushed at being caught staring.

Fisher was eating an ice-cream bar, and I saw him crinkle up the wrapper and start to throw it over his shoulder, but Tristan stopped him with a hand to his arm. He said something, and Fisher shrugged, tucking the wrapper into his pocket. Guess Tristan was green as well as beautiful.

“You know, he’s actually not that bad,” Darcy mused, nodding along to the minstrel’s song.

I rolled my eyes. That was Darcy for you. Mocking something one day, loving it the next.

“Come on,” I said. “Let’s check out the general store.”

We walked to the end of the street, and Darcy put her hand on the door, then froze, staring at something over her shoulder. Hovering over the ocean on a bluff at the southernmost point of the island was a huge house with a wraparound porch. It was painted blue with intricate, carved details around the many windows and dozens of flowerpots hanging from the porch. It had two turrets, almost like a castle, and gable windows facing the town, plus a huge patio with vine-covered trellises surrounding it. Atop one of the turrets was a golden weathervane with a swan motif, which I noticed was pointing due north, even though the wind was definitely blowing in from the west.

“Is that a hotel?” I asked.

“It has to be,” Darcy said. “Either that or someone stinking rich lives there.”

We turned to walk into the general store, but the door opened and we both jumped back as Joaquin exited.

“Hey, Rory,” he said in his deep voice, giving me an
aren’t
you glad you bumped into me
kind of smile.

“Um, hi,” I said, glancing over at Darcy.

“And Darcy!” he added quickly. He was wearing a black polo shirt with an embroidered swan on the left breast pocket, the words
THIRSTY SWAN
sewn in cursive over its head. I noticed Darcy admiring his biceps as he twisted the lid off a bottle of iced tea.

“Hi!” she said. “I thought you were working a double shift today.”

“I am.” He took a swig, then recapped the bottle and moved away from the door to let a pair of girls pass by into the store. I recognized them as the girls who had been talking to Aaron last night, but they didn’t bother to say hi. “I just came over here for lunch.”

“Oh. Us, too,” Darcy said.

Neither of us had said a word about lunch, but it was like she had to agree with everything he said.

“Too bad I missed you,” he said, looking her up and down. “I wouldn’t have minded having the Thayer girls as my arm candy.”

She blushed a deep red. I tried not to vomit. He stepped toward us, forcing us to part so that he could get through.

“You guys should come by the Swan tonight,” he said, pausing near the edge of the sidewalk and looking directly at me.

“Why?” I said.

Darcy smacked my arm with the back of her hand.

“Because I’ll be there,” he replied. The glint in his eye was half teasing, half cocky.

“Ha-ha,” I said flatly.

“I’m really not getting any love from you, am I?” he asked, still smiling.

My sister’s obvious worship wasn’t enough for him?

“No, really,” he added when I didn’t bother answering. “Everyone hangs out there. It’s kind of our thing.”

“Cool. We’re in,” Darcy said, pushing her hands into the back pockets of her jeans, which forced her chest up and out.

I shot her a look. There were only so many times we could get away with sneaking out.

“Cool,” Joaquin said. “Just head down to the docks and look for the carving of the drunk swan. You can’t miss it.”

Then he flipped open a pair of aviator sunglasses, slid them up his nose with one finger, and strode away. I couldn’t help noticing that every female he passed on the street, from the twelve-year-old with the ice-cream cone to the geriatric with the blue hair, turned to check him out.

“Why do you like that guy?” I asked Darcy as soon as he was out of earshot.

“How can you
not
like that guy?” she asked.

Because he was cocky. Because he was too sure of himself and obviously a player. Plus even after their supposed bonding session last night, he kept talking to me like she wasn’t even there.

“We’re not going out tonight,” I told her, thinking back to the fog that enveloped me on the beach. Imagined laugh or no, staying in seemed like a much safer option.

“Yes, we are,” she replied, yanking open the door to the general store.

“No. We’re not,” I shot back.

Darcy groaned loudly and stormed inside ahead of me. She was already trying on sunglasses at a wire rack as I closed the door behind us. Slowly, I made my way around the store and up and down the three short aisles. The place stocked everything from cereal to gardening gloves to underwear, but there was no magazine section. That was odd. I thought people in vacation towns were always clamoring for the latest issues of
Us Weekly
or whatever to read on the beach.

I approached the counter, where a woman with white hair was drying off tall soda-fountain glasses. She had on a blue-and-white gingham dress and a white, lace-trimmed apron.

“Excuse me,” I said.

Her smile was brighter than the sun outside. “What can I do ya for, hon?”

“Do you have any newspapers?” I asked.

She chucked her chin toward the register. “Have at ’em. They’re free.” Next to the old-fashioned change return was a stack of folded paper that looked something like my school newspaper, which only printed four times a year. I walked over and lifted the top copy.

THE DAILY REGISTER:

JUNIPER LANDING’S ONE AND ONLY NEWS SOURCE

The first article was titled
A DAY IN THE LIFE OF A JL LIFEGUARD
. Under the headline was a huge photograph of a smiling Joaquin Marquez.

“That’s it?” I blurted.

“People come here to get away from it all,” the woman said with a shrug. Then she shoved through the swinging door behind the counter and disappeared into the kitchen.

Unbelievable.
“I’m going outside!” I shouted to Darcy.

“Whatever,” she replied.

The bell tinkled again as I shoved through the door and dropped into the first wire chair. I quickly flipped through the thin rag, my hopes falling with each turn of the page. There were stories on the upcoming Founder’s Day parade, a piece on a local jeweler, and a notice about a roundtable the mayor was hosting, but there was no national news page. Not even a column. Not one single mention of Roger Krauss/Steven Nell or the “unnamed teenage girl” he’d attacked in the woods outside Princeton. Back home, our story had been front-page news every morning and splashed across all the local stations. It had been on CNN and
Dateline
.