The Boys Are Back in Town (32 page)

Besides, tonight she had other priorities.

It was not quite as cold as it had been midweek, but still chilly enough that Ashleigh wore a light sweater under her jacket. The air was redolent with the scent of flowers. The football itself was crepe paper, but the cougar design on either side was indeed a floral creation, mostly thanks to hard work by Tess herself. Ashleigh had lent a hand, but Tess was the one who had pushed for the inclusion of the flowers and she really made it work. Most everyone else was occupied with painting white lines onto the brown crepe paper to represent the laces on a football. It had taken the presence of the captain of the football team to remind them that the football needed laces. Even now Tim Friel was up on top of the float helping Tess add daisies to the cougar.

The strangest sight was Will and Brian—
her
Will and Brian—helping out with nailing down the green plastic grass carpeting that would cover the rest of the float. The players and cheerleaders would be riding there, and it was supposed to look like a football field. Instead, it more closely resembled the fluorescent grass that came in Easter baskets. Though Will and Brian weren't part of the committee, they had come down and offered to help. And though surprised, Mr. Murphy was more than willing to accept their help. Their job was to keep an eye on Bonnie Winter, who wasn't really helping, but was instead using her time to flirt.

The
other
Will and Brian—she would never get used to them—had not arrived yet, but she figured they would be here at any time. Ashleigh figured they had slept through the day again and probably gotten something to eat before heading over. She hoped that they would arrive soon, because she desperately needed to pee.

“Hey, Ashleigh.”

She turned from her spot on the float, where she was painting
EASTBOROUGH COUGARS
in the school colors. The wind blew her hair across her eyes and she pushed it away with the back of her hand, the smell of paint in her nostrils. Then she smiled.

“Lolly. What's up?” Ashleigh glanced past the other girl. “Where's Pix?”

“What, I can't go anywhere without her?” Lolly asked, the parking lot lights gleaming off her caramel features.

“Like peanut butter without the jelly.”

Lolly rolled her eyes and cocked out her hip in that completely unconscious, sultry way that she did. “I'm meeting up with her and Caitlyn in a bit. I told them I'd stop by and see if you wanted to come with. We're just doing a little window-shopping at the mall.”

“I can't. Don't want to abandon the rest of the committee. I'll see you guys in the morning, though.”

“All right. We'll just have to shop on without you.” Lolly glanced upward. “You're praying for no rain, huh?”

“Oh, yeah. That would suck.”

The pressure in her bladder had been growing, and now Ashleigh hopped down from the float and laid her paintbrush across the can. She wiped the paint from her hands on the threadbare jeans she had worn for precisely that purpose and shot Lolly a bashful grin.

“Girl's gotta go.”

“Then go, girl, go. And I'm gone, too. See you tomorrow.”

Ashleigh hurried across the parking lot toward the double doors of the high school, waving to Mr. Murphy to let him know where she was headed. He nodded in return. She paused just inside the door and tried surreptitiously to get Will's or Brian's attention, but to no avail. They were too busy hammering nails and watching Bonnie Winter. With a sigh she glanced at Tess, who was still up on the float affixing daisies. There were dozens of students around her. Anyone who wanted to hurt her would have to get through all of them to do it.

Unless they were magic.

The shadow man had become a wisp of darkness right in front of her eyes. Who was to say if he might appear from nothing, grab Tess, and disappear the same way?

Ashleigh hesitated another moment, but her bladder won out. She raced inside the high school, hurrying down the stairs. Halfway down she slipped and nearly fell, catching herself on the handrail just in time.

“Get it together, Ash,” she muttered to herself, her voice sounding hollow and distant in the stairwell.

Then she pushed in through the door of the ladies' room. It echoed with the drip of a leaky faucet and one of the lights was burnt out. Any other night she would have been uneasy about going in there alone in an empty school, but tonight she didn't have time for that kind of thing.

As quickly as nature would allow, she was hurrying back up the stairs. In the back of her mind she had painted terrible images of what might await her when she returned, but when she stepped back out into the lot, nothing had changed. Some of the kids were working, others were just flirting, laughing, and screwing around. Bonnie Winter was demonstrating one of the cheers their squad would use at tomorrow's game. Will and Brian had given up the pretense of work to watch her.

Tess was gone.

Ashleigh could not breathe. She glanced around, saw Mr. Murphy talking to Tim Friel, looked closely at every girl, just in case. But none of them was Tess.

“Fuck,” she whispered, sprinting across the lot. She wanted to scream at the guys, tell them to stop watching Bonnie Winter's tits bounce, but everyone would have thought she was a freak. Instead, she ran to Tim and Mr. Murphy, both of whom glanced at her with nearly identical raised-eyebrow expressions.

“Ashleigh?” Mr. Murphy began.

But her focus was on Tim. “What happened to Tess?”

“She had a date.” He shrugged. “She just left.”

Will and Brian had finally noticed something was up and they strode across the lot toward her. Ashleigh focused on Tim.

“Did she say who with, or where she was going?” she asked, panicking.

“Jesus, no,” Tim said. “Chill out, Ashleigh.”

“Don't fucking tell me to chill out!” she snapped, heart pounding, eyes burning. She had barely escaped the shadow man. The idea that Tess might be in his hands even now was too much for her.

Mr. Murphy frowned. “Ashleigh, what is it? What's wrong?”

She shook her head. “Did someone pick her up?”

“Nah, she was walking. She only lives on the other side of the lake.”

Ashleigh wasn't cold anymore. Adrenaline blazed through her as she spun and nearly ran into Brian Schnell. Will was right behind him. Mr. Murphy called after her but she grabbed the guys by their arms and tugged them along in her wake as she started to run out of the parking lot.

“She's walking home. Around the lake. That's nice and deserted, don't you think?”

Will swore and picked up the pace. The three of them raced out onto Townsend Lane, which ran beside the school and deadended in a tree-lined circle that screened out most of the view of Gorham Lake. It was barely large enough to be called a lake in the first place, but walking even halfway around would take a little time, and bring Tess through backyards and then through some woods that were part of a state park where people came to swim in the summer. The only people likely to be down there were young lovers with nowhere warm to go.

Headlights washed over them from behind. Tires skidded as the three of them spun around to see Will—the older Will—jumping out of the driver's seat.

“She's gone,” Ashleigh announced before they could say another word. And she explained about the lake and that Tess's house was almost precisely on the other side.

“Shit!” the future Will snapped, and he slammed his fist against the roof of the Buick. “I remember where her house is.” He ducked his head into the car. “Brian, get out.”

Future Brian complied instantly.

“Ashleigh, you and . . .” Future Will looked fondly at
her
Will “. . . you two go to the right. Brian and Brian will go left. I'm staying in the car. I'm going to check every street that goes past the lake. If he has a car . . . if he needs a car . . . maybe I can find him. Otherwise I'll get to Tess's house and start backtracking from there.”

W
ILL HADN
'
T EVEN ASKED
how they had managed to lose track of Tess. The truth was, the facts were searing themselves into his mind as memories as they happened. This was a night he would never forget. He only wished he knew how it would end.

Even as he guided the Buick, its engine snarling as it tore along Punch Street, it was as though he was in two places at once, his mind mapping the memory of Young Will's trek through the lakeside woods with Ashleigh, simultaneous with its happening. He could remember fearing for Tess and for Ashleigh and feeling guilt for not having paid more attention. Ashleigh had paint on her jeans and the denim was shredded at her knees.

“Get the fuck out of my head,” Will grunted, gripping the wheel as he reached the circle at the end of Punch Street. There were no cars parked there, nothing left behind. He paused a moment, staring through the trees along a path that led to the lake.

Other memories warred in his head, images of Tess as Homecoming Queen and then of her riding in the parade years later during their reunion weekend. He didn't want to think of what might have been happening to her, the pain and humiliation, but one snippet of imagery played over and over in his head like the newsreel of some catastrophe: Ashleigh's face, changing before his eyes as the past was altered, going from happy, successful, sweet woman to numb and hollow.

He had saved Ashleigh from that, or helped to.

No way was he going to let it happen to Tess.

Jaw tight, breath coming in sharp bursts, he raced the Buick back up Punch Street and headed for the next cut in toward the lake. There were three, maybe four, before he got to Tess's road. Will prayed he would catch up to the son of a bitch before he reached her.

Against the backdrop of his memories, his younger self rushed through bare autumn trees, pushing low-hanging branches out of his way. One of them slipped from his fingers and snapped back, slicing his cheek just below his left eye.

Will braked out of reflex, just for a moment. There was no pain, but he could remember the pain.

He put a hand up to his left cheek, and one finger traced the line of a thin white scar he would see the next time he looked in the mirror.

W
ILL HISSED IN PAIN
and turned his back to the tree. One of the branches jutted into his back as he touched his fingers to his cheek. They came away streaked with blood that looked black in the moonlight that streamed through the branches from above.

“You all right?” Ashleigh whispered urgently.

He nodded. “Let's go.”

They started off again, sprinting nimbly along a path that was barely a path at all. Will was in the lead, but Ashleigh kept up with no problem. She had always been more agile than he was. His face was cold from running through the chill night, and the blood was warm where it dripped like tears on his face, but he ignored it, did not even try to wipe it away.

In his mind, all he could see was the image of his own face, eleven years older. He was afraid for Tess; seeing the dark man, Ashleigh's attacker, disappear into nothingness on Monday night had freaked him out completely. But as he hustled through the trees with the soft hush of the lake lapping its shores, he still could not erase that older image.

Me. It's me.
All week those words had been echoing in his mind, and he could not be rid of them. He could also not shake a terrible dread that had snowballed inside him, a horrid certainty that he and Brian had started all of this. Magic didn't just pop into people's lives, he knew that for sure. You had to invite it in. And once you did . . .

Now he was faced with a visitor from a future he both yearned and feared to know. Himself. Will James. Every time he thought of it, his mind froze up a little.
I look good,
he thought.
I seem like I'm not too big an asshole. But then there's this. I have to go through this.

Again.

He burst out of the trees onto the clearing in the state park land that was used as a beach in the summer. There was a parking lot not far off, but it was empty. Nothing there. Ashleigh came up beside him, moving faster, and together they ran along that barren stretch of land just above the place where the state had dumped sand. There were green trash cans and a couple of rusted hibachi grills; at the midpoint was a tall white lifeguard chair.

Will stopped and stared at the chair, thoughts clicking through his mind like trying to find the combination on his locker. He'd heard at least a couple of different guys talk about taking girls down here, fooling around up on the lifeguard chair.

“Ash,” he whispered.

She glanced at him and Will saw pain in her eyes. God, she meant the world to him. He had no idea what the future held, and the other Will wasn't about to tell him, but he prayed that whatever happened he held on to Ashleigh. She was more than a friend. What was that saying? Home was the place that when you went there, they had to take you in. That was family. And blood relation or no, Ashleigh was family.

Her fingers gripped his hand and like that they hurried down to the lifeguard chair, coming up on it from behind. They slowed as they reached it, moving with caution, sidling around in front.

There was nothing there but shadows and moonlight.

H
IS HANDS CARESSED HER BACK
and Tess let her head loll back while he kissed her neck. She ran her fingers through his hair and her pulse raced. With his right hand he cupped her breast and gently stroked her nipple through her shirt, sending an electric shock of pleasure jolting through her.

A soft laugh gurgled up from her throat and she smiled further, knowing how sexy it sounded. She darted her tongue out to moisten her lips and she kissed the side of his face even as he continued to nuzzle her throat. They had planned for him to pick her up at the house, but he had walked down the path to meet her, too impatient to see her. In another guy that would have driven her away, but he was a good-looking bastard, charmingly cocky, and she couldn't deny her attraction.

His hand slipped up beneath her shirt, expertly lifting her bra and pushing it above her breasts. An excited thrill rippled through her and her eyelids fluttered as he caressed her bare skin, gently rolling her nipples between his fingers. She knew this was crazy. It was their first date. She should make him stop. This wasn't the place or the time.