The Evensong (10 page)

“Well so much for movie night,” he laughed. He sat next to me on the bed again and guzzled down his tea. I noticed my glass was still full, but I didn’t touch it, instead checking the clock on his nightstand. The green numbers read 10:15.

“God, I have to go,” I burst out, already on my feet. Rene was going to be upset I hadn’t called, and I’d missed the group lesson.

“I didn’t call Rene or anything.”

“Oh yeah—damn, I must have been tired,” Linden replied when he noticed the time.

I didn’t wait for him as I hurried out of the room and down the stairs. Reaching into my pocket, I struggled to get the keys out, barely hearing Linden on the stairs.

“I’m sorry I fell asleep,” he said, pushing his hood down.

“It’s fine, I did too,” I replied, going towards the front door. I’d just pushed the screen door open when Linden caught my arm, and I froze, unwilling to look at him. When he didn’t immediately say anything, I hesitantly looked up at him. He opened his mouth like he had something to say, but then shut it again, seeming frustrated.

“I’ll uh—catch up with you later. We’ll do something next time, no sleeping.”

It seemed like an improvised suggestion, but I nodded, agreeing before he let me go. I didn’t look back as I ran to my car, though I knew he was still standing in the doorway.

I drove home as fast as I could on the rugged road, noticing how a pressure was developing in my head as it began to drizzle. By the time I’d pulled up to the house, my head was throbbing steadily with the downpour. There were still a few lights on, including the porch light. I rushed through the rain to the porch and in the front door, closing it behind me quietly. Trying to catch my breath, I slipped off my shoes before Rene emerged from the kitchen. The look on her face told me I was in more trouble than I expected.

“Where have you been?” she asked lowly, her words clipped.

“I’m sorry I missed the lesson, I was—”

“Get in here, now.” She pointed to the living room, and I did as she asked. I sat on the couch and she sat in the wing chair beside it, repeating her first question.

“Where have you been? I gave you two hours after your normal work time before I called Meryl. She told me you got off early. So where the hell have you been for the past few hours?”

She was angrier than I’d seen her in a while. I took a breath and moved my damp hair out of my face.

“I was with Linden.”

“Who?” She looked at me hard, and I had a feeling she already knew the answer.

“He’s the one that lives on the edge of the swamps.”

She sighed and pressed her fingers to her temples, shaking her head. “I thought Meryl might have been mistaken. How do you think I felt worrying where you were, thinking you might be with him, a
complete
stranger?”

She was yelling now, but I was completely confused. It wasn’t like her to be so wound up about me hanging out with new people, especially people outside of the house. She usually encouraged it.

“Rene, I’ve hung out with him before, he’s not a—”

“Hush, Riley,” she snapped. “I don’t want to hear you’ve been with him again.”

I stared in shock. Was she really forbidding me to see him? It was the dumbest thing I’d ever heard, and I didn’t say anything as I stood and left the room. Rene didn’t stop me, and I hurried up the stairs, not bothering to be quiet. In my confusion, I almost ran into Omar as he stepped out of the bathroom, a towel around his waist.

“Sorry,” I mumbled, stepping out of his way.

“Hey, where’ve you been?” he asked, concerned. “You missed the whole group thing.”

“I’m aware of that,” I shot back, going to my room. I left him in the hall and closed the door behind me, leaving the light off. I crossed the room to my bed and lay down, facing the window. I watched the rain come down in sheets and noticed I still had a headache. It wasn’t as bad as usual, which was a relief, but my current anger didn’t help it. I couldn’t understand why Rene would pull this sort of thing on me . . . I hoped it was just her worry that made her so angry, and that drove her to blurt out my apparent punishment.

Maybe there were more rumors going around about Linden. I couldn’t imagine what else could be said to make him seem so bad, but the idea of Rene taking it seriously was not her usual way.

I sighed to the darkness of my room just as someone knocked on the door. I didn’t feel like talking to anyone, so I didn’t say anything. When the door opened anyway, I sat up on my elbows, glaring in that direction. Omar stood there, now in a plain t-shirt and pajama pants, his hair a damp tousle.

“You know, I closed the door for a reason,” I said as he slowly walked in.

“What, I can’t worry about you?” he asked, pausing at the foot of my bed.

“There is nothing to worry about!” I blurted out. “What are you, Rene?”

He just looked at me in surprise. “Wow, I didn’t think you were that pissed off. I think it’s
you
that’s Rene.”

“Please leave,” I replied, looking back to the window.

“You didn’t get sick again, did you?”

“No, I didn’t, I was
just
hanging out with someone.”

Omar paused, and I knew what he was thinking before he said it. “That someone being swamp guy?”

“Sure, swamp guy,” I replied, exasperated with correcting people.

“I don’t want to bug, but—”

“Then don’t.”

He sighed and twisted the knob at the end of the bedpost. “He doesn’t seem like the greatest type of person to be hanging out with.”

“And you base your judgment on what? The things you see in public, like him walking around?” I asked, imagining Omar peeking around the bookshelves in the library.

“Yeah, I do,” he replied defensively. “You can tell a lot about a person based on the things they read.”

This was his reason for most things. So-and-so had checked out this certain book, so that must mean that they are into those sorts of things.

“So what kind of stuff has he been checking out?” I asked, mocking intense interest as I sat up and looked at him with wide eyes.

He gave me a hard look before he replied, “Stuff like things we don’t talk about.”

I stared at him vaguely, and then had to hold back a laugh. “Stuff? That we don’t talk about? Thanks for being so specific.”

He lost his patience then. He threw his hands up in defeat and turned away, going towards the door. I didn’t stop him; I took a second to laugh to myself as he slammed the door behind him.

A few days later, I was sitting across from Rene at the kitchen table, struggling through the lesson I had missed earlier. After letting my frustrations die down, I had gotten over the worst of my anger towards Rene, though I still thought her new rule was stupid; I still wasn’t allowed to see Linden, but who’s to say I’d follow through with that?

“Let’s try this one now,” Rene said after flipping through one of her books for a few minutes. “This will be a bit of a stretch, but it will be good practice.”

She slid the book towards me, and I briefly read over the exercise. It was all about projecting, though it would be a guided projection. I’d had many guided projections before when I was just learning, but this one was supposed to be a little harder since Rene would be mixing up location.

“Sound reasonable?” she asked when I had finished reading.

“Reasonable,” I replied, giving her the book.

“Okay—and we’ll stay here at the table to do it, all right?”

I hesitated at that one. Usually I was in a more comfortable position rather than sitting in a wooden chair in the kitchen. But if she was up to the challenge, then I guess I was, too.

I folded my arms on the tabletop in front of me and tried to slouch down a little more while Rene read over a few things. When I was ready, I rested my head on my arms, taking a deep breath.

“Okay, shoot,” I said.

“All right. Eyes closed?” Rene paused and went on. “I’ll give you a few minutes to do your normal routine, but wait over the house until I give you instruction.”

I was hardly listening anymore as I started. There was a brief feeling of my body relaxing, and then I was above the roof, watching the trees blowing next to the house and waiting to hear something from Rene.

Her voice was like the faintest whisper in my ear, but I heard her when she spoke, and she told me to go in the direction of Meryl’s house. So I started the simple exercise, going through various places in town until Rene instructed me to go to my spot in the swamps.

I went there first, but my focus was decreasing already. I started meandering through the rest of the swamp, doing the normal things I usually did when I was there in person. I settled in the water and coursed along deeper into the swamps. That’s when my original intent was totally forgotten when I saw Linden crouched near the edge of the still waters.

I stopped moving immediately, settling in the tree next to him. He wasn’t wearing a hoodie or a long sleeve shirt this time, and his tattoos were in plain view in the weak sunlight. The color popped even in the shadows, and I moved into the fern next to him for a closer look.

It was better up close, and as the wind blew, the fern grazed his arm, which would have made me shiver had I been in my body. He glanced down at the plant, and I almost retreated, afraid he’d see me. But I caught myself and stayed put, realizing what a stupid idea that was. Linden passed his arm over the spot where the fern had touched him, and resumed looking in the water.

I watched as he reached out and submerged half of his hand. The ripples expanded outward, bouncing off the debris on the surface and other things coming from the water. When the ripples began to increase rapidly, I looked back at his hand, but he wasn’t even moving; the ripples just kept coming from where his hand was placed.

The curiosity of this almost drove me to jump into the water immediately, but I moved slowly, only just beginning to touch it when a burst of pain sent me back into my physical body.

My hands came up to clasp my head where the pain had exploded behind my eyes. It was rapidly fading, but the memory of it kept my eyes squeezed shut.

“Riley? Are you all right?” Rene asked, a hand on my arm. “It’s not raining . . .”

“Sorry,” I gasped, daring to open my eyes. “Sorry, I guess I was bouncing around in the swamp too much.”

Any mention of Linden would get me in worse trouble, but I could see some suspicion in Rene’s eyes. She let go of my arm and closed the book, muttering that we had done enough for the day. She made a beeline for the living room and started looking at the spines of the books on the shelves. I wasn’t sure what she was looking for, but she pulled out a few and made for her room where I assumed she’d be sitting at her desk for a couple hours.

SPECULATIONS

“This is ridiculous, isn’t it?” I demanded to Alysana as we stood in line at the bookstore, a few new volumes in our hands.

“What, the fact that this is taking so long?” she replied, looking ahead at the people in line.

“No—what I’ve been saying,” I replied. While browsing the books, I’d been complaining about Rene’s warning to me: she didn’t want to hear I’d been hanging out with Linden at all. This had been in effect for a week, which was only stirring in me a greater desire to see him again. I’d watched for him at work and even when I was driving home, but I didn’t see him anywhere. To top it off, it had been raining almost nonstop for the week.

“Oh that,” Alysana said, sounding exasperated. I didn’t blame her; I couldn’t seem to shut myself up. “Like I’ve been saying, Rene said she didn’t want to
hear
you’d been seeing him. So just don’t tell her, and don’t tell anyone that might tell her, and don’t let anyone see you going there.”

“It’s not that simple if I don’t see him—”

“Riley, I know,” she said, looking at me pointedly. “We’ve talked about this. A lot. Just take my advice and
go over there yourself.
He likes you enough, I don’t think he’ll be mad about it.”

“How do you know?”

She sighed and closed her eyes, but went on anyway. “Know what? That he likes you enough? For god’s sake, Riley, he’s always asking you over, wanting to hang out, I think it’s a safe assumption.”

It was a relief to hear it again, either way. I was beginning to worry that I was making things up in hope that I was right. An outside opinion was always welcome.

I was still pondering over what I had seen while projecting during my lesson. Was there any way to really explain it? I was hoping it was a trick of the light or something like that. Anything else seemed impossible or otherwise a bad omen. Still, I chose not to mention it to Alysana, or anyone else.

I glanced down at the two books I’d picked out, wondering if my subconscious plan would work. I’d already taken Alysana’s advice in going to see Linden—at least, I planned to. But I wanted a reason to show up, so I started here. I had picked up that book on the Elementals since it was the one he had noticed most. I’d thought about the Morgan Le Fae one, but scratched that after glancing through it. So my plan was to bring it to him as some kind of gift, though I still had no idea how I was going to present it.