Not exactly. “Just curious,” I shrugged.
He shook his head, as if not believing I was
worrying over this. “It’s way too high, honey. Don’t worry.”
I nodded, still filled with doubt, and moved
to the staircase.
“Oh, I almost forgot,” he said. I stopped
with my foot on the third step. “Somebody left you an early gift in
the porch while you were out. I put it on your bed. It had no card
or anything—a secret admirer maybe?”
A gift? Nobody knew about my birthday.
“Thanks, Dad. I’ll check it out.” I darted to my room and flicked
the light on. A gift, wrapped in brown paper with a red silken
cord, rested in my bed. I sat down and pulled it to my lap. There
was no card. I tore the wrapping with a frown and sucked a breath
when my eyes found the warped leather cover. It was the book, the
old lady’s book. I frowned confused. It seemed bizarre she would
give it to me like this, especially when she'd made it clear it
wasn’t for sale. And even more bizarre was that she’d left it
outside in the porch, as if she couldn’t wait, as if she was in a
hurry.
I flipped open the book and found a small
card. I opened it and read the fancy letters flowing along the
surface.
Skuld’s path is already taking its course, so
this book is no
longer mine. It belongs now to the true
beholder of the Ylem.
And though an alluvion of harms will flood
her life, remember
that when a soul has found its equals,
everything around
loses its balance, until the zenith is
achieved. Treasure
this book as your own life, and he’ll
treasure yours.
The fate of our world is in your hands.
I frowned. Skuld? I remembered that name. It
was one of the three goddesses of fate in Norse mythology. The rest
of the words sounded crazy, though. Who was “the beholder of the
Ylem?” And what the hell was the Ylem? She’d said some weird stuff
about it, something about having it inside of me, but I'd taken it
as senseless babble. So what? Should I assume I was the “true
beholder?” If so, what was my role? Hide it and save the world?
Ugh. I folded the card and squeezed it
between two books on the shelf above the nightstand. I stuffed the
old book in my tote and grabbed my pajamas from the armoire. I was
going to return the book to her tomorrow after school.
Its place wasn’t with me.
I was sitting on the same smoky, see-through
rock, panting. Soaked clothes wrapped around my quivering body, and
the same pixie-dust-waterfall rose across from me. I took a deep
breath and watched the emerald foliage surrounding the magic place.
In the midst of the green shrubbery, two familiar silvery eyes
watched me. But something was different, rare. Their shape was
feline, savage, and the intense color almost filled both eyes,
making the silver even more mesmeric and entrancing.
To my surprise, I wasn’t scared or worried. I
was fascinated by those vast eyes. I stood up and moved forward.
The eyes didn’t move. I took another step, watching them carefully,
and nothing happened. It seemed the creature behind those eyes
wasn’t against me being close. I walked slowly toward the bushes,
interest and curiosity driving my steps, attracted like a bee to
honey. I couldn’t escape those other-worldly eyes.
Tristan?
I took one more step and…fell, fell into an
unexpected void…
Void.
Void.
Void.
Ouch
. I muttered against the stiff
wooden floor underneath my cheek. The sheet and comforter were
twisted all around my body, and my fingertips quivered again with
those odd electric tingles—maybe I had to use the static spray
while sleeping, too.
One corner of my forehead ached. It was the
exact same spot I’d hit at Ski Apache. I stroked it, trying to ease
the pain a bit, and looked up to the bed. No sheet. No comforter.
Nothing. I’d fallen.
I looked at the digital clock in the desk and
groaned. It was too early to get out of bed. But I was already
out—not deliberately, but still out. I had two long hours to get
ready. After that forceful awakening, or should I say landing, I
couldn’t go back to sleep.
What a great way to wake up on your
birthday.
“Kalista…”
I jumped out of my thoughts, dropping my fork
on the plate with a clink.
“Sorry,” I said, looking at Valerie. We were
at the cafeteria. Voices in different pitches buzzed in the air,
like an uneven symphony playing in the background. The only ones
missing seemed to be the Triad’s.
Were they hunting back in those woods?
“You’ve been doing this the whole day.”
“Doing what?”
“Going away like this,” she waved her hands
in the air. “It’s like talking to a wall.”
“I think she passed onto the next daydreamer
level,” Owen snapped from across the table. “I wonder what’s after
that.” He raised his eyebrows and took a sip of coke.
“I just have a lot of things going on in my
mind with college applications. That’s all,” I lied, grasping the
fork again to play with the barely touched spaghetti.
“She’s been like this since this morning,”
Dean said.
“Well, I have gossip to perk you up.” Valerie
lowered her voice and bent forward. “Remember that girl I told you
about a couple of days ago, the one who ran away from her
house?”
“Laura, right?” I said, narrowing my eyes in
thought.
“Yep. It seems her boyfriend told her parents
he hasn’t heard from her, which threw her mom into a panic attack.
They don’t have any more leads on her whereabouts. And now that
somebody found what might be fragments of fresh human bones in the
woods near their neighborhood…they’re freaking out.”
“Human bones?” Owen grimaced. “Jesus.”
“But it’s not a sure thing,” I said with a
light pressure of worry in my chest. “You said they might be.”
Valerie nodded. “They took the fragments for
a DNA test to NMSU’s forensic laboratory yesterday.”
“Come on, we all know she’s a runaway,” Dean
said. “They might be some animal’s.”
“Do you think the sheriff’s office would’ve
sent them if they looked like they were?” Valerie arched her
eyebrows. “Yeah. I don’t think so.”
“Let’s just stop with all this Cold Case
stuff and focus on the party tonight,” Owen said. He pulled Dean
against him in a manly gesture. “My man here doesn’t deserve all
this dark, grisly talk on his last day at Ruidoso High School.”
“Yeah,” Valerie said. “We’ll miss you,
Dean.”
I looked at him with a sad smile. One of the
things I admired the most of Dean was how easily he'd let go all
the stuff that'd happened between us. He was a genuinely nice
person, so it shouldn't have surprised me when he offered to take
me to the old lady's bookstore.
“Thanks for bringing me,” I told Dean as I
unbuckled my seatbelt. “I just need to return something. It’ll be
quick.”
We climbed out of his car and moved to the
rock steps outside the old lady’s bookstore. “You know, when I was
a kid, I used to think goblins worked here or something,” Dean
said, sweeping his eyes over the weird structure.
“Funny. I thought the same thing when I saw
it—only I wasn’t a kid.”
He gave a short laugh and pushed open the
heavy door. The smell of herbs, must and leather rushed into our
noses. Dean wrinkled his nose. The yellow lights were on, but as
always, the place looked deserted. “Hello?” I called. Some books
were lying on the floor, as if they’d been pushed out from the desk
in a rage. Something about that tugged at my stomach.
“There’s no one in here,” Dean said, looking
around.
I walked down to the back and searched the
area. Nothing. Everything looked in order. Maybe she went to the
supermarket or something. But, why was the door of the bookstore
unlocked? Had she forgotten to lock it?
I went back to the front of the store.
“Anything?” Dean asked.
I shook my head. “She’s not here. I’ll leave
it on the desk.” I shoved my hand into my tote to pull out the
book, but stopped. There was a smear of blood in the desk.
“What’s the matter?” Dean stepped beside
me.
“Is that blood?” I said, not taking my eyes
from the crimson mark.
He leaned forward, taking a better look. “I
think it is.” He looked at me.
Dark thoughts stormed into my mind. “Oh my
God. What if something happened to her, Dean? What if she’s in
trouble? She doesn’t look strong enough to deal with a wound…”
“Whoa. Take it easy.” He placed his hands on
my shoulders. “I’ve seen the lady who owns this place and, believe
me, she’s tougher than you think.”
“She’s wounded, Dean.” I nodded to the smear
of blood.
“It could be anything, Kalista—a paper cut, a
bleeding nose, or someone else’s blood,” he added. “Besides, it
looks dry.”
“Which means it could’ve happened yesterday.
It’s even worse, somehow.”
“You’re overreacting. I think all that talk
about human bones in the woods left you apprehensive. I'm sure
she’s fine.”
His words made sense. The dreadful idea of
those bones being Laura’s freaked me out, because that meant she’d
been killed. But by whom? An animal? All of this made me think of
those gruesome medieval stories in the book. And it was stupid
because I knew the pack of Shifters that lived here, and they
wouldn’t dare to do something that atrocious. In fact, they
couldn’t do anything like that. There was a Covenant. And Chloe was
here to make sure it was respected. So there was no reason to take
that line of thought.
But still. I couldn’t get it off of my mind.
Tristan said there were bad ones out there—Insurgents, who didn’t
give a damn about the Covenant. What if there was one wandering
Ruidoso? What if Chloe hadn’t notice him? No, it couldn’t be. She
was a Benandanti, some sort of kickass girl hero with spirit
powers—something that still didn’t click in my mind. And Tristan
and the others had their wolf powers. They would have smelled an
Insurgent if he was around here.
“You’re right,” I finally accepted. “Maybe
she just went out to do something.”
“Exactly,” he smiled. “No reason to
worry.”
“Yeah,” I said, still a bit unsure. “Let’s
go.”
When we left, though, I took the book with
me. A little voice in my head told me that, for now, it was better
off with me.
It was a bright day outside, but I was left
feeling cold inside.
My dad didn’t deserve my dreary mood. He’d
been cooking the whole afternoon for me, putting aside his precious
writing time to make my birthday cake. He hadn't wanted to buy it,
of course. It was too much of a “special occasion,” even if deep
down inside of him he knew there was nothing to celebrate. I felt
the same way. We were both pretty good at ignoring the thorn
pricking our hearts. We’d been doing it for thirteen years now.
Only today, the recent criminal gossip and
the bad feeling lurking in my gut worsened the feeling.
“Everything was really good, Dad, even that
salad with olives and stuff,” I said, taking a last sip of
Chardonnay.
“The antipasto,” he said, as if he was having
a moment of glory. “Light and perfect to start a meal.”
I looked at the floral arrangement with the
two colorful happy birthday balloons at the center of the table.
He’d really put a lot of effort into this. “I love the flowers and
the banner.” It was hanging all across the wall with chipboard
letters glued on cardstock and decorative bits of paper. "What’s
for desert?” I asked. The pastel colors in the banner giving me a
sudden craving for sweets.
“You’ll see.” His eyes widened and he stood
up to go to the kitchen. Before I could take another breath, he was
back with a shimmering bag in his hands. “Just a little something
for you to look at in the meantime.”
“Thanks, Dad,” I said with a smile. I opened
the bag and pulled out a box with four batteries glued on the side.
“A shower CD player?”
“The best one I found on the internet,” he
said from the kitchen. “I’ve heard you singing when you shower and
thought it was a good idea to get you one.”
“Now it will take me longer to get out.”
“At least you’ll be cleaner.”
“Sparkling.” I smiled.
“Well, that’s the idea,” he added, returning
with two square plates on his hands. “Voila,” he said, setting in
front of me a piece of cake with a thin layer of whipped cream on
top. The bread looked wet, like a white sponge that had absorbed a
lot of milk, with caramel drops on the sides.
“What is it?” I asked, putting aside the
gift.
“Tres Leches cake,” he answered, sitting
down.
“Dad, I can’t speak Spanish, you know.”
He smiled. “It’s Three Milks cake.”
There goes the wet thing
, I thought. I
dug my fork into the cake. “Wow,” I said as the sweet taste rolled
in my tongue. “I think it’s the best cake I’ve ever had.”
His face gleamed with pride. “It’s a Latin
American dessert.”
“Wow,” I said again, taking another mouthful.
It took only three more bites to kill it with my teeth.
“Do you want some more?” he asked, looking at
me with sparkling eyes, his satisfaction glowing brighter than a
Christmas tree.
“No, thanks,” I said, patting my fully-packed
belly. “I’ll save it for tomorrow.” Especially if I was going to be
all by myself the whole weekend. It would save me from an overload
of pre-cooked meals.
“And you have to get ready for the party,” he
said, as if that was a reason to not eat more.
I sighed. “I guess I have to.”
“Hey, I'm not exactly thrilled that you’re
going, but I'm sure you’re going to have fun—safe fun,” he added
pointedly.
“Right.” I stood up and grabbed my gift.