Abandon (6 page)

A ripple of anticipation spread across the cavern. The din grew almost unbearable. Someone from the rowdy line managed to break free, then darted directly across our path, causing me to lose my already unsteady balance. My captor had to throw a protective arm around me to keep me from falling.

“I’ll take her place,” the man from the line was yelling, “if she’s coming over here!”

One of the guards caught him before he got very far and dragged him, screaming, back.

“But it’s not fair,” he shouted. “Why can’t I take her spot?”

The stranger from the cemetery, having watched all this, looked down at me.

“Where did you come from?” he asked suspiciously.

“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you,” I said, my eyes filling with tears. “Don’t you remember me?”

He shook his head. But his grip on me had begun to loosen.

“It’s me,” I said. I hated the fact that every time we met, I was crying. Still, maybe it would help jog his memory. “From the cemetery on Isla Huesos, the day of my grandfather’s funeral. You made a dead bird come back to life —”

His entire demeanor changed. The hardened glint disappeared from those gray eyes. Suddenly, they were as gentle as they’d seemed the first time I met him.

“That was
you?”
Even his voice had changed. It sounded almost human.

“Yes,” I said, smiling despite my tears. I could see I’d gotten through to him at last. Maybe — just maybe — everything was going to be all right after all. “That was me.”

“Pierce,” he said. I could practically see the memory flooding back. “Your name was…Pierce.”

I nodded, the tears coming so fast I had to reach up and wipe them away. “Pierce Oliviera.”

My name on his lips sounded so nice in that horrible place. The fact anything at all seemed familiar when around me, everything was so awful, was more wonderful than I could describe. I had to restrain myself from throwing my arms around him. After all, I wasn’t seven anymore.

And he was no longer the kindly uncle he’d once seemed, doing magic tricks with doves.

Which was why I was keeping my distance.

“I think there’s been a mistake,” I said when he let go of me to reach into his coat pocket and pull out one of the palm tablets all the guards had. He was looking up my name, I could tell. “That’s why I’m so glad I found you. I really don’t think I’m supposed to be here. No offense, but this place…” — the words tumbled out before I could stop them — “whatever it is, it’s
horrible.
Do you run it or something?”

I had the feeling he did, but that didn’t stop me from insulting his management skills to his face, a bad habit I’d picked up from my dad, who’d never had any compunction about sending back a steak or a bottle of wine he didn’t like.

“Because it could really use some updating,” I went on while he was still reading whatever it said on his tablet. “There aren’t any signs or anything saying where we are or when the next boat is leaving, and I don’t think all of us are going to fit on that one over there, and it’s
really
cold in here, and no one can get any cell reception, and” — I took a step nearer to him so the guards wouldn’t overhear what I said next, even though I was pretty sure, what with all the loud protesting going on behind us and the clanging of the anchor chain as the boat docked on the other side, I was safe — “those guys organizing the lines? They’re very rude.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. He slipped the tablet back into his pocket, then shrugged off his coat and wrapped it around me, pulling it — and me — close by the collar. “Is this better?”

A little bit shocked that he’d so missed the point of what I was trying to tell him — but undeniably much warmer. His coat weighed a ton and was practically steaming from his body heat — I nodded. He hadn’t let go of the collar.

It felt odd to be so near him. He definitely was no kindly uncle. He was, instead, very much a young man close to my own age.

And crackling with male sexuality.

I wondered if I should have just stayed in my line. Everyone in it was filing for the boat, which looked, now that I could see it up close, fairly comfortable.

“I didn’t mean just me,” I went on more slowly.
“Everyone
here is freaking out. They’re wet and cold, too.” I pointed towards the line of people who weren’t being let onto the ferry that had just docked. “What’s going on with them?”

He looked in the direction I’d pointed, then back down at me. He was still holding on to the collar of his coat, keeping it snug around my shoulders.

“You don’t need to worry,” he said. His expression had hardened again, however, and his eyes gone a stormy gray, as if this was a subject he didn’t like discussing. “A boat’s coming for them, too.”

“Well, they still deserve to be treated better,” I said, wincing as another man tried to make a break for the ferry line before a guard used force to subdue him. “It’s not their fault —”

He stepped even closer towards me, effectively blocking my view of what was going on in front of the ferry. “Do you want to go someplace else?” he asked. “Someplace away from here? Someplace warm?”

“Oh,” I said, feeling a rush of relief. He’d realized there’d been a mistake. He was going to fix it. I was going home. “Yes,
please.
”

And then I blinked. Because that’s what human beings do, especially when they’ve been crying.

But when I opened my eyes again, I wasn’t home. I wasn’t standing on the shore of the lake anymore, either.

And what I’d been hoping was the end of the nightmare I’d been going through turned out to be just the beginning.

I
nstead of home
, or standing by the lake, I was in a long, elegantly appointed room.

The horse was gone. The guards were gone. The beach along the lake was gone. All of the people — the people who’d been waiting in the lines — were gone, too.

The wind was still there, though. It caused the long, gauzy white curtains, hanging from the elegant arches along one side of the room, to billow softly.

But the wind was the only thing I recognized. Everything else around me — the white-sheeted bed topped with a dark, heavy canopy on one end of the room; the pair of thronelike chairs at the long banquet table sitting before an enormous hearth at the other; the ornate antique tapestries, all depicting medieval-looking scenes, which hung here and there on the smooth, white marble
walls; even the white divan on which I was sitting — I had never seen before in my life.

I was dreaming. I had to be.

Except that everything — the sound of water bubbling in the fountain in the courtyard outside the arches; the softness of the fur rug beneath my suddenly bare feet; the smell of the burning firewood in the hearth — felt so real. As real as everything had felt a split second before.

Most real of all was
him,
sitting beside me on the divan.

“Better now?” he asked.

His voice didn’t sound like thunder anymore. Instead, it sounded lush, like the rug into which my feet sank the minute I sprang to them.

Which I did the minute he spoke.

What was going on? I lifted a trembling hand to shove some of my long — now dry — hair from my face, and caught a glimpse of something white. I looked down.

I was no longer wearing his coat, or my wet, chilly clothes. I was in some kind of gown. It wasn’t a hospital gown, either. It was closely fitted on top, with a skirt that almost swept the floor. It bore a vague resemblance to what the maidens in the tapestries on the walls were wearing. It would not have looked out of place at the annual cotillion held for the upperclasswomen at the Westport Academy for Girls.

This
part I had to be dreaming.

But then, why could I feel my heart pounding so hard in my chest?

He’d risen from the couch when I had. Now he stood looking
down at me with an expression on his face that I could only describe as concerned.

“Isn’t this what you wanted?” he asked. “You’re warm now, and dry. You did say you wanted to go away from there.”

I stared up at him, openmouthed, completely unable to speak.

I was a tenth grader from Connecticut who had just blinked and ended up in some eighteen- or nineteen-year-old guy’s bedroom.

Did he not see how this might be disturbing?

“You’ll be quite safe here, you know,” he assured me.

I used to think I was safe in my own backyard. And look how
that
had turned out.

“I don’t understand,” I said, when I finally managed to find my voice. Even then, it came out sounding more pathetic than ever. I needed to sit back down. I was pretty sure I was having some kind of stroke or something. “What’s going on? Where are we? Who
are
you?”

I guess the fact that I was able to speak at all must have made him think I was fine, because he’d jetted off towards the table.

“John,” he said, tossing the name casually over one of those impossibly wide shoulders. “I’m John. Didn’t I tell you that last time? I thought I did.”

John? His name was
John?

Maybe I’d hit my head harder than I thought, and I had amnesia or something. Maybe I’d been at a costume party — that would explain the gown — and this guy was one of Hannah’s brother’s friends, and I’d just forgotten.

Only none of that explained what had happened in the cemetery with Grandma.

John. I’m John.

“How…how did you do that?” I asked him in a shaking voice. “One minute we were there, by the lake, and the next —”

“Oh.” He shrugged. “A perk of the job, I suppose.” He pulled out one of the thronelike chairs. “You must be tired. Won’t you sit down? And I’m sure you must be hungry.”

It wasn’t until he said it that I realized I was. Just looking at the mounds of ripe peaches, crisp apples, and glistening grapes in those gleaming silver bowls — not to mention the cool clear water in those crystal goblets, so cold I could see the condensation dripping from the sides — well, it wasn’t easy to stay where I was, especially feeling as wobbly on my feet as I did.

But my dad had warned me about situations like this. Maybe not
this
exactly. But not to accept food — or drinks — from strangers.

Especially young male strangers. Even ones I knew from before.

“Job?” I asked, staying where I was. My mind seemed barely able to grasp what was happening. Because far too much was happening, too quickly. “What job? I don’t understand. You still haven’t told me where, exactly, I am. And who were all those people?”

“Oh, out there?” Now those gray eyes, when he turned them towards me, weren’t stormy looking or filled with steel flecks or anything other than…well, regret. That was the only word I could think of to describe it. “I’m sorry about all of that. What
I accused you of before — that was unforgivable of me. I’ve just never met a girl like you. At least, not in a long time.”

“A girl like me?” I echoed. I remembered what he’d said as he dragged me towards the other line…the rough-looking one. “What does that mean?”

“Nothing,” he said quickly. “I just meant I don’t often meet girls of your…nature.”

“What do you know about my nature?” I asked. My voice was still shaking. I was pretty sure I was becoming hysterical, even though I was no longer wet and it was much warmer in the room than it had been down by the lake. “You barely know me. I was
seven
when we last met. You didn’t even recognize me down there until I told who I was, and even then you had to look me up on your little machine. What did it say about me on that —”

“I meant it as a compliment,” he insisted, letting go of the chair in which he’d wanted me to sit. He moved towards me, both palms facing out, as if I were a pony he wanted to calm. “And you haven’t actually changed as much as you might think. You still have the biggest eyes I’ve ever seen. They’re warm, you know. Like honey.”

His own eyes, I couldn’t help noticing, were the exact same color as the bowls holding all the fruit.

“
You’ve
changed,” I said. I didn’t mean it as a compliment, and he seemed to know it. He had to know it, if only because for every step he took towards me, I took a defensive one back…at least until I found myself hitting the divan. Now I had nowhere else to go, and stood looking up at him, my heart fluttering in my
throat. What had I gotten myself into? I should never have agreed to let him take me from the beach.

“Actually,” he said, standing so close, I could feel the heat from his body. “I haven’t changed at all. Neither have you. You’re still asking for favors for others. The last time I met you, you wanted me to bring a bird back to life. Then your grandfather. And out there just now, you kept talking about everybody else.
They’re
wet and
they’re
cold.
They
deserve to be treated better. That’s what you said. Was
I
all right? That’s what you wanted to know when my horse nearly trampled you. Was
I
all right. Do you know how many times someone’s asked me that question since I came here?”

I swallowed. His face was just inches from mine. The smell of wood smoke was very strong. I didn’t know if it was coming from him or the fire in the hearth. Maybe both.

“I don’t know,” I said.

“Never,” he said. “And I’ve been doing this for quite some time. Everyone else always says, ‘
I’m
wet.
I’m
cold.’ No one’s ever inquired after
my
health. Not you, though. You care. Not just about birds and horses but about people. And because of that,” he said, leaning even more dangerously close, “I’m guessing a lot of people must care about you.”

For a moment, I thought he was going to kiss me. I was almost sure he was going to. His mouth was that close to mine, and he’d reached one long, muscular arm out as if he were going to wrap it around me.

I’d heard about people falling in love at first sight. What he’d said about my perception of him having changed was true: He
was very striking looking, with that dark hair falling into his face, and the contrast with those very light eyes. He wasn’t handsome, necessarily, but he was someone who, if you saw him at the mall or someplace, you wouldn’t be able to look away.