Abandon (7 page)

At least, I wouldn’t be able to.

Except he didn’t kiss me. Instead, he turned out to be reaching for something on a shelf just above my head. It was a small wooden box. After he’d pulled it down, he lifted one of my hands and said, “Come sit with me. Just for a moment.”

My heart was still hammering from thinking he’d been about to kiss me. Not that I’d wanted him to kiss me. I didn’t even want to sit down with him. I just didn’t want to seem rude. Especially since he’d started pulling me back towards the table.

What could I do? It would be impolite to refuse to join him. He hadn’t tried to do anything to hurt me except yell at me for causing his horse to slip and possibly injure itself, and then get out of the line I was supposed to be in. And he did run this place, whatever it was. I was a guest in it. I had to do what he said.

Still, I said as nicely as I could as I took the chair he’d offered, “Listen, this has been very nice, and I hope everything works out with the job, or, um, whatever it is that you do. Thank you very much for the invitation to” — What time was it, anyway? I had no idea. There were no clocks anywhere, and the light outside the gauzy white curtains was pinkish, just as it had been down by the lake. The entire cavern seemed to be cast in a pink glow. Was it lunchtime? Or dinnertime? I had no idea — “eat with you. I’d love to stay, but —” While I’d been speaking, he’d placed the
box he plucked from the shelf down in front of me, then opened the lid.

And there it was.

My voice trailed off as I stared at it. I’m not really a jewelry sort of person.

But this was different.

“Do you like it?” he asked. He seemed almost…nervous, in a way. Which, considering what a self-assured — one might even say authoritative — person he was, was unusual. “You don’t have to keep it if you feel uncomfortable about it or don’t like it.”

The stone landed with a soft thump against my sternum.

Because of course I’d nodded in response to his question as to whether or not I liked it. I’d been struck speechless with desire.

And then — naturally — he’d come up to the back of my chair to put the necklace around my neck.

I had never in my life seen anything as beautiful. The stone was the color of a thundercloud…smoky gray at the edges, then turning so dark blue in the middle, it was almost black. It was the complete opposite of the shiny white diamond solitaires and bright blue sapphires all the other girls in my school got from Tiffany on their birthdays.

Gray, I could just hear them all saying. Gray is so
Pierce.

“It suits you,” he said shortly, his voice as rough as thunder again. He cleared it. “I thought of it the minute I saw you just now, down there. Only I never thought…well, I never thought you’d turn out to be you, or want to come here with me.”

I had no idea what he was talking about. Against the white bodice of my gown, the stone was the exact color of the Long Island Sound on a stormy day. It reminded me of the view I saw out my bedroom window back home.

“Do you know anything about colored diamonds?” he asked. I shook my head, still speechless with the beauty of his gift. He nodded and went on, “They come in just about every color you can imagine. Pink, yellow, red, green, black, gray…but they’re very rare. Any tone of blue, like this one, is the most desirable of all. Men have killed for blue diamonds. Stones like this are buried so deeply in the earth’s crust, you see, they’re almost impossible to find. There’ve been only two or three discovered that were anywhere near as large as this one.”

He reached from around the back of the chair to lift the heavy stone from where it dangled.

I still wasn’t quite sure what had happened to me. But out of everything — hitting my head; struggling in the pool; waking to find myself in a strange world covered by a pink sky made of stone; running into some guy I’d met when I was seven who turned out not only to possess the power to make dead birds come back to life but also to magically transport girls from one place to another —
this
was what finally sent me over the edge: that he’d just casually reached over to invade my personal body space as if he had some kind of right to.

I’m pretty sure he didn’t notice my suddenly blazing cheeks.

He went right on talking as if nothing were wrong. It was entirely possible, considering that the only company he was apparently
used to keeping was horses, huge tattooed line bouncers, and seven-year-olds, he didn’t
know
anything was wrong.

But that didn’t make it all right with me.

“I’ve read that this diamond has special properties,” he said. “It’s supposed to protect its wearer from evil, possibly even help her detect it. Which is good because true evil often wears the most innocent of guises. Sometimes our closest friends can turn out not to have our best interests at heart. And we never have the remotest suspicion…not until it’s too late.” He was speaking with a bitterness that suggested he’d had personal experience in this area.

“I can’t think,” he went on, in a different tone entirely — now he sounded slightly amused — “of anyone who needs something like this more than you.”

I still had no idea what he was talking about.

All I knew was that the stone, which I’d been watching him hold in those callused fingers as he spoke, had been doing something strange…turning from almost black in the middle to the palest of grays, the color of the downy fluff on a tabby kitten’s chest.

This was going way too fast for me. I had never even been to a movie with a guy. For all of Hannah’s efforts to get her brother’s friends to notice her — and dragging me along with her during most of her attempts — none of them ever had.

And now I was in this incredibly sexy guy’s room, and he’d given me this necklace, and I didn’t even know where my clothes were.

I ducked out from beneath his arm and said, leaping from the chair, “Well, thank you very much, John. But I should probably be going, because I’m sure my mother must be looking for me. She’s probably very worried. You know how mothers are. So, if you’ll just tell me how to get home from here, I’ll go.”

A part of me knew it was futile. But I had to try. Maybe there was car service. My dad always said wherever I was, if I called for car service, he would pay, even if it was from New Jersey.

“Then,” I finished, “you can get back to whatever it is that…you…do.…”

My voice trailed off as I watched the expression on his face go from mildly amused to grimly serious.

“What?” I said. I did
not
like the look on his face. “What’s wrong?”

“I’m sorry,” he said. He was frowning now. “Pierce, I thought you knew.”

And then I heard his voice reminding me of how I had tripped and hit my head, had fallen in the pool and drowned, and that’s why my clothes had been wet, and…

Dead.
That was the main word I heard. I was dead.

That’s where I stopped listening.

I suppose a part of me had known all along. But actually hearing him say the word —
Dead. I was dead
— was the biggest shock of all. Worse than the blow to my head. Worse than choking on the water. Worse than lying at the bottom of that pool, knowing my dad was never going to come in time to save me, and that I’d died because of a bird. A
bird
!

A bird that hadn’t been hurt at all but just stunned by the cold
or something, because it had flown away as soon as I hit the pool cover. I’d seen it as I drowned.

Dead. I was dead.

So many things made sense now. That’s why no one’s cell phone had worked. Their cell phones were dead.

Just like we were.

I felt frozen. All of me. Like I was still at the bottom of that pool, in that icy, icy water.

I was only fifteen. Just a few hours ago, I had been talking to Hannah on the phone. We’d been planning on going to the mall to see a movie later. I’d managed to convince her to have her mom drop us by the stables to visit Double Dare first —

Mom! My mom didn’t even know where I was. I had to let my mother know where I was.

“I…” My tongue and lips seemed to be the only parts of me that weren’t frozen. “Thank you,” I said to him, interrupting whatever he’d been explaining. Because John was still talking. Who knew what he was saying? He looked nervous again. “Thank you so much for everything. But I have to go now. Good-bye.”

I turned away from him and started to walk off in the direction of those gauzy curtains, towards the courtyard. He took a quick step forward, blocking my path.

“I know it’s upsetting,” he said. “But it doesn’t exactly work that way. You see, once you’ve arrived here, you can’t leave.”

I shook my head. “But I have to,” I said. “I have to let my mom know I’m all right. Except for the being dead part,” I added. I wasn’t quite sure how she was going to take that news.

“Your mom is fine,” he assured me, laying his hands on my bare shoulders and physically steering me back into the room. “I told you, you can’t leave. And I think you should sit down again. You’ve had a shock.”

“What do you mean, I can’t leave?” I spun back around to face him. Suddenly, I didn’t feel vague anymore. “What about all those people down by the lake? They’re leaving, aren’t they?”

He shrugged. “In a way. To their final destination.”

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Their just rewards,” he said, a little bitterly.

“That’s where the boat is taking them?” I asked. “Aren’t I supposed to be getting on the boat? The one that’s leaving?”

My voice trailed off as I read his expression. It was more serious than I’d ever seen it.

“The one that just left, you mean,” he said.

The words seemed to echo around the room. Although they didn’t really.

“Wait,” I said. “What?”

“The boat is gone,” he said. “I asked if you wanted to go someplace else, and you said yes, please. And now the boat is gone. You chose me over the boat, and now this is where you’re going to have to stay. Look, you really don’t seem well. I think you should sit down. Won’t you eat something? What about a drink? Some hot tea?”

Thunder rumbled. But it was inside my head, not outside. Suddenly, I was freezing again, in spite of the blazing fire in the enormous hearth.

“Are you telling me that I have to stay here with you forever because you made me
miss the boat
?” I demanded.

He was so tall, I had to crane my neck to look into his face. What I saw there — the muscle leaping in his lean cheek, the stubborn set of his jaw — made me as frightened as I’d felt back down by the lake.

Even when, despite the determination I could see in his face, I noticed the sadness in those silver eyes…

None of that helped the tears I could feel coming, or my racing pulse.

“What about the other boat?” I demanded. My voice sounded shrill even to my own ears. “The one for the people in the other line?”

“You don’t want to go where that boat is headed,” John said shortly. “Why do you think they all wanted to get on yours?”

I couldn’t believe this was happening.

“It’s okay,” I said, fighting for calm, even though I could feel my heart hammering in my throat. “Because I didn’t get on the boat, that means I haven’t passed on to my final destination, right? And you can make dead people come back alive. You did it with the bird. So you’re going to do it with me. You’re just going to make me alive again. You have to, because you messed up, making me miss my boat. So do it.
Now,
John.”

His expression remained obstinate, even as his eyes remained sad.

“I can’t,” he said.

“Can’t?” My voice caught on a sob. “Or won’t?”

He looked away. “Won’t,” he said.

Now my heart felt as if it were being constricted back in that pool cover all over again.
“Why not?”

“Because,” he said. But he seemed to have to think about it a while. “It’s against the rules.”

“Don’t you make the rules?” I asked. This was horrible. This was the worst thing that had ever happened to me. Including having died.

“No,” he said. I could tell he was trying to keep his temper in check. But he wasn’t having any more success with that than I was with my tears. Way off in the distance, thunder was rumbling. This time, it wasn’t in my head. “I don’t.”

“Then who does?” His figure had started to dissolve in front of me. Not because he’d gone anywhere but because of the tears that threatened to spill over from my eyes. I wiped at them furiously.

“I don’t know,” he said. Now he just sounded tired. “All right? Do you think I like this any more than you do? Don’t you think I’d like to leave here to go see
my
mother? But I can’t either.”

Hearing he longed to see his own mother wasn’t exactly helping the situation with my tears. I’d never even considered someone like him might have a mother. But of course he did. Didn’t everyone? “Why not?”

“Because of the Furies,” he said flatly, as if that explained everything. “Trust me, they make sure that the consequences for breaking the rules around here are much worse than anything you could imagine. And not just for breaking the rules. For
anything they feel like —” He broke off and looked at me, then glanced down and shook his head. “Well, just trust me. That’s why I gave you the necklace. It will warn you if any Furies are around. That way you’ll know if you’re doing anything that might put yourself in danger from them, even inadvertently.”

When he glanced back up again, his own eyes were bright. Brighter even than Dad’s throwing stars. But his voice was gentle. “I promise you, Pierce, in a little while, you’ll see, it’s not so bad here. You have everything you could possibly want. All the comforts of home…”

It was the worst thing he could possibly have said. All the comforts of home…except everything —
everything
— I loved.

Now I wasn’t frozen anymore. I was melting. The tears started pouring out so thick and fast, everything, including him, disappeared before my eyes.

“I’m sorry.” I hid my face in my hands. This was terrible. I was dead, and now I was being tortured as well? “I can’t stay here. I
can’t.”

“Don’t,” he said. Now the thunder sounded as if it was right over our heads.
“Don’t cry.”