Believing (22 page)

Calla feels another twinge of uneasiness.

“Why are we locking the door all of a sudden, Gammy?”

Her grandmother just shrugs.

Did Odelia have some kind of premonition? Did Dylan?

And what about Jacy? He said when they were walking home from the Yateses’ that he’s worried about her.

Right . . . she almost forgot about that.

She sits on the edge of the bed and puts on a pair of gold earrings, feeling her grandmother’s eyes on her.

“You look beautiful,” Odelia says with approval as Gert purrs and rubs herself against Calla’s ankles.

“Thanks, Gammy.”

“I hope you have a good time. What time do you think you’ll be home?”

Mom would have told me exactly when to be home, and warned me not to be late,
Calla thinks with a pang of grief-tainted irony.

“I’m not sure. Late, I guess. He said we’d get something to eat after the concert.”

“I probably won’t be back until after midnight myself. Just be careful.”

“I will.” Calla smiles at her grandmother, wishing she didn’t look so . . . worried.

Maybe it’s because Calla’s driving all the way to Buffalo with Blue in his fancy BMW. Or maybe because she doesn’t approve of Blue’s father’s high-profile lifestyle.

Yeah, or maybe she thinks a raccoon-eyed killer is going to come after me.

Left alone with the kitten in the empty house, Calla realizes she still has fifteen minutes before Blue picks her up. She spends a few minutes pacing around, jumping at every slight creak, before realizing this is silly. She should just wait outside.

“Sorry,” she tells Gert as she steps out onto the porch, using her foot to gently keep the kitten inside as she pulls the door shut. She locks it, then turns the handle to try it.

Gert shoots her an accusing look through the glass, then trots back toward the kitchen.

The rain has stopped, leaving Lily Dale glistening and misty as twilight falls.

Sitting on the porch, Calla wishes the Taggarts would show up on theirs, but the house is dark and the driveway empty. Evangeline said Ramona was taking her and Mason out to eat tonight.

Spotting a figure sprinting down Cottage Row toward her, she realizes it’s Jacy. He’s wearing gray sweats and sneakers, obviously taking his nightly run.

She doesn’t know whether to call out to him or hope he doesn’t spot her. She hasn’t seen him since he left her at the door after almost kissing her . . . or so it seemed.

Watching him look up toward Odelia’s house, she realizes he almost seems to be looking for . . . something? Someone? Her?

When he sees her, he hesitates only briefly before waving. She watches as he slows his pace and jogs toward her.

“How’s it going?” he calls from the street.

“Good.”

“Good.”

She sees his dark eyes checking her out from head to toe. Is he going to ask her why she’s all dressed up? Ask her where she’s going? And with whom?

Nope.

Maybe he already knows, she realizes. Just like everyone around here seems to know everything.

“Got to keep my heart rate up,” he announces. “So, see ya.”

“See ya,” she calls back, disappointed, and watches him literally run away from her.

That’s just because he’s training for track,
she tells herself.

But she isn’t so sure.

So far, Calla’s date with Blue has been as close to perfect as any date she’s ever had. Including with Kevin.

No, Blue isn’t Kevin. And she isn’t in love with him.

He isn’t Jacy, either.

But Blue is fun and funny and cool—not to mention hot. Plus, he’s so at ease in any situation that Calla finds herself instinctively relaxing whenever she’s around him.

At the concert—where they had great seats, comp tickets someone gave to Blue’s dad—Calla discovered she really likes jazz, and told him so. Afterward, he asked her if she likes wings, too.

“You mean Buffalo wings?” she asked, hoping “wings” isn’t some style of music she never heard of. She gets the impression that well-traveled, worldly, wealthy Blue is far more sophisticated than she could ever hope to be.

He laughed. But not because she was ignorant about music.

No, just about chicken, apparently.

“We don’t call them that around here,” he said with a grin.

“What?”

“Buffalo wings. That’s a dead giveaway that you’re a tourist. In western New York, they’re just wings. And you’ve never had them until you’ve had them at the Anchor Bar. Those are the real deal.”

The Anchor Bar turned out to be a jam-packed, no-frills restaurant right downtown, not far from the concert hall. And Blue was right. She’s never had wings like this.

Sitting at a cozy table in the big, brick-walled dining room, they polished off a gigantic bucketful of wings so hot they’re listed on the menu as “suicidal,” and a pitcher of Pepsi to cool the flames. They also split a sandwich, another local delicacy, called “beef on weck.”

Calla was stuffed by the time it arrived, but Blue made her taste it. She bit into a heap of thinly sliced rare roast beef, served with au jus and horseradish on a “kimmelweck”—a big roll sprinkled with crunchy pretzel salt and caraway seeds.

It was awesome.

The whole date was awesome.

How can anything bad happen now?

It can’t, Calla decides, riding home beside Blue in the darkness of his car, with an old John Mayer song playing on the radio. It just can’t.

She wonders what to do when they reach her grandmother’s house.

Odelia won’t be home yet.

Back when Calla was dating Kevin, an empty house meant a rare opportunity to be alone together.

But Blue isn’t Kevin, and this is barely their third date.

Still . . . he’s incredibly good-looking, and she’s just as attracted to him—tonight, anyway—as she ever was to Kevin.

Which is exactly why you shouldn’t be alone with him,
she tells herself firmly.

Okay. So she won’t ask him to come in when they get to Odelia’s.

She’ll just kiss him goodnight here in the car, and that will be that.

Ha. Easier said than done.

Because when Blue pulls up in front of the house, he immediately cuts the engine. “Looks like nobody’s home, huh?”

Calla looks up to see that the porch light is on and there’s a lamp lit inside. “How can you tell?”

“Your grandmother’s car is gone.”

“Oh, right. She went, uh, to . . .” She can’t even remember at the moment, because Blue is leaning toward her and pulling her close.

“Hmm?” he asks as he wraps his arms around her.

“Uh—”

He cuts off anything she might have said—not that it was likely to have made much sense—with a kiss. Not just a peck goodnight. A full-fledged, sweeping, passionate, expert kiss that leaves Calla feeling absolutely light-headed. And terrified.

Whoa.This must be why I felt like I was in some kind of danger all day.

She’s playing with fire here—and having been once burned by her old flame, she’d be smart to douse this new flame. For now, anyway.

“Can I come in with you, Calla?”

“Yes,” she says weakly, then, getting hold of herself, “I mean, no. No!”

“No?” He seems taken aback.

“My grandmother doesn’t want me to have anyone in the house when she’s not home.”

“Odelia said that?” he sounds doubtful.

Yeah, well, he knows her grandmother. Everyone in Lily Dale knows her grandmother, who sticks an expired parking ticket on her own windshield to keep the traffic cops away whenever she parks illegally. She’s not exactly a stickler for rules—following anyone else’s or imposing her own.

Still . . .

“She’s way more strict with me than you’d think,” Calla tells Blue in a rush. “She said no one’s even allowed on the porch when she’s not home, so . . . I’ll just say goodnight here.”

“Wait, Calla—”

“Goodnight!” she says brightly, and springs from the car, then leans back in to say politely, “Thanks so much for everything.”

“Wait one second, will you?” He grabs her hand.

“I have to—”

“Can I just ask you one question?”

“What is it?” she asks, slightly breathless and wondering if she can stick to her guns if he asks her again if he can come in.

But he doesn’t. He asks, “Want to go to the homecoming dance with me?”

She gasps. “Yes!”

“Great.”

Blue grins.

Calla grins back. Then she remembers something. “What about Willow?”

“What about her?”

“I thought you were . . . you know. Talking to her about homecoming.”

“About being on the committee? Yeah. She won’t leave me alone about that, but I keep telling her, I’m too busy with other stuff.”

So that was it. Blue was e-mailing Willow about the homecoming dance
committee
, not about going to the dance itself. That was all.

“Are you sure I can’t come in even for a few minutes?” he asks Calla, and she jolts back to the present.

“Oh—uh, yeah, I’m sure. Sorry. Goodnight!” With that, she practically flies up the path, onto the porch. Turning back toward the car, she gives Blue one last wave.

He blinks the headlights at her and the engine roars to life.

Calla reaches for the knob before remembering that her grandmother said the door would be locked tonight.

Again, she wonders if Odelia had some kind of premonition about something happening to her.

She turns abruptly back toward Blue’s car, suddenly not anxious to be alone in the house, even if it means being alone with Blue. Too late. He’s already pulling away.

Okay.

No big deal.

You’ve been alone before in this house at night. Right? Right.

She unlocks the door, closes it behind her, and locks it again securely.

There. Better already,
she tells herself.
Right?

Wrong
.

Her heart is pounding as she walks through the quiet house, hoping the kitten doesn’t jump out at her again tonight. Her nerves can’t handle that.

“Gert?” she calls, and notices her voice warbles a little.
Oh, please.You’re such a chicken. Get a grip, will you?

She turns on the light as she passes through the dining room toward the kitchen.

“Where are you, kitty?”

No meow or scampering paws in response.

Okay, that’s strange.

In the few short days Gert’s been here, the kitten has learned to come running when Calla calls.

“Gert!” she calls, more forcefully this time.

In response, she hears a faint meow from the back of the house.

Creeping into the kitchen, she sees that the door to Odelia’s sunroom is closed.

“Gert?”

Again, she hears the kitten mew—this time, obviously from behind the door.

How did she get in there?

Maybe Odelia came back home at some point after Calla left and put her in there.

But why would she do that?

Who knows? Maybe because the cat got into something.

Then again, yesterday Gert knocked over a vase of cut flowers, breaking the vase and showering the carpet with water and broken stems, and Odelia barely batted an eye. “Cats will be cats,” she said with a shrug.

Okay, so even if she’s not worried about the kitten wrecking the house, maybe she was worried that Gert would hurt herself by getting into something dangerous.

Dangerous
.

Calla walks stealthily toward the door, growing more uneasy with every step.

Aside from the wedge of light falling across the linoleum through the doorway of the dining room, the kitchen is dark. Even the light under the stove hood, which Odelia usually leaves on, is turned off tonight.

Wait a minute.

In that corner, by the sink . . . there seems to be a faint glow coming from somewhere, Calla realizes. Her eye goes to the window above the sink, but the curtains are drawn.

Somehow, though, a pool of light reflected from . . . somewhere . . . is falling over the pile of clean dishes Odelia left to dry.

Seeing something glint, Calla steps closer, frowning.

The light is beaming off the blade of the knife her grandmother used to make the stir-fry the other night.

Later, she’ll wonder about the strange glow that brought her attention to that knife.

Later, she’ll realize it didn’t really have a source.

Not an electrical one, anyway.

Later, she’ll understand that it was a different kind of energy glowing in the kitchen and illuminating the knife.

Now, without stopping to consider the source, she finds herself reaching out and grasping the handle.

Even as she holds the knife, she wonders why she picked it up. Just some crazy impulse. Because she’s spooked herself into thinking she’s in danger.

If you’re that scared, she tells herself, you should just leave. Get out of the house, go next door, and wait for Gammy.

But another meow on the other side of the door reminds her that poor Gert is trapped in there—maybe by accident.

I have to get her out,
Calla thinks.
Then I’ll go next door.

She reaches out and turns the knob.

The door creaks as it slowly opens.

“Gert?”

Calla takes a step into the room.

“Come on, kitty, where are—aaaah!”

She cries out as a human figure looms in front of her.

She feels her hand clenching the blade handle, feels it jerking into the air, arcing the blade.

Later, she’ll realize that her arm seemed to move of its own accord. That if she had stopped to think about inflicting harm on another human being, she might not have been able to react.

The blade makes contact with a sickening thud.

A voice lets out an unearthly screech.

She recognizes it: a man’s blood-curdling scream. Only once before in her life has she heard that terrible sound.

It came out of her father when he found out Mom was dead.

Murdered,
shouts a voice somewhere in Calla’s head.
She was murdered
.

The man, whoever he is, staggers through the doorway into the kitchen and collapses to the floor with a moan.

Even in the dim light spilling in from the dining room, Calla can see the purplish black bruise rimming his closed eye—a raccoon eye?—and realizes that he, too, is holding a weapon.