Hereafter (Shadowlands) (6 page)

I woke up early the next morning, the bright sun shining through the window behind my bed, and blinked in confusion. I didn’t even remember dozing off. I’d been so wired after partying at the cove with my new “family” that I’d felt like I would never fall asleep. But as I stretched my arms over my head, I was oddly energized, and when my stiff new leather bracelet slipped toward my elbow, I knew exactly why.

Tristan had invited me to spend the day with him, learning everything I needed to know to be a Lifer. A whole day alone with Tristan. I tossed the covers off and yanked on the first clothes I saw—a T-shirt from the desk chair and jeans from the floor—then tore down the stairs, smiling at the now familiar sound of my dad pounding away on his keyboard inside his room. I was just headed out the front door when I heard the floor creak behind me.

“Where’re you going?” Darcy asked.

I hesitated for a split second before turning to face her. She was already showered and dressed, uncharacteristically early for her. I saw the hopeful curiosity written all over her face and knew she wanted to get out of the house, but I also knew she couldn’t come with me. Not on this particular errand.

“Um…for a run?” I said, guilt oozing out of my pores.

She narrowed her eyes. “In jeans?”

I looked down. Damn. One of the very few times in my life I was not sporting running shorts or sweats and she had to call me on it.

“A walk, I meant.”

“I’ll come with you,” she said, grabbing her sunglasses off the front table next to the framed photograph of our family—me, my sister, my mom, my dad—the only one we still had of the four of us.

I bit my bottom lip. “Actually, I’m going to hang out with Tristan,” I finally admitted, my face pulsating with heat.

Darcy’s eyes widened; then she gave me a knowing smile. “I see. Have fun,” she said meaningfully.

“Uh, thanks!” I said awkwardly. “We’ll hang out later!”

Outside, the warmth enveloped me and I took a deep breath of the sweetly scented air as I sped up the hill toward town. On my way across the park, I saw Officer Dorn and his boss, Chief Grantz, standing close together, staring down at the paved sidewalk. A small white bird lay dead at their feet, half a dozen fat flies buzzing around it. I wrinkled my nose, and suddenly, both of the officers looked up at me, an accusatory gleam in their eyes. But for what? A dead bird?

Just then, Nadia rode across the street on a dirt bike and skidded to a stop right next to them. They shared a few words, and her eyes snapped up to glare at me, too. I shivered in the warm sunlight, then quickly turned my back on them and started walking again. As I started up the hill to the bluff, it took every ounce of self-control within me to keep from looking back. After what felt like an eternity, I knocked on Tristan’s front door.

Krista answered, wearing her blue-and-white gingham general store uniform. “Hi, Rory!”

I smiled, Krista’s ever-upbeat attitude instantly squelching what was left of my uneasiness.

“Hey!” I said. “Going to work?”

“Yeah. I was just heading out,” she said, slipping past me onto the porch. “Listen, I wanted to ask you…I’m having this big party on Friday night, and I was wondering if you’d want to be on the planning committee.”

I blinked. “The planning committee?”

She smiled and blushed, smoothing her bangs off her forehead with her fingertip. “Yeah. It’s my one-year anniversary on the island,” she explained, tilting her head and biting her bottom lip. “It’s kind of a big deal, so the other girls are helping me plan it.”

I fiddled with the end of my braid. Party planning was definitely not my thing. But she looked so hopeful.

“Sure,” I said. “When do you need me?”

Krista squealed and grabbed me into a hug. “That’s great! We’re meeting here, Wednesday morning, at ten sharp.”

“Okay. I’ll be here.”

“Cool. If you’re looking for Tristan, he’s up in his room. Just go upstairs. It’s the second door on the left,” she said as she jogged down the porch stairs.

“Thanks,” I called after her.

She lifted a hand and hustled around the corner, out of sight.

I took a deep breath and walked inside, closing the door behind me. The foyer was huge and silent, lit dimly in the morning sun. The floors were a dark, polished wood, and matching wainscoting reached halfway up the walls. The decor was impeccable but impersonal: the nap of a deep red Turkish rug was all swept in one direction, as if recently vacuumed. One perfect orchid in a gold vase sat atop a gleaming hall table. The walls were a warm, creamy white, bare of any photographs or portraits, aside from a landscape painting of Juniper Landing’s town hall.

A tall, banistered staircase stood to my right, but before I could move, a floorboard creaked somewhere nearby. I saw a shadow under the edge of a door on the far side of the foyer. It hovered there, as if listening.

For a long moment, I just stood there, vacillating somewhere between an instinct to run and my yearning to see Tristan. Finally, the footsteps receded and a door slammed shut at the back of the house. Unfrozen, I took the stairs to the second floor two at a time, looking into each doorway until I saw Tristan. He was standing with his back to me at a drawing table, which was set up to face a bay window overlooking the ocean, and he was holding something in his hands. Suddenly he tossed the heavy item into the bottom drawer of a storage cabinet under the desk, locked the drawer, pocketed the key, then turned around before I could come up with a good excuse for my hovering there.

“Hey!” he said, his eyes lighting up at the sight of me.

My heart warmed and I instantly relaxed. “Hi.”

He was wearing an aqua T-shirt that made his eyes stand out, even from across the room. There was something about seeing him there, in his own space, that made him seem vulnerable. He glanced around at the messy bedspread, the open trunk at the foot of the bed—filled with sneakers and flip-flops and what appeared to be a pair of fuzzy bear slippers—and the nautical-themed mirror with a crack in the right-hand corner.

“Um, welcome to my room,” he said. Then he scratched the back of his neck, smiling sheepishly, and quickly whacked the trunk closed.

“Thanks,” I said. “Krista let me in.”

“So, are you ready for your tour?” he asked.

“That’s why I’m here,” I said, smiling.

“I’m glad you’re still excited about all this,” Tristan replied, picking at the carved edge of his bed’s footboard. “Especially after last night. Sometimes when the first ushering doesn’t go smoothly, new Lifers have a tendency to…”

“Freak out?” I supplied.

“To put it mildly,” he replied with a chuckle. “I should’ve known you’d be different.” He held my gaze for a long moment, so long I started to blush.

“So, where’re we going?” I asked finally.

“Follow me,” he said, heading for the door. He paused and looked back over his shoulder with a heart-stopping grin. “You’re gonna love this.”

“I knew it!” I shoved Tristan with both hands. “I
knew
someone was watching me that day!”

Through the gleaming window I had a perfect view of the room across the street—the room Olive had occupied in the Freesia Lane boarding house last week when she was here. I’d gone looking for her there when she stood me up for breakfast, and I could have sworn someone was spying on me from this very room.

“Yeah, that was Lauren,” Tristan said, holding the blue brocade curtain back. “She told me later that she was sure you’d spotted her over here. She had such a panic attack about it that Krista let her reorganize her closet to calm her down.”

“That’s calming?” I raised an eyebrow at Tristan.

He threw up his hands. “It is for Lauren.”

“I saw the blinds move, but I didn’t see who was behind them.” It was weird, staring out that window, imagining my own curious face peering in from the other side.

“With practice, you get really good at not being seen,” Tristan told me. His words hung in the air for a long moment, and I had a feeling he was thinking the same thing I was. He hadn’t done such a great job of not being seen by me.

Tristan cleared his throat. “So, what do you think of the behind-the-scenes tour so far?”

I chewed on my bottom lip and glanced around the room. The wood floors were old and creaky, and the fraying lawn furniture haphazardly placed around the room left something to be desired. It had been like this in every “lookout” Tristan had taken me to—the library attic, which afforded a perfect 360-degree view of the town from its windowed rotunda, the widow’s walk above the surf shop overlooking the ferry dock. Even the upstairs apartment at the Crab Shack had offered nothing more than a vinyl couch and a cracked cooler. Whatever Lifer life was like, it wasn’t glam.

“Don’t you guys ever want to, you know, get comfortable?” I asked.

Tristan laughed and leaned against the window, the sun illuminating his handsome face and highlighting the lines of his chest. I blushed and glanced away, focusing on the sidewalk outside. Fisher and Kevin walked by, in the midst of an intense conversation, and Fisher checked over his shoulder three times in the space of five seconds. Then they disappeared from view. I stepped closer to the window next to Tristan, to see if anyone was following them, but the street was empty.

“We’re never in one place for very long, I guess,” Tristan said. “But if you want to make any changes anywhere, feel free. You’re one of us now.”

He gave me this look that sent a warm glow through my chest, like he was glad, relieved, even, to finally be able to say that.

“Noted,” I said, my heart rate skipping all over the place. “So, what’s next?”

Tristan hesitated. He shifted almost imperceptibly from one foot to the other. “Well, there
is
one more place you should see.”

It was clear that whatever it was, he didn’t exactly want to show it to me. Intrigued, I followed him down the stairs and out into the bright sunlight. It didn’t take long for me to figure out where he was taking me, and my pulse started to thrum as we stopped outside the gray house across the street from my own. Tristan had told me that his grandmother lived out there and that she liked to watch the world go by. That was how he’d explained away the moving curtains, my constant feeling of being watched, and the fact that he always seemed to be hanging out there. I glanced over my shoulder at Darcy’s window, hoping she wasn’t looking out. The house stared back at me, its two upper windows and double front door forming an accusatory face.

“You okay?” Tristan asked.

“Yep,” I replied curtly.

“All right, then.”

We strode up the steps and Tristan shoved the door. It let out a loud, painful squeal as it swung open. It wasn’t until I stepped inside the cool, shadowy, empty house that I realized I’d actually imagined what it might be like inside. In my mind’s eye I’d seen antique chairs set up around an ancient card table. I’d imagined lace doilies placed over the backs of upholstered sofas, a faded chintz rug, a fireplace decorated with knickknacks and framed portraits of grandchildren. Instead, what greeted me was a whole lot of nothing. The walls were gray and bare, the fireplace boarded up, and the only furniture on the first floor was a plain white desk, set up right in the center of the living room.

“Let’s go up,” Tristan said quietly.

I held on to the worn banister as I followed him up the stairs to the room that faced Darcy’s. Here we found three white wicker chairs with faded and stained cushions, all of them facing the windows. I pushed a curtain aside and looked out. Darcy lay back on her four-poster bed, holding a magazine at arm’s length up over her face. The view was so perfect I could see her blink.

“Wow,” I said. “This is just—”

“Creepy?” Tristan supplied.

“Yeah,” I said, turning away from the window.

“Maybe we should—”

Instead of finishing his sentence, he undid the faded tieback on the first curtain, and the fabric fell across the window, blocking the view of my house. Then he did the same with the other two windows, tossing the tiebacks onto the floor and casting us in relative darkness.

“I’m sorry,” Tristan said finally. “It’s just…it’s what we do.”

I tried to think back to all the times I’d been on the front porch or in Darcy’s room. Tried to remember what he and his friends might have seen.

“What’s the point?” I asked finally.

He seemed startled. “What do you mean?”

“I
mean
what’s the point?” I asked, extending my hand toward the covered windows. “What’s the point of all the watching?”

“Oh.” He chuckled, as if relieved. He gently rested his hands on the back of one of the wicker chairs. “We have to keep an eye on the visitors. We have to interact with them, because we’re integral in sending them where they need to go.”

A cold gush of fear crashed over me. “Wait a minute. You said you don’t decide where people end up.”

“We don’t,” Tristan replied.

“So what does that mean?” I asked. “How are you integral?”

He chewed on his bottom lip and looked up at the plaster ceiling, crisscrossed with cracks. “It’s a little hard to explain, but basically, everything we see, everything we hear…it all goes into the ultimate decision.”

“Do you have to write a report or something?” I asked, resting my hands on the chair across from his.

“No. Nothing like that,” Tristan said with a short laugh. “The information we gather, it just goes where it needs to be.”

“So what you’re saying is, you’re telepathic,” I said.

He shrugged, tilting his head to one side. “Kind of. We all are.”

“And you send telepathic messages to who? God?” I asked, almost laughing at the absurdity of the concept. Fortunately, though, I managed to hold my tongue. I didn’t want to offend him.

“I don’t actually know,” Tristan said. “I’ve tried never to ask that question.”

“How could you never ask that question?” I blurted out, my grip tightening on the back of the chair. “That’s the single most important question there is! Why are we here? Why are we doing all this? If I’m going to be someone’s eyes and ears, I’d kind of like to know who that someone is.”

“I don’t ask that question, Rory, because I’ll never get an answer,” Tristan said, his voice reaching a point very close to anger, a point I’d never seen him approach before.

I looked down at the floor, my face burning. “Oh.”

Clearly this was a topic of some frustration to him as well. Only he’d been dealing with it for a very long time. I turned away from him and stepped over to the window. With one finger, I moved the curtain an inch to the side, looking out at my house, our house, the last house my sister, my father, and I would ever live in together, and my chest felt full. My eyes prickled and I gulped in a breath.

“Are you okay?”

I felt the warmth of Tristan’s body as he stepped up behind me, the tickle of his breath on my neck. Instantly, my heart began to pound.

“Yeah,” I said quietly. “I’m fine.”

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, sending a shiver down my spine. “I didn’t mean to snap.”

I turned my head ever so slightly to the side. My breathing was shallow, my pulse skipping with him so near. “It’s okay.”

“I try not to question everything, because I know that what we’re doing here matters,” he said, his voice low.

I turned to face him, so fast that my braid brushed his bicep and our knees touched. I pressed myself back into the window, flattening the curtain behind me, but he didn’t even flinch.

“How?” I asked hopefully, looking into his eyes. “How do you know?”

His eyes roamed my face, flicking from my lips to my cheeks to my eyes to my hair. “We’re maintaining the balance of the universe,” he said. “There’s nothing that matters more.”

His eyelashes fluttered and he stared down at my mouth. My lips tingled and my fingers itched to reach out and grab his hand, his waist, his arm. I recalled the feeling of his thumb tracing my cheek last night, the way he’d held me close at the cove, how he’d looked into my eyes yesterday when he told me how strong I was. How beautiful. How true.

In a rush of bravery, I stood on my toes and pressed my lips against his. For a split second, everything was perfect. His soft lips, the heady scent of sea and salt in the room, the sound of the waves crashing outside the open window. But then Tristan abruptly pulled away. He flattened the back of his hand against his lips, his eyes wide. It wasn’t until that moment that I realized he hadn’t kissed me back.

“I’m…I’m sorry,” I stammered, flustered. “I didn’t—”

“No, I’m sorry,” he said, finally dropping his hand, an unreadable expression on his face. “I didn’t mean to give you the wrong impression, Rory. I never meant to—”

This wasn’t happening. This was
not
happening. I slid along the window, moving away from him, mortified. The things he’d said…all the touching, the stares, the obvious tension between us…how could I have misread him so completely?

But clearly that was exactly what I’d done. Of course I had. I’d only ever kissed one guy before and he had most definitely kissed me first. Besides, Tristan was perfect. He was the Golden Boy. The guy everyone looked up to, the guy every other guy wanted to be, and probably the guy every girl wanted to be with. I bet he’d kissed hundreds of girls over the endless years of his existence. Maybe even thousands. I was just the latest pathetic, recently deceased loser to throw herself at him. And now I was going to have to live with this humiliation—this skin-searing humiliation—forever.

As he stared at me, I realized he was wishing he could be anywhere but here. I knew the feeling.

“Forget it,” I said quickly. “This never happened, okay? Let’s just pretend it never happened.”

I turned my back on him before he could see me break down for the second time in two days and stumbled toward the door, leaving Tristan and whatever was left of my pride behind.