Shadowlands (Shadowlands (Hyperion)) (11 page)

My feet pounded against the pavement as I sprinted downhill toward town. If Tristan lived all the way up here, why the hell was he lurking in the house across the street from mine? Was he there just to watch me? Was he some kind of bizarre stalker keeping an eye on the new girl? And who the hell had been watching me from his
actual
house? I wanted answers, and I wanted them now.

I crossed through town, zipping past our favorite local musician in the park, who was jamming on his guitar with his eyes closed and a smile on. Near the far corner, I caught a couple of disturbed stares from an older couple chilling on a bench. Not that I was surprised. I must have looked like a crazed lunatic, sprinting for all I was worth and completely ignoring the sidewalk. I just hoped Olive hadn’t thought I was nuts when I’d blurted that I had to go and taken off, leaving her behind to stare after me.

I ran down the diagonal cut-through street, purposely averting my eyes from the rundown park, and took the corner onto our block, skidding so hard I almost hit the dirt. I was about to beeline it for the gray house, when I saw something hanging off the gate in front of our place across the way.

I stopped short and gasped for breath. It was a gray canvas messenger bag with a frayed strap. Exactly the same bag Steven Nell carried to school every day.

The air was cold and the ground wet against my back. Pine
needles pierced my arms. The clouds parted overhead. A perfect
half moon and Steven Nell’s sadistic smile, his watery eyes, his
thin, dry, lips.

A bell trilled and sucked me back into the now. The warm sun tickled my flesh. I blinked as the middle-aged man with his surfboard rode by me with a smile. Aside from him, the street was deserted, but that bag was still there. This couldn’t be happening. It couldn’t be real.

Part of me wanted to turn around and run straight to the police, but what was I going to tell them? That someone had left a bag on our gate? I was just going to have to deal with this myself. Maybe it was nothing.

Defiantly, I stormed across the road and over to the bag. The flap hung open, practically daring me to look inside. But what was I going to find if I did? A threatening note? A severed hand? What?

Holding my breath, I yanked the bag open. I blinked, surprised. It was filled to the brim with model lighthouses of various sizes. The smallest one was about two inches high, carved of stone and meticulously painted. The largest was about six inches tall, made of crappy plastic and topped by a tiny light that illuminated with the press of a button. There were dozens of them, each with a Juniper Landing swan stamped on its walls.

“Hey.”

I whirled around, dropping the bag back where it hung, letting it slam against the fence. Tristan stood right in front of me, looking perfect in a white T-shirt and tan cargo shorts, his blond hair falling forward on his cheeks.

“What the hell?” I shouted, shoving him with both hands as hard as I could. He didn’t move an inch, but he did look down at me, surprised. “You scared the crap out of me!”

“I’m sorry,” he said, his expression sincere.

Over his shoulder, I saw the door of the gray house swinging slowly closed. Suddenly, I remembered why I’d sprinted home.

“Why are you always here?” I demanded, crossing my arms over my chest. My face was on fire, and I felt my throat trying to close—my body’s way of rejecting confrontation—but I pressed on. “Olive told me you live up on the bluff, so why are you spending so much time in that house?” I said, gesturing across the street. “Why are you always watching me?”

Tristan glanced over his shoulder. “I just…I know the person who lives there,” he said. Then he shoved his hands under his arms and looked at me squarely, as if that explained everything.

“Oh, yeah? Who? Who lives there?” I demanded.

He frowned slightly. “My nanna,” he said. “My grandmother. On my father’s side. She’s confined to a wheelchair so I…we…me and Krista try to come visit her whenever we can.”

“Oh.” Color me guilt-ridden. Here I was, jumping all over his case, and all he was doing was being the perfect grandson.

“She likes to sit and look out the window a lot, so if you see the curtains moving or whatever, it’s probably her,” he added with a shrug.

“So that was her I saw watching me that first morning?” I asked.

“Probably,” he replied. “Actually, I remember her mentioning it. The pretty blond girl moving in across the street.”

He stopped and cleared his throat, looking away. Like maybe he’d said too much. Like maybe he agreed with Nanna.

“Oh,” I said again, blushing. “Well, that’s nice of her.”

“Yeah.”

Tristan knocked his hands together, and I saw his Adam’s apple bob as he pressed his lips into a line. For a long moment, we just stood there, until just standing there felt completely awkward. I was about to make an excuse to go inside when Joaquin came around the corner and strode purposefully over to me, a line creased into his forehead.

“Rory. There you are,” he said, his breath slightly ragged. He walked right over to me and enveloped me in a big, warm hug, forcing Tristan to sidestep away from me.

I squirmed and ducked out of the circle of his arms, almost losing my balance. Tristan reached out and quickly steadied me. “Um, what was that for?”

“I just saw Olive in town. Are you okay?” Joaquin asked, holding my wrist. “She said you guys were hanging out when you all of a sudden bolted like you’d seen a ghost.”

I glanced at Tristan and blushed. “Oh, that. I’m fine,” I said, pulling my arm out of his grip. “I told her I had to get home. Is she mad?”

“Not at all,” Joaquin said. “Just worried.”

“Well, I’m fine,” I repeated, looking from Tristan to Joaquin and back again. Two pieces of perfection—physically, anyway—and all I could think about was getting away from them. The cross-country girls back home would probably have me checked for brain damage. “Anyway, I’d better—”

“So did you invite her yet?” Joaquin asked Tristan.

“I was just about to,” Tristan replied.

“Invite me to what?” I asked.

“Tristan and Krista are having a party tomorrow night,” Joaquin said, crossing his arms over his chest. “I think you should come.”

I felt my blush deepen. “
You
think I should come,” I repeated. I glanced at Tristan. “What do you think?”

He blinked, startled. “What? Oh, sure. Yes. You should definitely come. If you want to.”

Wow. So one of them expected me to come just because
he
thought I should and the other clearly couldn’t care less whether I showed or not.

“That’s some invitation, you guys. Thanks,” I said sarcastically. “I’ll be sure to give it a nice, long consideration.”

“Rory,” Joaquin said in a condescending tone as I turned to go.

But I didn’t stop. I jogged up the steps to the house, slamming the door behind me and leaning back against it. What was with these guys? Why couldn’t they stalk Darcy instead of me? She would have loved every minute of it.

I glanced out the window and saw Joaquin say a few words to Tristan before sauntering off. Once he was gone, Tristan looked down at the gray bag, and I felt my heart skip a beat. I’d momentarily forgotten it was there. He lifted the flap and peeked inside, his brows creasing in confusion. At least I wasn’t the only one who thought a bag full of lighthouses was odd. He looked up at my house, and I ducked back behind the wall again.

When I glanced back out the window again, I half expected Tristan to still be standing there, but he was gone. The gray bag, however, remained hanging from the gate, taunting me. I double-checked that the door was locked and then retreated to my room. I hoped whoever had left it there would come back for it soon, but I also didn’t want to be here when they did.

The moment was nearing. The moment when he would finally have what was rightfully his. He had been so close so many times, but now, nothing would stand in his way. Once the last step in his plan was complete, there was no way she would say no to him. There was no way she would resist.

Yes. She would come to him, willingly. And perhaps, perhaps, perhaps…

Perhaps that would be the most satisfying end to this pursuit. Knowing that he had broken her, finally. That she wouldn’t fight. That her surrender would be complete.

Wednesday morning I sat at the Formica table in the kitchen, eating cornflakes out of a chipped bowl, watching the old-school phone that hung on the far wall. We’d been in Juniper Landing for four days. It hadn’t rung once.

“Okay, what is your deal?” Darcy demanded, striding into the room in her black silk pajamas and pulling out a chair diagonal from mine. She had her hair back in a sleek ponytail and had already washed her face. “Did you cast a spell on this island or something?”

“What’re you talking about?” I asked, picking up my bowl to drink the last of the milk.

Darcy watched me with a look of utter disgust and waited for me to put the bowl down again.

“Last night, Joaquin finally asked me out to some party at Tristan’s house tonight, and I was all excited until he basically hinted that I had to bring you or I couldn’t come,” she said, slouching back in her chair with her arms crossed over her spaghetti-strap top.

“Oh, that,” I said.

“You know about it already?” Darcy asked, her eyes incredulous.

“They invited me yesterday, too,” I told her.

“Unbelievable,” she said, shoving the chair back and crossing to the cabinet. “The wallflower is officially off the wall.” She grabbed a box of Froot Loops and brought it back to the table. “So would that have been when Joaquin walked up to you outside and gave you that totally intimate hug?”

I felt my skin warm. “You saw that?”

“Everyone on the block saw that,” Darcy replied, tossing a Froot Loop into her mouth. “I bet someone out there was inspired to write a blog about it. I don’t think there was one inch of your bodies that wasn’t touching.”

I shuddered. The very thought gave me the skeeves. “Darcy—”

“Are you and Joaquin, like, having a thing behind my back?” she interrupted.

I snorted a laugh. “What?”

Darcy walked around to the far end of the table so she could look me dead in the eye. The expression on her face, the pointed, knowing set of her chin, the slight apprehension in her eyes, made my heart stop. Did she know about Christopher and me? Was that why she was imagining some tryst between me and Joaquin?

“He keeps asking me about you, first of all. And then there’s all the hugging and smiling and complimenting…Tell me the truth, Rory. I’m a big girl. I can handle it,” she said. The tips of her fingers turned white as she gripped the cereal box.

“Darcy, I can one hundred percent guarantee you that I have no interest in Joaquin,” I told her firmly. “I promise.”

She eyed me for one moment longer before walking back to her chair and digging into the cereal bag with her hand. “Good.”

I watched as she came out with a handful of the colorful loops. There was no way she could know about me and Christopher. I hadn’t told her, I was sure he hadn’t told her, and no one else on Earth knew. I was just being paranoid. As usual.

“What, exactly, did Joaquin say to you?” I asked, leaning my chest into the table. “Why do you think you have to bring me?”

“He fed me some weird thing about there having to be an even number of guys and girls…” She trailed off, popping cereal bits in her mouth as she narrowed her eyes. “It made sense at the time, but he
did
have his arm around me, so I was a little distracted…”

“What a jerk,” I mused, reaching for my orange juice.

“Whatever,” Darcy said, placing the box down on the table. “But this is good! You’re already going, so no big deal.”

This was insane. How could she still want to go? How could she still like this guy after he was feeding her such obvious crap? I was never going to understand Darcy’s brain. Never in a million years.

“Except that I’m not going,” I said, shoving away from the table.

“Uh, yes, you are,” Darcy said.

“No. I’m not,” I said as I dumped my bowl and glass into the ceramic sink. God, I wished we were back home. If we were home, I’d be in calculus right now, solving problems I could solve. Not dealing with the quandary of whether I should help keep Darcy’s social life alive—a quandary I never thought I’d have to deal with in a million years and had no clue how to handle. “And you’re not, either. We’re grounded, remember?”

At that moment, my dad stopped inside the open doorway between the kitchen and the entry hall. He was fully dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, his face cleanly shaven and his hair slicked back. He’d started to get a tan, probably from all the running, and he looked different. Healthy.

“Actually, I wanted to talk to you girls about that.” He did a double take and his face fell slightly. “Oh. Did you eat already?”

“Not really,” Darcy said warily, her cheek still full of cereal.

“I just had cornflakes,” I said. “Why?”

“Let’s go out to breakfast,” he said. “I heard the general store has excellent pancakes.”

Darcy and I exchanged a look. Who was this person and what had he done with our real father?

“Um…I’d have to get dressed,” Darcy said, swallowing.

“Me, too,” I added, looking down at the T-shirt and sweatpants I’d slept in.

“I can wait,” he said with a semblance of a smile.

Neither one of us moved.

“Come on, girls,” my father wheedled. “It’s just breakfast.”

“Okay,” I said finally.

“Sure,” Darcy added.

Then we both padded out of the room past him.

“What’s with him?” Darcy whispered as we climbed the creaky steps.

“I have no idea,” I replied, following her into her room. “Maybe you yelling at him the other night got through to him.”

“You think?” she asked, surprised.

“You never know. But I’d be nice to him at breakfast,” I said as she slipped inside her closet. I leaned against one of her bedposts and stared across the street at the windows of the gray house. My heart skipped a beat at the very sight of it, but the place was still. “Maybe you can get ungrounded.”

“And then you’ll go to the party with me?” Darcy asked hopefully, gripping a white sweater to her chest as she came to the closet doorway.

I rolled my eyes but smiled. It was nice, sharing this sisterly moment with her. Feeling hopeful about my dad.

“Fine,” I told her. “If, by some miracle, we get ungrounded, I promise I’ll go to the party with you.”

“Yay!” She jumped up onto her toes, then dove back into the closet to get dressed.

I laughed and started to turn away so I could go get dressed myself, but at that moment, the curtain across the way moved. And this time, I could have sworn I saw a leather bracelet disappear behind it.