Crescendo (16 page)

I’m inside.

His voice was louder now, a real sound. Not just in my head this time, but in my ears, too. I turned toward the house, certain he’d spoken through the window. Stepping off the flagstone path, I tentatively laid my palm on the windowpane. I desperately wanted it to be him, but at the same time, the goose bumps popping up all over my skin warned me it could be a trick. A trap.

“Dad?” My voice wavered. “I’m scared.”

On the other side of the glass, a hand mirrored mine, five fingertips aligning with my own. My dad’s gold wedding band was on the ring finger of his left hand. My blood pumped so hard I felt dizzy. It was him. My dad was inches away. Alive.

Come inside. I won’t hurt you. Come, Nora.

The urgency in his words frightened me. I clawed at the window, trying to locate the latch, desperately needing to throw my arms around him and stop him from leaving again. Tears streamed down my cheeks. I thought about running around to the back door, but I couldn’t bring myself to leave him, even for a few seconds. I couldn’t lose him again.

I splayed my hand on the window, harder this time. “I’m right here, Dad!”

This time, the glass frosted at my touch. Tiny fibers of ice branched across the glass with a brittle, crackling noise. I jerked away at the sudden cold that shot up my arm, but my skin was stuck to the glass. Frozen. Crying out, I tried to free myself using my other hand. My dad’s hand melted through the windowpane and closed around mine, holding me so I couldn’t run. He jerked me roughly forward, the bricks snagging my clothes, my arm impossibly vanishing into the window. My terrified reflection stared back, my mouth open in a startled scream. The only thought pounding through my head was that this couldn’t be my dad.

“Help!” I yelled. “Vee! Can you hear me?
Help!
”

Thrashing my body side to side, I tried to use my weight to break free. A piercing pain sliced into the forearm he held captive, and an image of a knife burst into my mind with such intensity that I thought my head had split in two. Fire licked my forearm—
he was cutting me open
.

“Stop!” I shrieked. “You’re hurting me!”

I felt his presence flex across my mind, his own sight eclipsing mine. There was blood everywhere. Black and slippery … and mine. Bile rose in my throat.

“Patch!”
I screamed into the night with nothing short of terror and absolute desperation.

The hand dissolved from around mine, and I dropped backward to the ground. Instinctively I clutched my wounded arm against my shirt to stop the bleeding, but to my amazement, there was no blood. No cut.

Gulping air, I stared up at the window. Perfectly intact, it reflected the tree behind me, which swung back and forth in the night air. I scurried to my feet and stumbled out to the sidewalk. I ran in the direction of the Devil’s Handbag, turning to glance over my shoulder every few steps. I expected to see my dad—or his doppelgänger—appear from one of the townhouses, holding a knife, but the sidewalk stayed empty.

I faced forward to cross the street and saw the person a half blink before I slammed into her.

“There you are,” Vee said, reaching out to steady me as I choked back a scream. “I think we missed each other. I made it to the Devil’s Handbag and backtracked to find you. Are you okay? You look ready to throw up.”

I didn’t want to stand on the street corner any longer. Reflecting on what had just happened at the townhouse, I couldn’t help but be
reminded of the time I’d hit Chauncey with the Neon. Moments later, the car had returned to normal, leaving no evidence of an accident. But this time it was personal. This time it was my dad. My eyes burned, and my jaw quivered as I spoke. “I—I thought I saw my dad again.”

Vee folded her arms around me. “Babe.”

“I know. It wasn’t real. It wasn’t real,” I repeated, trying to reassure myself. I blinked several times in succession, tears staining my vision.
But it had felt real. So very real …

“Do you want to talk about it?”

What was there to talk about? I was being haunted. Someone was messing with my mind. Toying with me. A fallen angel? A Nephil? My dad’s ghost? Or was it my own mind betraying me? It wasn’t like this was the first time I’d imagined seeing my dad. I’d thought he was trying to communicate with me, but maybe this was a self-defense mechanism. Maybe my mind was making me see things I refused to accept were gone forever. It was filling the void, because that was easier than letting go.

Whatever had happened back there, it wasn’t real. It wasn’t my dad. He would never hurt me. He loved me.

“Let’s go back to the Devil’s Handbag,” I said, exhaling shakily. I wanted to distance myself from the townhouse as quickly as possible. Once more I told myself that whoever I’d seen back there, he wasn’t my dad.

The echoing clash, clang, and whine of drums and guitars
warming up for the show grew louder, and while my panic was slow to subside, I felt my heartbeat slowing down. There was something reassuring about the idea of losing myself inside the swarm of hundreds of bodies packed inside the warehouse. Despite what had happened, I didn’t want to go home, and I didn’t want to be alone; I wanted to slip into the center of the crowd. There
was
strength in numbers.

Vee grabbed my wrist and brought me to a halt. “Is that who I think it is?”

Half a block up, Marcie Millar was climbing into a car. Her body looked poured into a little black scrap of fabric that was short enough to show off her black lace thigh-highs and garter belt. Tall, over-the-knee black boots and a black fedora completed the outfit. But it wasn’t her outfit that had caught my attention. It was the car. A shiny black Jeep Commander. The engine caught, and the Jeep pulled around the corner and out of sight.

“H
OLY FREAK SHOW,” VEE WHISPERED. “DID I JUST SEE
that? Did I really just see Marcie climb into Patch’s Jeep?” I opened my mouth to say something, but it felt like someone had stuffed nails down my throat.

“Was it just me,” Vee said, “or could you see her red thong peeking out from under her dress?”

“That wasn’t a dress,” I said, leaning back against a building for support.

“I was trying to be optimistic, but you’re right. That
wasn’t
a dress. That was a tube top stretched down around her bony booty. The only thing keeping it from springing up around her waist is gravity.”

“I think I’m going to be sick,” I said, the nails-in-the-throat sensation spreading to my stomach.

Vee pushed down on my shoulders, forcing me to sit on a square of sidewalk. “Deep breaths.”

“He’s going out with Marcie.” It was almost too horrific to believe.

“Marcie puts out,” said Vee. “That’s the only reason. She’s a pig. A rat.”

“He told me there was nothing going on between them.”

“Patch is a lot of things, but honest isn’t one of them.”

I blinked down the street where the Jeep had vanished. I felt the unexplainable urge to storm after them and do something I hoped I’d regret—like choke Marcie with her stupid red thong.

“This is not your fault,” Vee said. “He’s the jerk who took advantage of you.”

“I need to go home,” I said, my voice numb.

Just then a police cruiser came to a stop near the club’s entrance. A tall, lean cop in black slacks and a dress shirt angled out. The street was heavily shadowed, but I recognized him immediately. Detective Basso. I’d fallen under the jurisdiction of his job once before, and I had no desire for a repeat performance. Especially
since I was fairly certain I wasn’t on his list of favorite people.

Detective Basso shouldered his way to the front of the line, flashed his badge at the bouncer, and walked inside without slowing.

“Whoa,” Vee said. “Was that a cop?”

“Yes, and he’s too old, so don’t even think about it. I want to go home. Where did you park?”

“He doesn’t look much over thirty. Since when is thirty too old?”

“His name is Detective Basso. He questioned me after the incident with Jules at school.” I loved how I kept referring to it as the incident, instead of what it really was. Attempted murder.

“Basso. I like that. Short and sexy, just like my name. Did he frisk you?”

I gave her a sideways look, but she was still gazing at the door he’d gone through. “
No
. He questioned me.”

“I wouldn’t mind being handcuffed by him. Just don’t tell Rixon.”

“Let’s go. If the police are here, something bad is going to happen.”

“Bad is my middle name,” she said, linking her arm through mine and drawing me toward the warehouse entrance.

“Vee—”

“There are probably two hundred people inside. It’s dark. He’s not going to pick you out of the crowd, if he even remembers you at all. Probably he’s forgotten you. Besides, he’s not going to arrest you—you’re not doing anything illegal. Well, aside from the whole fake ID business, but everybody does that. And if he really wanted
to bust the whole place, he’d have brought backup. One cop isn’t going to take down this crowd.”

“How do you know I have fake ID?”

She gave me an “I’m not as dumb as I look” glance. “You’re here, aren’t you?”

“How are you planning to get in?”

“Same as you.”

“
You
have fake ID?” I couldn’t believe it. “Since when?”

Vee winked. “Rixon is good for more than just kissing. Come on, let’s go. Being the good friend you are, you wouldn’t even think about asking me to break out of my house and violate the terms of my grounding for nothing. Especially since I already called Rixon, and he’s on his way.”

I groaned. But this wasn’t Vee’s fault. I was the one who’d thought coming here tonight was a good idea. “Five minutes, but that’s it.”

The line was moving fast, pouring into the building, and against my better judgment, I paid the cover charge and followed Vee into the dark, sticky, deafening warehouse. In a way, it felt strangely good to be surrounded by darkness and noise; the music was too loud to think, which meant even if I’d wanted to, I couldn’t concentrate on Patch, and what he was doing with Marcie at this precise moment.

There was a bar at the back, painted black, with metal bar stools and pendant lights that hung from the ceiling, and Vee and I slid onto the last two available stools.

“ID?” the guy behind the bar asked.

Vee shook her head. “Just a Diet Coke, please.”

“I’ll take a cherry Coke,” I added.

Vee poked my ribs and leaned sideways. “Did you see that? He asked to see our ID. How awesome is that? I bet he wanted our names but was too shy to ask.”

The bartender filled two glasses and slid them down the counter, where they stopped directly in front of us.

“That’s a cool trick,” Vee shouted at him over the music.

He gave her the finger and moved down the bar to the next customer.

“He was too short for me anyway,” she said.

“Have you seen Scott?” I asked, sitting tall on my stool to try to see over the crowd. He should have had plenty of time to park by now, but I didn’t see him. Maybe he hadn’t wanted to use metered parking and had driven farther out to find free parking. Still. Unless he’d parked two miles away, and that seemed highly unlikely, he should have been here.

“Uh-oh. Guess who just walked in?” Vee’s eyes were fixed over my shoulder, and her expression darkened to a scowl. “Marcie Millar, that’s who.”

“I thought she left!” A jolt of anger fired through me. “Is Patch with her?”

“Negative.”

I squared my shoulders and sat even higher. “I’m calm. I can
handle it. Most likely, she won’t see us. Even if she does, she’s not going to come over to talk.” And even though not one part of me believed it, I added, “There’s probably some twisted explanation for why she got into his Jeep.”

“Just like there’s a twisted explanation for why she’s wearing his hat?”

I flattened my hands on the bar and swung around. Sure enough, Marcie was elbowing her way into the crowd, her strawberry-blond ponytail streaming out the back of Patch’s ball cap. If that wasn’t evidence they were together, I didn’t know what was.

“I’m going to kill her,” I said to Vee, turning back to face the bar, gripping my cherry Coke, heat rising in my cheeks.

“Of course you are. And here’s your chance. She’s beelining this way.”

A moment later, Marcie ordered the guy beside me out of his seat and perched herself on top of it. She took off Patch’s cap and shook out her hair, then pressed the cap to her face, inhaling deeply. “Doesn’t he smell
amazing
?”

“Hey, Nora,” Vee said, “didn’t Patch have lice last week?”

“What is it?” Marcie asked rhetorically. “Fresh-cut grass? An exotic spice? Or maybe … mint?”

I set my glass down a little too hard, and some of the cherry Coke sloshed onto the bar.

“That’s really eco-friendly of you,” Vee told Marcie. “Recycling Nora’s old trash.”

“Hot trash is better than fat trash,” Marcie said.

“Fat this,” Vee said, and she picked up my cherry Coke and underhanded it at Marcie. But someone in the crowd bumped Vee from behind, so instead of sailing straight at Marcie, the Coke spread out and splattered all three of us.

“Look what you did!” Marcie said, jumping off her bar stool so hard she knocked it over. She swiped at the Coke in her lap. “This dress is Bebe! Do you know how much it cost?
Two hundred dollars.
”

“It’s not worth that much anymore,” Vee said. “And I don’t know what you’re complaining about. I bet you shoplifted it.”

“Yeah? So? What’s your point?”

“With you, what you see is what you get. And I see cheap. Nothing says cheap like shoplifting.”

“Nothing says fat like a double chin.”

Vee’s eyes went slitty. “You’re dead. You hear me?
Dead.
”

Marcie shifted her eyes in my direction. “By the way, Nora, I thought you’d like to know. Patch told me he broke up with you because you weren’t enough of a
slut
.”

Vee smacked Marcie upside the head with her handbag.

“What was that for?” Marcie shrieked, clutching her head.