Shadowlands (Shadowlands (Hyperion)) (6 page)

“Rory…”

I sat up straight in bed. My eyes darted around the unfamiliar room, the dark corners, the distorted shadows. Someone had just whispered my name.

“Rory Miller!” the voice sang again. “Can Rory Miller come out and play?”

I flung the covers aside, my bare feet hitting the cool wood floor. A quick turn of the room convinced me that no one was there, but the voice came again.

“Come on, Rory. Come out and play with me.”

Goose bumps popped up all over my bare arms as I shakily stepped toward the stairs and peeked over the guardrail. No one was there. Just the bare steps winding down into the dark.

“Rory?” It was Darcy this time. “Rory!” she screamed. “Rory, help!”

Heart in my throat, I stumbled down the stairs. When I opened the door, it stopped with a thud. I looked down, and there was Darcy, curled up in a fetal position on the floor. Her eyes were open and staring, dead. Her head was so crushed it seemed impossible it was ever whole.

“No!” I screamed, covering my eyes. “No! No! No!”

I whirled around on the stairs, right into Steven Nell’s waiting arms.

“No!”

I startled awake on Sunday morning, my hands over my stomach, the bright sun assaulting my eyes. Sweat covered every inch of my body and my skin felt like it was on fire. My belly ached like I’d eaten too many bags of cotton candy and chased them with an entire bottle of Coke. I covered my face and told myself it was just a dream. It was just a dream. It was just a dream.

Breathe, Rory. Breathe.

As my breath started to calm, I heard the sound of my father slamming pots and pans around in the kitchen. I shoved my feet into my slippers and yanked on my
E
=
mc
²
sweatshirt before padding down the two flights of stairs. I tiptoed through the foyer and paused by the table near the door. My father had placed the family photo there—the one that used to hang on our upstairs wall. I hadn’t even seen him take it from the house. When another crash sounded, I slid over to the kitchen door and peeked inside. My dad was bent over in jeans and a T-shirt, rummaging through a low cabinet, every so often tossing a Teflon pan or a copper pot behind him onto the floor.

“Tell us we have to leave our house and then send us to some backward island with no phone service and no Wi-Fi,” he muttered into the hollow of the cupboard. I’d noticed the Wi-Fi problem last night when I’d tried to log on to the Internet from my iPad, but I’d hoped it was a temporary glitch. “What the hell kind of way is this to run a government agency?” He started to pull himself up and slammed his head on the edge of the opening. “Motherf—”

I jumped back to hide before he could spot me and start yelling at me, too. Outside I heard a bicycle bell trill, and I made my way to the front door. I slipped onto the porch, closing the door quietly behind me. The warm summer air enveloped me from head to toe. I tiptoed over to the porch swing and sat, wrapping my arms around myself. Even from the front of the house, I could hear the waves rushing against the beach out back, and the air was filled with the tangy salty scent of the sea, plus that sweet floral infusion I couldn’t quite place.

Someone nearby was humming. The tune sounded vaguely familiar as it floated on the breeze. Familiar enough that I started to hum along. Until I realized exactly why I knew the melody. I jumped up from the swing, whirling around.

It was “The Long and Winding Road.”

I was flashing again. I had to be flashing again. But then a little yellow bird flew over and perched on the porch railing. I heard the distant sound of a bell. The magnolia tree across the street rustled in the breeze. I was here. In Juniper Landing. In the now. And the humming was real.

Trembling, I walked to the end of the porch and peeked over the railing toward the back of the house. Sandy, patchy crabgrass stretched out to a boardwalk that separated our house from the beach. But other than a blackbird perched in a flowering tree and a few bees buzzing around a coneflower, there was nothing there. I walked to the other side and looked back at the garage. Our new car sat in the driveway, its black hood glinting in the morning sun. I held my breath, closed my eyes, and listened. Nothing other than the crashing of the surf and the cawing of the blackbird.

But when I opened my eyes again, the very same curtain in the very same window of the house across the street fluttered closed. This time, I caught a glimpse of blond hair as someone turned away from the window.

“What the hell?” Before I could lose my nerve, I jogged down the steps of the porch, opened the latch, and stepped out onto the sidewalk for a better look.

“Whoa!”

I nearly jumped out of my skin as two girls about my age skidded to a stop on their bikes just outside our gate—and inches from me. One was pretty, dark-skinned, and round-cheeked, with curls sticking out in all directions and an eyebrow ring that glinted in the sun. She wore an army jacket, even though it was warm out, along with a black dress, a striped scarf, and tall black boots. The other was the petite girl I’d seen with Darcy’s new conquest yesterday at the general store. She had straight black hair that fell to her chin, dark eyes, and sported a
JUNIPER LANDING
T-shirt over denim shorts. A weathered, woven leather bracelet clung to her right wrist.

“Close call,” the girl with the eyebrow ring said, backing up her bike.

“Um, yeah,” I said, my eyes darting back to the window. The curtain was still.

“You’re new,” the petite girl said coolly. She looked at me with pointed curiosity, like she was studying my face.

“That obvious?” I asked.

“To a native, yeah,” she said with a short laugh that felt almost mocking. Like there was some private joke I was missing.

“Less obvious to me, but I’m just visiting.” The other girl kicked down the stand on her bike and offered me her hand. “I’m Olive Walden. This is Lauren Caldwell.”

I shook her hand, still staring across the street at the gray house.

“And you are…?” Olive prompted, clearly amused.

“Oh, sorry,” I said, blinking myself back into the moment. “Rory. Rory…Thayer.” The new name felt odd on my tongue.

Lauren looked up at my home away from home. “Nice digs.”

“Thanks. Do you have any idea who lives across the street?” I asked, lifting my chin at the gray house.

Lauren and Olive exchanged a look, then glanced back at the house.

“Already trying to get the dirt on your neighbors, huh?” Lauren said, a mischievous glint in her eyes.

I blushed. “No. I just thought I saw…I mean…” I trailed off, unsure how to finish the sentence. I couldn’t exactly explain that a serial killer was stalking me, so mysteriously moving curtains were sending me over the edge.

“Don’t sweat it. She’s just giving you a hard time.” Olive laughed, elbowing Lauren in the side in a
be nice
kind of way. “Want to go for a ride with us? We can take you for a tour of the town.”

I glanced back at the house. I didn’t relish the idea of hanging out inside with sulking Darcy and pissed-off Dad, but the eerie humming was still echoing in my head.

“Thanks, but I don’t have a bike,” I said, happy for the excuse. “Besides, I’m more of a runner.”

“Running? Really?” Olive shaded her eyes against the sun. “I never got the appeal.”

“No? It’s great. I love it,” I told her.

“Yeah?”

I lifted my shoulders and took a breath. “It’s…I just like being alone and not having to think about anything but the rhythm of my steps and the rate of my pulse,” I said. “It’s very…”

“Zen,” she supplied.

“Okay, Zen,” I said with a laugh. I looked her in the eye. She looked back with an intrigued expression.

Lauren, on the other hand, was starting to look bored. “Let’s get going, Olive,” she said impatiently, rolling forward on her bike. “I’m starved.”

Olive hopped back on her seat, lifted her kickstand with her heel, then turned to me once more. “Oh!” she said, her eyes lighting up. “You should come to the party tonight.”

“Party?” I asked warily. I detested parties. Avoided them as much as possible. I’d always been okay with friends one-on-one, but crowds were not my thing. In fact, one of the ways I comforted myself over never having gotten together with Christopher was by telling myself that he would have dragged me to at least one party a weekend.

Of course, now that seemed like a silly rationalization. My heart squeezed just thinking about it. I should have said yes to him. I would have gladly gone to ten million parties if it meant being with him.

“We’re having a bonfire on the beach,” Lauren explained, fiddling with her woven bracelet. “We always invite all the vacationers,” she added, as if wanting to make sure I didn’t think I was special somehow.

“It starts around nine and we’ll be out there till whenever,” Olive said. “Just look out your window. You’ll see us.”

“Um…okay. Maybe,” I said, even though I had no intention of going. Of course, it was totally Darcy’s kind of thing, but if I told her, she would want to go, my father would say no, she would sneak out, and World War III would erupt inside our temporary home.

“Cool. See you later, then.
Maybe,
” Olive said with a wry smile. Then the two of them rode off.

As soon as they were gone, the front door opened and my dad stormed out wearing Adidas shorts and an ancient Harvard T-shirt. He bounced on the balls of his feet a few times, his stomach moving up and down like a heavy ball.

“I’m going for a run,” he said tensely. “You want to come?”

I blinked. My dad hadn’t invited me on a run since before my mom died. He hadn’t invited me to do anything since before my mom died. The very thought of going with him made my shoulders curl, like he expected me to forget five years of his ignoring my existence.

“Um…I still need to eat breakfast,” I said awkwardly.

“Okay. I’ll be back in an hour.”

Then he opened the gate and jogged away. I was still standing there, gaping after him, when from the corner of my eye, I saw another flutter in one of the windows of the gray house. Heart in my throat, I turned and sprinted inside, locking both locks behind me. Then I moved over to the parlor window and hid behind the heavy, flowered curtain, angling myself so that I could just see outside.

All of a sudden the front door of the gray house opened with a creak. A guy with blond hair, a killer tan, and piercing blue eyes jogged down the steps, glanced over at our house almost furtively, and then speed-walked up the block with his head down. I recognized him instantly. It was the guy from outside the general store. The one who had looked at me like he knew me.

My breath caught in my throat. Blond hair. Piercing eyes. Had he been the one watching me from the window? And if he lived there, wouldn’t Lauren have said so? They’d been hanging out yesterday. It seemed as if they were friends.

I watched until he made it to the end of the street and disappeared around the corner that led to the town. Then I double-checked the locks, retreated to my room, and locked that door behind me as well. If there was one thing Steven Nell had taught me, it was to trust no one—especially people who seemed to have a thing for watching me.

I was just finishing a chapter in a biography of Marie Curie when I heard the door at the bottom of the stairs creak open. My heart all but stopped, and my eyes darted to the plain gray-and-white clock hanging on the opposite wall. It was past midnight.

“Hello?” I said, my voice breaking as I sat up straight.

Rapid footsteps sounded up the stairs, and I curled against the headboard, clutching my iPad to my chest. I was just wondering how badly I would damage it if I had to use it as a weapon when Darcy appeared. She was fully dressed in skinny jeans and a sparkly tank top, and was wearing complete makeup.

“You scared the crap out of me!” I said.

“Check it out!” she said, ignoring me as she gestured at the north-facing window. “Bonfire on the beach!”

Damn. I should’ve known she could smell a party in the air. I sighed, put my iPad/potential ninja star down, and padded to the window. Sure enough, there was a raging bonfire maybe three houses up the beach, with at least twenty kids milling around it. From this distance, all I could make out was their shadows. It looked vaguely like the cover of that
Lord of the Flies
novel I’d been forced to read in English class last year. Fiction had never really been my thing.

“I bet that guy from the general store is there,” Darcy whispered excitedly, raising her eyebrows. She turned and started rummaging through the armoire across from the foot of the bed, sliding the hangers aside one by one.

“What’re you doing?” I asked warily.

“Finding you something to wear,” she replied in her favorite condescending voice. “Go do something with your hair. It looks like birds are nesting in there.”

“Darcy, I don’t want to go to a party,” I protested, running my hands over my braid nonetheless.

“Well, I do, and I don’t want to show up by myself.” Her hands flopped to her sides and she groaned. “Don’t you own anything that’s not a zip sweatshirt?”

“Oh, well. I have nothing to wear, so I guess we’d better stay home,” I tried, dreading the idea of standing around, trying to make small talk with strangers.

Darcy looked me up and down, taking in my white tank top and gray, wide-leg sweats with the side stripe. “You can borrow something of mine,” she said, reaching for my hand and pulling me toward the stairs.

“Dad will kill us if we sneak out,” I said, grasping at straws.

“So? What else is new?”

“Darcy—”

“Oh, come on, Rory!” she whined, tipping her head back as she now took both my hands in hers. “Please? Please, please, please? I’m dying of boredom here. We’ve been locked up in this house for two whole days after being locked up in
our
house for a week. Please come with me? I’m begging you here. Please? You owe me.”

I looked into my sister’s eyes and felt a thump of foreboding mixed with overwhelming guilt.

“Why do I owe you?” I asked slowly. She didn’t know, right? How could she possibly know?

She glanced away and lifted her shoulders. “I don’t know. For defending you to Dad the other day? For defending you to Dad
every
day? For leaving behind all my friends and ditching Becky’s party and missing my graduation to come here?”

“Like that was my fault,” I pointed out. But still. I could breathe a small sigh of relief, because at least she hadn’t been talking about Christopher. At least she hadn’t somehow found out. But the damage was done, and the guilt was now pressing down on my chest.

Besides, Darcy was right. She had given up a lot to come here. When Steven Nell had attacked me, she’d been looking forward not only to her graduation and Becky’s bash, but also to about a half dozen other parties and a trip down the shore. Not to mention another summer working at her friend Liam’s family restaurant. This year she would be old enough to bartend and bring home “mad tips.” I’d never liked or understood her friends, but she lived for them, and all of that had been taken from her.

“All right, fine. We’ll go,” I said, shoving my feet into the sneakers I had kicked off next to my bed earlier. “But I’m wearing my own clothes.”

“Yay!” Darcy actually hugged me for half a second, and a smile flickered on my lips. I moved to the wardrobe, yanked out my favorite navy-blue Adidas zip sweatshirt and zipped it on over my tank. Then I followed my sister down the stairs and out the back door.

The air outside was cool, and even from down the beach, I could smell the ash on the breeze. Long, thin lines combed into the sand beneath our feet, as if it had recently been evened out and spruced up by a maintenance crew. I stuffed my hands in my pockets and matched Darcy’s casual pace as we approached the bonfire. My pulse raced with nerves when the first revelers on the outskirts of the crowd started to notice us. I felt conspicuous, like I didn’t belong here. But Darcy was in her element. She paused a few feet from the fire and pushed one hand into the back pocket of her jeans, shaking her hair away from her face.

“There he is,” she said through her teeth, sliding her eyes to the right.

Darcy’s dark-haired hottie stood with Lauren and Olive near a blue cooler. They were with the two boys and the pretty blond girl from the general store, along with two more surfer-type guys and the redhead who had stared at us from the sidewalk. All of them were beautiful and completely at ease, their hair wind-tossed, their smiles carefree, their clothes loose and beachy and casual.

“The key is to let the guy come to you,” Darcy informed me, leaning slightly toward my ear. “Never, ever go to—”

“Hi, there.”

We both jumped. Darcy’s crush stood just to her right, holding a red cup and wearing a perfect, smooth grin. He had one dimple in his left cheek. His brown hair fell over his right eye, and the sleeves of his red T-shirt clung to his biceps. His jeans were frayed at the bottom, and he was barefoot, as was the rest of his group. Even Darcy had gone shoeless. Suddenly, I felt out of place in my laced-up running sneakers.

Then the blond guy from across the street fixed his eyes on mine. A split second later, he looked away and sipped his drink. I licked my dry lips and clutched my hands together behind my back. My pulse began to race as I wondered if he would talk to me—what I would say to him if he did.

“Hi. I’m Darcy Thayer,” my sister was saying. She tilted her head with a smile. Her long brown hair tumbled over her bare shoulder.

“Joaquin Marquez,” the guy said. He gestured at the blond guy, and I noticed that Joaquin was wearing the same woven leather bracelet Lauren had on. “This is Tristan Parrish.”

Tristan simply nodded. My eyes darted to his arms. Sure enough, a leather bracelet was tied around his wrist.

“And that’s his sister, Krista,” Joaquin said, lifting his cup toward the blond girl, who wore a gauzy white dress; a long, delicate gold necklace; and the bracelet, although hers looked newer than the others.

“Hello,” she said, her eyes trailing over me from head to toe as if she were a fashion designer scrutinizing her work. There was a sophisticated confidence about her, which wasn’t all that surprising considering how beautiful she was. She had the same sharp cheekbones as her brother and the same stunning blue eyes. “I love your hair,” she mused, touching the end of my braid.

“Um, thanks.” I squirmed under her touch.

“How about we get through introductions first before you grope her, Krista?” Joaquin suggested lightly.

“Sorry,” Krista apologized, dropping my hair.

“Don’t mind her. She’s cute but socially awkward,” Joaquin said under his breath, leaning slightly toward us.

“Shut up!” Krista said, shoving his arm but smiling in a self-deprecating way as everyone else laughed. So he was that guy. Didn’t matter if what he said was rude or obnoxious, everyone just let him say it. Darcy had one of those in her crowd—her friend Liam—and I couldn’t stand him.

“Those guys back there are Bea, Fisher, and Kevin,” Krista told me, slipping one arm around mine and gesturing at the redhead and her two guys. They silently lifted their drinks in greeting. Fisher was tall and linebacker-broad with dark skin and hair shaved so close to his head it was almost nonexistent. Kevin was lanky and pale, with black hair and an intricate fire tattoo cut across his right forearm. “And you know Lauren and Olive.”

Darcy shot me a confused glance.

I cleared my throat, extricating my arm from Krista’s. “Um, I met Lauren and Olive earlier,” I explained to Darcy. “They were riding their bikes past the house.”

Lauren was in the same T-shirt and shorts she’d had on that morning, but Olive had changed into a long-sleeved black sweater over baggy cargo pants. Her dark curls bounced crazily in the ocean breeze. She was the only one without a leather band on her arm, unless it was hidden under her sleeve.

“Hi, Rory,” Olive said.

“Hey,” I said. “This is my sister, Darcy.”

The girls smiled politely at Darcy but said nothing. Darcy cleared her throat and shifted her weight.

“So, Rory, how do you like Juniper Landing so far?” Joaquin asked me, stepping past Darcy and over to my side.

While the rest of the group watched me, I glanced sideways at Darcy, whose smile faltered. She wasn’t used to being ignored, especially not in favor of me. My face grew warm, and suddenly my heart seemed to be pulsating directly against my skin.

“Um, it’s…nice,” I said.

“Have you been into town yet?” Krista asked, toying with her necklace.

“The ice cream at the general store is to die for,” Olive put in.

“And you have to check out the library,” Krista added. “They have an amazing science section.”

My heart thumped. How would Krista know I was into science?

“Because you were wearing that E=mc
²
sweatshirt this morning,” Krista explained, clearly reading my startled look. “At least that’s what Lauren told me.”

“Oh,” I said warily, shooting a look at Lauren, who stared straight back at me, as if it wasn’t weird that she’d reported back on my outfit. “Right.”

“She was? God,” Darcy said in an apologetic way, touching my arm. “Forgive my sister. She’s still learning how to dress herself.”

I cocked an annoyed eyebrow at my sister.

“I think she looks fine,” Tristan put in, speaking for the first time. The gravelly timbre of his voice sent a shiver down my spine.

“To each her own,” Darcy sang, tossing her hair back. But I could see the red forming on her cheeks from being contradicted. The beautiful people were supposed to be her people, not mine.

“So, Rory, let’s find someplace to sit,” Joaquin said, reaching his arm around me and giving my shoulder a familiar squeeze. “I like to get to know all our new visitors.”

I’ll bet, I thought, wondering how many girls that line had worked on in the past.

Tristan looked me dead in the eye at this, his expression pained.

“Actually, I’m kind of thirsty,” I said, dodging Joaquin’s touch.

“Fisher’ll get you something,” Joaquin said, tilting his head toward the others. “Right, Fish?”

Instantly, Fisher was by Joaquin’s side, as if ready to do his bidding. I glanced at Darcy, freaked, but she simply glared back at me.

“Um, thanks, but I can get it myself,” I said, angling so I could slide past them.

“You sure?” Joaquin asked.

“Yep! Very sure. I’ll be back,” I told Darcy.

But by the way she was looking at me, it was pretty clear she wouldn’t have minded if she never saw me again.