I stopped, lowering my violin slowly. “Hi.” I exhaled more than spoke.
“You’re really here?” he said, his voice gravelly from lack of use.
“I really am.”
“I’m not sure . . .” His face screwed up into confusion. “I don’t recall . . .”
“It’s okay. It will come back to you. Don’t try to force it.”
“I tried to die. Why didn’t I die?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess it wasn’t your time yet.”
My father closed his eyes, the pain of remembering clenching his jaw. “I heard you . . . like you were at one end of a tunnel telling me all these things I didn’t understand. Didn’t want to understand. And then, the song. The music made me remember your childhood. How I wished I could have been warmer, all the mistakes I made. I ran back to find that little girl again, to tell her I was sorry. And then I woke up.”
“Well, you have to stay now. The girl still needs you.”
He blinked at me, absorbing what I said and perhaps all the other things I’d told him during the week. “Yes, I suppose she still does. I’m very tired now.”
I stood up and smoothed his blankets. On an impulse, I leaned down and kissed his cheek. “Rest, Father. We need to get your spirits up so you can rejoin your body.”
He closed his eyes. “I’m going to pretend that makes sense. We’ll talk later about all this boy nonsense.” He smiled slightly when he said it and my heart lifted.
“Yes, later. Good night.”
I left my violin in his room. I was done playing for the night. As I closed my father’s door behind me, a huge weight lifted free from my chest. He was awake. There was hope.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
D
onny pulled back the curtain. “They’re still partying out there? Have they even slowed down since we left and came back? It’s been a week. This castle is like one big frat house of the living dead.” She turned back to me. “Are you sure I can’t do your makeup for you?”
“It’s under control,” I said and then promptly stabbed myself in the eye with the mascara wand. Donny had a heavy hand with cosmetics, though, and I wanted a fresher look. It was important that everything was perfect tonight.
Amelia sat next to me on the bench in front of the vanity. “Are you absolutely sure you want to go through with this?” she asked, wringing her hands while her foot tapped nervously.
I stared at my reflection. The girl who stared back was nearly a stranger compared with who she had been only a few months ago. “I’m sure.” I scooted around and stood, a little wobbly on my high heels. “How do I look?”
Ame clapped and Donny gave me a thumbs-up. I was decorated in one hundred yards of white tulle and taffeta. A floral sash of black roses tied around my waist and my hair was a confection of curls bejeweled with black and white diamonds.
A girl gets coroneted only once.
“So there’s no backing out after this, right?” Donny asked.
“I’m already considered the queen. This is just a formality. I’m glad you could come. It means a lot to me.”
It was a very special occasion. We’d decided that while Haden and I would travel between the realms often, our friends should come to Under only on rare occasions. This night, however, was too important to keep them away. They each had a stake in Under, having lost so much, and while they wouldn’t rule, their guidance would always be a part of our management. I was counting on Donny and Amelia to keep me grounded. And human.
And we all wanted to honor Varnie by never letting Under become what it once was.
This night was all about celebration, however. And although the kingdom had been celebrating quite well on its own, we wanted to have some type of organized party and formal coronation.
“What’s it like to be a queen?” Amelia asked.
“It’s not as glamorous as you would think. We’ve been spending most of our time going room by room and eradicating traces of Mara.” I shuddered. “It’s going to take a long time. She had a fascination with blood that I really don’t want to discuss right now.”
I also had to get used to seeing ghouls and beasts and skeletons everywhere I looked. All the things that scared me most were constantly popping out of the shadows. And my three handmaids were a handful. They were completely insane, but astonishingly earnest in their desire to please me. Unfortunately, they tried to please me the same way they took care of Mara, by bringing me “delicacies” that turned my stomach. Every day they laid out a dress for me, and every day I repeated my desire that they burn every item of clothing in Mara’s wardrobe. I would not wear anything of hers. They cooed and gurgled, but kept trying to interest me in their former mistress’s gowns.
And looking at them made me realize how close I’d come to becoming one of them.
I traveled back and forth more frequently between Under and home than Haden did. Now that we were in charge, Under was more his home than it had been while he was growing up in it. He enjoyed the challenges of reshaping the world. I did too, but I also wanted that elusive high school diploma and summer classes had already begun. Luckily, I didn’t need as much sleep as I did when I was “pre-mared” as Ame called it, and when I did sleep, I could visit Under in my dreams.
I also spent a lot of time talking to my father—both to his body in his hospital bed at home, where he was still comatose, and his bed in the castle, where his spirit lived and was getting stronger every day. We’d been cautious with each other, but it was starting to feel like we were making progress. I had no doubt that once he was strong enough to return to his body we would begin a battle of wills regarding my future. I almost looked forward to it.
A knock on the door signaled it was time.
My best friends looked beautiful, if a little nervous, in their ball gowns. We were quite striking as we checked ourselves one last time in the mirror.
“This is so much better than prom,” said Ame.
“It had better be,” Donny added.
We linked arms as we ventured down the long hall. The castle still moved however it saw fit, but somehow I always knew how to get to whatever room I wanted—even if it was in a different place from the last time I’d been there. There would come a time, I thought, when I would stop trying to figure out how all of it worked. That time wasn’t now.
As we neared a sideboard against the corridor wall, it jiggled. I didn’t like the look of it and slowed. It jiggled again and we stopped. The chair next to it wobbled and then the four legs began walking away from the wall like an animal. The furniture started coming at us, and we turned and ran the other way.
“Somebody watched
Beauty and the Beast
,
I take it,” Donny huffed.
“Her magic is still alive in pockets around here,” I answered as we ducked back into my room and slammed the door. “Sorry, guys, this will just take a minute.” I tugged the tassel that signaled the servants.
Since I wasn’t very good at letting people wait on me, they knew that when the bell rang I was serious.
“You’re not even scared, are you?” Amelia asked.
I thought about it. “No, I guess not. Not really. You have to take the good with the bad around here.”
“The good better be extraordinary,” Donny said, fluffing her hair in the mirror. She was doing a good job of pretending not to be scared, but I could smell the fear.
That was another reason why I spent a lot of time going back and forth. I was constantly aware of human essence around people now. I could tell when people were lying, when they were ill, when they were happy or afraid—and I needed the frequent times in Under just to take breaks from being overwhelmed by all the human souls. It was easier to control my hunger in Under, and I hadn’t fed on an essence since Haden stopped me with the flowers.
A servant knocked, and apologized when he entered. “The unfortunate furnishings have been removed, Your Majesty.”
“Mr. Pickerling, what have I told you about that?”
He bowed deeply. “Miss Theia,” he corrected himself.
I hated all the “Your Highness” this and “Your Majesty” that. We settled on “Miss Theia” because it reminded me of the way Varnie used to call me that.
“Shall we try again, girls? I’d really like to show you what I meant by the good. You’ve only seen the worst of Under.”
Ame looked a little green. “Um, Theia? How many eyes did that guy have?”
“Seven.” I pulled them back into the hall, where we were escorted by two skeletons to the coronation ball. I feared I would never get used to the sound of their rasping joints.
The doors to the ballroom stretched in a high arch of solid oak. As the doormen pulled them open, I wanted to see my friends’ expressions. We’d prepared them for the macabre dancers they would see—but I hadn’t tried to explain the dazzling ball itself.
On a dais of red carpet, an orchestra of skeletons dressed in black tuxedos played a song that, like Under, was beautiful and endearingly creepy. The tones produced by their strings were not heard in our realm; it was like being bitten in your heart while at the same time receiving a breathtaking kiss. Dancers had already begun swirling in intricate patterns across the shiny floor, their gore matched only by their charm as they swayed past in lavish clothing of rich satins and silks. The women wore makeup, whether they had faces or not, and the men wore suits in every color imaginable.
The girls stepped farther into the room, their eyes drawn to a chandelier so immense and bright it was like looking at the sun. The crystals broke the light into patterns on the wall and then dipped those shapes into a rainbow prism.
Amelia gasped when she saw the chocolate buffet that Haden had come up with on his own to please me. Chocolate renditions of famous sculptures lined the middle of a long table, each surrounded by a bounty of chocolate in varied sizes and colors. At one end, a chocolate fountain the size of a wading pool gurgled plentifully.
“Oh, man, am I having naughty thoughts,” Donny said.
Gabe reached for her. “That is exactly what I hoped you would say.”
“Theia, you look pretty,” Mike Matheny said with a little bow, though not enough to dislodge the food from his plate.
“Thank you, Mike,” I said after a curtsy.
We hadn’t known what to do with Mike. We found him in the castle, locked in a replica of his room from home. We tried to explain to him what Mara was, what she’d done to all of us, including brainwashing him. It took him longer to recover from the shock than the rest of us. Probably because he’d been blindsided by Mara when the rest of us had at least known she was coming.
He’d refused to leave his room in the castle for days—and he still hadn’t returned to Serendipity Falls. We tried to coax him back to his old life, but he simply wasn’t ready to go back. I was surprised he’d agreed to come to the party. Usually he spent most of his time in his room.
“I shouldn’t be here,” he said, looking at his plate as if it had answers. “It’s a celebration and I don’t belong.”
“What happened to you wasn’t your fault. Mara used you. She used all of us.”
“I feel so dumb. Those things I said to you at the cabin . . .” His coloring changed from pink to red. “I’m really embarrassed.” It was the first time he’d talked to me about that night.
“We were all pieces on her chessboard, Mike. She made you think that you needed to save me—and I didn’t help matters by unknowingly using the Lure around you. Tonight is about new beginnings, though.”
He huffed out an imitation of a laugh. “I stabbed Haden with a knife. I don’t know that I will ever be able to forget that. I’m pretty sure he won’t.” Mike lifted his right hand from his plate. “I didn’t know I was capable of stabbing someone.”
“I’ve done things I wish I could take back too. We still don’t know whether I’m the one who drained our classmates. We may never know. It’s how we go on from here that counts. You thought you were doing the right thing . . . saving me from a demon. You didn’t know.”
He seemed to shrink into himself. “You’re trying to make me feel better. I get that . . . but it’s going to be a while before that happens, okay? She really messed with me. And because of that, your friend died and Amelia hates me too.”
“She doesn’t hate you. Amelia couldn’t hate anyone. She’s hurting and she’s as embarrassed about what Mara did to her as you are. Try to have a little fun tonight, okay?”
He nodded and took his plate to a table.
Ame was standing alone, watching the dancers, so I joined her next.
“You miss him,” I said. Varnie’s absence was painful for us all, but I knew Amelia and Haden paid a bigger price.
She nodded. “Who’s to say if we would even have worked out, you know? I just wish we’d gotten our chance. He was a good, good guy, wasn’t he?”
I squeezed her hand. “He was the best.”
“I suppose I’m going to be stuck dancing with Mike all night since he’s the only other human here.”
“Be nice, Ame.”
“You’re right. I know it’s not his fault that Mara did that magic, but I still feel like he cheated me out of a love life for four years.”
“Don’t say her name too loud. I don’t want a riot tonight.” We watched the dancers for a few minutes more. “Mike blames himself for Varnie’s death. Because he sent us here.”
Amelia closed her eyes. “It’s not his fault. It’s no one’s fault but Mara’s.”
“I tried to tell him that.”
“I’ll talk to him.” She had to steel herself to go to him, but she would do it. Amelia was the strongest person I knew. She would help Mike even at a cost to her own pride.
I felt a prickle of awareness and turned towards the source—Haden. From across the room, I met his gaze and the world just stopped. He moved towards me with a pantherlike grace and a predatory gleam in his dark eyes, weaving through the dancers and setting my heart drumming a primal rhythm.
The sounds of the party dimmed under the rush of my heartbeat—and Haden’s. I felt it keenly as they matched beat for beat. He moved with agonizing slowness as I ached to be near him—it was always like this. This elemental longing, this dangerous desire. Still, I held my position and let him come for me.
As he got closer, his eyes told a story. Our story. A tale of hunger and desire, of love and sacrifice, of the beauty and the beast that lived in each of us. Ours was a dark fairy tale where the princess sometimes saved herself but didn’t need the prince any less.
We hadn’t yet tested the theory that we could make love without peril. There had been no discussion, just an unspoken agreement that for now we preferred to stoke the fire between us. We would know when the time was right, and wasn’t it just delicious to anticipate when that would be?
The smoldering expression on his face suggested that maybe my dress that night would be the tipping point.
He stopped directly in front of me. His nostrils flared slightly as his eyes roamed over me, searing me with the possession in his hot gaze. “I’m not going to tell you that you look beautiful,” he said finally.
I sent him a quirky grin. “You’re not?”
He shook his head, but the look he sent me from his heavily hooded eyes made the air around me shiver.
“Then I won’t tell you either.” But he did look beautiful. Oh, how he did.
“‘Beautiful’ isn’t strong enough to describe how delectable you are. It would be a throwaway word. Meaningless.”
The butterflies in my tummy went wild. “I don’t need the word, Haden. I can see how you feel just by looking into your eyes.”
He swallowed hard. “Dance with me?”
He bowed splendidly in his starched tuxedo. I curtsied, transported into another time when courting was so much more graceful. He led me to the floor and we waltzed as if we had no cares but to spin the world.
It was later, as we stood on the dais and accepted our crowns, that I realized Mara had gotten exactly what she wanted all along.