Witch Eyes (7 page)

Twelve

I could have headed straight for the hotel, but I needed to pull myself together first. A sharp wind was coming in from the west and cutting right through me. I was shivering within a block.

Washington Street opened into a residential area the farther north I went. Old Victorian offices gave way to a neighborhood of southern belles—ancient-looking houses hidden behind their veil of iron-wrought gates.

Jason Thorpe is my father.
It was hard to wrap my head around that one. I thought I understood, now, why Uncle John had never talked about his hometown. Who would want to remember growing up in the midst of some sort of battle. Was that why I’d grown up away from all of this? To hide me from Catherine Lansing?

Soon the old homes gave way to newer developments. I kept going. New houses like cookie-cutter outlines of the ones near them, all looking disposable and yet fresh.

“Braden?” Trey’s voice shouted through my thoughts. It had started to drizzle, I realized, glancing down at the sidewalk in front of me. I turned toward the sound and saw Trey behind the wheel of a black Ford F-150. “What
are you doing?”

It was almost like the rain was attacking me, the damp spots of my T-shirt darkening from red to
massacre
. “Walking.”

“Come on. I’ll give you a ride,” Trey said, leaning his head out the window. A moment later, I saw him grabbing things off the passenger seat, tossing them in the back.

You barely know him,
I reminded myself. I didn’t think I even liked him. Well, other than the fact that I liked looking at him. “I’m fine. Don’t need a ride. I’m going right up here.”

He turned to look straight ahead and squinted. “Only thing up there is Sather Park. C’mon. It’s going to start pouring any minute.”

“I’m fine,” I insisted.

The truck continued crawling along at my pace. “Even runaways need to take some help now and then,” Trey said.

“I don’t need a ride, Trey. Go on.” I waved him on.
Everything’s fine here. No big deal.
Even offered him a smile.

The truck didn’t speed up, though. It parked. Right there, in the middle of the street. Trey slid out of the driver’s seat and strode across. “Get in the truck,” he demanded.

“And if I don’t?” Everything else was too much to deal with. This was something more logical. Picking a fight with him would be so easy.

“What’s with you?” he exhaled. “It’s raining. You’re going to catch the flu.”

“I told you I didn’t need a ride,” I replied and nodded toward the truck. “Someone’s going to hit you if you don’t get back in. You can’t just park in the middle of the road.”

“It’s not like I’m taking you to a remote spot out of town to carve out your liver.”

I clenched my teeth and tried to focus. Deep, even breaths. Trey wasn’t responsible for what was going on. It wasn’t his fault.

The rain started picking up. I could fight this all day, but Trey looked like the stubborn type. “If I get in the car, will you leave me alone?” I said finally.

“Of course.” He climbed back behind the wheel, seasoning the slam of his door with a muttered, “Idiot.”

It was like the sky was waiting for me to agree to really unleash. All of a sudden it went from a growing rain to a downpour. I leapt into the passenger side, slamming the door harder than I had any reason to.

“Where are you going?” Trey’s voice was terse. I glanced across the front seat and saw his knuckles tightening across the steering wheel.

“Anywhere.” Anywhere would be better than here. Trey threw the car into gear, and the silence inside was only highlighted by the back-and-forth of the windshield wipers and the
steady patter of rain.

The silence didn’t last long. “You always give someone a hard time for trying to help you out?” Trey’s eyes never left the road, but he added, “Seatbelt.”

“Free rides don’t come cheap,” I muttered.

“You get that from a bumper sticker? Or a fortune cookie?” There was a fraction of a smile on Trey’s features now, just a hint of amusement.

I watched the streetlights as they started to churn to life. “It’s true. Ever since I came here, everyone has got big plans for me. Like I’m some sort of game, and they see something they want.”

“So change the game,” Trey said simply. “Make your own rules. You already ran away once. Couldn’t be that hard to do it again, could it?”

“I can’t do that,” I replied automatically. Then the thought started to turn over in my head. Why couldn’t I?

“Learn to live with it, then.” Trey drove just slightly over the speed limit, despite the rain coming down in torrents.

“
Where are we going?” I didn’t recognize any of the streets we we
re passing.

“Nowhere just yet,” Trey said comfortably. “At least for now. I could drop you off at the bus stop if you really want.”

“Maybe,” I said, but I knew that wasn’t an option either.

“
What brought you here, Braden?” Something about the way Trey kept saying my name made me want to squirm. “Why Belle Dam
?”

But it wasn’t like I could tell him what was going on. I shook my head.

“If you don’t want to talk about it, we don’t have to.” Trey’s voice was gentle. It was almost like I’d imagined the arrogant side of him.

I didn’t realize I’d started shivering until after Trey had reached over to the console and turned the heaters on. He didn’t say anything.

“I don’t even know what I’m doing most of the time,” I said, my voice barely audible over the sound of the heaters.

As we neared the beach, in the distance I could see the potential in the swells that suggested more chaos to come. I settled against the headrest and watched the sights of Belle Dam as they whipped past. There wasn’t a lot of town left to cover, but Trey continued to drive.

We passed by the lighthouse that stuck out against the point. With the weather the way it was, and the gray sky to frame it, it looked a little more like the one in my vision, but it still wasn’t exact. Were all of those visions important?

Trey turned onto a cracked, paved road near there, taking us toward the beach. I straightened in my seat, trying to figure out where we were going. For a drive in the
ocean?

“I come out here sometimes, when I need to think,” he explained. He pulled into a small parking lot in the shadow of the lighthouse.

“I’m not a runaway,” I said suddenly. I’m not sure why I said it.

Trey nodded after a moment. “Okay.”

“I mean, I’m not
just
a runaway. It’s … complicated.”

He didn’t look at me, just watched the waves swelling and crashing over the breakwall. The rain started picking up, slamming against the windshield. It made me sleepy.

Everything had made sense when I was running away. Get away from Uncle John. Keep him safe. Stop
whatever it was that was coming for me. But everything in Belle Dam was so much more complicated. First Lucien, now my father. And the woman who was apparently after me was my new friend’s mother. I couldn’t control the witch eyes, and Jason seemed to think Catherine was going to kill me unless I learned how to control them.

It was like coming here had made everything worse. And I still wasn’t any closer to knowing what to do.

After a while, my focus turned from watching the waves with Trey, to watching him.

He’s probably straight
, my mind viciously chimed in out of nowhere. Something about him put me on edge but made me feel comfortable all at the same time. Like I could talk to him if I really needed to, and he’d listen. But at the same time, he looked at me sometimes, and my stomach dropped.

“Figured me out yet?” Trey asked in the silence. I jumped, hearing his voice again after such a long silence. Reading my mind so effectively.

“Maybe,” I hedged. “Depends.”

“On what?”

I looked away before he caught me staring at him. “If this is just an act or something. For my benefit.”

He laughed. “I could say the same for you. Haven’t you ever heard that expression about not trusting a man you can’t look in the eye?”

Was that a real saying? Or was he making it up? “Well, you’ll have to deal. But I mean, I don’t know anything about you. You could be a vegetarian for all I know. And that’s just not cool.”

“Fair enough,” Trey admitted. “What do you want to know?”

Anything I wanted to know? “What’s with the hero complex?” I didn’t know where it came from, but Trey did have a tendency to interfere in my life.

“Hero complex?” Trey was quiet for a moment, and then burst into laughter. “I don’t think I have one, exactly.”

“Far as I can tell, you do.”

The laughter didn’t last long. Quickly enough, Trey sobered up, and his voice matched the seriousness of his face. “I guess you just look like you need a friend.”

“I’ve got friends,” I said curtly.

“And you don’t want more?” He flashed a smile I didn’t return. “I mean it can’t be easy with the eye thing, but I guess—”

“Wait. ‘The eye thing’? Is this some sort of pity gesture? The poor, nearly blind kid needs a helping hand?” All the frustration and anger that had been building up suddenly had another outlet. He felt
sorry
for me?

“Let me finish,” Trey was saying, as patiently as he could muster. His knuckles went white against the dark steering wheel once more.

“I think you’ve said enough,” I huffed.

“Please don’t throw a tantrum in my car. I just cleaned it out the other day. Angst is a bitch to get out of leather,” Trey added, completely deadpan.

The comment caught me off guard, long enough for the rational brain to kick back in. I started to laugh.

Even Trey cracked a smile. “I realized I was kind of a dick the other day. And you looked like someone kicked your puppy. I guess I could relate.”

“You go to school?”

He nodded. “The community college. I’ve been messing around with getting a business degree.”

“Rain’s letting up,” I observed. The storm wasn’t over; this was simply the calm setting itself upon the land. “Can you drop me off by the square? I’m staying near there.”

There was a moment of indecision that hung in the air. I was waiting for him to say what was coming, and he was waiting for me to say … something. I could see the thou
ghts running through Trey’s head, even if I didn’t know what they were, exactly.

“How old are you, Braden?”

“Seventeen. I’ll be eighteen in a few months.” Only seven months until March. It was close enough for me. “What about you?”

“Nineteen.” The tension was slowly melting from the cab, like it had never happened. I’d missed something. Trey turned the engine over and started driving back into the town.

“You sure you’re okay? You’ve got someplace to go?”

I looked out the window. A few people were hurrying out of buildings toward their cars, occasionally looking toward the sky in fear. “I told you, I’m okay. I’m staying at the Belmont.”

He whistled. “Not bad.” I glanced at him in confusion and he went on. “The Belmont’s … kinda pricey. Tourists don’t mind paying for ‘atmosphere.’”

“Oh.”

He shifted gears, his attention focused on the road. Instead of stopping at the square, like I’d asked him, he drove straight up to the Belmont and pulled up against the curb. “Here.” Trey pulled a card out of his wallet and scribbled something on it. “If you need anything, give me a call.”

“I’ll be fine.”

“Not in this town,” Trey muttered. “Just hold on to it. In case.”

“Okay.” It was an insurance agent’s card, and on the back was Trey’s number. I slipped it in my pocket, feeling it bend around the hotel key. And then a realization struck. There was something I needed to know. “So where is the Belle Dam anyway? I haven’t seen anything like that around here, and that’s what the town’s named after, isn’t it?”

Trey laughed. “Good luck trying to find it. They tell kids around here that it’s a secret dam hidden in the woods out west. But it’s actually just French. Or at least it used to be. Belle Dame. It means ‘pretty lady’ or something.”

Time to go. I hesitated once the door was open, glancing toward Trey. But everything I could think to say sounded stupid the moment it popped into my head.

I slammed the door and hurried away.

Thirteen

Before I even walked in the door the next morning, I ran into Jade. My first instinct was panic—like she’d somehow know who my father was.

“My new best friend has taste,” she noted with raised eyebrows. But if she’d learned any secrets about me, they weren’t showing on her face. I released my breath and tried for a smile. Maybe today wouldn’t be so bad.

I stopped long enough for her to look over my outfit. Dark jeans, a dark blue T-shirt, and a button-up.

“You act like getting dressed is hard,” I said with a laugh.

Her head shifted a bit to the side. “Someone hasn’t been paying attention to some of the fashion disasters roaming our halls. It’s like a Shakespearean tragedy in there some morn
ings.”

“I think you’re exaggerating a little bit,” I said, but then I thought of Riley in her gypsy outfit yesterday. Or maybe not. I glanced down, suddenly unsure of myself.
“You’re sure it looks alright?”

“Not bad,” she admitted. “But go with a lighter
T-shirt next time. Too dark with the glasses and the jeans.” She shook her head. “Definitely not jeans. Go with khaki. Doesn’t make you look like a pseudo-goth.”

“Jeans make me look like a goth?” I wondered.

The look she gave me was blank. “Of course not. Stop getting sidetracked. You’re as bad as Gentry. He didn’t get the fashion gene, sad to say. So it’s my sisterly duty to go through his wardrobe and burn everything I hate,” she said, eyes twinkling. “I mean, he wears
flannel.
”

I thought back to how many flannel shirts Uncle John and I had between the two of us. “Flannel can be comfortable,” I said.

Jade threw her head back and laughed. “And whoever told you that fashion was comfort?” Case in point, Jade’s outfit was a black pantsuit with all sorts of gold accents. Her hair was pulled back today, everything except that shocking streak of pink, which hung down over her face.

I shrugged. “Okay, no flannel. I don’t think I even have any here.” I hadn’t seen any in the drawers at the hotel. So maybe Lucien knew wh
at he was doing.

Jade was still eyeing me carefully. “Actually, that shirt’s still a little big. Baggy clothes won’t work on you. You’re too small.”

“I’m not small,” I laughed, looking down at myself. “They’re just new, that’s all. A few washes, and they’ll fit fine.”

“We should go shopping soon. There’s a few places with some really great stuff in town.” she pushed.

“Sure.” We entered through the front doors, and I glanced around as if Riley would be just standing around waiting for me to sho
w up.

“A bunch of us are going out tonight. You should come,” she said. “It’l
l give you a chance to meet everyone.”

I nodded. “Maybe. I’m still not sure what my plans are for tonight. But if I have time, then definitely.” We split up after that, each heading to a different side of the school.

It’s a conflict of interest being her friend. Nothing good will come of this.
I tried to shrug off the dark thoughts and focus on finding Riley in the halls. Without any luck.

“Did everyone read the first three chapters of
The Sound and the Fury
?” I flinched in English, realizing that in all the drama of the night before, I’d skipped out on hom
ework. That meant double tonight. “Who wants to tell us what’s going on?”

I hoped and prayed she wouldn’t call on me. The gods of Forgotten English Homework must have been listening, because she picked a girl in the front of the class. It was much the same in Algebra, when I didn’t turn in the even-numbered problems from page twenty-four.

After class, I hung back. “I’m really sorry about the homework,” I admitted to the teacher, a young blonde woman whose name I couldn’t remember.

“You’re already a week behind everyone else,” she chided lightly.
Miss Masters
. The memory came to me suddenly.

“I know. It’s just with getting here the day before yesterday, and then enrolling in school first thing in the morning, I kinda spaced on it l
ast night.”

Eventually, she nodded. “I don’t want this to become a habit, Braden. I realize you’ve got some … extra conside
rations, but I’ve got to think about the rest of the class. I can’t give you special treatment every time.” She closed her lesson plan and slid it into the desk. “But turn it in tomorrow, and I’ll overlook it this time. After that, any late assignment will be an automatic zero. Do you understand?”

I nodded with relief. “No problem. I’m not normally a slacker, I promise.”

“I hope not,” she said with a smile. “Now go on, you’re going to be late for y
our next class.”

The school was a bit easier to navigate the second day. The whole experience was underwhelming. A few of Jade’s friends, who’d noticed us talking the day before, went out of their way to say hi to me, which was cool.

I finally spotted Riley making her way through the halls, swimming against the tide of students swarming toward the cafeteria. I waited for the herd to pass, and then started to follow her.

She headed back toward the far corner of the school, down the hall from where Jade and I had spent lunch yesterday. I almost passed her by when I caught just the glow of a computer screen
in a darkened classroom.

“Riley?” I poked my head inside.

Newspapers lined the walls closest to the ceiling, the rest of the walls taken up by whiteboard with newspaper mockups posted on it. Riley was at one of the computer stations in the middle of the room. She nearly leapt out of her chair at the sound of her name. I bit back a smile.

“What are you doing here?” she asked, craning her neck in my direction.

I took a few steps into the room, looking over the mockups on the wall. A back-to-school issue. “I’ve been looking around for you all day, but it’s like you’re avoiding me.”

She laughed. “Not hardly. I had a dentist appointment. I just got here a little bit ago.” She swiveled her chair around and looked up at me. “So what’s going on?” The mix of curiosity and suspicion in her voice was hard to miss.

“I was hoping you could fill me in on some stuff around here,” I said, sitting in one of the chairs next to her. “You said you we
re a
n expert in local stuff.”

“Depends on what you want to know.”

I sighed. What
did
I want to know? There was already too much information clawing its way around my brain as it was. “I guess I just don’t understand this whole feud thing everyone keeps talking about.”

She nodded, tapping a pen against her lips.

I went on. “Everyone acts like it’s like … war, but you go outside and it’s just like any other small town. I mean, if things were really that bad, why would anyone live here?”

“It’s not that simple,” she said, as if that would put it all in perspective. “It’s politics, and it’s competi
tion, and a whole lot of other things. But it’s not war. At least not anymore.”

“So things used to be worse?”

She nodded. “You have to read between the lin
es,
because they’ve always controlled the media here, but it’s gotten bad before. And depending on who you talk to, it was somewhere between an old Western and a horror movie.”

“But then what’s it like now? Because everyone talks about it, but that’s all it is. Talk.” I tried not to think about my close, personal encounter with a transportation vehicle.

“It’s like high school,” she said simply. “On the one hand, you’ve got Jade and her friends, right?” She held up one hand as if to demonstrate. “And on the other is everyone that doesn’t fit in. Either Jade doesn’t like them, or their parents work for Mr. Thorpe.

“Jason and Catherine don’t actually do all that much to each other. Remember, I told you how Drew always compared them to the mob? They’re like the mob bosses. They’ll step in when they have to, but most of the time it’s the underlings that stir up trouble. Just like Jade doesn’t have time to personally ruin every single student’s life. Other people do her dirty work for her.”

“Jade’s not like that,” I protested.

Riley lifted a shoulder. “You’ve known her a couple days. I’ve known her all my life. I’ve gathered a lot more empirical data than you have.”

I shook my head, not wanting to hear this. Jade had been nothing but sweet to me since I’d met her. “But what about her mom,” I asked, trying much too hard to be casual. “What’s she like?”

Riley’s eyes narrowed, and I realized I’d made a mistake. Apparently nothing passed by her without getting filed away. But instead of pressing me about why I wanted to know, she answered my question instead. “Catherine is the nicest, most charming person I’ve ever met,” she said, unexpectedly.

“What?” That was some kind of joke, right? My heart sank, and I was picturing my encounter with Jason last night. She was
nice
?

“Catherine’s a politician. She knows how to put on a front and be this classy, sophisticated soccer mom,” Riley said. “But she’s not really like that at all. I’ve seen her blow up on people before … she’s got a temper like you wouldn’t believe.”

The tightening feeling started to loosen. “So she’s
not
a nice person,” I asked, mainly for the sake of clarification.

Riley shrugged. “I’m sure if you’re Jade’s new BFF she’s going to be the nicest person ever. But she’s not the one you should worry about, Braden. Just be careful around Jade.” She put her hand on mine, the bracelets clacking down her arm. “And don’t fall for her, Braden. I wouldn’t want to see what she does
to you, too.”

“Me?” The idea of falling in love with Jade was … com
pletely alien.

Riley nodded. “Just trust me. Jade’s great, but she gets bored easily. Boredom brings out the Lansing side of her.”

I was about to ask her what she meant by that, when her phone rang. She glanced at the screen, and then held up her hand and hurried out of the room. I waited a few minutes for her to come back, but she never did.

¤ ¤ ¤

The headache started sometime after lunch. A low throbbing behind my eyes that felt like it was trying to shove them right out of my skull. My fingertips started tingling, and I started getting cold sweats.

Going through a migraine in the building wasn’t an option. I wasn’t sure of the exact protocol, aside from trying to explain what I was going through to the school nurse. And that would
be a waste of time. Instead, I just grabbed the stu
ff I knew I needed for homework, and lugged my now-too-heavy bag outside.

The hotel wasn’t far from the school, realistically. Nothing was “far” from anything else in Belle Dam; the town was too small. I called Lucien to see if he could get me excused, but the receptionist wouldn’t pass my call through. She probably didn’t know how.

She swore they’d take care of it, though. By the time I was in my room, worrying about school was the last thing on my mind. I pulled the curtains tight over the windows, then took it a step further and threw towels on top of them. Blocking out any sense of light whatsoever. A few pills for the headache, a nap, and a shower, and I’d be okay. I hoped.

I glanced at my cell phone, pressing my lips together to stop the shaking. My first instinct was still to turn t
o Uncle
John and expect him to bail me out. I just needed to know I’d be okay. But while I tried to think of what to say, and how to say it, I started to drift off. I was asleep before I ever even opened the
phone.