Forty-Four Box Set, Books 1-10 (44) (83 page)

“Yeah,” I said. “I think so.”

“Even he was shocked at some of the things coming out of your mouth. He said it was the fever making you say them.”

“I think it was the same thing as Paloma,” I said. “The ghost was trying to get in me, too.”

“Not trying, Abby. He
was
in you. You weren’t yourself. You weren’t right in the head.”

The hairs on the back of my neck stood up.

“And it wasn’t just what you were saying. You were sleepwalking too. You went in the back yard and dug up all the flowers.”

“What?”

She didn’t look at me, just nodded.

“I brought you back inside,” she said, her voice cracking.

I didn’t remember any of it.

“It’s true,” she said, clearing her throat. “But it all still gives me chills. When I asked you what you were doing, you looked at me with these crazy eyes and told me that you were digging my grave.”

I started shaking.

“Oh, my God, Kate,” I said. “I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”

“It wasn’t you, Abby,” she said, hugging me. “I know it wasn’t you.”

“I don’t remember any of it. None of it.”

“I know,” she said. “It’s lucky that you don’t.”

We were quiet for a minute.

“What happened to Ty?” I said, almost afraid to ask. I could feel something wasn’t right.

“He was here,” she said. “For most of it. But last night, you were delirious, screaming and yelling.”

“I scared him off?” I said.

“I don’t know,” she said. “But you kept calling out for Jesse.”

I remembered that.

“What else? Tell me.”

“You said that you loved him,” she said. “You said you loved Jesse.”

“Damn it. God damn it.”

I felt like crying and held my head in my hands. I told Kate about the dream with Jesse and how something was after us, a dark energy with these bright blue eyes.

“I saw the color, Kate,” I said. “I saw them.”

“Your eyes were blue some of the time,” she said. “Light blue. It was freaking me out.”

“Jesse fought it. He told me to run while he fought the demon. I don’t know if he made it. I have a bad, bad feeling about it.”

But then I thought back to Ty.

“Has he called?”

“Of course,” she said. “About a thousand times. You’ll see him soon. Ty can handle it. Give him some time.”

I nodded, sitting quiet for a moment.

“God damn it,” I repeated.

CHAPTER 47

“What about Paloma?” I asked, dreading what Kate would say. “Have you heard anything?”

“It’s good news, Abby,” she said. “She’s okay.”

Kate told me that Paloma had been found wandering around on a forest road somewhere outside of Prineville. She had driven her car deep into the wilderness and crashed into a boulder. She had suffered a concussion and a broken collarbone.

“It seems like she blacked out for a while. When she came to, she waited for help to come,” Kate said. “But when she realized no one knew where she was and that she seemed to be out in the middle of nowhere, she started following the car tracks back.

“Some hunters found her and drove her to the hospital. They checked her out and the doctors said she’s fine. She went home yesterday. One of the first things she did was call you.”

“That’s great news,” I said. “I’m so relieved.”

“There was something, though, that the doctors couldn’t explain,” Kate said. “Paloma had a lot of cuts and bruises from the accident. But there were some bruises around her neck that weren’t consistent with a car accident. Off the record, one of them told me that it looked like someone had tried to choke her.”

CHAPTER 48

The sun was low in the cloudy October sky, the air smelled of wet leaves and burning wood stoves. I slid on my FC Barcelona track jacket and stepped outside, walking past Mo sitting on the curb, sucking down smoke.

I stared at the new tattoo on her leg. It was of a gargoyle with a tongue sticking out. Underneath it the word “Paris” was written in large cursive letters.

“You closing tonight?” I asked her.

She stomped out the butt on the cement and stood up.

“Yeah,” she said.

“Have a good one,” I said. “See you tomorrow.”

“Later,” she said.

Kate had insisted I take some time off, convinced that I had been working too many hours all summer and that it had contributed to what had happened. It was my first day back in a week. Kate never referred to it as a possession, but as an illness. I didn’t know what it had been, I just knew that it was great to be alive.

Apologizing to Mo was the first thing I did when I came back. I didn’t know what I said, so when I found her in the storage room, I was honest.

“Mo, look, I’m sorry. Sorry for what I said to you even though I don’t remember any of it.”

“You called me a slut, you bitch,” she said.

Just hearing the words rattled me.

“I was sick,” I said. “I called my sister worse from what I hear.”

She waved me off like she had already let it go.

Like I did every day, I drove to the park and looked for Jesse.

I couldn’t find him to thank him for what he did, for battling that
thing
on the field.

He wasn’t around.

I couldn’t feel him anywhere.

I called out to him. I begged him to come back.

But I knew.

The darkness that had tried to take me had succeeded in taking him.

Jesse was gone.

And this time it was forever.

CHAPTER 49

In the end I loved them both and lost them both.

I hadn’t seen Ty in weeks and I ached to be in his arms again.

We had talked a few times on the phone about what had happened, but it didn’t help any. I was up front about everything. The evil ghost, seeing Jesse in a dream, seeing Paloma in my vision. It was who I was now, and I was hoping Ty would accept it.

I knew it was a lot to take on and as the days went by and I didn’t hear from him, I wondered if it was all too much.

“Be patient with me, Abby,” he had said sadly one day. “I just need a little time to sort all this out.”

I tried.

A week slipped away. And then two.

He finally called on a Wednesday afternoon. I heard his voice and cried. I needed to see him, hold him. Kiss him.

We met along the river, soggy leaves under our feet.

“I didn’t know if you were really going to come,” I said as he walked up to me. His energy was darker than usual even though he smiled.

He kissed me and then took my hand, giving me hope.

“Of course I’d come,” he said.

He wiped a tear off my cheek and we walked quietly for a few minutes, crossing the footbridge and sitting on an empty bench.

“I know I hurt you,” I said. “Saying those things about Jesse. But I love you, Ty. You’re the one. You’re the one I want to be with. I love you with all my heart.”

He looked away. Didn’t say anything.

“Is it because of what happened during the fever?” I said finally.

“That’s part of it. But I’m so glad and relieved you’re okay, Abby.”

He paused.

“It’s just that it’s made me realize that this whole other world between us is so big. I don’t understand it, and that’s okay as long as there’s nothing too serious going on. But this. This made me realize that you see something that I’ll never see. You’re part of something I can’t ever be part of.”

I nodded.

“And I see that it’s between us now. You said that a long time ago. And I thought it wasn’t such a big deal, but I was naive. I didn’t understand. I didn’t understand any of it.”

I looked away.

“I thought it would be okay,” he said. “That we would be okay. But now, honestly, I’m not sure.”

He brought my hand to his lips and kissed it softly. His eyes looked so sad and lost.

“That and I think I realized too that Jesse is really your Perseus. He’s the one who saves you. And he’s the one you really love.”

“But that’s just not true,” I said, desperately. “That’s not true, Ty. I love you.”

I couldn’t lose him.

“I love you,” I said again.

“I can’t feel this way. It hurts too much. I have to figure it out on my own. It has to make sense before we can go on.”

Tears spilled down my face.

Then he said it.

“If we can go on.”

I tried to stop crying, tried to be strong. We walked along the river for a long time afterwards as the light faded in the trees ripe in their autumn.

He then took my hand as leaves fluttered down, floating around us like butterflies.

CHAPTER 50

A light film of sparkling frost covered the gray track.

I zipped up my North Face jacket tight around me. The evenings were becoming more and more chilly, leaving behind crystal-covered reminders that winter was coming. The first snow of the season couldn’t be far away.

But on this particular morning the sun was still making its presence felt, quickly melting the frost. I made my way gingerly around the oval, doing my best to avoid any lingering patches of ice.

It had taken Paloma and me time to recover from the psychic and physical abuse we suffered at the hands of Clyde Tidwell. We spoke on the phone a few times but whenever we tried to meet something always came up.

After a few laps, I spotted her sitting on the bench. The same bench where she had told me about him in what felt like a lifetime ago.

I walked over. I was strangely nervous, but I didn’t exactly know why.  

She looked up and waved at me.

“Hi, Abby,” she said, a bright smile dancing on her lips. “It’s so good to see you, girl.”

“Hey, Pal o’ mine,” I said. “It’s been too long.”

She stood up and gave me a giant bear hug, like I was a friend she hadn’t seen in a long, long time. There was a lightness in her face that I had never seen before. Like a great weight had been lifted off her chest and she could breathe again. She looked young and happy, nothing like the way she looked the last time I had seen her after she had tried to drown herself.

“You look like you’re feeling better,” I said.

“I am,” she said. “Better than I have in a long time. I feel like I used to before all of this happened.”

“I’m really glad.”

She paused for a moment. She suddenly seemed nervous. Then she let out a sigh.

“I wanted to thank you, Abby. For how you helped me.”

I shook my head.

“I didn’t do anything, Paloma. I wish I could have done more, done something, but I was pretty useless. I’m not the one you should be thanking. It wasn’t me.”

I thought of Jesse. He should be the one she was thanking. Jesse was the one who had stopped Clyde Tidwell. Jesse was the one who had freed both of us from his power.

“You’re wrong,” she said. “You believed in me and you did what you could. You helped me a lot more than anyone else.”

I was silent. I still didn’t think I was worthy of her gratitude, but I didn’t want to argue with her.

“He was a bad man,” she said, watching a runner with a dog pass the “No Pets Allowed” sign. “When he… when he was controlling me, I saw some of what he did to those women. It was…”

She sighed again and rubbed her face.

“I know,” I said. “I saw it, too.”

She looked over at me.

“You too?”

I nodded slowly.

“It was horrible,” I said. “I’m so sorry that happened to you, Paloma. But he’s gone now. He won’t hurt you again.”

“How do you know that?” she said. “How can you be so sure?”

I let out a long breath.

“I just know,” I said. “I had a friend who got rid of him.”

She looked at me for a moment and then stared off in the distance. I could tell there was more she wanted to ask, but she had the good sense not to.

I couldn’t talk about Jesse with her just now. What he had done for me, for us, and what he had sacrificed was just too painful to face right now. It was still too fresh. Maybe someday I would tell her. But not today.

“Hey, did you know that I got a new job?”

I forced a smile, trying to push away my gloomy thoughts.

“That’s great. Where?”

“Over at the Astro Lounge. I’m bartending fulltime and it’s a much classier place than Club 6. A new building with no ghosts attached, and more importantly, no cage.”

I laughed.

“Congrats, Paloma,” I said, giving her hand a squeeze. “That’s really great.”

“Yeah,” she said. “I think it’ll be good for me. It’s time I moved on and took my bartending career a little more seriously anyway.”

We talked a little longer before I had to leave for work. She invited Ty and me to stop by the Astro Lounge anytime and drinks would be on her. I told her that I was planning a fall party next month and wanted to invite her and her sister.

“Oh, you know there was something I never got a chance to ask you,” I said. “There were more important things going on at the time.”

“What?”

“At some point you said, ‘You don’t know me from Adam’s house cat.’ What does that mean?”

She squinted at me for a moment.

“Oh, yeah,” she said. “I don’t really know. I think it was just something I picked up at Club 6. Sounds like a Southern expression.”

“Well, I’m glad I do know you from Adam’s house cat,” I said.

She smiled.

I checked my watch and saw that I was running late. I stood up to leave. She got up and gave me another hug.

“I’ll see you soon,” I said, walking away.

“Abby?” I heard her say. I turned around.

“Yeah?”

“Thanks again for what you did. I mean it.”

I waved goodbye.

It wasn’t me
, I repeated in my head.

I turned away and walked to the Jeep, thinking of Jesse.

CHAPTER 51

As the weeks passed, I poured more and more of my energy into soccer. I was up to running six miles on the track, four times a week, and I found time to practice every day. There was a sadness in me I couldn’t shake, but I could make sure I exhausted myself to the point where I didn’t dwell on it. I began sleeping again, all the way through the night.