A Need So Beautiful (19 page)

Her mother holds Sarah’s arm as she stands up, and her dad brushes back her hair. And for a second, I see a different side of them. Like maybe they love her. And to be honest, I’m jealous that she has a family to care about her. I have Mercy and Alex, but what about my
real
family?

Again I shake away the strange thoughts popping in my head. Mercy is my mom and I’ve never doubted her love. What is going on? I don’t feel like myself.

Harlin’s hand slips into mine and I’m suddenly comforted. He’s always there when I need him. He’s my steady heartbeat.

Sarah and her parents pass by, her father staring straight ahead like I’m not worth his time. But Sarah glances over and offers a sad, small smile. She looks humiliated.

“Sarah,” I start to say, but suddenly Monroe is in front of me, a stern expression on his face.

“We need to chat,” he says.

“No.” Harlin wraps his arm around me. “You’re done with her. She’s had a long night and—”

“Harlin,” Monroe says, looking at him patiently. “This is about Charlotte. You can wait out here if you like, but I need to speak to my patient. Now.” Then Monroe glares at me like I should agree.

But if I agree now, my boyfriend will be furious with me. He already doesn’t trust me. I straighten and look at Monroe.

“I’m sorry, but—” I start to say, just as he reaches into his pocket. He pulls out the black journal, but doesn’t mention it. Monroe’s right. We do need to talk.

I turn to Harlin. “I have to see him,” I whisper. “I promise it won’t—”

His face clouds over quickly. “Of course you do, Charlotte. Don’t let me stand in the way of your secrets.” Harlin breaks away from me and I’m devastated as I watch him leave. But at the last second he pauses at the glass door. He looks over his shoulder at me, his face drawn. Tired.

“I love you, Charlotte,” he says simply. And then he’s gone.

As the door closes I wipe at the tears that have spilled over onto my cheeks. I’m ruining everything by lying to him about the Need.

Monroe shifts uncomfortably. “Help me stop this,” I hiss. He glances cautiously at Rhonda, who’s watching us, before reaching out to grab me by the arm.

“Get in my office. You have a lot of explaining to do.”

I sit across from him as he opens his desk and puts the journal in there, locking it. He pulls a small bottle from his pocket and swallows a pill quickly from it. Then he looks up at me, his blue eyes narrowed. “You stole from me.”

“I had to. You wouldn’t tell me anything.”

“I told you what you needed to know.”

“Where are the final pages?”

“They’re not your concern.”

“The hell they’re not!”

Monroe exhales hard, and then studies me for a second with a look of disgust. “Take off your shirt,” he says.

I’m startled. “No.”

He tsks. “Don’t be difficult, Charlotte. I want to see what you’ve done to yourself. Show me your skin.”

He knows. Somehow he knows about my dying flesh, and suddenly I don’t want to show him. Anger wells up inside me.

“Come on,” he says impatiently.

“Go to hell.”

“It’s there, isn’t it?” he asks. “You feel the shadows on your soul, don’t you?”

My eyes snap to his and I nod slowly. “It’s hate,” I say. “I feel hate.”

“Let me see.” He walks around his desk to stand in front of me, his mouth a thin line of concern.

Slowly I unbutton the navy jacket, biting hard on my lip as I slide it off my shoulder. Monroe gasps. I turn to look where he’s staring. My gold—it’s nearly gone. The glow is replaced with something horrible. An unthinkable gray, so cracked and dead, like it’s sucking the life out of me—splintering the skin as I watch.

“What’s happening?” I cry out, truly afraid.

“What have you done?” Monroe stumbles back, knocking into his desk.

“The Need hit at the event, but I didn’t go to it. I helped Sarah instead. I thought that if I fought the impulses, this would all go away. That I could beat it like Onika did.”

“You’re fighting it?” he asks in a hollow voice.

“I don’t want to disappear, Monroe. I’m not ready to go.” I start to sob. “People are forgetting me sooner. Even Alex and Georgia. Even Mercy. I’m fading. And I’m not ready to go.” My voice breaks and I pull my jacket on and wrap my arms around myself.

“I can’t watch it again,” he says, almost to himself. “I can’t.”

I sniffle and look up at him. “Watch me dissolve?”

“No,” he says, like I’m confused. “Watch you fight to live. You don’t understand, Charlotte. You can’t stay here.”

“But I want to.” I sound like a begging child.

“It’s not possible. And if you fight . . . it’s horrible. It’s so horrible.”

“Is this what happened to Onika? Did the Need do this to her?” Was Onika dead underneath the beauty that I saw, like in my vision? Was the real her this grotesque?

Monroe squeezes his eyes shut. “No. The Need didn’t do this to her. The Shadows did.”

I stare at him, goose bumps rising on my arms. “What are you talking about? There was nothing in your journal about Shadows.”

My skin begins to itch, like a slow crawl stretching over me. It’s the spot. It’s growing. “What happened to Onika?” I ask. “I have to know now.”

He winces at the sound of her name, then takes in a deep breath. “I loved her so much. And like you, she wanted to fight it. But it ruined her.”

“What happened?”

“When she had first started losing her skin, we tried to cover it with makeup. But every day a little more of her was gone. Soon, no one could remember her anymore—except me.”

“How did you try to stop it?” Hope wells up in my chest. There could be something, a small detail, a piece of the puzzle that could cure me. If I figure out where he went wrong, I might have a chance.

“I tried a medical approach, combination of pills, toxins even. Anything that I thought could help. And when she started to hold back her compulsions, she told me it was working.” He looks at me. “But she was keeping secrets. Terrible secrets.”

His words make me think of Harlin and how he knows that I’m keeping something from him. “What sort of secrets?”

“That the Shadows had come for her, trying to tempt her away.”

I shake my head. “I don’t understand. What is a Shadow?”

“A place devoid of light. A
soul
devoid of light. It will eat your glow and turn you into one of them. Walking Shadows.”

I want to rip my nails through my flesh and scrape off the gray.

“You know how you help people, Charlotte? How you save them? The Shadows are the opposite. They drain the light from the universe. They’re evil. They spread evil.”

“Then why? Why would anyone go into the Shadows?”

“To be remembered. After Onika turned toward the Shadows, people didn’t forget her anymore, and she was so beautiful. A showstopper.” He glances away as if lost in a memory. “I thought that maybe she’d done the right thing.”

“Then what happened?”

“You can’t hide from the universe, not in a human form. The body will wear away eventually. Onika found that if she gave into her evil impulses, she could keep her form—make herself stronger. It turned her into a monster, and when I wanted her to stop, she disappeared into the darkness.”

“So . . . she wants me to become like her?”

“She needs you to. She wants your light, Charlotte. She has to do terrible things to stay here, and that includes destroying the good. If you let her win, you’ll be a Shadow and you’ll have to hunt for Forgotten too. You’ll have to change them.”

“Why would she think I’d go along with that? It’s crazy. It’s—”

“Onika gave up the light for me, to stay with me. Maybe she thinks you’d do the same for Harlin?” He tilts his head like he’s considering the answer to his question.

“I won’t. But maybe there’s another way to—”

“No,” he says loudly. “There is no other way. You must transform, otherwise you’ll be bound here, Charlotte. Forever.”

My shoulder starts to throb under my hand, and I try to push away the small voice that’s telling me that forever-bound sounds a lot better than forever-gone.

“When’s the last time you saw Onika?” Monroe asks, turning away from me to go back behind his desk.

“Yesterday, maybe? Or the day before. She comes to me in my visions, mostly, so it’s hard to really remember.”

“Interesting. I wonder if she appears in visions because they’re easier to manipulate than real life.”

“I’m not sure.”

Monroe sits down on his chair and rests his elbows on the cluttered top of his desk. He looks exhausted. “I’m so sorry it’s happening like this,” he says. “I’ve really tried to keep an eye on you all this time. I didn’t want the Shadows to find you too soon. And I’d hoped you wouldn’t meet anyone—a boy. I didn’t want you to have to make a choice.”

“Oh, thanks.” So Monroe wanted to take away my own will? How is that fair? How is that love?

“It would have been easier,” he says. “It wouldn’t hurt this much. You’re special, sweetheart. You have to believe in that.”

“I don’t want to be special. And I definitely don’t want to be a freaking burst of light. I want to live, Monroe. I want to live here, with Harlin. Like we’d planned.” I have to close my eyes as the tears roll out. I miss him so much it’s making me ill.

“I can’t help you fight it,” Monroe whispers to me. “I love you too much to do that. But I can help you fill the Need. Stay in the light.”

“You really can’t stop it?” I ask. Please. Please.

Monroe’s eyes glass over as he stares back at me. “No.”

Inside I’m flooded with grief. Absolute, miserable grief. I get up from the chair, my body feeling heavy and slow. “I have to leave,” I say.

“I’ll remember you,” Monroe says. “It’s near the end, and from here on out, it’s going to be hard. Your family and friends will start to forget.”

I offer him a sad little smile. “They already have.” Then I walk to the office door, wanting to call Harlin, but remembering that I have to go back to the museum first. I have a Need to fill.

Chapter 19

I
catch the bus back to the museum. When it drops me off a block away, I feel the Need hit me again full force. Even though it has been pulsating through my bones the entire time, the minute I’m outside it doubles me over. I’m struck with incredible pressure through my chest, my head. I stumble to the bench and sit.

There’s no relief. I decide to move, to finish this before it gets worse. Slowly, and still in heels, I limp toward the museum. The charity event ended a while ago, but now there are custodians cleaning up.

The front door is propped open with a trash can and I slip in without them noticing. My heels click on the tile floor of the lobby and I freeze before reaching down to slip them off.

I close my eyes and try to feel where I’m supposed to go. My body is hot—on fire—and it’s pulling me back toward the exhibits, back to the banquet room where we had dinner.

I’m pretty sure everyone is gone, but before I can second-guess it, it’s like I’m pulled forward and soon I’m walking, hoping that as I get closer the pulsing in my head will stop. I’m a puppet, moving on invisible strings as I pass through the main room and back toward the banquet room.

As I reach the huge double doors, my vision begins to blur. I look around, hoping no one is inside the room, but I can’t stop now. I pull open the door and walk in. Out of the corner of my eye I see a man in a light blue uniform.

“Miss,” he says, “you can’t be in here. We’re cleaning.”

I don’t answer him. I’m being pushed and prodded toward the table, toward where I was sitting.

“Miss!” The man’s voice sounds agitated but I’m still walking.

I pause at the table where Harlin and I sat. The room around me is becoming duller by the second; sounds are getting farther away. I think the man mentions something about calling the police.

I reach out and grab on to the back of the chair, squeezing it as I look for a sign. Then on the floor under one of the chairs, something glows. A rush of air blows through me. I bend down to grab it, bring it close to my face and into focus. It’s a business card. But the only thing I can read on it is
PORTLAND POLICE BUREAU: CENTRAL PRECINCT
.

Then, like being underwater for too long and bursting to the surface, I suck in a great breath with relief. I fall into the table but steady myself. The absence of pain is amazing.

“Do you need an ambulance?” I hear the man ask, and he seems closer. I turn and look at him, surprised by how young he is. His dark skin is dotted with acne and he’s wearing a name badge that says Raphael. And he’s watching me like I’m crazy.

“No,” I say. “I’m sorry. I just forgot something.”

He looks me up and down, pausing at my bare feet and then nods his chin at me. “All right. Well, you need to leave. Place is closed.”

I thank him and start walking, the business card clutched in one hand, my shoes in the other. I’m so relieved from the Need that I barely notice another worker as he enters the room after me.

“Who you talking to in here, Raphael?” he calls out. I turn around. But Raphael scrunches his nose and grabs a push broom leaning against the wall.

“What? I wasn’t talking to no one.” And as he begins sweeping, I lower my head and walk out. I’ll go to the police station later, and I’ll finish this Need. Maybe even fix that gray skin, get my gold back. And soon . . . that’s all I’ll be. Gold.

“Have to be kidding me,” I murmur as I’m forced off the bus by a compulsion. It’s barely eight a.m. and I’m on the sidewalk, the business card clutched in my hand, staring straight ahead at the police station. I’m pushed forward and I put the card into my coat pocket as I stumble up the stone steps of the gray building.

I can’t believe the Need is taking me here to counsel some criminal. Why not Sarah’s father? Maybe I could tell him not to be such a heartless bastard. Or what about Harlin’s mother? The Need could help her see that her obsession with her husband’s death is driving her son away. I just want to be able to help the people I know—

My sight starts to blur around the edges, focusing in like tunnel vision. Oh great. How am I supposed to get into lockup if I can’t even see? I’m about to panic when I notice a woman sitting in the reception area. She’s ultra-thin with an expensive black suit, high heels, and a slicked-back bun. Suddenly a wind blows past me and my vision fades, leaving me blind once again.