Black Feathers (24 page)

He had made the right decision.

Walking toward the minivan from the coffee shop, he felt invigorated in the bracing cold. All of the anger from the encounter with that bitch earlier had left him, dissipated by the anticipation, the hunger.

It was good. She was still out there, waiting for him, and she would come to him like it was meant to be, like they had been waiting their whole lives for this meeting, for this one moment, for what they would do together.

It was all perfect.

He hadn’t really wanted that bitch anyway: she was too old,
too hard. The hunger had almost driven him to doing something that he would have regretted later. Her retreat from the van was the best thing that could have happened to him.

He was glad he had waited. With the music and the sound of the motor, the warm air blowing on him from the vents, it felt like he was alone in the universe.

No—it felt like the universe was his, and his alone.

He turned up the music.

His good feelings began to fade, though, as he took his first slow drive through Rock Bay.

Where were the girls?

There were a few of the old-timers under the street lights at the corners, as much a fixture as the street signs themselves, but where were all the other girls, the younger ones, the ones who stayed closer to the shadows?

He took another turn around the block, slower this time, craning his neck to see into the dark. Was it too cold? Had there been a bust?

His disappointment churned within him, the coffee spilling acid into his throat as the hunger cried out to be fed.

He took one more turn around the block.

Where was she?

He squeezed the steering wheel with both hands as the cold truth sank in: it wasn’t going to happen tonight.

He had left it too long. It was all that bitch’s fault. If it hadn’t been for her—

He took a deep breath, tried to talk it through in his mind.

If it wasn’t meant to be, it wasn’t meant to be.

Better he wait, better he let the hunger build, than spend it all on the wrong girl.

He would come back. He would always come back.

There would be other nights.

He almost smiled to himself, and he turned up the music as he cut across to Hillside. It was time to go home, to dream of nights to come.

Cassie could barely breathe as she climbed the high steps onto the bus, Heather’s words echoing ceaselessly in her head.

There’s someone there.

Mrs. Cormack said something about leaving them behind the next time they were late, but Cassie barely heard the words.

Calling my name.

Heather scurried up the narrow aisle, stepping deftly around bags and outstretched legs. Cassie imagined sliding into a seat next to her, trying to talk to her, but with a glance over her shoulder at her sister, Heather slipped into a seat next to Nicky Adams, pulling her bag onto her lap and pressing her knees resolutely into the seatback in front of her.

Cassie shook her head as she passed. Heather looked away.

Calling my name.

“Are you okay?” Laura asked as Cassie slid into the seat next to her. Her eyes were inquisitive, partially hidden behind her blond bangs.

Cassie nodded. “Yeah, I’m fine.” She tried to shake it off, tried to clamp down the echoing sentences.

“You don’t look fine.”

“Thanks.” She elbowed her friend lightly, trying to make a joke out of the whole situation, even as she craned her head slightly to see several rows ahead. All she could make out was the back of Heather’s head.

“So, did you get the algebra done?” Laura had her math text open on her lap, mostly obscured by her binder.

The top sheet of paper was blank.

“Yeah. My dad had to help me, though.”

“Nice,” Laura said. “Do you mind if I—”

Cassie rolled her eyes. “Do I ever mind?” she asked, fumbling with the zipper of her backpack. “Maybe you can figure it out.” She wrestled her binder out of her bag, managed to balance everything while she clicked out the homework page. “Here.”

As Laura reached for the sheet of lined paper, the stark winter light caught the ring on her finger, flashing off the green eyes of the cat.

“Thanks,” she said, laying the page next to her own. “I’ll give it right back.”

“Sure.”

Cassie slouched against the seat, her gaze wandering from her sister’s head to Laura’s hand holding the homework sheet steady, then out the window at the cold, grey world passing by.

Aside from the single car behind him, the streets were almost deserted all the way home. The farther he got from Rock Bay, the better he felt. The hunger didn’t go away exactly, but instead of overwhelming him, it seemed to be giving him strength, growling within him, rumbling like a force of nature all to itself.

As he slowed to turn into his cul-de-sac, the car behind him slowed as well. As he turned, he felt almost like waving; there was a surge of comfortable happiness rising in him that he didn’t really understand but that he wasn’t about to argue with.

Turning into his driveway, pressing the button for the garage door, he glanced out the passenger window. The car that had been behind him had stopped right in front of the entrance to the cul-de-sac, completely blocking it.

He turned as the garage door rose, as the light flashed on, revealing the four police officers standing inside the garage, their guns drawn, facing the van.

Spotlights in the rear-view mirror blinded him, and as he cut the engine, he heard running footsteps and shouting.

Their bus had the earliest drop-off, so the school was mostly empty when they arrived. The busload of kids disappeared into the echoing void and it swallowed them up. Within moments, it was as if Cassie and Laura were the only people in the whole building.

Even Heather had disappeared, blurring into the crowd and vanishing into the school without a backward glance.

Cassie could hardly blame her. She knew all too well how powerful dreams could be, the way everything started to bleed together, until she could no longer tell if she was asleep or awake.

She had never been sure … What if it wasn’t a dream? What if the voice, the shadow, the weight on her, the sound of her name, what if she hadn’t dreamed all that? What if it really was—

She shrieked and jumped as the boom of Laura’s bookbag hitting the floor echoed up the deserted hall.

Laura laughed. “Jesus. Why are you such a spaz today?”

Her heart thrummed like a tiny bird.

“Are you going to be okay? You look like you’re having a heart attack.” She was still smiling, but there was genuine concern in her eyes.

Cassie swallowed, nodded. “I’m okay.”

Laura looked at her. “No, really.”

“Really.”

Another long, studying look. “Okay.”

Laura opened her binder on her lap, took a pencil out of her bag and continued copying Cassie’s homework. Cassie waited, then pulled her journal from her backpack and started to write, the metal of the locker doors cold against her back.

That evening, Cassie tried to talk to her sister, but she never got a chance. Heather helped their mother with dinner, something that she never did, leaving Cassie and their father with the dishes afterwards. Rather than doing her homework in her room, the way she always did, Heather brought her books downstairs and spread them out on the table in the dining room, one open doorway from where their parents were sitting in the family room watching TV. When she was done, she went into the family room and sat with them.

Cassie watched for a moment from the doorway, plainly within Heather’s line of sight, but her sister pretended not to notice her.

At bedtime, Cassie decided to make one last attempt. She waited in her room until she heard Heather next door, then she vaulted off her bed and into the hallway. She closed Heather’s bedroom door behind herself and blocked it with her body.

Heather snapped around to face her, slamming the dresser
drawer shut, clean pyjamas dangling in her hand. Her eyes flashed with fear.

“I know you don’t want to talk about it,” Cassie rushed, before Heather had a chance to say anything.

Heather scowled at her, but as quickly as it had come, the expression vanished, replaced with a tired heaviness.

“There’s nothing to talk about,” she said, turning to putter with things on the top of her dresser: hair elastics, bottles of nail polish, a brush.

“I know—” Cassie started.

“It was just a bad dream,” she said. “I was just a bit freaked out about it, that’s all. I shouldn’t have said anything. I knew you’d freak out.”

Cassie drew a sharp breath, felt her face burning.

“You—”

The expression on her sister’s face stopped her: Heather looked scared. No: terrified. And she was striking out the only way that she could.

Cassie counted her breath. “It’s okay,” she said, biting back that first flare of anger. “I didn’t freak out. I’m just—”

Heather’s face was hard, her jaw set. But her eyes were wide.

“I just wanted you to know …” Cassie took a deep, steadying breath. “If you ever want to talk, about anything—”

Heather’s jaw relaxed, her eyes softened, but Cassie saw her flinch just the tiniest bit.

“—you know where to find me.”

She didn’t give Heather a chance to answer. She turned quickly, pulled the door open and slipped into the hall.

She replayed the scene over and over in her head as she got ready for bed, thinking of other things that she could have said, better things that she should have said. Her lips moved silently
as she washed her face, tried out lines in the mirror that she would never speak.

Pulling the blankets up high around her neck, she turned off the lamp on her bedside table. The room descended into complete darkness for a moment, then light started to reassert itself: the red glow of her clock radio, the faint aura through the curtains.

In the darkness, she could hear faint music, the sound of Heather’s radio next door. Cassie couldn’t sleep with music on: she needed to be able to hear. The distant sounds of movement downstairs, her mom and dad, the breeze outside, the light rattling of her window.

She had spent so many nights lying here, listening, waiting. Dreading the soft creak of the floorboard just outside her door, that singsong whisper of her name. She needed the quiet before she went to sleep, to know that there was nothing out there waiting for her to doze off.