Dark (4 page)

“You’re changing the subject,” Lucy said, following her into the
kitchen.

“You bet,” Eva said putting the food on the counter near the sink
because her table was completely covered in boxes. The window above the counter
showed an unruly backyard in desperate need of mowing surrounded by woods.
Nothing much had changed in all the years she’d been gone. “Here, I think I
have some paper plates under the sink.” She bent down and rummaged around.

“Don’t bother,” Lucy
said,
mouth already
full.

Eva stood back up and wrinkled her nose. “You are so gross.” She
shoved a paper towel at her friend. “You’ve got cheese on your nose.”

Lucy wiped it off and grinned. “You think you’ll ever get to meet
him?”

“Who?”
Eva grabbed a piece of pie and
folded it in half.

“Bruno Day.
Sentry of Manhattan.
He’s the
one who hired you to redesign the Stronghold website, right?”

Eva chewed and swallowed.
“Sort of, but not
really.
I never spoke to him. John set it all up. I’m actually working
for my stepfather, not the Sentry of Manhattan.”

“I’ve seen pictures. He’s really gorgeous,” Lucy continued,
undeterred by Eva’s severe tone. “All that yummy blonde hair and those blue
eyes.
Oh my God.”

Eva took another bite, thinking about dark hair and brown eyes
with silver specks. She far preferred that to blonde.
Stop it. You’re
obsessing over a guy you barely knew.
Again.
Out
loud she replied, “He’s okay, I guess.”

Lucy blinked at her and put her half-eaten pizza on the box lid. “Okay?
Just ‘okay?’” she asked, finger-quoting dramatically. “Are you nuts? He looks
like a movie star.” She shook her head. “The breakup with Brad must’ve messed
you up worse than I thought.” She licked up a stray fleck of sauce from her
wrist. “You need to get out more, girl.”

Eva rolled her eyes. “Brad has nothing to do with it. I simply don’t
think it’s a good idea to start mooning over a guy who’s two hundred years
older than we are. And who has repeatedly said that Sentries must remain
solitary, for some unknown reason.” She tore the crust off her pizza with her
teeth, chewing emphatically.

“Why did Brad take off, by the way? You never told me.” Lucy
grabbed another slice.

Eva finished chewing and headed for the fridge. “He said I was
cold.
Unemotional.”
She opened the door and pulled out
two bottles of water. She handed one to Lucy and cracked open the seal on a
second for herself. “And then he said I needed to lose about thirty pounds and
he didn’t want to tie himself to a walking health insurance claim denial.”

“What the hell?
Seriously?”
Lucy
viciously twisted the cap off her drink. “He actually said those words to you?”

Eva nodded.
“Yup.”

“Wow. What an asshole.”

Eva shrugged. “Whatever. I don’t even miss him.” They’d dated for
two years and in all that time she hadn’t felt even half the chemistry she’d
experienced during that one kiss with Greyson the summer after her senior year
of high school. They hadn’t ever even had sex, because she’d told Brad she
wanted to wait for marriage, which was a big, fat lie. What she
really
wanted was Greyson.
The impossible, unattainable man.
Brad had pushed at her and
pushed at her until they’d broken up, which was just as well, because she was couldn’t
stop thinking about Greyson.
What you think you felt with him was nothing
more than adolescent hormones,
she berated herself.
Which is why you’re still
wearing his ring, right?
a
smaller voice mocked.

Lucy made a face as she sipped at her water. “Okay, you’re better
off without that asshole, anyway.
The nerve of him.”

“True,” Eva said, forcing her mind away from the mysterious man in
the woods.

“Well, whatever,” Lucy said, changing the subject. “Anyway, did
you hear? Rumor has it that our haunted woods aren’t really haunted. Well, not
by a ghost, anyway.” She pointed over her shoulder.
“Lucky
for you, since this house is right up against the edge of them.”

“They were never haunted.” Eva grabbed another slice of pizza. “Those
were just stupid stories they told us when we were young to keep us from
tromping all over someone’s private property.”

“Uh-uh, not quite.”
Lucy shook her head.
“Turns out that another one of the elusive Sentries lives here.
That’s why everyone thought they were haunted.
Because he’s
been scaring off intruders for centuries.”

Eva almost dropped her pizza. “What?” Her heart knocked against
her ribs uncomfortably.

“Yeah, I saw it on the news. Sentry Bruno Day said, and I quote, ‘My
brother, Sentry Dark, protects territory in a rural stretch of northeastern
Ohio.’” Lucy leaned back against the counter, water in her left hand as she
gestured with her right. “We live in northeastern Ohio. We have haunted woods
that everyone is afraid to go in. Ergo, a Sentry lives right in our backyard.
He’s the one haunting them, except he’s not actually a ghost.”

Eva frowned, squashing the butterflies that had suddenly begun
fluttering around in her stomach. “That’s ridiculous. I’ve been in those woods
over a dozen times. They’re not haunted by anyone. Not a ghost and not a guy.”

“Wait, what? You’ve been in there?” Lucy set her water down. “The
ones right out there?” She pointed. “The creepy, dark woods where bad things
happen?”

“Yeah, those woods.
It’s not a big deal. I used to go
for hikes all the time when I first moved here in high school.” She watched
Lucy’s eyes go wide. “And I already knew they’re
not
haunted. That’s a
stupid story.”

“Eva, didn’t you ever wonder why Frank was out of school for two
weeks that time?” Lucy asked her, completely out of the blue.

She blinked at her friend, trying to follow the abrupt change of
subject. She hadn’t wondered, actually. She’d been too glad he’d finally
stopped picking on her. “No. I figured he caught the flu or something. Why?”
She picked at her pizza. “He made my life hell when I first moved here. I was
happy to not run into him for a while.”

“He was in the hospital, along with his three friends. No one
could figure out what was wrong with them. They didn’t respond to anything or
anyone. They’d eat if you put food in front of them, but other than that, they
just stared at the wall.”

“That’s impossible,” Eva said flatly. “Maybe they were in comas.”

“Nope.
They did tests.” Lucy shook her
head. “This went on for a week, and then one day they all suddenly snapped out
of it like nothing had happened.
Except for Frank.
He
had to be sedated. The others were okay, said they didn’t remember what
happened, but Frank screamed about a monster in the woods every time they tried
to wean him off the meds.” She snorted. “I can’t believe you didn’t hear about
this. It was all over the local news. My mom was freaking out, thinking there
were drugs all over the school or something.”

“I was new here,
remember
? No one was
talking to me yet.” Eva put her water on the counter, remembering Greyson
telling her she wouldn’t have to worry about the boys bothering her anymore.
Had he done something to them? How? She shook her head, looking at her friend. “I
was weird and overweight and starting a new school halfway through senior year.”
She smoothed her hands down her jeans. “I’m still weird and overweight.” She
laughed shortly. “But at least I have a good friend now, who doesn’t seem to
mind talking to me.” She bumped shoulders with Lucy who smiled.

“You
are
weird, but you’re not overweight. You’re curvy.”

Eva shook her head. “You’re nice for saying so.”

Lucy hugged her unexpectedly, and then smacked her on the back of
the head.

“
Ow
! Will you stop doing that?” Eva
rubbed her skull. “I am not your punch toy.”

“Only if you promise to stop
obsessing over your weight.
You look fine.” Lucy tossed her empty water bottle into the new
recycling container. “I wish I had boobs like yours.”

“Whatever,” Eva huffed.

“And also, you need to tell me what you were doing in the woods.
Did you really go in there?” Lucy began unwrapping plates and putting them away
in the cupboards above the sink.

Eva watched her for a moment,
then
tossed
her half-eaten pizza slice in the trash.
“Yeah.
I
liked it in there. It was quiet.
Sort of.”
She
laughed, remembering. Should she mention Greyson?
What could it hurt?
“There
was this guy I kept running into who lived in the forest somewhere. He was so cranky.
Grouchiest man I ever met.” She gave Lucy a hard look. “And don’t get any
ideas. He’s
not
a Sentry.” She
started
unwrapping
the box that held her drinking glasses.
Might as well get some unpacking done while she still had the
energy.

Lucy stopped unpacking to stare at her, plate in her hand. “You
have got to be shitting me.”

“What?” Eva tossed tissue paper in the trash.

“You met a Sentry and you never told me?” Lucy’s voice slipped
into shrill territory.

Eva winced as her ears protested. “I met a grumpy man, not a
Sentry.”

“Oh my God, you are so clueless!” Lucy shoved the plate on top of
the pile in the cupboard. China rattled. “The guy, what was his name?”

Eva sighed, hoping none of her dinnerware cracked.
“Greyson.”

“Holy shit!
You met Greyson Dark?” Lucy seized
her hands and squeezed.

“He never told me his last name,” Eva said, extricating her
bruised fingers. “And he’s not a Sentry. Why would a Sentry spend time talking
to a high school girl? That’s ridiculous.”

“Who knows? Who cares?” Lucy wrung her hands together. “What did
he look like?”

“You’re really hung up on this, aren’t you?” Eva
unwrapped
another glass. “He had dark hair.
Brown eyes.
He had a tendency to show up and disappear when
I least expected it.” She set the glass on a shelf.

“Eva, do you not realize you had a summer fling with one of the
most powerful men in the world?” Lucy sounded like she was on the verge of
hyperventilating.

“Geez, calm down.
He was just some guy, not a fling.”
Eva’s fingers itched to touch her necklace, but she didn’t want to give her
friend any more ammunition about Greyson, who was
not
a freaking Sentry.
She’d told Lucy years ago that an old boyfriend had given her the ring and she
kept it because she liked the way it looked.
You are such a liar,
she
mused.
You kept it because it reminds you
of him.

“Did he or did he not kiss you? You told me once that you’d gotten
your first kiss in the woods, the summer after your senior year of high school,”
Lucy said intensely.

Crap. How do I explain that?
Eva fidgeted, shredding the paper in her fingers. “Well, yeah. He
kissed me the one time, right before I went away to college. It was no big
deal.”

“You kissed a Sentry,” Lucy breathed, light brown eyes dreamy. “Wow.”

Eva laughed uneasily, tossing bits of packing wrap into the trash.
“He wasn’t a Sentry and it was just one kiss. It was nothing,” she lied.

“Eva, did you watch the news last night?” Lucy asked, abruptly
changing the subject.

“I never watch the news, you know that. Too depressing,” she
muttered, reaching for the box with her kitchenware. What was Lucy getting at
now?

Her friend caught her arm before she could grab another glass. “Bruno
Day held a press conference. He said that someone was trying to hack into the
Stronghold net. And then another Sentry walked out and stood next to him. He
introduced him as his brother, Greyson Dark. He’s only the second Sentry to
come out to the public.”

Eva pulled her arm away. “So? He has the same name as a guy I once
knew.
So what?”

“The new Sentry has dark hair and brown eyes.”

“A lot of men have dark hair and eyes, Lucy.” Eva grabbed another
glass and crumpled the packing paper into a ball. She didn’t want
her
Greyson to be a Sentry. Because then there would be no hope of anything. She’d
have moved back here for nothing.
Dammit.

“Here, look,” Lucy said, thrusting her smartphone under Eva’s
nose.

Unwillingly, Eva looked at the photo. Her heart sank as she stared
at the picture. The man she’d dreamed about for four years stared up at her
from her best friend’s phone.

“See? It’s him, right?” Lucy asked.

Eva ignored her, trying to get a grip on her emotions.
Greyson,
damn you to hell for making me wish for something I can never have
.