Endless (22 page)

But suddenly, being without him was an impossibility, even though she knew it would sound crazy if she said it out loud. Fought against it sounding crazy even in her own mind.

“I don’t want to say goodbye,” she finally admitted, her words muffled against his chest.

“I know.” He leaned back, looking into her eyes. “But I’m not going anywhere, Jenny. I’ll fight to stay with you.”

His voice was ferocious, and in that moment, she pitied anyone who tried to separate them.

She was brushing her teeth when she heard her dad come in. She wiped her mouth on a towel and went downstairs, wanting to reassure him that she was home and everything was okay.

“Hey,” she said. “How was the meeting?”

He turned to face her, his eyes lighting up. “It was okay. How was work?”

She shrugged. “Work. You know.”

He nodded wearily. “I do.”

“Speaking of work,” Jenny said. “How’s the Daulton house coming along?”

“Started demo today, actually. Should be done tomorrow and then we can get to it. Thanks for telling Clare about that job at Books, by the way. She seems to really like it.”

Jenny nodded. “So … ” She chose her words carefully. “Are you and Clare, like, friends or what?”

He folded his arms across his chest, a smile playing at his lips. “Are you and Ben, like, friends? Or what?”

He was mocking her, but in a sweet way.

She thought about his question before answering. Ben was … interesting. And attractive. But he wasn’t Nikolai.

“Yeah. I think we’re friends,” she finally said. “No ‘or what,’ though.”

Her dad grinned. “Same for me.”

Jenny’s relief was followed by disappointment in herself. She had to get past not wanting her dad to have a social life, to meet someone. Didn’t he deserve it? Her mom had been gone long enough.

“Great,” she said. “Now that we know we both have friends, I think I’ll head up to bed.”

“Smart-ass.” Her dad laughed. “Good night, honey.”

She was halfway up the stairs when she remembered her plans for the next day. She turned around. “Dad?”

“Yeah?”

“Are you at the Daulton house all day tomorrow?”

“Probably. The schedule’s tight. I need to stay on top of the guys to make sure we meet the deadline. Why?”

“I have plans with Tiffany so I’ll be gone most of the day. I just didn’t know if I’d see you in the morning, and I wanted to let you know.”

She could tell he was thinking about how much detail he should demand. “Where you guys off to?”

She was ready. “The lake. A bunch of kids from school are going to kick off summer.”

His nod was slow. “Keep your cell on.”

“I will.” She headed for her room, trying to ignore the thread of guilt winding its way around her throat.

It was only eleven o’clock, but she was exhausted. She hadn’t had a solid night’s sleep since the Ouija board incident.

She unpacked her laptop and waited for it to boot up. Once it was up and ready to go, she did a quick search for Marist University, making note of the library’s operating hours and phone number. She put all the information on her phone so she’d have it for tomorrow. Then she crawled into bed and let out a sigh of relief.

She was reaching for the lamp on her nightstand when her cell phone vibrated. It was Ben.

She thought about ignoring it. She was so tired she could hardly see straight. But then she remembered that Ben had been planning to look into the music box’s history and was probably waiting for her to tell him what she’d seen in the pictures from the retreat center. Even with Nikolai in the picture, she and Ben were still in this together.

“Hey,” she said into the phone.

“I found something out,” he said without greeting her. “About the music box.”

“You did?”

“Yeah,” he said. “It’s not much, but my mom remembers it.”

“Really?”

“Uh-huh. Said her uncle used to bring it out and play it on special occasions when she was little.”

“Did she say anything about it having any … you know, special powers or anything?” she asked.

“No, but I didn’t ask,” he admitted. “And I didn’t tell her about what happened in the attic, either. She’d only worry, and she has enough to worry about.”

Jenny smiled to herself, thinking how surprising it was that someone so rough around the edges could be so sweet to his mom. “I can see that.”

“What about you?” he asked.

“What about me?”

He laughed. His voice was comforting over the phone line, like they’d been friends forever. “The pictures? Didn’t you say you were going to look at them on the computer or something? See if we missed anything at the retreat center?”

“Oh, right,” she said. “I did. I had to mess around with them for a while, but I finally got them to a point where I could make out the pictures. They tell this really weird story, though.”

“Weird, like, how?”

She called up the photos in her memory. “Well, a group of the monks—”

“Wait,” he interrupted. “From the retreat center?”

“Yeah.”

“How do you know?”

“They’re wearing the same robes and they go to … Just let me explain it, okay?”

“Okay,” he agreed.

“So a group of the monks is sitting around some kind of … magical book, and—”

“A magical book?”

Jenny sighed. “Well, I can’t be sure it’s magical, but there’s light streaming from it and it looks kind of … I don’t know,
magical
.”

“Magical,” he repeated. “Okay, keep going.”

“Anyway, they’re surrounding this book and then in the next scene they’re flying through a night sky,” she continued. “After that, they’re in some kind of field right below the monastery.”

“The monastery here?” Ben asked.

“That’s why I said the monks were the same. It’s like they started somewhere else and then figured out how to get here and flew here or something. The last pane shows them looking up at the retreat’s main building.”

There was a pause before she heard him exhale into the phone. “Maybe you were right. Maybe they are some kind of cult.”

“Maybe … ”

“What?” he asked. “You have another theory?”

She looked at the ceiling, thinking of everything she’d learned. She couldn’t tell Ben everything. Not yet. She still didn’t know what “everything” was. She decided to test the waters.

“Well,” she said. “I was wondering if it might have something to do with time travel.”

“Time travel? What makes you say that?”

“I don’t know. I’ve just been thinking about the stained glass. There’s something … I don’t know,
old-fashioned
about those first images. And then it’s like they’re flying through the sky, but they’re not just flying, the stars around them are really bright and blurry.”

“Maybe they’re just flying really fast,” Ben suggested.

“So you think it’s more likely that they’re physically flying than traveling through time?”

He was quiet for a few seconds. “I see your point. And it’s not like time travel’s out of the question.”

“It’s not?”

“No. Don’t you ever watch the Discovery Channel? Or
NOVA
?”

“Um … I don’t really watch TV.”

“Okay, well, scientists have been saying time travel is possible, from a theoretical standpoint, for ages.”

“They have?”

“Uh-huh. Anyway, do you still have the pictures?”

It took her a minute to answer. She was still reeling from Ben’s easy acceptance of her theory. “I saved them to my flash drive,” she finally said. “Wanna take a look?”

“Definitely. Will you be around tomorrow?”

She thought about her plans with Nikolai. “I’m going to be out most of the day, actually. Want me to just e-mail them to you?”

“Nah.” She could almost see him shaking his head. “My mom and I are sharing a computer right now. I don’t want to risk her seeing them and asking a bunch of questions I couldn’t answer even if I wanted to.”

“Got it,” she said. “I’ll call or text you when I’m on my way home. We can get together later.”

“Sounds good. And Jenny?”

“Yeah?”

He lowered his voice a little. “I’m glad we’re in this together. Whatever it is.”

She nodded. “Me, too.”

They said goodbye and she hung up the phone. She turned off the light and rolled over in bed, wondering if Ben would still be glad when he found out about Nikolai—and how things had changed so quickly that she even cared.

She was getting ready to go to Nikolai’s the next morning when she realized she had no idea if he had a car. She pulled out her phone to text him.

Am I driving today?

He responded less than a minute later.
I’ve got that covered.

She raised her eyebrows, intrigued.

K
, she typed back.
But I’ll have to walk back from your house later. I haven’t figured out how to introduce you to my dad.

Understood.

She looked at the word on her phone, wondering how long she’d be able to keep her two worlds apart. Her guess was not long.

She dressed in a lightweight skirt and T-shirt, opting for sandals instead of tennis shoes. Then she grabbed her bag and locked up the house before heading across the field to Nikolai’s.

He was sitting in an Adirondack chair under one of the massive trees in the front yard, a steaming mug on a little wooden table next to him. She stopped, watching him for a few seconds from the woods.

He held a book in one hand, his face intent as he stared at the page. It made him look like a worried little boy, and she felt a surge of affection for him so strong it nearly rocked her backward. He looked exactly like he did as the Nikolai in her dreams. Not a day older. It was only his eyes, when he looked up and saw her standing at the edge of the trees, that looked older than time.

He stood. He was wearing a white linen shirt over faded jeans, somehow sexier for all their looseness. Something in her quickened at the sight of him. She stepped into his arms without a word.

“I thought you’d never get here,” he said.

She laughed into his shirt. “I’ve only been gone twelve hours.”

He pulled back to look at her, brushing a strand of hair away from her face. “It felt like a lifetime.”

She smiled. “For me, too.”

“So,” he said. “You ready?”

“Yep. I have directions and everything on my phone.”

“Alright, then. Let’s go.”

She looked at the empty driveway, wondering how he planned to get them all the way to New York. “I thought you said I didn’t need to bring the car?”

His eyes sparkled. “I told you, I’ve got that part covered.”

*

They sped through the countryside, the wind from the half-open window whipping Jenny’s hair. She didn’t know much about cars, but this one was an Audi, black, sleek and low to the ground. She shouldn’t have been surprised when Nikolai led her to the carriage house at the back of the Farnsworth property, opening the creaky doors to reveal the shimmering car. He had to get around somehow.

They wound their way out of Stony Creek and past Acton, getting on Interstate 84 heading west toward New York. It turned out that Jenny didn’t need the directions on her phone. She gave the address to Nikolai, he typed it into the onboard GPS system, and a crisp British voice directed them at every turn. She wondered again how he managed to drive, use a cell phone, own a place like the Farnsworth property.

She turned to him. “Nikolai?”

“Hmmm?”

“How long have you been here?”

He glanced at her, his eyes flashing like shards of emerald in the sunlight. “In Stony Creek?”

“Stony Creek, the US. Just … you know. Here.”

“I came forward about four years ago.”

“Four years,” she said. “That’s not very long.”

He didn’t say anything for a minute. When he spoke his voice was heavy with sadness. “It’s a long time when you’re alone.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s just that you don’t look any older than you are in my dreams as Maria.”

“Four years older, to be exact,” he said. “My mother saw to it that I didn’t grow older while I was healing. I only started aging again when I came forward.”