Infinityglass (19 page)

Images rushed around me like water swirling down a drain. It happened so much faster than before, maybe because we were trapped in the rips’ world, instead of them being trapped in ours.

My body became a revolving door for rips. The blood in my veins pumped double time, triple time, as my cells regenerated and tried to give me enough energy to handle what was coming.

The mask is more than a Mardi Gras favor; it’s my chance to find Jean Claude, to make him mine
.

I approach the entryway where he’s agreed to meet me, finally, and his arm reaches out to sweep me into the darkness. He says not a word, but his hands ravage my body. They grip my waist, my hips, linger on the curve of my breasts above the corset. Air kisses my skin as he pulls down my sleeves and his lips find my shoulder
.

“Take off the mask,” I command. “I’ve waited so long for you.”

Heat rolls off his body, and tension keeps his muscles tight. “Here, in the dark?” he asks, tracing the neckline of my gown. “Instead of a bed?”

“Now.” He reaches for my mask, mindful of the feathers. He knows I must go back to my husband tonight. His mouth claims mine before I can tell him to mind the lipstick, and I decide I don’t care
.

New world, new players.

“I don’t want to show you anything,” the girl yells back at me. I laugh and drop the beads for her, anyway
.

I feel generous here. New Orleans is good to me. The beer is cold, and no one ever asks for my name. No one cares. About anything. Not if I drink, not if I squat, not if I steal. At the right parties, they don’t even care if I crawl into bed with them. If I get that far, they don’t care what I do next
.

I stick my hand in my pocket. Wince when I catch a hangnail. Two rings, a wallet, cash. A set of car keys, a checkbook, and my favorite, a tiny knife with a pearl handle. A knife that sliced my cheek open before dinnertime, but belonged to me by sunset
.

I can steal bigger things with a knife. I can hurt someone with a knife
.

Will anyone care about that?

The possession let up long enough for me to reach out for Dune. I could feel him, hear him, but the next round slammed into me, swallowing me whole.

“Did you hear?” Carolina is aflutter, her fan flipping her ringlets at a furious pace. “The scandal is international. She buried bodies beneath the floorboards.”

Elizabeth has more to share. “There were experiments in the attic. She’d peeled back skin and let people—”

“Stop.” I speak too loudly for a lady, but my stomach is churning. “This isn’t a thing to sensationalize. These were human beings. People, with souls.”

“But they were just slaves.”

I stare at Carolina, wondering how her heart can be so full of darkness. How we could’ve been raised in the same household. How she can have such disregard for human life. “You should be ashamed of yourself. I’m ashamed to call you sister.”

My request doesn’t stop her. “Men and women were chained to the wall, body parts scattered all around in piles and in buckets.… ”

I cover my mouth with my handkerchief, my stomach churning at the thought of so much human pain, and the knowledge that my own flesh and blood relished it
.

No more ugliness or horror. I pushed the memory away, but they wouldn’t let me go. Instead they just came faster and faster.…

Dune

I sat on the ground, her head in my lap. The rips shuffled her cells like they were a card deck, forming them into their own images.

Kaleb’s focus shifted from the rips on the street to Hallie on the ground. “What the hell is going on?”

“Rips. Funneling through her, controlling her.”

“Her face …” Lily reached out to put her hand on Hallie’s arm, hovering just above it. Tears filled her eyes. “Kaleb and I might know a way out, but I’m scared of what could happen to Hallie if the rip world dissolves while she’s possessed.”

“So am I.” I pushed Hallie’s hair out of her face, one that no longer belonged to her. The faces of those possessing her moved
so fast her own features were a blur. She was underneath. She needed me.

Kaleb’s eyes were guarded. “We’ve got to stop this.”

“I don’t know how. She’s broken free from it on her own before. I never made her do it.”

“Dune?” Lily’s voice broke through my thoughts. “You need to see this.”

The alley was still dark, but the sound of the party on the street echoed off the walls. The streetlights illuminated what had put so much fear in Lily’s voice.

The rips that had noticed us on Bourbon, at least thirty of them, were lined up across the entrance of the alley. Every single one stared at Hallie.

“Hallie. Come back.” Please.

As if she heard me, the transmutations slowed enough for me to distinguish some features.

A middle-aged woman with too much lipstick, most of it smeared.

A younger guy with a gash on his left cheek.

A girl Hallie’s age, her hair in ringlets and tears in her eyes.

The same faces were reflected in the rips’ lining the alley.

And then I caught a brief glimpse of Hallie, and she whispered my name. “Dune.”

“I’m here.” I grabbed her hands. “Open your eyes.”

Hallie groaned a little and her eyelids fluttered. When she gritted her teeth and squeezed my hands, I realized what she was doing.

“She’s trying to control the rip. She’s pulling it in.”

In the street where the Mardi Gras parade raged on, a bright light flashed and narrowed. The rips began to fade around the edges. A premonition pushed into my brain.

Suddenly, the rip world began folding in on itself. Inches faded at a time, and then inches became feet. The rips lining the alley disappeared all at once, and then everything was gone except for Hallie. There were a few seconds of peace, and I thought it was over.

I was wrong.

Voices roared. A gravitational pull fought against our hands, tugging at Hallie, snatching at her hair. The force of it moved her across the ground, toward the light, and Lily and Kaleb grabbed her arms.

They were fighting for her as hard as I was, but she had to fight for herself.

“Don’t leave me, Hallie.” I had to yell over the chaos.

Her eyes flew open and locked on mine.

“I’m not ready to lose you!” The whirling air around us snatched my words as they came out of my mouth. But Hallie heard me.

“I’m not ready to go.” She sat up. Her whole body tensed as a scream that sounded like a thousand voices ripped its way
out of her. Power surged through the alley, and the roaring ceased.

In one short second, the darkness swallowed the light, leaving us in complete silence.

Chapter 18
Hallie

I
slept for five hours.

When I woke up, Dune was in my bed with me, typing one hand. The other was on my hip. “Dune?”

“Hey.” After a couple more key clicks, he put the computer down and kissed my forehead. “What can I get for you? What do you need?”

“You.” I grabbed him and held on tightly. It took less than a second for him to hold on harder.

“You slept for a long time.” He tucked my hair behind my ears. “I think you took about thirty thousand breaths.”

Because he watched every single one.

“Where are the houseguests?” I asked.

“Kaleb and Lily went to find Michael and Em so I could bring you straight home. They’re all back. Probably asleep.”

“I don’t remember what happened.”

“It was a rip world. The whole thing took us over. Not only did you stop your possessions, you got us out, too.”

“How?” I asked.

“I hoped you’d remember. Poe saved Em and Michael from a rip world once, but it was a totally different situation.” His lips touched mine, and he smiled with his eyes. “You saved our lives.”

I climbed on top of him and dropped my forehead to his shoulder. Images of some of the people who’d possessed me flickered in my subconscious, but I didn’t want to recall any of it.

“You cried in your sleep. I couldn’t decide whether or not to wake you up.”

“Bad dreams. The night I was possessed in the ballroom, there were happy moments. Everything I saw in that alley tonight was terrible, depraved in some way. I don’t want the memories, but I have them.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“Not now.” Maybe never.

“Whatever you need, I’m here.”

“You’re here.” I sat up straight. “In my bed. My dad is going to kill you!”

“No, he’s not. Carl is heading up security tonight, and after I told him what happened, he didn’t want you left alone any more than I did. I put the security feed on a loop, just for tonight. We’re safe.”

“Look at you, taking care of me.” I wanted to touch his
skin, not the cotton of his T-shirt. I pulled it over his head and was almost disappointed when I didn’t see more tattoos than the one on his shoulder. Then I ran my hands over his chest, and all disappointment left the building. Smooth skin. Defined muscles.

Floaty hearts. Falling. I let my fingertips absorb the warmth of him and hoped it would smother the nightmares.

“Tell me about your tattoo. You said you wanted to keep these memories for life.”

He explained the different parts as I traced over them. “The swirls stand for past, present, and future.”

“Is that a turtle?” I would’ve expected a sea animal to look hokey, but it didn’t on him.

He gave me his crinkle smile, like he knew what I was thinking. “They have remarkable migratory patterns. They always return home.”

I leaned over to place a kiss in the center of the turtle’s shell. “And the word
aiga
?”

“It means ‘family.’ The ten stars represent everyone I’ve lost, and the moon is for my father.”

I hoped he didn’t have to add any more stars. My sigh caught on a sob, but I stopped myself before it broke.

“Hey.” He lifted my chin with one finger. “Like I said tonight, I’m not going to lose you.”

“You saved me in that alley; you didn’t leave. You or your friends.” I couldn’t imagine what I would do if Dune weren’t
part of my life. “You stayed, and gave me a reason to hold on.”

As if he heard the words I couldn’t utter, he said, “I’m not going anywhere. Not without you.”

I moved to the skin over his heart, placed a kiss there. “I don’t want that, either. Not ever.”

“Hallie.” He spoke my name in a whisper.

He was watching me. Raw, unmasked. All that control conquered. Finally.

“Dune,” I whispered back.

His fingers dug into my hips, holding me back, but his expression didn’t change. “A lot of terrible things went down tonight.”

“Yes, they did. Good reason to claim a stake on life, don’t you think?”

“All I can think about is trying to stop this.”

“Are you saying you don’t want to kiss me?” I traced the outline of his bottom lip, staring at his mouth. “Are you really going to tell me no?”

“Yes, I want to kiss you. I’m not insane. And who could possibly tell you no?”

I had time to smile before his kisses burned down the column of my throat, across my collarbone. He took my face in his hands, leaned back, and brought my mouth down to his.

I let myself sink into the kiss, into him.

When he rolled me over and covered my body with his own, I lost my breath.

Dune thought he was so quiet, sneaking out of bed. When a 220-pound weight lifted, a girl noticed.

I’d slept enough, but I stayed quiet, letting him think I was still out cold. I had a lot to think about, and he’d spent a good part of the past hour making sure I hadn’t thought at all.

When he shut the door behind him, I opened my eyes. His laptop was open on my desk. I didn’t hesitate.

I clicked on the external hard drive that held all the Infinityglass info. I didn’t look at anything else on his computer. I didn’t want to invade his privacy. I just wanted a quick look at the things that pertained to me that I hadn’t seen yet. No one could fault that.

Especially if I didn’t get caught.

There were carefully labeled folders organized by year, and one with the words
time-related objects
underneath. I found other folders with lists of links, articles scanned from old newspapers, and thumbnails of pictures, one of which showed an hourglass in a frame made out of human bones. It had been stolen from a museum.

By me.

Others were things I’d never seen or heard of, and while some of them were truly scary, others seemed downright ridiculous. I kept skimming until I found a folder with my initials on it, and then I was overcome by that undeniable feeling
of anxiety that arrives when you’re seeing something you shouldn’t.

That didn’t stop me from clicking.

Three other names occupied my desktop file, each with folders of their own.

Two females, one male.

Very little information was provided. One of the girls helped on an archeological dig that took place around the time Tut’s tomb was discovered, in the golden age of archeology. The other worked on a farm, possibly in the United Kingdom, and listed no dates.