Jekel Loves Hyde (13 page)

Without waiting to see if Todd replied--and I thought even Flick was smart enough to keep silent--Tristen pulled us both down the sidewalk, clasping my hand. I could feel Darcy's and Todd's eyes on us following our progress, probably staring at the point where we were joined: the hot, hot press of Tristen's palm against mine. I should have been terrified. Maybe horrified. Did I hold the hand of a ...
beast?
Was it possible?

Tristen's fingers clenched around mine.

But I wasn't really scared. Mostly confused. Why did we hold hands at all?

When we reached the corner of Pine Street and turned toward my house, Tristen let go of me, and I realized that my palm was soaked with sweat. I wiped my hand on my jeans, wanting to ask what had just happened.

Had Tristen felt the monster that he swore lurked inside of him coming out?

And just as much, I wanted to know why he'd defended me at all. But of course I already knew that answer. He'd protected me because I had the potential to help save him. I was
serviceable,
just like I was to Becca in the lab.

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Jill Jekel: always needed, never really wanted. I should have had that pathetic slogan tattooed across my body--assuming I was ever allowed to alter my un-pierced, untouched flesh in any way. We were still about a block from my house, but I pulled my arms out of Tristen's shirt and held it out to him, forcing a smile. "Here. I'm not really cold anymore."

"Are you sure, Jill?" He seemed distracted, already accepting the shirt before I even answered.

"Yes," I assured him anyway, shivering.

We walked along shoulder-to-shoulder, me and a boy who might have just become part monster, until we reached the garage behind my house. The dark, dark garage where the bloodstained car, and so many old hurts and fears ... and maybe one soul's long shot for salvation ... waited.

Chapter 31
Jill

"YOU'VE HEARD OF BROOMS,
right, Jill?" Tristen asked after I'd switched on the single bare bulb that struggled to light our big sway-backed barn of a garage. "This place is in desperate need of a cleaning--or better yet a bulldozing."

I didn't bother to remind Tristen that maybe I'd have more time for sweeping garages if I wasn't trying to
save his life.
I was too busy staring at the hulking silhouette of my dad's old Volvo hunkered under the dirty tarp like a gruesome gift in filthy wrapping. I didn't want to go any closer.

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"Jill?" Tristen asked, checking my face. "It was just a joke ... gallows humor ..."

"This is even harder than going into his office," I said, eyeing that vehicle like the killer might still be hiding inside. "Dad
died
in there, Tristen. He suffered."

I expected Tristen to sympathize like he'd done in the past. But he didn't. He just stepped past me and, like a magician unveiling his latest trick, stripped the paint-spattered canvas right off the car, tossing the tarp to the ground.

And there it was. The car in which my dad had been butchered, looking surprisingly normal.

"Like ripping off a Band-Aid, Jill." Tristen clapped some dust off his palms. "Best to get these things over with. After you've sat inside, perhaps you'll want to drive it."

I stared at him, incredulous, not moving toward the car.
"Drive it?"

"Why not?" He shrugged. "You don't have a car." He tapped the side of the Volvo. "And yet you do."

"Tristen ... I don't even want to open the door."

"Then I will," he said, opening the driver's side. He nodded toward the passenger side. "Your turn."

I hesitated.

"Jill, I am
very
impatient to look in the glove box and will do so myself in about ten seconds," he said. "But I honestly believe you should open the door. This effort to hide, to pretend the murder never happened, it's not healthy. You've been in your father's office. You know you can face this."

I got a little upset with him then. "I thought you said you weren't a psychiatrist like your dad," I reminded him. "Maybe my mom and I are just dealing with things in our own way."

"Your mother fell apart, Jill," Tristen said.

109

I got
really
angry when he said that. "You don't know what caused her breakdown!"

We stared at each other by the light of the bare bulb, Tristen resting one hand on the Volvo, me standing near the door of the garage. A part of me suspected that he was right. What Mom and I were doing--locking Dad away, pretending he didn't

exist--probably wasn't healthy. But I didn't have the courage to do anything else. How we dealt with Dad's murder--it was like another rule, an unspoken code, that I followed.

The autumn wind blew, the rafters creaked, and Tristen ended the standoff, moving not toward the passenger door, which I knew he was itching to open, but toward me. He leaned down so we were eye-to-eye, and I saw again the soft side of him that I liked. Too much.

"Jill," he said, "I've never told a soul this, but when my mother disappeared--when I
knew
that she was dead--I forced myself to go into my parents' bedroom, and I lay down on her side of the bed, my head on her pillow, breathing in her perfume. The scent that she'd worn my entire life. I stayed there, choking on what had once been comforting and pondering what hell Mom might have suffered in her last moments. All the awful scenarios that had played around the edges of my imagination--I faced them

head-on. And the strange thing is when I smell that perfume now, it's okay again. Almost... welcome." His gaze flicked to the car. "If you take this out in the sunlight a few times, you'll get past the murder and start moving on to the good memories."

I didn't know what to say. I still wasn't even sure how I wanted to remember my dad. My horror over his murder was mingled with my outrage over his deception, like oil and water that kept mixing and separating again and again.

What I did know was that I didn't want to move. And not only 110

because I didn't want to enter that four-door chamber of horrors that crouched on deflating tires just a few feet away.

No, I didn't want to break the moment that Tristen and I were sharing. That communion of grief, it was getting stronger. And for me going beyond a shared misery. He was so strong. Not just physically but emotionally. He would kill himself if he had to ... I stared into his eyes and he watched mine, and for a split second I could have sworn, for the second time that night, that I saw my own growing feelings for him reflected there. Or maybe I was mistaken, because the wind blew again, the rafters groaned, and Tristen slowly straightened, distancing us. "Do it now, Jill," he said. "Don't hesitate longer."

Listen to him, Jill. He understands this...

Taking a deep, ragged breath, I inched toward the Volvo, aware of Tristen trailing behind me, practically feeling his renewed eagerness as I fought my profound reluctance.

When I reached the side of the car, my hand stretched toward the door handle, and images, horrible images, began to chase through my brain. Dad ... The flash of a knife blade ... My father screaming ... Blood coursing from a wound in his throat as he was dragged from the car ...

But I kept moving, tugging on the handle, swinging open the door, my eyes darting around the interior, hunting for flecks of blood by the glow of the dim dome light.

Nothing. There was nothing.

I slid into the once-familiar vinyl passenger seat and snapped open the glove compartment. Papers and napkins spilled out, and Tristen, who had been looming above me, hands braced on the door frame and the roof, couldn't check his impatience any longer.

"Well, Jill? Well?"

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"I... I don't see"--my hands flew through the mess. Why had Dad kept so much junk?--"anything." But then I noticed it. The blood that I'd dreaded. Old and black but somehow

distinctive, like only blood can be. A stain on a creased and crumpled and worn paper. A sheet that looked like it had been crammed into the compartment by somebody in a hurry.

My hands shook as I unfolded and smoothed the paper on my lap, eyes squinting to read Dad's cramped handwriting.

"Well?" Tristen repeated. "Is it there?"

"Tristen ..." My voice shook harder than my hands. "Look," I said, turning to offer him the stained paper. The bloody list. Of systematically altered. Salts.

Chapter 32 Tristen

"
'K 2
CR
2 O 7 PLUS ... '?" I pored over Dr. Jekel's list, confused. Jill's father
had
been tinkering with salts, yes. But what he had added--the notations made no sense. The abbreviations didn't even signify elements on the periodic table. Nor could I discern a
private
system of abbreviation. Half of each formula seemed to be meaningless. Yet there was a pattern, too.

I was so absorbed in my thoughts that I didn't even hear my father enter my bedroom.

"Tristen? You're working late."

112

I spun around in my chair, startled, eyes darting to check the clock. It was nearly two in the morning. I'd completely lost track of time.

"I'm just finishing an assignment," I said, facing him--but trying to slip the bloodstained list beneath a chemistry reference, which was, thank god, open before me, too: the
Inorganic Materials
Chemistry Desk Reference,
in which I'd been seeking information on all types of salts. "Senior year, you know?" I added, trying to sound casual. "I'm quite buried, between running and classes." Dad drew closer, stepping into the puddle of light cast by my desk lamp. "Is this anything that I can help with? I've a few academic degrees under my belt, you know."

"No, thank you." I managed a smile, even as I tried to position my arm over the list, a good portion of which stuck out from beneath the book. "This is chemistry," I added, joking, "my strong suit.

"Now, Tristen," Dad said, sitting on the edge of my desk, "I'm not ignorant of chemistry. You wouldn't call your father
ignorant,
would you?"

"No, sir, never," I agreed, regretting my attempt at humor.

"Let's see ..." Dad reached out and ran his finger across the open pages of the reference book, his hand just inches from the list, and sweat began to trickle down my back. He gave me a quizzical look. "I thought you're studying organic chemistry this year."

"Yes ..."

"But you're using an inorganic reference?"

"Just looking something up." I shrugged. But the blood was pounding in my ears.

Dad knew that I was lying to him. Although the light glinted off his silver-rimmed spectacles, I could see by the curve of his mouth that he was laughing inside.

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Oh, hell.

"Well, if I can help, just call down the hall." He rose and moved toward the door and away from the hidden list. Had he seen it?

"I'll do so," I promised.
Leave, just leave...
But Dad wasn't quite finished with me. "Tristen?" he noted, pausing in the doorway "You're not working late because you're distracted from your studies by something other than running, are your

"No, sir. I am quite focused," I promised, tensing again. Did Dad somehow know about my late-night forays into the school? My extracurricular project?

But, no, my father wasn't talking about that type of diversion. "I just thought perhaps there might be a young lady," he said. "After all, you've never lacked for girlfriends--until lately."

"No," I said, and for the first time since he'd entered the room, I heard my casual facade crack. "No one," I repeated with deliberate calm. "I'm too busy right now."

"Oh." My father sounded almost disappointed. "Given your eagerness to help her mother, I thought perhaps you fancied the Jekel girl."

My mouth tasted curiously metallic as I said, "Jill? No. She's just a friend."

Dad frowned. "That's too bad, Tristen. Because Mrs. Jekel, although fragile right now, shows flashes of sweetness and charm." He rested one hand on the doorknob, that queer smile flitting across his lips again. "And you know what they say. Like mother, like daughter." He laughed. "And of course, like father, like son."

With that, Dad left me, closing the door without even saying good night.

114

My hands shook almost as badly as Jill's had done as she'd handed me the list, which I now folded and hid inside a

Hemingway novel that I'd been assigned to read junior year. Then I shrugged off my jeans, shut off the light, and lay down on my bed.

Sleep proved elusive, though.

Like mother, like daughter. Like father, like son.

Had Jill suspected back in the garage what I had believed with near certainty the moment I'd laid eyes on the "last, bloody list" of

"altered salts"? Had it even crossed her mind that my father had, in all probability,
killed hers
--or at the very least been involved, somehow? That perhaps it really was no accident, Jekel meeting Hyde in the heart of Pennsylvania?

I felt sure that Dad had come here not just to teach but to confer with Dr. Jekel. I wasn't sure why, or how, they'd come together, but the coincidence was too great to be ignored. There must have been some sort of collaboration. A partnership that had gone terribly wrong at some point...

My father--who was he now? Who--
what
--did I live with?

I closed my eyes, willing myself to sleep, needing to escape my thoughts, which of course pursued me even in slumber, and I woke up less than two hours later, thrashing in the throes of the nightmare.

She was so close to turning, revealing her face--although I'd already guessed her identity.

Becca Wright. But why did I want to kill
her?

That night by the river had meant nothing to me--nor to her. Becca wasn't faceless just in the dream. Although I saw her nearly every day, she barely registered with me. She was a blur of self-consciously styled hair, slave-to-fashion clothes, and bright eyes

115

that managed to be dim at the very same time. Why was this thing inside of me obsessed with slaying such an innocuous girl? "Oh, god," I groaned aloud.

I was close to a solution. I could feel it. But I was close to destruction, too.