Luminosity (Gravity Series #3) (The Gravity Series) (2 page)

“He wouldn’t have brought it up at all, if he wasn’t planning on using it against me,” McPherson insisted.

As they passed by me, I turned to watch the back of McPherson’s bald head and ugly suit. Misuse of funds was a big deal. McPherson had always struck me as suspicious, to the point where I’d suspected him of the girls’ disappearances. I didn’t have time to wonder about his troubles, though.

I headed for an unused part of school that had been closed off since Warwick lit a few fires there. I slowed my frantic steps as I arrived. The school had never gotten around to fixing the hall up, preferring to forget it since it was an area still under construction. Smoke marks stained the walls above the lockers. Half of the lights were burned out, enhancing shadows that I normally wouldn’t have noticed.

Henry was nowhere to be found.
Mr. Impatient must still be on his way,
I mused. Ambling silently, I peered into the locked classrooms. The blinds drawn inside of the rooms made the hall several shades darker than the rest of the school. I nearly tripped over an old Halloween streamer that lay abandoned on the floor.

Paranoia attacked me hard and I stopped moving. It felt like I was being watched. I twisted to see behind me. The security camera on the wall was disabled, part of why this hall was safe. Its dead lens stared at me, and I could just barely make out my tiny reflection, my pale face and long, black hair.

A hand shot out and grabbed me. Another wrapped around my mouth to stifle my scream.

“Where are you going?” Henry’s deep voice whispered in my ear. I instantly relaxed against him. He dropped his hand from my mouth and grinned impishly at me, brown eyes amused.

I waited for my heart to realize things were okay, but it was still pounding, just for a different reason. His closeness brought on a wave of irrationally strong euphoria. I took in his handsome face: his full, inviting lips, the strong set of his cheekbones and jaw, the nose curved just enough to give it character. I adored his face, and I knew I’d never get tired of looking at him.

Wiping my sweaty palms off on my pants, I scowled lightly at him. “I didn’t know where you were.”

“That was the whole point: the sneak attack.” Part of me wanted to wipe the smirk off of his face, but his smile was too enticing, full of suggestion. He grabbed my hand and dragged me to the small closet he’d been hiding in.

“Where are we going?”

“I think this is better than being out in the open. Plus, I can have my way with you.”

He whipped the door shut, darkening the small nook completely except for a slit of light beneath. There wasn’t much room inside so he was practically on top of me—not that I minded. My insides quivered at his proximity; yet, I felt the same strange shyness I always did the first few minutes of being around him.

“Uh, I hate to inform you, but this is creepy, not sexy,” I said softly, trying to diffuse the mounting tension. “Unless you’re going for a seven minutes in heaven effect.”

An alluring chuckle sounded beside me. “Maybe I am.”

All kinds of beguiling images drifted through my head, and his lips found mine in the dark. My heart began beating triple time in my chest.

His arms wrapped around my waist and he eliminated the modest gap between us. The scent of his cologne was utterly intoxicating—like trees after rain. We kissed for a long minute, and I savored the feeling of his arms around me. Heat filled my chest, spreading down into my stomach. I pressed myself against him and I felt him relax and give in to me just as completely.

Breaking away, I settled my head into the nape of his neck and listened to the strong echo of his heartbeat. I could barely see anything, but being with him was calming.

“I’m guessing our time is running out,” Henry said softly. His words broke the spell.

“It’s so ridiculous that we have to sneak around,” I muttered. “I feel like a criminal.”

He rested his chin on top of my head and squeezed me tighter. “Me too. We could buy matching orange jumpsuits.”

I laughed despite myself.

“I don’t want to take even the slightest risk of something bad happening to you,” he said, his tone instantly serious. “Dad knows you’re connecting Thornhill to Warwick. Right now he sees you as overwrought and harmless, but if he knew his only son was in love with you, he’d see you as a major threat.”

“Throwing that word around again, I see.” I was glad he couldn’t see the furious blush racing across my face.

“As much as I have to until you bounce it back to me.”

I changed the subject. “It’s been almost two months, Henry. You really don’t think we could come out of the closet?”

He laughed softly into my hair. “If he and Thornhill did have anything to do with Warwick’s crimes, then no one is safe. Especially not if that person is sniffing close to what’s his.”

“I think you just like having a secret,” I teased.

“If you’re my secret, then yes, I do.” He captured my lips again and held me in a lingering kiss.

“I wonder when….” Just as I finished the last word, the bell rang, jarring me out of my reverie. He dropped his arms from my waist and I wrenched open the door, sliding into the hall.

I heard him let out a heavy breath, but we were already rushing back to the main area. I silently cursed time for not slowing down when I wanted. I knew my teacher would have a tardy slip helpfully written out for me.

Classes spilled out around us, and Henry and I blended in, becoming two more anonymous faces in the crowd. We were back to being silent enemies.

###

“I have interesting news for you today, class,” Mr. Golem chimed in chemistry.

Alex Perkins, my best friend Theo’s boyfriend, groaned in his seat beside me. His lanky frame shifted, barely fitting in the desk. “The news is only good if there’s a lot of blood. Or strippers.”

I rolled my eyes. “What newspapers are you reading?”

“They’re called tabloids and they’re very credible,” Alex said smugly.

“Don’t worry,” Mr. Golem said to the class. “I know that together you guys have the collective attention span of a goldfish. I won’t waste too much of your time; that’s your job.”

He held up this morning’s local paper. On the front page was a huge, grotesque picture of a dead blackbird with its ebony wings spread out stiffly. BIRD DEATHS SOLVED, screamed the headline.

Golem gave the paper to a student in the front row to pass back. “As a refresher, hundreds of crows and blackbirds died during a cold snap several months ago. The CDC retrieved the bodies for testing, and now the results of those tests have been reported.”

The birds had multiplied like crazy last summer, and then one morning in October, their lifeless corpses littered the ground. I’d thought about them often. Sometimes the dark birds flew soundlessly through my dreams, dropping feathers that floated in the still air.

“Anybody want to take an educated guess at what the scientists found?” Golem scanned the room for raised hands.

“Zombie DNA?” Alex proposed. The class snickered, none louder than Alex himself.

“Radioactive blood?” cracked another boy.

“Nothing that movie-worthy,” Golem said. He scrawled quickly across the board with squeaky chalk. “They found crush injuries. The theory is that a strong antagonist, possibly the changing winds or the intense cold front, either hit the birds with debris or caused them to hit each other because their natural sense of direction was off.

“They’ve settled on the temperature change as a suitable answer, despite the fact that not all the evidence points to it. The front was severe, of course—from the low seventies to below freezing. But when you put the pieces together, it’s still an incomplete picture.”

“Okay, kind of interesting,” Alex relented. “Is class over yet?”

“Patience, dude. Don’t be a hater,” Golem said in a tragic attempt to be cool ten years too late. “The tests were thorough—air, water, soil. No abnormalities were found. But I’m still not buying it. I think there’s more to the story. I want you guys to think of this as extra credit. Let’s drum up some theories on what killed the birds. Break up the monotony. Since this is chemistry, we’ll start by looking at the chemicals involved.”

“Isn’t the cold snap a good scientific reason?” asked a melodious, unfamiliar voice from the back row.

I turned, interest piqued, along with the rest of the class. It was rare to have new students at Hawthorne, especially in the middle of the school year. Theo and Henry had been the last that I could recall.

“Sure,” Golem said, addressing her. “But there’s a lot you missed. For those of who haven’t met her yet, this is your new classmate, Harlow Briggs.”

A round of murmurs cycled through the room. Harlow’s stunning face was calm, not even acknowledging that she was now the center of attention. Her smooth, dark brown skin was complimented by a beautiful leather jacket on top of a royal blue shirt. Her black hair was styled effortlessly around her face. An expensive pair of slouchy leather boots stuck out from beneath her desk.

Golem continued speaking. “Only blackbirds died—none of the robins or sparrows. Why did they multiply so quickly in the first place? What caused all of the them to die at the same time?”

“It just seems like a waste of time,” Harlow said evenly. “But I didn’t witness it. I’m glad; I wouldn’t have wanted to scrape bird guts off of my Mercedes.”

Golem smiled tightly. “What I’m striving to teach here is the ability to think critically and not just accept an answer that is handed to you, if it’s not satisfactory.”

Harlow shrugged, seeming satisfied or bored. The birds were forgotten by the rest of the class as they continued to peek at her, a diamond among the rest of us plain old rocks.

CHAPTER 2

THEO, ALEX AND
I
were clustered by Alex’s jeep in the parking lot after school, planning what we were going to do that night. Hell had limited options to kill time outside of ghost sightings and playing cards.

“We could always break out the Monopoly board,” Theo suggested half-heartedly, making her fists dance up and down.

“Only if we’re playing for cash,” Alex said, mimicking Theo’s motions. He was nearly a foot taller than her and built like a linebacker, so he looked much goofier.“You don’t even have all the pieces, and you never let me play as the hat.”

“Well, I think I’m officially out of ideas,” Theo said, throwing her hands up. “You two figure out something brilliant. This brain is tapped out.”

“Oh, we could—” Alex began, but Theo cut him off.

“Nothing illegal,” Theo clarified. Alex’s face fell instantly.

Theo was an artist and always dresses the part. Her wardrobe mostly consisted of clothes she had designed and sewed herself. She’d recently traded her glasses for contacts, and her unusually vivid green eyes stood out even more without lenses to dull them. The rainbow of glitter she always wore on her eyelids brightened her look even more.

Theo had been very shy when we first met, but as she gained some validation and experience, she’d changed. She’d found a lot of acceptance and praise for her art, which was the most important thing to her, and that made her a lot more comfortable and open.

Alex and I filled her in on Golem’s extra credit project; like everyone else in Hell, she showed interest in what killed the birds. We didn’t have to bring up Harlow—her shiny silver Mercedes skimmed past us, sparing Theo by a hazardous inch.

Alex whistled at the Mercedes and Theo glared up at him. A wind gust caused her ruby red hair to fly up around her face, making her look like an irate sorceress.

He shrugged, looking embarrassed, and pulled the brim of his worn baseball cap over his eyes. “What? It’s a nice car. I appreciate the finer things in life.”

Henry briskly marched up beside Alex and pulled him aside. I tried not to look at him directly, to pretend it was just any other boy there, and to not think about what we had been doing mere hours ago.

“Can I talk to you for a minute?” Henry asked him. His voice sent little sparks to my nerves, sabotaging my effort. My body hummed with vibration, making my hands tremble.

“Sure, man,” Alex said. They had remained friends the entire time, throughout the drama of Henry’s and my rollercoaster relationship.

Alex mouthed an apology at Theo and me as he followed Henry to his BMW. Theo scowled at the pair; she hadn’t forgiven Henry for the things he’d put me through, no matter what the excuse.

Theo caught my unsteady reaction and mistook the reason for it, patting me on the back. “Give it time, Ari. You really cared about him. That doesn’t just go away no matter how big of a pile of dirt the guy is.”

“I just want to keep myself busy, that’s all,” I deflected.

“You can tag along with me to my father’s, if you want,” Theo suggested. “Not an exciting event, but he said he had something to give me. Maybe my long forgotten aunt died and left me a million dollars.”

“Sure. I can’t believe I’ve never met him after all this time.”

She shrugged. “He’s not a people person—kind of socially awkward. That’s part of why he and my mother live apart.”

Alex came jogging back over and we slid into the Creep, the name that Theo had tagged his Jeep with.