Nightstruck (28 page)

I shook my head in helpless denial.

“Piper made it easy for him,” Marlene continued. “She gave him plenty of evidence she was interested, so asking her out was zero risk. He's a really good guy, but like most guys his ego can be surprisingly fragile sometimes.”

I swallowed hard, remembering how he had kissed me, how natural and right it had felt. I'd been telling myself it was an act of pity, a heat-of-the-moment impulse he surely regretted, but maybe it wasn't
his
fragile ego that was at issue here.

“I'm sorry if telling you all that makes things more complicated for you,” Marlene said, a furrow of concern between her brows. “Maybe I should have kept my big mouth shut. But as you may have noticed, keeping my mouth shut isn't one of my strong suits.”

I laughed weakly. “Don't apologize. I'm glad you told me. I just … need some time to rethink everything. I always thought
he
wasn't interested in
me.
But even if we're both interested, it's still complicated.”

“Because of Piper.”

“Yeah.”

We both fell silent.

The condo was on the twentieth floor of an impressively tall building, and the study had a nice view of the Delaware, with no other tall buildings in sight, so neither Marlene nor I had thought to close the blinds. There was a sudden loud tapping sound on the window that made both of us jump and gasp.

Bob catapulted out of his den beneath the desk, snarling and jumping at the window. It was too dark out to see much of anything, but there was a flurry of tapping sounds, and a shadow crossed the window, skittering downward. The tapping sound continued, fading away as the whatever-it-was made its way down the building, presumably heading for the sidewalk.

It was always possible it had been just some random night construct having fun with the people in the building, tapping at windows and generally terrorizing them. It might have had nothing to do with me at all.

But I couldn't help the creeping suspicion that something had been sent there for me. That it had been watching me.
Spying
on me. And the thought that it might have overheard that particular conversation and might report it back to Piper or Aleric wasn't comfortable at all.

 

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Marlene was fast asleep and Bob was snoring so loudly I was surprised he hadn't awakened the whole household. It was after two in the morning, and I had yet to come close to finding peace and falling asleep. My eyes were gritty and my whole body felt about fifty percent heavier than usual, but my mind didn't care how tired my body was.

Marlene had been quick to dismiss the sounds at our window as just another episode of the city's night madness, but I couldn't shake the feeling that that creature had been here specifically for me. Maybe I was being paranoid or egocentric—I really, really hoped I was—but I doubted it. As far as I could tell from the news, the madness in the night was impersonal, the constructs and the Nightstruck attacking anyone who had the bad luck to cross their paths, rather than targeting individuals. But Piper—and Aleric, too—wanted me in particular. I hadn't seen Piper since the night she and her new friends lured my dad out to his death, but I was under no illusion that she was through with me.

My overnight bag was wedged between the head of my air bed and the wall, my dirty clothes sitting rolled up on top of it. If it had been any farther away, I might not have heard the ding of a text message coming through over Bob's persistent snoring.

There was no one who would legitimately send me a text at two in the morning. Which meant I should ignore it, on the assumption that it had to be a wrong number. Maybe if I were even a tiny bit closer to sleep I would have, but instead I dug my phone out of my bag and squinted at the message in the darkness.

I'll call in 5. Answer, or U won't have house 2 go home 2.

I shuddered and hugged myself. I didn't recognize the number, but I knew it had to be Piper. If she wanted to make a call or send a text, she would simply steal someone's cell phone. I wondered if the phone's true owner was still alive.

I wondered, but if the answer was no, I didn't want to know.

It goes without saying that I had no desire to talk to Piper. Ever again, unless she came back to herself. But she was not a construct, and that meant she could get into my house if she could find a way around all the locks, which I had of course changed since learning Aleric had Dad's keys. Hell, even if she couldn't find a way in, she could probably find a way to burn the house down from the outside. It wouldn't matter to her that she'd probably take out the entire row of houses in the process.

Not wanting to risk being responsible for another horror, I slipped quietly out of my bed and tiptoed out of the study. There were people sleeping in every room of the house except the bathrooms, so I made my way to the nearest one and prayed it wouldn't be occupied.

I was in luck—the bathroom was empty. I slipped inside and locked the door, then turned on the light and squinted in the sudden brightness. I would have to keep my voice down, no matter what Piper said, or the people sleeping in the living room would hear me.

I didn't want to sit on the commode, so instead I sat on the floor with my back resting against the wall. I stared at my phone, which I had put in silent mode, and tried to control my dread. Just the
thought
of hearing Piper's voice was enough to make me shudder. Even if somehow, through some miracle, she could be restored to herself, could become the pre-night Piper again, I doubted I could ever be her friend again. Maybe that wasn't fair of me; maybe she was just a victim of the night and shouldn't be held responsible for her actions. But fairness didn't much matter. Technically it was the goat that had killed my father, but it was Piper who had arranged it all, and I would never, ever forgive her for that.

My phone lit up and buzzed, and I had to close my eyes to stave off a wave of nausea. I didn't know how I could manage having a conversation with Piper right now, but I couldn't let her take my house away from me. Not that I could stop her, if she had other demands I couldn't meet or if she just wanted to do it to hurt me.

I answered but couldn't force myself to speak, just sat there silently with my heart thumping so loudly I felt like I was walking through the giant beating heart at the Franklin Institute. It was a display meant to teach kids about how the heart worked, but it had always freaked me out.

“Hey there, Becks,” Piper said in a cheerful, upbeat voice that made me want to reach through the phone and strangle her. “Did you have a nice Thanksgiving?” I still couldn't find my voice, but as usual that didn't bother Piper. “I hear you had a lovely dinner with my boyfriend and his family. Luke loves them to death, I know, but I was never what you call impressed. Especially with that Cousin Marlene of his.” I could almost hear the eye-roll. “Impossible to get a word in edgewise around that one.”

It was a lovely irony to hear Piper complaining that someone else talked too much, but I had the feeling she expected me to comment on it, so I didn't. I didn't want to give her the slightest shred of satisfaction. I'd answered her call because I felt that I had to, but so far I saw no reason I actually had to talk to her.

Piper let out a huge, dramatic sigh. “Okay, okay. I know you're mad at me. And I know this had to have been a really hard day for you. First Thanksgiving without your dad and all.”

It was all I could do to maintain my stony silence, and my teeth ground together so hard it made my head ache. But again, there was no need to give her the satisfaction.

“I'm telling you, Becks, you have no idea how much better you'll feel if you just let it all go. Being out in the night, being part of it … Well, words can't describe how awesome it is. It would be awesome even if your everyday life was all roses and sunshine, but when your life sucks like it does now…” Another big sigh. “You're torturing yourself, clinging to the past, for no reason.”

“I'm not torturing myself!” I protested, unable to hold the words back. “
You're
the one who's torturing me.” A sob stole any other words I might have said, and I hated myself for not being able to stay in control.

“I know that's how it looks from where you stand, Becks,” Piper said, and if I didn't know better I would have sworn there was a hint of sympathy in her voice. “It's tough love in the extreme, but I'm really trying to help you. You belong out here. You deserve a life without cares or worries or responsibilities. A life steeped in magic and power and just plain fun. That's what I want for you, and as far as I can tell, the only way to get it for you is to make it impossible for you to tolerate the day.”

I laughed bitterly. “Yeah, right. You killed my father in a selfless act of charity.”

I could hear Piper's smile in her voice. “I never said it was selfless. I love my new life, but I don't want to give up all my friends to have it. Some of them have to go because they're not suited to it.”

“Like Luke you mean?” I asked. I remembered she had told me once before that Luke would not be welcome, but I hadn't thought much about what that might mean.

“Yeah, he's a no-go. Too much of a goody-goody for this kind of life.”

It was against my better judgment to engage Piper in conversation, but I had to admit I had a lot of questions about the night world and about what had happened to the people who were lost to it. Whether I could trust Piper's answers or not was a whole other question.

“So what am I, some kind of bad girl?” I asked, genuinely curious why Piper and Aleric seemed to think I was a good candidate to join them.

“It's not that you're a bad girl,” Piper said. “It's just that you have the potential to be one. If you'd been raised by different parents, or maybe even if you'd just gone to a different school, you'd be a very different person right now. You have the makings of a hell-raiser, even if so far you've managed to shout all those feelings down.”

“That's ridiculous,” I argued, but I wasn't so sure. I'd been on a very different road back in the days when I was in middle school, tormented by my peers, called Becky the Brain by everyone I knew, and reviled for it. My parents had left me in that school for two long years after the bullying began, because they thought sending me to a private school would make them into snobs. I had been so very angry, at the bullies, at the school that couldn't—or wouldn't—stop them, and at my parents, who couldn't see past their personal prejudices to realize keeping me there was a terrible idea.

If I'd stayed at that school, if the world had continued to add more fuel to the anger that had been building inside me …

“Tell yourself it's ridiculous, if it makes you feel better,” Piper said. “It's not my fault you don't like the answer to your question.”

It doesn't matter,
I told myself.
You are who you are now, not who you might have been.
But I knew my mind would circle back to the subject again and again and again.

“Why was it so important to you that I pick up the phone?” I asked. “Just so you could have some more fun poking sticks at me?”

“I'm not poking sticks at you,” Piper said, with exasperation in her voice. “Like I said, I'm trying to help you. Trying to get you to the place where you feel better and all of this shit stops hurting so much.”

I wondered if she was aware of her own hypocrisy, then decided it wouldn't matter if she was. She'd say anything, do anything, to get what she wanted. And apparently what she wanted was me.

“But it's obvious you aren't convinced yet,” Piper continued. “You seem to like Marlene. How terrible would you feel if something happened to her and it was all because you were too selfish to do the right thing and give yourself up?”

My hand clenched on the phone, and my heart gave a nasty thump. “Don't you dare—”

“But maybe you'd be okay as long as you still had Luke. I wouldn't want you to put too much faith in the bullshit Marlene was feeding you. Luke was all mine, and would have been mine as long as I wanted him. He's into you now because he's on the rebound, and because, hey, you're available. I know you know all that, but I bet you still have hopes that you and he will, like, get married and have babies and live happily ever after or some such shit.”

“I'm hanging up now,” I said through gritted teeth, but I didn't actually do it.

“I'm going to take out everyone you care about,” Piper said. “I'm glad you've met Luke's family, because that'll give me a nice pool of victims to choose from. One by one, I'll take them away from you, until you have no one left. Let's see how many losses your conscience can take before you realize you really have no choice.

“Call this number and let me know when you're ready to give in. And try to remember that, no matter how much it hurts, everything I'm doing is for your own good. I'm still your friend, and I'll be here for you whenever you're ready.”

In the end, it was Piper who hung up.

 

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

I didn't get a whole lot of sleep after getting off the phone with Piper, so when Dr. Gilliam drove me back to my house, I practically fell asleep in the car. We had to drive most of the way across Center City to get home, and it looked nothing like any other Black Friday in my life. The sun didn't rise till around seven these days, so there were no early-morning sales to bring people out in droves. Stores were open—most of them at least—but there were very few customers visible through their windows.

The city's maintenance workers did their best, but there was no keeping up with the destruction and mess the Nightstruck and the constructs caused when the sun was down. Broken glass littered the streets and sidewalks, piles of litter blew in the breeze, and graffiti—much of it obscene—was everywhere.