Platinum (20 page)

I saw the truth.

“You see.”

This time, it wasn’t Lissy’s voice, or Lexie’s. It was Shannon’s, that First Seer whose infinitely blessed eyes I had seen through just now, for the briefest period of time. And then, that ultimate clarity, that vision, was gone, and Helen, Brock, Cade, and the knife melted back into place as if no time had passed at all.

“I am Helen. I am unequaled.”

“Take off the ring and say that.” The challenge was out of my mouth before my brain had completely configured it. I’d seen the ring in my visions: seen it on her finger from day one, seen it a moment ago on dozens of women throughout history.

“Take off that ring and tell me they love you,” I said. “Take off the ring, and let them choose.” I arched one eyebrow. “Or are you afraid that without it, you’re nothing? That even here, you’re nothing more than a memory that didn’t even get a memorial in the yearbook: the prom queen that wasn’t, the girl who used to be It.”

“I’m not afraid of you,” she said, tossing her hair over her shoulder. “They will choose me. I am beautiful. I am Helen.”

I stepped forward, and feeling Lissy and Lexie with me, their energy feeding into my body through the aura strings I’d glimpsed with Shannon’s eyes, I moved with lightning-quick speed, and before I knew it, my hand was on the ring. Helen blinked, and the force field cracked audibly as she turned her attention to me.

Invisible hands clawed at me, but I held tight to the ring.

“Platinum,” I observed out loud, getting a better look at it. “Why am I not surprised?”

“I am Helen. I am—”

“Nothing,” I said. “I am Lilah, and I don’t need a ring to make boys like me. They fall at my feet. They shove each other to get a better look at my butt.”

They’ve been my lifeline since I was ten years old, I thought, but I didn’t dwell on it.

“They may kiss you,” I continued, “but they love me.”

Did they? I didn’t let the question show on my face.

Helen said nothing.

“You may have been something special back in the day,” I told her. “You may wear a platinum ring that your boyfriend gave you once upon a time, but I
am
Platinum. I’m It, and these days, Emory High is my school.”

Beneath my touch, the ring heated up, changing colors as it did in bursts of blue, pink, and purple, and finally black before dissolving to nothingness under my touch.

Almost instantly, the boys stopped fighting. The blade dropped from Cade’s hand and clattered to the floor, hitting the concrete beneath their feet.

“Lilah?” Brock said, and it was him again. Tad Bradford was gone from his face.

“Helen?”

Cade’s words cut into me. He’d said her name, not mine. She smiled at me, and for the briefest second, the ring I’d destroyed moments before began to piece itself together around her finger.

“Cade.” I said his name, lowering myself by showing that I cared, that his actions could affect me.

“Princess?” At his words, the ring began to dissolve once more.

“Cade.” I said his name again, not bothering to temper my voice, my emotions.

Like the eyes of a patient waking up from a coma, his eyes began, slowly, to clear.

“Lilah.”

A moment later, he turned back to Helen. Her hair, vibrant, white blond a moment before, was a more ordinary honey color now. Her eyes were no longer crystalline. Her lips pulled down into a more than marginally unattractive frown.

“You know, she should really practice those expressions in the—”

“Lexie, shhhhh!”

Ignoring the sisterly conversation in my head, I turned back to Helen.

She looked at me, her eyes wide and hateful, and in an odd way, almost sad. “You wanted them,” she said. “Now they’re yours.”

The air around her cracked, and before I could blink, she’d disappeared entirely: no more blond ponytail, no more “I am Helen” speeches, no more female competition in the room. Life was as it should be, except that the moment she disappeared, the ring of Helen of Troy reappeared on my finger, and Brock picked up the blade on the ground and turned back to Cade.

“You should have left Lilah alone.”

20

Hurt

Once you feel it,
it’s real.

Great. Now they were fighting over me. Because that was so much better than them fighting over a wannabe Helen. I could feel the ring changing me. My hair grew in length and thickness until it broke free from its ponytail and flowed freely to my waist. My eyes, catlike to begin with, widened and tilted up at the edges. My lashes doubled in size, and I could nearly taste the reddening of my own lips.

I was wearing the ring, I was beautiful, and they were fighting over me.

“Seriously, guys. Not. Cool.”

I’d spoken the truth when I’d told Helen I wouldn’t have wished this on anyone. Even now, even with the ring on my finger forcing my heart to race giddily at the sight of the boys’ movements, I didn’t want this.

“
I told you Lilah wasn’t evil,
” Lexie told Lissy triumphantly. I would have laughed, but I couldn’t take my eyes off the fight in front of me.

“Stop.”

They didn’t heed my command. I tried desperately to pry the ring off my hand, but the moment I touched it, it burned my fingers.

“If you don’t stop this, I’ll never talk to either of you ever again.” Since Brock wasn’t much of a talker, I added to the threat. “I won’t make out with you either, Brock.”

I may as well have been filing my nails. They ignored me, ignored my pleas, and under the influence of the ring that clung to my finger, Brock lunged at Cade.

“You don’t want to do this,” Cade said. “I’ve been here before. I’ve done this before. You won’t win. You can’t, and when you lose, you’ll die.”

“No, he won’t,” I burst out. “No one is going to die.”

“He touched you,” Brock said, certainty in his voice. “That’s why you’ve been so weird lately. God, Lilah, have you seen the way he looks at you? The way you look at him?”

There was hurt in Brock’s voice, the kind of hurt I’d felt the day before, and it didn’t bring me any satisfaction. I didn’t—couldn’t—love him, but I didn’t want to hurt him. Still, I couldn’t deny that the Sight had changed me, and that Cade had been a large part of that.

“What kind of slut are you?”

Brock’s words stung me. He was hurt, and he was lashing out, and I knew it, but I was still tempted, very briefly, to take the knife from him bodily and castrate him myself. Luckily for Brock, the hair on the back of my neck still stood on end with the wrongness of this place, this moment of frozen time that should never have happened. And besides, I had to consider that, given the freaky ring aspect of the whole thing, Brock might not have had control over what he was saying, and castration may have therefore been a wee bit harsh.

“Put the knife down, Brock,” I said. “This room, this place, this ring—” I held up my finger mutinously. “It’s getting to you.” I forced my expression to soften to something between a puppy-dog smile and a come-hither invitation. “Let’s go home.”

Brock’s grip on the knife tightened, and his face twitched, fighting against something I didn’t understand.

The knife inched toward Cade.

“Cade, please.” I turned my plea toward the ghost boy. My ghost boy. “Don’t let him hurt you. Don’t hurt him.”

“He cheated on you,” Cade said softly. “He said horrible things to you just now.”

Great. So my chivalrous ghost was going to defend my honor with my still possibly mystically influenced boyfriend.

“Cade.” I paused. “Ghost Boy.” My lips curled up even as my eyes filled with tears I hadn’t seen coming at all. “Figment of my imagination, pain in my ass.” I looked him in the eye. “Please.”

He nodded slightly, and I knew that he wouldn’t fight Brock, that should the knife end up in his hand, things would end without (further) bloodshed. The ring was on my finger now, not Helen’s, and Cade was resisting—would continue to resist—its thrall. For me.

“Brock?” My voice was little, my eyes still on Cade.

Brock looked back at me, torn. “Lilah, baby, I love you. I’ve got to. Don’t you see? If I get rid of him…”

“No, Brock.”

“He touched you.”

There it was again—a chance to deny it. A chance to tell Brock that nothing had ever happened. A chance to get the knife out of his hand. I clawed at the ring on my finger, but it didn’t budge.

“He touched you.”

The moment was passing, and all I could think about was that if Cade didn’t fight back, if this ring really did intend for blood to be shed here today, my ghost boy might become a ghost for real.

Blood-streaked flesh, still on the floor.

He could die.

“He didn’t touch me.” I said the words calmly. Right now, my denying everything was Cade’s best chance at survival. As I spoke, as I verbally gave up what I wanted most, the ring around my finger flickered in and out of existence like a lightbulb on its last leg. “Do you think I’d let him touch me?” I asked Brock, forcing myself to convince him.

Brock tilted his head to the side, taking in my claim. I was, all things said and done, an excellent liar. Cade didn’t move, but somehow he still managed to flinch at my words.

I had to get the knife away from Brock. I had to save Cade. Forget the fact that I had no idea where (or more to the point, when) he would go once I saved him, I had to do it. I’d seen too many bodies lying dead in this spot, and there was pretty much no fury of emotion like a quarterback scorned. Especially a quarterback under the control of a ring that had once belonged to Helen of Troy.

“There’s nothing going on between us, Brock.”

Another nonflinchy flinch from Cade; another flicker from the ring on my finger.

“He’s nothing to me.”

Another strip peeled slowly off my heart.

I stepped forward and took Brock’s hand, thinking I’d have a chance to right things with Cade the moment I got the knife away from Brock. I pressed my cheek against Brock’s and repeated the words, willing him to hand me the knife.

Cade, Cade, Cade
beat my heart.

“He’s nothing,” I said again, putting the haughty tone Brock recognized all too well in my voice, which I then lowered to a purr, resting my head on his shoulder. “I love you.”

The ring bleeped out then, and it didn’t come back. For the second time, the knife fell to the floor.

Cade nodded—whether with understanding of the lie or acceptance of it as truth, I couldn’t tell—and the next moment, everything went black.

Pink. Purple. Blue.

The colors rose from nothingness, blurring into and out of my field of vision, fading finally to a white so bright it could only mean one thing.

“This whole visitation thing?” I said out loud, the words striking my ears surprisingly softly. “Not my cup of tea.”

“You did well, my daughter. You’ve never traveled to the past before.”

“Yeah, well, I’m kind of new at seeing it, too. What can I say? I’m a quick learner.”

“Are you?” Her question challenged me. How had I gotten used to my Sight so quickly? Was I really learning, or was I…remembering?

I lifted my eyes to meet Shannon’s and thought of what it had felt like to see through her eyes. To know through them.

“You do remember,” she said softly. “In your dreams, in your heart.” She touched my temple gently with the side of her hand. “The mind forgets,” she said. “The soul does not.”

Suddenly, the term “old soul” was taking on a whole new meaning. I shook my head. I was a high school junior. I spent my time staying on top and painting my fingernails. How old soulish was that?

“Brianna.”

The sound of the name reminded me of other visions I’d had, and then I remembered what I had done to get the ring off my finger, what I had said to quell Brock’s supernatural jealousy and save Cade from the fate he’d been forced to dole out to others for the past fifty years.

With any luck, he was alive. And, you know, waiting for me in my bedroom at home.

“Cade?” The word came out as a question that got stuck halfway out of my throat. I didn’t know why I was asking her this, except that knowing what she could see, I figured she should know better than anyone what had happened—where Cade and Brock had gone, where I (or at least my body) was now.

“All will be as it has been meant to be.”

There were a few too many linking verbs in that sentence for me to fully parse it given my current state.

“Brock?” I tried a different question.

“All will be as it has been meant to be.”

“Helen? The ring?” It was worth a shot.

“Gone. Neither will bother you again, my daughter. Your will was too strong, the bond too firm, and her essence too pure to fall to the lure of absolute beauty, absolute power.”

The will was mine.

The bond was Lissy’s, tied with her nimble little aura-manipulating hands.

I didn’t need to be told whose essence was pure.

“She is not the only one.” Shannon lifted the thought from my head and cupped my chin with her hands. “You are more than you give yourself credit for being.”