The 52nd (The 52nd Saga Book 1) (14 page)

“Since
when?”

“Since now. Good night,” I called, skipping steps upstairs.

The only thing calming when I walked into my room was the lingering scent of Lucas. I walked to the window and sat down on the windowsill. I picked up his good-bye note once more and wondered why he’d left. Then I saw Mae’s book peeking out of my purse. In a flash his note was falling to the floor and I was running for the book, desperate for answers. I sat at the desk, flipped the light on, and began reading from the beginning.

It wasn’t until my head knocked against the desk that I realized I’d fallen asleep. So I walked to the bathroom, brushed my teeth, and washed my face in an attempt to stay awake. I slipped into my flannel pajamas and rubbed my neck as I settled back down at the small
desk.

I decided to skim through the pictures and leave the rest of the reading for morning. First I returned to the page with the picture of Lucas’s tattoo. I was certain it was an exact replica. But the way the roots twisted and curled around the trunk of the tree also reminded me of the one I saw in my blackout. I didn’t want to look at it anymore—or didn’t want to see the connection—and instead hopped over to the page with the twins, realizing that the ball the god was holding looked similar to the one in the tattoo on Dylan’s
calf.

I flipped the pages more quickly now. Halfway through was an odd sketch of a map with one half missing. A few pages later, I found a drawing of a barefoot woman with short, spiky hair. When I looked into the friendliness of her beautiful smile, I paused, cupping my hand over my mouth as my head began to spin. This woman had a tattoo, just like all the other members of the Castillo family. I found my eyes drawn to the caption underneath: “
La
bruja
.”

I fumbled for the Spanish–English dictionary at the corner of my desk, near the bottom of last year’s book pile, and opened it quickly to the
B
s. When I saw the word
bruja,
I jolted back to the sketch, unable to withstand the anticipation or the turning of my stomach. It read, “witch {charmer, sorceress; a person who cast spells on others}.” I zoomed back to the woman in the drawing, who didn’t look anything like a witch. Her friendly features were young and playful, but the evidence pointed me toward an unexplainable conclusion. I’d seen her with the Castillo family at Lucky
Pin.

I had to move on, but when I turned the page, I immediately closed the book, afraid that the creatures shown there would come alive and get me. Although it was absurd, I placed another book on top of Mae’s to weigh it down and went to bed for the evening, with the lights
on
.

When I woke up the next morning it was sunny, but a darkness seemed to hover over the burgundy book. I felt tricked when I found myself sitting down again to open the leather-bound journal. My shaky fingers turned the frail pages with caution until I reached the page where I’d stopped. The drawing seemed less scary in the daytime, although I still envisioned it coming to
life.

The sketch of two entities filled an entire page. The one on the left was a shadow identical to the ones I’d seen during the night games. Its hazy shape was precisely what I remembered, a human figure with hollow eye sockets and long fingers. The picture to the right showed a skeletal man, the same size as the shadow, but only partially covered with skin, with his innards on the outside. The identical midnight eyes proved that these were the same monster—and worse, the creatures of my blackout world. A shredded breechcloth was wrapped around the naked skeleton’s waist, and he wore strange armor over his
head.

Only a few words were written underneath these drawings: “
Demonio de mundo terrenal.”
In seconds I was searching the dictionary for a translation. I shuffled through the pages to the letter
D
. There,
demonio
—I followed the typed words to the right: “demon.” I jumped back and started shaking my hands as if I could ward the knowledge
off.

No, no, no. Demons do not exist.
The words repeated in my mind. Suddenly I felt an awful flow of fluid heaving up my throat, an upswelling of filth. I rushed to the bathroom, threw my hands down for support, and splattered the toilet with rancid liquid.
Right, I missed dinner, didn’t I?
My stomach cramped with nauseous hunger as I wiped my mouth and swiped my toothbrush through it. Then I went downstairs to raid the kitchen, leaving the old journal for another
time.

“Hey, Mom,” I moaned, rubbing my stomach. I opened the fridge and pulled out the first thing I saw, a carton of orange
juice.

Mom flipped a blueberry pancake on the skillet and looked at the oven clock. “You’re up
early.”

“I couldn’t sleep
well.”

“Are you sick?” she asked, observing my pale
skin.

“No.” I tried to sip the orange juice, but it didn’t sit right in my stomach. I left it in front of me untouched, my attention drifting out the kitchen window to the flying leaves in the backyard. Max and Casey were outside, hunched over in the dirt. “
What
are the boys doing, and
why
so early on a Saturday?”

“We got a call from jail last night.” Mom didn’t move her head, but her eyes swept to the back window and over the twins. “Your dad had to bail them out at three in the morning; he put them on family community service to pay him
back.”

I laughed, feeling a little
better.

“You should have seen their faces when we picked them up.” She laughed.

“Wait
we
? You left me alone last night?” I panicked.

“Yes, you were
asleep.”

“Why didn’t you wake me up?” I asked frantically, my forehead sweating.

Mom laughed again as she sat down at the bar. “And wake you up? You’re hilarious.” Then she buried her nose in a fashion magazine. As a retired pageant queen, she was religious about keeping up with the latest styles, even though our funds didn’t allow her to buy Gucci. “Why on earth would I do
that?”

“Because it’s irresponsible.” I pounded the counter, raising my voice. “You’ll get child protective services called on
you!”

Mom looked up from the colorful pages and laughed again. “You are seventeen, Zara. You’re a big
girl.”

“Ugh. Don’t do that, Mom.”

“Dad said you were a little on edge last night. You’re not tripping, are you?” Her eyes stopped dead on mine, searching suspiciously. I lost my appetite.

“What? Mom, no. That’s disgusting,” I said, appalled.

I glanced at the twins once more. As much as I wanted to be entertained by Max and Casey pulling weeds at seven on a Saturday morning, I felt drawn back to my bedroom and the mulch of my depression and self-pity. Maybe I was in denial or just scared stupid, but either way, I was not picking up that book ever again. It didn’t matter. I had been abandoned.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Hallow’s Eve

It was mid-October, and a thin white film crunched underneath my feet as I trekked across the
lawn.

“What is that awful smell?” I asked, hopping into Bri’s car. The sun sparkled through the frost-webbed corners of my wagon’s windshield as we passed it. I
sighed.

“It’s my new caramel lotion, and if you don’t like it, you can drive your own damn car.” Bri stared ahead without the slightest glance at me. “Tell me again why you don’t want to drive yourself? You’re going to flunk your history class if you never
go.”

“Like you care about my classes. And besides, I don’t need to show up to pass. I can study from the textbook on my
own.”

“Why can’t you just drive your own stupid
car?”

Bri’s annoyance with me over the past couple of weeks was finally erupting, and I took full responsibility. My headaches were constant, I complained whenever I wasn’t being a jerk, and I was spooked to death that I would be chased again, or maybe even black out while I was driving. Bottom line, I didn’t want to be alone. I was upset that Lucas had left. I needed him, and while I thought of him often, I also thought of the vomit-inducing book that continued to collect dust on my
desk.

“I told you, I can’t drive because of my migraines,” I
lied.

Bri pinched her lips and remained silent. I wondered how much longer I could hitch rides with
her.

“After the party,” she
said.

“What?”

“After the Halloween party—you know, big shindig, costumes, punch, keeps the students from driving drunk?—after that, I’m done. Your car is perfectly good to drive, and you
obviously
are perfectly fine too. I’m not buying your crap. You have until Halloween to figure your mess out and make your life normal again. This carpool thing is not good for our relationship.”

I looked out the window, feeling ghostly as the blood left my head. “Okay.”

When I woke on Halloween morning two weeks later, I knew something wasn’t right. The hair on my arms stood up. A new headache began midmorning and then, at lunch—just my luck—nausea joined the party. I took medicine for the headache and tried to shrug the nerves away, but the sickness was relentless. The bad feeling that came when Lucas left, which never went away no matter what I did, now grew exponentially.

Going out that night made me feel doomed. I didn’t feel human. My fingers were cold and unresponsive, and it took nearly two hours to get ready. I stared at the crimson silk dress Bri had brought for me and clutched at a lurching feeling in my stomach. I kept its contents down long enough to tug and squeeze and suck into that
silk.

Spicy fumes made their way into my room. My stomach grumbled payback for boycotting food all day, but I ignored it, even though my mouth watered desperately. I looked into the mirror, emotionless, vaguely seeing the historical dress encasing me. The corset was tight, not only pushing my breasts up but also making it hard to breathe, and I fell into a daze. An irksome voice rose from the depths, where my worst fear resided:
so this is what I will look like when I
die.

A noise scratched in the air. It vibrated over and over until I finally recognized Bri’s voice downstairs.

“Zara, you up there?” Bri called
again.

My eyes strained on my reflection as I choked out a feeble response. “I’m
here.”

“Hurry. It’s a good forty-minute
drive.”

A new shiver went down my spine as I hiked my skirt out of the way and sent my body downstairs to what felt like my funeral.

It was dark in the house except for the mini lights wrapped around the banisters, which sent clusters of orange and purple light ricocheting across the
stairs.

Bri fretted at her cakey face in the mirror. Most of her hair was pulled up smoothly into a bun, leaving tight curls falling down to frame her face. Her pale yellow dress had much more intricate detail than mine, with bone-colored buttons and white lace edging the sleeves and corset. And by the look of her bulging breasts, I could tell it wasn’t her seamstress but Bri who decided to make the corset extra
tight.

“Really, Bri?” I asked, briefly comparing our
chests.

She looked down at the round pudginess below her chin and shrugged innocently. “What?”

“Remind me why we all decided to dress as Sleepy Hollow characters.”

“The girls chose and the boys just did what we said. You would know if you’d get your head out of the clouds and listen for a
change.”

I rolled my eyes to the door. “Let’s just get this over
with.”

Farther down the road, Bri turned on the radio. Her singing was like screeching in my ears. Later, when she started squealing the high notes, I shut off the
radio.

“Hey, I was listening to
that.”

“No, you were killing it. Bri, come on, you can’t sing,” I said, looking at the speedometer as she entered the freeway. “Slow
down!”

It wasn’t just the speed that coiled my fear. My stomach cramped when I realized that we were past the city lights, and tall, black trees now surrounded us. I hugged my arms snugly around my belly and wheezed.

Bri looked at me strangely. “I’m only going five over the speed
limit.”

“Well, you’re freaking me
out.”

Her foot let off the gas. “Happy?”

“Thank
you.”

Bri kept her face forward and didn’t say a word the rest of the drive. I didn’t mind. I kept my eyes on the dark trees. She exited the El Dorado Freeway and joined a train of headlights snaking toward a canyon. The party was in a barn in an abandoned pasture between Angora Lake and Echo Lake. The deeper Bri drove into the canyon, the more my sickness built up and my breathing became shallow.

“We’re here,” Bri said. The brake lights of the car in front of us glowed red on her face as she coasted to the shoulder.

I felt clammy. I rubbed my palms on my dress and squirmed in my seat. Feeling panicked, I turned to look at the narrow, tree-lined road that led to the barn. It was nearly black under the trees. The sick worry in my stomach grew into a stabbing sensation as my corset’s deathly grip suddenly pinched out every ounce of air I had.
I have to go in there?
I started fanning my face with my hand, feeling hotter by the
second.

“Can you breathe in that thing?” I squeaked.

“What are you doing? It’s fifty degrees outside.” Bri sounded annoyed. She reached into her backseat, grabbed a paper, and starting fanning me. “Get a hold of yourself; you’re embarrassing, for crying out loud. And yes, I can breathe in this
thing.”

She hopped out of the car and leaned back in, her breasts threatening to fall out of her dress. “You’ve been all weird ever since Lucas left. Whatever creepy fetish you two have with each other is between you two.
I
prefer to remain normal.” She straightened up and looked
around.

I hauled myself out and shot back, “
You
aren’t normal, and I
don’t
have a
fetish.”

A draft of mountain air frosted my breath, and I reached for my
jacket.

“What are you doing?” Bri hissed. She ran around the car with a repulsed expression and snatched it
away.

“What? I’m
cold.”

I reached for it, but she tossed it into the car. “These dresses are
not
supposed to be covered up by jackets.”

I ignored her and grabbed it. As I slipped it on, Bri turned and waved to the arriving cars. Boys in strange costumes leaned out of windows, cheap beers in hand, shouting random words to people standing around—like us.
This is ridiculous. I shouldn’t be here.
Bri was bobbing up and down, her hands clapping rapidly together. “College is so much better than high school,” she crowed. “Ooh, there’s Jett. Let’s go catch
up.”

He was in a crowd of kids heading down the small trail. Stretchy white fabric clung to his
calves.

“Are you wearing tights?” Bri laughed as we came up behind
him.

“Yes,” he groaned. “Who the hell chose Sleepy Hollow? Worst idea ever.” His hand moved to his tight leggings and began shifting parts
around.

“Gross.” I
gagged.

“Where’s Tommy?” Bri
asked.

Jett pointed up the line. “Up there with Hayden and Ashley. They wouldn’t wait for me.” Another shift. “Man, my crotch is killing
me.”

Bri chirped, did that weird clapping thing again where her hands flapped like a hummingbird, and ran
ahead.

“If I’m going to be walking with you, leave your crotch out of it,” I
said.

Jett laughed, glancing down. “What’s wrong with my
crotch?”

I rolled my eyes. “You talk like it’s your
baby.”

“Good point. So, I’ve been writing some new
songs.”

“Oh
yeah?”

“My EP is doing pretty good. I’ve been getting pressure to start an
album.”

“From
who?”

“I thought you were following me on YouTube,” he said, surprised.

“I haven’t really had time,” I said, feeling that the forked fingers of the black branches threatened to reach forward and snatch me. I edged closer to
Jett.

He put his hands in the pockets of his jacket and stared at the dirt. “A couple of my songs have gone viral. Someone pretty big I guess saw me and wanted to see
more.”

“So are you going to do
it?”

He laughed. “It’s not like that, Zara. You don’t just make an album with no intention of pursuing that
career.”

“That’s not what I
asked.”

We took a few more steps toward a dark covered bridge. Slivers of moonlight hit its roof through the trees. Eyeing just how dark it was inside, I stepped on the heel of the person in front of us as I maneuvered myself between Jett and another schoolmate. I looped my hand over the crook of Jett’s elbow and leaned my cheek close to his shoulder. As I set foot on the first plank I squinted.

“What’s with you, Zara?” Jett asked, squeezing
back.

Out of nowhere, amid the rush of water in the stream below and the others’ talking, I heard a deep chant, a whispering tune that seemed to echo in the
wind.

“Do you hear that?” I
asked.

He raised his chin enough to look around. “Hear
what?”

Fear spread through me, and the corset pinched my organs as I squeezed Jett’s arm harder. I closed my eyes and let him lead me across the bridge. When the sound beneath my feet changed to dirt crunching, I opened them and relaxed. We were descending into the open meadow. There was the barn, barely visible through the unmown grass. It was lit festively with vibrant lights, and as we got closer, I saw that it was two stories high. The large front door was cracked open, and light escaped through it into the night as a thick
beam.

“Don’t leave me tonight,” I
said.

Jett’s hand overlapped mine. “I won’t.”

A stream of colors welcomed us as we followed the kids inside. The barn had a dance floor with live music, colorful spotlights, and cheerful swaths of streamers. The single room was huge. I had to crane my neck to see the ceiling.

Bri and Tommy poked through the crowd, holding
hands.

“Zara, Jett!” Bri
called.

Tommy dropped a shoulder and leaned into Jett. “Are you good, for
later?”

“Good for what?” I
asked.

“It’s nothing,” Jett responded.

“They’re going to play a prank,” Bri
said.

“Guys, no,” I said frantically. They looked confused. “I mean . . . the dean is here. What if you got
caught?”

“Zara, come on, it’s just a fun
joke.”

“No, it’s not. Nothing ever is with you guys. You’ll take it too far,” I
argued.

Tommy looked to Jett. “Jett, take care of
her.”

“Excuse me?” I said, taking a step closer to
Tommy.

Jett stepped between us. “Zara, go get a drink with Bri, and by the time you’re done, I’ll be
back.”

“Back? Where are you
going?”

“Nowhere. I’m just stepping out for a
minute.”

“Don’t go alone,” I
asked.

I felt Bri’s hands slip around my shoulders. “Come on, Zara. It’ll be
quick.”

Yes, it would be quick. As Bri pushed me along, all I could think of was how quickly those demons almost had
me.

“I’m not going alone,” Jett assured
me.

I shrugged Bri’s hands away and looked him square in the eye. “You have two minutes.”

I watched as Tommy disappeared to the back of the barn while Jett exited through the front. Then I walked to the punch bowls with Bri while she rambled on about some sort of lipstick. After she poured our drinks and began talking with someone in her English class, I snuck out a side door and searched for Jett. I could hear the rest of the boys giggling near the back, but Jett I saw up the hill, standing in the overgrown grass. He was far away, and there wasn’t a soul around
him.

I felt the anger rising. He was farther than I thought he’d go, and he hadn’t taken the road. I went after him, to catch him before he reached the bridge’s darkness. If those demons came after me, I wouldn’t be surprised if they came after him
too.

“Jett!” I shouted. “Come
back!”

Finally, after a long drifting moment of despair, he turned. He began to walk toward me, looking confused, shouting words with his hands that shooed me away, but my heavy breaths drowned out his voice. I looked back, mentally calculating my distance from the barn. I was a lot farther than I liked, but Jett and I could make it back in a couple minutes if he was willing to run
hard.

“Run,” I yelled, but he didn’t.

I waved my hands frantically, desperate for him to come faster, but my shoulders were confined so tightly in the silk that it hurt. Then it occurred to me that Jett couldn’t hear
me.

I watched angrily as he walked back, taking his time. I was nearly at a run
now.

“Jett, run!” I screamed, feeling the hairs on my skin rise as a hushed whispering grew out of the wind’s soft
rustle.

I looked around, my knees going weak with the feeling that the demons were here. But the night’s ravenous darkness was too deep for clarity, and between my skirt and the grass up to my knees, I couldn’t see where I was stepping. Just as I twisted my ankle on a hidden rock, a blackish figure stepped out of the bridge and into the moonlight. I froze, and as my legs went numb, it transformed into a ridged cloud and sped after
Jett.