The Haunted (34 page)

A sick feeling started roiling in my stomach, and I knew where he was going with this. Crossing my arms, I shook my head. “Oh, no. You are
not
doing this again, Caspian.”

He looked at me with pained eyes, and I stalked closer, jabbing the air in front of him with one finger. “You broke my heart once before, during Christmas, with that I-just-want-to-be-friends note. You are
not
doing that again.”

“It’s better this way—”

“I’m not listening to you, and I’m going home now,” I said.

He suddenly bent down to pick up a dead leaf from the
ground and held it out to me. Slowly closing his hand, he crushed the leaf. It crunched between his fingers, and when he opened his fist, only a pile of dust remained. “This is me. Dust. Ashes. I’m dead, and you have to face that.”

Frustration and fury bubbled up in me, and I had to fight to keep a cool tone. “You know what? I
will
face that. Where are you buried?”

He blinked once. “What?”

“
Where
are you
buried
? I’m going to face it. I’m going to visit your grave.”

“Why?” he whispered.

I leaned in, close enough for a kiss, and whispered back, “Because I love you, Caspian. I
love
you. I’ll do whatever it takes to be with you.” I held up my left hand. The red scratch that Vincent had given me was still clearly visible. I should have realized there was something more—
he
was something more—when he gave it to me. “And because I don’t want any secrets between us either, I have to tell you something. I lied to you about this. About how I got it. Vincent scratched me when he stopped by my uncle’s shop.”

Caspian’s face turned dark with fury, and for a second I thought he was mad at me for lying to him. “I am going to return the favor,” he said, between gritted teeth. “Times ten.”
He put out one finger and traced it down my palm, going right through it.

I felt the tingle all the way down to my toes.

“West Virginia,” Caspian said softly. “Where we used to live. I’m buried in Martinsburg, West Virginia.”

I crashed as soon as I got home, and when I woke up, thoughts of Revenants swirled through my head, darting like angry bees. But as I pushed my hair out of my face, I pushed the thoughts from my mind.

Right now there was only one important thing to take care of, and two potential roadblocks standing in the way.

I found Mom and Dad downstairs in the living room watching a movie. It was almost over, and I waited until the credits rolled before I sprung my big idea on them. “I want to go look at colleges in West Virginia,” I blurted out.

Dad paused with the remote in his hand, mid-mute for the commercials, and Mom sighed happily. Her whole face lit up. “You do?”

They exchanged a
Can you believe this change of heart?
look, and I felt guilty for the lie. But not guilty enough.

“Yeah, there are some really great schools there, and with my senior year coming up, I’d like to rethink some of my options.”

“We’ll set everything up,” Mom said excitedly. “Oh, honey, your first college tour! Such a big moment. We’ll have to make sure to check out the campus and the dorms, of course, and—”

“Mom.”

“The town. You want to make sure the town is safe. A lot of people don’t think about things like that.”

“Mom!” I gave Dad a helpless look, and he grinned at me. “Mom,
stop
.”

She stopped. But the look of excitement was still there.

Ah, damn it.
Now I felt bad. “The thing is… I want to go on my own.” There was utter silence, and Mom’s mouth gaped open.

“No.”

“But Mom, I
really
want to do this, and I think it will be good for my independence. I’m growing here, and I feel like my feathers are getting all tangled.”

“Feathers? What…”

“Baby bird,” Dad said. “I get it.”

I shot him a grateful look.

“How will you get there? Where will you stay? You’ll be all alone.” Mom’s face crumpled.

“I can take a bus. And there are hotels there. I’ll be fine. I’m
seventeen. I can do this. In some countries girls my age are getting married, you know.”

“M-married?” Her lower lip quivered.

Uh-oh. Wrong thing to say.

Dad came to the rescue. “Do you have any friends that could go with you, Abbey? I’m sure that would make your mother and me feel safer.”

“Friends? Well, there’s always Ben,” I quipped. “He’s dependable.”

Dad nodded. “Yes, he is. You’ll have to get separate rooms, though. And I’m going to call each night to do random bed checks. No bed hopping on this trip.”

“
What
? Are you
serious
? He’s a teenage boy, Dad. You actually
want
us spending unsupervised time alone together?”

“Well, considering the other options… He’s been tutoring you, hasn’t he? Has he made any inappropriate advances?”

“No, he’s been the perfect gentleman.”

“Then I think it’s a good solution. He has a car, right?”

I nodded.

“See about making the arrangements, then.” He patted Mom’s hand. “Your mother and I will stay here.”

Mom looked close to tears again.

“I’m serious about the bed checks though,” Dad called,
when I got up to leave the room. “No funny business.”

Shaking my head as I climbed the stairs, I wondered the whole way what planet I was living on and where my
real
parents were. Obviously, the ones in there had been replaced by pod people.

R
OAD
T
RIP

Certain it is, his advances were signals for rival candidates to retire…

—“The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”

I talked to Ben about going to West Virginia with me, and he quickly agreed, saying that he was always up for a road trip. “Are you
sure
you don’t mind driving?” I asked him again, cradling the phone to my ear.

“I don’t mind, Abbey,” he said.

“And I told you about the dad thing? He’ll probably be obnoxious about calling to check up on me.”

“You told me. Twice,” Ben replied.

“Are you cool with dropping me off ? I don’t want you to be stuck hanging around.”

“It’s cool. My dad has a friend who owns a junkyard near there. I’ll check him out.”

“Thanks, Ben. I really appreciate this.”

“What’s the name of the college?” he asked.

Luckily, I was sitting in front of my computer, and I quickly turned to Google. “It’s um…” I typed in
colleges in West Virginia
. A listing came up showing at least a dozen of them, and I scanned through. I couldn’t believe my luck when Shepherd University popped up within ten miles of Martinsburg. “Shepherd,” I said.

I clicked the link and arrived at the university’s website. Pictures of tall buildings and smiling students littered the home page, and the “About Us” page said that it was a liberal-arts school.
Wow
.
Perfect.

We decided to take the trip two days later, and I hung up the phone feeling a sense of accomplishment. This just might work. And the school looked pretty cool, too. Too bad I didn’t have any plans to actually check it out.…

I wasn’t sure how to tell Caspian about the trip, so I waited until the next day. I still hadn’t figured out the best way to say, “Oh yeah, I’m going to be spending the entire weekend with Ben.
Alone.
”

We were in the mausoleum, sitting on the bench together, when he suddenly stood up. “I almost forgot. I have something I wanted to show you.” He crossed over to his boxes, reached
into one of them, and pulled out a tiny acid-washed blue-jean backpack.

“Classy,”
I said, raising one eyebrow.

“I know, right? But I think you mean
classic
. This is vintage eighties style right here.” Unzipping the backpack, he came over and sat back down. “What’s even better, though, is what’s inside.” He pulled out a fistful of cassette tapes, and then produced a small, neon-pink tape player. “Portable.”

“That
is
better.” I grinned at him. The sight he made with the bright pink, girly tape player in his hand was comical. “It’s your color, too. Pink.”

“Matches my eyes.” He held the player up and batted his eyelids.

“You made another trip to the thrift store, huh?” I said. “What did you leave this time?”

Caspian ducked his head and fiddled with the battery compartment. “I sort of, um, didn’t?” He looked up at me. “I don’t really have anything left, and there are only so many books a guy can read before he goes crazy. It’s not an iPod, but at least it’s something.”

“I don’t think they’ll miss it. What songs did you get?”

He held out one of the tapes. “
Christmas Kids Sing the Blues
,” I read. “Wow, that’s kind of an oxymoron.”

He gave me a half smile and flipped through the remaining cassettes. “We also have…
Grover and Me Sing-a-long
, the Sheldon Brothers…”—he raised both eyebrows—“and… Debbie Gibson.”

“Now
that’s
what I call an eclectic music mix.” I laughed.

Caspian put one of the tapes into the player, adjusted the volume to low, and pushed play. “I’m open-minded.”

A mariachi band started up.

I wrinkled my nose at him. “Now we know what the Sheldon Brothers are.”

He pushed stop and switched the tapes. An instant later soft piano and synthesizers came out of the tiny speakers. “Better than the mariachi band,” I said. A female voice started singing.

Caspian tapped his foot along to the beat, and I gave him a skeptical look. “Really? You’re enjoying this?” He cocked his head to one side but didn’t say anything, while Debbie sang about silence speaking a thousand words. I raised an eyebrow at him.

“Don’t you get it?” he said finally. “My silence is speaking a thousand words.”

I rolled my eyes. “My silence is going to speak a thousand words too.”

“Is your silence answering my silence?” he asked, a teasing
glint in his eyes. “Because my silence is getting very suggestive right now.”

I blushed and looked down at my hands.
Will I ever get over this whole embarrassment thing around him?
I sure hoped so.

My phone beeped, and I took it out of my pocket, flipping it open in one fluid motion. Ben’s number was there, and instantly, guilt flooded me. I still hadn’t told Caspian about the trip.

I reached over to the cassette player and turned it off. The sudden silence between us was deafening. “Caspian… I need to tell you something.”

His face changed. “Is it Vincent? Did he find you again?”

“No, no. It’s not him. It’s… I’m leaving tomorrow to go to West Virginia.”

“To Martinsburg?” he asked quietly.

I nodded. “With Ben.”

“Ben? Why?”

The words spilled out of me. “My parents wanted to go. Not to your grave, but to this college. Only, I’m not going to the college. I just told them that as a cover. So then
they
suggested that a friend go with me, and I joked about Ben, and… it just… worked out.”

“Is he driving?”

“Yes.”

“And you’re staying there overnight? With him?”

“Yes.”

“What time do we leave?”

“We’re leaving at—wait, what? We, as in
we
? You and me?”

Caspian smiled an angelic smile. “Yes. You and me. I’m coming.”

I opened my mouth to protest, but Caspian held up a hand and started ticking off each finger as he ran through a list. “I’m going because: One, Vincent Drake is out there, possibly after you. Two, the other Revenants are still out there, possibly after you. Three,
Ben
is going to be there with you.
Alone
…” I snorted, and Caspian gave me a look. “I’m a guy. I know how his mind works.”

“He has feelings for Kristen. Not me.”

“Yeah, well, just wait and see what eight hours alone in a car can do.”

“Six,” I mumbled.

He held up a fourth finger. “Four, you’re going to see
my
grave, and I don’t want you to be alone. Five…” He looked away, like he was trying to think of something else to add. “Five… we’ll get to spend quality time together. And I
love
the license-plate game.”

One side of my mouth turned up in a smile I couldn’t quite quell. “You’re very persuasive, you know that?”

“I learned from the best, Arm-Twister Abbey.”

Laughter burst out of me. Shaking my head, I said, “We’re leaving at eight a.m. Don’t be late.”

“I won’t.” He grinned. “Pack extra snacks.”

I tried to shove his arm and went right through him, laughing again as my hand bounced harmlessly off the bench. “Don’t make me regret telling you about this. Or I’ll let Ben talk about
Star Trek
the whole way down,” I warned.

He groaned. “God help us all.”

I shot him a teasing grin, but inside I was already worrying about the trip. One car. Two boys. Six hours. And I had to try to remember to only speak to one of them.
God help us all.

The next morning Caspian knocked on my window at seven a.m., and I had to finish getting dressed knowing he was right outside the bathroom door.