Wildcat Fireflies (25 page)

I ducked back behind the wall, praying they wouldn’t ask for me or acknowledge we’d met before. If Mistress knew I was still awake she’d tell me to start on tomorrow’s list and kiss off sleep.

“Good night.” The boy and the girl spoke in unison, leaning against each other like they were in love and couldn’t get enough touching.

“Good night. Come back if you need to!” Mistress shut the front door behind them as they left. “Stupid necking idiots. The world would be better off drowning teenagers.”

Nicole elbowed me and we backpedaled down the hallway. “Do you know those kids?”

“No. I mean, I met them once down by the creek, but that’s all.”

“They seemed nice. I don’t buy that they were hooking up by the boat ramp.”

“Why not?”

“Check out the window now.” Nicole pressed her face against the glass with me. “He’s carrying her.”

“Did she faint?”

“Maybe. But if she was sick you’d think they’d come back inside.”

“She didn’t look well.”

“Plus, it’s closer to walk into town than to out here, if they really broke down at the boat ramp.”

“So what were they doing here?” I asked, watching a huge dog join their parade until they were out of sight.

Nicole shrugged.

“Nico?” Bodie stumbled down the attic stairs.

“Yes? I’m coming.” To me she said, “I’ll see you in the morning?”

“Sure, but I have coffee with Ms. Asura.”

Nicole’s expression closed and darkened. “Be careful.” She hugged me quickly and tight.

What was the worst thing that might happen? I mean,
really
?

“Oh, here’s this.” Nicole handed me the piece of paper she’d pulled from the copier.

I smoothed it out. At a glance, it looked like I would be able to read every word. “I thought you said it was ruined?”

“Guess we got lucky.” She herded Bodie back up the stairs and I tucked the page in my bra to look at when I got down to my space.

I realized alarms were going off in two rooms when the nurse came barreling up the stairs with Mistress hot on her heels.

“I’
m okay, you can put me down now,” I said to Tens. My breath clouded the words in a chilly bubble.

Tens grunted.

“Haven’t we done this before?” I tried to smile.

He stopped and gently set me on my feet. “You’re heavier now than you were then.”

I couldn’t be offended by the truth. Back at Auntie’s I was sticks and sickly, painful flesh.
Real sexy
.

“What happened?” Tens leaned against a tree trunk. The lights of Dunklebarger were still visible through the bare branches of the trees.

“Do you remember when Auntie talked about ghosts? Spirits that didn’t cross over for whatever reason?”

“Like Charles?”

Auntie’s husband, Charles, waited and watched and kept up his protective vigil until the end. Of course, that meant he scared the crap out of me several times before I knew what was going on. “Yes and no.” I sank to the ground and let the cold damp soak up the back of my legs. I felt like I’d gone ten rounds with a T. rex.

“There are old people dying in there, right?”

I nodded, the three-quarter moon beckoning me with its blue cool to believe in magic and in fairies. That wasn’t quite right, though. This hadn’t felt like older energy, not all of it.

“What don’t I understand?” Tens asked.

“It wasn’t old energy in there. Not elderly souls, but kids, teens too.”

Mini and Bodie came running toward us.

“Wait!” Bodie called in a whisper-yell.

I waved to acknowledge him. Tens and I ducked further into the shadows in case his voice carried back to the house.

Mini yowled. Custos barked in response and greeted Bodie with a tongue lashing of the slobbery kind.

“You shouldn’t be out here.” I sounded like the kid’s mother.

“I snuck. All the old folks are real sick, busy dying.” Bodie gasped for breath. His little legs had worked so hard to catch us it took a moment for the words to be put together in such a way they made sense.

“What do you mean, all the old people are …?”

“Dying.” He nodded, still gasping.

“Catch your breath, then talk,” Tens commanded, scooting his back against a tree. Like we had all the time in the world and a surprise rendezvous with a first-grader was perfectly normal.

Mini wrapped herself around my legs, reaching up with her claws to stretch her back, but I didn’t feel any divine information headed my way. She meowed plaintively; maybe it was my imagination, but she sounded quite disgusted with me. She twitched her tail and turned to Tens.

Bodie knelt on the grass, but he stayed out of reach. I didn’t know if that was because he didn’t trust us, or because his instinct was to make sure he could escape any situation. “Mini said we needed to get you back.”

“Back?”

“Uh-huh. To the house. The bells and stuff started dinging. You left and they went crazy.” His eyes widened.

I glanced at Tens.

“So Mini says you have to come back and sneak into the house until it’s safe again for Juliet.”

“Oh—” Now the cat talked to Bodie, too? What was wrong with me?

“No.” Tens talked over me.

“We can’t—” I shook my head.

“You hafta,” Bodie insisted.

Mini punctuated this with a yowl. Bodie scrambled up and headed back toward Dunklebarger with her. “Come on!” His voice held an authority that belied his tiny frame and oversized eyes. “Hurry!”

“Merry, you can’t.” Tens caught my arm as I started to follow.

“I’m okay. I can handle the willing souls fine.”

He nodded acceptance.

Tens and I jogged along with Bodie until we got to the back of the house. Bodie dipped under a tall hedge of vines.

“Don’t touch those,” he said over his shoulder. What was easy for the boy to squeeze through was hard for me and almost impossible for Tens.

Bodie watched us struggle through. “Sorry, it’s the fastest way to the house.”

Vines wrapped around my neck and arms, creeping down my shirt like itchy fingers. I battled them like they were living opponents. I had to be more tired than I thought to hallucinate that much. They seemed to move at will, not as inert vines should. I shivered.

We waited outside the kitchen door, in the shadows, along the back of the building. Then we crept in at Bodie’s frantic hand signals.

Tens mumbled under his breath, “We’re insane.”

Sneaking through the kitchen with appliances way predating this century, we heard yelling and trampling footsteps above our heads.

“In here.” Bodie herded us toward the stairs, opened a small door, and shoved us into a cramped storage space. “Go to the back. Nico will get you when it’s safe. Keep going.” He thrust a flashlight into my hands, gestured for us to tunnel in, and shut the door behind us.

I couldn’t help but wonder if this was a trap. A crazy Nocti plan to lock us in a closet and burn the house down around us. I flicked the switch and handed the flashlight forward to Tens. He pushed past stacks of toilet paper and paper towels. “There’s a mattress back here,” he whispered.

“Tens?” The hair on the back of my neck stood up. “I need to sit.” I felt like I’d stuck my head out of a window of a car going sixty miles per hour—the world rushed up toward my face and I stood at a shining summer window.

“Hello, dear.” Auntie stood next to me. She embraced me and I felt her against me, solid flesh and blood. I smelled her apple blossom soap and famous chocolate cake.

Shocked, I wrapped my arms around her. “I can hear you?” I asked. Lined up around us were six elderly men and women growing more vibrant with each second, like extra coats of colorful paint were added with each blink. And children—there were children lined up single file, just a few, confused, but there nonetheless. Were children dying in here or were these ghosts of children who’d passed but hadn’t transitioned?

“We don’t have much time, these lovely souls have agreed to take turns with your window. Slowly, so we can talk.”

“How is this possible?” I asked, aghast.

Auntie’s face grew serious. “There’s no time for that. Look in the journal, 1943 and a girl named Prunella.”

I nodded as if this made sense.

Auntie continued. “You have to be careful not to scare
Juliet. She won’t believe. The key is Father Anthony, get her to him. She won’t leave the others without making the choice be hers. You must be patient. There’s a Nocti clan nearby. You must be ready for anything.”

In no time at all, Auntie moved back toward the window as the last elderly man stepped across, holding the hand of a small boy I didn’t recognize.

“Why are there kids here?”

“They sacrifice to convert—”

“But—” I called to her, watching her disappear across the ledge. I didn’t want her to leave. I gasped for breath and blinked up at Tens, whose hand covered my mouth. The flashlight was pressed tightly against his chest, so only the faintest glow illuminated him.

I relaxed my grip on his hand; I knew my nails left deep crescent marks.

His expression questioned whether I was awake enough for him to release my mouth or not.

I nodded, gulping air. Even the stuffy, dusty, stagnant air of the crawl space quenched my need for oxygen.

My right leg cramped and I straightened it by contorting around Tens’s waist. We must have looked like a freeze-frame during a game of Twister.

“Okay?” he asked, shifting.

“Better,” I said as my cramp eased.

His breathing evened out, to the point that I might have believed he’d fallen asleep, if not for the tension holding his frame motionless.

I strained my ears to distinguish noises and voices
from the sounds rolling around us. My mind filled in the blanks, imagining all sorts of wild scenarios. Darkness did terrible things to my imagination. Anxiety ate at my rational self and I was transported back to Revelation, worrying that at any moment Perimo might storm in with henchmen and burn us like they burned Auntie’s house and her remains.
He’s dead. He’s dead. He’s dead. Josiah killed him. You were there. You saw it
.

My mantra brought little comfort, but I kept repeating it in my head, while trying to match my breath to Tens’s. Josiah, a Sangre Warrior, the species of angel who battle evil with light, filled Perimo with so much light, Perimo’s darkness disappeared for good. I didn’t know enough about Sangre yet. To the best of my knowledge they were the only ones able to kill Nocti. It wasn’t as if Josiah was on my speed dial. But there were more Nocti out there. Causing chaos. Creating havoc. Ripping souls from their families and taking them to the void. Hunting Fenestra to kill or turn. Manipulating the environment to take advantage of human frailty was against the rule of the Creators—that was where Sangre came into play. I think. I hadn’t figured out how Fenestras could defeat Nocti if a Sangre wasn’t available.

Tens turned off the flashlight. Not even the crack of light from under the small door made it to us back behind the cleaning supplies. “Merry, why is there a mattress tucked back here?” Tens whispered against my ear, his breath tickling, sending shivers down my spine.

“What?” I blinked.

“Someone sleeps here.”

Or we will, if this is a trap
. “Maybe they knew we were coming and made a holding cell?”

“There wouldn’t be a kinda comfortable mattress then.” He tsked.

“Good point.” They’d throw us in a dungeon or the modern equivalent.

“So … who?” Tens wouldn’t drop it and I took the bait.

Who sleeps here? Who tucked an air mattress and a single ratty old army blanket behind paper towels and rolls of TP? Someone hiding
.

“It’s hidden,” I said.

Tens nodded against my neck.

I concentrated on being completely in the moment. Pushing all fear of the unknown out of my head. I closed my eyes, even though in the dark it was a redundant gesture.

“Juliet.” I felt the truth in her name.

“Why?” He shifted his hips against me.

I don’t know how, but I simply know
. It was the same feeling I had when we’d come upon her at the creek. Pieces fit together. When I wasn’t stuck in the past, in my fear of Nocti and what we’d experienced in Colorado, I felt stronger. “She escapes back here. Turn on the flashlight.”

He clicked the switch back on. “Careful,” he warned.

I glanced around and noticed three bottles of cleaners in the far back corner. They looked out of place. “Hand me the bleach.”

“What are you doing?” He reached for the bottle and
lifted it. It rattled. Not like it held liquid, but like pieces of glass or metal were inside. He paused, quirking a brow in question.

“Open it,” I demanded.

Tens shifted against me, our legs tangled in the small space. He accidentally elbowed me in the ribs.

“Umph.”

“Sorry.”

I shook my head. Nodded at the bottle.

He tried to unscrew the top, but it wouldn’t come off.

“Wait.” I saw a piece of duct tape on the bottom. “Turn it over.”

Tens pointed the flashlight directly at the bottom of the jug. The contents shifted and rattled with each movement. We both turned toward the door hoping no one heard. Silence fell upon the activity above our heads.

“Not bleach.”

I carefully lifted the tape and peered inside using the flashlight. I saw a collection of pebbles, shells, an arrowhead, and feathers.

Tens took a look. “What do you think this is?”

“Treasures?”

We opened another bottle and saw a bird’s nest filled with empty blue eggshells, carefully wrapped in toilet paper to keep the bundle safe. I gently put it all back, pondering why Juliet kept a collection of outside trinkets disguised in plastic bottles.

We couldn’t risk making more noise, because the quiet felt oppressive.

I heard doors slamming above our heads as what
seemed like several vehicles drove up outside. More doors slammed and a clatter of heels against the stairs descended.