Soulmates

Tristan, and I've missed you. You don't know how much I've missed you.'

'You don't know how often I've been with you, watching you sleep, listening to you play. It was like last winter all over again, waiting and wanting, hoping you'd notice me.'

The yearning in his voice made Ivy quiver inside, the way his kisses once had.

'If I'd had the right angelic powers, I would have thrown some broccoli and carrots at you,' he added, laughing.

Ivy laughed, too, remembering the tray of vegetables he'd overturned at her mother's wedding.

'It was the carrots in your ears and the shrimp tails up your nose that made you irresistible to both Philip and me,' she said, smiling. 'Oh, Tristan, I wish we'd had this summer together. I wish we could have floated side by side in the center of the lake, letting the sun sparkle at our fingers and toes.'

'All I want is to be close to you,' Tristan told her.

Ivy lifted her head. 'I wish I could feel your arms around me.'

'You couldn't get any closer to my heart than you are now.'

Ivy held out her arms, then folded them around herself like closed wings.

'I've wished a thousand times that I could tell you I love you. But I never believed, I just never believed I'd be given a chance-' 'You have to believe, Ivy!' She heard the fear in his voice ringing inside her. 'Don't stop believing, or you'll stop seeing me. You need me now, in ways that you don't know,' he warned.

'Because of Gregory,' she said, dropping her hands in her lap. 'I do know. I just don't understand why he would want to'-she backed away from the most terrifying thought-'to hurt me.'

'To kill you,' said Tristan. 'Everything that Philip described about that night happened, only 'the bad angel' was Gregory. And it wasn't the first time, Ivy. When you were alone that weekend-' 'But it doesn't make sense,' she cried, 'not after all he's done for me.'

She jumped up from the piano bench and began to pace around the room.

'After the accident, he was the only one who understood why I didn't want to talk about it.'

'He didn't want you to think too much,' Tristan replied. 'He didn't want you to remember that night and start asking questions-such as whether our accident was an accident.'

Ivy paused by the window. Three stories below her, Philip was kicking a soccer ball. Andrew, coming up the driveway, had stopped the car to watch. Her mother was walking across the grass toward him.

'It wasn't an accident,' she said at last. She remembered her nightmare: she was in Tristan's car, and she couldn't stop-just like the night they'd hit the deer and couldn't stop. 'Someone fooled with the brakes.'

'It looks that way.'

Ivy felt sick to her stomach at just the thought of Gregory touching her, kissing her, holding her close, close enough to kill her when the chance arose. She didn't want to believe it. 'Why?' she cried.

'I think it goes back to the night of Caroline's murder.'

Ivy walked back to the piano and sat down slowly, trying to sort things out. 'You mean he blames me for his mother's-his mother's murder? It was suicide, Tristan.' But as she said it she could feel a numbness in her chest and throat, a growing fear that threatened to shut down every reasonable thought.

'You were at the house next door on the night she died,' Tristan told her. 'I think you saw someone in the window, someone who knows what happened or was responsible for it. Try to remember.'

Ivy struggled to separate her memory of the night from the nightmares that had followed. 'All I could see was a shadow of a person. With all the reflections on the glass, I never saw who it was.'

'But he saw you.'

Bit by bit, the dream was unraveling. Ivy began to shake.

'I know,' Tristan said gently. 'I know.'

Ivy longed to feel the touch that she had once felt when he spoke to her that way.

'I'm afraid, too,' Tristan said. 'I don't have the powers to protect you by myself. But believe me, Ivy, together we're stronger than he is.'

'Oh, Tristan, I've missed you.'

'I've missed you,' he replied, 'missed holding you, kissing you, making you mad…'

She laughed.

'Ivy, play for me.'

'Don't-don't ask me that now. I just want to keep hearing your voice,' she pleaded. 'I thought I had lost you forever, but now you're here-' 'Shhh, Ivy. Play. I heard a noise. Someone's in your bedroom.'

Ivy glanced at Ella, who stood at the top of the Steps now, peering down into the darkness. The cat crept quietly down the stairs, her tail bristling. It's Gregory, Ivy thought.

She nervously opened a book and began to play. Ivy played loudly, trying to blot out the memories of Gregory's embraces, his urgent kisses, the night they had been alone in the store and the night they had been alone in the darkened house.

Trying to kill her? Killing his mother? It didn't make sense. She could almost understand how Eric could do it, half crazed with drugs. She remembered the message she'd overheard on Gregory's phone; Eric was always in need of drug money. Maybe he had tried to get some from Caroline, and things went wrong.

But what motive would Gregory have had for such a terrible thing?

'That's what I've been trying to figure out.'

Ivy stopped playing for a moment. 'You can hear me?' she asked silently.

'You don't cloak your thoughts as well as Will.'

So he had heard everything she had just thought, including the part about the urgent kisses. Ivy began playing again, banging on the piano.

Tristan sounded as if he were shouting in her head. 'I guess I shouldn't have been listening in, huh?'

She smiled and softened the music.

'Ivy, we need to be honest with each other. If we can't trust each other, who else can we depend on?'

'I love you. That's honest,' Ivy said, speaking all her words silently now, so only Tristan could hear. She finished the song and was about to start another.

'He's gone,' Tristan told her.

Ivy breathed a sigh of relief.

'Listen to me, Ivy. You've got to get out of here.'

'Get out? What do you mean?' she asked.

'You have to get as far away from Gregory as you can.'

'That's impossible,' Ivy said. 'I can't just get up and leave. I have nowhere to go.'

'You'll find somewhere. And I'll ask Lacey-she's an angel-to stay near you. Until I can figure out what's going on and come up with some evidence to take to the police, you have to get away from here.'

'No,' Ivy said, pushing back the piano bench.

'Yes,' he insisted. Then he told her about what he had learned from time-traveling through the minds of Gregory and Eric He recounted the angry scene between Gregory and his mother, how Caroline had taunted him with a piece of paper, and how he'd shoved the floor lamp at her, cutting her face. Then Tristan told Ivy about the memory he had experienced in Eric's mind, the intense scene between him and Caroline, which had taken place on a stormy evening.

'You're right about Eric,' Tristan concluded. 'He needs drug money and he's involved. But I still don't know exactly what he's done for Gregory.'

'Eric was searching the gully by the station today,' Ivy said.

'He was? Then he took Gregory's threat seriously,' Tristan replied, and recounted the argument he had overheard at the party. 'I'll watch both of them. In the meantime, you need to get away.'

'No,' Ivy repeated.

'Yes, as soon as possible.'

'No!' This time the voice leaped out of her. Tristan fell silent.

'I'm not leaving,' she said, speaking within her mind again. Ivy walked to the window and gazed out at the old and windblown trees that topped the ridge, trees that had become familiar to her in the last six months.