her sweaty skin. She walks past the still-smoldering fire pit and heads toward the horse barn, breathing in the scents of fall. Leaves crunch under her feet. She takes in the deep night, the bright stars.
The silence of air.
The horse barn is locked up for the night. It figures, considering the strange stuff of Cryer’s Cross these days. Kendall sinks to the grass and leans up against the barn wall, staring into the night. Thinking.
About everything. Nico. And college. Jacian and how hot she feels lately when she’s around him. And then the guilt comes again. Pounding her, beating her up.
Alongside that is the crazy, otherworldly scariness of the desk. And again, now that she is alone, she wonders if there actually might be something real about it. What if it truly is Nico? What if he is trapped in the school, being kept tied up by. . by old Mr. Greenwood? And maybe he is allowed to roam the school at night, leaving messages for Kendall?
But why wouldn’t he leave them on Kendall’s desk? And if it were Nico doing the graffiti, how could he make the new stuff look like it had been there for years — and why would he want to?
Kendall thinks she knows now. She’s pretty damn sure.
Because that desk, the desk that makes people disappear, is possessed.
And maybe so are the people who touch it.
It dawns on her. There’s no kidnapper. There’s absolutely no need for this crazy buddy system. Kendall could wander Cryer’s Cross naked in the middle of the darkest night and nobody would kidnap her.
It’s not a who.
It’s a what.
She shudders violently. “Fletcher! You’re crazy,” she reprimands. “Knock it off already.”
A stick crackles, as if Kendall’s outburst startles someone. Kendall whips around and scrambles to her feet. She peers into the darkness. Her heart pounds. She backs up to the barn as tightly as she can, as if its size and structure can give her strength.
A figure appears and stops abruptly as if it senses her.
Kendall freezes. “Who’s there?”
“It’s just me,” Jacian says. He walks toward her, peering through the darkness. “Your parents are here.
They’re worried because they couldn’t find you.”
“Oh.”
“I said I knew where you were and that you were fine.”
“Oh,” she says again. Flustered. “Did you?”
“I saw you go out.” He stands there a moment. “So you should probably go back inside and prove that for me now, so I don’t get interrogated again. For the third time.” He turns and starts walking back to the house.
“Jacian,” Kendall says.
“What?”
She jogs to catch up to him, not knowing what she intends to say, only that she doesn’t want him to walk away. “You’re a really good dancer.”
“So are you.” His voice is husky from working in the smoke all evening.
“You saw?”
His silence is affirmation enough.
Kendall shoves her hands into her jeans pockets, shivers a little. “When did you break up with your girlfriend?”
He’s quiet for a minute. “That night I went to your house. It was over between us months ago, when I moved. It just took us a long time to say it out loud.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
He shoves a hand into his pocket and looks up to the sky. “It didn’t seem like it would make any difference to you.” After a moment he turns toward the house and starts walking again, faster this time.
“Jacian,” she says again, and jogs after him. “Wait.”
“What now?”
“I. . just. .” She grips his arm. Feels her heart pound.
He stops. Turns toward her. “You feel like slapping me again?”
“Yes,” she says. She can hardly breathe.
He stands there for a moment, and then he slips his fingers behind her neck, weaving them into her hair, his breath warm on her face. He crushes his lips against hers, pulls her body close, closer.
Kendall can’t think. She reaches for his neck, his face, tentatively, moving to his chest, grabbing his Tshirt in her fingers. She can’t breathe. Doesn’t want to breathe. Just wants to forget everything.
Just as abruptly he pulls away. “What do you want, Kendall? Are you really ready for this? I don’t think you are.”
She gasps and takes a step back. “Shit,” she says. “I’m so sorry.”
He stares. “Me too.”
“You understand that I can’t. .”
He closes his eyes wearily. Takes a deep breath, lets it out, and turns away. “You can’t,” he says. “You can’t do anything because of your missing boyfriend.” His voice is filled with bitterness. “Sure, I understand. Yeah, you just wanted to get a freebie, just a little something, so you can keep mourning without missing too much action. What’s not to understand? Besides the fact that it was obvious you two were so much more like brother and sister than boyfriend and girlfriend.” He doesn’t wait for her to respond. “Obvious to me from the moment I saw you.”
“You don’t know anything,” Kendall says.
“Maybe you should think about getting a different ride to school. How about your other boyfriend, Eli?”
“What, now you’re you jealous of Eli?” she blurts out. But then she gets control. “His car is full already.
And maybe you’re right about Nico and me, and I just didn’t know any different.” She bites her lip, still tasting Jacian, hating herself for wanting to kiss him again. “Jacian,” she says quietly. “All I know is that
Nico never made me feel like you make me feel. Nobody does.”
Jacian stands there a long moment, agonizing, and then rips his fingers through his hair and turns back toward the horse barn. “God, Kendall! Don’t. I can’t do this.” He swallows hard and looks away. “You do this, and I’m the one who looks bad.” His eyes bite through the darkness, but his voice is resigned. “I can’t keep being the bad guy around here.”
He turns away and jogs off into the darkness.
Kendall trudges slowly, numbly, to the house.
We slumber, lying in wait, saving Our strength for the day. Now sensing, now quivering. Thirty-five, one hundred. Thirty-five, one hundred.
Redemption dawns.
Kendall goes to sleep thinking about Jacian, but at night her dreams are about Nico again, urgently trying to contact her through the desk. He pleads, cries out, begging her to find him, save him.
When she wakes up, sluggish and still exhausted, her heart is all mixed up about how she’s supposed to be feeling about guys and life and death. So conflicted. But the one thing that’s clear to Kendall is that she needs to go back there. Back to Nico’s desk one more time. Because if she doesn’t, she’ll never shake the feeling that his blood is on her hands, that she could save him if she just weren’t so stubborn.
The ride to school is quiet. Marlena, in the middle with a birthday-cake hangover, rests her head against the seat back and whines about how tired she is. Jacian drives stone-faced. Kendall aches. They are all lacking sleep for a variety of reasons.
Kendall knows that whatever happened last night, it’s never going to happen again. She’s devoted to
Nico. She has to be. No matter what. At least until somebody knows something about what happened to him. She moves mechanically.
Jacian doesn’t speak to Kendall. Resolute, she goes about her morning routine and then, as if drawn in, she
