My head swirled, Looking away, I tried to focus on my own life and my own memories, but Luke's kept flashing through my head in dreamlike spurts. My eyes were suddenly heavy, as if the sleepless night had caught up with me all in a rush. I wanted to lie down on the street and give in to sleep, but a part of me knew my exhaustion couldn't be natural.
"What's wrong with me?" I asked, my eyes half-lidded. Luke glanced over to me and sighed.
"You're tired?" I nodded slowly.
He held a hand out toward me for the third time since the tomb. I shouldn't have taken it. But screw it. I was too tired to process my doubts and the still-flashing images of his past and I wanted to take his hand so badly it hurt. I reached my hand out and he took it firmly, leading me down the road toward home like a small child.
"Have you ever heard of psychic vampires? People who take energy from other people to fuel themselves?"
"Uh-huh."
"Those people only wish they could be Eleanor when they grow up. She must've used a lot of energy to do that
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vanishing trick of hers. I was wondering who she got it from."
I stumbled and pulled myself back up. "Why aren't you like this? Why only me?"
"Because you were easy. Because she wanted to hurt
you.
He said something else too, but I wasn't paying attention. I was falling asleep on my feet. Luke released my hand and I immediately sank down onto the road, relieved just to stop.
"No, pretty girl. Come on." He leaned over and lifted me as if I were only the slightest of packages. The tiny bit of me that was awake whispered, Can't trust him. Tell him to put you down. I just rolled my face next to his soft black shirt, his familiar smell lulling me to sleep, wishing life was just this simple.
***
I woke up a little bit when cold air-conditioning bit my skin. He'd carried me right into the house, past a grumbling Rye on the kitchen floor and up the narrow stairs, turning me so I didn't kick the wall. It was proof how much Eleanor had drained me that the idea that Mom might discover us didn't make me leap from his arms. Somehow it didn't surprise me that Luke knew right where my room was, making his way silently across the floor, quieter than fallen snow at night.
Carefully, he set me down on the bed and tugged the
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blankets up around me. My bed felt amazing after two nights of sleeping on the couch--cool and soft. Luke knelt so he was eye level with me. I looked at him through slitted eyes as he gazed back at me, his expression pensive, the dried, red, tear-stain untouched on his cheek. "Is everything ruined now?"
I blinked slowly, an image of him laughing and playing with a dog very like Rye flicking behind my eyelids like a slide in a projector. I wasn't sure if I answered out loud. "I don't know." I couldn't think of a way to answer that question without knowing why he'd killed those people.
Blink. An image of his fingers hooked around the edge of the tore, tearing at it. Blink. The present-day Luke again, fingers close enough to touch me, but not.
"Do you still see my memories?"
I forced my eyes open and nodded against the pillow.
His voice was barely a whisper. "I see yours, too."
I mumbled, "I really screwed up, didn't I?"
He touched the bloodstain on his cheek-- my blood-- and rested his forehead on the edge of the bed. "Oh, Dee. What am I going to do?" Time passed, unnoticed. Was I sleeping? Blink. An image of him kissing my cheek softly, or maybe it really happened. Then a hollow feeling in my gut, when I realized he was gone.
And then just sleep.
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BOOK THREE
I sat within a valley green
Sat there with my true love
And my fond heart strove to choose between
The old love and the new love...
While soft the wind blew down the glade
And shook the golden barley.
--"The Wind That Shakes the Barley"
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thirteen
I woke up to a beeping cell phone and loud voices downstairs. Mom and Delia. No surprise there. They argued like other people breathed; it was instinctive and unavoidable. I buried my face away from the too-bright sun; I must have really slept in.
Rolling onto my stomach, I extricated the phone from my back pocket (good thing I'd rescued these jeans from the laundry when I went out to meet Luke, or else the phone would've gotten washed). I sat up and wiped the sleep out of my eyes. I felt like I'd been dead for the past few hours. I'd been lost in a dreamless sleep so heavy I'd slept through my phone ringing.
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Luke.
I was instantly awake, the events of the melodrama that was now my life running through my head. I flipped open the phone: fourteen missed calls, three new texts. Every call was from James. They started at about six a.m., with the last one just a few minutes ago. I opened the text messages.
First: wakey wakey.
Next one: i need 2 talk 2 u.
Last one: call granna.
I didn't call Granna, of course. I called James. He picked up before the first ring had even finished.
"What are you, sleeping in a coffin these days? Eve been trying to get you for hours."
"What's wrong?"
"Did you call Granna?"
I climbed out of bed, stiff from sleeping in my jeans. "No, I called you. You called me fourteen times, so I figured it was important."
"It is important. I think something's happened to your grandmother."
"Huh?"
"Call it my spidey sense. Did she bring you that stuff she was making?"
Come to think of it, she hadn't. I felt a little guilty for forgetting about
