I yelped and whirled around to see Gray standing right behind me. "G.o.d, you scared the wits out of me. Ever hear of knocking?"
"The door was open." He stared past me at the suitcase. "Where did you find that?"
"In my closet, but they"re not mine." I eyed him. "You or Trick like to dress up like girls?"
"They were Mom"s clothes."
That explained the scent; our mother"s name had been Rose, and she had always worn rose-scented perfume.
All the anger inside me faded as I reached for one of the pretty blouses. I"d been too young when our parents had died to remember much about my mother, but thinking of her always made me feel a little blue. "She really wore these?"
"Yeah." He came to stand beside me. "Trick"s been saving them for you, I guess."
"Not like you guys could wear them, although you might look good in lace." I held up the blouse against my front. "Why didn"t he tell me he put them in my closet?"
Now his eyes shifted away. "He probably forgot."
I had seen a few pictures of our mother, who had been a pet.i.te blonde with big blue eyes. I was tall and thin like our father, so I probably couldn"t wear any of her slacks, but some of the blouses might fit.
"Gray, are you-" Trick stopped in his tracks when he saw Mom"s blouse in my hands. "What are you doing with that?"
"I found it in my closet, so I"m going to wear it to work." I held it up and faced him. "What do you think? Does it say "responsible employee"?"
"I was saving those for when you grew up." He sounded angry.
"I don"t think I"m going to get any taller." I measured one sleeve against my arm. "They should fit me okay now. Any other objections?"
I could tell from his expression that he didn"t want me to wear my mother"s clothes. From his silence I knew he didn"t want to tell me why. I didn"t feel sorry for him, though. If my big brother had been honest with me about everything, he wouldn"t be in this position.
Gray looked from me to Trick. "Those old books might be dirty, Cat. You don"t want to ruin Mom"s clothes."
"Dust washes out, Grim. Besides, I"ll be wearing gloves and an ap.r.o.n." I was almost enjoying myself now. "Now if you two don"t mind, I"d like to get a shower so I can try these on and see how they fit."
They didn"t leave, and for a second I thought Trick was thinking of using his ability to make me forget I"d found the clothes. I didn"t know how I"d stop him if he tried-or even if I could-but I stood my ground. I knew I"d never been able to prevent him from doing it before, but maybe this time I could punch him before he brainwashed me again.
"You"d better braid your hair," Trick said finally. "You don"t want it getting in the way while you"re working."
My brothers went back downstairs, but I didn"t hear them leave the house. I grabbed my newest pair of jeans and a towel and went into the bathroom, turning on the shower before I walked out into the hall.
I could hear Gray and Trick talking in the kitchen, and because they thought I was in the shower, the talk was probably about me.
If they catch me I"ll pretend I ran out of soap, I thought as I carefully made my way down the stairs. I"d already tested each step thoroughly so I could avoid the squeaky spots.
I went to the laundry room, the best spot for eavesdropping, and positioned myself behind the door.
"-not coming back," Gray was saying, "but she"s getting suspicious. If you don"t quit jumping on her she"s going to start asking questions you don"t want to answer."
"I"m glad you"ve decided that this is my fault." Trick sounded disgusted. "Why didn"t you put that case up in the attic, like I told you to?"
"I thought I did," Gray insisted. "It must have gotten mixed up with hers when we unloaded the truck."
"The damage is done. At least this time she didn"t have a flashback." My oldest brother made a tired sound. "We can"t make any more mistakes, Gray."
I didn"t wait to listen to anymore; I hurried back upstairs and locked myself in the steamy bathroom. My hands shook as I undressed and stepped into the shower, where I leaned against the tiles and closed my eyes.
Trick had a trunk that I was pretty sure had once belonged to Abraham Van Helsing; I"d found it filled with old books and papers about vampires, and some of the iron weapons our ancestor had used. He"d made me forget about it at least twice, and probably more times than that; now I knew he was keeping other things from me.
Why didn"t you put that case up in the attic, like I told you to?
I"d never been up in the attic. I didn"t even know we had one. Was that something else he made me forget? If I didn"t remember anything, why did he sound so worried?
I quickly finished my shower, dried off and brushed out my hair before I dressed. Mom"s blouse proved to be only a little loose, and while pastel lavender wasn"t a color I ever wore, it looked good on me.
Why would seeing Mom"s clothes make me have a flashback? I"d only been about five when my parents had died. I could barely remember them.
I straightened the delicate lace collar, and then reached out to wipe a circle in the steam-clouded mirror. My face looked whiter than usual, while my eyes had gone dark; a sure sign I was going to get a ma.s.sive headache. I took my bottle of aspirin from the cabinet and dry-swallowed two pills. The bitter taste on my tongue matched my mood as I braided my damp hair.
Frustration made me want to yank my hair out of my scalp. No, what I really wanted was to go down there and tell my brothers that I knew what they"d been doing to me. But if I did that, Trick would erase my memories and move us to another town, someplace where he could keep me completely clueless and cut off from the world.
I"d lose Jesse again, this time for good, and no matter how angry I felt, I wasn"t going to let that happen.
Five.
My brothers had gone back to the barn by the time I went back downstairs, so I made a sandwich and bagged it along with some fruit and a couple of water bottles. That went with my purse into the red and black plaid backpack I used for school, which I figured would be easier to carry while riding the bus and walking around town.
I couldn"t leave without saying good-bye, so I made myself go out to the barn. Gray was holding a section of the pen up for Trick, who was drilling holes in it, but both of them looked up as I approached.
"I"m leaving now," I said in my best cheerful tone. "Want to wish me luck?"
"You won"t need any," Gray told me, and even sounded like he meant it.
"Call and check in with me when you"re on your break," Trick said.
I gave them a farewell wave and started toward the front gate. Gray caught up with me before I got to it.
"Here." He shoved something into my hand. "You might need this so you don"t miss the bus home."
I recognized the old silver pocket watch; Trick had given it to Gray for his sixteenth birthday. Like the St. Christopher"s medal I wore, it had once belonged to our dad. I also knew it was Gray"s most prized possession. "I can"t take it."
"Give it back to me tonight." He tapped my wrist. "And next time, remember to put on your watch." He grinned at me before he strode back toward the pen.
I slipped Dad"s watch in my pocket and went through the gate, latching it behind me. I didn"t want to hate my brothers forever, and every time I thought I would Gray or Trick would do something to pull me in the opposite direction. It wasn"t fair.
Walking to the bus stop didn"t take long, and when I reached the wooden-slat bench seat by the sign at the corner I checked Gray"s watch and saw that I had another ten minutes to wait.
Our nearest neighbor was another six and a half miles away, so the only thing surrounding the road
were fenced-off pastures and fields. Big rounds of feed gra.s.s that had been cut and baled sat like giant pencil erasers across one pasture; a small herd of goats wandered scrounging through another harvested field. In the
distance I could see slow-moving Black Angus cattle shuffling around a ditch where another neighbor had been burning dead brush and long, twisted branches of black oaks. Just beyond it a tractor stood hitched to a gigantic trailer piled with weathered and broken lumber; he must have torn down an outbuilding or a barn.
A plaintive mew and the brush of fur against my jeans made me look down at a cream-colored cat with dark brown ears, paws and tail. The rhinestone-studded collar he wore was the exactly same shade of blue as his eyes.
"Hey, kitty." I reached down to let him sniff my hand, but he leapt up onto my lap and rubbed his head under my chin. "Nice to meet you, too."
On his collar was a bright new metal tag engraved with the name "Johnson" along with an address on a county road I knew was on the other side of Lost Lake.
I cradled the cat"s face between my palms. "Why did you stray twenty miles from home, sweetie?"
I wasn"t expecting an answer, but the cat gracefully jumped down and scampered across the road. The reason seemed to be the rumbling sound of a diesel engine coming close, and when I turned I saw the bus into town coming toward my stop.
As the bus"s brakes squealed, I shouldered my backpack and took out the change for the fare. The narrow doors at the front of the bus swung open, and I climbed up inside to deposit the coins in the change meter.
The driver, a big man with hair so bright red it was almost orange, nodded to me and waited until I took a seat in the back before pulling onto the road.
Only six other people were riding the bus into town; two men dressed in town maintenance uniforms, an older woman in a mauve cardigan who was knitting something small, two boys in soccer jerseys and some lanky teen in a black hoodie who was slouched down in the seat in front of me. Everyone glanced at me except the kid in the hoodie, whose face was concealed behind an open photography magazine.
I got comfortable and looked out the window to see if the cat had emerged from the brush, but the sound of the bus must have scared her off. Cats were pretty sensible that way; if she"d been a dog she probably would have tried to chase us into town. I still couldn"t figure out what she was doing all the way out here; she"d looked too sleek and well-fed to be anything but an indoor cat.
"The view doesn"t get better," a wry voice warned.
I looked at Black Hoodie, who had turned around to talk to me. "Excuse me?"
"You"re still living in the creepiest small town in Central Florida." The kid pushed back the hood to reveal her face. I recognized her as Karise Carson, Tanglewood High School"s only real Goth girl. Her shorn blonde hair had grown out a little, and she"d switched her black lipstick for a softer, prettier pink gloss, but silver still glittered from her nose and eyebrow piercings. "Why are you resorting to public transport, Youngblood? Your brothers too cheap to drive you into town?"
"I"ve got a job for winter break at ... " I stopped talking to gape at her. "You know my name."
"Sure, you"re Catlyn Youngblood." She smothered a yawn. "Got some pics of you, too. You"re very photogenic. Real supermodel material."
"I haven"t seen you since before Halloween, have I?" I knew I hadn"t, but I didn"t want to jump ahead of myself.
"Nope." Her eyes gleamed. "I was too tied up to make the school dance. I also missed that nasty flu that went around the day after. You know, the real tricky one."
I understood what Kari meant: my brother hadn"t erased her memories. "How did you manage not to catch that?"
"Easy." She turned her head and bared her teeth at Mauve Cardigan, who was watching us, and whose mouth puckered with disapproval before she went back to her bootie knitting. "I pretended I already had it. Seek, my boyfriend"-she rolled her eyes over the last two words-"did the same as me, so he"s cool, too."
"You haven"t told anyone that you didn"t get ... sick?" As she shook her head, I relaxed a little. "I am so sorry about this, Kari."
"Why? You didn"t do it." She finally got up and came to sit beside me. "Seek and I wanted to let you know, but when you came back to school it was pretty obvious you"d gotten a really good dose. We were afraid if we told you, you"d go to your brother, and he"d come after us. Or the sheriff would, now that they"re such good buddies. And me and Seek, we"re ... " she hesitated, and then sighed. "Okay, I"ll admit it. We"re stupid crazy in love with each other; we have been since Halloween night. We couldn"t risk losing that."
What Trick had done had frightened and angered me, but I"d never considered how it affected anyone but me and Jesse. Now Kari made me realize that he hadn"t simply erased the town"s memories, he"d stolen bits and pieces of their lives.
"Cat." Kari waited until I looked at her. "I"ve got to get off at the next stop. Where are you working in town?" After I told her, she nodded. "Sometimes I hang out at Tony"s Garage, one block over. It"s where Seek works. Maybe we"ll run into each other again one night."
"I hope so."
"Until we do, stay healthy, Youngblood." She reached up to pull the stop cord, and then gathered up her things and got off the bus. I watched her through the window as she walked down a dirt road toward an apartment building.
I felt a small surge of hope. If Kari and her boyfriend had avoided being brainwashed, maybe other people had, too. My brother might have a freakish, scary ability, but he wasn"t all-powerful. He couldn"t control everyone.
Mauve Cardigan, I noticed, was watching me again. I couldn"t manage a Kari-glare so I gave her a little smile.
She smiled back.
I got off the bus at the closest stop to the bookstore, at the little park in front of City Hall, about two blocks away. My watch said I had twenty minutes before I was supposed to start work, so I wasn"t going to be late. Finding out Kari remembered me had been a shock, one that still made me feel a little shaky, so I sat on one of the benches encircling the fountain to drink some water and calm down.
"Ms. Youngblood?"
I looked up at two small reflections of my face in Sheriff Yamah"s mirrored sungla.s.ses. "Yes, sir?"
He studied me for a second. "You all right, young lady?"
"I"m fine." No, I was horribly uncomfortable as I remembered how I"d made Gray think I had a crush on the sheriff. Say something before he arrests you for indecent teasing. "It"s a nice day, isn"t it?"
He nodded, and then looked around slowly before showing me my twin face reflections again. "Planning to do some holiday shopping?"
"Ah, no, sir. I"m starting my new job today." And he would want to know where, of course. "I"ll be working at Mrs. Frost"s shop."
His thick mustache twitched. "Martha Frost rents out her shop to some college test prep service so she can spend the holidays with her grandkids."
"Yes, sir, she has. I"ll be taking inventory for her in the evenings." I hoped I looked as innocently employed as I sounded. "I love books, so it should be a lot of fun."
"Is that right." He shook his head, and for a split second I thought he was going to slap the cuffs on me and call Trick. "Not much of a reader myself. I expect it"s because I"ve got to deal with too much conflict in real life."
"My brothers are the same. About reading books, I mean," I tacked on quickly. "Although I got my oldest brother to read Nathaniel Philbrick. He writes history books, mostly about famous ships, but he"s not boring at all."
"I"ll mention him to the wife, next time she goes to the library." He touched the brim of his hat. "Good luck with the new job, Ms. Youngblood."