"I know," Ash said. "It"s not like the girls" bathroom either; there"s no line to pee on a tree."
Raja didn"t laugh.
Ash sighed. Yet another inappropriately timed joke. "Come on," she said, standing up. "We"ll mount a two-woman search party."
"Really?"
"Yeah." Ash yanked Raja to her feet. "You shouldn"t go wandering the woods alone, G.o.ddess of the under-world or not. And if we find him, I"ll leave you two alone to have some private time in the forest."
The only light when they stepped into the woods was the faint flicker cast from the movie screen. There was no sign of Rolfe anywhere nearby.
Raja frowned. "Maybe he got a little forest-shy and decided to use a real bathroom?"
Ash held up a hand to quiet her. Where she had thought there had been only silence before, she heard a strange rustling coming from the forest ahead, a whisper like a rope stretching during a game of tug-of-war. And then they heard a familiar girl"s voice. "Come on," the girl whispered.
Ash and Raja exchanged glances and power walked forward. It sounded like the voice and the rustling were coming from somewhere up ahead and to the right, and- They popped out from between two trees. Despite 341 the bizarre events of the last week, Ash couldn"t have been prepared for this.
Lily stood in profile wearing a low-cut velvet dress clearly inappropriate for gallivanting in the cold woods at night. One of her straps had fallen from her shoulder and was hanging at waist level to reveal a lacy bra underneath.
Next to her, flattened against a tree, was Rolfe. His arms and legs were bound to the trunk of the redwood by vines that had coiled around all of his major joints, pulling his body taut. He wheezed painfully as his spine dug into the rigid bark. Vine tendrils continued to spring from the earth and out of the tree, covering his body but leaving his face exposed.
He turned his head to the side as Lily leaned into him, so preoccupied with pa.s.sion that she remained oblivious to the new arrivals. "Come on," she whispered. "I"m leaving for Vancouver tomorrow. This is your last chance. No one"s going to know." Her hand cupped his face, and she pressed her chest to his through the vines. "Stop being a baby and enjoy this, Rolfey."
"You kinky little b.i.t.c.h!" Raja shouted, unable to restrain herself anymore.
If Lily was at all surprised to see them, she hid it well.
"Can I help you two?" She pulled the fallen strap back up to her shoulder.
"Yeah," Raja said. "You can start by getting your hands off my boyfriend."
"I"ll take whatever I want, and I"ll play with whomever 342 I want. Eve was right about the lot of you." Her gaze tracked from Ash to Raja and back to Rolfe, whose futile squirming was only causing the vines to pull tighter. "So much potential to go out and experience the world, and you just want to lie low and cling to each other."
"My sister is disturbed," Ash said. "Whatever poison she"s feeding you-"
"The only thing that"s poisoned me is this." She pointed toward Blackwood. "This . . . captivity! I"m done with this school. I"m done with this prude surfer wan-nabe. And you . . ." She turned her attention to Raja.
"Why don"t you shut your ugly mouth and go build a pyramid."
Ashline reached out to hold Raja back, but wasn"t quick enough. Raja plowed forward with her hands outstretched. Whether she intended to wrap her fingers around Lily"s neck or to rip her dress, Ash would never know, because Lily swung her hand outward in a crushing blow that caught the side of Raja"s head and flung her flat onto her back.
Lily loomed over her and brought her fist back, preparing to send another vicious strike home.
Her fist was coming down when the air quivered around them. The vibrations struck Lily in the rib cage like a fastball. She slammed torso-first into a tree, rico-cheted off, and hit the ground. When she pulled herself to her feet, she sucked in a pained breath and clutched her ribs where she had connected with the redwood.
343.
"I don"t know what"s going down here," Ade said from the gap in the trees where he"d appeared, "but I"m guessing you deserved that."
Still crouched, Lily held up her hands. Sharp thorns slid out from beneath her fingernails. Like an animal Lily launched herself forward with claws bared, this time channeling her rage at Ade.
She made it only two thirds of the way to him. Rolfe, who had snapped free of his bonds now that Lily"s concentration was diverted elsewhere, grabbed her out of the air by the scruff of her neck. He dangled her in front of him like a cat that had misbehaved and said, "No means no."
She lashed out with her claws, but he simply hurled her away, high into the air. She was prepared this time.
As she was hurtling toward the redwood, she dug her nails into the bark and clung to the tree. From her shadowy perch twenty feet above them, her eyes fluoresced yellow, and Ashline feared she would swoop down on them again, consumed by the need for revenge.
Instead she howled explosively, flipped herself around, and clamored up the trunk with feline grace. The canopy high above rustled. Then there was silence.
Rolfe helped Raja to her feet. For a tense minute they stood in a stunned semicircle watching the stygian forest expectantly for another attack. The silence was broken only by a new arrival from the opposite direction. It was Jackie, her owl-like eyes wide and frantic in a way that 344 was cla.s.sic Jackie. "Guys, they"re canceling the movie because of the thunder. It"s not safe to be out here in the woods." It finally registered on her face that weather might be the least of their problems. "I"m sorry. Did I just interrupt a serious game of spin the bottle or something?"
Ade, thinking on his feet, guided her by the shoulders out of the forest. "Come on. Before curfew you need to help me pick out a tie for tomorrow that matches your dress."
"Sure," she agreed hypnotically. The pangs of l.u.s.t steamrolled over any interest she"d had in the weird forest meeting.
After the two of them had gone, Ash examined the welt on Raja"s cheekbone. "Doesn"t look too bad. With any luck you won"t have a shiner for the ball tomorrow.
Does it hurt much?"
"I"ll live." Raja bristled. "I"m more p.i.s.sed that I didn"t land a punch or two before that little bobcat scampered away."
Rolfe stepped up behind her and tenderly ma.s.saged her shoulders. "I still can"t believe that just happened.
I"ve heard of people taking rejection poorly, but that . . ."
His ashen face suddenly lit up. "Hey, am I crazy, or did I hear you refer to me as your boyfriend a few minutes ago?"
"You"re crazy." Raja slapped his ma.s.saging hands away.
"I"m afraid I heard it too," Ash apologized, and couldn"t help but smirk.
345.
Raja just growled in frustration and headed back for the hill, grumbling something about "a lapse of judgment" and "the heat of the moment," while Rolfe practically galloped behind her with glee.
Now alone, Ashline"s knees trembled and she knelt down on the moist forest floor, if only to gather her thoughts.
Lily . . .
Eve had somehow gotten to Lily. But the creature who"d attempted to s.e.xually a.s.sault Rolfe, before she"d then tried to crush Raja"s skull and rip open Ade"s throat . . . How could she be the same soft-spoken girl they thought they"d known?
"I guess what they say is true," Ash whispered to the sullen forest.
It was the quiet ones you had to watch out for.
Ashline wasn"t taking any chances.
Over the last three school nights, Ashline had managed to unconsciously light her bed on fire, sear a handprint into Colt"s chest, and transform a tennis ball into a flaming missile. She wasn"t sure what more she could possibly do in her sleep -burn down the faculty lodge?
Napalm the chapel?
No, she wasn"t going to take any chances.
The idea was to think arctic. In the hall bathroom she filled a bowl with cold water and then placed it on the floor of her bedroom, next to the bed. Despite the chill 346 of the spring night, she grudgingly opened the window to let the cool saturate her room. Then she climbed under her covers and let one hand dangle off the bed, just at the right length so that her fingertips would dip beneath the surface of the water.
It looked ridiculous, and she knew she was just as likely to roll away from the bowl of water or tip it over in her sleep. But if it kept her brain in cold mode overnight and prevented any spontaneous combustion, then she would happily sacrifice comfort if it meant keeping herself from burning down Blackwood the night before the masquerade ball.
Sure enough, when she woke around three in the morning, she found the bowl on its side. She climbed out of bed; the little rug was squishy and frigid beneath her bare feet.
Time for plan B.
The bas.e.m.e.nt of the residence hall rarely saw any action. It consisted of a series of study rooms that Ashline had never heard of a single girl actually using. It also housed a kitchen with a working refrigerator and a stove, but since the students weren"t doing much in the way of baking, and they didn"t exactly have leftovers from the dining hall to place in the fridge, the residents of East Hall only ever used it for ice.
Ice was exactly why Ashline was tiptoeing down to the bas.e.m.e.nt in her pajamas and moccasins in the middle of the night. Maybe a small reservoir of ice water in her 347 stomach would lower her temperature enough to extinguish any fires she might dream up. She was so delirious with fatigue at this point that she was becoming increasingly apathetic about her mission to stay flame-free. She just needed sleep.
Ash scooped ice into a plastic cup until it was stacked to the brim before she went over to the sink and filled the rest with water. She was sipping her ice c.o.c.ktail and heading for the stairwell when she heard the giggling.
It had come from one of the study rooms, strange and creepy since none of the lights were on in any of them.
She was just starting to convince herself that the girl"s voice had been the hallucinations of some half-conscious dream, when she heard it again.
Ash flipped on the light in the first study room.
Empty. So was the next.
But when she came to the third, her hand hesitated on the switch. Back in the recesses of the unlit room, she could make out two things. Her blood ran colder than the gla.s.s of ice water in her hand.
Spotlighted by the moonbeams streaming through the single back window, Serena sat in one of the cushy study chairs with her cane clasped between her knees.
She was smiling and saying something inaudible to her companion.
Hulking over her was one of the Cloak. If it hadn"t been for its burning blue eye, its obsidian body might have just appeared to be an extension of the darkness.
348.
It sensed her presence at the same time Serena did.
Ash flipped the switch, but by the time she blinked so that her eyes would adjust to the sudden burst of halogen light, the Cloak had evaporated, its oily body absorbed into the wall behind it.
"Serena!" Ash rushed forward and knelt down next to her. "Are you okay?"
Serena gawked at her quizzically. "Of course. Where did my friend go?"
"Your friend?" Ash echoed and placed her hands roughly on Serena"s shoulders. "Do you know who you were talking to?"
"He"s the guy I"ve been telling you about," she said innocently. "That was Jack. Is he as handsome as he sounds?"
349.
MASQUERADE.
Frida y Ash sat alone on the back stoop of East Hall.
She locked her knees together with her feet splayed out to either side, and rested her head in the cradle of her hands like a pedestal sacrifice. The back of her red dress was probably collecting dust from the stoop, but at this point who cared?
She watched sullenly as the last of the cars filtered out of the underground lot. She couldn"t believe it. This was happening to her.
She had been stood up.
A hand squeezed her shoulder from behind. "Hey,"
Raja said. "How you doing?"
"Great," Ash said. "I spent an entire afternoon slaving away at hair and makeup that my date will never see."
"I know him. He"s not the type to just bail. I"m sure he"s having car trouble, or hit an elk on the 101, or . . .
350.
I don"t know. Either way, it wouldn"t be like him to just leave you hanging."
"You two go ahead." Ash waved to the garage. "I already made you guys miss the bus waiting. Take the Rolfe-mobile and get out of here."
"Uh-uh," Rolfe said, coming around the corner. He grabbed Ash by the arm and picked her up. "You"re coming with us." A quick glance at the dirt-covered back of her dress made him cringe. "But first you need to brush yourself off. I"d be happy to give your b.u.m a few cleans-ing pats, but I"m not sure who would kill me first-you or Raja."
"I would," Raja and Ashline answered simultaneously.
Ash dug her heels into the dirt to resist Rolfe"s pulling. "But what if Colt rolls up late after all?"
"Then he can haul a.s.s to the inn and meet you there,"
Rolfe said. "The guy is a park ranger, for Christ"s sake.
I"m sure he can build a compa.s.s out of a beer can and trailblaze his way through the forest if need be." Ash still wasn"t moving despite all his tugging on her arm. "I"ve pulled anchors less difficult than you. What have you been eating? Steel?"
Ash shoved him, but her laughter weakened her hold on the ground, and he was finally able to tow her toward the garage. "I am Baldur," he proclaimed in his victory voice, "G.o.d of Light!"
She had to squeeze into the front seat of the station wagon with Rolfe and Raja, as the backseats were flattened 351 and covered with a variety of long-boards and one wet suit, crusty with sea salt.
"So." Ash shut the door. "Should we bring a weed whacker in case Lily bought a ticket to the ball?"
Rolfe and Raja stared at her without laughing.
Ash whistled. "Tough crowd."
Raja was so agitated at the sound of Lily"s name that it took her several attempts to buckle her seat belt. "I swear I"ll go lumberjack on that green-thumbed date rapist if she even comes within a hundred yards of . . . Rolfe."
"Change of subject!" Rolfe turned on the car. "And let the record show that Raja just swerved around the word "boyfriend" like it was roadkill."