“Trust me.” Two more words no guy wants to hear from his girlfriend.
What are you up to? Help me out here.
“The band had to be there early.” She dragged me after her.
“The band? You mean the Holy Rollers?” Now I was really confused. Principal Harper wouldn’t let the Holy Rollers play at a dance any more than—actually, there was no comparison. It would never happen.
Lena’s hair curled in the nonexistent breeze, and she tossed me the keys.
12.12
A Light in the Dark
I could see lights flashing through the upper windows of the gym all the way from the parking lot. The party was already in high gear.
Lena pulled me by the arm. “Come on! We can’t miss this!”
I heard the unmistakable howl of Link’s vocals and froze. The Holy Rollers were in there performing, just like Lena said they would be.
I felt a moment of panic. The Eighteenth Moon was almost here, and we were about to walk into a dance at Jackson. It seemed stupid, but then so did staying home and worrying about the end of the world when there was nothing we could do to stop it. Maybe the stupidest part was thinking I could keep it from happening.
So I did the only logical thing, which was keep my mouth shut and tighten my arm around the prettiest girl in the parking lot. “All right, L. Come clean. What did you do?”
“I wanted him to have one good night without Ridley.” Lena slid her arm through mine. “And I wanted it for you.” She looked over her shoulder to where John’s low voice and Liv’s laughter floated up behind us. “For everyone, I guess.”
The weirdest part was that I understood why she did it. We had all been stuck since the summer, as if it never really ended. Amma couldn’t read cards or talk to the Greats. Marian wasn’t allowed to do her job. Liv wasn’t training to be a Keeper. Macon barely came up from the Tunnels. Link was still trying to figure out how to be an Incubus and get over Ridley. And John had been stuck for real, in the Arclight. Even the heat stuck around, like the endless summer from hell.
Everything in Gatlin was stuck.
What Lena did tonight wasn’t going to change any of that, but maybe we could leave the summer behind us. Maybe it would end one of these days, taking the heat and the bugs and the bad memories with it.
Maybe we could feel normal again. Our version of normal, at least. Even if the clock was still ticking and the Eighteenth Moon was getting closer.
We can do more than feel normal, Ethan. We can be normal.
Lena smiled at me, and I pulled her even closer as we walked into the gym.
The inside of the gym had been transformed, and the theme seemed to be—Link. The Holy Rollers were onstage, lit by spotlights the Dance Committee could never afford to rent. And Link was in the center of it all, his ruffled shirt unbuttoned and drenched with sweat. He was alternating between playing the drums and singing, sliding along the stage with the mic stand in his hand. Every time he moved near the edge, a group of freshmen girls screamed.
And for the second time in my life, the Holy Rollers sounded like a real band—without a cherry lollipop in sight.
“What did you do?” I shouted to Lena over the music.
“Consider it a Don’t-Let-the-Dance-Suck Cast.”
“So, I guess the whole thing was Link’s idea in the first place.” I smiled, and she nodded at me.
“Exactly.”
On the way to the dance floor, we walked past a cardboard backdrop. There was a stool, but the photographer was nowhere in sight. The whole thing looked a little suspicious. “Where’s the photographer, L?”
“His wife went into labor.” Lena wouldn’t look at me.
“Lena.”
“Really. You can ask anyone. Well, don’t ask her. She’s a little busy right now.”
We passed Liv and John, who were sitting at a table near the dance floor. “I’ve only seen this on TV,” Liv said, taking it all in.
“An American high school dance?” John smiled. “It’s my first, too.” John reached out to tug on a length of her blond hair. “Let’s dance, Olivia.”
An hour later, I had to admit Lena was right. We were all having a good time, and it didn’t feel like summer anymore. It felt like a regular high school dance, where you wait for the slow songs to get close to your girlfriend. Savannah was holding court in her puffy cotton candy dress, and she even danced with Earl Petty—once. The only exception was the return of Link as a rock god. But tonight even that didn’t seem so impossible.
Fatty was busting the rest of the Holy Rollers for smoking in front of the gym while the Dance Committee’s pre-approved playlist blasted through the speakers. But there wasn’t much Fatty could do, since they were all around twenty-five and confirmed dirtbags. That was obvious when the lead guitarist whispered something in Emily Asher’s ear that actually left her speechless for the first time in her life.
I went to find Link, who was hanging out in the hallway by the lockers. The hallway was dark, except for one blinking fluorescent panel on the ceiling, which made it a good place to hide from Savannah. I figured I’d tell him how great he was onstage, because there was nothing you could say to Link that would make him happier than that. But I didn’t get to tell him.
He was wiping the sweat off his face when I saw her turn the corner.
Ridley.
So much for Link being happy.
I ducked into the doorway of the bio lab before they saw me. Maybe Ridley was going to tell him where she’d been all this time. She would definitely lie to Lena and me when we asked her.
“Hey there, Hot Rod.” She was sucking on a cherry lollipop, wearing lots of black and showing lots of skin. Something was off, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.
“Where the hell have you been?” Link threw his sweaty shirt onto the floor.
“Around.”
“Everyone’s been worried about you. Even after the stunt you pulled.” Everyone meaning him.
Ridley laughed. “Yeah, I bet.”
“So, where—” For a second, he didn’t say anything. “Why are you wearin’ sunglasses, Rid?”
I pushed myself flatter against the wall and looked around the corner. Ridley was wearing black sunglasses, the kind she used to wear all the time.
“Take them off.” He was almost shouting. If the music wasn’t so loud, someone would’ve heard him.
Ridley leaned up against the locker next to Link. “Don’t be mad, Shrinky Dink. I was never cut out to be a Mortal. We both knew that.”
Link pulled her sunglasses off, and I could see her yellow eyes from where I was standing. The eyes of a Dark Caster.
“What did you do?” Link sounded defeated.
She shrugged. “You know, I begged forgiveness and all that. I think everyone knew I’d been punished enough. Being a Mortal was torture.”
Link was staring at the linoleum. I knew that look. It was the same one he had whenever his mom started on one of her tirades, threatening moral damnation if he didn’t bring his grades up or stop reading books she was trying to ban. It was the look that said: Nothing I do is going to make any difference.
“Who’s ‘everyone,’ Rid? Sarafine? Abraham?” He was shaking his head. “Did you go to them after everything they did to you? After they tried to kill us? The way you let John Breed outta the Arclight after what he did to me?”
She stepped in front of him, resting her hands on his chest. “I had to let him out. He gave me power.” Her voice was rising, the sarcastic tone gone. “Don’t you understand? It was the only way I could feel like myself again.”
Link grabbed her wrists and pushed her away. “I’m glad you feel like yourself. Guess I never really knew who you were. I’m the idiot.” He started walking back toward the double doors that led into the gym.
“I did it for us!” Ridley actually looked hurt. “If you can’t see that, then you really are an idiot.”
Link turned around. “For us? Why would you do this to yourself for us?”
“Don’t you get it? We can be together now. We’re the same. I’m not some stupid Mortal girl you’ll get sick of in six months.”
“You think I cared about that?”
She laughed. “You would’ve, trust me. I was nothing.”
“You were something to me.” He looked up at the ceiling, as if the answer to this mess was written on the worn squares.
Ridley closed the distance between them. “Come with me. Tonight. I can’t stay here, but I came back for you.”
As I watched her, I saw Sarafine—the one from the visions. The one who was trying to fight her nature, the Darkness taking hold within her. Maybe Lena’s family was wrong.
Maybe there was still Light in the Dark.
Link leaned his head against hers, their foreheads touching for a second. “I can’t. Not after what they did to my friends, and to you. I can’t be one of them, Rid. I’m not like you—and I don’t want to be.”
She was stunned. You could see it in her eyes, even if they were yellow.
“Rid?”
“Take a good look, Hot Rod. This is the last time you’re ever gonna see me.” She was walking backward, still looking at him.
Then she turned and ran.
A cherry lollipop rolled across the floor.
Link’s voice was so quiet I barely heard him as his hand closed around it.
“Bad or not, you’ll always be my girl.”
After seeing Ridley, Link didn’t care about being a rock god. He was in bad shape, and he wasn’t the only one. Lena had barely said a word since I told her about Ridley. The dance was over for us.
The parking lot was deserted. No one left a Jackson dance this early. The hearse was parked at the far end of the lot, under the broken streetlight. Link was behind us, and Liv and John were walking in front, holding hands. I listened to our shoes against the asphalt as we walked. That’s how I knew John had stopped walking.
“No. Not now,” he whispered.
I followed his eyes, but it was pitch-black and I couldn’t see anything. “What is it?”
“What’s up, man?” Link stepped up next to me, his eyes focused on the hearse. I knew he could see in the dark, like John. “Please tell me that isn’t who I think it is.”
John didn’t move. “It’s Hunting and his Blood Pack.”
Liv tried to find them in the darkness, but it was impossible until Hunting stepped into the pale glow of another streetlight.
She pushed John. “Go! Get back in the Tunnels.” Liv wanted him to rip, dematerialize before Hunting had the chance to do the same.
He shook his head. “I can’t leave you. I won’t.”
“You can rip us out of here.” Liv reached for his hand.
“I can’t take all of you at once.”
“Then go!”
It didn’t matter what Liv said. There was no time.
Hunting leaned against the streetlight, a cigarette burning between his fingers. Two more Incubuses stepped into view. “So, this is where you’ve been hiding out. High school. I never would’ve guessed. You never were that smart.”