Crescendo

CHAPTER 8

VEE WAS OUT OF HER CHAIR FIRST.

I chased her to the bakery doors, where we rushed out to blinding sunshine. Shielding our eyes, we looked both ways down the boardwalk. We jogged down to the sand and did the same thing. People were scattered all over the beach, but I didn’t see one familiar face.

My heart was pounding, and I asked Vee, “Do you think it was a joke?”

“I’m not laughing.”

“Was it Scott?”

“Maybe. He was just here, after all.”

“Or Marcie?” Marcie was the only other person I could think of who might be thoughtless enough to carry this out.

Vee looked sharply at me. “As a prank? Maybe.”

But was Marcie that cruel? And would she even go to the trouble? This was a lot more involved than a hurtful comment in passing. The note, the ring—even the delivery. That took planning. Marcie seemed like the kind of person who got bored after five minutes of planning.

“Let’s get to the bottom of this,” Vee said, walking back toward the bakery doors. Once inside, she singled out Madeline. “We need to talk. What did the guy look like? Short? Tall? Brown hair? Blond?”

“He was wearing a hat and sunglasses,” Madeline answered, casting furtive glances at the other bakery workers, who were beginning to pay Vee some attention. “Why? What was in the envelope?”

“You’re going to have to do better than that,” Vee said. “What exactly was he wearing? Was there a team logo on his hat? Did he have facial hair?”

“I don’t remember,” Madeline stammered. “A black hat. Or maybe brown. I think he was wearing jeans.”

“You think?”

“Come on,” I said, tugging Vee’s arm. “She doesn’t remember.” I flicked my eyes to Madeline’s. “Thanks for your help.”

“Help?” Vee said. “She wasn’t helpful. She can’t go accepting envelopes from strange guys and not remember what they look like!”

“She thought he was my boyfriend,” I said.

Madeline nodded vigorously. “I did! I’m so sorry! I thought it was a present! Was something bad in the envelope? Do you want me to call the police?”

“We want you to remember what the psychopath looked like,” Vee shot back.

“Black jeans!” Madeline blurted suddenly. “I remember he was wearing black jeans. I mean, I’m almost positive he was.”

“Almost positive?” Vee said.

I hauled her outside and down the boardwalk. After she’d had enough time to cool down, she said, “Babe, I’m so sorry about that. I should have looked in the envelope first. People are stupid. And whoever gave you that envelope is the stupidest of all. I’d happily ninja-star them, if I could.”

I knew she was trying to lighten the mood, but my thoughts were five steps ahead. I wasn’t thinking about my dad’s death anymore. We’d come to a narrow divide between shops, and I pulled her off the walk, wedging us between buildings. “Listen, I need to talk to you. Yesterday I thought I saw my dad. Here, at the pier.”

Vee stared at me, but said nothing.

“It was him, Vee. It was him.”

“Babe—,” she began skeptically.

“I think he’s still alive.” My dad’s funeral had been closed casket. Maybe there’d been a mistake, a misunderstanding, and it wasn’t my dad who’d died that night. Maybe he was suffering from amnesia, and that’s why he hadn’t come home. Maybe something else was preventing him. Or someone …

“I don’t know how to say this,” Vee said, looking up, down, everywhere but at me. “But he’s not coming back.”

“Then how do you explain what I saw?” I said defensively, hurt that she of all people didn’t believe me. Tears stung my eyes, and I quickly brushed them away.

“It was somebody else. Some other guy who looks like your dad.”

“You weren’t there. I saw him!” I didn’t mean to snap. But I wasn’t going to resign myself to the facts. Not after everything I’d been through. Two months ago I’d flung myself off the gym rafters at school. I knew I’d died. I couldn’t deny what I remembered about that night. And yet.

And yet I was alive today.

There was a chance my dad was alive too. Yesterday I’d seen him. I had. Maybe he was trying to communicate with me, send me a message. He wanted me to know he was still alive. He didn’t want me to give up on him.

Vee shook her head. “Don’t do this.”

“I’m not giving up on him. Not until I know the truth. I have to find out what happened that night.”

“No, you don’t,” Vee said firmly. “Lay your dad’s ghost to rest. Digging this up isn’t going to change the past—it’s going to make you relive it.”

Lay my dad’s ghost to rest? What about me? How was I supposed to rest until I knew the truth? Vee didn’t understand. She wasn’t the one whose father had been unexplainably and violently ripped away. Her family wasn’t shattered. She still had everything.

The only thing I had left was hope.

I spent Sunday afternoon at Enzo’s Bistro in the company of the periodic table of the elements, throwing all my concentration into homework, attempting to crowd out any thought of my dad or the envelope I’d received telling me the Black Hand was responsible for his death. It had to be a prank. The envelope, the ring, the note—it was all someone’s idea of a cruel joke. Maybe Scott, maybe Marcie. But in all honesty, I didn’t think it was either of them. Scott had sounded sincere when he’d offered his condolences to me and my mom. And Marcie’s cruelty was almost always immature and spontaneous.

Since I was seated at a computer and already logged in, I ran an Internet search for the Black Hand. I wanted to prove to myself there was no validity in the note. Probably someone had found the ring at a secondhand store, come up with the clever name of the Black Hand, followed me to the boardwalk, and asked Madeline to hand the envelope to me. Looking back, it didn’t even matter that Madeline couldn’t remember what the guy looked like, because mostly likely, he wasn’t the person behind the prank. That person had probably stopped a random guy on the boardwalk and paid him a few dollars to deliver the envelope. That’s what I would have done. If I were a sick, twisted person who got off on hurting other people.

A page of links for the Black Hand popped up on the monitor. The first link was for a secret society that had reportedly assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria in 1914, catapulting the world into World War I. The next link was for a rock band. The Black Hand was also the name of a group of vampires in a role-playing game. Finally, in the early 1900s, an Italian gang dubbed the Black Hand took New York by storm. Not one link mentioned Maine. Not one image showed an iron ring stamped with a fist.

See? I told myself. A prank.

Realizing I’d strayed to the very topic I wasn’t supposed to be thinking about, I pinned my eyes back on the homework spread out before me. I needed to get a grip on chemical formulas and calculating atomic mass. My first chemistry lab was coming up, and with Marcie as my partner, I was preparing for the worst by putting in extra hours outside of school to drag along her dead weight. I punched a few numbers into my calculator, then carefully transcribed my answer onto the open page of my notebook, repeating the answer loudly in my head, to block out thoughts of the Black Hand.

At five, I called my mom, who was in New Hampshire. “Checking in,” I said. “How’s work going?”

“Same old. You?”

“I’m at Enzo’s trying to study, but the mango smoothie keeps calling to me.”

“Now you’re making me hungry.”

“Hungry enough to come home?”

She gave one of those “it’s out of my control” sighs. “I wish I could. We’ll make waffles and smoothies for brunch on Saturday.”

At six, Vee called and talked me into meeting her for spinning at the gym. At seven thirty, she dropped me off at the farmhouse. I had just finished showering and was standing in front of the fridge, hunting down the leftover stir-fry my mom had stored there yesterday before leaving, when there was a loud knock at the front door.

I squinted into the peephole. On the other side of the door, Scott Parnell made the peace sign.

“Battle of the bands!” I said aloud, smacking my palm to my forehead. I’d completely forgotten to cancel. I looked down at my pj pants and groaned.

After a failed attempt at fluffing my wet hair, I turned the bolt and opened the door.

Scott checked out my jammies. “You forgot.”

“Are you kidding? I’ve been looking forward to this all day, I’m just running a little late.” I pointed over my shoulder at the staircase. “I’ll get dressed. Why don’t you … reheat some stir-fry? It’s in a blue Tupperware in the fridge.”

I took the stairs up two at a time, shut my bedroom door, and called Vee.

“I need you to come over now,” I said. “I’m on my way to battle of the bands with Scott.”

“Is the point of this call to make me jealous?”

I put my ear to the door. It sounded like Scott was opening and closing cabinets in the kitchen. For all I knew, he was hunting for prescription drugs or beer. He was going to be disappointed on both counts, unless he had unrealistic hopes of getting high on my iron pills. “I’m not trying to make you jealous. I don’t want to go alone.”

“So tell him you can’t go.”

“The thing is … I kind of want to go.” I had no idea where this sudden desire had come from. All I knew was that I didn’t want to spend the night alone. I’d put in a full day of homework, followed by spinning, and the last thing I wanted was to stay home tonight and check off my list of weekend chores. I’d been good all day. Make that good my whole life. I deserved to have some fun. Scott wasn’t the best date in the world, but he wasn’t dead last, either. “Are you coming or not?”

“I have to admit, it sounds a lot better than conjugating Spanish verbs in my room all night. I’ll call Rixon and see if he wants to come too.”

I hung up and did a quick inventory of my closet. I decided on a pale silk cami, a miniskirt, opaque tights, and ballet flats. I sprayed perfume in the air and walked through it for a light, grapefruity scent. In the back of my mind, I wondered why I was spending the time to clean up for Scott. He was going nowhere in life, we had nothing in common, and most of our brief conversations including flipping insults at each other. Not only that, but Patch had told me to stay away from him. And that’s when it hit me. Chances were, I was drawn to Scott because of some deep-rooted psychological reason involving defiance and revenge. And it all pointed back to Patch.

As I saw it, I could do one of two things: sit home and let Patch dictate my life, or ditch my Sunday-school-good-girl self and have a little fun. And even though I wasn’t ready to admit it, I hoped Patch found out I’d gone to battle of the bands with Scott. I hoped the thought of me with another guy drove him crazy.

Mind made up, I flipped my head over, dried my hair just enough to give my curls definition, and breezed into the kitchen.

“Ready,” I told Scott.

He gave me the second full-body scan of the night, but this time I felt a lot more self-conscious. “Looks good, Grey,” he said.

“Right back at you.” I smiled, going for chummy, but I felt nervous. Which was ridiculous, since this was Scott we were talking about. We were friends. Not even friends. Acquaintances.

“Cover charge is ten bucks.”

I stood there a moment. “Oh. Right. I knew that. Can we stop by an ATM on the way?” I had fifty dollars’ worth of birthday money sitting in my checking account. I’d already allocated the money to go toward the Cabriolet, but it wasn’t like withdrawing ten was going to kill the deal. At the rate I was saving, I wouldn’t be able to buy the Cabriolet before my twenty-fifth birthday anyway.

Scott tossed a Maine driver’s license on the counter, with my yearbook photo copied onto it. “Ready, Marlene?”

Marlene?

“I wasn’t joking about the fake ID. Not thinking of backing out, are you?” He grinned like he knew exactly how many points my blood pressure had shot up at the thought of using illegal ID, and he’d bet all his money that I’d back out in five seconds. Four, three, two …

I swiped the ID off the counter. “Ready.”

Scott drove the Mustang through the center of Coldwater to the opposite side of town, down a few winding back roads and across the railroad tracks. He pulled up in front of a four-story brick warehouse overrun with weeds that twined up the exterior. A long line of people waited outside the doors. From what I could tell, the windows had been covered from the inside with black paper, but through the cracks between tape jobs, I saw the slice of a strobe light. A neon blue sign above the door glowed with the words THE DEVIL’S HANDBAG.

I’d been to this section of town once before, in the fourth grade, when my parents drove me and Vee to a haunted house staged for Halloween. I’d never been to the Devil’s Handbag, but I was certain just by looking at it that my mom would have rather I kept it that way. Scott’s description of the place bounced up from my memory. Loud, unrehearsed music. Loud, unruly crowds. Lots of scandalous sex in the bathrooms.

Oh boy.

“I’ll let you out here,” Scott said, steering to the curb. “Find us good seats. Close to the stage, in the center.”

I climbed out and walked to the back of the line. In all honesty, I’d never been to a club that required a cover charge before. I’d never been to a club, period. My nightlife consisted of movies and Baskin-Robbins with Vee.

My cell sang out Vee’s ringtone.

“I hear warm-up music, but all I see are train tracks and some abandoned boxcars.”

“You’re a couple blocks away. Are you in the Neon, or on foot?”

“In the Neon.”

“I’ll come find you.”

I pulled out of the line, which was growing by the minute. At the end of the block, I rounded the corner, heading toward the tracks Scott had driven the Mustang across to get here. The sidewalk was cracked and uneven from years of disrepair, and with the streetlights placed few and far between, I had to watch my step to keep from snagging my toe and tripping. The warehouses down the block were dark, their windows vacant eyes. The warehouses gave way to abandoned brick townhouses splashed with graffiti. Over a hundred years ago, this had probably been the hub of Cold-water. Not so anymore. The moon cast an eerie, translucent light on the graveyard of buildings.

I folded my arms close to my body and walked faster. Two blocks away, a form materialized out of the smoggy darkness.

“Vee?” I called ahead.

The figure continued toward me, head down, hands pocketed. Not Vee, but a man, tall and slender, with broad shoulders and a vaguely familiar gait. I didn’t feel especially comfortable passing by a man alone on this stretch of sidewalk and reached for my cell in my pocket. I was just about to call Vee and get her exact location, when the man passed under a cone of streetlight. He was wearing my dad’s leather bomber jacket.

I stopped short.

Completely unaware of me, he climbed a set of steps to his right and disappeared inside one of the abandoned townhouses.

The hairs on my neck rose. “Dad?”

I broke into an automatic jog. I crossed the street without bothering to look for traffic, knowing there was none. When I made it to the townhouse I was sure he’d entered, I tried the tall double doors. Locked. I shook the handles, rattling the doors, but they didn’t give. Cupping my hands around my eyes, I peered through one of the windows flanking the door. The lights were off, but I could make out lumps of furniture covered in pale sheets. My heart was beating all over the place. Was my dad alive? All this time—had he been living here?

“Dad!” I called through the glass. “It’s me—Nora!”

At the top of the staircase inside the townhouse, his shoes vanished down the hall. “Dad!” I yelled, pounding the glass. “I’m out here!”

I backed away, head tilted up, looking at the second-story windows, watching for his shadow to pass by.

The back entrance.

The thought floated to the surface of my mind, and I immediately acted on it. I jogged down the steps, slipping into the narrow passageway cutting between this townhouse and the next. Of course. The back door. If it was unlocked, I could get inside to my dad—

Ice kissed the back of my neck. The chill tiptoed down my spine, momentarily paralyzing me. I stood at the end of the passageway, eyes fastened on the backyard. Bushes swayed docilely in the breeze. The open gate creaked on its hinges. Very slowly I backed away, not about to trust the stillness. Not about to believe I wasn’t alone. I’d felt this way before, and it had always signaled danger.

Nora, we’re not alone. Someone else is here. Go back!

“Dad?” I whispered, my mind darting.

Go find Vee. You need to leave! I’ll find you again. Hurry!

I didn’t care what he said—I wasn’t leaving. Not until I knew what was going on. Not until I saw him. How could he expect me to leave? He was here. A flutter of relief and nervous excitement bubbled up inside me, eclipsing any fear I felt.

“Dad? Where are you?”

Nothing.

“Dad?” I tried again. “I’m not leaving.”

This time there was an answer.

The back door is unlocked.

I touched my head, feeling his words echo there. Something was different about his voice this time, but not noticeably enough to place a finger on it. Slightly colder, maybe? Sharper? “Dad?” I whispered at the faintest volume.

I’m inside.

His voice was louder now, a real sound. Not just in my head this time, but in my ears, too. I turned toward the house, certain he’d spoken through the window. Stepping off the flagstone path, I tentatively laid my palm on the windowpane. I desperately wanted it to be him, but at the same time, the goose bumps popping up all over my skin warned me it could be a trick. A trap.

“Dad?” My voice wavered. “I’m scared.”

On the other side of the glass, a hand mirrored mine, five fingertips aligning with my own. My dad’s gold wedding band was on the ring finger of his left hand. My blood pumped so hard I felt dizzy. It was him. My dad was inches away. Alive.

Come inside. I won’t hurt you. Come, Nora.

The urgency in his words frightened me. I clawed at the window, trying to locate the latch, desperately needing to throw my arms around him and stop him from leaving again. Tears streamed down my cheeks. I thought about running around to the back door, but I couldn’t bring myself to leave him, even for a few seconds. I couldn’t lose him again.

I splayed my hand on the window, harder this time. “I’m right here, Dad!”

This time, the glass frosted at my touch. Tiny fibers of ice branched across the glass with a brittle, crackling noise. I jerked away at the sudden cold that shot up my arm, but my skin was stuck to the glass. Frozen. Crying out, I tried to free myself using my other hand. My dad’s hand melted through the windowpane and closed around mine, holding me so I couldn’t run. He jerked me roughly forward, the bricks snagging my clothes, my arm impossibly vanishing into the window. My terrified reflection stared back, my mouth open in a startled scream. The only thought pounding through my head was that this couldn’t be my dad.

“Help!” I yelled. “Vee! Can you hear me? Help!”

Thrashing my body side to side, I tried to use my weight to break free. A piercing pain sliced into the forearm he held captive, and an image of a knife burst into my mind with such intensity that I thought my head had split in two. Fire licked my forearm— he was cutting me open.

“Stop!” I shrieked. “You’re hurting me!”

I felt his presence flex across my mind, his own sight eclipsing mine. There was blood everywhere. Black and slippery … and mine. Bile rose in my throat.

“Patch!” I screamed into the night with nothing short of terror and absolute desperation.

The hand dissolved from around mine, and I dropped backward to the ground. Instinctively I clutched my wounded arm against my shirt to stop the bleeding, but to my amazement, there was no blood. No cut.

Gulping air, I stared up at the window. Perfectly intact, it reflected the tree behind me, which swung back and forth in the night air. I scurried to my feet and stumbled out to the sidewalk. I ran in the direction of the Devil’s Handbag, turning to glance over my shoulder every few steps. I expected to see my dad—or his doppelgänger—appear from one of the townhouses, holding a knife, but the sidewalk stayed empty.

I faced forward to cross the street and saw the person a half blink before I slammed into her.

“There you are,” Vee said, reaching out to steady me as I choked back a scream. “I think we missed each other. I made it to the Devil’s Handbag and backtracked to find you. Are you okay? You look ready to throw up.”

I didn’t want to stand on the street corner any longer. Reflecting on what had just happened at the townhouse, I couldn’t help but be reminded of the time I’d hit Chauncey with the Neon. Moments later, the car had returned to normal, leaving no evidence of an accident. But this time it was personal. This time it was my dad. My eyes burned, and my jaw quivered as I spoke. “I—I thought I saw my dad again.”

Vee folded her arms around me. “Babe.”

“I know. It wasn’t real. It wasn’t real,” I repeated, trying to reassure myself. I blinked several times in succession, tears staining my vision. But it had felt real. So very real …

“Do you want to talk about it?”

What was there to talk about? I was being haunted. Someone was messing with my mind. Toying with me. A fallen angel? A Nephil? My dad’s ghost? Or was it my own mind betraying me? It wasn’t like this was the first time I’d imagined seeing my dad. I’d thought he was trying to communicate with me, but maybe this was a self-defense mechanism. Maybe my mind was making me see things I refused to accept were gone forever. It was filling the void, because that was easier than letting go.

Whatever had happened back there, it wasn’t real. It wasn’t my dad. He would never hurt me. He loved me.

“Let’s go back to the Devil’s Handbag,” I said, exhaling shakily. I wanted to distance myself from the townhouse as quickly as possible. Once more I told myself that whoever I’d seen back there, he wasn’t my dad.

The echoing clash, clang, and whine of drums and guitars warming up for the show grew louder, and while my panic was slow to subside, I felt my heartbeat slowing down. There was something reassuring about the idea of losing myself inside the swarm of hundreds of bodies packed inside the warehouse. Despite what had happened, I didn’t want to go home, and I didn’t want to be alone; I wanted to slip into the center of the crowd. There was strength in numbers.

Vee grabbed my wrist and brought me to a halt. “Is that who I think it is?”

Half a block up, Marcie Millar was climbing into a car. Her body looked poured into a little black scrap of fabric that was short enough to show off her black lace thigh-highs and garter belt. Tall, over-the-knee black boots and a black fedora completed the outfit. But it wasn’t her outfit that had caught my attention. It was the car. A shiny black Jeep Commander. The engine caught, and the Jeep pulled around the corner and out of sight.