The Power of Love kbaa-2 Read online

"What do you mean?" she asked.

  He stared deep into her eyes. "Why have you been avoiding me?"

  Ivy looked away.

  "Look at me! Answer me!"

  She swung her head back. "Ask Suzanne, if you want to know why."

  She saw the flicker in his eyes then, as if he suddenly understood. It was hard to believe that he hadn't guessed what was going on. Why else would she avoid him?

  He loosened his grip. "Ivy." His voice was softer now, wavering. "You're home alone, late at night, in a house where you were attacked last week, with the door wide open. You left the door wide open! Why would you do something so dumb?"

  Ivy swallowed hard. "I thought the screen was latched. But it wasn't. I guess, and Ella must have pushed it open."

  Gregory leaned back against the sofa, rubbing his head.

  "I'm sorry. I'm sorry I upset you," she said.

  He took a deep breath and laid one hand over hers. He was much calmer now. "No, I scared you. I should be the one apologizing."

  Even in the flickering candlelight. Ivy could see the weariness around his eyes. She reached up and touched the temple he had been rubbing. "Headache?"

  "It's not as bad as it was earlier today."

  "But it still hurts. Lie down," she said. She set a pillow on the floor for his head. "I'll get you some tea and aspirin."

  "I can get it myself."

  "Let me." She put her hand lightly on his shoulder. "You've done so much for me, Gregory. Please let me do this for you."

  "I haven't done anything I didn't want to."

  "Please."

  He lay back.

  Ivy got up and put on a disk with sax and piano music. "Too loud? Too soft?"

  "Perfect," he said, closing his eyes.

  She made a pot of tea, put some cookies on the tray along with aspirin, and brought it back to the candlelit room.

  They sipped awhile in silence and munched cookies. Then Gregory playfully clinked his cup against hers in a silent toast.

  "What is this stuff! I feel like I'm drinking a garden."

  She laughed. "You are — and it's good for you." He took another sip and looked at her through the wispy steam. "You're good for me," he said.

  "Do you like to have your back scratched?" Ivy asked. "Philip loves to."

  "Have it scratched?"

  "Rubbed. When you were a little boy, didn't your mother ever rub your back trying to get you to sleep?"

  "My mother?"

  "Turn over."

  He looked at her, somewhat amused, then set down his tea and rolled over on his stomach.

  Ivy began to rub his back, running her hand over it in small and big circles, the way she did with Philip.

  She could feel the tension in him; every muscle was tight. What Gregory really needed was a massage, and it would feel better if he removed his shirt, but she was afraid to suggest this.

  Why? He's just my stepbrother. Ivy reminded herself. He's not a date. He's a good friend and kind of a brother" Ivy?"

  "Yes?"

  "Would it be all right with you if I took off my shirt?"

  "It would be better," she said.

  He removed it and lay down again. His back was long and tan and strong from playing tennis. She began to work again, pushing hard this time, moving her hands up his spine and across his muscular shoulders.

  Ivy kneaded the back of his neck, her fingers working up into his dark hair, then she ran her hands down to his lower spine. Slowly but surely she felt him relax beneath her fingers.

  Without warning he rolled over and looked up at her.

  In the candlelight, his features cast rugged shadows. Golden light filled a little hollow in his neck. She was tempted to touch that hollow, to lay her hand on his neck and feel where his pulse jumped.

  "You know," Gregory said, "last winter, when my father told me he was marrying Maggie, the last thing I wanted was you in my house."

  "I know," Ivy replied, smiling down at him.

  He reached up and touched her on the cheek.

  "Now. ." he said, spreading his fingers, letting them get tangled in her hair. "Now. ." He pulled her head down closer to his.

  If we kiss, thought Ivy, if we kiss and Suzanne— "Now?" he whispered.

  She couldn't fight it anymore. She closed her eyes.

  With both hands, he pulled her face swiftly down to his. Then his rough hands relaxed, and the kiss was long and light and delicious. He lifted her face and kissed her softly on the throat.

  Ivy moved her mouth down and they started kissing again. Then they both froze, startled by the sound of a motor and the sweep of headlights on the driveway outside. Andrew's car.

  Gregory rolled his head back and laughed a little. "Unbelievable." He sighed. "Our chaperons have arrived."

  Ivy felt how slowly and reluctantly his fingers let her go. Then she blew out the candle, turned on the light, and tried not to think about Suzanne.

  Tristan wished he knew some way to soothe Ivy. Her sheets were twisted and her hair a tangle of gold that had been tossed back and forth. Had she been dreaming again? Had something happened since he left her at the festival?

  After the performance, Tristan knew he had to find out who wanted to hurt Ivy. He also knew he was running out of time. If Ivy fell for Gregory, then Tristan would lose Will as a way of reaching her and warning her.

  Ivy stirred. "Who's there? Who's there?" she murmured.

  Tristan recognized the beginning of the dream. A sense of dread washed over him, as if he himself were being drawn into the nightmare. He couldn't stand to see her that frightened again. If only he could hold her, if only he could take her in his arms-Elk, where was Ella?

  The cat sat purring in the window. Tristan quickly moved toward her, materializing his fingers. He marveled at his growing strength, how he could pick up the cat by the scruff of her neck for a few seconds and carry her to the bed. He put her down and, just before the strength went out of him, used his fingertips to nudge Ivy awake.

  "Ella," she said softly. "Oh, Ella." Her arms wrapped around the cat.

  Tristan stepped back from the bed. This was how he had to love her now, one step removed from her, helping others to comfort and care for her in his place.

  With Ella snuggled next to her. Ivy settled into a more peaceful sleep. The dream was gone, pushed deeper into the recesses of her mind, deep enough not to trouble her for a while. If only he could get to that dream. Tristan was sure that Ivy had seen something she shouldn't have the night Caroline died — or that someone thought she had seen something. If he knew what it was, he'd know who was after her.

  But he couldn't get inside her any more than he could get inside Gregory.

  He left her sleeping there. He had already decided what to do, and planned to do it in spite of all of Lacey's warnings: time-travel back in Eric's mind. He had to find out if Eric-was die one riding his motorcycle through Ivy's dream, and if he had been to Caroline's the evening she died.

  As Tristan moved toward Eric's house he tried to recall all the details he had seen earlier that night.

  After the festival, Lacey had accompanied him to Caroline's house. While she had opened closets, looked behind pictures, and poked through things that were in the process of being boxed up, he'd studied the details of the house, outside and in. These would be the keys, the objects he could meditate on once inside someone's head, giving him his chance to trigger the right string of memories.

  "If you're going to go through with this stupid plan of yours," Lacey had said while digging between the sofa cushions, "go prepared. And get some rest first."

  "I'm ready now," he had argued, his glance sweeping the living room where Caroline had died.

  "Listen, jock angel," Lacey replied, "you're starting to feel your strength now. That's good, but don't let yourself get carried away. You're not ready for the heavenly Olympics, not yet. If you insist on trying to slip inside Eric, then get some hours of darkness tonight. You'll need it."

  Tristan
hadn't answered her right away. Standing by the picture window, he had noticed that there was a clear view of the street and anyone coming up the walk. "Maybe you're right," he'd said at last.

  "No maybe about it. Besides, Eric will be most vulnerable to you at dawn or just after, when he's sleeping lightly," she had told him. "Try to get him just conscious enough to follow your suggestion, but not so awake that he realizes what he's doing."

  It had sounded like good advice. Now, with the sky starting to glow in the east, Tristan found Eric asleep on the floor of his bedroom. The bed was still made, and Eric was still dressed in his clothes from the day before, lying on his side, curled in a corner next to his stereo. Magazines were scattered nearby. Tristan knelt down next to him. Materializing his fingers, he paged through a motorcycle magazine till he found a picture of a machine similar to Eric's. He focused on it and nudged Eric awake.

  Tristan was admiring the cycle's clean, curved lines, imagining its power, and suddenly he knew he was seeing it through Eric's eyes. It had been as easy as slipping inside Will. Maybe Lacey was wrong, he thought. Maybe she didn't realize just how well he had developed his powers. Then the picture softened at the edges.

  Eric's eyes shut. For a moment there was nothing but dark around Tristan. Now was the time for him to think about Caroline's street, to take Eric on a slow ride up to her house, to get him started on a memory.

  But suddenly the blackness opened out, as if a dark wall had been unzipped, and Tristan went hurtling forward. Road came at him out of nowhere and kept coming like the road in a video racing game. He was moving too quickly to respond, too quickly to guess where he was going.

  He was on a motorcycle, racing over a road through brilliant flashes of light and dark. He lifted his eyes from the road and saw trees and stone walls and houses. The trees were so intensely green they burned against Tristan's eyes. The blue sky was neon. Red felt like heat.

  They were racing up a road, climbing higher and higher. Tristan tried to slow them down, to steer one way, then another, to exert some control, but he was powerless.

  Suddenly they screeched to a halt. Tristan looked up and saw the Baines house.

  Gregory's home — it was and it wasn't. He stared at the house as they walked toward it. It was like looking at a room reflected in a Christmas ornament; he saw objects he knew well stretched by a strange perspective, at once familiar and weird.

  Was he in a dream, or was this a memory whose edges had been burned and curled by drugs?

  They knocked, then walked through the front door. There was no ceiling, no roof. In fact, there wasn't a furnished room, but a huge playground, whose fence was the shell of the house. Gregory was there, looking down at them from the top of a very tall sliding board, a silver chute that did not stop at ground level but tunneled into it-There was a woman also. Caroline, Tristan realized suddenly.

  When she saw them she waved and smiled in a warm and friendly way. Gregory stayed on top of his sliding board, looking down at them coldly, but Caroline beckoned them over to a merry-go-round, and they could not resist.

  She was on one side, they were on the other. They ran and pushed, ran and pushed, then hopped on.

  They whirled around and around, but instead of slowing down, as Tristan expected, they went faster and faster. And faster and faster still — they hung by their fingertips as they spun. Tristan thought his head would fly off. Then their fingers slipped and they went hurtling into space.

  When Tristan looked up, the world still spun for a moment, then stopped. The playground had disappeared, but the shell of the house remained, enclosing a cemetery.

  He saw his own grave. He saw Caroline's. Then he saw a third grave, gaping open, a pile of freshly dug earth next to it.

  Was it Eric who started shaking then, or was it himself? Tristan didn't know, and he couldn't stop it — he shook violently and fell to the ground. The ground rumbled and tilted. Gravestones rolled around him, rolled like teeth shaken out of a skull. He was on his side, shaking, curled in a ball, waiting for the earth to crack, to split like a mouth and swallow him.

  Then it stopped. Everything was still. He saw in front of him a glossy picture of a motorcycle. Eric had awakened.

  It was a dream, thought Tristan. He was still inside, but Eric didn't seem to notice. Maybe he was too exhausted, or maybe his fried brain was too used to strange feelings and thoughts to respond to Tristan.

  Did the bizarre events of the dream mean anything? Was there some truth hidden in them, or were they the wanderings of a druggie's mind?

  Caroline was a mysterious figure. He remembered how they had no will to resist her invitation to a ride on the merry-go-round. Her face was so welcoming.

  He saw it again, the welcoming face. It was older now. He imagined her standing at the door of her own house. Then he walked through that door with her. This time he was in Eric's memory!

  Caroline looked around the room, and they did, too. The blinds were opened in the big picture window; he could see dark clouds gathering in the western sky. In a vase was a long-stemmed rose, still tightly curled in a bud. Caroline was sitting across from him, smiling at him. Now she was frowning, The memory jumped, like a badly spliced movie, frames dropping out of it. Smiling, frowning, smiling again. Tristan could barely hear the words being spoken; they were drowned out by waves of emotion.

  Caroline threw back her head and laughed. She laughed almost hysterically, and Tristan felt an overwhelming sense of fear and frustration. She laughed and laughed, and Tristan thought he'd explode with the force of Eric's frustration.

  He grabbed Caroline's arms and shook her, shook her so hard her head rolled backward and forward like a rag doll's. Suddenly he heard the words being screamed out at her: "Listen to me. I mean it! It's not a joke. Nobody's laughing but you. It's not a joke!"

  Then Tristan felt a pressure squeezing his head, compressing his mind so intensely he thought he would dissolve. Caroline and the room dissolved, like a scene from a movie disintegrating in front of his eyes; the screen went black. Eric had pressed down on the memory. His own bedroom suddenly came back into focus.

  Tristan got up and moved with Eric across the room. He watched his fingers open a knapsack and pull out an envelope. Eric shook brightly colored pills into his quivering hand, lifted them to his mouth, and swallowed.

  Now, Tristan thought, was the time to take seriously Lacey's warnings about a drug-poisoned mind. He cut out of there fast.

  Chapter 11

  "Capes and teeth are selling big," Betty said, glancing through the sales receipts for Tis the Season. "Is there a convention for vampires at the Hilton this week?"

  "Don't know," Ivy murmured, counting out a customer's change for the third time.

  "I think you need a break, dear," Lillian observed.

  Ivy glanced at the clock. "I just had dinner an hour ago."

  "I know," said Lillian, "but since you'll be closing up for Bet and me, and since you just sold that sweet young man who bought the Dracula cape a pair of wax lips…"

  "Wax lips? Are you sure?"

  "The Ruby Reds," Lillian said. "Don't worry, I caught him at the door and got him to trade them for a nice set of fangs. But I do think you should take a little break."

  Ivy stared down at the cash register, embarrassed. She had been making mistakes for three days now, though the sisters had graciously pretended not to notice. She wondered if the cash box had come out right Sunday and Monday. She was amazed that they would trust her to close up that night.

  "The last time I saw you like this," Betty said, "you were falling in love."

  Lillian shot her sister a look.

  "I'm not this time," Ivy said firmly. "But maybe I could use a break."

  "Off you go," Lillian said. "Take as long as you need."

  She gave Ivy a gentle push.

  Ivy walked the top floor of the mall from one end to the other, trying once more to sort things out. Since Saturday she and Gregory had been doing a sort of shy danc
e around each other: hands brushing, eyes meeting, greeting each other softly, then backing away. Sunday night her mother had set the table for a family dinner and lit two candles. Gregory looked at Ivy from across the table as he'd often done before, but this time Ivy saw the flame dancing in his eyes. Monday Gregory had slipped away without speaking to anyone. Ivy didn't know where he had gone and didn't dare ask. Maybe to Suzanne's. Maybe Saturday night had been just a moment of closeness — a single moment, a single kiss, after all the hard times they had shared.

  Ivy felt guilty.

  But was it so wrong, caring for someone who cared for her? Was it wrong, wanting to touch someone who touched her gently? Was it wrong, changing her mind about Gregory?

  Ivy had never felt so mixed up. Only one thing was clear: she was going to have to get her act together and concentrate on what she doing, she told herself — just as she ran into a baby stroller.

  "Oops. Sorry."

  The woman pushing the stroller smiled, and Ivy returned the smile, then backed into a cart selling earrings and chains. Everything jingled.

  "Sorry. Sorry."

  She narrowly avoided a trash can, then headed straight for the Coffee Mill.

  Ivy took her cup of cappuccino to the far end of the mall. The two big stores that had been there were closed, and several lights had burned out. She sat on an empty bench in the artificial twilight, sipping her drink. Voices from shoppers at the other end of the mall lapped toward her in soft waves that never quite reached her.

  Ivy closed her eyes for a moment, enjoying the solitude. Then she opened them, turning her head quickly, surprised by three distinct voices to the right of her. One of them was very familiar.

  "It's all there," he said.

  "I'm going to count it."

  "Don't you trust me?"

  "I said I'm going to count it. You figure out whether I trust you."

  In a dimly lit tunnel that led to the parking garage, Gregory, Eric, and a third person were talking, unaware that anyone was watching. When the third person turned his head into the light. Ivy could hardly believe her eyes. She had seen him outside the school and knew he was a drug dealer. But when she saw Gregory hand the dealer a bag, what she really couldn't believe was how she had forgotten about the other side of Gregory.