“For God’s sake, I did everything right,” Adrian said, throwing his hands in the air. “I got the corsage, I wore a suit, I borrowed the car, we danced. Why are you upset with me?”
I just stared at him, tears mutinously coursing down my cheeks. “This isn’t a game, Adrian. It’s not a show or a play, this is my life. This is the dance, this is high school, this is us, and you’re not here.”
He looked at me like I was insane. “I’m here. I’m here every day. This was the setup, this was how we decided to play it—you’re the one who came up with the rules, that stupid chore chart. If you’re not happy with all of this, you have no one to blame but yourself.”
I sucked in a sharp breath, trembling.
That was cruel.
There was no way I could justify his response, or explain it away for him. He was being mean, and I was done.
“Adrian,” I whispered after a long moment. “I’m breaking up with you.”
He stared at me. “You can’t do that.”
I stared right back at him. “Yes. I can.”
Leaving him speechless, I walked back into the gym and found Trish. She saw the tears on my face and immediately pulled me into a dark corner where I bawled my eyes out on her shoulder. She and Ben immediately packed up and drove me home. I had to lie to Joe—again—and say that Adrian’d had a flat tire, so Trish had given me a lift. I told them the dance was wonderful, and that I was tired and going to bed.
But of course it wasn’t over. Breaking up with Adrian didn’t mean it was over.
So cue the nightmare.
It felt like the first one. Where I’d woken up in a dark room, unable to move. Completely paralyzed. A light formed somewhere overhead, growing slowly brighter. In front of me, a shape materialized in the darkness until I saw it was a person. Scratch that, a kid.
It was Lucian.
He was sitting with his head bowed forward so that his curly light-brown hair fell over and shadowed his face. It took an eternity for the light to brighten enough to see that he clutched my book in his hands, The Adventures of Frankie the Boy.
Suddenly, his head rolled back.
His aviator goggles were gone. His eyes were wide open, and they were completely black.
He was dead.
Out of the darkness, a white figure slowly approached. Nearing, I realized it was my mother, dressed in the World War II nurse’s outfit she’d worn before. She knelt by Lucian’s chair and smiled at me sadly with her bright red lipstick. I didn’t know what she was doing here, but I knew it was bad. She slid Lucian into her arms like he weighed nothing. I watched helpless as the book slid out of his fingers and fell to the ground. She walked away into the darkness, taking Lucian with her, until they disappeared completely.
19
FINALS
A week after winter formal, I woke up to the clatter of pans, the patter of feet running up and down the stairs, and the calls back and forth between Norah, Rachel, and Joe. It was seven in the morning, and I’d managed to get in about five hours of sleep—three before my nightmare and two after, once the sun was really up. It was a school day, but we were leaving at ten to head for Richmond, Virginia—the site of the East Coast Equestrian Finals, where Norah was about to kick ass—so Joe and Rachel had decided to just let us stay home until we left rather than pick us up early from school.
I was grateful, because I couldn’t handle much more whispering and hushed conversations about the breakup. Adrian hadn’t called me over the weekend, he hadn’t fought for me or talked to me or so much as looked at me at school. Which was fine, except it was very obvious to the rest of the student body that Adrian and I were no longer a thing. Even through my exhaustion, I could tell that little else was being discussed at the lunch tables. On the supernatural side of things, I’d heard nothing from Mariana or the Council. Which was fine with me—as far as I was concerned, they could go be miserable and ancient all they wanted if they’d just leave me alone.
Groaning, I rolled out of bed, wrapping myself in my green quilt like a mummy, and headed downstairs to snag a cup of coffee before I took a shower. I could hear the washing machine and dryer going and bet Rachel was trying to do some last-minute housekeeping before we were gone for the weekend. Norah was running around with various pieces of clothing in her hands looking frazzled, and Joe was conspicuously gone—probably outside checking on the horses—where it was quiet.
I actually took the coffee with me into the shower, setting it on the window ledge above the spray of the nozzle. Halfway through rinsing my hair, the water gushed violently, then immediately relented, drizzled, and stopped altogether, then spurted on again, but lukewarm, and then cool, and then ice cold. I yelped and shut it off. A knock sounded on the bathroom door.
“Caitlin?” Rachel called, her voice muffled.
“Yeah?” I replied.
“We had to shut off the hot water.”
“What happened?” I called back.