It was supposed to offer its wearer protection from evil. Or at least that’s what he’d said when he gave it to me.
But it certainly hadn’t done me any good tonight — or any other time, as far as I could tell.
It wasn’t until I was standing there in front of him in the cemetery, feeling his soft breath on my cheek, that I realized I’d never even asked if it was all right for me to take it back with me into this world. It hadn’t been stealing, exactly, since he’d given it to me.
But I’m pretty sure it had been a gift that came with conditions, and one of the conditions had been that I stay in his world, and…
Well, that hadn’t happened.
Without any regard to the consequences, he’d said.
My stomach clenched as I quickly folded my arms to hide both the stone and everything else going on beneath the front of my dress.
“You still have it,” he breathed.
His voice didn’t sound like thunder anymore. It sounded exactly the way it had the day we first met, when he’d been so kind and reassuring.
“Of course I still have it,” I said, confused by his surprise.
What did he think, that the minute I’d gotten away from him, I’d thrown it under a steamroller or something?
Then I bit my lip. I suppose he was justified in thinking I might not have wanted to hang on to any reminders of the day I died…or of him. I probably was a bit of a fool not to have dropped it in the ocean, old-lady-from-Titanic style. Any other girl would have. Actually, most girls probably would have sold it, considering how much I’d been told it was worth.
What did it mean that I’d done neither?
Nothing. Certainly not that I had any special feelings for him. I really would have to be crazy for that to be true, considering what he’d done to me. Oh, please don’t let him think that’s why I kept it.
But then, why did the thought of giving it back make me feel…well, a little queasy? All I should have been feeling was relief.
Reluctantly, I reached up to pull on the chain. The round, multifaceted diamond — now as gray as the clouds overhead, and about the size of a large grape — fell out from its safe cocoon, managing to find a way to gleam even on a night as stormy as this one. The clouds had yet to overtake the moon.
When he saw what I was doing, it was like seeing someone throw back the storm shutters on a house that had been closed up for hurricane season. All the careful guardedness drained from his expression. Even the life returned to those formerly dead eyes.
He was right to be surprised that I still had it: Who goes around wearing a reminder of the day she died? I probably needed to go back to all of those psychiatrists and tell them the whole truth this time.
But what good would it do? It might help me. But it certainly wouldn’t help them.
“Um,” I said hesitantly. Do it, my mother’s voice warned me inside my head. Except even my mom didn’t know where the necklace had come from. Telling her would only make her think I was as crazy as everyone else did. “Do you…want it back?”
It nearly killed me to ask it. But the time had come, I told myself. New start.
All this time I’d been hiding it beneath my shirts, I’d been trying to protect others.
But if I were truthful with myself, I’d been trying to protect it, too. Because I loved it to a ridiculous degree, and had from the moment I’d first laid eyes on it, when he’d given it to me.
But I also didn’t want any consequences. Not for me. Not for him. Not for anyone.
I pulled the chain over my head, not caring when it tangled in my long hair. I was trying to do this as adroitly and sensitively as possible. Because at the Westport Academy for Girls — which, true, I’d been kicked out of, but so what? — they teach nothing if not adroitness and sensitivity when dealing with others or with difficult issues. That’s why my dad had insisted on my going there from kindergarten on up. He’d heard about the school from some of his clients and hoped it would keep me from ending up like him.
So far, things weren’t looking promising.
Do it.
I thrust the necklace towards him, knot of hair and all.
“It’s all right,” I said, silently cursing myself for still having a shake in my voice. And my fingers. Could he see this, as well as the tears in my eyes, in the moonlight? “You can have it back. I know I should never have taken it. I’m sorry for any…consequences this might have caused. But it all happened so fast. Well, you know that. Anyway,” I added, with an attempt at some humor to lighten the situation, “at least now you won’t have to follow me around anymore.”
If I’d been looking for precisely the wrong thing to do and say, I’d found it. In an instant, the shutters that had swung open when he saw I still had the necklace came slamming back down over his face and his eyes.
Snatching the pendant out of my hand, he demanded, ”Following you? Is that what you call it?”
I blinked back at him, stunned by his reaction. So much for adroitness and sensitivity. Also humor.
“I gave you this” — he shook the necklace in my face, his deep voice lashing out at me like the rain I could smell already beating the mangroves offshore — “because, as I thought I made clear, it affords its wearer protection from evil…something which, I might add, you seem to need more than most, since every time I see you, you’re in some kind of mortal peril or another. But since you obviously don’t want me — or it — in your life, here’s a thought. Stop coming here. And don’t wear it.“