“Well, honey,” Mom said, pressing the off button on the alarm, then putting the code back in. “Some of our guests are still here. So how about we wait to put the alarm on until after they leave? Okay?”
I nodded, still peering out the foyer window. I was not going back out there to turn off my bike lights. They could blink on and off all night, for all I cared. I’d just buy new lights if they burned out. It would be worth it. If the bike got stolen, so what? I’d just make Dad buy me a new one. This whole thing was his fault, anyway. That’s what Mom thinks.
I was never going back outside again.
Not so long as he was out there.
“Honey?” Mom asked. “Are you all right?”
“Sure, Mom,” I said, letting the curtain drop. “I’m great. Having a nice time at your party?”
“It’s your party, honey,” she said, smiling. “And I’m having a great time. It’s so good to see everyone again. I think even your uncle Chris enjoyed himself—”
“Great, Mom,” I interrupted. “Look, I’m really tired. I’m going to go to bed.” I was going to pull the covers up over my head and never come out.
“Oh,” Mom said, looking disappointed. “Don’t you want to say good night to everyone? Your uncle Chris waited especially to see you before he and Grandma and Alex head for home. And I think Alex wants to make sure you don’t have any more questions about starting school tomorrow. I thought that was awfully sweet of him.”
Just the reminder that school was starting tomorrow made me want to bite off all my fingernails. But Mom had taken me for a special back-to-school mani-pedi yesterday, so I knew I had to keep them out of my mouth.
“You know what,” I said. “I’m really beat. Must be all the lastminute excitement with the party. Just tell Alex thanks, but I’ll see him tomorrow morning when he comes to pick me up for school. Good night, Mom.”
I rushed up the stairs before she could say anything more.
He’d destroyed the gates to the cemetery.
He’d crushed the lock with a single vicious kick from one of those heavy black boots. Then, when the gates crashed violently open, he’d pushed me through them.
“Get out,” he’d warned in his devil-deep voice. “Do you hear me, Pierce? Get out and don’t ever come back. It’s not safe for you here. Not unless you really do want to end up dead. Forever this time.”
A huge bolt of lightning had lit up the clouds right after he said it, and then a crack of thunder, so loud that I thought the sky was splitting in two, had muffled the sound of the gates swinging back into place behind me.
Without looking back, I ran to where I’d left my bike chained, I was so grateful to have escaped.
Now standing in the shower, letting the water pour over me, so hot it was almost scalding, I had to wonder:
Had any of it really even happened? How could it? No one could kick apart a locked metal gate — and the black wrought-iron gates to the Isla Huesos Cemetery were huge, large enough for a hearse to fit through, and thick and strong as jail bars.
No one who lived in this world, anyway.
I didn’t want to think about it.
I couldn’t think about anything else.
Had I really seen him…spoken to him…touched him…been touched by him? I looked down at the skin on my bare arms where those killer fingers had been. Incredibly, they’d left no mark, though earlier I could have sworn they’d singed me to the bone.
I didn’t even have the necklace anymore to prove to myself that any of it had happened. Now it was lost — forever this time, just like he’d said — because I was certainly never setting foot in that cemetery again. Maybe some tourist would find it. It would probably end up for sale online or in a pawnshop somewhere.
Stepping from the shower and wrapping myself in one of the thick, white towels Mom’s interior decorator had picked out, I shook my head. It didn’t matter anymore. I knew what I’d seen, what I’d felt. I didn’t need a piece of jewelry to prove it. Not to myself or to anyone.
Seeing him tonight had only made things worse. My apology for what I’d done to him had obviously gone over like a big fat empty piñata at a five-year-old’s birthday party.
On the other hand, I hadn’t heard any apologies out of him. So why did I even care? Guys really could be jerks. At least from what I’d observed. Mom certainly thought so. Which was why she packed the two of us up and moved us to Isla Huesos. Because I wasn’t the only thing she loved that she felt Dad had allowed to die through neglect.
“Isla Huesos, Deb? Really?” I’d overheard Dad say to her after dropping me off from one of our last (court-mandated, of course, though I didn’t mind) lunches. Neither of them knew I was outside the door, listening. I knew eavesdropping was wrong. But how else was I supposed to figure out what was going on? “You think that’s what the counselor meant when she said a place better suited to her needs?”
“It can’t,” Mom said, “be any worse for her than Connecticut has turned out to be.”
“You can’t peg the teacher on me, Deb,” Dad said defensively. “That one was all you. I heard you pushing her to take him up on his tutoring offer —”
“Just drop it,” Mom said. Now she sounded defensive. “I’m taking her home. End of story.”
“Of course you are. Going to save the birds.”