THIRTEEN

LOVE, DEATH, AND OTHER CONFUSIONS

Errol’s breath didn’t last long; the rush of the water beat it out of him even before his blood demanded oxygen. He kicked desperately at the grip on his foot, but it was too strong. The salt stung his eyes and his nasal passages.

Water rushed in, and he knew it was all over. It hurt, at first, like knives in his chest, but the pained dulled then stopped. Everything became kind of peaceful. He thought he saw Veronica, and hallucinated she was kissing him, pulling him ever deeper into the water.

I’m sorry, he tried to tell her. I didn’t mean to.

The next thing he knew, the pain was back, and he was coughing his lungs out. Everything tasted like salt and seaweed. His eyes felt swollen, and they stung like the Devil had spit in them.

“You’re okay, Errol,” someone said.

No, not someone—Veronica. He would know her voice anywhere.

He opened his smarting eyes, trying to focus, and found her sitting next to him, legs tucked beneath her. She was wearing his green shirt—her legs were bare.

They were on sandbar near the banks of a muddy-looking river winding through a forest of oak, hickory, and loblolly pine. The ocean was nowhere to be seen.

“What happened?” he groaned. “Where did you come from?”

“That’s sort of a long story, Errol,” she said.

“There was a ship,” he said. “A dragon . . .”

“That’s all way over there,” she said, gesturing vaguely to her left. “and we’re way over here. How do you feel?”

“Like I’ve been drowned,” he said.

“Well, you know me,” she said.

“That was you who pulled me under?”

“Yes,” she said. “That was me.”

He sat up. “Hey.”

“Hey yourself,” she said.

For a moment he didn’t know what to do. Insanely, he almost blurted out what had happened, that he had kissed Dusk.

Instead, he reached for her, feeling a little weird about it. The way she was looking at him, he couldn’t tell what she wanted.

But he felt like he should do something, so he leaned up to kiss her.

She hesitated, but then kissed him back. That was good, wasn’t it?

Her lips were salty, like his, but he realized with a shock that they were also warm. Of course—the sun was out.

She drew back from him.

“What’s that?” she asked.

“What?”

“You taste . . .” she trailed off. “Maybe I’m imagining things.”

There it was, the window. His chance to be honest, to get right with his guilt. But her expression was no longer unreadable; there was a question there, and the beginning of hurt.

“Veronica?” he said.

“What is it, Errol?”

“I love you.”

Her mouth opened, and he heard an intake of breath. Then she bent, slowly, and kissed him again, leisurely, sweetly, so his toes tingled and all the pain in his body faded off into nevermind.

“I love you too, dummy,” she said.

He kissed her again. It was constant surprise and amazement, and although on one level he knew they ought to talk, on a more immediate level, he didn’t want to stop. Each touch felt like lightning.

He pushed her gently down and lay on top of her, moving his lips down her neck, to her collarbone. She tasted like the ocean, like everything he’d ever wanted.

“Errol,” she said. It was a sort of a sigh, and he took it as encouragement. Then she pushed at him a little.

“What?” he asked.

“Just—I’m not ready.”

“Ready for what?”

“Errol.”

“No,” he said. “I wasn’t going to—” he stopped, feeling a little defensive.

“Sorry,” he said. “I thought you were enjoying it.”

“I was,” she said. “That’s kind of the problem. I love you. And I’m confused. I’m feeling things I don’t know how to feel. New things. So just—be patient with me.”

“Yeah,” he said. “No, I wasn’t planning—”

“I know,” she said. “They never are.”

He heard the darkness behind her words and remembered what she had been. Not long after he met her, she almost drowned a guy, a man she claimed had some very nasty intentions concerning her. She could sense guys like him, she said. When she kissed them, she could feel the things they wanted to do.

And she did things to them instead.

“Hang on,” he said. “Are you comparing me to those guys you drowned, back in the day? The ones trying to rape you?”

“Yes,” she said softly. “I mean, no—I know you wouldn’t do that, Errol. But it’s all still in my head. And before, you know—before he killed me—I had hardly done anything with a boy. This life, this thing we’re doing—it’s all new to me.”

It struck him that Dusk had said nearly the same thing, although without the being murdered, and . . .

Something else occurred to him, then.

“Veronica. Mr. Watkins—or whatever he is—did he . . .”

“He didn’t rape me,” she said. “But he touched me. He touched me in places that were supposed to be all mine. He was going to rape me. But I got away and I jumped. I didn’t let him.”

“You killed yourself?”

She shrugged. “Before I got away, he cut me with a knife.” She touched her throat. “He was going to do it while I was dying. It’s what he likes, to see our eyes go all black, to take all of the light out of us while he . . .”

She stopped and bit her lip. Tears formed in the corners of her eyes, but he couldn’t tell if they were from grief or fury.

“I think it surprised him that I broke free up and jumped,” she finished. “So he didn’t get it all.”

“Yeah,” Errol said. That would be a surprise. He had never cut anyone’s throat, but once you did, you probably figured they would go down and stay that way. He felt suddenly sick, even as he tried not to imagine it, what she had gone through . . .

“God, Veronica, I’m so sorry.”

“I had forgotten,” she said. “But the more I’m alive, the more I remember. Sometimes—sometimes I wish I wouldn’t.”

He helped her sit up. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t want to do anything you don’t, okay? Remember that.”

She nodded, and looked him in the eye. It was all suddenly too intense. He realized he was angry.

“You know,” he said, “before, when Jobe’s boys were coming for me—I decided I didn’t want to kill anybody. I shot to miss, just tried to scare them, slow them down. I still don’t like the idea of hurting anybody that bad. But when I find this guy—this thing, whatever he is—it seems to me he maybe needs some killing.”

“I tried to put an end to him,” Veronica said. “I thought I had. But I didn’t. He’s stronger and worse than ever. He somehow got into the Sheriff’s body, and he has his power, too. You can’t go against him, Errol.”

Now that there was space for it, the last second before he was dragged under came back to him—and with it, a sudden stab of guilt. Here he had been smooching it up, when . . .

“Aster,” he said. “She was there, with Haydevil. She fell in the water.”

“She’s alive,” Veronica said. “A ship fished her out of the water. I’m not sure about Haydevil.”

“That’s a relief,” he said. “What about—” but then he stopped.

“Dusk?” she asked. “I saw the two of you on her little flying horsey.”

He nodded.

“They got her, too.”

“Oh,” he said. “Okay. So, you—how did you find me?”

She looked down.

“I’m still trying to figure that out,” she said. “I’ve changed, Errol. Something happened, and I’m different now. But I’m also the same.”

“Different how?”

“I’m not sure,” she said. “Or not completely sure. But how I got here? I came through the water.”

“You mean you swam? But the sun is still up. How could you breathe?”

“That’s one of the things that’s different,” she said. “I didn’t swim exactly, anyway. Can we—I don’t want to talk about this anymore. Not right now.”

He had about three hundred more questions, all of them vital, but when Veronica said she didn’t want to talk about something, she usually meant it.

“Okay,” he said. “But you’ll tell me eventually? How you got here? What’s going on with you.”

“I came to look for you,” she said. “Maybe you should catch me up first, lover boy. Last word I had, Dusk was not one of our friends. But you two looked kind of chummy.”

“She sort of kidnapped me,” he said.

“Sort of? Like she sort of chopped off my head?”

“She was in Laurel Grove. She beat up a bunch of orderlies and then put a spell on me so I would follow her.”

Veronica lay back on the sand.

“Go on,” she said.

He told it to her, more-or-less, leaving out some fairly specific parts, and emphasizing that he believed he needed Dusk to get back home—or anywhere, for that matter. He also stressed what the woman in the sarcophagus had told him about ending the curse. He thought it put his efforts to save Dusk in a bigger context.

Veronica didn’t say anything, but he could tell she wasn’t completely buying it.

“The way I see it,” he said, “our next move is to find out where they took Aster.”

“Why?” Veronica said.

“Well—because she’s our friend.”

“Is she?” Veronica said. “You think if you were in trouble, she would come after you?”

“Isn’t that why you’re here?” He asked. “Didn’t the two of you come here to save me, or whatever?”

“Yes,” she said. “And now you’re saved.”

“But now Aster and Dusk are in trouble. We can’t abandon them.”

“Errol, they’ve both abandoned you in the past. Once we got to the Kingdoms, Aster went to find her father instead of you. And Dusk—you don’t need a reminder about her, do you? I came here for you. Only you, Errol. We’re finally together. You say you love me—let’s go be together. Without all the rest of this. Just you and me.”

It wasn’t the first time Veronica had suggested something like this. He’d thought she was getting better, that she was beginning to understand, but maybe that was him seeing and hearing what he wanted to. Of course Aster had gone after her father. If his father was alive, and in trouble . . .

“Veronica,” he said, “I do want to be with you. And it’s tempting—”

“No, it isn’t,” she said. “You would rather go fight for them than be with me.”

“Veronica, when you were in trouble, I came after you.”

She sighed. “I know. It made me feel special. But I guess any ol’ damsel in distress will do, so far as you’re concerned.”

“That’s not fair.”

“I know it isn’t. Anyway, I’m sure that’s probably one of the reasons I love you. Or one of the reasons I should love you.” She cut her eyes away.

“Veronica—”

“Look,” she said. “The sun is going down.”

He looked and saw she was right; the sun had moved during their conversation and was now touching the horizon.

“Where are we?” he asked.

“I place I know,” she replied. “I thought we would be safer here. Come on. I know where we can spend the night.”