Chapter Ten

 

The incident with Jovan and Evandis barely registered with Ivy the next morning. She awoke with a surreal feeling of having slept for a week. Her memories were vague and she felt she was in a dreamlike state.

She tried to brush it off as she got dressed.

Less than a week left before Camille's party and she still needed to finish her costume. "Too much time hanging with Dred," she mumbled, dressing quickly. "Maybe he is bad company. Can't remember a thing lately."

Research on wind cycles certainly wasn't cluttering up her memory.

The sound of the refrigerator opening and closing in the kitchen reached her.

She paused pulling on her last sock, listening. Her dad's familiar whistling meandered up the staircase. She sighed. He was home early.

"There you are," her dad said as she entered the kitchen a moment later.

"Good morning." She kissed his cheek, then looked over the leftover hamburger casserole he'd brought out from the refrigerator. "Hungry?"

"Starving. You?"

"I'll make omelets." She found a green bell pepper, three eggs, shredded cheese, and a small jar of pickled red peppers in the refrigerator and then a pan from the cupboard. She nodded for him to sit down. "How'd the meeting go?"

"Fine. We got the contract."

"Good. Will you have to travel a lot?" She rinsed the bell pepper under the faucet.

"Probably. You'll be okay with me taking long weekends with a Monday every now and then?" He shuffled through the papers she'd left on the counter the night before.

"Sure. I've got to work on my dress, and Camille and Lornie are still not finished with their costumes." She found a cutting board and quickly diced up the pepper.

"And about that party." He picked up a paper and read parts of her notes. "Still going?"

"Yes." She waited for the reprimand.

"Camille's mom's going to be home, right?"

"Yes, Dad. Like last year."

"Okay."

She heated oil in a skillet on the stove and took another egg from the refrigerator.

"What are you working on?"

She turned to look at him.

He held her research on the Brylinden Hall, skimming several pages of notes before she could round the counter. He looked at her. "For school?"

"No." She didn't want to grab the papers from his hands, but felt a little protective of the pages. "Just, just researching the town, you know."

He nodded, smiling, slinging an arm over her shoulders. "It's a fascinating building, isn't it?" He set the papers on the counter. "All the architectural styles, the history it must have. Mostly vacant now, I think."

For a reason she couldn't identify, Ivy didn't want to clarify who lived in the house. "I heard from the Historical Society lady that it's been owned by the same family for decades."

"Could be." He set the pages before her. "Someone's keeping it up, I noticed."

The smell of scorching peppers brought her back to the stove. "Ooh, almost too black," she mumbled, stirring the peppers and putting the skillet on a cold burner. She waved off the smell. "I think these are salvageable."

"They did Carrie out in front of it one year."

Ivy looked back to him. He downed his coffee cup, winking at her.

"The movie Carrie?" she asked.

"The old one, the original. Not shot the movie, Ivybelle, but the float contest my senior year in school. We used to have the picture in an old yearbook." He sighed, smiling sadly. "I don't think I kept it. But it was the backdrop for some of the photos. All the floats in front of the house. Carrie, Jaws, and . . . can't remember the other ones."

She leaned on the counter across from him. "Did anyone live there then?"

"No. Don't think so."

She nodded slowly, her mind trailing off. "Interesting."

 

* * * * *

 

Onstage, the scene was set for Juliet's bedroom, the balcony pushed to the far right side where the school's dance troupe—most belonging to the local studio—were poised for a steampunk Roaring Twenties style celebration. Carlie, playing Juliet, stood center in the room, wearing a nightgown as her robotic nanny, played by Heidi, buzzed about the set in jerky motions, geared gyro sounds coming over the speakers.

Ivy sat forward in the audience, watching as the strains of Shampain came from the orchestra pit. As the music came to full sound, Carlie raised her arms and sang out, walking to the balcony to look at the dancers moving in unison. The dancers, appearing to be at a distance, twirled as the play on the word champagne was sung, sipping empty goblets and hooking arms with each other, then stopping as Juliet resumed her song.

Ivy couldn't help but smile at the image. A large pane of specially ordered glass was set up between the audience and the dancers, making them appear smaller, and farther away, than the balcony. It was a trick, made to look like the dancing was taking place in Verona's town square at midnight. As the dance progressed to when the song reached the chorus, Carlie's mood soured, a wistfulness replacing her sleeplessness. The nurse, actually Heidi Owens in a body-snug robot suit, whirred around the room as the song played, showing off her gadgetry and mime movements.

In the wing closest to Ivy, stood Lornie in full Juliet dress, mimicking the lead song. Ivy smiled. The words to Marina and the Diamonds' songs had become second only to breathing the last few weeks. Personally, she felt Lornie had the better voice for the part, but Carlie had spent a month at her dad's house, standing in for summer stock at the Chicago Playhouse. Maybe it was only fair.

Ivy sat back as the song ended and Juliet continued to pine for a fuller life, sinking onto her bed onstage.

"Pretty good, huh?" Dred's voice said in her ear from the row behind hers.

Ivy squelched a yelp as best she could.

He laughed until she elbowed his grinning face.

He dodged and slipped around the seats and sat in the aisle seat beside her. "Thought you might be here."

"How'd you know?"

"I asked Camille." He rolled his eyes. "Vohn said if I couldn't find you or Lornie, Camille would know."

Flashbacks of following Vohn through Camille's summer of puppy love had brought them into corners of the town best left for scavenger hunts. Despite it all, they had never discovered where he lived. She was guessing now it was Brylinden Hall. "Yeah, I guess so."

He stretched out into a room-eating slouch, his knee against hers. "Sorry my family's so invasive, ya know?" He shrugged. "Kind of all the slack collects in one spot."

She faced him more as the curtain fell onstage as the scene changed. "Like you? What's really going on there, Dred? I've never seen so many . . . different, and talented, people like that in one place."

He spared her a long look, estimating something in her face. "Some families have more black sheep than others, ya know?" He sighed tensely. "My family has a lot of them. Guess we keep them all together."

She watched him not look at her for a moment, finding interest in the armrest. "I think it's interesting. You should be proud of their talent, Dred."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

"Good." He leaned close, only inches away from her face as the heavy curtain came up onstage. "'Cause Scarlet wants to see you in your dress."

"My, my green—?"

"—dress as Scarlett." He chuckled at her disbelief. "Why not?"

"It's not done yet."

"Close, right?"

She wanted to crawl under the seats. "Not that close, Dred."

He nodded to her cell phone in her hand, still with the shot of Lornie in the wings onstage. "You got one in there of you in the dress?"

Her mouth dropped open, not at such a suggestion, but that he seemed to know. "Yes, but—"

"Let me see."

She fumed, searching for a reply.

His smugness came back. "I'll just wait 'til you put it up on Facebook."

"I'm not posting it there." She clicked off her phone's camera. "Until after Halloween."

"Then let me see now. Come on, Ivy." He slouched closer, but still smiling. "Why not?"

She hesitated, and then flicked her phone to the images section. "I didn't have the bodice part done, so it's only pinned," she explained, finding the photo she'd taken only last night. "I'm finishing it with Lornie soon."

He leaned over her phone when the image appeared. It was standard selfie, with Ivy's camera shooting from below her face as she tried to get her whole dress in the screen. In it, she held the camera with one hand, her dress hitched shut with the other behind her.

He nodded, sitting back. "You can't even see your face, Ivy."

"It's about the dress, not my face, remember?" She snapped the phone off, turning her attention back to the stage as the rehearsal began again.

"But . . . Well, it looked good."

"Except my face." She didn't look at him.

"I wanted to see your face, too. You know, all of you."

She glared at him.

"It. The dress."

"You did." She turned back to the play.

He sighed, stretching his legs beneath the seat in front of him. "It's nice, really. You did an expert job."

"You sounded disappointed," she finally said.

"I was just surprised to see your face didn't show." He shook his head. "It's nice. Really. And," he said quietly, "part of it, actually, is 'cause it kind of helped them accept me."

She looked at him, seeing something raw in his expression she hadn't seen before. "Why wouldn't they accept you? They're family."

"You've seen how they are, Ivy." He waggled one knee, not letting it touch her as he shrugged. "Everyone's talented. Artsy. Even Vohn's one of the best with a sword, even better than Rimbladt on some days. I can't hold a blade against either of them."

His knee stilled, replaced by knuckle-cracking. He stopped, glancing to the stage.

She let her knee rest against his. He glanced at her, hands dropping to his lap.

"I'm sure they accept you, Dred. It's just hard to fit in to a new place." She took a deep breath. "Thanks for liking my dress."

"You wearing it to Camille's party?"

She nodded. "Are you going?"

"I might. I found a note in my locker this morning. Guess she invited the whole school."

She grinned as he did. "Almost."

His eyes searched the stage for a moment as the next musical number set up. It was just after Juliet discovered she was to be wed to Paris and included another number by Marina and the Diamonds. "How'd they do that little dancers thing in the last scene? Make them look smaller?"

"They used a special glass. It's just a trick. Ms. Decker is awesome with visuals."

He nodded. "I liked it."

She thought she saw genuine admiration in his eyes. "Me, too."

 

* * * * *

 

He bowed to one knee before the antique-framed mirror, sensing the gray smoke that swirled in the glass-like reflection. "I humbly request your presence."

The smoke filtered up the tall glass, some of it bumping against the invisible boundary that kept it from the material world.

He chanced to look up, seeing nothing but smoke and the reflection of the old library. It was seldom used now, mostly for storage or when Rimbladt wanted privacy.

A low quiver of lighter gray smoke added to the haze.

"Why do you think she's the one to unite us?" came the gravelly voice from Neverfall.

He straightened just enough to face the mirror. Still no sign of Mortifal. Just smoke and cinders occasionally falling. "Everyone agrees, on some level. She speaks to each of us, on our own terms." He grinned, feeling his fangs lengthen at the very mention of the girl. "She's the first innocent—"

"The first is not always the wisest choice," Mortifal hissed.

He rose a few more inches, still eyelevel with the mirror's center. "She's captured Jovan. You know how reluctant he is. Maeve let her in the Hall. Evandis is immortalizing her, and I think Mandrake views her as his next muse. He's composing again, and not for the Zodiac plays."

A low chuckle came from the mirror. "Are they now?"

"Yes." He licked his left fang, feeling its smoothness. "No one will admit it, but I think our marks are fading."

"A very good sign." The voice was closer now. "Bring her to me. Closer this time."

He looked full into the mirror. "You have seen her?"

A cruel laugh cut into the room, making the crystal chandelier tremble overhead. "She is a curious sort."

He hung his head, the news surprising him. "I knew not she'd looked into the mirror."

"Yes." The word was drawn out. "She has made you all careless."

His fangs shrunk back up into eyeteeth. "As you can see, we forget ourselves around her."

"Maeve will fight you. So will others."

His hand tightened on the sword he gripped, its tip cut into the parquetry where is stabbed. "I will succeed."

The smoke swirled fainter, leaving a chill in the room. "Show her to me."

He rose, his head still bowed. "I will bring her for you."