There had to be a reason why I was being pulled to him, whether it was me, this ghost, or something else entirely. There had to be a reason why I hadn’t succumbed to my death from seeing his face as the rest. It all had to mean something …
The fog in my ears was slowly dying away. Julian’s chest expanded, and I noticed the sadness expel in a dull breath behind his mask. “What’s happening to me?” he croaked into the night, the light from the moon and stars touched over his outline. His form, his shape, his edges, his colors. Julian was dark and bright like a morbid black sun.
“I don’t know,” I told him, rolling onto my back and staring at the sky with him. The clouds crawled over the star-freckled canvas, ribbons of ink and eternity. “What do you remember?”
For a moment, Julian didn’t speak. The night didn’t speak either. It was as if the world had been turned upside down or we’d been transported somewhere else where no worry lived. Everything was calm.
“Nothing. I was lying in my bed. Now I’m lying here. Now I’m with you. And it’s nice. I don’t want to leave.”
I don’t want to leave either.“Does this happen a lot?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know anything anymore. It feels like something is controlling me … I have no will. I’m not me … I’m something else. Something dark. And Darkness doesn’t have fingers to twist into me or legs to chase after me. It doesn’t stalk me or prey on me. It can’t drag me under anything because Darkness is already here. Everywhere … All the time … It lives inside me. It’s all I am. I am Darkness.” His shoulder relaxed beside me. “And you’re still here. Why are you still here?”
Why am I still here?Had he meant in Weeping Hollow? At this basketball court? With him?
I didn’t have the answers. Even if I did, none of them would have made sense to anyone, but it all made sense in my heart. I was still here, lying beside the Hollow Heathen because it felt familiar and normal. If I weren’t here with him, the mere thought ofthatwouldn’t make sense to me.
So, I wrapped it all up in six words: “Because I want to be here.”
Julian released a breath. Everything he did was so loud and in my atmosphere no matter how far away he was. His breaths rattled like a drumline in my ears, and every flicker of his long black lashes was like notes bouncing off the cello. He was loud and filling me, dragging in heavy breaths and letting them go.
“Okay,” he told me. “Can we just lay like this for a while?”
A fist of his words wrapped around my heart, pumping a new beat inside my chest. My gaze followed the angles of his silhouette and his thick black hair and the hardness in his form as he lay beside me. He was all backward, wearing his soul like skin—and his soul was beautiful. Not beautiful like a rose but beautiful like a Black Velvet petunia.
Never in my life had I come across a more captivating man than him. His eyes generally held a madness. His muscles had a way of tensing, perhaps from burdens he may be carrying. But there were moments, moments such as these, when they beamed of nostalgia and wistfulness of equal proportion—a sweet blend of melancholy.
And Julian’s burdens must be deranged and disturbing considering the town and the curse, turning him into this nightmare who lurked in the shadows. But despite all these things, he was capable of such a glacial gentleness, and I wanted to wrap myself inside it and fall asleep in his chill.
I inched my hand toward him until my fingers touched his. I watched as his eyes closed for a moment before they opened again, probably trying to make sense of this strangeness that lived within me. Thefreakshow. The creature who looked like a ghost—something not ordinary. But I didn’t feel his distance, a sign he may have found and accepted it.
Julian turned his head and looked into my eyes as he ran the tip of his finger down the length of my palm. He laced his fingers with mine.
And we lay there on our backs, hands tied together, and returned our gaze to the starry midnight sky.
There was no longer a need to figure him out, to ask him questions.
Only to be around him. To be with him. To be real like this.
Julian Blackwell was cursed, and now, so was I.
Chapter 14
Julian
After what had happenedduring the Town Hall meeting and the death of Jury Smith, I knew it would only be a matter of time before I was called here to the Order’s Chambers.
This wasn’t the first time I had been invited. Yes, the Order hadinvitedme by a formal invitation postmarked and hand-delivered to my mother’s house, complete with the Order’s seal stamped over the flap enclosure.
Thankfully, Ocean, the homeless man who’d slept behind Mina’s Diner, had been passed out and didn’t witness my attempt on the flatlander at the basketball courts when I’d blacked out. The girl I’d almost killed had been drunk, her story hardly credible. Officer Stoker had shown up at the auto shop for questioning. I’d told him she came on to all of us at Voodoos, and we turned her down. That I went straight home after I left the bar. A heap of half-truths, which only turned a monster into a coward.
But, as I stood before the Order beside a smug Kane Pruitt, I realized it had nothing to do with what happened at Earl’s trailer or the basketball court. We were all gathered here for another reason, and I suddenly wished it had to do with me killing Jury Smith or my assault on the girl because I knew it had everything to do with Fallon.
The Chambers were located in the cellar under the gazebo. Augustine Pruitt, Viola Cantini, Clarence Goody, and my mother, Agatha Blackwell, sat atop the stairs behind their long table, making up the four within the Order. Two cherished symbols hung on the stone wall above the Order, protecting the Chamber. The five-pointed star pentagram represented the Norse Woods Coven, the five original families from the elements of earth, air, fire, water, and spirit—the Hollow Heathens.
On the other side, the Celtic knot, representing Sacred Sea Coven—the Weeping Witches.
Candles lit from within various pockets in the walls of the room, along the floor, and up the stairs leading to the Order. No matter the time of year, the room remained damp and cold and at the same stagnant temperature.
