Two years older, he’d taught me everything I needed to know about St. Hilaire and probably more than I wanted to know about myself. He had an intense and almost overwhelming way of making me feel as if I were wanted. That was something I missed too, even if Ian had seemingly wanted everyone and everything at the same time.
But it sucked that no matter what I tried, I’d never been able to negotiate a peace between Ian and Dec. Where Dec was skeptical and steady, Ian was a constant explosion of personality and expectation. There was no middle ground between them and no way to cultivate both friendships. Mostly, Dec could barely stand to be in the same room as Ian.
Time with Ian always felt transient, and too much like something I wanted only because it was forbidden, and complicated, and loud. He’d always had a unique way of leaving me feeling empty when he left a room, as if he’d taken something that would be impossible for anyone else to replace.
Alternatively, my relationship with Dec and his family was real. Solid. Comforting. The Hamptons were a household of mediums, a family of mediums. It was all so different from what I had with my hardworking, normal father and my missing mother, and I found I craved the warmth of it all.
Ian might have put up with Dec, but the problem was Ian wasn’t something you did halfway. He was all or nothing, and “nothing” had seemed like the right choice at the time, so when I had to choose, I chose Dec.
The Guild, made up of the most powerful mediums in St. Hilaire, couldn’t contact Ian. However, my dream had me wondering if I would be able to. Still, “able to” wasn’t the same as “should,” and it certainly wasn’t the same as “want to.” I had bigger things to focus on.
I crumpled the flyer into a tight ball and threw it at the garbage can that sat to the left of the fountain.
It bounced off the rim and landed still, back at my feet. I stared at it and felt a familiar otherworldly chill. Then I turned around and headed home.
Chapter 11
Dec
My dad used to say that only the guilty suffered from insomnia. Actually, he’d been full of sayings: “Mistakes are doorways to discovery,” “A beautiful thing is never perfect,” and “When the moon is full, it begins to wane” had all been his favorites.
I think the guilt thing was right, though. Usually, I slept like the dead. Now, I was awake, unable to get over the fact that I’d managed to spend all day with Annie without telling her how much she and her music meant to me.
I was pretty sure it was too late to say that without sounding creepy.
Miraculously, Laura had convinced Harriet to let Annie stay with us. For a fee, of course. Still, that bought me some time, and I was trying to figure out how to make things right when the curtains rustled, just enough light to catch my attention. Footsteps crossed my floor as I heard the unmistakable yet familiar sounds of a flint being struck and a cigarette being lit. The room smelled like lemons.
I tried to fool myself into thinking I was dreaming of the frozen lemonade my mom used to make for the tourists, but I knew better.
“Tristan?” I called into the darkness.
“I told you not to open the door,” the darkness replied.
Reluctantly, I pulled myself up against the pillows and rubbed my eyes, hoping that would make this ghost from my childhood disappear. But when my vision cleared, Tristan was there, all blond hair and heavy-lidded green eyes.
“What the hell is going on? I thought you were gone this time,” I said, suddenly awake and choking on anger that tasted of citrus. It was a peculiar type of anger, one that I’d had the better part of two years to turn over and examine. It was both irrational and overwhelming, a memory of a feeling I could never shake, but also never fully understand.
“Really?” Tristan stared at me. “Did you?”
“I’d assumed…” I started. Aside from the park, the last time I’d seen Tristan was at my parents’ funeral. He’d shown up and paced around our family plot, wearing a path in the dusty ground behind the house. Two years later, that grass still hadn’t grown back.
“You know what is said about those who assume, Daniel. They just make an ass out of you and me.” Tristan took a drag, and the room filled again with the scent of thin Indian cigarettes, called bidis, I’d rarely seen him without. He was close enough that I could see the thin band around the top of the cigarette, decorated with a parade of elephants.
I fixated on Tristan’s fingers, which were as long as Anastasia’s but broader. They were musician’s hands, but as far as I knew, Tristan had never been musical. To the contrary, he seemed almost repelled when I’d had learned to play the piano and always tried to distract me with games, plots, and trips to the creek that ran alongside the edge of our property.
“So, what can I do for you?” I asked politely, trying not to cough. I really didn’t have the energy for a fight.
Tristan leaned forward and blew a perfectly irritating smoke ring toward my face. “Well, it’s really more about what I can do for you, isn’t it?”
I waved the fumes away and wondered, not for the first time, why everyone else’s imaginary playmates disappeared as they grew up, while mine stuck around to torment me.
“What do you want, Tristan?” It was a simple question, but he looked jittery as he stood and went to the window, his blue velvet coat appearing black in the moonlight.
“The girl,” Tristan said.
First, I heard Tristan’s words, and then I heard them repeated in a rush of blood to my head. Tristan couldn’t possibly mean Annie.
He got up and stubbed out his cigarette on my windowsill. Lit from behind by the moon, Tristan resembled a painting of a teenaged romantic poet and it had always annoyed the crap out of me that I could never quite figure out what he was. He couldn’t be a ghost, because no one else could see or hear him—not even Russ—and in St. Hilaire, it would be more likely for a pink unicorn to walk down Main Street undetected than a ghost.
Tristan linked his hands together and sat on the edge of my bed again, which barely registered his weight. “I told you not to open the door, but you did, and now…something’s wrong, Daniel.”
Oddly curious, I reined in my anger. “What?”
“Well,” Tristan drew the word out, “she isn’t meant to be here, is she?”
“Neither are you,” I muttered.
Tristan laughed. “That’s debatable.” His laughter faded as quickly as it came, and a cloud passed across his face as he ran a hand anxiously through his long blond bangs. “This doesn’t feel right.”
“And just what is it you want me to do?”
Tristan’s green eyes opened wide. “Why, I want you to make her leave, of course.”