I blinked hard and then glanced at the clock on my nightstand. 2:22 a.m. Triple digits were important, but I couldn’t remember why. I just knew I wanted this conversation to be over.
“Go away, Tristan. I’m not sending her away, and I’m not staying up to do this with you either. I’m going back to sleep.”
I pulled the covers over my head and waited, though I could still smell Tristan in the room. Lemon, and the must of mothballed clothes, and something else I couldn’t place that reminded me of old flowers. I could almost feel him in the chill in the air and in the abnormally fast beat of my heart.
“I wouldn’t ask you to do this if it weren’t important,” Tristan said petulantly.
I pulled the covers back. “You mean like when you suggested I push Harriet in the lake as a joke that summer? Or when you told me my father would be down with me skipping school and taking the train into the city for that comic book convention I really wanted to go to? I was grounded for a week that time.”
A hundred different memories flooded my mind; I was surprised to realize that Tristan had been a part of so many of them.
“Those were pranks,” Tristan replied. “This is different.”
I bolted up. “Why should I believe anything you say? Why should I believe you exist?”
Tristan dimmed like a light bulb during a brownout. “I’m sorry I don’t have the answers you need, Daniel. But I’m obviously here.”
“Really? So why can’t anyone else see you?” I reached out a hand toward Tristan and pulled it back. It wasn’t that Tristan wasn’t solid. Mostly. It was that he shouldn’t be—only the most powerful of ghosts had substance—and the thought of Tristan being a powerful anything was mind-boggling.
“We don’t choose who we are,” Tristan answered, softly. “What we are. What happens to us.”
I fought against feeling sorry for him. As a kid, I’d been grateful for the company, although Tristan always managed to get me into trouble. When I told my parents who the real culprit of the pranks was, my mother took me to local doctors, doctors who could read lumps in your skull or the lines in your hand. One actually suggested they foster me out to a family in Buchanan. When we returned home, my parents told me never to mention Tristan again. And I was so scared that I never did.
“Where do you go when you aren’t here?” I asked, suddenly consumed by anger. I knew the definition of insanity was doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different outcome. If that was the truth, then asking this question for a gazillionth time probably confirmed I was certifiable. “Where have you been for the last two years?”
“I…” Tristan paled and looked away.
So many of our conversations had ended this same way. “What’s your last name?” “What are you?” Everything added up to frustrated confusion.
Tristan sighed. “You’re thinking of leaving St. Hilaire again.”
“I am leaving,” I snapped back. “But I’m not going to throw Annie Krylova out of my house just because some whatever-it-is-you-are says I should.”
Tristan stared back with wounded eyes. It was so easy to hurt him. Too easy. Too tempting. He was a bruise I couldn’t resist poking; everything I hated about this place rolled up into one.
“Be careful what you wish for, Daniel,” Tristan said and faded away.
The room was colder after he left and more than a little empty. Although I lay back down, I knew I wouldn’t sleep. I just tried to figure out what my wishes had to do with anything.
Chapter 12
Dec
I woke up angry.
My phone showed another missed call from “no number.” The coffee wasn’t strong enough. The breakfast table was crowded. Harriet crunched her toast as if she wanted to hurt someone. Laura chattered uncharacteristically about some story she’d read online about a group of California psychics who were predicting the end of the world.
Across the table, Annie was taking it all in, her hand wrapped around a charm that hung from a chain around her neck. I wondered if I’d missed it yesterday or if she hadn’t been wearing it. Then I wondered what Tristan’s problem was. Then I wondered if I was going to be able to stay awake.
Somehow I’d managed to forget how disoriented I always was after Tristan’s visits. When your life was filled with mysteries, one more shouldn’t make a difference, but Tristan was my secret alone, and that feeling of isolation always ended up making it harder.
I bit down on a piece of bacon, and it shattered in my hand. Laura always liked her bacon crispy. “Damn it. Does everything here have to be burnt?”
Harriet glared at me, and Laura stopped her story in the middle of a sentence. “Sorry,” I mumbled and got up to pour another cup of coffee.
Laura joined me in front of the coffeepot on the sideboard, a half-empty cup in her hand. “You look tired.”
I considered telling her I’d seen Tristan, but she hovered over me enough, and I didn’t want to give her one more reason to worry.
“I’m fine,” I lied and turned around to watch Annie nibbling at the corners of her toast. It didn’t make sense for Tristan to consider her a threat to anything. Also, it didn’t feel like there was any sort of disturbance in the house, not that I was particularly sensitive to that sort of thing. Still, Laura and Harriet didn’t seem abnormally bent out of shape either, and Harriet was always looking for trouble.
I couldn’t shake Tristan’s warning. Be careful what you wish for? Was he serious? Was it a threat?
I decided to try something I hadn’t in a long time. I excused myself and went back up to my room with only weak coffee as a crutch.
“Tristan,” I called to the empty room. “Look, I’m sorry.” The apology stuck in my throat. “Just tell me what the hell you’re talking about.”
The air flickered. One minute I was alone, the next Tristan was there, standing by the window, pouting.
“You aren’t sorry,” Tristan said into the cool window. Defying physics, his breath did nothing to mark the condensation.
My chest tightened. “I’m sorry enough to call you back here. It’s what I’m offering. Take it or leave it.”
Tristan raised an eyebrow. “You drive a hard bargain, Daniel.”
I almost laughed. “It would help if you weren’t so cryptic all the time.”
“You can’t fault me for not knowing what I don’t know.” Tristan reached out a finger and drew a lazy spiral in the moisture on the window. “Perhaps you’re simply asking the wrong questions.”