Everneath. Part 10

Jack pushed his chair back, and I knew I had to do something. I ducked my head and threw my weight against Cole's arm, barreling my way past.

I didn't stop running until I had reached my little red, rusted Rabbit. Once I was inside, I put my head against the steering wheel and took in some deep breaths as I thought of a harsh fact I didn't want to face-if Cole was going to follow me everywhere, there was a good chance someone important to me would get hurt.

I s.h.i.+vered at the thought.

My bedroom.

"What was that?" I said, unable to keep my voice lowered. "How did you ... change?"

It was later that night. Cole had s.h.i.+fted back to his regular form, blond hair and all. He waved his hand, as if he were swatting a fly. "It's not a big deal. Sometimes we can use our energy to alter our appearance. It's a waste, though. I only like to use it on special occasions."

"And today was a special occasion? Making Jack think..." What? I had no idea what he thought about it, but it couldn't be good.

I turned away from him and put my face in my hands. I wanted to hurt him.

He sat next to me on my bed, and when he spoke again, his voice was gentle. "I had to see what the big deal was. You Returned for this guy, but I have to admit, watching the two of you together... I'm just not seeing it."

My eyes started to sting, even though I was sure I hadn't recovered enough emotions to cry. I pulled my knees into my chest and rolled onto my side on the bed. "We're not together. I only wanted to see him again. Before I go."

"In that case, I did it for your own good, Nik," he said. I couldn't believe anything less right now. "Now that he knows what you're really like, it'll be easier to stay away from you. Besides, why would you want to live through pain like that? You'll lose everything again."

"What do you care?"

"I can't explain the need to understand your heart. But I've been feeding off it for so long, it's almost my own. I have to know, because it doesn't make sense why you would choose to Return."

"It wouldn't to you." I sighed.

"Tell me, Nik. Please."

I pushed myself into a sitting position, feeling defiant. "You want to know how I could pull off lying to you for one hundred years about forgetting everything? Because I had his face behind my eyelids. And I thought if I could see him, even just for a day, it would be worth the hundred years. One day is all I deserved, and I've had so many already. I've won. I've won!"

He shook his head and looked at me as if I were delusional. As if I didn't know what winning was all about. Then he put an arm around me and it was almost like he was mourning my life with me. "I don't understand the things you would give up for mortal relations.h.i.+ps."

"You better hope you never do, Cole."

"Why?"

"All you know about is the search for the next energy source. Your only relations.h.i.+p is with something you can Feed off. If you ever understood what you were missing..." I shook my head and realized how much I wanted him to understand. Maybe then he would feel, for the first time, real pain.

"Why don't you help me understand, Nik?" He raised the corner of his mouth in a devilish smirk and tightened his grip around me.

I shook his arm away from my shoulders.

I remembered the first time I'd met Cole. On the other side of the hundred years. Did he know then that I'd end up following him? That I'd allow him to drag me to the Everneath?

LAST YEAR.

February. One month before the Feed.

The line to get into Harry O's extended all the way to the sidewalk on Main Street, and up around the Park City T-s.h.i.+rt Company building. But Jules walked past everyone like she had a VIP badge or something.

More than a few freezing people gave nasty looks as we went by.

"Are you sure we can do this?" I asked Jules.

She grabbed my hand and pulled me along. "Yes. I told you. Sean said we just give our names to the guy at the door."

Harry O's was hard enough to get into on a regular night, but during the Sundance Film Festival, it would've been easier to break out of jail than to break into Harry O's.

But Sean O'Neill was the great-grandson of the original Harry O. And he was in Jules's pottery cla.s.s. And he had a thing for blondes.

He told Jules she could bring a friend. Jack was more than happy to stay home and watch the Jazz play the Nuggets. This wasn't his scene. It wasn't mine, either, but Jules begged.

Jules hesitated only slightly when she saw the large bouncer at the door, a big, thick man dressed in a tight black T-s.h.i.+rt and black pants, with a clipboard in his hands.

"Um, hi. We're supposed to give our names? Or something? Um... Julianna Taylor?"

He gave us a look that made me wonder if we were doing something totally illegal, and all I could think about was the fact that if we were arrested, my dad would never bail me out. But then he scanned his list, stopping his pen midway down.

"Julianna Taylor and guest."

I smiled when he said "guest," as if that were my name or something, but he didn't notice. He unhooked the velvet rope. We were in.

The place was packed with the most decked-out people I'd ever seen. The music blared, and I could feel the thrum of the base all the way to my heart. A few private booths with curtains lined the sides of the room, to accommodate the ultra-famous people.

Now that I was here, I realized I probably wouldn't see one other person I knew. There was nowhere to sit. Fewer places to stand. And even though I'd worn my best club outfit-okay, my only club outfit-I felt like an orphan out of Oliver Twist compared to everyone else. Jules scanned the crowd, probably thinking the same thing. Maybe I should've stayed home. Watched the game with Jack.

"Look! There's Meredith Jenkins." Jules was pointing across the room to a large table of people. "How did she get in?"

Jules caught Meredith's eye and waved to her. Meredith nodded and then turned to the girl next to her, a girl I didn't know.

"Let's go over," Jules said.

"Um, she wasn't exactly inviting us."

Jules shrugged. "Where else are we going to go?"

We could just go home, I thought, but I followed Jules over. Meredith smiled as we approached, but she definitely wasn't making room for us or anything.

"Hi, Julianna, Nikki. How did you get in?" She didn't sound rude. Just curious.

"Sean put us on the list," Jules answered.

A few awkward moments pa.s.sed, and I considered pulling Jules away and making a break for the exit, when a guy on the other side of the table stood up. And then I knew why Meredith was acting weird.

The guy was tall, dressed in a black T-s.h.i.+rt and jeans that looked distressed, but the kind of distressed that cost a lot of money. And I knew him. Not personally, but I knew who he was. I had both of his CDs at home, and his blond hair left no doubt in my mind. He was the guitarist for the Dead Elvises. Cole.

I glanced down the table. The entire band was there: second guitarist Maxwell; the ba.s.s player, Oliver; and the drummer, whose name I couldn't remember. Gavin, maybe? How was Meredith with these guys? Then I remembered hearing something at school about how Meredith was friends with some musician. I guess it was true.

Cole looked right at me. "Here. We can make room." He stepped away from the end of his bench and motioned me over. Me. Not Jules. "We can fit you here. Mer, make some room for her friend, will you?"

Meredith gave Cole a confused look, then scooted over so Jules could fit one b.u.t.t cheek on the bench. I slid onto the end of the other bench, where Cole had been, and then he sat next to me so I was sandwiched between Cole and Maxwell. My heart was pounding. I wasn't a crazed fan of theirs-I didn't have any tattoos of a skeletal Elvis anywhere on my body-but this was my first run-in with a celebrity. Even my fingertips were sweating a little.

Cole held his hand out to me. It was difficult to shake because we were sitting so close, and I made it fast because I didn't want him to remember me as the girl with the clammy hands. "Cole Stockton."

"Yeah, I know. I'm Nikki Beckett." He stared at me in silence for a few moments. I could feel my cheeks turning pink. "Um, shouldn't you guys be in one of those?" I pointed to the booths that were curtained off.

"Oh no. Those are for famous people." He gave me a smile that I could've sold on the internet for money. He wore a few silver bracelets and a necklace with a silver cross hanging on it. Each of his fingers had a tattooed design, like a ring, and in his hand was a plastic triangular object that he absentmindedly rolled over the tops of his knuckles. A guitar pick, it looked like. I'd only ever seen someone do that with a coin. "Beckett," he said. "Any relation to Mayor Beckett?"

"My dad. You know his name?"

He shrugged. "Saw him in the paper." He lowered his voice like a newscaster. "Mayor Beckett Reads Fluffle Bunny to Kindergarten Cla.s.s."

I smiled. "Slow news day, I guess."

"Is there any other kind here?" He winked.

No one else was really talking. Our end of the table just watched Cole and Maxwell, as if they were waiting on them. I wondered if that was how famous people felt all the time- like everyone around them was waiting for them to perform. But Maxwell wasn't doing anything, and Cole was only talking to me, and I was sure the music was too loud for anyone to really hear us.

Meredith's gaze kept darting to me. She looked annoyed.

I leaned in to Cole and lowered my voice. "So, are you and Meredith...?" What would be a term a rock star would use? Dating? Together? Going out?

As I grappled with the words in my head, Cole just watched me with a smirk. He wasn't about to help, which fl.u.s.tered me even more.

"... are you ... you know?" I waved my hands in a circle, in what I thought was a fill-in-the-blank kind of way.

Cole crinkled his brow.

Seriously? How could I be more obvious? I sighed. "Never mind."

"No, don't give up." Cole was definitely smiling now. "Do you mean, are we..." He held up the index fingers of both his hands, and then put the tips together and made a loud smoochy noise.

I couldn't help laughing. "You're making fun of me."

He wiped the smile off his face with his hand. "Sorry. No, I'm not with her. But Meredith and Max are..." He started tangling his fingers together, twisting them around each other. My face went red, and I covered his hands with mine to make him stop, and then my face got even hotter because I was clasping his hands.

Thankfully a waiter appeared right then with new drinks. He must've known the tip would be good because he kept the drinks coming-some local draft for the band and sodas for the rest of us. Over the next hour, the bouncer let more people in, but it seemed like no one was leaving. I lost count of the number of people who'd come up to our table and asked Cole or Maxwell for their autographs. These fans had more guts than I would have had.

Cole signed napkins, sc.r.a.ps of paper, even one girl's arm, all the while keeping up a conversation with me. Like it was totally normal that he was asking about where I was going to college while he held another girl's arm flat on the table in front of him, poised over it with a Sharpie.

It was all very surreal. The music and the drinks and Cole's voice blended together, and I soon forgot I didn't really belong here. But then a familiar man at the bar caught my eye. It was Carl Volker, the prosecuting attorney for the case against the drunk driver who killed my mom. The trial was set to start in a few weeks, and I'd been avoiding any news about it. A fresh wave of grief washed over me, and I stared hard at the s.h.i.+ny metal surface of the table, trying not to cry. It still surprised me how close to the surface the tears were. Whenever I was overcome with sadness-and it happened a lot since my mom died-I always tried to think of Jack and the fact that we were together now. It was my version of finding a happy place.

I pictured Jack at home, watching the game, his arm wrapped around me. I closed my eyes and smiled, and it was a few moments before I remembered I wasn't alone. When I did, I raised my head. Cole was looking at me with a strange expression on his face.

"Whoa. You are the happiest sad person I've ever met."

"Huh?"

"Or the saddest happy person." The corner of his mouth quirked up. "I'm not sure which." He leaned a little closer, to the point where I could smell his breath on my face. Beer and smoke. "Nope. Happiest sad person."

I tried a smile, so he couldn't see how close he really was to the truth. "I'm not sad."

"And she's not afraid to lie."

I felt my smile drop and I turned away. The second guitarist, Maxwell Bones, was on the other side of me. I'd read somewhere that Bones wasn't his real name, but he changed it before he joined the band.

Maxwell had an iPhone that he'd been fiddling with all night, and he was reading a message.

"What's the news, Max?" Cole asked.

"The queen," Max said. I could've sworn I felt Cole tense at this. I tried to lean a little closer to read the message, but Max clicked the screen blank. "Says we owe her."

I felt like I was intruding on a business conversation, but there was nowhere I could go. I looked at Cole. His lips were pressed together.

He saw the look on my face. "Our ... manager."

"You call your manager the queen?"

He gave a short chuckle. "It's more of a ... term of endearment."

He and Max were quiet for a moment, making the music in the place seem even louder. Whatever the message was, whoever this "queen" was, it seemed to bother them.

"Mer!" Max called out suddenly. "To the dance floor!"

Meredith flashed a wide grin in response. I was about to scoot out so Max could pa.s.s by, but he just climbed on top of the table and held his hand out to Meredith. I guessed famous people could walk on tables whenever they wanted.

Cole nudged me with his elbow. "C'mon, sad girl. Let's turn that frown on its a.s.s. Dancing makes everything better."

The entire table got up, and we made our way to the middle of the floor. I noticed a bouncer place a RESERVED sign on the table after we were gone.

Jules and I stuck together, but after a few minutes I got carried away in the music, and the fact that I was dancing with the Dead Elvises, and it was a long time before I remembered my mom was gone and her murderer's trial would start soon.

ELEVEN.

NOW.

School. Less than four months left.

I wasn't sure how Jack would react after Cole had showed up at school as "Neal." I would've understood if he decided to completely ignore me, and maybe even ditched out on Mrs. Stone's cla.s.sroom after school.