Chapter Twenty-One
“Only Devon would meet a guy in the morning and convince him to take her to prom that night,” Cooper said. He took a long pull from his flask before offering it to the rest of us congregated around the punch bowl.
“Please, he didn’t even have the decency to come to dinner or ride in the limo with us,” Cynthia replied, accepting the flask. She took several quick sips then passed it to Elizabeth.
“I think it’s romantic. She must have made quite an impression,” Elizabeth said. “How exactly did she meet him anyway?”
“On Main Street. Somewhere between the tailor and her car they ran into each other,” I replied.
When Devon called me earlier that day and said she’d found a date to prom while picking up her gown from Andrea’s Alterations, I’d been ecstatic. I’d been so proud of her for refusing to back down and forgive Rick for his latest indiscretion, and finding someone to occupy her time was even better. But the more I thought about it, the less I liked the idea of my best friend taking a complete stranger to prom. Just as Cynthia had said, he told Devon that he couldn’t make dinner or pictures and would meet her at the country club. Now, an hour into the dance, he’d finally made an appearance ― sort of. He’d texted Devon saying he was outside and asking if she could come meet him.
“I’m sure she’s fine,” Kaydon murmured in my ear. “Just relax and try to have a good time.”
His assurances not only didn’t make me feel any better, they made me feel guilty. Instead of paying attention to Kaydon, my date, I’d spent the evening obsessing over the mysterious guy Devon was all of a sudden enamored with. Asking a complete stranger out on a date was uncharacteristic for my best friend. She was suspicious and inquisitive by nature, and preferred to do a complete and thorough background check on any potential suitors. So this departure from her normal personality bothered me.
A slow song started to play, and my friends and their respective dates began moving towards the dance floor. I didn’t follow immediately. I wanted to make sure Devon was okay.
“She’s fine,” Kaydon repeated. “Let’s dance, and if she hasn’t returned by the end of the song, we’ll go look for her.”
Only the fact that I’d basically ignored him all night made me agree. “One song,” I prefaced. “Then we go make sure she’s okay.”
“Deal.”
I took Kaydon’s offered hand and let him lead me to the dance floor. He wrapped his arms around my waist and I wrapped mine around his neck. But my attention was still on the main entrance. Devon was nowhere in sight.
Beside us, Cooper dipped Elizabeth backward until her long hair swept the floor. She giggled and sang along with the song, butchering the words. Mandy and Matthew moved in small awkward circles, neither of them particularly coordinated dancers.
“Are you having a good time?” Kaydon asked, pulling me from my thoughts.
“Of course,” I replied automatically.
Kaydon bent down so his face was inches from mine. The concern in his eyes was evident, making me feel even worse for being such a crappy date. “You only get one senior prom, Endora.”
I smiled and kissed him softly on the cheek. “I’m having a great time.”
A head of blonde curls laced with baby’s breath caught my attention over his shoulder. I exhaled a long sigh of relief. Devon was back. I almost laughed at how worried I’d been. All this nonsense about Egrgoroi was making me paranoid.
The relief quickly morphed to unease. Devon wasn’t alone, and the guy, her mystery date, wasn’t a stranger. I’d seen him at least once before. He’d been dressed in jeans and a sweater that accented his midnight blue eyes. At the time I’d thought his frosted blond highlights screamed high maintenance. Now, in his immaculate white tuxedo with black piping, he looked like a heavenly creature. But the energy he exuded felt anything but angelic. Dark, dangerous power radiated from his body.
The boy walking hand in hand with my best friend was the same boy who’d suggested I jump off the rock at Caswell Lake.
“Eel? What’s wrong?” Kaydon asked, following my gaze to Devon and her date. His body tensed when his eyes landed on the boy.
“Do you know him?” I demanded.
Kaydon took a moment to compose himself, allowing his muscles to relax and his features to return to neutral. “No. Why? Do you?”
He was lying. Kaydon definitely knew the boy, or at least recognized him. My pulse quickened. Something was off. I pulled free from Kaydon’s grip and started towards where Devon and her date were standing by the finger foods.
“Eel, wait!” Kaydon called after me.
I ignored him. Nothing was as important as getting to Devon.
The song ended and a faster, more upbeat one took its place. More of my classmates began filtering onto the dance floor, obstructing my view of Devon and making it harder for me to fight through the crowd.
Kaydon caught up to me, grabbing my upper arms to stop me in my tracks. I struggled to free myself, but Kaydon’s grip was firm.
“Stop, Endora.”
I didn’t heed his command. The crowd around us had parted, and I could see Devon again. She was starting down a hallway off of the main ballroom, still holding hands with the boy.
“Who is he?” I demanded without turning to face Kaydon.
Kaydon said nothing.
“Who is he?” I repeated through gritted teeth.
Kaydon said nothing.
Irritation and anxiety spiking, I screamed my question a third time. “WHO IS HE?”
****
“Eel, wake up!” someone demanded.
Blindly, I tried to reach out towards the sound of the voice. My arms were pinned. Coarse hair tickled my nose as it swept across my face. Someone was leaning over me. I kicked my legs, finding them untethered.
“Jesus, Eel,” the voice said as something sharp and pointy slammed into my gut.
“Owww,” I moaned, finally opening my eyes. Devon’s face was inches above me, huge eyes watery with unshed tears. “What’s wrong?” I asked, afraid something had happened to her.
“You kicked me,” she said, sitting back on her haunches and releasing my arms.
“I did?”
“Yeah, just now. You were screaming in your sleep and when I tried to wake you up, you freaked.”
I scrambled to sit up. Devon had turned on her bedside lamp, and in the dull light I could just make out red blotches on my upper arms where she’d held me down. I brought my knees to my chest and hugged myself, suddenly freezing.
“Nightmare,” I mumbled, rocking back and forth slightly. I repeated the word, reassuring myself as much as Devon. My heart was racing and my side ached, and I was still disoriented from being forcefully pulled from sleep.
“Nightmare,” I repeated a third time, finally meeting Devon’s concerned gaze.
A fist seemed to squeeze my lungs, cutting off my air supply. A sudden rush of panic jolted my brain fully awake, but the panic wasn’t for me. It was for my best friend. The glazed expression in her eyes, the way her curls were piled on top of her head, the thin straps of her pajama top, triggered something in my mind. Wisps of gray-and-white smoke swirled around me at dizzying speed. Incorporeal hands reached for me, their nails clawing at my arms and legs. Blistering heat engulfed my entire body. I blinked rapidly, too stunned to react.
“Definitely a nightmare,” Devon agreed.
Her voice pulled me from the vision, anchoring me to reality. I blinked several more times before I was convinced that Devon and I were alone in her bedroom. I nearly wept with relief when the ghost-like appendages didn’t reappear.
“You started screaming bloody murder, I thought you’d wake my parents,” Devon continued. The concern in her eyes deepened. “Eel? Are you okay?” She placed the back of her hand against my forehead, like my mother used to do when she thought I might have a fever.
“You’re roasting,” she proclaimed.
Devon leapt to her feet, disappearing into the hallway and returning moments later with a cold washcloth. The wet towel felt amazing against my flushed skin, cooling the feverish flesh on contact like aloe on a bad sunburn.
“You’ve been having a lot of nightmares lately, Eel,” Devon said quietly. “Want to talk about it?”
I patted my chest, searching for the dream catcher for comfort. It wasn’t there. Right, because despite promising Kaydon I wouldn’t take it off ever again, I hadn’t wanted to see my mother and therefore failed to retrieve it from my bedroom.
“Are they all the same?” Devon pressed when I didn’t respond.
“I-I-I don’t know,” I stammered. “I don’t usually remember them after I wake up.”
I hugged my knees tighter against my chest. I’d told Devon the truth. The dreams were gone from my mind nearly the instant I woke up. Tonight was the first time images had bled through.
“Usually?” Devon’s attention to detail was impressive. Even minute facts and figures were never overlooked by my best friend. “So sometimes you do remember them.”
It wasn’t a question. I nodded anyway.
“Talk to me, Eel.”
While the images from the dream were gone, the ominous sensation remained. Kaydon had said that in time I would recall the dreams from the moment I awoke. As I watched the lines between my best friend’s brows deepen, I had the awful feeling that time might not be a luxury that I had.
“Something bad is going to happen,” I whispered softly. I couldn’t bring myself to add that the something bad involved her.
“When?” Devon asked.
I shook my head and bit the inside of my cheek to keep from crying. The nightmares that had been plaguing my sleep were important, of that I was certain. And I couldn’t shake the increasing worry that Devon’s life might hinge on my ability to recall the dreams before it was too late.
“How many of your dreams have come true?” Devon’s voice was kind but intense. The urge to cry out of frustration became harder to fight.
“Four or five,” I mumbled, “so far.”
“And you think that the one you just had will, too?”
“I don’t think it will. I know it will.”
****
Both Mr. Wentworth’s Escalade and Kaydon’s Jeep were already in the Moonlight parking lot when we arrived the next morning. Mr. Wentworth was standing between the two vehicles talking to Kaydon through the Jeep’s open window.
Devon parked on the other side of Kaydon’s Jeep and turned off the Chevy’s engine. I made no move to get out of the car, regretting that I’d declined Devon’s offer to swing by McDonald’s drive-thru for coffee. My brain wasn’t all systems go quite yet, and coffee would have been the pick-me-up I desperately needed. My lackluster attitude was also due to my conflicted emotions about the day’s mission. On the one hand, I was excited to see Dad’s house. On the other, I was terrified of what we might find.
“Come on let’s get this over with,” Devon said and threw open her door.
Hesitantly, I followed her lead.
“Good morning, Endora,” Mr. Wentworth said warmly. He turned to Devon. “And you must be the infamous Devon Holloway. Nice to put a face with a name.”
Infamous? Great, I could only imagine what Jamieson had told him about Devon.
She could bad-mouth me all she wanted; after five years I was used to it. Devon, though ― I wouldn’t stand for that. Before I could open my mouth and dispel the awful rumors he’d likely heard about my best friend, Mr. Wentworth said, “Why don’t you kids all ride with me? Mark’s place isn’t far.”
“Great. Thanks, sir,” Kaydon said. He rolled up the window and got out of the Jeep.
Devon climbed into the front passenger seat of Mr. Wentworth’s SUV, and Kaydon opened the back door, allowing me to slide into the back seat.
“Where’s your necklace?” Kaydon whispered as Mr. Wentworth turned left out of the parking lot.
“At my house,” I whispered back. “I’ll explain later.” Even though Mr. Wentworth had been the one to give me the necklace, I felt uncomfortable talking about it in front of him.
Kaydon ran his palm up and down my thigh and gave my leg a light squeeze, letting me know he understood. I smiled up at him, grateful for his company.
No one spoke on the ten-minute ride from the Moonlight to my dad’s place, which, as it turned out, was located several miles down a winding back road. The house was ranch style, wedged between two identical structures. A red pickup truck sat in the driveway with Dad’s “Historians Have Been Doing It For Centuries” bumper sticker on the back window. My chest tightened; Mom hated that bumper sticker.
“Has the truck been here this whole time?” Devon asked the question my mouth couldn’t formulate.
“Yes. As far as we can tell, Mark left the house of his own accord in someone else’s car. There is no forced entry and no evidence of a struggle. Well, at least I don’t think there was a struggle. It’s hard to tell.”
“What do you mean?” Kaydon asked.
“Dad is not a great housekeeper,” I said numbly. My father liked clutter. His office in our old house had stacks of old student papers and more books than the public library. Every spring he promised Mom he would clean out the space. When we moved, I finally sifted through all of the junk, finding term papers dating back to the year I was born. Over my mother’s protests, I saved many of his treasured books from the dump pile.
Mr. Wentworth led our group to the front door and selected a key from his key ring. The front door swung open, revealing a hoarder’s dream. In an ordinary home, I imagined that the main area would be a living room, but my father had turned it into a humongous office space. World maps with pushpins sticking out of them papered the walls. Legal pads and binders covered almost every inch of the wooden floor boards, save the pathways Dad had left himself. A large whiteboard stood in the center of the room, my father’s tiny handwriting scrawled in red, blue, and green markers. The only normal living room accessory was the brown leather sofa pushed against one wall, and even that was covered in books.
“Shit,” Devon said, so eloquently summing up what everyone was probably thinking.
“I see what you mean,” Kaydon muttered to Mr. Wentworth. “I don’t know how you would tell if there had been a struggle.”
“Okay, here’s the plan,” Devon said. “Eel, use the camera on your phone to take pictures of all the maps, particularly the places he stuck those pins. Kaydon, take the whiteboard. And I will start on the couch, I guess.”
“What do you want me to do?” Mr. Wentworth asked.
“Why don’t you start with that pile?” Devon said, pointing to a waist-high mound of legal pads staked against the wall.
“I am looking for any mention of the Egrgoroi?” Mr. Wentworth asked.
“Yeah,” I said uncomfortably. I wasn’t sure what I’d expected Jamieson’s father to do while the rest of us searched my father’s belongings, but I hadn’t imagined he’d help. “We’re just trying to learn everything we can from Dad’s research.”
The four of us set off on our assigned tasks.
Upon closer inspection, I realized that they were all world maps, though each was from a different point in history. One dated back to 1100 B.C. The most recent was dated 2005. Each map had nine pins in roughly the same geographical locations; it was hard to tell for sure since the earlier maps designated empires instead of countries or cities.
After I finished examining the maps without actually learning anything, I started on a stack of books on the couch. Dad had marked various pages with neon Post-its, many of which had indecipherable notations made in his tiny handwriting. I poured over Dad’s work, setting aside the more heavily tabbed books to take with me.
Hours passed in silence. My neck and back began to ache from sitting bent over in the same position. My stomach frequently reminded me that I had not yet eaten today and I felt like my eyes were crossing after too much time reading faded text. I found several references to the Egrgoroi, but learned nothing new.
Devon had given up on the books and legal pads and was now dissecting Dad’s digital files. I joined her at the computer desk, every joint in my body cracking as I stretched.
“Find anything?” I asked her.
“Yeah, maybe,” Devon mumbled around the pencil stuck between her teeth. “Your father has a file on here named ‘Endora,’ but it’s password-protected.”
“Did you try my birthday?” I asked.
Devon rolled her eyes at me over her shoulder. “No, Eel that never occurred to me,” she said sardonically.
“Just trying to help,” I mumbled.
“I know. And yes I did. I also tried your name, your initials, and Eel. No luck. What’s your parents’ anniversary?”
I rattled off my parents’ anniversary, followed by each of their birthdays when the anniversary failed. Feeling like a failure and wondering whether I really knew my father at all, I shrugged my shoulders and told her I was out of ideas.
“Why don’t we take the laptop with us?” Mr. Wentworth suggested. “I can have one of my techs work on it. It’s nearly noon and you guys should get back before Evelyn realizes you’re gone, Endora.”
He had a point. My cell was still in Devon’s car and I wasn’t looking forward to the texts and voice-mail messages that awaited my return.
Devon packed up Dad’s laptop while the rest of us loaded boxes of books into the back of Mr. Wentworth’s Escalade. On the ride back to the Moonlight, Devon, Kaydon, and I agreed to split up the books and continue combing through them separately that afternoon. Mr. Wentworth promised to call the minute his tech guys were able to crack Dad’s password.
“Think your mom will let you out tonight?” Kaydon asked me while we were saying goodbye in the diner’s parking lot.
Mr. Wentworth had already left and Devon was sitting in her car playing with her phone.
“She probably won’t even be home,” I told him. “So, yeah I can probably get away.”
“If she isn’t home, maybe I could come over?” Kaydon smiled almost shyly and my heart melted.
“That would be great,” I said.
“I’ll see you later then.” Without giving me a chance to answer, Kaydon wrapped his hands around my waist and pulled me to him. He was leaning with his back against the side of the Jeep, so when he pulled me forward I fell on top of him, hands splayed across his chest. His mouth was on mine, gentle at first until we both grew accustomed to the sensation.
“Get a room,” Devon hollered from the Chevy.
I made a one-fingered shooing gesture in response.