Cold Kiss Read online

  “Come on, Wren.” For the first time in over an hour, he gets up, and the coffee table screeches against the floor as he pushes off it. He rakes his fingers through his hair again as he paces toward the windows. “Is he really the Danny you knew?”

  The cold knot in my stomach tightens. I swallow back a wave of nausea. “Yes. Mostly.”

  “Wren.” Gabriel turns around, head tilted to one side. “Be honest.”

  “He is.” I sit up, wrapping my arms around my knees again. “He’s a little … different, but it’s him. It is, Gabriel. He is.”

  It’s nearly four thirty, and the light outside is already dying. Backlit by the windows, Gabriel’s face is hard to read—I can’t make out more than the angular line of his profile and the hard set of his jaw. When he suddenly moves across the room to turn on a lamp, I’m startled, and I flinch when he drops down next to me on the sofa.

  “Just tell me.”

  I take a deep breath. He’s so close, there’s only an afterthought of space between his thigh and my hip. The lamplight is a dirty gold puddle across the room, and in it the apartment looks even more like Early Fallout Shelter crossed with Garage Sale Reject.

  I focus on a torn cardboard box spilling T-shirts and towels onto the faded floorboards. “I had to wait for a full moon. So I figured out when the next one would be and got everything I needed while I waited.”

  “What spell did you use?”

  I flick my gaze sideways. “I wrote it myself.”

  His eyes widen. “Seriously?”

  I shrug. “Seriously. I mean, I got my ideas from a few different books, but yeah.”

  His mouth is still hanging open a little when he makes a “go on” motion with one hand.

  “I needed some things I couldn’t find around here,” I continue, staring at the toe of my boot over my knee. “Mandrake root. A ritual, um, blade. They call them—”

  “Athames, I know. My grandmother had one she gave my mom when she died.”

  I swallow again. I wasn’t expecting that. “I wrote it all out, and collected the other things I needed—saffron, poppy, hemlock. I sort of scoped out the cemetery a few nights before the full moon, to make sure no one would be around. And to, well, get used to it, you know?”

  I shivered as I remembered those nights before the moon was due to rise full, and I sat near Danny’s grave, sometimes resting my cheek on the simple stone, tracing the letters of his name, engraved in the marble. DANIEL FRANCIS GREER. I had never known his middle name was Francis.

  “And on that night?”Gabriel sounds almost angry now.

  “I was there at eleven, waiting for midnight. I had a picture of him, and a T-shirt of his, and all the other things. I had already blessed the athame, too.”

  I can feel the slight motion as he nods. “Then?”

  I close my eyes to picture it. I don’t think about it much anymore—it was hyper real at the time, too many sensations, the chill of the earth even in late July, the damp kiss of the grass on my knees, the flat, chalky smell of the stone, the dark blanket of sky overhead.

  I had everything ready—a candle, a bowl and a small container of milk, the herbs, and the blade. I laid it all out, trying to ignore the way my hands shook, the faint crackling of squirrels in the trees, the grasshoppers’ steady hum.

  “At about five minutes to midnight, I poured the milk in the bowl and wrapped the mandrake root in Danny’s shirt. I put that in the bowl, submerging it, and then added the saffron and the poppy and the hemlock.” I glance at Gabriel, and his brow is twisted into a crooked, unhappy line.

  “I laid the picture of him on the grave,” I say, and my voice trembles a little then. It was a picture I loved—everything in it was perfectly Danny, from his Stooges T-shirt to the sun in his hair to the sleepy, soft smile on his face. “And I got out the knife.”

  “Shit, Wren.”

  I ignore him, plowing ahead, determined to get the rest of it out now. “I pricked my finger and smeared the blood on the picture. Then I cut my hand, here”—I hold out my right hand and show him the scar in the center of my palm—”and waited. As soon as it was midnight, I started the spell and squeezed my hand over the bowl.”

  I can remember the words even now, the smooth weight of them on my tongue, the sound of my voice in the silence. It had taken me almost a week to get it right, or as close to right as I thought it could be.

  This night I seek to rekindle Life’s bright fire

  Fire stolen too soon by the cold grasp of Death

  Untimely Death.

  Spirits bright

  Spirits dark

  Spirits undecided and in between

  Witness my invocation.

  Life taken from you, Danny, return!

  Love awaits you.

  Death has no hold on you.

  By candlelight By starlight

  By moonlight growing stronger

  I command this to be.

  With this symbol of Danny

  With my blood

  I command this to be.

  Return to life

  Return to me

  Return to life

  Return to me

  Return to life

  Return to me.

  Gabriel closes his eyes and scrubs a hand over his face when I repeat the spell to him, and I bite my lip. It sounds wrong here in this shabby room, on the sofa that smells like ancient must and smoke. It sounds crazy, wrong and crazy, but I have to tell him the rest.

  “I took the blade and drove it through his picture and into the ground, into the dirt.” My heart is pounding now, remembering the racing thrill in my veins as I waited, the air in the graveyard swelling, pushing out, and the cool breeze that licked at the candle until it guttered and went out.

  “And?”Gabriel says. He leans closer, folds his hand around my ankle again.

  My voice is nothing more than a whisper. “I opened my eyes and Danny was there.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  IT’S NO PLAGE TO STOP, BUT AS GABRIEL RAKES a hand through his hair again, my phone rings. It’s Robin, so I can’t ignore it.

  “What?” I sound wrecked, even to my own ears.

  “I can’t find him and I looked everywhere! Are you coming home now? Wren?”

  I can’t make any sense of it, but then I picture Danny’s face and my heart drops into my stomach without warning, a sickening whoosh. “Find who, Robin?”

  “Mr. Purrfect! He’s not anywhere in the house, and he won’t come when I call, and you know he—”

  “Robin.” I sit back as my heart starts to beat again.

  Of course she doesn’t mean Danny. She doesn’t even know about Danny; she wouldn’t be looking for him. I’m totally losing it. “Calm down.”

  “Wren, he’s old.” She’s panicking, which she almost never does, and she sounds about five years younger, the little Robin I remember, terrified in the middle of the night after a bad dream. “And he gets confused lately, and what if he’s stuck somewhere or—”

  “Hey, seriously, calm down. I’m coming home right now, okay? I’ll be right there.”

  Gabriel is glaring at me when I flip the phone closed, and I shrug. “I have to go, it’s my sister.”

  “We have to talk about this,” he says, and folds his arms over his chest.

  “Not right now we don’t.” I stand up and grab my backpack, hefting it over my shoulder.

  I know I’m taking the easy way out, the perfect excuse to run away from the expression on Gabriel’s face and the judgment in his eyes, but I don’t care. It may be a relief not to have to lie about what I can do, what I have done, but I hadn’t thought about how much disapproval would hurt. “Look, I get that you’re worried or whatever—”

  “Worried?” His laugh is a bark, short and sharp. “Are you kidding? You have your dead boyfriend living in your neighbor’s garage!”

  Power floods through me in a hot, aching rush, and across the room the lightbulb explodes beneath the lamp shade. “Back. Off.”
>
  I have to give him credit—he doesn’t even flinch. But when he opens his mouth, I cut him off.

  “I get it, okay? I really, really get it, believe me, and I’ve been living with this since July, instead of the last half hour. So just … back off already. I’m a big girl and I will deal with this. But first I have to find my sister’s senile cat.”

  It’s such a ridiculous thing to say, Gabriel snorts a laugh, and I can’t help smiling. It breaks the tension in the room, soothes the angry hum of electricity in my blood.

  When I head for the door, though, Gabriel grabs my hand. He turns it palm up and scrawls his phone number there with a blue ballpoint.

  “Whenever you want,” he says, and steps back.

  And despite my big words, it’s a relief to know he cares that much. But I’m pretty sure calling him might be a matter of need.

  I drop my backpack by the front door and shrug off my jacket when I get home. “Robin?”

  “In here.” She appears in the door to the kitchen, tears dried in silver tracks on her cheeks. Mr. Purrfect’s favorite catnip mouse is clutched in one hand. She looks, well, like her beloved cat is missing, and my heart squeezes in sympathy even if I wish Mom hadn’t let her give the beast such a completely lame name.

  “Hey, come here.” I open my arms and she walks straight into them, laying her head on my shoulder. The wet warmth of tears and snot is a little gross, but I stroke her hair anyway. “We’ll find him, Binny. I promise.”

  I haven’t called her that in years, and it makes her sniffle and heave a big, shuddering breath. “I know it’s stupid. I know it. But he’s getting old, Wren, and the Tates have that big, nasty dog—”

  “Shhhh.” I hold her closer and swallow a sigh. It’s been a long time since the biggest crisis in my life was as simple as a cat who went out for an unsupervised walk, and I’m exhausted after Gabriel’s interrogation. But Mom’s at work, which leaves me to handle Robin, and the damn cat. Who hates me, not that that should matter.

  I really hope it also doesn’t matter that he followed me outside last night, since I can’t remember seeing him again after that.

  I let go of her when she seems a little calmer, and glance into the kitchen. Mr. Purrfect’s bag of kibble looks like it exploded, clown-car-style—mounds of tiny fish-shaped pellets have spilled out of a bag half its size.

  Robin winces when I look back at her. “I was shaking it, you know? To get him to come? And I was calling him and shaking it, and calling him, and … suddenly all this food started pouring out of it.”

  It’s really coming, then, the moment when Robin can do the things I can do, and Mom can do, and for a second jealousy stabs at me. At least she has an idea it will happen to her, unlike me.

  But that’s something to deal with later. For now, we have to find the dumb cat.

  “You checked the whole house?” I ask her, going back into the front hall to grab my jacket. “Closets, drawers, basement, everywhere?”

  “Everywhere.” She’s practically vibrating with panic, and I don’t blame her. The number of places a twelve-pound cat can hide is huge.

  “He has to be outside, then. Come on.”

  She grabs a sweatshirt and follows me through the back door, already calling for him as she yanks it over her head. It’s nearly dusk, the backyard crouching in the shadow of the scarred elm tree beside the garage.

  “You check in there,” I tell her, and squint into the gathering dark of the lawn, the space under the back steps, the scraggly bushes along the wall.

  Robin knocks something over in the garage, and she comes out muttering and brushing off her sleeves. “If he’s in there, he’s somewhere I can’t see. We need light.”

  The word is barely out of her mouth when a buttery glow follows the path of her outstretched hand. Her eyes widen, and I stumble backward a foot, but there’s no time to comment on it because the light has fallen on a trampled path pressed into the dying grass.

  Heading straight toward the corner of the yard, and Mrs. Petrelli’s garage.

  Robin’s on her way before I can say anything, the yellow light wobbling in front of her. It’s pretty clear that the path is too wide for a cat to have made, but she doesn’t see that in her panic.

  “Robin, slow down.” I jog after her. “You might, um, scare him if he’s back here.”

  “Mr. Purrfect,” she calls, ignoring me. “C’mere, boy. Come on now, I’ve got dinner for you, boy.” She’s already at the break in the hedge, waving her hand to cast the light through the scraggly leaves.

  And there, just on the other side of the hedge, is the cat, six feet from Mrs. Petrelli’s garage, with a crumpled piece of paper in his mouth. His yellow eyes gleam hot when Robin’s light bounces over his face.

  “There you are!” The light disappears as she rushes toward him, pushing through the leaves and dropping onto the grass with her hands outstretched. “Come here, boy.”

  I know it’s not possible—if my heart really stopped, I would pass out, keel over, lose consciousness. But it feels that way as the stupid animal opens its mouth to mewl at her, dropping the paper on the ground at her knees.

  All I can think is wind, but it’s too late. Before the stiff breeze slaps at us, she picks up the paper and spreads it open. “What’s this?” she says, petting the cat as he rubs against her thigh. His fur is standing partly on end, and I don’t know if he’s freaked out because of the wind or something else.

  Like my dead boyfriend.

  “Wren,” Robin says as I stand there with my mouth open like an idiot. “It looks like one of Danny’s.”

  The wrinkled page on her knees bears a cartoon sketch of a girl who looks just like me, in skinny black jeans and Docs, dark hair sticking out every which way, only half caught up in barrettes, and a bright red slash creating a smirk.

  It is me, of course. And Robin would know—her favorite game was to get Danny to draw funny pictures for her, of me, of the cat, of himself, even of her. She still has a couple of them pinned to the wall over her desk, all signed with Danny’s scribbled initials.

  She loved him, too, and he treated her better than most boyfriends would treat someone’s annoying little sister, because Danny was always willing to make someone smile.

  None of that matters right now, though. I lean forward and snatch the paper off her lap. “Get the cat, come on. It’s freezing.”

  “Where do you think he got that?” She stands up, Mr. Purrfect cradled in her arms and her voice muffled since she’s speaking into his fur.

  “I threw some stuff out the other day,” I tell her, and glance back over my shoulder as we make our way across the yard. “It must have blown out of the trash.”

  She blinks, and even in the semidarkness I can read the betrayal on her face. “Oh.”

  It hurts to let the lie hang there, but there’s nothing else I can do. Except glare at the cat, who hisses at me as Robin walks past on her way up the back steps.

  “Turn it off,” Danny says, frowning, when my phone buzzes for the fourth time.

  It’s Mom’s late night at the salon—on Mondays she does bills and general cleanup after closing, so Robin and I are on our own for dinner and homework. And since Robin locked herself in her room for some disgusting lovefest with the stupid cat after I made frozen pizza, I snuck out to the loft.

  Darcia keeps texting me, though, little blips of happiness about Friday, and dumb stuff about school or home, just the way she used to. It’s nice, except for how Danny—this Danny anyway—isn’t used to sharing me.

  “I can’t.” I stroke his back gently. He’s sitting up, drawing something in the last of the big sketch pads I got him. “I told Robin I was going to the library, and Mom’s not home, so I need to answer if she calls.”

  Now I’m lying to Danny, too. Not that I haven’t been all this time, of course, but it feels different to lie to him about everyday things. I close my eyes for a second, swallowing back the instinct to start screaming and never stop.
/>   He glances over his shoulder at me again, brow still creased. Three fat candles burn in the corner of the room on the floor, the flames casting dancing shadows over his face. For a moment, I’m sure I can see the blunt outline of his skull beneath his skin, the indentations of his eye sockets, and I shudder.

  “Are you cold?” Just like that, his unhappiness is forgotten. He grabs the ratty quilt from the end of the mattress to tuck it around my legs, and his drawing falls to the floor.

  It’s nothing like his usual comic panels or figures. Instead, a huge, gnarled tree seems to grow out of the center of the page. The branches are bony, long arms that stretch into skeletal fingers, dozens of them reaching toward me as I stare at it, a twisted, funhouse tree.

  I shudder again, and Danny moves closer, winding his arm around my waist. It doesn’t help—he’s like marble, cold and unforgiving, his ribs like a cage.

  “What’s that?” I ask him, pointing at the drawing while I try not to shiver.

  He shrugs. “A tree. Can’t you tell?”

  “Well, yeah, but … you don’t usually draw things like that.” I reach into my pocket and pull out the folded sheet of paper, smoothing it open. “You usually draw stuff like this.”

  His sudden smile is startling, the Danny I love surfacing from under a shroud. “That’s you. Yeah.” Just as suddenly, he scowls. “I had to throw it at the cat.”

  I actually gulp, shaking now. “The cat?”

  “Robin’s cat.” He moves away, body tight with tension again, the line of his back a blunt backslash in the candlelight. “Stupid thing hates me now. It used to like me.”