Phoenix Read online

  I closed my eyes and laughed. “Idiot.” You can load any word you like with affection and it comes out like “I love you.”

  “You were so cool, Darina. You could look at a guy and destroy him—zap, he’d be gone.”

  “Not really.”

  “Yeah, you could. Girls like you don’t know their power.”

  “Girls like me?”

  “Beautiful and hostile—a killer combination.”

  “Listen.” I reached for his hands. “That wasn’t hostility—that was pure fear. Other girls—Jordan, Hannah—they’re born with the confidence gene. They’re out there saying ‘Look at me!’ knowing that the whole world adores them. Not me. There’s not a grain of that anywhere in my entire body—I step out of my door each day armed and ready for attack.”

  “How did that happen?” Phoenix wondered, sitting in a shaft of sunlight that fell through the open door.

  “It’s not hard to work out. When my dad was around, he expected a lot. Always be good, be smart. And I tried real hard. Sometimes it worked—one time, when I was eight years old, I won a prize for making a speech in front of the whole school. Me! I was so chewed up with nerves I didn’t eat for a week. Then there were times I tried to please him, and it didn’t work. That’s when Dad did a great job of ignoring me and making me feel like I didn’t exist.”

  “Yeah, we have to please Daddy.” Phoenix knew the score.

  “That’s the thing about fathers—you work and work at it then they leave home anyway.” This was part of the bond between Phoenix and me, I realized. We were both abandoned kids. “I just talked with yours,” I told him hesitantly.

  “I know. Hunter was there.”

  Of course! “Michael needs closure,” I told Phoenix. “He wanted to know about us, to understand. And he showed me a picture.” Describing the photo of Brandon and Phoenix, I waited for his reaction.

  Phoenix was silent, lost in his memories.

  “What are you thinking?” I asked.

  He glanced up at me then smiled sadly. There was a lifetime of regret rolled up in that smile. “I’m thinking it was a long time ago.”

  • • •

  I already mentioned being unhappy with the fact that Hunter had returned with such a small group of Beautiful Dead.

  “Where are the others? Where are Donna and Eve?” I asked Iceman after Dean had come into the kitchen to get Phoenix, and I’d found myself wandering aimlessly across the yard into the barn, where I found Iceman chopping logs.

  “They didn’t come back.”

  “I see that, but why? Where are they?”

  Iceman let the heavy ax head swing to the ground, rested on the shaft, and shook his head. “Donna’s twelve months were up.”

  Listening to Iceman’s short answers, I struggled to picture Donna—always there but in the background.

  It was her bright red hair that you noticed and that was all. I felt bad about not being more curious when I had the chance.

  “Did Eve run out of time, too?”

  “No. She found her answer.”

  Eve with her baby, Kori, whose golden hair shone like a halo.

  Iceman read my mind. “Actually, Eve was here for Kori. She needed to learn why her baby died. It turns out the hospital missed a diagnosis. Meningitis.”

  “And Eve?” I didn’t want to hear that she’d lost her baby and died soon after of a broken heart.

  “In childbirth,” Iceman explained. “She stepped over six months before Kori. They’re together now.”

  I let out a sigh then stood quietly while Iceman took up the ax again. I saw the shiny blade fall, heard the thud and crack as it split the log.

  “It feels different without them, I know.” Iceman paused again and spoke what I was thinking. “And without Jonas, Arizona, and Summer.”

  “They all left and won’t come back.” The barn was gloomy and cold, sad memories floated in the dust.

  “And soon Phoenix,” Iceman said, going back to his task.

  “Iceman, I want you to stay here with Darina.” Hunter strode into the barn while Dean and Phoenix waited in the yard. “Keep her hidden. If intruders come too close, you know what to do.”

  Intruders! I flipped into panic mode. “What happened? Did Michael Rohr follow me down here?”

  Hunter had already turned away, but he paused to glance at me. “Not this time, Darina. No—Dean just spotted cops heading along the dirt road. It’s Jardine and the new sheriff, coming to check the place out.”

  Knowing this had nothing to do with me, I relaxed.

  Well, not relaxed exactly. Let’s just say Hunter wouldn’t be able to blame me for the new county sheriff driving out to Foxton. It was part of his job to check out the squatter rumors, simple as that. And Hunter’s job was to protect the Beautiful Dead from intruders.

  So I stayed in the barn with Iceman while the overlord took Dean and Phoenix up to the ridge.

  “What will Hunter do?” I asked, climbing the crumbling wooden steps into the loft and finding a lookout spot between two warped planks. From there I could spy on the action up among the aspens.

  “You mean, which of his superpowers will he bring into play?” Following me up the steps, Iceman leaned back against the rough wall, arms folded, not bothering to keep watch with me. “Don’t hold your breath,” he advised. “I bet Hunter will stand back and let the two visitors satisfy themselves that there’s no cause for concern out here.”

  This seemed to be what was happening as I peered through my chink. I saw the three Beautiful Dead gather quietly in the shadow of the water tower. Hunter spoke a few words then surrounded them in a soft, shimmering light. I blinked, and they were gone. Superpower number one—the ability to dematerialize at will. But as far as I could tell from this distance, there was no calling up of the barrier of wings to stop the two cops in their tracks.

  I waited a while, long enough to take in the trees lining the ridge—their slender, silvery trunks and bright canopy of leaves—and to think how peaceful and perfect this place was. Then two uniformed figures appeared.

  They were two guys doing a job, probably enjoying the scenery like I did the first time I ever came here, with no clue what they might be walking into. One—the shorter, stockier one—I recognized as my buddy, Deputy Sheriff Henry Jardine, expert fly fisher and all-round good guy, the one who decided not to arrest Zak Rohr on a charge of arson. He was with his new boss, Danny Kors, and they were chatting as they strolled through the aspens, stopping after a while to direct their attention down into the valley.

  “They’ve spotted the house!” I whispered to Iceman. “They’re heading this way!”

  Not strolling now, but picking up their pace, they kept their gaze fixed on the abandoned house and the heap of rusting parts that had once been a truck parked next to it, thinking maybe that the rumor was right—there were squatters here who needed to be checked out. Soon they drew near enough for me to pick out their high-alert expressions.

  Right away I decided they fit the good-cop/bad-cop formula; slightly overweight, kind uncle Jardine versus lean Mr. Mean Kors.

  The sheriff made a beeline for the old house while Henry hung back to take note of a recent repair to the razor-wire fence in an otherwise neglected yard.

  Inside the loft, I switched positions for a better view of Kors, who was stepping up onto the porch, testing the door in the kitchen then raising the sole of his boot to lash out and kick in the old lock. There was the sound of splintering wood then the door swung open.

  I frowned, taking it as a personal insult that Kors was damaging Beautiful Dead property in the line of duty.

  “Hunter should do something!”

  “Sssh!” Iceman still wasn’t looking, but he was listening hard. Superpower number two—they can hear a leaf fall from the distance of half a mile. He heard the door hinge creak t
hen Kors’s heavy footfall inside the house.

  I kept my face close to the new gap, watching Jardine follow his boss into the house, waiting another few seconds before I hissed at Iceman, asking for an update.

  “They’re searching the place, currently heading upstairs,” he reported.

  Up to the one small bedroom whose window overlooked the yard, disturbing the silence of decades, flinging back the faded quilt, poking into dusty corners.

  “Now they’re coming back down.”

  I stared at the front door hanging crookedly from one hinge after the sheriff’s forced entry. I thought of Hunter, Phoenix, and Dean keeping invisible watch.

  “Kors wants to move on to the barn,” Iceman told me. “Jardine is saying what’s the point? Nobody’s set foot in the place in years.”

  I saw the two men reappear in the doorway, Kors leading the way, stooping under the low doorframe as he stepped down into the yard. He stopped to stare at the moose antlers above the barn door, then, deciding to ignore his deputy’s advice, he walked toward us.

  Do something! was my silent message to Hunter.

  Below us, I heard Kors slide the big metal bolt. “Henry, come over here!” he called.

  “What did you see?”

  More footsteps followed across the packed dirt surface. Jardine joined his boss.

  “There—the ax leaning against the stall and the stack of split logs.”

  “Interesting.” The deputy sheriff had evidently changed his mind.

  We heard more footsteps, directly underneath. “And here—see the cell phone at the base of the steps.”

  My hand flew to my jeans pocket—there was no phone.

  I sucked in air and felt my throat go dry. Iceman stood, watching me panic.

  Down below I heard Kors place a foot on the bottom step.

  My brain stopped working. I sprinted for the top of the stairs and, in my hurry to intercept the sheriff, I missed my footing and slid down the steps.

  “Hey, where did you come from?” Kors grunted.

  He lunged for my phone, but I scrabbled for it and grabbed it first.

  Now, because of what I’d done, Hunter couldn’t hang back. Straightaway he raised the winged barrier inside the barn, opened wide the door, and sucked in a thousand death-heads. Yellowing skulls with dark eye sockets whirled around us, pressed in, swerved away, whirled back again in the storm of wings to force Jardine and Kors back out into the yard.

  I was fixed to the spot, holding my phone in the palm of my hand. Iceman stood at the top of the stairs, staring at me and shaking his head.

  “Darina, come out here!” Hunter ordered.

  Out in the yard I cowered under the beating wings. Their sound filled my head and drove me crazy—beating, beating, battering me until I dropped the phone and raised my hands to protect my head as I sank to the ground. “Phoenix!” I cried.

  “He can’t help you,” Hunter warned, his voice ice-cold.

  I collapsed, still shielding my head, curling up, waiting for the sound to fade, for the wind to stop, and the skulls to disappear. A few yards away, Kors struggled to his feet, dragging Jardine up with him.

  “I’m sorry!” I told Hunter. “I shouldn’t have done that.”

  “What’s happening? Who are you talking to?” Kors tried to deflect the death-heads, using his forearm to shield his face and struggling against the beating wings, refusing to let the nightmare visions overwhelm him.

  “No one!” I gasped. I’d never seen anyone fight back against the Beautiful Dead this way.

  “You were planning to meet someone. Who was it?” Kors advanced toward me, through the wings and the skulls.

  “No, I wasn’t—I swear. There’s no one here.”

  “What was that name you yelled out—Phoenix?”

  I shook my head. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Dean take a silent order from Hunter then place himself between me and Kors. Invisible to the sheriff, Dean lashed out and upward with the back of his hand, making contact with the underside of Kors’s chin and lifting him clean off his feet, flinging him backward until he crashed into Jardine. The two men fell to the ground. I heard Dean mutter something that sounded like, “Sorry about this, Henry,” and I remembered again that Dean, the ex-cop, had once worked with my friend the deputy sheriff.

  “Get them out of here,” Hunter ordered roughly, keeping his steely gaze fixed on me as Dean, still invisible to his victims, raised them out of the dirt as if they weighed no more than rag dolls. They struggled helplessly in his grasp.

  “Go ahead—you know what to do,” the overlord muttered.

  It was time for Dean to memory-zap the two guys. He threw them against the side of the house and sent some weird, superpowerful electrical current surging through their brains to wipe out all recollection of what had happened since they first set foot on Foxton Ridge.

  I saw it happen—watched their bodies absorb the charge and twist in pain, saw their faces contort, their heads fall back and mouths open in silent agony. I groaned for them as their knees buckled and they finally sagged back to the ground.

  And now, for the first time since the crisis began, I saw Phoenix—a blurred figure through the wild storm of skulls and beating wings—watching silently. I tried to run to him, longed to feel his strong arms around me, sheltering me from the storm.

  “Phoenix, help me!” I whispered, though I absolutely knew he was in thrall to his overlord.

  Phoenix, his expression fixed in an agony of helplessness, stayed where he was, close to the house with Iceman. I was still on my knees just outside the barn. Dean straddled the two semiconscious lawmen slumped in the dust.

  Hunter, the puppet master, let the skull barrier fade then gave the silent order for Iceman to help Dean carry Kors and Jardine back to their car.

  As the two men were raised from the ground and dragged away, I struggled to my feet and managed to look Hunter in the eye. Yes, I’d been stupid, I’d acted without thinking and caused a problem, but I wasn’t going to cave in. I would try to stand up to him.

  “When will you ever learn, Darina?” Hunter sighed.

  He stood looking at the far horizon of jagged mountains then up at the clear blue sky, not expecting an answer.

  “I said I was sorry. Anyway, Kors saw my phone—he already knew someone was here.” Even though the wings and skulls had faded, my knees trembled and my voice was hardly more than a whisper.

  “Not necessarily.”

  “He was about to climb the steps into the loft!”

  “And you wouldn’t have been there. I’d already told Iceman to get you out of there fast.”

  I gasped. “You ordered him to dematerialize me? How was I supposed to know? I’m not like you—I don’t have telepathy.”

  Hunter finally turned his head and leveled his gaze on me. “You’re supposed to take orders from me, end of story. You’re not meant to think for yourself and make bad decisions.”

  Phoenix, I thought. Step in here, stand up for me!

  “I can’t do it—you know I can’t,” he whispered. Instead of backing me up, he retreated into the porch and watched from the shadows.

  I had to plead for myself in front of the coldest of judges. “If Dean does his job, Kors and Jardine won’t remember what happened out here. They’ll go back to town and make a report—all quiet, just miles of pine forest and empty scrub, maybe the odd mule deer.”

  Hunter’s eyelids flickered. “Likewise, Darina. Remember I could send you back in the same condition as those two, with a sore head and a big blank in your memory.”

  “I know it. And I know I can’t stop you from doing that. But last night you saw how messed up my head’s been lately, and you offered me the chance to walk away. Being here today is the hardest thing I ever had to do—seeing Phoenix again, loving him the way I do, knowing that this time I h
ave to say good-bye.”

  Hunter’s head dipped slightly—a nod of acknowledgment.

  For once I’d got through the outer armor and decided to take a big risk.

  “Think about what you told me last night. Imagine if you got the chance to be with Marie again—for one day, one hour, even a minute.”

  I saw pain then anger flash in Hunter’s eyes. Phoenix saw it, too, and took a step down from the porch as if to protect me, before his overlord stopped him dead.

  “Picture it,” I went on. “Would you be thinking straight? No. One look at Marie and you’d fall apart. Don’t tell me you wouldn’t!”

  “I would,” he murmured.

  I looked right at Hunter, opened my own heart, and put myself at his mercy.

  “And still I’m here today. I came to save Phoenix.”

  • • •

  A plane traveled like a slow silver bullet across the vast blue sky. A wisp of white cloud tangled itself around Amos Peak. The mountains were bruise blue in the late afternoon sun. Phoenix stood with me by my red car under the aspens.

  “Hunter gave us thirty minutes,” he said.

  “Then what?”

  “Then I have to go with Iceman to check out some kids over at Angel Rock.”

  “Kids,” I echoed softly. Probably more far-siders made curious by the growing rumors about Foxton Ridge—it was a sunny afternoon, and they had nothing better to do.

  “Darina, we need to talk,” Phoenix began.

  In my experience, that is never a good sentence. Guys usually follow with, “It’s been great dating you, and I’d like for us to stay friends, but it’s time to move on.” For a split second I thought this was good-bye.

  “No,” he said quickly, tenderly. “That’s not what I mean.”

  “What then? What’s to talk about?”

  “I want to explain to you what it’s like for me, coming back to the far side, seeing you—how hard that is.”

  “I’m so sorry,” I breathed. I realized that all I ever thought of these past few weeks was how bad it was for me—missing Phoenix, fearing that he would never come back to Foxton.