And suddenly, there in the dark, with Christian’s memories fresh in my mind, I knew that I’d been given a clue about what I was supposed to do next.
Chapter Twenty-Four
I lay in bed awake, waiting for the rest of the house to come back to life. It’s a funny feeling, being the only one up while everyone else is asleep; everything’s quieter. It’s easier to hear yourself think. I’d always had the theory that you can’t get bogged down with the stress of life when you’re still in a horizontal position and those around you are snoring and dreaming. It had been a long time since the house had been quiet like this and I reveled in it.
I got to know the way Asher sounded when he slept. He breathed slowly and evenly, and he barely moved at all. I’d been told by friends who’d shared beds with me at slumber parties growing up that I was a thrasher, possibly due to my active dreams. At one point Trish refused to ever share a bed with me again.
But Asher was a calm sleeper. Not that I was watching him in a creepy kind of way. More like observing him as I waited for him to wake up. At one point, I could barely see him breathing, and I got so paranoid thinking that he might have died in the middle of the night that I pulled my compact off the bedside table to find out. Luckily, the mirror fogged up when I placed it near his mouth and I was able to relax, knowing I hadn’t lost him, too.
As soon as I began to hear others move around the house, I decided it was probably an acceptable time to leave the comfort of my bed—and Asher. But I didn’t want to ditch him. I knew from my dream what that could feel like.
There was work to be done before I could wake him, though. No way was I daring to breathe on him with my morning dragon breath. Nuh-uh. But getting up would mean moving around in bed, which could possibly wake Asher before I was ready, so I had to take a few shortcuts to achieve morning perfection.
Casting my freshening spell, I sucked in deeply, tasting the minty flavor as it played across my lips. With that out of the way, I turned to the next order of business: changing this mess into a success.
“Renewbus freshimo perfecto,” I whispered.
I didn’t need a mirror to know that my hair was transforming into waves that would glisten in the light. Various shades of concealer and makeup were appearing on my face, covering my flaws and highlighting my natural beauty. When I was sure I was boy worthy, I knew it was time to do what I had to do.
It was time for Asher to wake up.
“Quivable divanish.”
I stayed as still as I could as the bed shook like a mini-earthquake. It felt a little like sitting in a vibrating chair—there was just enough movement to shake you out of whatever dream you were having. And that was exactly what it did to Asher.
“Whaa?” he asked as his hands flew to grip the comforter. I, however, acted like it was Asher who’d woken me up.
“What’s wrong?” I asked in my most sleepy, I-just-woke-up voice.
Asher was looking around the room now, his head flipping from side to side as if he could find the culprit that had suddenly awakened him. When he finally realized we were alone in the room and nothing was out of place, his eyes dropped and rested on me.
“Huh? Nothing. I must’ve been having a weird dream or something,” he muttered.
“What about?” I asked.
“I have no idea,” he said, shaking his head. His eyes roamed over my face as he noticed my morning glow. He smiled lazily. “Wow. You’re really not a Hyde, are you?”
“A Hyde?” I asked, confused.
“You know, there’re those girls who look great during the day, but when you see them first thing in the morning, you realize in reality they don’t look anything like the person you fell asleep next to. You go to bed with Dr. Jekyll and wake up with Mr. Hyde.”
“Girls don’t like it when you compare them to psycho monsters, Asher.” I said it like I was serious, but then let my mouth fade into a grin.
“I just mean that some girls wear so much makeup that you’re surprised when you see what they really look like. And you’re not like that. You really are gorgeous all the time,” he said, turning over onto his side and propping himself up on his elbow. “Your girlfriends must hate you.”
I burst out laughing. Not a great delivery, but I could tell he was trying to give me a compliment. “Only part of the time,” I responded.
“Sounds about right,” he said. Then, without hesitation, he leaned forward and gave me a soft kiss. I happily kissed him back, grateful that I’d had the foresight to freshen up. But the sound of someone running down the hallway pulled me out of my fairy-tale make-out session.
I sucked on his lower lip lightly before falling back onto my pillow. “Everyone’s getting up. We should probably do the same.”
Asher reached over and wrapped his arms around my waist and rolled us until I was lying on top of him. “Let’s just stay in bed for the rest of the day. The others can get along without you for a few hours.”
I shook my finger at him, but didn’t get up just yet. The offer was tempting—part of me wanted nothing other than to stay right there, enveloped in our little love cocoon—but I had work to do. Because the truth was, I wouldn’t be around to enjoy these kinds of moments if the Parrishables wiped me out the next time we met. So right now, Asher had to come second.
“Have you met these kids? If I leave them alone too long, they’ll burn the cabin down, leaving smoke signals for our enemies,” I said. “So come on, get up!”
I threw the covers back and hopped out of bed.
“Ugh,” Asher groaned, watching me cross to the bathroom. “You’re really kicking me out?”
“Yep! Now go clean up and get dressed—because although I’m beautiful and smell like roses in the morning, you don’t seem to have those powers,” I said jokingly, and gave him a wink. “I’ll meet you downstairs in fifteen and we’ll eat breakfast together, okay? And if you’re good, I may be up for another slumber party tonight.”
“Fine,” Asher said, sounding like it really wasn’t. But he was smiling as he trudged over to the bedroom door.
When he finally disappeared, I threw on a classic look of designer jeans and a black top that Kristen Bell had worn in an episode of Veronica Mars—one of my fave shows of all time—and turned the knob as quietly as possible. Poking my head out into the hallway, I was happy to see that everyone appeared to be downstairs already. When I was sure I wouldn’t be caught, I tiptoed down the hall to my old room.
This was really why I’d been so eager to kick a cute boy out of my bed. Asher may not have remembered the dream he’d been having before he was shaken awake, but I could certainly remember mine. The dream about Bridget’s daughter was as firmly planted in my mind as if it were my own memory.
And I was positive that if I pried up those floorboards, I was going to find all of Christian’s secrets. This, I hoped, would help me finally decide whether I was going to stay or go. On the one hand, I wanted to do what my mom was asking me to do. She’d never steered me wrong before, and she had ventured beyond the grave to tell me to save the others by leaving for good. It didn’t make sense to me, but it was coming from my mom and that was impossible to ignore.
That’s what I was hoping my little scavenger hunt would help clear up. If there was something in that book of Christian’s that could help us actually win the battle with Samuel, then I wouldn’t have to leave after all. Maybe my mom hadn’t had this info when she’d passed her message on to Emory to relay to me. So she wouldn’t have been wrong, just uninformed.
I was happy to find my old room empty, and tiptoed inside. Closing the door quietly behind me, I turned the button in the knob until the lock fell into place. No good would come from someone catching me—with a traitor among us, I didn’t want whatever I found to end up in the wrong hands. No, the fewer people who knew about what I was doing the better.