Courtney Summers - Defy the Dark

“Sure I do.”

“You do not!” Her voice scared a pigeon into flight. “You don’t even want to face the truth—that you’d rather die than be looked down on for being a candy-ass flutist!”

Cado knew that the truth hurt, but he’d never felt its jagged claws rip into him before.

He fished out his cell and pressed the number three nine times. When Patricia realized what he was doing, she tried to bat the phone out of his hands, shocked that he even knew what to dial.

“Wait!” She grabbed his wrist before he could press SEND. “This isn’t a game, Cado. Why can’t you understand that? Sometimes people prank call that number, just to see what will happen, and then they don’t show up to take the ride. So the trolley pulls up in front of their homes and gets them.”

Cado knew that Porterenes were scared of the night trolley, but seeing that fear on Patricia’s face frightened him in a way all her talk had not.

“If you call,” she said, her icy fingers digging into his flesh, “it will come for you.”

“And take me to another world? You said I could make it in any world. I believe you. Even if you don’t really believe in me.”

He pressed SEND.

Patricia’s hands flew to her mouth as if to stopper a scream.

“Night trolley.” The bored, sexless voice was decidedly unfrightening.

“This is Cado McCoy.” He took a deep breath. “I need a ride.”

“It’s a dollar, one way.”

Cado said firmly, “This’ll be round trip.”

“This stop, three a.m.,” said the voice. “Don’t be late.”

After he put his phone away, Patricia said, “Do you realize what you’ve done?” She couldn’t look at him, her hands still covering the lower half of her face.

“I’m not afraid—”

“Because you’re an idiot!”

“—of the trolley,” Cado continued calmly. “But knowing you don’t have any more faith in me than I do”—he touched Patricia’s face—“now, that’s scary.”

Cado had meant to rest before his otherworldly appointment, but it was impossible. Mr. Markham kept coming in to check that he was still in the guest room and not lolling sexily in Patricia’s bed. When the door opened for the fifth time, Cado threw his pillow at it. “Dammit, Mr. Markham, I’m—”

But it wasn’t him.

Patricia snuggled next to Cado, her gown soft, but not as soft as her body through the gown. Her feet curled around his ankles. She must tiptoe across the backs of geese and the tops of clouds to keep such velvet skin.

“If I were nicer,” she whispered, “you wouldn’t be doing this, would you?”

He brushed his thumb over the tip of her nose. “You’re the nicest girl I know.”

“I’m not nice! I wish I had a dungeon so that I could throw you into it and chain you up until this madness leaves you.”

“Would it be weird if I said that sounds like fun?”

His alarm went off, and he had to leave Patricia’s embrace to shut it off. He turned on the lamp and got dressed.

Patricia threw back the covers and held out her arms. “Come back to bed.” Her nightie wasn’t black, but sunset-colored, like the daylilies she hadn’t wanted. Her toes sparkled at him.

“I refuse to be distracted by your body right now,” Cado said, lacing his Chucks. “But feel free to distract me with it tomorrow.”

“What tomorrow?” she said bitterly, and then with an equally bitter resolve climbed out of bed. “I’m coming with you.”

“No way.”

“Why not? We’re the Bonnie and Clyde of the classical music world, and they died together in a car—we’ll die together on a trolley. I’d prefer a private jet or a yacht, but I’ll take what I can get.”

“It doesn’t count if I bring a brave kick-ass girl to hide behind. I have to do this on my own.”

“You’re taking your flute?” Patricia asked when he grabbed his case.

Cado stroked the cracked black leather. “Turns out I don’t need your magic purse after all. I got my own right here.”

“ A flute case? ” she said in a voice too shrill for two a.m. “You think you’re one of the Hardy Boys or Harry Potter? That if you’re clever and plucky, you can play a tune and save the day with the power of music?”

“I know what I’m doing,” he reassured her. “And it doesn’t involve pretending to be the Pied Piper.”

“What does it involve?” she asked, not in the least reassured.

“What’s going on?”

Mr. Markham’s robed appearance in the doorway barely registered, Cado and Patricia too busy staring into each other’s eyes as if for the last time.

“Nothing,” said Cado, finally looking away. “I was just leaving.”

“Where do you think you’re going at this hour?”

“To learn about fear,” he said, his mind already on the adventure ahead. “About real fear.”

But instead of walking out the door, he looked back at Patricia and immediately wished he hadn’t. She seemed bruised somehow, as if he had struck her. That’s how she would look at his funeral. Of course she wouldn’t stand over his grave and laugh at him. Cado was amazed he had ever thought such a thing.

“I wish I had kept those flowers,” she said. “Looks like they were a good symbol after all.” She put her hands on his shoulders. “At least kiss me good-bye?”

Cado kissed her between the eyes and once on each cheek.

Patricia made a tsk of impatience. “That’s not good enough!”

“That’s because it wasn’t a good-bye kiss. Just, you know, a ‘see you later’ kiss. I’ll kiss you for real when I get back.”

“What is going on around here?” Mr. Markham asked as Cado escaped downstairs.

Patricia answered but her tears distorted the words. Her father’s response, however, was as clear as arsenic:

“You should have kissed him good-bye.”

St. Teresa Avenue was within walking distance of the Markhams’ home, so it didn’t take long to reach. Cado had the town all to himself, the shops now closed and the street empty. His steps echoed like a giant’s. The purple-tinged fairy glow beneath the lampposts only illustrated the absence of light.

Cado went up the steps that beveled the sidewalk and stumbled over an indistinct lump. No. Not a lump. A person.

A bum?

A stroke victim?

“Hey, you okay?” Cado grabbed what felt like an arm and pulled the person beneath the lamppost a few feet away. The weak light illuminated a woman in black sweats with long, pale hair and no face. It had been peeled neatly off from hairline to chin like the skin from an apple.

Cado scrambled away and fetched up against the blue bench at the trolley stop. After winning the struggle to free his phone from his pocket, he sat and dialed the sheriff’s office with fingers that had gone numb and spoke with a voice he hadn’t used since he was thirteen.

“A woman without a face?” the deputy was saying, uninterested. “Another one? We’ll get someone out there as soon as we can, miss.”

Miss? Cado looked down at himself, then quickly away. If he looked too long, he might grow breasts. Or if he looked directly at the dead woman, his own face might peel off for no reason. The world felt dangerously malleable.

He called Patricia.

“Cado? Is it over already?” The hope in her voice was painful to hear. “Cado?”

“Am I awake?”

A long pause. “You were when you left,” she said, all hope gone. “You sound weird. I’d tell you to come back, but it’s in God’s hands now. God’s or whoever’s. Why aren’t you saying anything? Cado!”

“There’s a dead woman on the sidewalk,” he whispered. “Her face—”

The line went dead.