GHOST CROWN: THE TRACKS TRILOGY - Book Two Read online

  It was a six-story, brick-fronted structure dating from sometime in the eighteen hundreds, like most of the buildings in downtown Middleburg. It had been vacant for most of her life, and her dad had inquired about buying it several times, only to be told by some out-of-town lawyer that the owner—whoever it was—had no interest in selling. For a while, her dad had grumbled about it every time they drove past, until finally he’d given up on the place. Now there was a brand-new, modern-looking sign above the door, in shiny, silver letters:

  MORNINGSTAR INC.

  Aimee walked slowly to the display windows and looked through them. Someone had redone the place, and it was beautiful. The floors were slate, the walls exposed brick. Several modern-looking desks made of some sort of sleek, dark wood—ebony, maybe—were arranged artfully around the room. Each desk had a cool-looking new computer and a vase of fresh flowers on it. In the center of the room was a statue of an angel, carved of some sort of dark stone. It rose up from the center of the floor, almost to the ceiling, and it had to be at least eleven feet tall. She looked closer and saw that the statue was a fountain. Streams of water were coming out the angel’s eyes—two rivers of tears that ran down her cheeks, down across her breasts and the stone tendrils of her hair, and into a small pool of water below. Her outstretched arms reached toward the ceiling, and her face was tilted pleadingly upward. It was a gorgeous piece of art, but it gave Aimee the creeps.

  She wondered suddenly how the place had been redone so quickly—and why. She and Rick passed this storefront every day on the way to school, and she hadn’t noticed any activity here at all. It was as if the place had been completely renovated overnight. Aimee didn’t know much about construction, but she was pretty sure it would take months to do this kind of beautiful work. It was certainly the most lavish office in town, even more luxurious than her dad’s.

  As strange and beautiful as the furnishings were, something else caught Aimee’s eye. There was someone—a young man—sitting in the back corner at a desk larger than all the others, wearing a perfectly tailored gray pinstriped suit. He looked just a little older than Rick and he was writing something with a thick, black pen—like the fancy one her dad showed off when he signed important documents. His hair, the same dark color as the wood of his desk, reached to his shoulders. As he leaned over the document he was reading, a thick strand of it fell across his face. When he brushed it away to reveal perfect features, Aimee was momentarily captivated. He was stunning—prominent cheekbones, a strong square chin—but it was more than that. The light above his desk was the only one on in the office, and he sat under it as if it was a carefully placed spotlight. He seemed to Aimee like a work of art—like a living sculpture or a painting come to life.

  Without meaning to, she stepped forward and cupped her hands against the glass, staring in. At that moment, he looked up from his paper and his gaze met hers. Even from this distance, she could tell his eyes were a deep, piercing blue. The smile he gave her was strangely serene as if, Aimee thought suddenly, he knew some divine secret he wasn’t about to tell.

  And then, what felt like a bit of the old panic seized her briefly and she backed away from the window, slipping on the ice and almost falling as she hurried to the cab, just managing to keep her footing and make it safely. As she closed the door behind her, she could have sworn she heard her own heart, beating fast in the silence.

  She didn’t understand her reaction to the sight of the handsome young man. She was in love with Raphael and nothing would change that. But she felt so strange—awkward at being caught in such blatant voyeurism, yet intrigued by the thrill she’d felt for one brief moment as he looked up and stared right into her eyes.

  “What, no pizza?” the driver asked.

  “No,” she murmured. “Just take me home, please—Hilltop Haven.” She wasn’t hungry anymore.

  As they pulled away from the curb, she couldn’t help but glance once more at the office of Morningstar Inc. The lights, now, were all off.

  I’m in love with Raphael, she thought. I am.

  But all the way home, she couldn’t stop thinking about the handsome young man with the piercing blue eyes.

  

  Bright, clear strains of music soared through the room, painting the walls, the ceiling, the floors with shafts of warm, invisible sunlight. Zhai had mastered many of the most difficult violin solos ever written, and for the past few months, he’d been experimenting with improvisation. But he’d never dreamed of making up a piece on the spot and playing it for someone—until now. He almost always kept his eyes shut when he played, but now he ventured to open them, just for an instant.

  There was the beautiful Kate, sitting on the bench at the foot of his bed, watching him with a rapt, dreamy look on her face. For a moment, it was hard for him to believe that she was really there with him. It seemed much more likely she was some sort of beautiful delusion conjured up by the music—but there she was, as gorgeous as ever. He felt his heart beat faster and his music sped up with it, as he played a soaring run that peaked at a high A then plummeted back down again—but as the beautiful piece (Nocturne for Kate, he would call it) reached its glorious conclusion, something bizarre happened. The backs of his hand began to burn terribly. The bow felt heavy and strange between his fingers, and the notes he was playing started to go off pitch. He looked down at the violin in horror. He was dragging the bow back and forth across the strings now, grinding out a terrible atonal, groaning sound. Kate winced and looked confused, but still he could not stop. His hands moved of their own accord, in twitches and jerks as the awful noise filled the room. He fought with all his strength to resist, but it was impossible. The horrible music continued for what seemed like forever, until at last whatever force was causing Zhai’s hands to move disappeared. Immediately, his arms dropped to his sides. The bow fell from his hand onto the carpet and the neck of the violin slid through his fingers. The whole world seemed suddenly to go dim and his mouth filled with saliva as if he were about to vomit.

  “Zhai? What was that awful scream?”

  He rolled over and opened his eyes.

  Li was standing in the doorway, with her friend Weston. Zhai got out of bed and stood, but when he tried to walk to her, he started to go down.

  “Weston, help!” Li shouted and hurried to Zhai. They caught him before he hit the floor and got him back to bed. The strange feeling slowly dissipated. Zhai looked at his sister, confused for a moment, and then he looked around.

  Kate wasn’t there. It had been a dream, but the stabbing ache in the back of his hands was real. And it was real that he wouldn’t be able to hold his violin properly for a while, although he could remember every note of Kate’s Nocturne. As soon as he could, he would write it all down, and he would play it for her someday. He shuddered as he also remembered how it had changed to hellish devil music.

  Li sat down on the edge of his bed and Wes paced the room. They both looked worried.

  “Zhai, what happened?” Li asked. “Should I get Mom to call a doctor? I’m calling her.” She pulled her phone out of her pocket but Zhai put his hand over hers.

  “No,” he said. “I’m fine. It was just a dream.”

  “One of the bad ones?” The sympathy in her voice was genuine.

  “No. Actually, it was a pretty good one—at first.” He smiled, remembering how Kate had looked at him as he played for her.

  “But you never take naps, Zhai. And you almost fell. And . . .” She took Zhai’s hand. “What’s with the gloves?”

  Zhai looked down at his hands then up at Li. Yesterday, after he had discovered the tattoos, he had stopped off at Lotus Pharmacy where he’d picked up a pair of black leather driving gloves, the kind with little holes on the knuckles and no tips on the fingers. They looked like something the leader of a motorcycle gang would wear, and they didn’t exactly go with Zhai’s rugby shirt and khaki pants, but he’d figured the g
loves would be easier to explain to everyone than the weird tattoos on his hands. And, as it turned out, none of his friends had even asked about the gloves. He thought they probably just assumed it had something to do with his kung fu training.

  “I know you, brother mine,” she said fondly, using her old childhood name for him. “What are you hiding?”

  Quickly she pulled the glove off his left hand, held the hand up and stared at the tattoo on the back of it. Then, she pulled the glove off the right hand and looked at it, too.

  “Zhai . . .” she began, her voice scarcely more than a whisper. When her eyes met his, the fear he saw in them sent a chill through his whole body.

  Weston shifted on his feet uncomfortably and pushed his drooping glasses back up the bridge of his nose.

  “Do you know what they say?” Zhai whispered, almost afraid to ask.

  “They’re both the same,” she said quietly, her hands trembling against his. “They say slave.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Maggie sat in bed, the copy of The Good Book propped against her knees, her fingers toying with the little key on the gold chain around her neck.

  Her mom had been surprisingly lucid again today. When Maggie got home from school and cheerleading practice, she’d found her mother cooking. It was just spaghetti, and it was kind of mediocre, but she had actually taken time away from her precious tapestries to do something useful. When dinner was over, Violet went back to her little breakfast-room studio, which was fine with Maggie. All she wanted to do was go upstairs and take a shower. And she wanted to be alone.

  Her bedroom was probably her favorite place in the world, the one spot on earth where she didn’t have to worry about looking pretty or sounding smart or acting cool. In there, with the door shut, surrounded by all her familiar things, she could relax and be herself.

  Everyone seemed to be getting on her nerves more than usual today, even Bobbi Jean and Lisa Marie. She no longer had the patience to listen to their gossip or their pointless conversations about boys and cheerleading and football players. And Rick.

  She knew they had crushes on him—they had crushes on all the jocks, but Rick was the real prize. Maggie had once thought so too.

  Well, they’re welcome to him, she thought. It’s not like she had a relationship with him anymore. They hardly ever talked and he only called her once in a while to tell her where and when they were going on their next date, in plenty of time for her to look gorgeous.

  She took a deep breath and unlocked Lily Rose’s book, hoping that when she opened it this time she’d see a page full of words of wisdom about how she could soar above her destiny and make her own choices. The pearlescent pages were still blank. She had opened it several times since she’d gotten it, and each time she’d been disappointed. But, she thought now as she considered the problem, she had been opening the book in the middle. Even if the book was magic, it was probably best to begin at the beginning. Especially if the book was magic.

  She flipped back to the first page, enjoying the silky feel of the paper against her fingers. She was disappointed again. It was blank.

  She thought, not for the first time, what an idiot she was for believing all this magic stuff anyway, but as she started to close the book, she felt a pressure, a slight constriction on her head, as if the harvest crown—the ghost crown—was still there and pulsing away, trying to send her a message. Maybe it was.

  She looked down at the page again and after a moment or two of staring at it she realized something was different. The whiteness of the page was not static at all as she’d first thought. It was like staring out an airplane window while passing through a cloudbank, with wave upon wave of thick white vapor slipping past. Something was moving—something inside the page. As she stared, the ghost crown constricted again, and the feeling was painful but also satisfying, and suddenly she was able to see something coming toward her out of the roiling clouds that were somehow trapped inside those mysterious pages. Words started to form, at first distant and milky, then growing nearer and more distinct, until finally becoming perfectly clear:

  Vision not of light

  Eyes not required for sight

  Close them, and see right

  Transfixed, Maggie stared at the words as they fluttered in the center of the page like a flag in a breeze. She read them over and over, trying to process exactly what they meant. All the while she could feel the invisible harvest crown pulsing against her brow. The pressure of the crown and the hypnotic movement of the letters drew her toward sleep. Her eyelids drifted slowly downward and she sank into a comforting darkness.

  But she wasn’t asleep. In the silence of this relaxed state, she heard footsteps coming up the front walkway. Then the doorbell rang. She heard her mother’s footsteps crossing the marble floor of the downstairs foyer as she moved to the door. Maggie felt herself falling deeper into the darkness behind her eyelids. There was a strange feeling inside her head, then a subtle click, like when someone flipped a light switch, and her eyes snapped open.

  The words on the page were still there, and they were no longer wavering. They were fixed, printed, like the words in any ordinary book.

  Before she had time to figure out what it could mean, she heard her mom at the foot of the stairs, calling up to her.

  “Maggie—come down. You have company.”

  She carefully closed the book, slipped out of bed, and started down the stairs—and then abruptly stopped. There was someone at the foot of the stairs, where she thought her mom would be standing, someone tall with porcelain skin that glowed with a shimmering, golden light, and where it encircled the woman’s head, the glow was tinged with red, and it was more pronounced. The figure did resemble her mother, she realized. Or a younger version of her mother. No, not younger, Maggie corrected. Ageless.

  As she watched, the halo around her mother’s head pulsed, grew brighter for a moment and then diminished again. When the light ebbed, the halo looked different, like a golden crown. Like the harvest crown. It pulsed once more, with its own peculiar light, before it diminished, then pulsed again.

  “Maggie, are you coming or not?” Violet asked. “How long are you going to keep your guest waiting?”

  Feeling dizzy and a little weightless, Maggie slowly made her way down the stairs and into the foyer. She walked carefully past her mother’s glowing, surreal form to the front door, which was ajar. She pulled it the rest of the way open and froze in horror.

  The thing on the stoop was colossal. Its dark face was twisted, grotesquely deformed. Its shoulders were broad and sublimely muscled, and its eyes were black, with irregular, crimson pupils, like stars made of blood. Its left arm was not made of flesh and bone but some kind of filthy, rusty metal, and at its end was a claw.

  “Maggie . . .” It said her name softly, seductively. “Maggie, my love.” Its hideous face was twisted into a mad grin.

  “No . . .” she whispered, terrified.

  She started to slam the door but the monster chuckled—a snorting little laugh—and stuck its foot in the doorway.

  “Maggie, what are you doing?” Violet asked. “What’s wrong with you?” She turned solicitously to their horrific guest and opened the door wider. “Rick, dear—how are you?”

  Maggie watched in stunned silence as the thing opened its mouth, wiped away the saliva drooling down its chin and growled a few distorted words. “Fine, Mrs. Anderson. How are you? My dad sends regards.”

  “Sorry not to invite you in,” said Violet. “I’m just in the middle of cleaning. You understand.”

  “Sure,” the thing said and leaned over and kissed Maggie, its foul breath hot on her lips. “Just wanted to see if Maggie would like to go out to the lake and collect pinecones and stuff for the Thanksgiving display, for the trophy case at school. We’re on the committee again this year.”

  “No,” Maggie said quickly. She squeeze
d her eyes shut and opened them again, but the thing still didn’t look like Rick. “I—I’ve got a headache. I think I’m coming down with something. See you at school.”

  And she slammed the door shut in its face, ignoring her mother’s protests as she slid all the deadbolts home and fumbled with the chain locks until she had them all in place.

  She felt another click in her brain, and the next thing Maggie knew, her mother’s hands—surprisingly strong—were gripping both her wrists and she could hear her own ragged breathing. Violet was staring into her eyes. She was no longer glowing and the aura that had encircled her head was gone.

  “Maggie, what’s going on? Why were you so rude to Rick?”

  “Rick,” Maggie said vaguely. She was still terrified and wondered if she was going into shock.

  “Why did you close the door in his face? Are the two of you fighting again?”

  “Yes,” Maggie said.

  “What on earth about?”

  Maggie only shook her head as she pulled away from her mother’s grasp. Her brain felt like all the circuits were overloaded.

  “Well, whatever it is, that’s no way to treat a boyfriend if you want to keep him. It’s not like Middleburg is brimming over with handsome starting quarterbacks.”

  “Mom, I know, okay?” Maggie said. “I’m really not feeling well. I think I’m just going to bed.”

  She slipped past Violet and headed for the stairs.

  That thing on the stoop had been Rick—looking the same as he’d looked during his last big battle with the Flatliners. Hulking, twisted, demonic. She’d thought then—had been horrified, in fact—that she was going insane, only she wasn’t. Everything she was seeing was really there. She was seeing things—people—not as they appeared on the surface, but as they really were.