“Are you sure?”
She scratched the back of her knee. “I’ve been out here lots of times and I’ve never seen them.”
“Just because you can’t see something doesn’t mean it’s not real. Besides, I have seen them.”
“You’ve seen the footprints? Where?”
“I can show you if you want.”
A gust of wind ruffled her dark hair, the same breeze that stirred the bells in the distance. For the first time, he sensed her hesitancy. Not from fear, exactly, but from an instinctive resistance that would have to be slowly and carefully chipped away.
That same thrill of anticipation soared up his spine, and he turned his head so she wouldn’t see his smile.
She thrust her hands into her jacket pockets. “Even if I believed you, which I don’t, I have to get home. My old man hates it when I’m late for dinner.”
“I hope you’re not leaving on my account. You don’t have to be afraid of me. I would never hurt you.”
Her head shot up. “Do I look afraid? Please. Besides, you even think about laying a hand on me, my dog will kick your Emo ass.”
He glanced down at the complacent mongrel at her side. “I can see that.”
“He’s a lot meaner than he looks,” she warned.
He knelt and held out his hand, and Gabriel came over to sniff for more bacon. “Nah, he likes me. Don’t you, boy? Good dog,” he crooned, burying his hand in the soft fur. “I used to have a dog just like this. Maybe they came from the same litter.”
The notion seemed to intrigue her. “Gabriel just showed up at my house one day. I always wondered where he came from.” She paused as an unwelcome thought struck her. “You’re not going to claim your dog ran away or something, are you?”
“No, he died. Someone poisoned him.”
“On purpose? Man, that bites.” She dropped to the grass beside Gabriel, dinnertime and her earlier reticence forgotten. “What kind of psycho would do something like that to a poor, helpless animal?”
“Someone evil,” he said. “Someone without a soul.”
Their gazes met and he saw her shiver. “My sister keeps bugging my folks to get rid of Gabriel. She hates him.”
“Are they going to?”
“Probably. My dad takes her side every damn time. They both make me sick.”
Her anger caused his heart to beat even harder. He had to take a couple of breaths to curtail his excitement.
Sarah wrapped her arms around Gabriel and gave him a squeeze. “They’ll be sorry, though, won’t they, boy?”
“What are you going to do?”
She lifted her thin shoulders. “I don’t know yet, but I’ll think of something.”
“Maybe I can help you.”
Her expression turned suspicious. “Why would you do that?”
“Because that’s what friends do. They help each other out.”
“News flash, retard. We’re not friends. You don’t even know me.”
Oh, but I do, Sarah. Still he had to be careful, not push too hard.
“And anyway, I don’t need your help and I don’t want any friends. Gabriel is all I need.” Her tone was harsh and defiant, but he, and only he, could see the bereft shadow in her eyes.
His chest tightened; he knew that pain so well. They were so much alike, he and Sarah. Dark, sad, lonely. Her solitude drew him like a newborn baby grasping for its mother’s breast.
She scrambled to her feet and dusted off the seat of her jeans. “Hey, I’m sorry I called you a retard.”
He smiled. “That’s okay.”
“No, it’s not. I hate when people call me that.”
“Who calls you that?”
She answered with a shrug. If she noticed the edge in his voice, she didn’t let on. “Are you coming back out here tomorrow?”
“I will if you want me to.”
“Like I care one way or the other. I was just asking.”
But that was a lie. She did care. Whether she knew it or not, she needed him as much as he needed her. She’d come back tomorrow, because she wouldn’t be able to help herself.
Sitting cross-legged in the grass, he watched her cut across the edge of the field toward the road, Gabriel at her heels. The air chilled as the twilight deepened, and he knew he needed to be on his way, too. The voices inside his head were getting more desperate by the moment. He was out of time. He couldn’t ignore them any longer.
He rose and stood listening to the bells pealing in the distance. Death music. He smiled. A serenade for the doomed.
Two
Fourteen years later
Winter came late as it always did to the Deep South.
It arrived with only a whisper through the magnolia trees—a creeping shadow, an unwelcome presence easily ignored until a bitter cold front swept down from Canada, bringing freezing rain and record-breaking temperatures all the way to the Gulf of Mexico. Downed power lines, disrupted city services, massive pileups on the interstates—it was the kind of chaos New Orleans hadn’t known since Katrina.
Even without the inconveniences, Sarah DeLaune hated the cold. Earlier, as she listened to sleet pelt against her windows, she’d been gripped by a strange anxiety, and she found herself wondering how she would cope if summer never came again. If the winter storm raging outside her house was not merely an anomaly, but a permanent shift in the subtropical climate of the Gulf Coast.
As she fantasized about being trapped in a frozen universe, she’d slipped so deeply into the gloom of her own thoughts that even the Valium she’d taken mid-morning couldn’t dig her out.
She’d recognized the early stages of cabin fever, and in spite of the incessant warnings issued by the weather service, she’d gone out, precariously negotiating the icy streets to the French Quarter, where she found the seedy bar that had been her hangout of late warm and inviting.
The party atmosphere, along with a few drinks and half a Xanax, had nudged her toward a mellower outlook, and at midnight she’d gone home to bed, eventually sinking into the kind of bone-melting sleep she hadn’t known in months.
She’d been dreaming about her dead sister when the phone woke her up. She had no idea how long it had been ringing, because even after she opened her eyes, the sleep demons held her firmly in their grasp. Rachel’s disembodied head floated above
