back. “Okay, Meg. When I went to see Dr. Hawes I found myself telling him about the nightmares we all had when we were little. I told him I always woke up convinced that you and I and Tashya had been in terrible danger.”
“Well, duh,” Tash broke in. “We were being hunted down in them. Whoever was after us had killed Mom and Dad and wanted to kill us. That might be the danger part, no?”
“You remember that much?” Kat turned her attention my way. “What about you, Megan?”
I guess I should explain something here. It doesn’t happen so much now, but when we were kids our dreams were practically always identical, even though we weren’t. So Kat’s question made perfect sense to me, I just didn’t have a good answer to it.
“When they stopped coming, I let the memory of them fade. All I remember was they left me terrified.”
“They were a bunch of dumb nightmares, for heaven’s sake.” Tash shrugged. “I never tried to suppress them, especially after Popsie told me they came from eating cheese before bedtime.”
“He told us that, too,” Kat informed her. “I guess you were the only one either dumb or logical enough to believe him.”
“Maybe both,” I added. “Sometimes you scare me, Tash.”
Unexpectedly, she grinned. “Sometimes I scare myself.”
Once in a while Tash comes out with a flash of humor that makes me wonder what’s really behind those china-blue eyes and under that cloud of red-gold curls. I also wonder if it isn’t my fault and Kat’s that she usually doesn’t reveal that side of herself.
My nanosecond of soul-searching ended with her next words.
“So the reason we’re all getting married is because of some stupid dreams that made you and Kat wee-wee the bed when we were kids and that made Kat go on an air-and-water diet when she was fifteen. That’s the big theory?”
For a moment I thought Kat was going to give one of those bouncy curls a sharp tug, but she got herself under control. “What I learned was that some girls who slip into anorexia are trying to exert control in the one area of their lives they think they can—their body image. And they do it because sometime in their past they’ve experienced a traumatic event. When Hawes told me that, it all clicked into place for me.”
“What clicked into place?” Tash sounded bored. “And what does your eating disorder six years ago have to do with us now?”
“Because this time we’re all trying to impose control over our lives,” I said slowly. “We’re choosing situations where we can pretty much predict what the next fifty years will be like. We’re almost certain those fifty years will be screamingly boring, and we’ll be spending them with a philandering cosmetic surgeon, a lawyer who’d sell his own mother and an investment banker who probably wears three-piece Brooks Brothers suits to bed, but that’s better than—” I stopped.
“Better than what?”
“Better than what used to cause the nightmares until we started wearing these?” Kat flicked a manicured nail at the tiny silver cross around her neck. It was a mirror image of the ones Tashya and I had on, and so much a part of us that I sometimes forgot we wore them.
“Now you’ve totally lost me.” Tash squinted at hers. “I never really liked having to wear this, not even when we were kids, and I always thought it was kind of dumb that it didn’t have a clasp. If it hadn’t been a present from Grammie, I would have snapped the chain long ago. Now you’re telling me that if I had, my nightmares would have come back?”
She reached for the chain around her throat. The next moment she dropped it beside her empty glass.
“Booga-booga,” she said complacently. “Guess who gets to wear Grammie’s antique pearls at my wedding. And don’t either of you dare tell her I broke her chain on purpose,” she warned.
When I think back on that night I tell myself that if I’d had any kind of premonition at the sight of Tash’s broken chain, I might have saved the three of us from our fate. But I didn’t get a premonition—I just got pissed off at Tash.
“Don’t worry, if I told Grammie anything, I’d tell her you broke the only thing you had to remember our grandfather by.”
“Popsie?” Tash made a face. “God, Meg, if I needed anything to remember Popsie by, which I don’t since it’s not like he’s dead, how about my little Mini sitting outside in the driveway? Or our sweet-sixteen diamond tennis bracelets, or—”
“Not Popsie, you birdbrain, Grandfather Darkzyn. Mom’s father.” There was a tight feeling in me, as if I was standing on the edge of a cliff. “Grammie once told me those crosses were a present from him on our second birthdays, and since he died not long after, I’d say you just broke your only bequest from him. But if you thought you’d be the first Crosse triplet to wear Grammie’s pearls down the aisle, think again. I’m the eldest, so I get them first.” I threw down the gleam of silver chain and the small silver cross I’d just snatched from my neck.
“You forgot to add nya-nya, sweetie,” Kat drawled, picking up Tash’s chain from the table. “And our grandfather’s name was Anton Dzarchertzyn, not Dark—”
Okay, time-out here while you try to put yourself in my place. Remember, I’m talking about Kat, for God’s sake—Kat, whose languid sizzle fells males like trees; Kat, whose favorite reading material is the Mr. Boston Guide to Cocktails. That’s what I tried to tell myself, anyway, but as her head jerked up without warning and her eyes suddenly darkened to dull cloudiness, the person standing between Tash and me no longer seemed to be my sister.
Or if she was, someone—or something—had temporarily done a pod-person number on her.
“One will be the striking talons of the eagle—she will begin the battle.” The harsh, guttural voice rasping from Kat’s throat was as chillingly alien as everything else about her. “The second will be the far-seeing gaze of the eagle, and she will warn of coming danger. The third will be our wings. She will fly us into the very core of the darkness; we pray she proves strong enough to fly us out again. These are our roles and our duty, and have been for all the unlit centuries of night. Without my presence the circle is dangerously open. I close it and form the three.”
Pod-Kat’s hand closed over the chain at her throat. With a sudden tug, she broke it free.
“I get it, all right?” Tash snatched the chain from her. “Just because I had the idea of wearing Grammie’s pearls at my wedding, you and Meg have decided to wear them to yours first. Well, be my guest. The last time she took them out of the safe, they looked like they needed restringing, anyway.” She glared at us. “And forget what I said about not wanting to marry Todd. I can’t wait to get away from your stupid insider jokes at my expense. I’m sure you both think this eagle thing is screamingly funny, but for once your dumb little sister isn’t hanging around for the punch line. I’m going to bed.”
“Somebody has trouble handling her cocktails,” Kat purred. “The punch line to what you call the eagle thing is that we don’t know what you’re talking about, right, Meg?”
She was Kat again, right down to her languid tone, and from what she’d just said, she’d totally blanked on her eerie little performance just now. With difficulty I found my voice. “Wrong, Kat. Striking
