When the Shadows Fall by Elise Noble

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER 27 - SKY

ONCE I EXPLAINED to the staff in the dining hall that Vanessa had accidentally tripped and hurt herself, they packaged her dinner onto a tray to go, including a slice of chocolate cake.

“Hungry this evening?” Asher asked, falling into step beside me as I hurried out the door.

“It’s for Vanessa,” I explained. “She fell over earlier and—”

I didn’t get to finish the sentence before Ezra Rosenberg blocked my way. “A word, please, Sky.”

“Can’t it wait?” Asher asked. “She’s taking dinner to her roommate.”

I’d never seen Asher interact with one of the Rosenbergs before, and it was clear there was no love lost between them. Ezra’s jaw clenched, but he didn’t chastise Asher for speaking to him in that manner.

“No, it can’t wait. A few minutes ago, I had a very serious incident reported to me, and the complainant alleged that Sky was involved.”

“Involved with what? We haven’t heard about any incident.” Asher shrugged. “Although we’ve been studying together in the library this evening, and the gossip doesn’t always get that far.”

“You’ve been with Sky this evening?”

“Didn’t I just say that?”

“All evening?”

“Since five o’clock. We’re lab partners, and we have a biology test on Saturday.”

When Rosenberg stood there, unmoving as he processed that little snippet of news, Asher took another jab.

“What? You keep telling me to make friends and study harder, and now that I am, you’re complaining about it?”

Uncle Ezra gave his head a little shake. “Not at all. I see now that there’s been some kind of a mistake. Sky, I apologise for interrupting your evening.”

I almost sagged with relief. My heart had begun racing, but I didn’t realise quite how fast until Ezra strode off towards A-block, and in the remaining silence, I heard the thump-thump-thump in my ears. And Emmy. She was there too.

“Interesting exchange. Why did Asher cover for you?”

I had no idea.

“Thanks,” I mumbled.

“Did you do it?” Asher asked.

“Do what?”

He just stared, his gaze locked onto mine, and those big blue eyes dragged the truth out of me.

“Of course I did.”

His laughter was…unexpected. But nice.

“Come on, you’d better take that food to Vanessa before it gets cold. Did Deandra hurt her badly this time?”

“Scraped up her hands and knees. Were you really in the library?”

Asher snorted. “Of course not.”

“Then where were you?” I asked before I could stop myself. What Asher Martinez did in his spare time was none of my business. But at that moment, I realised I kind of wanted it to be my business. The revelation hit me like a punch to the gut, and I would have walked into the door of New Hall if Asher hadn’t opened it for me.

“I snuck out to buy cigarettes. Don’t worry; nobody saw me.”

Cigarettes? He had cigarettes? I really, really needed a puff right now. “Can I bum one?”

“You smoke too?” Asher asked.

Ah, shit. Emmy was still listening, wasn’t she?

“Not often. I mean, not at school.”

“I’ll wait here for you. We’ve both broken enough rules tonight without me sneaking into a girls’ dorm.”

True. I jogged up two flights of stairs, careful not to drop Vanessa’s food. The last thing I needed was a bigger mess. This should have been such a simple job—get in, record some video, plant some bugs, get out—but it was turning out to be more complicated than I ever imagined. Why? Because of people. People turned even the best-laid plans into mayhem.

“Here you go. Mac and cheese with triple chocolate fudge cake. How are you feeling?”

“You brought cake? Now I’m feeling much better. Wait, you’re not staying?”

“Haven’t finished that study session. Mitosis is a bitch.”

I slipped out the door before she could ask any more questions. I was all out of answers tonight. But before I went downstairs, I locked myself in one of the toilet stalls and sat on the closed lid.

“Emmy?”

“What are you doing, Sky?”

“I have no idea. Isn’t that obvious?”

“I’m not your mother. I’m not going to give you a lecture. But just remember you’ll be leaving Shadow Falls in a few weeks. I don’t want anyone to get hurt, especially you.”

“I don’t want anyone to get hurt either, but I need to stay on good terms with Asher. If he hadn’t stepped in tonight, I’d be in Ezra Rosenberg’s office right now, getting a bollocking.”

“I understand that.”

“And do you know how awkward it feels, having to have these conversations with people, trying to form bonds and cultivate relationships with somebody from Blackwood listening in the whole time?”

“Yes.”

“So what do you do in that situation?”

“Simple. I turn my microphone off when things get heavy.”

“I didn’t realise that was an option.”

“Trust goes both ways. If we’re asking you to trust us, then we have to trust you as well. If you feel it’s safe to go dark, just let whoever’s monitoring you know there’ll be radio silence for a while.”

“Okay.” I hesitated for a moment. “Aren’t you going to scold me for smoking?”

“If I told you off for having a cheeky cigarette, I’d be the biggest hypocrite on the planet.”

“You smoke?”

“Very occasionally. Don’t you dare tell Black.”

“My lips are sealed.”

“Asher’s waiting for you.”

“Uh, so I guess I’m going quiet for a while.”

“Just check in with me later, all right?”

I removed the earpiece and turned the tiny dial to switch off the microphone, but I left the speaker on. That way, I could still hear Blackwood, but they couldn’t hear me. Then I jogged downstairs to Asher.

“Hey.” With the radio turned off, I’d expected things to feel less awkward, but it turned out the opposite was true. “Where are we going?”

He put a finger to his lips and headed for a running trail that led into the woods. When the lights from the dorms had faded away, he turned on a small torch.

“I can’t smoke in my apartment. One of the housekeeping staff would smell it and report me.”

“You have an apartment?”

“One of the few perks of being related to the Rosenbergs. Ezra was going to put me in a regular room, but Grandma overruled him and gave me a staff apartment. Officially, I’m meant to be the student liaison for Linton Hall, but things run pretty smoothly over there. It’s geek city.”

The ground was slippery after today’s rainfall, and when Asher cut right onto a smaller path that climbed steeply uphill, he offered me a hand. I took it. It would have been rude not to, right? And then we found ourselves in a small clearing with a tumbledown wooden shack at the far end.

“What is this place?” I asked.

“Not sure. It might have been a toolshed once, but now it’s full of old junk.” The door hung off rusted hinges, and he led me inside. “I don’t think anyone comes here now except me.”

No one but spiders, anyway. A cobweb tickled my face, and I knocked it out of the way only for another to take its place. Yeuch. The moonlight that filtered through the filthy window cast creepy shadows over the inside of the shed, and Asher’s torch lit up half a dozen broken chairs, a rusted spade, and a pile of old newspapers. The place smelled damp and musty with an underlying hint of what could have been a dead mouse.

“Do you bring all the girls here?” I asked.

“Can you imagine Tiffany or Meaghan in a place like this? They’d both have run screaming by now.” He grew more serious. “No, you’re the first girl I’ve ever brought here.”

“You really know how to make me feel special.”

He studied the collection of chairs, dragged out the two that looked the most intact, and wiped them with his sleeve. A cloud of dust billowed into the murky light.

“Take a seat. Don’t say I never spoil you.”

I forgave him when he offered me a Lucky Strike from the packet in his pocket. “Thanks. Do you smoke a lot?”

“Not often. Only when I’m stressed.”

“Why are you stressed? Is it the test on Saturday?”

“Partly.”

“Partly? What’s the other part?”

He didn’t speak. Avoiding the question? Or just considering his answer?

“Asher?”

“I’m deciding whether or not to be honest.”

“Why wouldn’t you be?”

A match flared in the darkness, and Asher lit my cigarette and then his own. I inhaled deeply and quickly regretted it when I began coughing.

“I don’t smoke much either,” I explained. “Only when I need to take the edge off.”

“Why do you need to take the edge off?”

“It’s not every day you flush a tart’s head down the toilet and nearly get caught.”

“You did what?”

“I thought you already knew?”

“I saw Deandra coming out of Ezra’s office with one of the other Dingbat Barbies, and Deandra’s MO is to weaponise the teachers against her enemies. When Ezra wanted to talk to you, I knew she’d reported you for something. But giving her a swirly? She’s had that coming for a long time. Chem, you deserve a medal.”

“So do you, because that was a nice deflection. C’mon, Shortcut—what’s eating at you?”

“Are you always this perceptive?”

“There you go again.”

“Don’t you ever quit?”

“I—”

He held up a hand to silence me. “On second thought, I don’t want to know the answer. I’ll talk, okay? Have you ever considered working at Guantanamo Bay? I hear the CIA’s interrogation team has openings.”

The wall of the shed creaked alarmingly when Asher stood and leaned against it, and I had visions of being buried under a pile of rotting wood. Perhaps I should have left my microphone on after all? Emmy could send Ryder and his merry men to rescue me because no way was I explaining that predicament to the fire brigade.

“Being around you makes me stressed,” Asher said.

Well, shit. I hadn’t been expecting that.

“Sorry. I don’t mean to make you feel that way.”

“I know. But you…you see me in a way nobody else does, not even my family. All the things I try to hide, you either notice them on your own…” He waved the glowing end of the cigarette. “Or I blurt them out when you ask. I feel as if I’m losing control of my life.”

“I’m not planning to tell anyone your secrets, if that’s what you’re worried about.” I rose to face him. “You know one of mine too. Why did you cover for me?”

“I already told you—Deandra deserved to be taken down a peg or two.” He chuckled. “Or ten. And Ezra’s a whiny asshole.”

“Why do you hate the Rosenbergs so much?”

“Because of the way they treated my mother. They disowned her after she went to college.” He sighed. “She grew up here, but she broke with family tradition and chose California College of the Arts instead of Harvard.”

“They disowned her for picking a different school?”

“No, they disowned her because she fell in love with my dad. His father was a janitor at CCA.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah. His family was the wrong colour, and from the wrong social class. But my mom said to hell with it and married him anyway.”

“Wow. That’s…that’s disgusting. What they did to her,” I hastened to add. “Not what she did.”

“The joke was on them because my Californian grandparents worked their asses off so Dad could be the first person in their family to go to college, and he graduated from Stanford with distinction. And then he went to law school. I had a good life as a kid, at least until Mom died.”

“I’m so sorry.” I squeezed his free hand with mine. It seemed like an appropriate thing to do. “But I still don’t understand how you ended up here.”

“It’s a long, long story.”

“If you want to talk, I’m here to listen. But if you don’t, that’s okay too.”

He flicked his cigarette butt onto the cracked concrete floor and ground it out with his heel, then bent to pick it up and drop it into a battered metal watering can. I followed suit and saw the little pile of dog-ends already in there. Perhaps Asher got more stressed than he cared to admit.

“Mom died suddenly. Her aorta ruptured in the middle of a yoga lesson, and by the time the ambulance got there, she was gone. Do me a favour and skip the yoga lessons, Sky. I hate the thought of you…” Popping my clogs the same way? “Never mind.”

“I’ll avoid yoga.”

He squeezed my hand back.

“I was twelve. And the bottom dropped out of my world. Dad always made sure we had family time at the weekend, but during the week, he worked long hours, so it was just me and Mom. She picked me up from school, helped with my homework, ate dinner with me. Then suddenly she was gone. I couldn’t handle it. From the outside, I looked okay, but inside, it felt as if a wrecking ball had gone through my ribs. I fucked up my first year of junior high and had to repeat it.”

Grief. I’d barely experienced it, not really, but Lenny had almost died three months ago and the numbness I’d felt in those few minutes…

“That’s completely understandable.”

“Not to my dad. He had this crazy work ethic, and he couldn’t figure out why I didn’t share it. Plus he fell apart after Mom died too. He’d already buried both of his parents, and after Mom’s funeral, he stopped coming home, stopped eating, developed this distance in his eyes. She was his soulmate, and without her, he was never the same. After one of our many, many arguments, he told me he couldn’t bear to look at me because I reminded him of what he’d lost.”

What a cruel thing to tell a child. If what I saw in Asher’s eyes was any indication, then words hurt far more than fists ever could. For once, I was grateful my father had chosen the latter.

“I wish I could go back in time and flush his head down the toilet.”

That got me the tiniest smile. “What’s done is done. We drifted apart after that. Dad spent most of his time in the office, and I spent most of mine getting into trouble. Lucky I knew a good lawyer.”

“Did you ever get arrested?”

“A few times. Mostly, I hightailed it before the cops came. Ever driven a modified Mustang along a freeway with the sound of sirens in the background? It’s a fuckin’ rush.”

Asher had been a street racer? I got a rush too, all my blood heading south to places it definitely shouldn’t have gone. But those guys had balls.

“Do you still have the Mustang?”

“Not that one, but a different one. I had to hide it from my dad. Our relationship had broken down completely by that point, and he’d have crushed the car if he’d found out about it. I guess I couldn’t have blamed him. He’d sent me to three good schools, two of which I got expelled from, and I’d failed everything and quit. I turned eighteen, got a job where I earned good money, and messed around with cars in my spare time. Only went home to sleep. Figured I’d do that for the rest of my life, but then Dad had a heart attack at his desk one night. His PA didn’t find him until the next morning.”

Any words would have been totally inadequate. There wasn’t enough sympathy in the world for what had happened to Asher. So I did the only thing I could think of and wrapped my arms around him in a slightly awkward hug. We stood in silence long enough for a spider to drop from the roof, crawl all the way across my shoulder, and start creeping down my arm. I wasn’t arachnophobic or anything, but it took willpower I didn’t know I possessed to keep from flicking it away. I tried shifting to the side, but it tippy-toed over my wrist and took up residence on my hand.

“So after that, what, you decided to reconnect with your mother’s side of the family?”

“Not exactly, not by choice anyway. By then, Dad and I had clashed so many times that he’d added a clause to his will. If I want to inherit a cent, I have to get my high school diploma.”

My eyes widened. “Oh, shit.”

“As I said, I can’t blame him. If I’d had a kid like me, I’d probably have done the same thing. And maybe I’d have stayed in California if I hadn’t lost my job, but…” He paused for a moment. Swallowed. “Anyhow, Grandma Rosenberg heard what had happened and reached out. Mom had partially reconciled with her over the years—not Ezra or Saul and definitely not her father, but she spoke to Grandma. We even visited a time or two. Which left me with two choices—going to public school in San Diego and scraping by on my own, or coming here and doing the bare minimum. Both shitty options, but this place seemed like the lesser of two evils. So that’s my story, Chem. Told you it was long.”

“How are you finding Shadow Falls?”

“So far, it’s met with my expectations, but the future seems a little brighter.” Asher smiled at me. “You can take your hand off my ass now. Or leave it there. I don’t care.”

Oops. Damn spider. I shifted my arm to a more appropriate position, and the eight-legged freak floated to the floor and scuttled away.

“Sorry. Uh, if you need to graduate, then perhaps we really should do some studying this evening?”

He made a face.

“Oh, don’t give me that look. I can help you with reading or whatever. Honestly, I don’t mind.”

“Have you eaten dinner?”

I shook my head. “But it’s fine. I have a stash of jelly beans in my room.”

In forty-seven different flavours, no less. That was practically a meal in itself. But Asher didn’t seem to think so. He pushed away from the wall, forcing me to take a step backwards.

“It’s not fine. You need to eat.” He held out a hand, and this time, I didn’t think twice before I took it. “I have a kitchen. You’ll have to sneak into Linton Hall, but I’ll make you dinner.”

“You can cook?”

“I can microwave.”

“That’s good enough for me.”