"Why are we here again?" Jaylin asked, watching the party-goers pass by as Tisper adjusted herself in the visor mirror. The turnout was bigger than he remembered—but then again, it'd been half a decade since the last time he attended a party at the Sigvards.
"Cute boys, cute girls..." Tisper droned, fixing a bit of makeup that had smudged in her efforts. "Take your pick."
"I pick sleep."
Tisper reached over to fix a stray lock on his haywire blond head, then she said, "Well then, at least settle for the booze."
They snapped the car doors open both at once, and a blast of humid summer air conquered the comfortable cold of the AC.
As Jaylin left the car, his eyes followed the covey of people to the rustic anterior arrangement of the Sigvard Manor.
It was a beautiful home with high-arched windows and bucolic architecture, far from the municipal streets. The only way to the manor was along a private gravel road, now stuffed with cars on either side. The building sat on knolls of grassy hills, centered between trees twice as old as the city itself, and then swaddled all around by the dense privacy of an evergreen forest. And more prominent than anything was the fact that this place—all sixty-four acres—belonged to the Sigvards.
They were a family that had inhabited the city for decades, and they never let anyone forget it. It wasn't that they held any prominent position of power—Richard Sigvard was a lawyer who'd won a huge case in the early eighties, and since, he'd only become more and more distinguished in his aptitude for law. Mrs. Sigvard's donations to charity were often featured in the newspaper, but that was it. They'd done nothing all that significant for anyone. They were just rich.
From the spindly vine-crusted arbor on their front lawn, Jaylin took in the vibrant flora that wrapped around the home. Lush rhododendron bushes and the yellow bleeding hearts, sagging sad and beautiful from their hanging baskets. The bleeding hearts hadn't been here his last visit, but the red roses were—their vines as tall as himself, with long, wicked teeth for thorns. Oh, he remembered those roses. He was gagged by the nostalgic perfume of them as he passed.
It had been four years since his last visit to the manor and he hadn't expected all of the smells, how easily they'd draw his memories out. Even the the sound of the glass wind chimes were an awful, familiar song. They all took him back to that Fourth of July night. Back to Tyler.
Thankfully, the sounds and the smells were clipped off from the world as they stepped inside and Jaylin could smell nothing but perfume and sweat, hear nothing but EDM.
"I'm gonna use the bathroom," he called over the music. He needed a breather, and he wasn't quite ready to face those rose bushes again.
Tisper shouted back, "Do you know where it is?" but already Jaylin was splitting the sea of people down the middle. He couldn't forget where it was if he tried.
A large chest bumped into him—a woman, trying to reel him into dance. He smiled politely and slipped out of her grip. Once free from the crowd, Jaylin bounced up the staircase, carpeted and crescent and lined with slick wooden baluster railings. He slowed when he noticed the pictures hanging on the walls.
Four strong-jawed Scandinavians set the focus of the photograph. Lisa Sigvard—stoic, stout-shouldered, with a chin pointed to the ceiling in such a way that half of her life was either spent staring through the slits of her eyes, or gazing up to the stars. Standing beside her was her husband, Richard, his hair darker than the others, his eyebrows thick and furrowed, leaving deep lines that dipped permanently across his forehead. Anna Sigvard sat on her haunches in front of her mother, her long golden braids plating down her small, pale shoulder—her summer dress fanned out delicately across the carpet. Her brother, Alex Sigvard knelt next to her. He was younger. Jaylin had met Alex once before. He was the kind of kid you couldn't see through—the kinda guy that looked like he was always lost in thought.
But then there was another person in the photo, and something about his fierce appearance cut into Jaylin and stuck there like a hook.
He stood beside Mr. Sigvard, immaculate suit pressed tight against his chest. His skin betrayed the luxuries he wore; it was dark, rich—stained by the pressing sun. Jaylin thought maybe he was Italian or Greek—the way his hair slicked back in easy dishevelment and his smile glared so brightly against his skin. Jaylin couldn't remember seeing this man last time he walked these steps. Not in any photo, not in any painting.
"It's sad, isn't it?" a voice said from beside him.
Her skin was a dark brown, those plump cheeks of hers glistening under the stairwell lights. Her eyes lined in a sheening silver and her red lips wrapped around the neck of a beer bottle. He didn't recognize her at first—lost in the misdirection of her hair; now short, wild curly tendrils that bounced above her brow and drifted away from her nape like a silky cloud. She'd always worn it tied back before, hidden beneath sporty sweatbands and beanies.
Jaylin laughed and threw his arms around her hourglass waist, buried in the scent of her perfume. "Sadie! I thought you were in Europe."
"I was," she said, holding her beer up high to keep Jaylin from knocking it over. "Traveled all over, you know. Prague, Berlin, Venice. Spent every dime I'd saved up from working part time at the Burger Shack, and guess how my adventure ended."
She wore a smile as Jaylin pulled back, but his own wilted when he noticed the irony in it. "Badly?"
"Apparently, all this time Kat's been studying abroad, what she's actually been studying a pretty little Spanish exchange student named Lucia." She said it like the name tasted disgusting on her tongue, eyes falling to her beer bottle. "Anyway, we're over. I feel like an idiot."
Jaylin drew back to look her in the eye. "Sadie, I'm sorry."
"It's fine. It's not fine, but I'm... fine. Not like I'm the first person who's ever been cheated on. Things just kind of suck right now." A sour silence followed after, but it wasn't long before Sadie sighed and shook her head like she was rattling the negativity out through her ears. Then she pointed her beer at the framed photo he'd been eying.
"Anyway, Anna. Sad about her, right?"
Jayin looked to the family portrait. "Sad? What do you mean?"
"She's dead. Nearly two years ago," Sadie said. "You didn't know?"
Jaylin had never paid her much attention before, but this time he took a good look at Anna's face. She seemed like a nice girl. Older than himself by a handful of years, but her smile was full of youth and innocence. She was a happy person; he could see it in the way she smiled.
Sadie shrugged. "They just announced it a while back. The Sigvards have always been weird with that stuff. Keeping the important matters to themselves. It's almost like they wanted to keep her death a secret. Eerie, right?" She grinned and gave Jaylin a nudge with her elbow. "A place this big has to be chock full of those. Secrets I mean. Feel like snooping around with me?"
Secrets. It was definitely full of those.
"I just, uh...." Cigarettes weren't something he smoked often; his mother had told him stories of his father's nicotine addiction and Jaylin wanted nothing less than to become David's prodigy. So he rationed them, one a day and no more. He'd smoked his daily allowance to calm himself after his job interview, but that July night was beginning to haunt him. There was too much of Tyler in this place.
When he recognized the fleeting sadness still in Sadie's eyes, Jaylin reached out took her by the hand instead. "Let's just dance."
-
Jaylin had never felt music drown him like this before.
What once was a luxurious two-story manor had become but a pit of puppets just like himself, bodies swaying and twisting and bouncing to all the heavy sounds that trembled the floor and carried his heart into palpitations.
Jaylin had found his euphoria in Sadie's grin—her teeth long and sharp and her cheeks creased with little charming divots. She'd always had the prettiest dimples he'd ever seen. The lights flashed against her dark skin, turning it into beautiful shades of burgundy and violet.
He didn't know how long they'd been dancing together, but he was in a place where he couldn't tell his own heartbeat from the thrum of the bass. It was a place of bliss and it seemed to take away time entirely. But despite how he loved this feeling, the liberated buzz in his blood, Jaylin realized something terrible. He'd forgotten all about Tisper, not that she needed him around. She would have come with or without him, but Jaylin hated the thought of leaving her behind.
He stopped his dancing to search through the taller shapes in the room. With the lights strobing and heads bobbing, he couldn't grip a single silhouette before it was disappearing into shadows or consumed in the crowd. Then he found himself gazing over Sadie's shoulder at the banister of the stairs. Two dark figures stood behind the railing, ruling over the crowd like kings before their kingdom.
Jaylin had to squint his eyes to make out the faces. The first he identified as Alexander Sigvard—looking nothing like anyone else in the place. His hair was the color of sand—a dirty-blonde mess that curled down over his brows. He dressed in nothing but a t-shirt and sports shorts—though he looked like he'd never lifted a football in his life. There was something so decaying about him that Jaylin hadn't noticed in the family portrait.
Then beside him was the stranger. The one from the photos on the wall, with sun-stained skin like a sepia painting. Jaylin felt himself drawn closer, not because the man from the wall was beautiful—he was—but because looking into his eyes felt like standing at the edge of the earth, staring into that endless black void. They were deep-set and dark and watching not with fascination or surprise, but sadness. He looked like a man who'd watched the world turn to ashes.
Then the stranger's eyes lifted from Jaylin—settled somewhere else in the crowd. He was speaking to Alex, words too far gone to catch.
"Hot, isn't he?" Sadie called over the music.
"Who is he?" Jaylin asked, almost so quietly, he wasn't sure he had ever really spoken at all.
"Quentin Bronx. He was engaged to Anna before she died."
Jaylin looked back to the banister, and this time there was a third figure, too tall to miss. He was pushing his way through the crowd to reach Quentin, a blaze of red hair combed back by hasty hands. He snatched Quentin by the arm and whispered something in his ear, and those calculative eyes pinned Jaylin where he stood. From that dark, strobing baluster, the man in the ashes watched him—gazing with such intensity that Jaylin could only stare back in wonder.
"Jaylin!" a voice peaked just slightly over the roaring music and Jaylin spun to find Matt edging through the crowd with a grimace, enough freckles on his face to account for every constellation in the sky. When he looked back, Quentin, Alex and the redheaded stranger had all disappeared. Gone, like they'd never been there to begin with.
"Jay!" Matt shouted again, and Jaylin edged through the crowd to meet him. A snapback sat snug atop his head, the bill flipped backwards, little brown ringlets escaping through the gap at his forehead and sticky with sweat from the run over. This, Jaylin found, wasn't unusual. Sweaty and panicked was kinda Matt's brand.
"Where's Tisper?" he asked—or demanded, really—yanking the hat from his head and using it to fan himself.
"No, no, no. I'm not getting in the middle of your bullshit." Jaylin held up a hand. "She doesn't want to see you, Matt. There's a reason she's avoided your calls all summer, and don't act like you don't know—"
"No, shut up! It ain't about that!" Matt barked, his faint Texas accent drowned out against the snarl of the bass. "Bobby was here—I saw them talking by the pool. You know I don't trust the asshole, so I—y'know. I watched. But I turned around for five seconds, man. Five! And when I looked she was gone. They both were. God,"—he threw his arms to the side with a look of grief—"call her or something, what are you waiting for?"
Jaylin blinked and scrambled for his phone, wedging through bodies until he'd escaped the pit.
With Sadie and Matt on either side of him, Jaylin listened close to the dial tone until the cheery sound of Tisper's voice mail greeting chewed into his nerves.
"She's not answering." He shoved the phone in his pocket and wiped his sweat off on his forearm. "Is her car still here?"
Matt nodded his head wildly.
"Okay," Jaylin said. "Sadie, stay here and look for her. Ask around. If you see her or Bobby, let us know." Then he turned to Matt. "You go check her apartment. Bring your dad's gun, but don't be an idiot about it."
Matt squinted at him but nodded anyway. "What about you?"
"I'll swing by Bobby's house," Jaylin said in a hurry. "Call your dad ASAP if you hear anything, alright?"
"Bobby's place?" Matt gawked. "After we did to his car, man? You really think it's a good idea?"
"Are you stupid?! It's a horrible idea!" Sadie exclaimed. "You shouldn't be going anywhere near that place alone."
"It's Tisper," was all Jaylin said. It was Tisper and he'd do anything for her.
Sadie and Matt exchanged a look, but let him go, splitting off in their own separate directions. Jaylin shoved his way free from the party and ran down the long stretch of gravel road, several blocks to the nearest bus stop. The last transit of the night was minutes from arriving when Matt called.
Jaylin stuck the phone to his ear. "Did you find her?"
"No," Matt said—a roughness to his voice like he'd been running. He probably searched the entire complex for her. "Lights are off, doors locked. Can't hear a damn thing. She's not here, Jay."
"Any word from Sadie?"
"Not a peep."
Jaylin rose from the bus bench as the shuttle grunted to a stop in front of him. Tapping his bus pass to the machine, he took the first seat on the right and cupped the phone to his ear so the driver wouldn't overhear. "I'll be at Bobby's place in ten minutes. Get down here if you can. Bobby's a big guy. If he's around, then I could use a hand."
"Yessir," Matt's southern twang rang loud and clear. "Traffic's heavy tonight, but I'll be down aysap. Be careful, Jay." Then the call went silent.
Jaylin's nerves were snapping like live wires and he couldn't sit still for the life of him. His foot tapped against the ground, his palms wiped at his face. Tisper was his best friend. What would he do if he lost her?
Eventually the bus came to a grinding halt at the Cedar Brook cemetery. Bobby's dad was the grave keeper; the land beside the cemetery had belonged to his family for years. That's what Jaylin remembered Tyler telling him when he was younger. When they'd walk past the gravestones, under the skirts of evergreens and the spindly arms of willow trees. Before the good in Tyler died.
He hurried past the tall entry sign, rushing through the cultured lawn and the bouquet of disturbed soil. The old trees croaked in the passing breeze, and the sound of their whispers brought chills to Jaylin's arms.
Bobby's house was tucked away, just over the fence on the back-side of the cemetery. Jaylin used to hop the fence with Tyler—raid Bobby's fridge when they were famished, and too far from home. In a way, he felt responsible. Tisper would have never known Bobby if not for his relationship with Tyler. If anything were to happen to her, he'd blame himself until it burned a hole in him.
Jaylin's breath shuddered as he followed the winding sidewalk through a sea of gravestones and rotting roses. The moon was all he could see—the perfect circle sliced right through with the twisted branches of leafless willow trees. He'd just reached the far side, where one hop over the fence would land him right into Bobby's backyard. But as he twisted his fingers through the gaps in the wires, Jaylin's phone began to buzz in his pocket again.
"Sadie?" he answered. "Please tell me you found her."
"I found her," Sadie said triumphantly. "She was passed out in the wine cellar. Her drunk ass doesn't know how she got here, but she's fine."
"...that Jaylin?" he could hear Tisper's voice somewhere in the background. "Gimme."
There was a shuffle as Sadie pulled the phone away. "Looks like she left her cell somewhere. That's why she wasn't answering."
"...want to talk to him!" Tisper bickered in the distance.
Jaylin shut his eyes and sighed out in deep relief. "Alright, Matt's on his way. I'll just have him take me back—"
He was ripped back by a hard grip on his shoulder, his body spun and a palm slammed against his throat; pushing him back against the metal fencing until the wires dug into his neck. His phone slipped from his fingers, cracking against the edge of a gravestone.
"Hey, buddy." Bobby was grinning inches from his face, his breath ghastly and liquored, his snaggle teeth stained yellow. "What you doin' here, huh?"
Jaylin gripped at his wrist, twisting the flesh in a fruitless effort to free himself. "I was leaving, so fuck off."
"No, stay a while," said a second voice. "This feels like a good time for a talk,"
Jaylin dropped his struggles at the sight of him. The fleck of red from the cigarette between his lips stole away all the light from his face, but Jaylin could tell by his voice that it was Tyler. His voice was the only thing about him that hadn't changed.
He stepped closer, and the shadows washed away. He used to be so handsome, Jaylin thought, watching the way the moon fed on his long jaw and settled like embers into the honey brown of his eyes. Maybe he was still handsome. Maybe it was only Jaylin's perception of him that had changed. No, he looked physically different, too. He'd let his facial hair grow in and lopped off the curly brown locks Jaylin loved so much. He hardly looked like himself anymore—or maybe this was Tyler now. Maybe the Tyler from Jaylin's past was one with the bodies buried beneath his feet. He couldn't believe he had loved someone so dead to him now.
Tyler wandered closer, his heavy boots crushing dry grass and twigs. Jaylin felt a familiar kind of grip around his wrist, yanking his arm from the clutch he had on Bobby. He could hardly breathe for the fingers that wrapped his throat, but still he fought Tyler's grip, whipping his arm away only to feel that squeeze go tighter.
Tyler plucked the joint from his lips and twisted it in his fingers, and Jaylin's heart cracked against his chest as he pressed the burning paper to the skin of his forearm. Jaylin gnashed his teeth to keep from crying out. The cherry seared him bone-deep and Tyler looked him in the eyes. Dark and hooded and unhinged, he watched Jaylin suffer.
Then he whispered, "Olivia told me."
A cord in Jaylin snapped. He sent a knee up, bashing between Bobby's legs, who staggered back with a painful yelp. Then he gave his arm a downward yank, and with a lunge forward, Jaylin smashed his head against Tyler's. There was a crackle of cartilage, a sharp pain as his teeth cut the skin of Jaylin's forehead.
Jaylin slipped past their keeled shapes, sliding down loose earth until he found the pavement again. Then he ran. Jaylin ran so fast, he could feel his tears dry in his eyes. He ran past the creak of old oaks, and the quiet hoot of the owls that inhabited them. He ran past bouquets and flags and letters from loved ones. But Jaylin couldn't outrun Tyler. He never could.
He was horse-collared by the neck of his shirt and choked back with such force that Jaylin lost his footing, tumbling down beside a decaying gravestone. He felt a boot bash against his stomach and Jaylin cringed inwardly. Then another slammed against his face, snapping him into a daze. He saw black, smelled blood. He was kicked so many times, he stopped feeling them. His body had numbed to the metal toes of Tyler's boots, his spine jerking with every kick Bobby served him—but the pain was so much that it was nothing at all.
It felt like decades before they finally stopped. Jaylin couldn't see, save for the specks of light in his vision, but he could hear them talking—feel the breeze cool his cheek, taste the blood in his mouth. Maybe he could move, but he was too afraid to try.
"You didn't hear that?"
Jaylin regained himself enough to make sense of Tyler's words.
"I didn't hear shit," Bobby said. Then he kicked Jaylin again. This time, he felt something snap and Jaylin gave an agonizing cry. Then he heard it: a snarl that silenced Bobby, silenced Tyler. Silenced himself.
It sounded like the low grumble of an engine, and for a moment, Jaylin wondered if it was the sound of Matt's new Jeep Wrangler. Maybe he'd driven right into the cemetery. But then the grumble joined into a chortle—excited little noises, like the titter of a hyena.
Jaylin opened his eyes, blinking back the red in them. He could see the shadows of the trees that domed above him, just barely making out the hesitance in Tyler's silhouette. Alert, stiff...beginning to back away from something.
Jaylin remembered how proudly Tyler talked of being at the top of his ROTC classes. He remembered the boot camp he went away to for a summer and how he'd returned so much bigger. He remembered the races Tyler won, and how his father nicknamed him "Bullet". He remembered just how fast Tyler was, but Jaylin had never seen him run like this.
He was sprinting so quickly, it was as if the ground was reversing beneath his feet. Then Bobby was behind him, shouting something, stumbling over himself.
Jaylin heard another snarl crackle through the silence, and something darker than black washed over his sight. Fur, glinting like fine wire in the moonlight; it shifted above muscle and bone, lunged itself at Bobby—took him down to the ground with a scream that made Jaylin's blood go cold in his veins. It was only then that Jaylin could make out the shape of it. A long, bushy black tail swinging in excitement, a chest laced with tufts of fur that jutted this way and the next like fine, shattered glass. Then the long, briery canines as the beast cracked open its snarling jaw and dove into Bobby's neck, tearing into his throat with a sound that ripped and snapped like Velcro.
Jaylin was afraid to take a breath. He stayed quiet and shook for fear that the beast might smell the terror in him. When he couldn't stand the sight of Bobby's blood anymore, Jaylin turned his head away.
His heart lurched at the shape that appeared before him. A second wolf of lighter color than the first sat on his haunches with slow-blinking eyes. His jaws opened wide, and Jaylin shoved himself back with a gasp, but the wolf only stuck out his tongue and yawned. Then he licked at his muzzle and shook his head in contentment, his chest puffing out in beautiful spurs of gold and brown.
The beast rose on his feet, took a step closer, and then sat back down again. Jaylin feared moving. He shut his eyes and tightened every muscle in his body. That was how these situations went, right? Stay still, he thought. Stay still and play dead.
Jaylin squeezed himself so tight, he was sure he could feel every muscle burning in his body. His rib ached and pinched with every breath and he sobbed at the feeling. He was going to die. He was going tobe eaten alive, and all because he didn't listen to the others. He should have avoided this place like the plague, and Jaylin knew that. Four years and he hadn't been back to this spot once.
It'd been the only place he and Tyler could be together. The cemetery with too many trees to hide behind. The only place he would touch Jaylin, the only time he'd hold him in public: when they were walking beneath these willow trees.
It was still so hard for Jaylin to believe that a time like that existed. A time before the death threats and the derogatory names and the steel-toed boots. Tyler didn't like what he was, so he broke himself to start again from scratch. And in his selfish ways, he broke Jaylin, too.
A cold tickled against Jaylin's forehead. The cold of the wolf's nose ripped him from his woes and shoved him back into his pit of fear. He could hear the soft gusts of air as the wolf sniffed about his skin—the flick of his tongue as he licked his chomps. Then a giant exhale, fluttering the hair on his temple.
But Jaylin wasn't harmed. He was greeted with nothing more than the brush of its hanging fur as it stepped over his body, gently bumping his shoulder on the way. It yipped—a small demanding sound, and the black wolf returned it with one of its own.
Despite the pain in his ribs, he turned over to watch the wolves, their ears flexing at his noise, but not for a second acknowledging him. They made off into the trees, nipping at one another and grunting out agitated little noises, then they slipped out like shadows through a gape in the wire fence.
Jaylin didn't dare look back at Bobby. He feared what might be left of him. He gripped the headstone beside him for balance, clutching the splinter in his ribs. His insides ached like an illness, and he could feel the blood cracking dry against his face. Jaylin was lost in himself. Lost in the shock of it. Lost in the howl that breached his ears from a short distance away; the high-pitched croon, yowling into the night.
He was lost in the song of the wolves, and for some reason, he couldn't help but think that maybe that song was meant for him.