CHAPTER ELEVEN

WOUNDED, UNTO DEATH

That night, Juliet didn’t eat dinner at Chas’. She really did make Seth take her home, but before that, she put on his underwear. It was soft and smelled slightly musty, like him. It might have been petty of her, but he really wasn’t getting them back later.

Seth borrowed Chas’ car to drive her back across the river. Chas’ car was a long, black Jaguar. Juliet couldn’t figure out why she had seen him walking when he had a car like that parked in the tiny garage out back. Seth opened the door for her, but he didn’t do it like he was a gentleman. He did it like it was all part of the obligation of being with a girl. Juliet had the feeling that he would have done the same for Nixie or anyone.

Once they were alone in the car she tried asking him about the tub again. “Why did you put me in the tub when I was unconscious?”

She heard him huff slightly in the darkness and then he said, “You got in the tub yourself. Don’t you remember? I turned on the jets. We were taking a bath together.”

“The show’s over Seth. It’s okay if you tell the truth,” she said quietly.

For a second Seth didn’t say anything. Then he said softly, “I couldn’t stand the way you smelled when I was so hungry. I put you in there so I wouldn’t be tempted to bite you. I thought that was already understood.”

For the first time since Juliet met him, she was really fed up with what he pretended to be in order to please her.

“Today has been awful timing all around,” he went on. “I wanted more time to think after what happened last night, and then you showed up today before I’d sorted myself out. I spoke hastily when I talked about someone else. She’s been on my mind lately. It’s kind of like an arranged marriage with someone who may or may not show up. The possibility of that woman has always been there, like a shadow hanging over my entire life. I don’t usually like to talk about it, but when I’m starving, I can’t think about anything else. You walked in at the wrong time. I would never have spoken about it with you otherwise.”

“So, if this woman shows up, you really would leave me in the lurch no matter how much you liked me?” she asked, getting agitated again.

“Juliet, I don’t actually believe she’ll come. It’s just something I worry about like a spasm that comes with hunger pains. It could be your job to drive out those feelings of apprehension and calm me down.”

“If it’s a job, I should be getting paid,” she commented mockingly.

Seth scoffed his reply, “Wouldn’t you need to be calmed down if your mother promised you to someone? And the arrangement wasn’t a normal relationship that could be understood. It’s not a marriage.”

Juliet paused and they pulled in the u-shaped driveway of the dormitory parking lot. “Okay, so why didn’t you say something about this when we started seeing each other?”

“It wasn’t important. It isn’t now.”

“I think it is,” she rushed, “when you’d suddenly drop me like a rock, without telling me anything beforehand. I don’t want to be second place.”

“It wouldn’t be like that, drama queen. You’re over-reacting,” he accused.

Juliet’s hand went to the car door. She opened it slightly so that the interior light came on. “Whatever Seth! Forgive me if I seem demanding, but I’d like it if my boyfriend didn’t harbor persistent thoughts about other girls.”

“Hope you find him,” Seth said bitingly.

“And... one who doesn’t resort to lies that don’t make sense!” she yelled, getting out of the car and slamming the door. She didn’t look back and stormed up the front walk.

Seth vaulted out of his side of the car and shouted, “That’s what you like about me!”

Juliet spun around and glared at him.

He smiled roguishly and got back into the car.

***

Even with all those theatrics, Juliet didn’t want to give Seth up. Actually, she wanted him more than ever, but she couldn’t allow herself to be a pushover. Just because he was beautiful, that didn’t mean that she had to be his lapdog until whomever he really wanted showed up. That would be the worst ending she could imagine for herself. She’d have to see if she could change his mind. He said he saw her all over campus, well then, let him see her all over campus. She would dress up cute, look unattainable, and she wouldn’t let her desire for him near the surface. As a matter of fact, if he wanted to come back, she’d make him beg.

On Monday, Juliet dressed carefully and walked tall. She curled her hair and wore lipstick and smiled at everyone, making sure she made the best use of her ‘innocence.’ That way everyone got pleasure from looking at her. A guy even gave her his phone number in the food court during lunch, but Juliet was certain Seth hadn’t seen that.

By Tuesday evening, her spirits had dwindled a little. She expected him to have broken down and called, but he hadn’t. The previous Saturday, she believed that getting him back wouldn’t be that hard and she didn’t have a spine if she let him walk all over her. But, in those two days, she hadn’t seen him once.

She saw him on Wednesday. He was sitting in the fishbowl of one of the student lounges. He saw her. He even gave her a crooked smile, so she made her way over to his table. Unfortunately, she had to pass by several crowds to reach him. By the time she made it there, he had already gone. He caught her eye by the exit. His expression was weak, perhaps slightly downcast and then he disappeared.

Juliet sat down in his empty seat feeling slightly rejected. Maybe he had a class to go to or some other totally acceptable reason why he had to leave without even saying hello to her.

On Thursday, he outright snubbed her twice. He was in the elevator to the pub they had been to on their date. It was almost full, but she thought she could scrunch in and stand next to Seth, if not to eat lunch with him once they reached the top. But he gave her his place in the elevator and let it go up without him. Juliet went to the pub to have lunch anyway, hoping that he would show up and join her, but he never came.

The second time, she headed directly to the Safewalk office to talk to him, but as soon as she got there he went into his personal office with a student and shut the door. She was positive he’d seen her. In the end, Juliet waited forty-five minutes, but he didn’t come out. Nixie asked her if she wanted Seth to call her, but Juliet shook her head. She was being stupid. He didn’t want to try again with her and what was worse, she had chased him when she planned to make him beg. She was pathetic.

She went back to her dorm room and felt utterly defeated for the rest of the night. Ten o’clock found her watching the end of a Japanese drama with a massive box of tissue and a small collection of wrappers from the junk food she’d binged on. She was coming unglued. Then she let herself cry. The poster of Seth tortured her. He seemed to say, “You let me go.”

The worst part was that Juliet was alone nursing her heartbreak. Her laptop was not sufficient company. She thought of calling her parents, but she knew if she called them when she was like this, they would immediately come see her and that was the last thing she wanted. She just needed to pick up and move on, but it was hard when there was no one except herself to lick her wounds.

When the Friday night of the Occult’s Addict meeting rolled around, Juliet prepared herself for what should have been an electric night. It was the meeting before Halloween, so she could dress up. She bathed in apple blossom nectar scented bubble bath and did herself up to the nines. She dressed up in her long black dress and wore her knee-high black boots. She tied a red ribbon around her neck like a choker with a bow in the back and long tails hanging to her waist. She tied another red ribbon around her bare wrist and another one around her witch’s hat. She let the tails hang long. Inspecting herself in the mirror, she was hugely satisfied by her appearance. Thank goodness for ribbon, inexpensive and glorious. It gave her a sense of being dressed up, and she needed the confidence badly.

A whole week had passed. Even though Seth was brushing her off, she still hadn’t shaken her feelings for him. She didn’t feel burned just because he was good-looking, did she? It wasn’t because he was mysterious, was it? There had to be more than that since she felt so mournful. However, it wasn’t the end of their relationship. She was going to try to win him back when she called for an escort to the party.

Once she was ready to head over to the meeting, she went to the lobby of her dormitory and called for a Safewalk. She had promised Seth that she would always call for a Safewalk at night if he would tell her about vampires. She was sort of putting her belief in vampires on hold for the time being. It didn’t matter anyway. A promise was a promise and an excellent way of seeing if he still wanted to see her. He was probably working that night.

But when the Safewalk couple arrived, they were two people Juliet had never seen before.

Pushing her disappointment aside, she smiled at the two students and directed them toward the meditation room. Normally, it was a quiet room that allowed only for absolute stillness, but since the Occult’s Addict had rented the room, they would be able to speak, rearrange the furniture, and basically do whatever they wanted, except light candles.

When Juliet got there, she saw that Taylor and Rylan had worked very hard to make the room extra elaborate for the hallowed event. The couches and end tables were covered in black linen. In the center of the room, they had set up a small reflection pool that had eerie turquoise lights shining from underneath the water.

The witches and the two sets of twins had all arrived before her. The women looked like fluttering butterflies as they flitted and fluttered between the buffet table and the couches. Apparently, they had all thought to dress similarly and their ruffles and satin made Juliet feel like she’d joined the most sophisticated club on campus.

As Juliet entered, her arm was immediately taken by Rylan. He looked incredible in a black tuxedo, but his eyes weren’t their usual red. Instead, she found herself looking into golden-brown eyes. She was shocked. Brown must be his real eye color. Good grief! He looked gorgeous to her.

“I’m glad you came,” he said pleasantly as he led her into the room and propelled her toward the buffet table. “I know it is Halloween and I should be trying to scare you, but I’m going to talk about something very personal tonight—almost sacred—and I couldn’t bear to turn this into some cheesy event with fake skulls. You know?”

Juliet nodded as he filled a goblet full of sparkling cider for her.

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He handed her the goblet, and their fingers touched briefly. She smiled and colored. Then suddenly, she was very aware of what Seth had said to her before. That if he left, she would end up with Rylan. She hadn’t believed that such a thing was possible. Wasn’t Rylan kind of detestable? But, somehow, she didn’t see him that way that night. He had started out being overly considerate of her and she was feeling so downtrodden that she wanted to confide in him. In another moment she was confiding in him.

“Seth and I broke up,” she said quietly, taking a sip of her bubbly.

“I know,” he said, looking at her plainly. He was definitely not gloating.

“How?”

“Not until a minute ago, when you came in. I thought I would be pleased if I heard that it hadn’t worked out, but when I saw your face, I couldn’t even feel one second of delight over your injury. Sorry.”

“Don’t apologize. I’m the one who should apologize to you for the way he embarrassed you that night. I don’t think he likes you very much.”

“That’s all right. His kind never does.”

Juliet puzzled over that comment. What did he mean by that? However, she was soon distracted by Rylan rooting around in his pocket.

“I have a present for you,” he said casually.

“What is it?” she asked.

He was wearing white gloves and he took one of her hands in his and placed something small in her palm.

It was a coin.

“It’s for you to toss into the pool. I want you to make a wish, except that isn’t an ordinary pool and that isn’t an ordinary coin. The witches aren’t the only ones who can work magic. Make a wish.”

“What kind of wish?” she asked as he ushered her to the pool.

“Any kind of wish will do. You could wish that I wasn’t such a jerk, or you could wish that you didn’t feel bad about Seth, or…” he said with a grand gesture, “You could wish that you were a magical creature and could get full membership in our club instantly.”

Juliet took the coin in her fingers. It was a dime, the smallest coin. What should she wish for? Rylan stood beside her patiently while she considered. She wanted to wish that Seth would come back to her properly, but it felt wrong to make such a wish with Rylan’s generosity. Finally, she came up with one.

She closed her eyes and kissed the coin. I wish, she thought, I could be an autumn instead of a spring.

Juliet tossed the coin into the water and opened her eyes to watch it slide back and forth before finally resting on the bottom.

“Thank you,” she said to Rylan. “I feel relieved.”

He nodded and took her over to a seat on one of the covered couches. Then he went to the front and began to lead the lecture.

“Welcome to our Hallows’ Eve celebration,” he said in a grand voice like he was used to making public addresses. “Tonight, as all of you know, Taylor and I are going to share our experience, how we got our scars. The theme of the evening is ‘Near-Death Experiences’.”

Juliet’s throat tightened.

“Come on, dear sister,” Rylan said, reaching for Taylor, who immediately rushed to the front.

Juliet had not seen Rylan and Taylor within such close proximity of each other since the first time she went to the Occult’s Addict’s office. They had seemed close then, but Juliet didn’t realize how close they actually were until that moment. Taylor and Rylan kissed each others’ cheeks. Juliet squinted. That was something she saw in movies, but nothing she had ever seen in real life before. Was it possible for siblings to feel that strongly about each other? Then another idea hit her. Could Rylan really be a bad guy if Taylor was so fond of him? She remembered the time she wanted to apologize to Taylor for Seth’s bad behavior and Rylan wouldn’t let her. Maybe Rylan knew Taylor well enough to protect her, even from small things.

Juliet took another drink and exhaled in exasperation. Why had Seth been so right about her? Why did she suddenly feel like going to Rylan for friendship when a friendship with him could only lead to a love affair? She hated herself. Didn’t she care about Seth? Didn’t she want to fight hard to get him back? She looked down at her finery. Seth hadn’t walked her that evening. Her dress had been for nothing. Now she didn’t believe he would come back, not after he had snubbed her so many times.

Taylor started speaking. “When Rylan and I were fifteen, we went to an amusement park for our birthday. We went with a bunch of our friends and made a day of it. We rode the roller coaster, hung upside down on the pendulum, got nauseated on the zipper, played carnival games, and made ourselves sick on junk food. We rode everything, except there was one ride called the Spiral Bubble that wasn’t working that day. We watched them test it over and over again. Rylan wanted to ride it so badly. We watched the trial runs and he kept saying, ‘It’s fine. It works. Why won’t they let us ride it?’ Well, any of you who really know my brother know that he’s basically a genius who understands everything, including mechanics. So, later that night, we did something really stupid.”

Her narrative so far had been unbroken and presented with grace and even a little flair, but at this part of the story, she had to pause to prepare herself for what she would say.

“We sneaked into the park after hours to see if we could get the ride operational ourselves. There weren’t digital locks or all-night security guards. The surveillance cameras were few and scattered. Rylan had already mapped out where all of them were that afternoon and they were easy to avoid, so even after everything was over, they didn’t have any footage of us getting in. It was easy, really easy—too easy. Rylan brought his friend Tom and he helped us hike over the fence without any trouble. It was harder to open both the control booth and turn the ride on. Once they did, Rylan ran a few unmanned trial runs. Then he showed Tom how to operate it and he went first—by himself. Nothing went wrong, so he let Tom and I ride it. Heck, we must have ridden it twenty times before something did go wrong. The ride was made so that two people got into a pod and sat back to back, and then it went around in a spiral going upwards before falling straight down. There were parts of the individual cockpits that looked like bubbles, but I have to stress that most of it was open to the air and there was only one bar keeping you in place. Afterward, they said that the ride’s restraints broke at exactly the wrong time—at the worst possible moment. Rylan and I were riding while Tom operated it and the restraints came loose at the very top of the ride, right before it turned to go down again. We came off at an angle with one wheel hanging onto the rail and at first, we just hung upside down for a few seconds. The hinge broke and we slid back down the spiral. We scraped our hips on the rails and then our sides when our bubble hit the pavement. Not just our sides, but our elbows and arms, too. If we had only fallen, no one’s life would have been threatened, except the bubble crashed into a nearby trailer.”

Rylan put his hand on her shoulder to support her. She hadn’t exactly started crying, but tears were forming in her eyes.

She took his hand, kissed it like she was grateful just to touch him, and continued, “Tom called for the ambulance. I suffered the most tortured hours of my life as we waited for the ambulance and then waited for the doctor’s opinion. I cried out to him over and over while Tom tried to pry me from my chair,” she mumbled. “And I was very hurt. They were scraping bits of gravel out from under my skin all that night. Rylan was in a coma. I suffered like that for weeks…” her voice broke off in a sorrowful strain.

“That’s enough,” Rylan said gently. “I’ll take over from there.”

He led her over to Halona, who took Taylor in her arms and let her rest her head on her lap and put her feet up on the empty part of the couch.

Juliet stared. She had never had friends who were that close.

Rylan went back to the front so that the turquoise pool cast colored light onto his face. When he spoke, he sounded infinitely eloquent, “I have never been afraid of dying because the idea of dying never entered my head. I have always taken it for granted that I would live forever. Juliet asked me last week what I believe in. I told her I believe in the afterlife because I have seen it. I know that what I saw back then was not the imagination of my mind or a dream I had while I was unconscious. The place I saw was a black palace, a place just beyond the blackness of your dreams if you could only strain yourself to see it. Lucky for me, it wasn’t my soul’s final resting place. However, during my time in the black palace, it’s true, you do see a reflection of your whole life and I learned things about myself that I had never guessed. I saw myself through my mother’s eyes, through Taylor’s eyes, through the doctor’s eyes. I was an idiot. I was smart enough to get the Spiral Bubble working, but not smart enough to realize that I shouldn’t ride it. I saw Taylor and what I had done to her—her horrible scrapes. My sweet twin sister! My body meant nothing compared to hers.”

He turned his back to the girls and got himself a drink from the punch bowl. Everyone waited patiently. He was more emotional than usual. Juliet saw it was awkward for him because what he was about to recount was an experience he would have rejected, had he not gone through it himself.

He came back and went on, “I met someone in the black palace. It was a man with long, shining hair and red eyes. I would have died. I should have died, but he returned me to my family. I’ll go back someday and he’ll be waiting for me.”

That marked the end of Rylan’s story. He didn’t seem inclined to say more, though Juliet suspected there was more to the story that he wasn’t willing to share.

“Does anyone else have a near-death experience?” he asked, inquiring of the whole group.

Juliet put up her hand before she realized what she was doing. She never told anyone her story. It was none of their business, but she had also never met a person who had a similar experience. She wanted to talk about it with Rylan and she wanted to be close with these people. If she didn’t confide in them, how could she ever be close to them?

She got up and took Rylan’s place at the front of the room looking out at the beautiful women strewn across the couches. Rylan sat down and waited for her to start.

She fumbled with her fingers and tried to find the right words. She wanted to be as graceful as Rylan and as beautiful as Taylor. Taking off her witch’s hat, she began, “You may not believe me, but… I don’t have any memories before I was thirteen. There was an accident. Well, not exactly.” She paused, searching for her voice and a way for her to make her story ring true. “My memories begin when I woke up in the psych ward of the hospital. I was on suicide watch. I couldn’t remember a thing, but one thing was for sure, I no longer had any wish to harm myself. They showed me the note I had written to my mother. I wrote that she didn’t love me enough to save me and that no one did. I said that my life was unbearable. I wanted to escape and there was only one way.” She paused and consciously disassociated herself from the person she was talking about, so she shed no tears. “I had thrown myself off a train bridge into an overflowing river. I was carried over a kilometer downstream before some campers saw me and rescued me. No one knew how I survived. To this day, it is still a mystery. I was lucky those campers knew CPR.” She tried to laugh, but it didn’t ease her nerves. “It turns out that I have no memories like Rylan. I didn’t see a palace or talk to anyone who seemed benevolent. I just woke up like a baby and looked into my parents’ eyes like they were strangers. That was when my life began. Several of my extended family members thought I was joking when I said that my memory was gone. Maybe I was being bullied. Whatever happened to make me want to kill myself has been kept a secret from me. I never got the chance to ask anyone in my school class because my parents moved us to a small town a little over a month later. I spent most of that month in the hospital.”

Juliet looked up and surveyed the room. The beautiful witches were listening very carefully. Tawnee had a hand to her mouth in distress. Taylor was sitting up and leaning forward to catch every one of Juliet’s words like it was very important that she didn’t miss any of it.

Juliet wasn’t going to look at Rylan, but her head turned subconsciously towards him. He was smiling. She did a double-take. He looked satisfied, like the last piece of a puzzle had just fallen into place. Confused, she forgot about continuing her speech and just stared at him.

“Sorry,” he said, raising his eyebrows and touching a hand to his chest. “I was just thinking about how long I’ve waited to meet someone who knows what it’s like to die. It was obviously painful for you and I shouldn’t be this happy. I apologize. Continue.”

“You’re always such a clod, Rylan,” Taylor said from the other side of the room. “Treat her experience with the same respect she treated yours. She’s only sharing this because of you. Be sympathetic.”

“I was trying,” he said before his face went blank and he motioned for Juliet to go on.

Juliet was ruffled by the interruption and it took her a second to find her place in the story. “Whatever lesson I was trying to teach my mother by trying to kill myself, she learned it, and I was hardly ever alone after that incident. Being here at university has been my first time to enjoy the quiet peace that comes from just sitting alone. It took a lot to convince her to let me live here in the dorms, but I would have gone crazy if I’d stayed with my parents another minute. Unless you’ve lived it, there’s no way you can understand how they watched me for any sign of self-hate. I was on suicide watch for five years, not three weeks. Of all the things I want to learn, what made me hate myself is not one of them.”

There, Juliet had said all she could stand to. She went back to her seat, and Rylan took her hands in his. As he looked at her, his lovely brown eyes suddenly swelled with compassion.

“I really do know something of how you must have felt. I feel privileged to know you. We will have to have a conversation someday, about how I was treated by my family after I got out of the hospital. I think we probably had similar experiences.”

He pulled her head close and let her rest it on his shoulder. She felt the comfort of someone who has suffered through the same thing. Her eyelids fell shut and she simply enjoyed the warmth of his arm. Finally, someone was there for her.

“I knew it was you,” he said gently.