Kissing Midnight Read online

  “Okay,” I say. “But it’s hard to know where to start.”

  “I know! It’s insanity! Like a theatre-junkyard-slash-archives-slash-museum.”

  “It makes me giddy-slash-overwhelmed.”

  Delia laughs. “No being overwhelmed. Just take these—” she shoves half the stack of orange tags at me, along with the notebook and pen “—and start tagging things that make you think ‘fairy tale.’ Then jot down what you tagged so I can tell them what we found, okay?”

  “Okay.” Deals and I set off in opposite directions, and soon we’re deep in the maze.

  The next two hours pass quickly. I spend my time attaching orange toe-tags to furniture fit for a castle: a pair of thrones, a curved staircase, a mirror in an ornate gilt frame. Delia flits like a butterfly from piece to piece, snapping pictures on her phone as she goes and sending them to people on the organizing committee. I can’t always see her—the piles of furniture are over our heads—but Delia is hard to lose. I can hear her keeping up a running commentary as she works: “I’m taking a selfie in this magic mirror… Do you think this jukebox really works?... Could this coffin be Snow White’s if we painted it pink?... Wouldn’t this chandelier look awesome in our dorm room?”

  “That chandelier wouldn’t even fit in our dorm room. We don’t even fit in our dorm room!”

  “Well, it’s a good thing it wouldn’t fit in my purse or I’d be taking it right now.”

  I catch sight of Delia’s blond hair as she climbs up a teetering pile of boxes. “Deals, you’re gonna break your neck.”

  “I am not!”

  “You are, too! You’re going to cause an avalanche of crap!”

  “A crapalanche!” She laughs at her own word.

  “Yes, and it will bury us both and it will take them two weeks to dig out our bodies.” I pick up the armless torso of a mannequin and shove it aside. I’m trying to unearth some boxes marked “Camelot,” but they’re buried pretty deep. “Shouldn’t Dev be here by now?” I tug out the Camelot box, rip it open, and start sifting through the daggers and goblets and shields. “This whole box is good, but it’s barely labeled. I swear, never leave organization projects to artists! I just want to get in here with a decent data base. All they need is a bar code generator and a scanner and—”

  Delia’s laugh echoes in the cavernous space. “Deep breaths, sweetie. Is all this chaos making your eye twitch? Hey, look at me!”

  I look up to see Delia posing on a white-painted balcony set.

  I frown at her. “You don’t know that’s safe. The floor could fall right out from under you. How did you even get up there?”

  She shrugs. “Climbed the boxes.”

  “In heels?”

  “No. I took my boots off a while ago. Let me know if you see them, by the way.”

  I roll my eyes. “They’re gone now. Blanche Dubois will be wearing them in next season’s production of Streetcar.”

  “Well, you said I shouldn’t have worn them.”

  “But I didn’t say go barefoot! Have you had your tetanus shot?”

  Delia ignores me. “But look, I’m Juliet! No, I’m Taylor Swift! No, wait, wait! I’m Evita!” She flings her arms wide and sings “Don’t cry for me, Argentina! The truth is I never left you!”

  “You look more like Taylor Swift than Madonna.”

  She shoots me an exasperated look. “I’m the Broadway Evita, not the movie. Rise, my descamisados!”

  “Wait,” I say, “I think I hear Dev.”

  We both stop and listen.

  “Hello?” Delia calls, “Dev, is that you?” She puts on her Shakespeare voice “Deveraux, Deveraux, wherefore art thou Deveraux? Deny thy father and refuse thy name!”

  “Deals, hush!” I strain to listen, but no one answers. “I swear I heard something.”

  Delia leans her elbows on the balcony railing. “Could have been anything. We’ve probably dislodged a bunch of stuff, and stuff settles. Or it could have been a mouse. They eat papier mache paste, you know. That Chinese dragon in the corner is chewed to bits.”

  “Great,” I mumble, “Mice.” But that must be what it was, because the sound doesn’t come again.

  “We totally need this balcony,” Delia says. “We could have a photographer take couples pictures up here. It could be a Cinderella thing. Or— oh! Oh! Have you seen a clock? We could pose them in front of a clock striking midnight. Then it would be Cinderella and New Year’s both!”

  “That’s a good idea,” I say, but I’m only half-listening. I’m on edge already after my moment in the library, and now something about the sound or the thought of mice or something has unnerved me. I keep glancing over my shoulder as I replace the Camelot props in their box. I want to pull the box out, but to do that I’d have to move another mannequin, and I don’t want to touch it. It looks to creepy lying there with its empty arm sockets, its vacant eyes staring at the ceiling, its head turned a little too far…

  “I’m going to call Dev,” Delia announces. “I can do that,” she adds in a sing-song, “because I have his num-ber.”

  “Yeah,” I say distractedly, “Do that.” I pick up a velvet curtain and toss it over the mannequin, sending up a cloud of dust. The cloth hides its frozen, pretty face, but the human-shaped lump is still there.

  Relax, I tell myself. There’s nothing wrong.

  “You okay over there?” Delia’s voice drifts to me over the piles of junk. I can hear the creaks and bangs as she climbs back down from the balcony. “It looks like you’re sending up smoke signals in the dust.”

  “Sure. I’m fine,” I say, but when I notice I’ve left one of the prop daggers out on the floor, I don’t try to put it away. I pick it up and grip it tight. It’s only made of plastic, but it makes me feel better to look armed.

  “Hey, Dev?” I can hear Delia talking on her phone. “It’s Delia. You’re still coming, right?” She pauses and I imagine Dev’s charming voice answering. “Yeah, it’s kind of out there, isn’t it? The cab guy looked at us like we’d lost it. But no, you’ve got the right address…” She pauses again. “Okay, super. Yeah, if we could just get some of the smaller stuff back to campus tonight, then—” She pauses again. “Yeah, she’s here. She came with me.”

  Did Dev just ask about me? The anxious fluttering in my stomach turns into a different kind of nerves. My mind flicks involuntarily to our moment in the stacks, the way his blue eyes shone in the darkness…

  “Well,” Delia says, “We’ll see you soon.” Dev must say something witty because Delia bursts into exaggerated giggles. “Okay, we won’t. Bye!” I hear her phone click shut. “He’s on his way but running late. He got a little lost and—oh! Jackpot!”

  “What?” I start to pick my way towards her. “Did you find your boots?”

  “No, better: Boxes marked Into the Woods. I knew they had to be here somewhere.”

  “Smart!” Sondheim’s fairy tale show will be full of things we can use. I duck under an arbor draped with flowers and follow the sound of Deals exclaiming over her treasures.

  “It’s all here—crowns, aprons, the red hood.” Delia comes into sight, kneeling on the floor in a pile of props. “And there are two boxes marked MND here, too. If that’s Midsummer Night’s Dream, we’re golden on the fairy wings and—” Delia’s phone chimes with a text.

  “Dev again?”

  “No.” She frowns at her phone. “Oh, fuckity fuck! It’s from Hannah on the committee. She’s got the chick with the cake samples and the florist person meeting her on campus in like twenty minutes and she’s stuck at her folks…” She’s texting double-time as she talks. “She needs me to meet with them.”

  “What? Can’t someone else do it?”

  “I can’t say no, Saint! I’m trying to get in good! I’ll have to call a cab.”

  “But…” I can feel my worry building. “Can’t you just wait for Dev? You said he was on his way!”

  “Oh, double fuck! Well, I can’t ask him to just turn back around. We need to
load stuff into his car. Would you mind waiting here for him while I cab it back? Help him bring the stuff back?”

  I bite my lip, hesitant. I’ve had enough of the warehouse. “Maybe we should just call him, tell him I’m cabbing with you…”

  “Pretty please?” Delia gives me a pleading look, her blue eyes wide. “Dev should be here any minute. You’ll be okay, right?”

  What can I say? I’m afraid to stay alone in the warehouse for even a few minutes? I’m too shy to be alone with Dev? I don’t want to sound crazy. “Well…”

  “Honestly,” Delia gives me a sly smile, “I would trade places with you if I could. I’d love an excuse to hang with Dev, but,” she sighs dramatically, “duty calls.” She salutes, clicking her heels together like a soldier and I notice what she has on her feet.

  “Hey!” I say. “You’re wearing ruby slippers!”

  “Wizard of Oz box, back left corner. Don’t worry, they had like six pairs. Fair trade for my boots.” She heads off, ducking the arbor as she goes, “There’s no place like home, Saintly!” she calls over her shoulder in her best Judy Garland voice. “See you there soon!” She disappears behind a pile of boxes, leaving a trail of red glitter behind her. I can hear her ordering the cab.

  I sigh. Home is sounding good right now, but there’s no use arguing with Delia. She always gets what she wants.

  Better get back to work.

  I pick my way toward the box marked MND. In a moment I’m pushing aside a papier mache donkey head and shorting through gauzy wings and garlands of flowers. My hands are busy, but my mind keeps wandering back to this morning at the library. He bothered to switch my work assignments, which was…intrusive, sure, but well intentioned. At least, I think it was. I mean, he did it to help with the dance, right? And maybe to get to Delia through me. Guys are always doing that.

  Although, if he wanted to talk to Delia, why not just find us at lunch?

  Was he just trying to get me alone? The thought thrills and terrifies me. There’s no doubt Dev Renard is the sort of guy most girls would kill to be alone with, but adding someone like Dev to my life might be enough to put me over an edge.

  Snap.

  I sit up sharply. What was that? Another mouse, I’m sure, but my nerves are shot. I freeze perfectly still, straining to hear, but all I can hear is my own heart pounding. My mind explodes with a million memories of things I saw at Westgate, things I never want to see again. I try to shove the images into a room at the back of my mind and slam the door shut.

  It’s nothing.

  Snap.

  It isn’t nothing. It’s something—something too big to be a mouse. My pulse is racing. “Delia?” Maybe she came back for something. She’s always forgetting something. “Dev, is that you?” If this is his idea of a joke, I’ll kill him.

  Footsteps. There’s a chinking noise and then—

  “Hide in the kitchen

  Hide in the hall

  Ain’t gonna do you no

  Good at all…”

  Elvis’ voice booms through the warehouse.

  The jukebox.

  I’m up and on my feet, the prop knife still clutched in my hand, before it even has time to register. Someone is in the warehouse. Someone who isn’t answering. But they’re at the jukebox, which is in the back, which means they aren’t between me and the door.

  I creep toward the front, bent nearly double so I can’t be seen over the piles. One step. Two. My heart is pounding so loud that I’m sure they can hear it. Three steps.

  There’s a sizzling noise overhead as the florescent lights flicker out and the warehouse is plunged into darkness.

  I yelp before I can stop myself and slap my hand over my mouth to keep from screaming. Whoever they are, they must have heard me. They know where I am now. I can’t stay here.

  But I can’t run. The room is a maze of God knows what and it’s pitch black. I could break my neck, bring a pile down on my head, get turned around and lose the door completely…

  If I haven’t already. I think I know where the door is, but I can’t be sure. I inch in that direction, my ears straining for any sound.

  But I can’t hear anything over the sound of Elvis singing.

  Stretching the prop knife out in front of me, I prod the darkness, taking another step. My jeans catch on something sharp, and I stifle another yelp as the fabric rips, the tearing noise loud in the sudden silence. The song has ended. I can hear the shush, shush, shush of the record spinning and the chunk of another falling into place. And something else. Panting breath, heavy and wet.

  “One way or another I’m gonna find you,

  I’m gonna get you get you get you get you…”

  Blondie screams to life over the speakers, drowning out the sound of breathing before I can tell where it’s coming from. The prop knife shakes in my sweaty hand. You’re imagining this. It’s one of your episodes. But is it? Or is it someone’s idea of a joke, or worse? There’s nothing to do but creep toward where I think the door is and get out of here as fast as I can.

  But even if I get out, will I be safe? The neighborhood looked abandoned. Could anyone even hear me if I scream?

  I can’t think about it. I have to keep moving.

  Something else is moving, too. I can hear footsteps on the concrete floor, catch glimpses of motion between the piles—a darker patch of darkness slipping stealthily between the boxes.

  But I can also see a slice of gray—what I hope is the outline of the door. That’s the good news.

  The bad news is the shadow is headed that way. It’s on the other side of the pile from me now. I can hear it. If I don’t do something to stop it, it will reach the door before I do and there will be no way out. I have to do something.

  Gathering all my strength, I ram my shoulder into the pile of boxes beside me, feeling the impact jolt down my spine. The pile shudders. The uppermost boxes topple, dragging the rest down with them, and there’s a massive crash as they hit the ground. Glass shatters and something cries out—a deep, animal noise of pain. I see the figure in the dark leap back. The barrier is down between us now and whoever it is stands opposite me. A slice of dim light cuts across the room, and for a moment I can make out someone…

  Or some thing. It’s tall enough to be human, but the face…The nose is too long, the teeth too sharp. The eyes shine in the light like an animal’s.

  The light! Someone must have opened the door!

  I bolt. The thing leaps the boxes and it’s on my heels. I stumble over boxes, broken glass crunching under my feet, but I’m almost to the door.

  Something snags my foot, and I go down hard. I scream as the glass bites into my palms and brace myself for worse.

  Something grabs me from behind, pulling me to my feet. I struggle, kicking and thrashing against its grip. Wrenching my arm free, I drive the dagger as hard as I can into what I hope is the creature’s chest.

  “Saintly! Stop! It’s me!”

  The lights flicker back on and the warehouse is shot through with a sudden greenish glow. I look up to see what holds me.

  “Dev!” His strong arms are pinned around me, his copper hair mussed, a look of complete shock in his bright blue eyes. And on his chest…

  “Oh my God!” I drop the dagger and my hand flies to my mouth. A deep red stain is spreading across his white shirt. “I hurt you!”

  He looks down at his blood-soaked shirt, his expression blank. He must be in shock.

  “We have to get you to a doctor.” My voice comes out high-pitched with panic. I spin around to face the now-light warehouse. The floor is littered with boxes. A smashed lamp lies in jagged pieces in the middle of the path. “But where’s the beast?”

  “The beast?” Dev echoes. Then he starts to laugh.

  I turn and stare at him. “You must be delirious. You’re badly hurt. Here, give me your phone.”

  “Saint, I’m not hurt.” His expression is equal parts amusement and concern. He picks up the knife from the floor. “Look.”
/>   Before I can stop him, he drives the knife deep into his own palm. I scream.

  But, although the knife sinks in to the hilt, the blade doesn’t come out the other side. There’s a little spurt of blood, but not nearly enough.

  Relief floods me. “It’s fake.”

  Dev holds up his hand, perfectly uninjured. “Collapsible. A prop.”

  Of course. “Then the blood is fake.” I feel giddy with relief.

  “My blood is, but yours isn’t.” His blue eyes narrow with concern. “Your hands, your cheek…” He brushes my cheek gently with his finger, and I wince away from his touch. “What happened?”

  My words tumble out in a rush. “The music came on the juke box by itself and someone turned off the lights and I could hear someone—something—moving. It was breathing like—” I try to imitate the panting breaths, but my breathing is still too rapid. “I saw it! It had eyes like an animal!”

  Dev’s expression darkens with worry, but I can’t tell if he’s worried about the beast or worried I’ve lost my mind. “Deep breaths, Saintly. It’s going to be all right.” Dev puts his arms around me, and I let him. He pulls me close. The feeling of his arms around me calms my breathing—and makes my heart race in a completely different way.

  But we can’t stay here. Not if there’s any chance what I saw was real. I pull away. The fake blood on Dev’s shirt has left a mark on my own, like a bleeding heart. “We have to get out of here.”

  “Saintly, really, I don’t think—”

  There’s a noise from behind me. I spin to face it. Dev’s arms go back around me, protectively, as something emerges from the shadows.

  It’s a cat, small and black and sleek. It picks its way through the wreckage towards us, mewing plaintively.

  Dev laughs with relief. “Is that what you saw?”

  “No!” My face is hot with embarrassment. “The thing I saw was bigger, much bigger. Its eyes were at my eye level!”

  “Maybe the cat was standing on boxes.” Dev lets me go and reaches down to run a hand along the cat’s back. It arches into his touch.

  “But what about the music? What about the lights?”