The flight attendant started toward them, and the back of Jenny's neck began to prickle. Her little fingers tingled.
Be casual, she told herself. Be calm.
But her heart began to pound as the flight attendant reached their row. She was dressed in navy blue with cream accents and looked rather military. Her face was pleasant but authoritative, like an alert teacher.
Don't look at her. Look out the window.
Jenny wedged her fingernails into the bottom of the plastic trim around the oval window and stared at the darkness outside. She could feel Michael beside her, his teddy-bear-shaped body rigid with tension. Out of the corner of her eye she could see Audrey in the aisle seat, her burnished copper head bent over the in-flight magazine. The flight attendant was blocking the view of Dee across the aisle.
Please let her go away, Jenny thought. Please, anything, why is she standing there so long?
Any minute now Michael was going to break into hysterical giggles-or, worse, a hysterical confession. Without moving a muscle, Jenny silently willed him to stay quiet. The flight attendant had to go away. She couldn't just keep standing there.
She did. It became clear that she wasn't just stopping casually, a little rest on the route from the galley. She was looking at them, looking at each of them in turn. A grave, searching look.
We're debate club students, flying to the finals. Our chaperon got sick, but we're meeting a new one in Pittsburgh. We're debate club students, flying to the finals. Our chaperon got sick, but...
The flight attendant leaned toward Jenny.
Oh, my God, I'm going to be sick.
Audrey stayed frozen over her magazine, spiky lashes motionless on her camellia-pale cheek. Michael stopped breathing.
Calm, calm, calm, calm ...
"Is it you," the flight attendant said, "who ordered the fruit plate?"
Jenny's mind swooped into a nosedive and stalled. For a terrible second she thought she was going to go ahead and babble out the excuse she'd been practicing. Then she licked the dry roof of her mouth and whispered, "No. It's her-across the aisle there."
The flight attendant backed up and turned. Dee, with one long leg folded so she could tuck her toe into the little pouch on the back of the seat in front of her, lifted her eyes from her Gameboy and smiled.
Except for the Gameboy and the army fatigue jacket she was wearing, she looked exactly like Nefertiti. Even her smile was regal.
"Fruit plate," the flight attendant said. "Seat eighteen-D. Lovely, got it." The next moment she was gone.
"You and your damned, damned fruit plates," Jenny hissed across the aisle. And to Michael: "For God's sake, Michael, breathe!"
Michael let out his breath with a whoosh.
"What could they do to us, anyway?" Audrey said. She was still looking at her magazine, and she spoke without moving her lips, her voice barely audible above the deep roar of the 757's engines. "Throw us off? We're six miles up."
"Don't remind me," Jenny said to the window as Michael began to describe to Audrey, in hushed detail, exactly what he imagined they could do with four runaways in Pittsburgh.
Runaways. I'm a runaway, Jenny thought wonderingly. It was such an unlikely thing for her, Jenny Thornton, to be.
In the darkened window she could see her own face-or part of it. A girl with forest-green eyes, dark as pine needles, and eyebrows that were straight, like two decisive brush strokes. Hair the color of honey in sunlight.
Jenny looked past the ghostly reflection to the black clouds outside the plane. Now that the stewardess danger had passed, all she had to worry about was dying.
She really hated heights.
What was strange was that even though she was scared, she was also excited. The way people get excited when an emergency, a natural disaster, happens. When all normal rules are suspended, and ordinary things that used to be important suddenly become meaningless.
Like school. Like her parents' approval. Like being a good girl.
All blown when she ran away. And her parents wouldn't even understand why, because the note Jenny had left them had said almost nothing. I'm going somewhere and I hope I'll come back. I love you. This is something I have to do.
I'm sorry. IOU $600.00.
Not very informative. But what was she supposed to say? Dear Mom and Dad, A terrible thing happened at Tom's birthday party last month. You see, we built this paper house and it became real. And suddenly we were all inside it, and this guy called Julian made us play a game there with him. We had to face our worst nightmares and win, or he would have kept us with him in the Shadow World forever. And we all made it out except Summer-poor Summer, you know she was never the brightest-and that's why Summer's been missing for weeks. She died in her nightmare.
But the thing is, Mom and Dad, that Julian followed us out of the Shadow World. He came into our world and he was after one thing-me. Me. He made us play another game, and this one turned out bad. It ended with him taking Tom and Zach back to the Shadow World. That's where they are now-they didn't run away like everybody thinks. And the last thing Julian said to me after taking them was: If you want them, come on a treasure hunt.
So that's what I'm doing. Only there's just a slight problem about getting into the Shadow World-I don't have any idea how to do it. So I'm flying to Pennsylvania, to Grandpa Evenson's house. He opened a door to the Shadow World a long time ago, and maybe he left some clues behind.
Say that? God, no, Jenny thought. The first part her parents had already heard, and didn't believe. The second part would just let them know where Jenny was going-and give them a chance to stop her. Excuse me, Doctor, but my daughter has flipped. She thinks some demon prince has taken her boyfriend and her cousin. We've got to lock her up and keep her safe. Oh, yes, get that biiiiig hypodermic over there.
No, Jenny couldn't tell anyone. She and Audrey and Dee and Michael had spent three days planning this trip. It had taken them that long to get enough money for plane tickets, each collecting two hundred dollars a day using their parents' ATM cards. Now they were on the red-eye from LAX to Pittsburgh, alone and vulnerable, six miles off the ground. Their parents thought they were asleep in their beds.
And Jenny was excited. Do or die. It was do or die, now, literally. There wasn't such a thing as safety anymore. She was going to a place where nightmares came true-and killed you. She would never forget Summer's blond head disappearing in that pile of garbage.
When she got there, all she'd have to rely on were her own wits-and her friends.
She glanced at them. Michael Cohen, with his rumpled dark hair and soulful eyes, wearing clothes that were clean, wrinkled, and bore no resemblance to any fashion trend that had ever existed. Audrey Myers, cool and elegant in a black-and-white Italian pantsuit, keeping any turmoil she might be feeling hidden under a perfectly polished exterior. And Dee Eliade, a night princess with a skewed sense of humor and a black belt in kung fu. They were all sixteen, juniors in high school, and they were on their way to fight the devil.
The flight attendants served dinner. Dee ate her fruit plate brazenly. Once the trays were cleared, lights began to go out all over the plane. One by one they winked off.
Funeral parlor lighting, Jenny thought, looking at the dim, diffused ceiling-glow that was left. It reminded her of the visitation room where she'd last seen her great-aunt Sheila. She felt too keyed-up to sleep, but she had to try.
Think of anything but him, she ordered herself, leaning her head against the cool, vibrating wall of the plane. Oh, who cares, think of him if you want to. He's lost his power over you. The part of you that rushed up to meet his darkness is gone. This time you can beat him-because you don't feel anything for him.
To prove it, she let images drift through her mind. Julian laughing at her, his face beautiful in the most exotic, uncanny way imaginable-more beautiful than any human's could ever be. Julian's hair, as white as frost, as tendrils of mist. No, whiter than that, an impossible icy color. His eyes just as impossible. A blue that she couldn't describe because there was nothing to compare it to.
As long as she was proving a point, she could remember other things, too. His body, slim but powerfully built, hard-muscled when he held her close. His touch all the more shockingly soft. His long, slow kisses-so slow, so confident, because he was absolutely certain of what he was doing. He might look like a boy Jenny's age, he might be the youngest of his kind, but he was older than Jenny could imagine. He was expert far beyond her experience. He'd had girls through the centuries, any he wanted, all helpless to resist his touch in the darkness.
Jenny's lips parted, her tongue against her teeth. Maybe this wasn't such a good idea after all. Julian had no power over her, but it was stupid to tempt fate by thinking about him.
She would think of Tom instead, of little Tommy kissing her behind the ficus bushes in second grade, of Tom Locke, star of the athletic field. Of his hazel eyes with their flecks of green, his neat dark hair, his devil-may-care smile. Of the way he looked at her when he whispered, "Oh, Thorny, I love you"-as if the words themselves hurt him.
He was only human-not some eerily beautiful prince of shadows. He was real, and human, and her equal... and he needed her. Especially now.
Jenny wasn't going to betray his trust. She was going to find him and bring him back from the hellish place Julian had taken him. And once she got him safe, she wasn't going to let him go again.
She relaxed. Just the thought of Tom brought her comfort. In a few minutes her thoughts unwound, and then ...
She was in an elevator. A silver mask covered the little man's entire face. He was so small she wondered if he was a dwarf.
"Will you go with us? Can we take you?" Jenny realized he'd been asking the same question for quite some time.
"We can carry you," he said. Jenny was frightened.
"No," she said. "Who are you?"
He kept asking it. "Can we take you?" On the elevator wall behind him was a large poster of Joyland Park, an amusement park that Jenny had loved as a kid. "Can we take you?"
Finally she said, "Yes ..." and he leaned forward eagerly, his eyes flashing in the mask's eyeholes.
"We can?"
"Yes ... if you tell me who you really are," she said.
The little man fell back, disappointed.
"Tell me who you really are," Jenny demanded. She was holding a bottle over his head, ready to brain him. She knew somehow that he wasn't actually there; it was only his image. But she thought he might materialize briefly to show her what he really was.
He didn't. Jenny kept hitting the image, but the bottle just swung through it. Then the image disappeared.
Jenny was pleased. She'd proved he wasn't real and that she was in control.
The elevator stopped. Jenny walked through the open doors-into another elevator.
"Can we take you? We can carry you."
The little man in the silver mask was laughing.
Jenny's head jerked up and she sat staring. A plane. She was in a plane, not an elevator. A plane which, at the moment, seemed crammed to its dim corners with menace. She was alone, because everyone else was asleep. The other passengers could all have been wax museum figures. Beside her Michael was completely motionless, his head on Audrey's shoulder.
As she watched, his eyes flew open and he made a terrible sound. He sat bolt upright, hands at his throat. He looked like someone who couldn't get air.
"What is it?" Audrey had jerked awake. There were times when Audrey acted as if she didn't care about Michael at all, but this wasn't one of them.