The Impossibility of Tomorrow Read online

  “He does have a temper,” she admits.

  “And it’s worse since you moved?” I press, walking slowly. I need more than this.

  “No, I wouldn’t say so,” she answers. “He’s always had a bit of a short fuse.”

  We’ve reached the back deck of the house, and we step into the pale circle of light from the wall-mounted lantern near the door.

  “Do you want me to wait while you use the bathroom?” she asks.

  “Oh, no, that’s okay, I think I can find my way back,” I answer confidently.

  From my jacket pocket comes a jangling ring, extremely loud in the quiet rural night. Startled, I whip it out and regard the screen—it’s Lucia.

  Rebecca cocks her head slightly, narrowing her eyes. “I’ll let you get that,” she says curtly. “See you back at the fire,” she adds, striding away toward the dark path.

  I quickly throw the door open as I answer the call, closing it firmly behind me so she won’t hear my conversation.

  “I have good news,” Lucia chirps.

  “And bad news, too, right?” I brace myself.

  She laughs. “Not this time. All good in the ’hood, as they say. We got it.”

  “Tell me.”

  Lucia begins to speak, but a wave of static crashes into her voice. I run to the window. “Sorry,” I interrupt her. “Can you say that again? I couldn’t hear you. The reception’s terrible up here.”

  “Where are you?” Her tone is urgent.

  “Sonoma.”

  Silence on the line.

  “Lucia?”

  “I’m here,” she says finally. “Sonoma is where we traced the address to. Whoever sent you that e-mail, they’re at 4570 Cavedale Road.”

  My heart bangs into my chest. That’s the address of the Looking Glass Winery.

  “You there?” Lucia prods.

  “Yes,” I whisper.

  “Are you in trouble?” she asks.

  “No, I’m totally fine,” I lie. “Really.”

  “Okay,” she says uncertainly. “But call me if you—”

  Her voice dissolves once more into static before the call goes dead.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  I stare upward, where the ceiling should be, but all I see is blackness. I am wide awake, alert; every muscle in my body is rigid. My right hand clenches the knife under the suffocating weight of the pink bedspread. The nightgown I’m wearing is damp with sweat.

  Next to me, Leyla snores softly, deeply asleep.

  Reed’s room is down the hall. I want nothing more than to creep in there right now, while he’s vulnerable, and kill him. But Noah and Bryan are sleeping there, too.

  The wind has picked up outside. It shakes the house, rattles the old windows in their wooden frames. From over my head I hear the incessant squeal of the rusty weather vane.

  Suddenly, I hear another sound coming from down the hall. Is that a door opening? I lift my head from the pillow, straining to hear. It’s silent. Nothing but the wind outside.

  I lean back, relaxing my neck. And then I hear it again. Footsteps pad down the hall, pausing outside our room, and my pulse goes wild. My palms grow slick. The knife handle is slippery when I tighten my grip.

  It takes an eternity for me to peel back the bedspread and inch into an upright position. Beneath me, the mattress springs squeak, and I freeze, waiting for the door to burst open, to see Reed’s face twisted with malice.

  But then I hear the footsteps move on, past our door and down the hall. A minute later, a door slams downstairs.

  I slip from the bed and crouch on the carpet, tugging on my boots without a sound, stuffing my knife in its usual spot. Leyla shifts on the bed, turning to her side and kicking a leg out from under the covers, and mumbles something that I can’t understand. I freeze, hoping she won’t wake up.

  She doesn’t. I dart soundlessly to the window and peer out.

  Everything is gray and shapeless. The approaching storm has filled the sky with clouds, covering up the moon, the stars. I can barely make out the shape of the concrete patio below and the dark sea of the vineyards beyond.

  But then a powerful gust of wind coaxes the storm clouds to part briefly, and I see something moving in the resulting flash of moonlight. No, not something—someone. It’s definitely a man, but I can’t tell who. The clouds shift again, and he vanishes in the darkness.

  Cyrus. It has to be.

  I hurry to the door and slip out, wearing only my nightgown and my boots. In the countless mirrors lining the hall, I see my reflection, pale and fleeting. With my white, long-sleeved nightgown, I could be the ghost of a girl who used to live here.

  Outside, the storm trails icy fingers along my face. I take off running down the path, the sound of my footfalls obscured by the wind, which tears, howling, through the vines and tosses leaves up to the sky. I pass the fire pit, a pile of ash whirling in its center, and continue on. I don’t see anyone in the darkness.

  The path forks. To the left it runs straight into the forest, where the jagged tops of pine trees jut toward the sky like teeth. To the right I know it heads deeper into the grapevines, where it eventually stops at the glass house. I cock my head, but there’s nothing to hear.

  On impulse, I decide to go left, toward the woods. I’m rewarded a few minutes later when another brief burst of moonlight illuminates the path. There’s a messy scuffle of footprints from the group hike earlier. But on top of these, etched into the packed sandy soil, is another, sharper set of tracks.

  I glance toward the forest and freeze. The figure is standing in front of a copse of trees. It’s too far to tell if he’s facing me, but I throw myself to the ground anyway, sand digging into my chin.

  When I look up a moment later, he’s gone.

  I take off in his direction at a faster pace, breath ragged. It’s even darker in the forest. The wind tears through the trees, swaying in unison over my head. My footsteps fall in rhythm with my thundering heart.

  And then I see him. I skid to a noiseless stop, watching as he steps into a clearing up ahead, the moonlight illuminating him for a fraction of a second. But it’s enough to reveal his powerful shoulders, his navy uniform, the handcuffs tucked in his belt.

  It’s Officer Spaulding.

  I’m too terrified to be confused, to even worry or consider why he’s here. I just know that I’m in danger and have to act now. I reach down and grab my knife, gripping it as I dart from tree to tree, keeping to the shadows.

  But when I reach it, the clearing is empty.

  I slump against the trunk of a redwood tree, its ridged surface digging into my shoulders. I close my eyes in disappointment. I lost him.

  Suddenly, a meaty hand lands on my left shoulder and pulls me away from the tree. I stumble forward. My right arm is yanked painfully upward behind my back, my knife pried from my fingers.

  “Seraphina Ames,” Officer Spaulding growls. “I’ve been looking for you.”

  THIRTY-FIVE

  I scream, or try to, but his left arm wraps around my throat and the small, pitiful sound is cut off, tossed away on the wind like a bird’s lost feather.

  “Don’t bother,” he snarls.

  The wind howls in response.

  He lets go of my wrist and yanks me closer, pinning my arm between my body and his. I try to bend at the waist, to throw my torso forward and free my arm, but I may as well try to overpower a column of marble. He outweighs me by a hundred pounds at least.

  I hear a small, metallic sound, a clicking. Oh, god. He’s reaching for his handcuffs. If he gets them on me, I’m screwed. I relax every muscle in my body, and his grip reflexively loosens. Not much, but enough. I yank my chin down, into his elbow, then whip my head back. Hard.

  “Bitch!” he yells, as my skull connects with his jaw. But before I can struggle any more, he shoves his elbow against my throat again and wraps his left leg around mine, planting it firmly in front of me in the earth between my feet.

  I feel his hot, minty breath against my
left ear, the side of my neck. Is he . . . sniffing me? “Your hair smells good,” he murmurs. “Vanilla and roses.” My skin crawls.

  “I like this body you picked out,” he goes on. “It’s different. So . . . young.”

  I hate you, I want to say, but I can’t even breathe. Dots appear in my vision, red and purple and black, swimming through the air like undersea creatures. Every cell in my body aches for air. I think of Cyrus grasping his hunting falcons. They’d flap their wings in vain, trapped, an impressive display of powerful muscles that went nowhere.

  “Oh dear, you’re turning blue,” he whispers in my ear, and somehow he makes the words sound disturbingly tender. He’s enjoying this. “I’m going to let you breathe. But you’d better not scream again, Sera.” I try to nod.

  He lets go of my neck, swiftly moving his hand up above my eyes, pinning my head back against his massive chest.

  I inhale greedily, oxygen clearing my vision, my mind.

  “Here’s what’s going to happen,” he says against my cheek. “I’m going to put the handcuffs on you. You’re going to come with me. And then you’re going to tell me where you hid the book.”

  “I threw it in the bay,” I gasp, my voice gravelly, sharp notes of pain in my throat. It’s actually safe in Berkeley, behind the painting of Taryn on Kailey’s wall.

  He jerks his hand against my stomach. A threat. A warning. “Don’t lie to me. I know you beat me to the punch, finding that junkie girl before me. She told me that she saw you. Told me about the car crash and the girl named Kailey. She called you an angel, which is laughable at best. And she said that she had ‘your’ book. Though I think we both know whose book it is.”

  Taryn. I say a quick prayer of thanks that she’s woken up. I picture Officer Spaulding—that is, Cyrus—running up the stairs to her apartment when she ODed.

  “But it wasn’t at her apartment. And you know how much I hate being bested,” he continues. “Especially by you. So don’t lie. It makes me very angry.”

  “Taryn’s awake,” I say, ignoring his question.

  He chuckles. “She was, earlier today. But she’s gone back to sleep, poor thing. For good.”

  “You’re a monster.” I spit out the words.

  “So are you!” His voice rises. “We’re both monsters. We’re exactly the same. You always seem to forget that.”

  “But she didn’t do anything! She was innocent!” Rage, blood-red rage, ascends through my body. Another innocent, another life, tossed away like garbage.

  “I had no choice. She had read the book. No human can have that knowledge. Her blood is on your hands, too—if you hadn’t stolen the book in the first place, she might still be alive.” He talks about violence the way a normal person would describe a trip to the grocery store. It makes me sick. “Doubt it, though, considering the size of the heroin stash she had in her bedroom.”

  He moves his arm away from my middle, and I feel him fumbling for his handcuffs.

  “Tell me where the book is, Sera.”

  I grit my teeth. “I. Don’t. Have. It.”

  He laughs again, the sound chilling. “Maybe you’ll change your tune after I kill that nice family you’re living with.”

  No. Not them. Not the Morgans.

  “Or that boy next door. Noah. I might enjoy that.”

  Something snaps inside me, giving me a surge of power I didn’t know I had. In one wrenching motion, I bend my knees, slipping out of his grip. I coil my leg muscles and throw the weight of my body against him, my shoulder slamming into his kneecaps.

  With a clang, the handcuffs slip from my hand and hit the dirt. And with a grunt—of pain or surprise, or both—he does, too, crumpling to the ground, holding his knees, moaning.

  My knife. Where is it? My eyes sweep the ground, frantic, till I spot its silver blade a few feet away. He seems to see it at the same time I do, using his arms to heave himself toward it. I dive, scooping up the knife before hitting the ground with my shoulder and falling into a tumbling roll.

  I pop back up to my feet, brandishing the knife in front of me. He flips on his side and sweeps his leg out. His boot hits my ankle, knocking me off my feet. I fall flat on my back, the wind knocked out of me, struggling to breathe.

  And then he’s on top of me, straddling my chest, pinning my arms above my head, rendering my knife once again useless. His fingernails dig into my wrists.

  “You’re going to regret that!” His face is twisted with rage. I notice his lower lip is cut from when I slammed my head into his face.

  Only my legs are free. I whip my feet upward, toward his head, the momentum lifting my hips briefly from the ground. Then I slam them down, using the force as leverage to wrench my chest upward, sideways, slipping my hands out from his as he falls to the side.

  I spring to my feet and take off running, my knife firmly in my right hand as I find the path and follow it through the clearing, to the thick forest beyond.

  I hear heavy footsteps behind me, and I look back, briefly. He’s running after me, awkwardly, favoring his right knee. But he’s gaining.

  I run faster, fear giving me a burst of speed, yet his footfalls grow nearer. The path turns sharply, into a grove of oaks. A gust of wind sends a shower of leaves over my head.

  I round the corner and skid to a stop, panic knifing through my heart.

  The path ends abruptly at a concrete driveway that leads to a weathered barn. Old stone walls extend out from the barn on both sides, at least eight feet high. The only way out is the way I came in.

  I run to the barn and slam my palms against the door. It’s wreathed with a thick steel chain and a padlock the size of my fist. I’m trapped.

  My terror takes over. My rational brain turns off. I whip around to face him, dropping my knife onto the pavement where it bounces away from my reach. It’s useless to me now. A knife won’t do anything if he slams into me with all his force.

  I don’t think. I let my body do the driving. I take a wide stance and bend my knees, my elbows. He’s running straight at me in a flat-out sprint.

  Right before he slams into me, I whip my left hand out, high, to the inside of his upper right arm, grabbing onto his police uniform. In a smooth motion, I step into him, sweeping my right arm up into his left armpit, pivoting on my foot and heaving him over my head.

  His own force is his undoing. I barely have to exert any strength. His body rolls over my shoulder, momentarily in the air, then slams down to the concrete, hard. His head hits a second later with a sickening wet thud.

  I back away slowly, breathing hard, and retrieve my knife. My hand shakes.

  He blinks once, twice. Opens his mouth. “You ruined everything,” he says, with effort, a shudder wracking his body. His chest rises, falls, rises, falls.

  “I just wanted to be free,” I whisper.

  Then he stops moving.

  For a long, horrible moment, his body lies motionless, whole. The only sound is my raspy breathing and the incessant wind.

  And then it begins. His feet, his hands, his head are covered by a wave of gray, the human coloring washed out. It travels down his face, up his arms, his legs, leaving an ashy, crumbled surface in its wake. It takes his clothes, his belt, his handcuffs—everything he’s wearing disintegrates with his flesh.

  The wind has paused, leaving his body undisturbed, a photographic negative of what it was, all gray.

  I hear the wind approaching through the trees, the leaves quivering in a dry death rattle as they float to the ground. The breeze approaches the barn like a wave swallowing the beach, the air beating with invisible wings. It covers the pile of dust that was his body and throws it upward in spiraling currents.

  Another gust, and another, and another. Moments later, the dust is carried into the air, carried into forever.

  And a few moments after that, it begins to rain.

  THIRTY-SIX

  Tears of relief mingle with the rain, streaming down my face as I run back toward the house. I can’t believe
it’s all over. For the first time since Cyrus appeared in my biology class on the first of November, I’m free.

  I burst through the trees, past the sea of swaying grapevines, past the drenched fire pit, past the clapboard Victorian inn till I reach the small parking lot where we parked our cars. There’s no police cruiser there, but Cyrus must have driven here somehow. He probably hid the car somewhere up the road.

  I take off again, jogging slower as I circle the property, retracing the tour I took earlier with Reed and the rest. Reed. A bolt of remorse hits me as I realize how wrong I was about him, how close I was to killing him. Just like I was wrong with Noah.

  I’m about to turn back when I scan the vineyard one more time. In the east the path curls toward the one place I haven’t checked: the glass greenhouse. Even though my nightgown is plastered to my body and my fingers throb with cold, I decide to go check it out, just to be sure Cyrus came alone.

  I walk more slowly now, listening to the percussion of the rain as it pelts the vines, pelts my face. I don’t even mind. Cyrus is dead. Finally, truly dead. I saw it with my own eyes. I did it. I should feel triumphant, I should be rising to the sky. But as long as I’m apart from Noah, there’s no victory.

  Noah. I’m consumed by the sound of his name. Each footfall on wet earth sounds like “Noah” to me. I quicken my pace, pushed along by the wind at my back. The sooner I make sure the glass house is secure, the sooner I can go back to where Noah sleeps. I can wake him up right now, apologize, try to make things right. Nothing can keep me from him anymore. Cyrus is gone.

  I stop cold when I crest the small hill. The glass house lies below me, brilliantly lit in a flickering orange glow that I suspect comes from the many candles within.

  Someone’s in there.

  I dart through the storm like a phantom, sweeping my gaze left, then right as I approach the house’s glass walls. I cup my hand around my eyes and look inside. It’s Noah.

  He sits on a faded blue couch in the center of the greenhouse, his knees drawn up to his chest, a blanket over his shoulders. My breath catches at how beautiful he looks. And so sad, like the storm that rages outside is nothing compared to what’s inside of him. I bite my lip and tap my finger on the glass. He doesn’t respond—the rain swallows all sound. I tap again, harder.