I squeeze my eyes shut, disgusted with my own thoughts. If I said any of that out loud, Camila would be the first to tell me how I’ve had my mind addled by too many rom-coms and fairy tales. I don’t need the lecture, so I keep my thoughts to myself.
Lucky for me, Camila has stopped watching my face and moved on to more exciting spectator activities, like narrating all the town gossip while a dozen little soap operas play out through the window, as if it’s our own personal flat-screen TV.
“Hmm, looks like Val and Erik are still together. Guess she never told him what she did to his car. And Brandon is way too drunk again. Third time this week, from what I heard.”
“Quit it, Camila,” I grumble.
“Come on... Don’t you want to know what’s going on in this sad little town?”
“I don’t like gossip. People are entitled to their secrets.”
“Oooh,” she says, ignoring me. “Natalie Martinez, returning to the scene of the crime.”
“Camila, I said—”
“Shh, I know, but this is different. It’s not about what she did, it’s what got done to her. If some sleazebag attacked her, don’t you think it’s my duty to let everyone know? For the safety of future potential victims, I mean.”
I cast her a doubtful look. Camila’s been known to exaggerate. “Did some sleazebag attack her?”
She shrugs. “Hard to say, really. It was last Saturday night, at Matt Klein’s kegger. I got there late because I was...” She trails off. “Well, never mind what I was doing. The point is, when I got there, she was slipping into one of the bedrooms with this half-Asian guy. Floyd or something. Lloyd? Hyde. I’d never seen him before.”
“That’s your story? People do that all the time, Camila. You do that all the time.”
“I’m not judging, and I’m not done! As far as anyone can tell, she went in perfectly happy and willing, but she came out twenty minutes later looking like she’d seen the devil himself. She started yelling at this guy in front of everyone, calling him a freak, saying she’d never agreed to that.”
“To what?”
“Oh, so now you want to know,” Camila teases.
I turn away from her, annoyed that she caught me in her trap. “So don’t tell me,” I huff. “You’re the one who brought it up.”
“Yeah, well...whatever it was, it was apparently too kinky for Natalie to say out loud. She did say she was going to call the cops on him, though.”
“Shit,” I say, interested again in spite of myself. “What happened?”
“Somehow it all died out. Natalie left the kegger in tears with a friend, and I expected to hear sirens within minutes, but no one ever came. As far as the gossip mill is concerned, she never told anyone what happened. No one official, at least. But then again, Natalie’s gotten around a lot since her dad got sick last year. Maybe she’s afraid no one would believe her story.”
“What about the guy? Hyde?”
“Beats me. At that point, no one wanted to admit to knowing him, let alone inviting him. I don’t blame them... There’s something funny about that guy. Something off.”
“What do you mean?” I say, no longer bothering to hide my interest. Camila’s too deep into her story to give me a hard time about it.
“I don’t know...” she says, staring off at nothing as if she’s replaying the scene in her mind. “He’s sort of weird-looking.” She shivers. “Something about his face.”
“What, like a scar?”
Camila squinches up her forehead, like she’s trying to remember, but after a second she shakes her head. “I don’t know. Maybe.” She shivers again and slides off the porch rail. “Come on, it’s freezing out here. Come back inside with me and at least try to have fun?”
I heave a long-suffering sigh, but a few minutes later we are giggling uncontrollably at the sight of Dracula, Frankenstein and Sherlock Holmes trading keg stands, and I have to admit I am having a pretty good time—at least until Camila decides to join them, and ends our evening early by getting spectacularly drunk and puking all over Kilpatrick’s kitchen table. After that, I don’t have much choice but to get her as cleaned up as I can, then tug and shove her toward the front door, through a crowd that seems to have only gotten bigger and rowdier in the past couple of hours.
Once I’ve gotten a weakly protesting Camila through the door, I turn and give one last glance around the party on the off chance that my eyes will land on Jek. Camila’s right—it’s pretty unlikely that Jek would show up to a kegger, but he did say he might. But before I get a good look, I’m knocked off balance by some guy shoving his way into the house. I tip backward into Camila, and she goes stumbling down the front steps, where she wobbles a moment before pitching heavily to the ground.
“Watch it, asshole,” I call over my shoulder as I hurry to her side. In return, the guy spits back a slur so vile that I spin around to face him, shock and fury pulsing through me. “What did you call me?”
The dark-eyed boy tosses a bored glance over one shoulder and opens his mouth as if to follow up on his comment. But something about my face must change his mind, because his eyes widen in what looks like panic, and before I know it he has slithered back into the crowd.
“What was that all about?” Camila asks hazily as I help her to her feet.
“I hate costume parties,” I mutter. “Hard to give someone a piece of your mind when they’re dressed as...”
“As what?”
I grasp at a word or an idea for a second, but it slips away from me. “I didn’t get a good look at him,” I tell her with a shrug. “Some kind of angel? Or a demon.”
Camila giggles as I maneuver her into the car.
“Well, which was it?”
“I mean, like a fallen angel,” I explain, but I can’t put my finger on why I think so. I try to conjure up a mental image of him, but I don’t remember him wearing anything special or carrying any props, and his face is now a muddled memory. I can’t quite get a fix on whether his nose was big or small, his cheeks sharp or soft, his skin dark or light—all that stands out in my mind are those intense black eyes, and the strange fear I read in them.
I can’t stop thinking about that guy who ran into me at the kegger. It’s weird to see anyone you don’t know in a town like this, where almost everyone is connected in some way to the Research Park. London’s funny that way.
No, not that London—London, Illinois. Up until the 1970s, it was an unincorporated farming community called Plachett, an hour and a half out of Chicago on winding country roads. It didn’t even have a post office. Then Lonsanto Agrichemical Corporation bought out a bunch of the local farmers and built a major research facility right in the middle of nowhere, and people started moving in and building houses. In 1978, Lonsanto merged with Donnelly Pharmaceuticals to create London Chemical—Big Farm meets Big Pharm, people said. That’s when they built the Research Park, and more housing developments, and in 1984, the town of Plachett incorporated and changed its name to London—for LONsanto and DONelly.
That history makes London feel different from most small, Midwestern farm towns. Most places grow up naturally around a river or a railroad, and they wind up a mishmash of old buildings and new, straight roads and roads that wind off into nothing, fancy brick houses and old wooden shacks. In London, the