Kissing Midnight

Prologue

Dev

Four fifty-two a.m.

I glare at the time on my phone as I fumble it off the bedside table. Who the hell is calling at this hour? My voice comes out rusty. Hello?

Dev! The girl’s voice is so thick with tears that I can barely understand her. Thank God I got you. It’s Beth.

Beth? Who the fuck is Beth? For a minute I’m not even sure what decade this is. My mind flashes through all the Beths I’ve ever known, and there must be a thousand. Beth..?

Kayla’s friend. Her voice breaks on Kayla’s name, and she stifles a sob.

Shit. I sit up in bed, suddenly awake. Deep breath, I say, Calm down. What is it?

Oh my God, Dev. I don’t know how to say it. I shouldn’t be telling you this on the phone. Is anyone with you? You shouldn’t be alone.

A terrible coldness creeps through me. I swing my legs over the side of the bed and stand, my hand tightening on my phone. Just say it.

Dev, it’s Kayla. Earlier tonight… There was so much ice on the road…

Beth, I say carefully, Just tell me. Is Kayla okay?

Her voice comes out small. Her parents called me. On her way home from dinner, her car slid off Stalton Bridge. The police pulled her out, but she…she didn’t make it. She takes a deep, shuddering breath. Dev, I’m so sorry. Kayla’s dead.

Kayla’s dead.

She’s dead.

I sit down hard on the bed. Kayla, in whom I’ve invested six months of my time. Six months of movies and dinners and making Christmas plans with her family. Six months of late-night sexts and driving her to work and being kind to her fucking cat.

And we were so close. We were almost there.

Dev? the girl’s voice trembles. Are you still there? Oh God, I knew I shouldn’t tell you over the phone.

I’m still here. My voice comes out flat and vacant. Good, I think, I sound appropriately upset. And I am. I am very upset.

Good! The girl sounds relieved I haven’t gone and jumped off a bridge. (I could, but it’s not like it would do any good.) She starts talking nonstop, but I just catch bits and pieces: special to her, so in love, didn’t suffer, horrible accident.

Was it an accident, I wonder? The timing seems too perfect. I stare at the ornate antique box on my dresser. It looks as secure as ever, but is there a chance they’ve gotten strong enough? That enough of them have gotten free?

No, I think, only a few have leaked out. It would take more than that to do any real damage, wouldn’t it?

But there still might be someone else who wants me dead. In four hundred years, a man collects a lot of enemies.

Or maybe this is just bad luck. In four hundred years, I was bound to have some of that, too, and, all things considered, I’ve been lucky.

Luckier than some, at least. For a second I picture Kayla’s little silver Subaru plunging through the guard rail. I see her beating on the windows with her palms as the river swallows the car, imagine the cold sting of water invading her lungs…

No. I press the image out of my mind. It’s never a good idea to think about how they die.

I’m vaguely aware the girl on the phone has stopped talking. I should say something. I knew the roads were bad, I say, I shouldn’t have let her go.

Don’t think about it, she says quickly, You can’t blame yourself. It’s not your fault.

Yes, I think, that’s the problem. I can’t take the blame—or the credit, either. Kayla doesn’t count.

Dev? Are you there?

I’m here.

I’m coming over. You shouldn’t be alone. I’m getting in the car right now.

For a minute, a whole new scenario plays out in my head: Beth comes over. We talk. We cry. We listen to Kayla’s favorite songs. She makes me tea. In a few days, after the funeral, I tell her I don’t want to be alone. We hook up for a night of comforting each other with passionate, life-affirming, survivor-guilt sex. We start a secret affair…

Which one is Beth? The blond? Or the shorter one?

No. Too many variables. Too many complications. I can’t afford for anything else to go wrong.

No, I say, I don’t want you to drive. I’m okay.

You’re not, she says gently, but you will be. Someday you will be. I promise.

Oh yes, I think, I most certainly will be. I always am. But my palms are sweating as I run them through my bedhead hair. I don’t even have to look at the calendar to know: Eleven days until New Year’s Eve.

Eleven days to make a new girl love me.

It takes ten minutes to persuade this girl Beth to get off the phone, and the second she hangs up, I punch in a new number. God knows I hate to involve anyone else—I prefer to work alone—but this time I may need backup.

"Bonjour?" The voice that answers is silky with sleep. Or maybe that’s a purr I hear, if she has recently been a cat. Dev, is that you? Why are you calling so late?

Eleven days.

Anathema, I say, I have a situation.

Chapter 1

Saintly

The last thing my brother ever gave me was this little black heart. He drew it on the underside of my wrist, the day I went to confront him about the drugs. He was always drawing things—on paper, on his desk, on his own arms and the arms of all his friends. Sometimes just little doodles, sometimes big, elaborate sketches that twined in and out of his real tattoos like animals slinking through vines. He got in trouble for drawing on everything, of course, but Enrique didn’t mind. He was used to being in trouble and usually able to charm himself out of it by batting those long, dark eyelashes and flashing that crooked smile. Drawing calmed him down, he said, made him sit in his seat and focus, the way school work never could. Besides, he would say, I have to practice to be a tattoo artist. I’ve got my future to think about.

When did Enrique stop drawing on things? Whenever it was, I should have known right then.

But all I knew was the way he made our mother cry, the way the dark shadows under her eyes had become a permanent fixture from too many nights up, waiting for him to come home. I noticed the way she sniffed his clothes like a drug dog before she put them into the wash, the way she rifled through his pockets for proof. I saw how she watched the news when he was out late, scanning it for signs of accidents and shootings, rubbing her fingers together like she was ticking off invisible rosary beads. Our mother didn’t deserve this. She had already been through too much.

And so I confronted him. I cornered him in his room and yelled at him, furious, but he stayed calm. (Who knows, maybe he was high, then, too. Or maybe he knew even then what he was going to do and that it would all be over soon.) He took my hand in his and flipped it over to reveal the smooth belly of my wrist. "No te preoccupies, hermanita, he said. Don’t worry." (He always called me hermanita, little sister, just because I was a few inches shorter than he was. Never mind the fact that we were twins, or that I was a full eight minutes older and endlessly more mature.) And he drew that tiny black heart, there where my angry pulse was pounding, because that was the way he kept calm, by putting ink on skin.

It did nothing to make me calm. I yanked my hand away before he was even done. His black pen left a long thin line from the tip of the heart, like yarn from a sleeve about to unravel. I stormed out of his room and slammed the door behind me.

It’s a wonder I didn’t scrub the heart off right then, on purpose.

It’s a wonder I didn’t scrub it off by mistake the next night, after I found him, when I was frantically trying to wash the blood from my hands.

But I didn’t. I forgot all about it, and only rediscovered it at the funeral when I looked down at my praying hands and noticed the line trailing from the heart like mascara streaked by tears. Like a tiny thread, still tying me to him.

From then on, I was committed to keeping it. Losing it would be losing the last of him, and that I couldn’t bear. I should have gotten it tattooed over right away. Enrique had a million friends at the Inkshack where he hung out—he had a million friends everywhere—and they would have been happy to do it for me, but I wanted to wait until I was eighteen. I wasn’t a rule-breaker like my brother, who snuck out to get his first ink when we were only freshmen. I knew I would have to ask my mother’s permission to legally get a tattoo under age, and there was no way I could ask her for that. I could barely ask her for anything in the state she was in, and certainly not for something that would remind her of him, that would make her think I was headed down the same path.

And so, instead, I started retracing the heart every day, to keep it from fading away. I thought I only had to retrace it for a year, until I turned eighteen. How hard could that be? I didn’t know I’d spend most of that year at Westgate, where the stinging hospital soap would reduce the heart to the color of ash, turn it into a ghost of itself. Sometimes it got so faint, I wasn’t sure it was there at all. Was I just redrawing it from memory? Was the heart I saw just an after-image, like the flashes behind your eyelids when you stare into the light too long?

Of course, by then I was seeing a lot of things that weren’t there. That’s why I was at Westgate in the first place. I had learned not to trust my eyes.

So I traced the non-existent lines with a ballpoint pen stolen from the nurse’s clipboard, my fingers shaking from the medication until the lines wobbled and I couldn’t tell how much of it was the heart he left and how much was a heart of my own creation, warped and already fading like my memory of him. At my best, the heart was a talisman that brought those memories back, and at my worst…

I remember the day at Westgate when I hit an all-time low, the day I saw the monster for the last time. I looked at the heart like it was the center dot in a line across my wrist showing me where to cut, as if Enrique had left me a little path to follow him.

It feels wrong to be in the world when your twin is gone, like you’re a person without a shadow, or a shadow without a person.

But I didn’t do it.

I hauled myself up by a tiny string and got out of Westgate and into college, and the first week we were here Delia and I went to a tattoo shop (the cleanest one I could find—I researched online) and she got a bright little daisy on her ankle and I got this black little heart. I even got the trailing line, like the string of a kite a little kid let go. Except now I can’t let go. Enrique and the heart are a part of me forever—or, for as long as I live, anyway—for better or for worse.

I rub the heart when I’m nervous, now that I can’t rub it off. It has become a little habit to scrub at it with the thumb of my right hand, or press on it like I’m checking my own pulse. In fact, I’m doing it right now as I gaze out the window of the student union. I’m watching my classmates—the ones who are already done with finals—haul their suitcases and duffel bags of dirty laundry across the frozen quad. They’re headed for the line of taxis idling by the dorms, waiting to take them to planes and trains and ultimately home. There’s a powdered-sugar snow sifting down, so gentle it looks fake, and everyone is laughing and waving goodbye and calling out holiday wishes. It’s December twenty-second, just three days until Christmas, and I’m not going home.

Saintly, are you okay?

I startle at the sound of Delia’s voice. I had almost forgotten she was there. She’s looking at me over the edge of her coffee cup with a sad, worried expression that seems wrong on her usually sunny face. It makes me feel guilty. Delia has worried enough about me, and I don’t want to drag her down.

I force a smile and try to shake off my mood. Sure. Just tired.

Her forehead is still creased with concern. Honest? Because if you’re having second thoughts about not going home I’m sure your mom would—

No, I say quickly. I’m fine. Going home is not really an option, since there’s really no home to go home to now that my mother sold the house, and joining her at her parents’ in Mexico City isn’t really an option, either. I told you, I want to stay here with you over break. I’m not changing my mind.

Delia lets out a sigh of relief, her whole face brightening. Good, because we’ve still got a shit-ton to do. How about a romantic evening in Paris?

That depends. I smile. With whom?

Delia rolls up her notebook and smacks my hand with it. I mean as a theme for the ball! I want to have my suggestions all thought out before the planning meeting tonight. We have to focus.

I pull my notebook a little closer. I am focused. On Abnormal Psych. I still have two more exams, remember?

Saintly, in a few short hours it will be winter break. The ball is New Year’s Eve, and we haven’t even announced a theme! People have bought tickets! They need to know what their costumes should be, and we only have nine days.

Well, I only have two hours and— I glance out the window of the student union, toward the big clock tower of the library —twelve minutes before this exam.

Which you are going to ace, by the way, so I don’t know why you’re sweating it. She reaches over and slides my notebook from under my nose. Abnormal Psych is your subject.

I give her a look.

She sighs. You know I didn’t mean it like that. I just mean you ace everything.

Flattery will get you nowhere. It’s true I’ve done well this semester, but I’ve had to. That was the deal I made with my mom: Good grades, stick with Delia, stay in therapy. If my grades slip at all, my mother will panic. I have to show her I can cope. I got a B on my last psych paper. I told you that.

Sure, she says, But only because Stridewater doesn’t give A’s, so that’s like an A in translation to Stridewater language. So you B-aced it. You baced it.

I smile in spite of myself. Deals loves to make up words. "There is no such word as baced."

Still! I’ve known you since we were—what? Nine? You’ve always gotten good grades. There’s a touch of envy in her look. Your grades were good enough to get you in here, even without most of senior year. I bet you could have gone Ivy League if it weren’t for— She catches herself. Deals knows better than to bring up Westgate by name. She straightens in her seat. What I mean is, precedent suggests you have no reason to act the freakazoid about this test.

Delia, I say gently, There is no precedent. These are our first college finals.

And this is my first and last chance to make an impression in the theatre department. You know they never let first years onto the New Year’s ball committee! They only let me in because you and I were willing to stay here over break, and now I have to prove I actually belong there by suggesting a kick-ass theme. Come on, Saintly. Delia widens her big blue eyes. You know how important this is to me. Please?

I sigh. It’s not like I don’t owe Delia pretty much everything, after all she’s done for me. Okay, I say, I will allow myself a study break until noon. That gives us— I glance at the clock again, —about nine and a half minutes to find a theme.

Yay! Delia bounces in her seat. She grabs her purple pen and starts scribbling things down. So, A Night in Paris.

I shake my head. Too high school.

Delia looks crestfallen. But you love Paris! Paris is sophisticated!

Sure, when it’s a salon by the Louvre, but A Night in Paris is more mimes and baguettes and cardboard cutouts of the Eiffel Tower.

And French kisses! And French fries! And those little French bulldogs with the flat faces!

No, I say, "Just no. Think of the people who go to the ball, Deals. They’ve been to Paris. They probably own Paris."

Fine. She pouts and draws a purple line through A Night in Paris, crossing it off her list. What do you want, then?

I don’t know. Maybe come as your favorite author?

Delia crinkles her turned-up nose. What would the couple’s costumes be? Poe and his raven?

Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, Mary Shelley and Percy Bysshe Shelley…

And who am I supposed to go as? Frumpy Emily Dickinson? Dowdy Jane Eyre?

Jane Eyre is actually a character, not an—

"Whatever. The point is, it’s a New Year’s masquerade ball. A ball. For New Year’s. It has to be glamorous!"

Okay, I say, "So maybe it should be characters. Jane Eyre would actually be a very—"

Oh! Delia starts scribbling, What about movie characters? If that guy I told you about in my acting class came as James Bond, I think I’d die happy.

No, I say, No movie characters. No TV. This is a fundraiser for the theatre department of a liberal arts college. It has to be, you know, artsy. Intellectual.

You’re right. Delia’s brow creases in thought. She twists one blond pigtail around her finger. Theatre characters then. Or, narrower than that. Characters from Shakespeare.

I nod slowly. Yeah. I can see that. Someone as Prospero. Someone as… who’s the jester? Touchstone?

I was thinking couples costumes. Romeo and Juliet, she says at the same moment I say, Desdemona and Othello.

We both laugh. That’s the difference between us, Delia says loftily, I’m a romantic. You always expect the tragedy.

They’re both tragedies, Deals, I point out.

Yes, Delia says, "But Romeo and Juliet is a very pretty tragedy and a great costume idea. Although, she purses her lips in thought, everyone would think of it. There would be a whole ballroom full of them. What girl wouldn’t want to be Juliet?"

Me. I can’t think of anything more pathetic than a lone Juliet, and the chances of me having a date to the ball are slim to none. Which is fine. After all, I’ll just be there volunteering, to help Delia out, and it’s not like my life needs any more complications. I rub the heart tattoo again. I’m still just trying to get by. There would be lots of costume options, I say reasonably, You said people can borrow costumes from the theatre department archives, right? Well, they must have done a million Shakespeares over the years. They did Tempest recently. You would make a great spirit of the air…

But Delia is already crossing Shakespeare off her list. Ariel is too obscure.

I glance at the clock tower again. I need to get back to studying, but Delia will never let me if we don’t hit on a theme. Midsummer Night’s Dream, then. They’ve done that, right? Or use the fairy costumes from that in some other way, like we could do… a fairy tale theme.

Fairy tales? And you said Paris was juvenile! Fairy tales would be… Delia’s voice trails off. Her blue eyes widen Oh my God, she breathes, I hope that’s him.

Who?

She’s staring at someone over my shoulder. I start to turn around, but Delia grabs my hand. Don’t look! He’ll notice you!

I laugh. You make it sound like we’re on a nature special. ‘Don’t make eye contact. If he notices you he may—

Shhhhh! It’s not a predator, it’s a guy.

I start to open my psych book again. This campus is crawling with guys. I thought you, of all people, would have noticed.

Not that kind of guy, she hisses, A hot guy. A guy we haven’t seen before, which means he may be our new volunteer. Kate from the committee said she told a guy who wanted to volunteer that he should meet me here.

A guy we haven’t seen before. That is sort of unusual, on a campus as small as this one. I start to turn again, just out of curiosity.

I said don’t look!

Okay. I go back to my psych notes, happy for the excuse.

What?she says, You don’t even want to see him? Look, quick!

I laugh. Fine. I turn slowly around in my seat, trying to pretend I’m just casually stretching. The student union is full of people—studying, blowing off studying, celebrating because they don’t have to study any more. I search the crowd for the guy.

But someone else snags my gaze. A girl, sitting a few tables away. She has short, pale blond hair cut messy so it hangs in her eyes. She’s wearing a denim jacket covered with pins and patches, like something out of the ’80s or ’90s. Maybe that’s why she looks… out of place, somehow. Strange. Whatever it is, there’s something different about her and it makes me pause. For a second, her gaze meets mine and I see her gray eyes widen behind the shag of her bangs like she’s an animal caught in a sudden beam of light.

No, Delia whispers, Over there! She juts her chin at the other side of the room. I tug my gaze away from the girl and turn.

Instantly, I know who she means. The room may be crowded, but the guy stands out, and for once I can tell Delia isn’t just being dramatic: He really is that hot. Rumpled red-blond curls, sharp, stubbled jaw, pale blue eyes. He’s dressed casually in a hoodie and jeans, his jacket slung over his arm, but there’s an intensity about the way he’s looking around the room. A sense of purpose.

Delia crosses her fingers. Please, let him be looking for us.

And then the beautiful guy’s gaze comes to rest on Delia and his face lights up in the most charming smile I’ve ever seen.

Her answering smile is just as bright. I turn back to my notes, but I can feel him coming toward us, the way you can still feel the sunlight when you’re looking at the ground.

Hey, there, he says when he reaches us. Delia Barron?

Delia’s smile brightens a few more watts. That’s me! She holds out her hand, and he takes it.

Cautiously, I glance up from my notebook. The guy is looking Delia over, and I’m sure he likes what he sees. Guys always fall all over Deals. She looks like a doll, with her heart-shaped face and her little blond pigtails and her big blue eyes, so different from my long, dark hair and tan Latina skin.

Delia holds onto his hand a beat longer than strictly necessary. I’m sorry, they didn’t tell me your name.

Dev. He reaches back and snags a chair from the table next to us, flipping it around to face ours, and takes a seat.

Dev. Delia jots it down in her dance-planning notebook, next to our list of themes. Is that short for something?

Devilishly Handsome. He says it without hesitation, with a perfectly straight face.

Delia laughs. I resist the urge to roll my eyes. Maybe just devilish.

"Devilishly, huh? Delia shoots me a sly smile. Then you two should meet. We call her Saintly–"

Because my last name is Santos, I put in quickly.

Because she’s so perfect. Delia smiles at me, teasingly. Perfect grades, zero vices. It’s disgusting.

This time I do roll my eyes. Thanks for making me sound boring.

Oh, Dev holds out his hand, I’m sure you’re very interesting. He says it mildly, but when his blue eyes flick up to meet mine, I feel a little spark. Nice to meet you, Saintly.

Mariana, I correct him. Santos.

Mariana Santos, he says, like he’s trying it out. It seems to meet his approval.

Nice to meet you, too…Devon? I guess.

Yeah. He picks up my pen and taps it on the table. Let’s go with that. Much more normal.

Come on, Delia coaxes. What is it really?

Deveraux. He shrugs. Old family name. I don’t use it much. Devereaux Renard.

Deveraux! Delia exclaims in an exaggeratedly French accent, "Mais oui! C’est Francais! I’ve played Cosette in Le Mis—not to mention a champagne flute in Beauty and the Beast—so French is like my second language!"

Oh, are you a theatre major? There’s a spark of humor in Dev’s eyes. That explains it.

Delia fakes surprise, her blue eyes wide. Explains what?

"Your joir de vivre, he says, spreading the accent on just as thick, You’re certain je ne sais quois." He winks at me, and I fight the urge to smile.

Oh. Delia looks confused, "Sorry. I don’t actually speak French. You know, except for voulez vous couche—"

Deals. I cut her off. She’s making a fool of herself.

It’s actually Saintly who’s taking French, she shrugs, Which is ridiculous, if you ask me, since she already speaks fluent Spanish and could just test out of the language requirement if she wanted.

I look down at my psych book. She’s right. I maybe should have played it safe. I know, I say, But I always wanted to visit Paris.

So tell me… I’m surprised when Dev rolls up his sleeve, baring his right forearm. Delia looks thrilled, but he holds his arm out to me. Can you translate this?

For a second, I’m distracted by his arm, which is, admittedly, nice: Not bulky, like some guys, but muscled. Strong.

But it’s the tattoo he’s trying to show me, nestled just below the crook of his elbow on the underside of his arm.

I rub at my own tattoo self consciously and read, hoping my accent isn’t too bad.