Spellbound - Cara Lynn Shultz [33]
I picked up my pace, breaking into another jog. Hiss. Hiss. Pop. POP! I stopped short, as if I had run into an invisible wall. I was frozen in my tracks, afraid to look behind me. I slowly turned around, dimly aware that I had started shaking. Four street lamps were extinguished, the lights dead and black from within. The pathway was velvet dark, the only illumination coming from Queens, across the river. I placed my left foot behind me, carefully, as if I were walking the plank. My eyes were still riveted on the dead street lamps as I backed away from them cautiously, the way someone would step away from a wild animal.
I heard another popping sound behind me. It started off low—almost guttural. I spun around. The streetlight in front of me was smoking, black plumes streaming out as if it were on fire. I heard a sharp sizzling, crackling sound and instinctively crouched down, covering my head with my hands. I screamed as the frosted glass light exploded, a flash of flames shooting glass and filaments into a halo on the ground below. The burning embers extinguished as they fell on the wet leaves, sending off a sinister, snakelike hiss as the heat died out.
The next thing I heard was choked-up breathing—mine. I took off, ignoring the burning in my chest as I sprinted down the pathway. I tried singing to myself, to distract myself from the sounds that I knew I could not be hearing. But the crackling, the hissing demanded to be heard, getting louder as it chased me, reaching out to grab me with unseen claws as I raced along the river. Every light I passed ruptured and died. Every streetlight blew out as I passed it, like I was the wind extinguishing a row of lit matches.
I ran off the pathway and across the street, ignoring the blaring horns of a taxi as it stopped short in front of me. Getting hit by a car would be preferable to letting the blackness catch up with me, I knew it. I had to get out of there before I was in total darkness.
I stumbled forward, my palms falling onto the yellow hood of the cab. For a short moment, the driver’s eyes and mine met—he flinched when he saw my face.
I pushed myself off the taxi’s hood and stumbled onto the curb, gasping for breath. Grabbing hold of the building on the corner, I whipped myself down the side street, my back against the cool stone of the building. Sweat dripped down my forehead as I peered around at the sinister-looking stretch of the East River, a smoking dark tunnel that threatened to entomb me. It was a black pit of nothingness.
Slowly, all the lights flickered and came back on. It looked like any other night, a postcard-perfect view of the East River.
If I’d been looking for something to take my attention away from Brendan, this did it. I didn’t even notice him—well, not much—in English class the next day. I was pretty much useless in all of my classes. I lied to Cisco and Jenn at lunch, when they asked me why I was so quiet.
“I think I’m catching Mr. Emerson’s cold,” I fibbed, my voice clear as a bell. “I just don’t feel well.”
I was too freaked out when I’d gotten home the night before, but I planned to spend the rest of this evening on Google. There had to be some explanation. Maybe the streetlights were not up to code? Maybe they were overdue for maintenance? Maybe I really was going crazy, and imagining a bond with Brendan was the first symptom?
In chemistry class, I slumped in my seat, giving Angelique a weak smile as she walked in. She halted in her tracks when she saw me, a terrified look on her face. I glanced over my shoulder, wondering what Kristin was doing to provoke such a reaction. Spitballs, most likely. That girl had remarkable aim. Then I realized Angelique was horrified because she was staring at me.
She grabbed at one of her necklaces and mumbled some thing to herself, then slowly slid next to me.
“Hey,” I said, trying to be casual.
She ripped a page out of her notebook and