by Eva Chase
That was the school talking much more than it was me. On an impulse, I dug into my jacket pocket. The brambles I’d stuffed in there bit into my fingers. I grasped a handful and shoved it toward the other—false—me.
“I broke Roseborne. I say you let him go—now.”
Her body jerked as the shattered bits pressed against her collarbone. Seeing my face distort in horror made me shudder, but I held steady. “We’re done here. Back off and let this end.”
She stumbled away from me, and the vision of the room crumbled away alongside the disintegrating of the shattered twigs in my hand. With a jolt, I found myself standing in the woods again, nothing but dry powder slipping from my fingers—but the ghostly version of me was gone.
The monster that was Cade twitched and hauled himself to his clawed paws. His silvery gray eyes stared up at me. I couldn’t read the emotion in them or that fanged face, but I knew what I had to say anyway.
“I’m still going to save you from this place if I can,” I said. “You’re my brother, and no way in hell am I forgetting that. But—after that’s over, once we’re out of here, I’m not sure where we’ll stand. You need to give me time to figure that out, and you—you’ve got some figuring out to do too. The one thing I know is we can’t keep going the way we were.”
The creature let out a low growl through its teeth. A chill trickled through me, but I kept my head high. “I’ll leave you to it, then.”
A couple of the tears slipped free to slick cold over my cheeks in the night air. The burn of them inside traveled right down the center of me. It took all the strength I had in me, but this time I did turn my back on him, heading toward the school building and the three guys who really had looked out for me since I’d arrived here, wherever Roseborne’s spirits had thrown them.
Chapter Fifteen
Elias
The blast of energy that exploded between me and Trix and the other guys slammed into my chest so hard it lifted me right off my feet. Before I could so much as flinch, it flung me away from all of them. For a few fleeting seconds, the world narrowed down to a blur and the warble of air past my ears. Then I crashed into the side of the carriage house.
A breath sputtered out of me. I pressed my hands to the ground, my fingers digging into the cool earth instinctively—whether to steady myself or to hold on in case another blast came at me, I wasn’t totally sure.
My vision was still hazy. I blinked hard, and the shapes of the campus reformed around me in the darkness.
What had happened to Trix and the others? I didn’t see them nearby. I moved to heave myself to my feet—and stopped halfway as a wave of dizziness swept through me.
I bowed my head, fighting to regain control over my senses. My legs wobbled beneath me. Just as the strength had leached from my body a couple hours ago when I’d toppled in the basement, weakness seeped through my limbs again. My jaw clenched.
For fuck’s sake, I couldn’t let myself falter now. I’d survived Roseborne’s torments this long. We were so close to breaking free.
I wasn’t going to shrivel up like a dead rose when Trix might need my help.
I clenched my jaw and put all my will into straightening my legs. I managed to stand up, but I immediately swayed back against the wall of the carriage house. My breath hitched. For a long while, I didn’t dare move, knowing the moment I took my weight off the building, my legs would crumple again.
My grandfather’s voice echoed through my head. Get yourself together, Elias. What kind of a man can’t even support himself on his own two feet?
You never had to live through anything like this, I thought back, but I could already imagine his response to that excuse—reminding me of the long journey his family had taken to get to America, of the derision and doubt he’d faced at school, and of how he’d met those challenges and risen above them regardless.
He wouldn’t even be wrong. I was failing right now. How could I offer Trix any protection, let alone help free everyone trapped here, when I couldn’t even peel myself off this fucking garage?
A fresh twinge ran through my chest. That way of thinking wasn’t helping. I inhaled slowly and fully, focusing on the rise of my lungs and the ebb as they deflated with my exhale. One thing at a time. Elias DeLeon didn’t let a bunch of supernatural miscreants dictate his life, even if there wasn’t much of it left. If Jenson could take them on wholeheartedly, they’d better believe I could too.
The tremors gradually faded from my calves and thighs. I eased myself away from the building. When my legs held me up, I tried one tentative step and then another.
All right. My head still swam with faint dizziness at the motion, and my heart was beating faster than it should from just that little exertion, but I was getting somewhere now. If I just—
A ghostly form drifted around the side of the carriage house, and all other thoughts fled my mind.
It was my sister. Her face drawn, her dark hair rumpled and pulled back in a wide tortoiseshell clip like it’d been the last time I saw her—the last time I saw her alive, that was. She peered at me, her dark eyes plaintive, as she glided closer.
I could hardly run in my current condition. My hand dug into my suit jacket automatically, reaching for the brambles I’d brought with me—but I didn’t think I had enough to form a solid barrier around me. She’d find a way through.
Why the hell should I dodge her anyway? Of all the people I’d wronged, Gloriana was the one who deserved my consideration the most. Trix and Ryo had faced the demons of their past in the math classroom without running away. I should have to face this, to relive this moment in all its horrible actuality.
“Gloriana,” I said hoarsely. “Of course you’d come.”
The ghost didn’t speak. As far as I’d seen, none of these figures from our pasts ever did outside of the visions. She just breezed across the last few feet between us and sank her hands into my chest as if reaching straight for my heart.
Cold flooded me, tossing my mind off into darkness. Darkness, and then the clean lines and light leather scent of my last apartment.
Somehow, I was already in the act of holding open the door. My sister slipped past me into the open-concept space with its pale furniture and twinkling pot lights.
It was that day—the last day. The rims of her eyes had turned a harsh red tone; the thick fall of her hair through the clip didn’t quite hide the bruise that mottled the back of her neck. She held herself as if on the verge of cowering. As if she saw in me the same violence her “boyfriend” had aimed at her who knew how many times before.
Had I noticed that at the time—how frightened she was of me? I didn’t remember it. Seeing it now, shame choked me, thick and clammy.
Grandpa DeLeon had always harped about family. Funny how his words about loyalty had only really applied to him and our grandmother. He’d never seen any issue with casting Gloriana aside when she hadn’t met his expectations.
And I’d followed his footsteps so willingly.
“I’m so sorry,” Gloriana was saying. “I didn’t know where else to go. I’m just—I’m so scared, Elias.”
I should have hugged her, told her she didn’t have to be, that I’d defend her. My arms stayed locked at my sides. In that second, all I could see was how out-of-place she looked in the posh apartment, this teenaged girl with her mussed hair and haphazard clothes. She was everything I’d tried to make sure I’d never become. She’d chosen that. Chosen to defy our grandparents, chosen to take the lazy route while I worked my ass off.
No. I closed my eyes, shaking my head at myself. Those were the old ways of thinking that Roseborne was trying to stuff back inside my head. I wouldn’t let the college drag me back down that path.
When I opened my eyes again, my sister was backing away. She’d taken the shake of my head as a rejection of her. “Please, Elias,” she said. “I know it’s a lot to ask. I just need a place to stay for a little while until I’m sure—until I’m sure he won’t come after me. I’ll help cle
an up, I’ll cook. Whatever I can do to help.”
What would she say if I took the same approach I had back then: chided her for her bad decisions, told her she had to live with them now rather than drop them in someone else’s lap? Would she have accepted it like the real Gloriana had or laid into me the way Bryan had in his vision?
Better to never find that out.
The words stung coming up my throat, but I forced them out. “I should have let you stay, no cleaning or cooking or anything else required. I’m sorry. You needed a brother, and I treated you like… like you were practically a stranger. If I could do this over, I’d tell you to stay as long as you need to. I’d sit you down, and we’d work out a plan for how to deal with that asshole. I—I failed you, Gloriana.”
Was I going to do the same with Trix, all over again? Not in the same way, but by giving in to a different weakness also inflicted by someone holding their power over me?
My sister had stopped where she was in the doorway. Her expression showed only startled disbelief. “How can you say that? It’s my fault. I ran off with him—I abandoned all of you. I’ve been so selfish the whole time.”
Would the Gloriana I’d known have admitted that, or was this some new test from the college to see how I’d respond? The truth was, I didn’t really know. I’d barely spoken to my sister in the close-to-a-year after she’d moved out of our grandparents’ apartment to devote all her time to the asshole who’d seduced her—a prick who was almost thirty to her barely legal seventeen. How could any of us have seen that as her crime?
I wasn’t going to lie to her about what I’d thought back then. Maybe what was true would be enough, as long as I gave her the truth about myself too.
“Maybe you were selfish in some ways,” I said. “But you’re a teenager. I think you’re allowed to make mistakes and be a little selfish. I’ve been selfish too, and I’m old enough to know better. I was more than old enough to follow my heart and what I believe is right instead of always worrying about what Grandpa would think.”
A hint of defiance came into her stance. She crossed her arms over her chest, her lips pursing. “You only just decided that now? It didn’t seem like you saw me as anything other than trash back then.”
“I know.” My head bowed. Emotions tangled through my chest, too tightly wound to pick them apart. Suffocating. What did she need me to say? What could I possibly say that would make up for abandoning her to the abusive jackass who’d killed her just days after I’d turned her away?
“You still think it’s true,” she said quietly. “You think I’m a screw-up, a mess, that I’ll never amount to anything. The only reason you’d help me is out of pity. Of course. I mean, it’s obviously true. Only a screw-up would end up begging for help like this. It’s not like I’ll ever amount to anything more.”
“No.” My head jerked up. One clear impulse shot through the turmoil inside me. She couldn’t believe that about herself—I didn’t believe it.
She was reaching for the door. I snapped out of the grip the room had held on me and grasped her arm gently to stop her.
“Come here,” I said. “Let’s just sit and—and talk.” While I figured out how to put this anguish into words.
“What’s there to talk about?”
Okay, then I’d find a way to say it here. I swallowed hard.
“It doesn’t matter how many mistakes you made before. You can always do something different later. I’m trying to do that right now. There are so many screwed-up people out there… but they still deserve to live and get more chances to make something of themselves. Not just the things Grandpa thought mattered either. Things like realizing your relationship isn’t safe anymore and getting out. Things like being a brother who’s there for his little sister when she needs him.”
Like letting her know how much I cared now, regardless of whether it was too late in reality. Like doing whatever I could to help Trix and everyone else at Roseborne even if it wasn’t as much as I’d have liked to. Maybe it was true that I’d failed people—hell, I’d probably fail plenty more before my life was over, if I got to live much more of it. I could let that define me, or I could make the most of the parts in between.
“Grandpa expected us to be perfect,” I went on. “But he never was. He never loved us like the parental figure he was supposed to be—he never figured out how to relate to you. He left me thinking my only worth was how much money I could make and what concrete victories I could show off. That’s screwed up. So what if we’re not perfect either? So what if we fail sometimes? What matters is what you’re doing right now. You pick yourself back up and keep going, keep trying.”
Gloriana’s gaze searched mine. “Do you actually mean that? Or are you just trying to make yourself feel better?”
“I wish I could make you feel better. I wish you were really with me to hear this.” I raised my hand to brush my fingers over her hair, and then I found I could offer that hug after all. I wrapped my arms around her. She clutched my suit jacket and leaned into me, as if I’d been the brother she’d needed all along.
Something else I hadn’t even known I wanted to say wrenched up through me. “I love you. Even if I let myself act as if I didn’t, even if all Grandpa’s attitudes clouded over it—I’ve always loved you. I never forgave myself for making you leave that night. Love should have mattered more than anything else.”
My sister looked up at me, the tension gone from her face. “Maybe you should forgive yourself now. If we’re all allowed to make mistakes. If what matters is how we make up for them.”
With those words, she slipped from my grasp. A whirlwind surged around me, tearing us apart, flinging me out of the apartment and back onto the campus lawn outside the carriage house.
I found myself groping into the darkness as if I could have snatched onto my sister and brought her back with me. Of course I couldn’t. Unlike some of the people from these visions, she really was gone.
Would she have forgiven me that easily if she could have come back from the dead? I didn’t know. But maybe… Maybe what I’d said was true for me too. Where did I go from here?
I dragged in the cool air and took a step forward. Another. Another. My muscles were still weakened, but that was okay. I’d make do with what I had.
Out there was another girl—a girl I also loved. That was true too, wasn’t it, even if I’d hesitated to admit it to myself before? It was a very different kind of love than I’d felt for my sister, yes, but just as meaningful. And this time I wouldn’t let my doubts overwhelm it. This time I’d let it guide me and take as much strength as I could from that.
I had to keep remembering this, no matter how many times those old instincts kicked in: it wouldn’t matter how much I ended up being able to offer, only that I offered all I had.
Chapter Sixteen
Trix
The back of my neck prickled as I emerged from the woods, my ears alert for any sound of Cade following me. I wasn’t totally sure whether I’d have wanted him to at this point, despite my original intentions. But what I’d told him was true. I’d get him out of here if I could—and the time for sorting out the rest of our issues would be afterward.
He didn’t come after me. And as soon as I’d left the trees behind, my gaze snagged on another slumped figure in an apparition’s thrall several feet across the lawn from the woods. I hustled over, peering at the body in the thin light cast by the ghost that gripped it.
It was a girl, her long, fawn-brown hair fanned around her limp head. She looked like she might have been even younger than me, so one of Roseborne’s newer students, probably. I recognized her vaguely from around the school, but I’d never spoken to her or shared a dorm bedroom with her, at least not that I recalled. The ghost bending over her was a girl too, around the same age.
My first impulse was to walk away. She wasn’t my responsibility. I had to get back to the guys, make sure they were okay. But as I took a step to the side to avoid her body, something twisted in my ches
t. That way of thinking felt way too familiar.
Like Winston with his group of vengeful students, seeing everything in terms of “us vs. them.” He’d attached himself so completely to his small circle that their influence had swallowed up his identity.
Like me and the sway Cade had held over me all these years. I’d been so wrapped up in his narrative of the world that I’d nearly lost real devotion when it was offered to me because I’d found it so hard to believe.
Obviously I wasn’t going to be BFFs with every person in the known universe. But maybe… maybe it wasn’t such a great approach to focus only on the people I cared about the most. I didn’t really think anyone deserved Roseborne’s treatment, and that included this girl, even if I didn’t know her name or anything about her. If she was new, she wouldn’t have had much time to process her supposed crimes.
If I didn’t help her, there was no one else here who could.
I hesitated for a few seconds longer, and then I moved closer, digging my hands into my pockets. The broken remains of the basement rosebush had helped repel the ghosts on other occasions. I jabbed what felt like my second-last handful at the ghostly girl now, watching her reaction.
The glow around the translucent body flickered faintly, but the apparition didn’t move. Her expression didn’t change. I pushed harder with no more result.
All right, so once they were attached to their target, that connection must provide enough fuel to make it much harder to dislodge them. At least from outside the vision. I’d been able to get the other me to back off using the brambles from inside Cade’s.
Or had that only worked because it was me?
I guessed I might find out now. I shoved the remaining bits back into my pockets, braced myself, and grasped hold of the ghost.
I fell with a jerk and a whirl, and stumbled at the edge of a forest clearing. Not the same forest I’d just left, though. The trees that loomed around me stood twice as tall as those on Roseborne’s campus. A tangy pine scent wafted through the warm air. The sun beamed down from a clear sky between the canopy of dark green leaves and needles.
