“Why would I?”
She doesn’t respond. She doesn’t even blink.
“Everyone’s looking for you,” I tell her. “Are you okay?”
“Do I look okay?” she questions, elevating her brows.
“No. You look like your hurt.” I eye the blood trickling from her head. “I think you might need to go to the hospital.”
“Why? They can’t help me. No one can except for you.” She stares at me in a way that makes the hairs on my arms stand on end.
“Why me?” I ask nervously.
Her twisted smile looks all sorts of wrong. “Because you died and came back. But you came back wrong—or right depending on how you want to look at it—and now you can see the truth.”
Is she crazy? “I… I don’t know what you’re talking about? What truth?”
She grins, revealing a mouth full of chipped teeth. “Can’t you see it? It’s right in front of you?”
My gaze sweeps the mostly empty gas station. “There’s nothing here—”
A drop of water splatters against my forehead. My gaze drifts to the ceiling. A huge water stain stains the tile and the light is flickering on and off.
I swipe the water from my head and return my attention to Beth. Her mouth is agape and her tongue is missing. I trip backward, and end up smacking my elbow against the shelf behind me.
“You can’t run from the truth.” Her lips remain frozen as she speaks. “It lives inside you.” Then she lets out a blood-curdling scream, water spewing from her mouth.
I whirl around to run, but my feet are glued to the floor. Water gushes around me, filling up the gas station and rising to my knees. I open my mouth to scream, but my lips are cinched shut.
I am helpless.
I can’t move.
I am going to die here.
I am alone.
No one is here with me.
Alone…
I’m in this truck alone.
Foster is gone and only darkness surrounds me.
I press my head against the inside of the roof of the truck as the water consumes the cab.
I can’t see anything but darkness and water.
I can’t swim.
And soon the water is going to take over the truck.
This truck is going to be my tomb.
I close my eyes and brace myself for the end—
Fingers thread through mine and a hand brushes my cheek.
“I’ve got you,” someone whispers. “I promise I won’t let anything happen to you.”
I start to open my eyes, desperate to see their face. When I see their eyes, I gasp—
I jerk back, gasping for air, only to realize I’m standing in the gas station, not sinking in the lake again. There is no water around me. My savior is gone. Beth isn’t here anymore either, only the cashier guy who’s staring at me like I just sprouted a unicorn horn out of my ass.
He warily eyes me over from the other side of the counter. “Are you okay?”
I attempt to nod, but my head won’t cooperate. “I don’t know.”
“Are you on something?” he questions with an arch of his brow. “If you are, you need to leave the store. I don’t need any more damn kids coming in here high and then my ass gets in trouble when they disappear. Like I can control that shit.”
“What’re talking about?” I hug my arms around myself as I shuffle up the aisle toward him, confused.
So confused.
Always confused.
His eyes narrow at me. “Like you already don’t know.”
“I… I really don’t.”
He considers what I said with a scowl. “That girl your boyfriend was talking to in here the other night—Beth, I think her name is—went missing. And since this was the last place she was seen and according to some witnesses, she was high while she was here, the police think I had something to do with her disappearance. Funny thing is, the only people that saw her when she was here was your boyfriend, the guys you just pulled in here with, and you, so my bet is one of you told the police to come question me.”
What? “I didn’t—”
“I don’t want to hear your bullshit lies,” he cuts me off, lifting his hand. “Just get what you need and take your high ass out of my store.”
“I’m not high,” I mumble, although I kind of wish I was. At least then I’d have an excuse for what I just saw.
I suck in a gradual breath as the image of Beth, dirty, bloody, and broken sears my mind.
What was that? A hallucination?
But it felt so real.
Inhaling and exhaling, I turn to leave.
“And FYI, your little boyfriend, the one with the smartass mouth, is a liar,” the cashier calls out after me.
I stop dead in my tracks and twist back around. “Why would you say that?”
“Because he never lost his wallet that night. He came in here, threw it down on the counter, and told me to give it to him when he asked for it. The asshole didn’t even wait for me to agree to do it. Then he went into the bathroom with that Beth chick. My guess is to fuck her. Well, either that or get high with her. Either way, your boyfriend’s a liar. And probably a cheater.” He seems so pleased with himself that he’s telling me all these horrible things.
It should piss me off that he’s being so awful. But what he’s saying… What happened that night…
Memories stain the air around me like shadows of a past I can barely recall.
Beth had been crying when I’d come back into the gas station the second time. And she had been flirting and talking to Foster earlier. Could he have said something to upset her?
A chill spills across my flesh as another thought occurs to me.
Could Foster have something to do with Beth’s disappearance?
I shake my head. No. Foster was with me on the cliff that night. Still, that doesn’t mean the cashier is lying. That Foster didn’t do something with Beth the second time he entered the gas station. What was he doing, though? Getting high with her? I’d accused him of being stoned a handful of times that night, but I never really believed it. And he never really seemed stoned.
What other reason does that leave? That he was screwing Beth in the bathroom like the cashier implied. That’d mean he had sex with her right before he kissed me and told me he loved me.
A couple of weeks ago, I’d have been positive that couldn’t be true, but now…
Tears well in my eyes. I haven’t cried in weeks and the sensation feels foreign and strange. I feel so off balance, like I’m about to fall over. And I’ll keep falling and falling and falling down into an abyss.
Sucking back the tears, I run out of the gas station. Not wanting Porter to see me crying, I veer around to the side of the building. But the moment I round the corner, I regret my decision and slam to a halt.
Just a handful of feet away from me, Kingsley is standing by a dumpster, and beside him is Porter along with a guy who has the hood of his jacket drawn over his head.
I’m so confused. I never saw Kingsley leave the gas station, but maybe he slipped out the back door. Why, though?
“Look, I’m not sure how long I can do this,” Kingsley says as he roughly tugs his fingers through his hair. “It’s starting to take over my entire life.”
“I know it’s frustrating,” the stranger replies, reclining back against the wall of the gas station and lighting up a cigarette. “But you agreed to do this. Now you can always back out of the deal, but you’ll have to pay the consequences.”
Kingsley shakes his head. “I fucking hate this… Lying to everyone… to her.” He sighs. “But I get it. I did this to myself.”
“Yeah, you did,” the guy agrees, a cloud of smoke puffing from his lips.
“Oh, shut the fuck up, Evan,” Porter snaps, stuffing his hands into his back pockets. “Just because you have that stupid badge, doesn’t mean you’re better than us.”
Badge? Like a cop badge?
The stranger—Evan pushes from the wa
ll. “Maybe I should go over the list of reasons why you’re here and see if you still think that.”
Porter inches toward him with his fists curled at his sides. I sense a fight about to break out and I start to back away, but bump into a solid, cold object.
“Don’t run from him. Trust him,” Beth whispers in my ear.
Then I’m shoved forward.
I stumble, bumping my arm into the side of the building, but quickly regain my balance and push away from the wall. I throw a panicked glance behind me, hoping to all the stars that Beth is behind me. A human, very alive Beth. But nope. Nothing but darkness is there.
“Har, what’re you doing?” Kingsley asks with an edge in his tone.
He’s nervous.
That thought comes out of nowhere, but somehow I know…
Kingsley is nervous.
I slowly turn back around. “Um… I… I thought you had to piss?”
Jesus, out of everything I could say, those are the words I go with.
Nice, Harlynn. Really smooth.
Porter gives me a funny look then flicks a glance at Kingsley. “Dude, you told her you had to piss?”
Kingsley presses him with a look and Porter frowns, his gaze sliding to Evan, who’s observing me closely. I can tell that he’s a bit older than me with a scruffy jawline and an intense gaze. The kind of gaze my dad sometimes gets when he’s trying to figure out what to do with me after I’ve done something wrong.
Great. What in the hell did I just interrupt? A drug exchange or something?
But Porter said Evan has a badge. I guess cops can deal drugs, though. Although that wouldn’t make this situation any better.
“I’m going to go wait in the car,” I mutter, then spin around to haul ass away from them.
Fingers fold around my arm before I can make it very far. I tense as Kingsley steers me back around to face him.
His gaze skims across my face then a frown forms on his lips. “Were you crying just barely?”
I wipe my eyes with the sleeve of my jacket. “No, I have allergies,” I lie.
He shakes his head, but doesn’t say anything else about it. “Go wait in the car, okay? Porter and I just need to finish this up and then we can go.” His tone is surprisingly soft.
I nod, then high tail it away from there, walking straight to Porter’s car. Then I climb into the backseat and start conjuring up a plan of what I’m going to do. Should I pretend like I didn’t see anything? Or should I ask Kingsley and Porter what that was about? It was pretty clear I wasn’t supposed to overhear that conversation, and the old Harlynn would just let this go. But this new Harlynn wants the truth. How am I supposed to see the truth, though, when everyone around me keeps painting the air with lies? And all I can seem to do is breathe them in. Breathe in their lies, over and over again, letting them pollute my lungs and my mind.
Maybe that’s why I’m hallucinating Beth. Because my mind is so damn polluted with lies.
“Am I a hallucination, though?” She materializes in the seat beside me.
I squeeze my eyes shut. “You’re not real.”
“Maybe not to everyone,” she says. “But to you I may very well be the realest thing in your life right now.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means you can’t trust anyone. Not until you can see the truth.”
“What is the truth, though?” I whisper.
“There’s a lot of truth’s, Harlynn, but right here might be a good start.” She brushes her icy-cold fingers across my arm, drawing them downward and along the bandage on my wrist.
Then she pulls back and silence settles over me.
I crack my eyes open to find her gone.
My gaze drops to the bandage that conceals the feather-like wound. How can this be the start of the truth? What is this wound?
An idea comes to me and I dig my phone out of my pocket. Then I do a search on mysterious feather-shaped wounds. A few articles pop up and I start skim reading them. About the third article in, I stumble onto something that piques my interest:
A feather-shaped wound, also known as the Sight of Fallen Darkness, usually appears after someone has briefly slipped past the veil that divides the Land of the Living and the World of the Alive. The person who bears the mark has seen what lies in death. A handful of people with the mark have reported having certain abilities, most of which are related to, but aren’t limited to, being able to communicate with the dead, which some refer to as necromancy. Many psychics have the mark, but that doesn’t mean all who bare the mark can see the future.
After that, the article shifts focus to psychic abilities, something I’m fairly certain I don’t have. But necromancy… communicating with the dead…
A shudder rolls through my body.
Is Beth not a hallucination? Am I really talking to her?
Talking to her from the grave?
And does that mean Beth is dead?
Twenty-One
Harlynn
I remain in the car by myself for a bit, waiting for Beth to appear again, but she never does. Eventually my thoughts drift to the dream I had last night about Paige. Paige who was just found dead in the lake. Does that mean that somehow I’m communicating with her too?
Goosebumps sprout across my flesh and I shiver. If I can communicate with the dead, just how bad is this going to get? How many spirits are going to appear to me? And what about the incident in the gas station where I thought the entire place filled up with water and I was slammed back into a memory of that night in the lake? Is stuff like that going to happen to me more frequently?
My temples pound as my mind races with so many thoughts I can barely keep up with them. The wound on my wrist pulsates with pain to the point where I feel sick. I may have very well thrown up all over the floor of Porter’s car, but when him and Kingsley open the doors and climb in, strangely, the pain dissolves.
The second the doors shut, Kingsley rotates around in his seat, his lips parting. But then his eyes skim across my face and worry creases his features. “Are you okay?”
I nod, lowering my fingers from my temples. “I just have—or well, had a headache.”
But it went away when you climbed in.
The worry remains on his face. “Do you want to go get some painkillers from the gas station—”
“No,” I say way too quickly. When Kingsley’s brows rise at my outburst, I add, “Sorry, I’m just… The cashier in there was being a jerk and I don’t want to deal with him again.”
Kingsley glances at the gas station. So does Porter.
“Looks like Will’s working tonight,” Porter mutters, his gaze shifting to Kingsley.
They trade an indecipherable look then both their gazes slide to me.
“You want us to teach him a lesson, dead girl?” Porter asks with a hint of amusement.
“No,” I start to say but then pause. “Wait… What do you mean by that?”
Porter’s amusement doubles and Kingsley lets out a weighted sigh.
“Porter,” Kingsley warns, but Porter talks over him.
“What do you think it means?” Porter rests his elbow on the back of the seat as he turns to look at me. “Come on, dead girl, let us hear just how bad you think we are.”
Normally, I’d throw a snarky comeback at him. But with everything that’s happened over the last fifteen minutes, my minds too exhausted to banter right now.
“Who was that guy you were talking to over there?” I change the subject, pointing in the direction of the side of the gas station.
The smile fizzles from Porter’s lips and Kingsley’s frown deepens.
“It’s just some guy we know,” Kingsley replies evasively while Porter looks away and starts up the engine.
My gaze bounces back and forth between the two of them. I note how shifty they are. My initial instinct is to back off, but Beth’s voice purrs in my ear.
“Ask them,” she whispers. “You can’t get to the truth if you don’t ask for it.”
“I’ve been trying to ask for it,” I mutter underneath my breath. “No one will tell me anything.”
Kingsley glances over his shoulder at me with his brows knit. “What?”
“Nothing.” Jesus, I’m one step away from looking like I need to be locked up in a padded room. “Seriously, though, what were you guys doing with that Evan guy?”
Kingsley looks away from me, fiddling with a leather band on his wrist. “We were just talking to him. And his name’s not really Evan. That’s just what we call him.”
I chew on my bottom lip, trying to convince myself to shut the hell up, but apparently my mouth has taken on a mind of it’s own. “What did he mean by if you backed out, you’d have to pay the consequences? Are you… dealing drugs or something?”
Porter’s grip on the wheel tightens and a muscle in Kingsley’s jaw ticks. Nervousness edges through me, but when Kingsley gaze locks with mine, my anxiety lulls back to sleep.
“Look, as much as I wish I could tell you what that was about, I can’t,” he says, appearing apologetic. “But I promise it’s not as bad as you’re probably thinking. And while this is going to make the situation sound even sketchier, I really need you to just let this go for now and not bring it up to anyone. Not the conversation you heard. Not the guy you saw us with.” His eyes silently plead with me. “Please, Har.”
How can I say no when he’s looking at me like that?
“You promise it’s not bad?” I ask and he nods. I hitch out my pinkie in front of me. “Pinkie swear it then.”
A soft smile graces his lips. While I haven’t done the pinkie swearing thing with Kingsley as much as I have with Foster, we did it a couple of times when we were younger and still hung out sometimes. We even did it when he gave me my very first kiss, and he pinkie swore that my fish was in a better place...
“I promise it’s not suffering,” he assures me after I confessed to him that I’m worried death is hurting the fish.
I sniffle. “You swear it?”
He sticks out his pinkie in front of him. “I pinkie swear it.”
I smile, feeling a bit better already. Pinkie swearing means he’s telling the truth. So, I hitch my pinkie with his.
Breathing Lies: (The Breathing Undead Series, Book 1) Page 14
