by Bre Hall
“It looks like someone trashed the place,” Ren said.
“Like they were looking for someone,” Peter said. He let go of Ren’s hand and stepped carefully over the forgotten belongs. On the window sill sat an old, leather-bound Bible. Peter opened it and pulled out a letter. “I found this the other day. Mrs. Johnson wrote it to someone named Eileen. It never got to her obviously.”
“What does it say?” Ren asked, trying to get a look at the tight, cursive handwriting scrawled across the aged paper.
Dearest Eileen,
I fear the sweet, romantic days of living in the quiet countryside are nearing their end. Oliver, as always, has gotten us into a situation I don’t see him getting us out of. We are leaving tonight, a suitcase each, and we won’t be returning. I don’t know where we’re going, only Oliver seems to, but, as I look into his eyes and try to see the gleam that was there the day we first met and find nothing but a spooked spirit, I’m not even sure he knows what’s next. I’ll write soon, once we are settled again.
All my love,
JoAnn.
Peter shook the letter. “How about that for proof?”
“Why didn’t she send it?”
“Maybe they ran out of time.” Peter folded the note into thirds. Pressed it like a flower into the Bible. “Or she slid it into the book to send later and accidentally left it behind.”
Ren wondered why the police never stumbled upon any of this information. Perhaps someone on the inside knew about the Johnson’s trouble. Maybe they were in just as deep and the story of a murder was the coverup. Small towns have a way of feeding oxygen to the coldest ember and sending up a flame. Or, possibly, the Johnsons were always to remain a mystery.
“It’s a possibility.” Ren stepped over a pair of overalls and a set of high heels. She scooped up a dusty, green midi dress with a full skirt, white daisies speckled over the hem like pixie dust. She held the dress up to herself and popped a hip out like she imagined Mrs. Johnson might have done back then. “How does it look?”
Peter tapped the middle of his square chin. “It’s missing something.”
He leaned out over several tattered books and plucked up a pearl necklace, draped across a man’s steel-toed work boot. Then, he made his way to where she stood and strung the pearls around her neck. His fingertips grazing her skin made her shiver as he fumbled with the clasp.
“Better?” she asked.
Peter grabbed her chin between his thumb and forefinger and tilted her face toward his. He smiled and answered her with a kiss. His hands roamed her waist, her hips. She dropped the dress and ran her fingers through his curls. Peter pulled her closer to him. His thumb ran down her spine, passing over every vertebra until he reached her lower back. His fingers brushed under her t-shirt just as a clap of thunder crashed down on the house.
They pulled apart. Lightning lit the room up in a silver blaze. Rain pounded like horse hooves on the old roof.
“I should go,” Ren whispered.
It was the storm pressing pause that made her realize how much in fast forward she and Peter had been moving. It made her dizzy.
“Stay.” Peter nuzzled into her neck. “Wait out the storm.”
“It’s dinner time,” she said. “Meredith will be wondering where I am.”
Peter breathed heavily. “Okay.”
They walked down the stairs, hand in hand, and stepped out onto the porch. The electricity in the air was palpable. It set Ren buzzing from the crown of her head to the very edge of her longest toe. She let go of Peter and stepped off the porch. As soon as the first gush of rain washed over her, she was jumping back.
“What is it?” Peter’s forehead wrinkled.
“I’m so frazzled I forgot my jacket.”
Peter held up a single finger—wait—and disappeared into the house. She studied the white sheet of rain and listened as the thunder hammer down on her ear drums. She thought, briefly, about staying for a while longer, but then Peter was back, helping her into her jean jacket, and the thought was gone. He kissed her once and let her go. She backed slowly down the steps, waiting for him to invite her to stay again. She wouldn’t say no. Waiting for him to offer to walk her home. She would say yes. As her boots hit the ground, the grass submerged in thick mud, she watched Peter pull a cigarette from his case and light it.
She turned her back and jogged to her bike.
The seat was wet, but there was no sense in wiping it down. Her ass would be soaked clear through in seconds regardless. She flung a leg over, glanced back at Peter one last time, and cycled away.
The driveway was dark. The road darker. When she crossed the steel truss bridge, she sent a little prayer up to whoever was listening not to allow the metal beams to conduct electricity from the lightning and strike her dead. She zoomed onto the other side, the slick gravel road turning to even slicker asphalt and brick. To keep from sliding into a roadside ditch by accident, she kept her tires stitched to the very center of the street, breathing a little bit lighter when she saw houses and street lamps wink into view.
At Main Street, she slowed. Toyed briefly with the idea of turning right instead of left. Pedaling to Alfie’s house instead of hers and telling him about the latest regression. About Peter and how much he had come to mean to her in the past day or two. Even as she thought it, she knew it was a stupid idea. Alfie would scoff at the idea of her and Peter’s relationship—or whatever it was—and would only be hurt that she hadn’t invited him to the Johnson house that afternoon.
She turned left, away from Alfie’s, and kept tight to the sidewalk, close to the streetlamps.
As she passed Richard’s Antiques, a grumble of thunder threatened her from above. A flash of lightning. The whine of wind as it pushed raindrops down on her sideways. No one was driving through town and most of the shops were closed already for the night. Only a few, lonely windows glowing in naked light.
She neared the city limits, and the clouds wretched open. She was losing light again, little by little, and her good eye was straining to see the road. Only the feel of the asphalt beneath her tires and the occasional bolt of lightning illuminating her path kept her moving in the right direction.
Headlights appeared in the far-off distance. A broken beam of gold. It didn’t help her vision. She tried not to look directly at the car, but it was difficult when it came screaming past a few moments later, spraying up a wave of water from the road that only soaked her further. She wavered for a moment after the vehicle had passed, then flipped her middle finger at its taillights.
“Asshole,” she muttered, glancing over her shoulder to glare at the car. The brake lights were illuminated and it was spinning back around. The headlights blinded her.
The car was coming back. Approaching fast.
Her head snapped forward. She pedaled hard. Surely they hadn’t seen her flip them the bird and were coming back to spray her again just for the hell of it. She sighed. It was probably some guy she went to school with. Bored. Bad tempered. Garret Monahan or one of his football buddies.
The car seemed to be picking up speed so she moved to the left-hand side of the road, giving them a wide birth. They’d splash her again, she was sure of it, but at least they wouldn’t run her off the road in the process. She gazed back, wanting to get a look at the driver, if she could.
It could have been the rain, the lack of light, the one eye, but it almost looked like they were angling toward her. Driving up the wrong side of the road. But she couldn’t be sure. Not until they were right there. Inches from her back tire.
“Shit,” she yelped as the car came down on top of her.
A high-pitched scream rang out above the downpour. Burning light. Something hard slammed into her side.
Darkness, blacker than the night, consumed her.
chapter
19
SHE STOOD IN A BLACK void, a hollow that extended infinitely. Her breathing was shallow, ragged. She blinked as pillars of light swirled down beside her. As the light
faded, a person was left in its place. Soon, she was not alone. A sinewy woman who wore dreadlocks to her hips. A shirtless teenage boy in hide trousers with war paint drawn across his dark chest, cheeks. More. Thousands of faces. Eyes turned toward her. Staring at her from every corner of the void.
Two of them stepped forward, the crowd parting smoothly to let them pass. Ren recognized them instantly. One with long, black curls, wearing a bell-shaped plum ball gown. Charlotte. She clung tightly to the hand of a curveless girl, slender nose lifted slightly, blue eyes wandering. Lizzie.
“Wh-where am I?” Ren stumbled forward. Her voice, her steps, echoed. Pinged off the bodies of the silent crowd.
“You’re with us, darlin’,” Charlotte cooed.
“Am I dead?”
“Not this time,” Lizzie said in her familiar Irish lilt. “Not yet.”
“You need to go back,” Charlotte said. “We all need you to go back.”
The crowd murmured, nodded. A few distinct voices uttered single words: Yes, please, go. Then, a voice rose above the rest. A soft-spoken woman she couldn’t see through the masses.
“Be careful,” the voice whispered, followed by a thousand bobbing heads.
Charlotte reached out and squeezed Ren’s hand. She could feel herself lifting up off her toes. Then, Lizzie took her other hand, an electric shock, like the kind you get after you’ve run over the carpet and then touch the television screen.
“Now, then,” Charlotte said.
Lizzie finished her sentence. “It’s time for you to go.”
In one, sharp burst every single person in the crowd disappeared. Became light again. Swirled away. Ren took one last look at Charlotte and Lizzie before they too became light. Then, Ren slipped through the dark floor and fell through the emptiness of the hollow void. It was different than falling into the regressions. The same, stomach-lurching, light-headed feeling, but there was no light. No color. For all she knew, she could be falling into oblivion. She could be dead, despite what they had told her.
“Ren?” she heard a voice reaching out to her as she descended. The sound was distorted at first. Far away, but it kept on. The longer she fell, the more attuned she was to the sound. Deep, gravelly, familiar. Peter. “Ren?”
She slammed into the ground. Hard. She gasped. Opened her eyes. An orange ember glowed above her. A cigarette hung from Peter’s lips. She could just make out his outline in the night. The whites of his eyes. The lines of his shoulder blades, pressing through his rain-soaked jacket.
She inhaled sharply as her recent memories came flooding back to her. Rain, car, slam, void, past, falling. “What the hell just happened?”
“It’s okay,” Peter said, grabbing her shoulders between his hands. A fleck of ash sprinkled down from his cigarette and disintegrated in the drizzle of rain. She turned her head to the left. Stalks of unharvested sorghum. To the right. Blacktop. No car in sight. Nothing.
“What happened to my bike?”
Peter laughed. “You were almost run over and you’re worried about your bike?”
“It’s a nice bike,” she said. “It has sentimental value.”
Peter stroked her cheek with one of his knuckles. “I’m not worried about your bike. I’m worried about you. Do you feel okay?”
She wiggled her toes. That was a good sign, right? “I think so. What happened? Where’s the car that hit me?”
“It almost hit you,” Peter said.
“I felt it slam into me,” she said.
Peter shook his head. “That was me.”
“You?”
“I knocked you out of the way.” He took a drag off his cigarette. “As soon as you left the house, I had a bad feeling. Something in the air, you know. I thought maybe it was just the electricity in the storm, but I couldn’t think about anything else. I had to follow you and make sure you were okay. I should have just walked you home.”
“How’d you get here so quickly on foot?” she asked.
Peter chuckled. “I wasn’t on foot.”
Right. Winged creature. No wonder humans called them angels. Swooping in. Saving everyone. She wondered if more of Peter’s kind were still looking after humanity or if they had all become pompous, too good for the mortals.
She pushed up onto an elbow and tried to sit up. Peter slid a hand behind her neck and helped her. His fingers were icy. She shivered.
“What idiot tries to hit someone?” Ren asked. “I bet it was some douche bag from school.”
“It was them.”
“Them?”
“Yes,” Peter said.
“Them them?” she asked. “Like as in—”
“The Rogue Auxilium,” Peter finished. “The ones who want you dead.”
“I thought the experiments were supposed to keep them away?” she asked. “Like my strengthening soul is supposed to be some kind of ward against them.”
“Not exactly,” Peter said. “What we’re doing is meant to help you protect yourself against the Auxilium.”
“Why did you save me, then?” she asked.
“You’re not strong enough.” Peter pulled her to her feet. Looped an arm around her waist to steady her. His fingertips pressed into her hip bone. She liked how safe she felt near him.
“I’m falling into past lives every day,” she said. “How long do I have to do that before I will be strong enough?”
“Soon,” he said.
“After Lizzie?”
“Perhaps,” he said, but she could hear the waver in his voice. Uncertainty.
They began to walk down the side of the highway. The rain had turned to a velvet mist and a patch of night sky, stars twinkling, shined above. A cut of moonlight fell down on the blacktop and lit a path to the edge of the fence that ran alongside the farmhouse’s driveway. Just a few more pumps of her bike pedals and she would have made it home. No accident. No rescue. No visit to the crowded void.
“I saw them,” she said.
“What?”
“When I blacked out or whatever,” she said. “I was in this empty kind of room and all these people started to appear. I don’t know if they were my past lives showing themselves or what, but Charlotte and Lizzie were there. They spoke to me.”
“And what did they say?” Peter asked, his voice pinched.
“Not much,” she said. “Just to keep doing what I was doing.”
“Good,” Peter said. His fingers pushed harder into her hip. She was so close to him it was hard to walk out of step. Like they were in a three-legged race or something.
“And to be careful,” she added.
He loosened his grip on her. Stopped. He started to speak twice but remained silent. When they began walking, he let her go entirely, pulling out his cigarette case, the butt of his last smoke finished. He threw the old one on the ground and lit a new one.
“Did they say anything else?” he asked, his voice suddenly distant, as if he were thinking about something entirely different. “Anything at all?”
“No,” she said.
She wanted him to slip his arm around her waist again, pull her close. She wanted to lean her head on his shoulder and stop the questions reeling through her mind. Why was she supposed to be careful? Careful of what? Of who? Why was Peter so aggravated by it? He’d traded her for a cigarette, right? For something to calm him. Why did he need to be calmed? She had an urge to run down the driveway and into the comfort of her house. Jump under the blankets of her bed and burrow in until morning.
“Good,” Peter said. He exhaled a stream of smoke through his nostrils.
“How is that good?” she asked.
“It’s good they didn’t say anything else because I’m sure it’s all very confusing to you,” he said. “All of this is new. It’s layer upon layer of new. I don’t want you to get overwhelmed.”
“I’m fine,” she said.
They reached the driveway. Peter stopped and leaned against the dented mailbox. He took another drag off his cigarette “I forgot to tell you, I won�
�t be able to see you tomorrow.”
“Why not?” Her worries were trickling out of her like blood from a nasty cut.
“Don’t worry,” he said, flicking his thumb against the butt of his cigarette. “I just have to check on something.”
“What?” she asked.
“It’s just something I have to do,” he said and kissed her forehead before turning away. He shuffled back down the road.
“I’ll come over Monday, then,” she said. “After school?”
Peter spun back to face her. Spoke as he walked. “I might be a few days. I’ll come and see you when I’m back.”
“Back?” she asked. He was just a few feet away from her, but it felt like thousands of miles. “Where exactly are you going?”
Peter sucked on his cigarette and blew the smoke into the moistened air. “Don’t worry about it.”
“But I don’t even have your phone number,” she said.
“I don’t have one,” he said. “I’ll only be gone a couple of days.”
She twisted her toe in the gravel of the driveway. “If you say so.”
“A little trust, Ren,” he said, almost annoyed. Before she could find the words to shout back at him, Peter was stepping over the ditch and slipping between the stalks of a neighbor’s corn field. A moment later, a silver light shot out from the field and across the sky, a high-pitched wail following it, and all at once, Peter was gone.
chapter
20
“WHERE’S YOUR BIKE?” ALFIE ASKED Ren Sunday afternoon. Only his head was visible, his eyes peering at her over the top of a headstone in the cemetery. He hadn’t answered her phone calls and it wasn’t like either of them texted. Meredith wouldn’t even let Ren get close to going over their family-shared minutes and Alfie’s mom didn’t believe in cell phones. Ren had walked the two miles into town and, when she couldn’t find Alfie at his house, went straight to the cemetery. She was tired of avoiding him, and after her whirlwind Saturday with Peter, she needed someone to talk to.
