by Clara Kensie
“Tristan wants us here,” I said, forcing the words past the Nightmare Eyes. “I want us here.”
“It’ll be hard at first,” Jillian cooed, “for both of you. But you’ll see. Once we’re far away from this place, Tristan will be happier, his family will be happier, everyone will be happier. You want Tristan to be happy, don’t you? Leaving is the right thing to do.”
The Nightmare Eyes burned from above, agreeing with Jillian.
Logan floated the last of my belongings into my bag. It zipped itself up.
“Wait,” Tristan cried, growing desperate. “You don’t have to leave right this minute. Let’s just talk about it some more.”
“There’s no point in stalling,” Logan said. The room started vibrating, a low rumble. Marmalade leapt off the dresser and hid under the bed. “All you’ll do is try to convince us to stay, but there’s nothing anyone can do or say to make us change our mind. We’re leaving. Now.” The rumbling got louder, and the dresser drawers rattled.
“No.” Tristan strode over and pulled me to him, wrapping his arms around me. “You’re staying here. All of you.”
“Tristan, let her go,” Logan said, “or I swear to God I’ll rip—” He stopped, then adjusted his words, his voice low and menacing. “I could, but I’m not going to hurt you. But if you don’t let her go right now, I’ll take her away from you myself, and lock you up somewhere you won’t get out of until we are long gone.” The closet door slammed itself shut, enforcing Logan’s warning.
Tristan tightened his hold on me. “Try it.”
Jillian put her hand up. “Logan, there’s no need for threats,” she said, calmly, serenely. The room stopped vibrating. She approached me, still in Tristan’s arms, and cupped my cheeks. “Babydoll, we’ve caused everyone so much pain. But you can make it stop. You can end it. You don’t belong here. You know it, and deep down, Tristan knows it.”
The Nightmare Eyes knew it too.
“You belong with Logan and me,” Jillian said. “We’re your family. We’re your only family.”
That wasn’t true. I had another family. The Connellys.
But I still had to choose.
Jillian and Logan, or Tristan, Dennis, Deirdre, and Ember.
I looked up at Tristan, to my siblings, and back to Tristan.
The Nightmare Eyes watched. Killers’ Spawn, they taunted, high and invisible, but condemning and unforgiving. My tainted, tarnished blood coursed through my veins, scorching me, scalding me, scarring me.
There was only one choice to make.
I chose Jillian and Logan.
My brother and sister stood by the open front door, getaway bags in hand, as I sat with Tristan on the couch in the family room. He scraped his hand through his hair. “Where are you going to go?” His voice was tight, strained, like it hurt to say every word.
“We haven’t decided yet.” I’d wrapped myself in the thickest fog possible, but it wasn’t enough to numb my heartache, or to extinguish the fire in my blood. My lungs were rocks, and I could barely speak. “Maybe back home to Virginia. Maybe we’ll go somewhere south. Jillian likes the warmer states.”
It took him a long time to speak again. “You said you were never running again.”
“I’m not running,” I said. “I’m not hiding either. No more aliases. We’re using our real names.” I was wearing a soft white sweater that Deirdre had purchased for me, not one of Tristan’s hoodies, and I was leaving my phone behind. Not that it would make a difference. If Tristan wanted to find us, he could. He wouldn’t even need the APR’s help. “Please don’t look for us. Not even if you have a warning premonition about me. You’ll be too far to stop anything from happening anyway. It’ll be easier that way.”
He just shook his head. “Not for me.”
“We left the money upstairs in the duffle bag,” I said. “We took a little. Just enough to last us a few days. We’ll pay it back as soon as we can. We don’t want any of that money. We want you to return it to the victims.” I swallowed hard. “The victims’ families, anyway.”
“What will you do for money?”
“Our mother used to clean motels in exchange for a room. We can do the same thing. I can cook at a diner.” But if I cooked, I’d be around all those silver sparkling knives. “Or I could be a waitress.”
His head was down, and he wouldn’t look at me. “You’re making a mistake.”
“They’re my brother and sister, Tristan. I have to stay with them.” They were Killers’ Spawn, like me.
Killers’ Spawn, the Nightmare Eyes echoed.
But the Nightmare Eyes were right. No matter how much Tristan loved me, he never would have blood that burned through his veins like a disease. But maybe, hopefully, once we started a new, normal life somewhere else, the Nightmare Eyes would fade and my blood wouldn’t burn so much.
Marmalade padded over, then climbed onto my lap and mewed.
“What about Marmalade?” Tristan asked. “Are you leaving her too?”
“She’s coming with me.” Ember would have taken good care of her, I knew, but Marmalade was my kitten. She’d already been abandoned by her mother, and I couldn’t abandon her too. And Jillian wanted her. Marmalade soothed her.
Tristan took Marmalade and stood, pulling me up with him. “Fine. Then I’m coming too. We can take my car. I’ll go pack right now.”
I wanted him to come with me. I wanted to say yes, come with me, keep your arm around my shoulders and crawl into bed with me and chase my nightmares away and kiss me, kiss me, kiss me.
Instead, I looked around the Connelly’s cluttered family room, at the art projects and sports trophies and the dozens of family photos on the walls. The fog was thick, but the Nightmare Eyes burned it away to show me the visions:
Tristan and the Lab Brats cheering at the annual Connelly Superbowl party. Three years ago.
Tristan, coming back from a college tour, exclaiming how much fun it’ll be to live in the dorms. Two years ago.
Tristan bursting into the house, proudly announcing that he was chosen to be a junior agent at the APR, the first step in his career plan to become executive director. Eighteen months ago.
Tristan kissing Melanie as she looks up at him like he’s her knight in shining armor, the night before he left for his first mission in a little town called Twelve Lakes. One year ago.
Tristan, stretching his arms around the back of the couch, sighing contentedly, happy with his life. Ten years ago, five years ago, two years ago, one year ago.
I couldn’t take that away from him. If he came with me, he’d be giving up everything that made him happy. If he stayed, he’d keep his family. He could become an investigator for the APR. He’d get Melanie back. He could easily slay her dragons, and he would finally feel like a hero again.
I had to do to him what my mother had done to me: set him free, so he could be happy.
“You can’t come, Tristan. You need to stay here.”
He hung his head, and when he spoke, his voice was strangled and aching and raw. “What about us? You and me?”
My heart echoed in rhythm: Thump. Thump-th-thump.
But that was the last time. Because there could be no more us. There could be no more you and me.
My heart was bound in barbed wire and it squeezed, squeezed, squeezed.
I took his face between my palms. Stroked his stubble. Ran my fingers through his tousled hair. Stared into his blue eyes, imprinting them into my mind, so when I slept, I would dream of them instead of the Nightmare Eyes.
“I love you, Tristan.” I brought him down and kissed him one last time, his warm lips and soft breath—
But he pushed away. “No. I won’t just sit here and let us end. We belong together, Tessa. You can leave, but I’m coming with you. Give me five minutes to grab my things. Wait for me. Five minutes.”
“Tristan…” I started to protest, to argue, to tell him us was over. But the words wouldn’t come.
I closed my eyes. Took a breath.
Licked my lips, swallowed.
But I still couldn’t say it.
So instead I said, “Okay. Five minutes.”
He lit up, kissed me hard, then sprinted upstairs.
As soon as he was out of sight, I grabbed a notepad and pen from the coffee table. I could have written a million words, but I needed only eight.
Tristan,
I love you.
I’m sorry.
Goodbye.
~Tessa
I took off my promise ring, placed it on the note, and scooped up Marmalade. Then Jillian, Logan, and I slipped out the front door.
The white sedan that Jillian and Logan had driven here was purchased with money our parents had stolen, so we didn’t want it. We drove it to the bus depot on Main Street and left it in the parking lot. Someone, Tristan probably, would find it and turn it in to the APR.
The Nightmare Eyes hovered over me like a storm cloud as we stood in the shiny Plexiglas bus shelter. Jillian and Logan wanted to leave Lilybrook so we could forget everything, but I could never forget. The scars on my stomach were a permanent reminder of my parents, and I would never allow myself to forget Tristan—I owed him that much.
Lilybrook was quiet on this cold weekday morning; almost everyone was at home or work or school or yoga class. Very few cars drove down Main Street, and except for a pair of speed walkers in matching Under Armour, there were no pedestrians. The only thing my siblings and I wanted to see coming down the street was the bus. We had a twenty-minute wait, so I kept Marmalade warm inside my jacket.
A vehicle rolled down the street and pulled into the parking lot, but it was just a Jeep. The door opened, and Cole Gallagher stepped out in his black APR jacket.
Great. We hadn’t even made it out of town before they sent someone after us.
Jillian and Logan went rigid out of habit, and I went rigid out of determination. Tristan could beg, Dennis could demand, Deirdre could cry. We were still leaving Lilybrook. Our mother wanted us to leave. Except for the Connellys, no one wanted us here. Tristan, eventually, would be happier without me. No matter how much it hurt, no matter how my lungs ached so much that they felt like rocks, no matter how many tears I had to blink away before they fell, leaving was the right thing to do.
Cole lifted his cell phone to his ear. “I found them, Deirdre. At the bus depot on Main Street. No problem. I’ll tell them.” He snapped the phone shut and pocketed it as he jogged over.
“You’re not bringing us back, Cole,” I said.
“That’s not why—” He flinched. “Wow, you’re upset. Just hit me hard.” He put his hand on his chest and took a shallow breath. “It’s like my lungs are rocks.”
The knowledge that Cole felt my anguish made a tear fall, and I swiped it away. “I’ll be fine.”
Jillian put her arm around me. “She may be upset now, but she understands why we have to leave.”
“Please tell Deirdre and Dennis that I’m sorry,” I said. God, after everything they’d done for me, I hadn’t even left them a note. “And tell them I said thank you. For everything.”
Cole sighed and rubbed the back of his neck, his brows drawn together over his tawny brown eyes. “Tessa, I don’t know how to tell you this…”
“What is it?” Something was wrong. He looked too distraught for something not to be wrong. “Is Tristan okay?”
“It’s Dennis,” Cole said. “He was still tired from the trip to Star River, and when he and Deirdre got back from buying the beds and learned you were gone, I don’t know, maybe all of it was too much for him.…”
Oh no. “Cole, what happened?” I cried. “What happened to Dennis?”
“He had a heart attack. It’s bad, Tessa.”
A heart attack. The fog swooped in and my legs lost their strength and I sank to the bench, and Cole was talking, each word fainter and fainter, disappearing down a tunnel as my periphery narrowed. “Deirdre says if you want to say goodbye, you’d better come now.”
❀
Say goodbye. I needed to say goodbye to Dennis. I’d left without saying goodbye, and now I had to say a real goodbye, a permanent goodbye, and it may be too late.
“Please,” I begged my brother and sister. “Please let me say goodbye to him.”
Perhaps out of respect for Dennis, or maybe because of the rasping sob that pushed its way from my throat, Jillian and Logan nodded grimly. They followed me as I stumbled through the fog, following Cole to his Jeep. They climbed into the back, and I held a squirming Marmalade against my chest and buckled myself in the passenger seat. “Hurry, Cole. Please.”
Please don’t let it be too late.
Cole pulled onto Main Street and sped off. I was going to see Tristan again, less than an hour after I’d left him. I could picture him in the APR’s clinic, sitting at his father’s bedside. Knees wide, head down, occasionally raking his hand through his hair. Devastated about his father. Devastated about me.
I watched through the fog as Cole turned off Main Street, onto a smaller, woodsy road that wound around Lilybrook Lake. “We should be there in less than ten minutes,” he said.
My mother had given Dennis his first heart attack, and now I had given him his last. He went to Star River to help me. He came back and I’d left, breaking his heart, for real.
I really was Killers’ Spawn.
Ten minutes had never seemed so long.
The Nightmare Eyes burned into me, yet I shivered. They hovered above me, dark as a starless night and black as a cavern of coal. I lowered the fog but they wouldn’t go away. All I felt was my tainted blood pulsing through my veins.
Cole glanced sideways at me, my anguish mirrored on his face, but he didn’t say anything. Agitated, Marmalade squeaked and jumped from my arms into the backseat.
As Cole raced around the lake, the Nightmare Eyes burned through the fog. Hating me, accusing me. I squeezed my eyes closed, certain that if I looked up, I would see the Nightmare Eyes glowering down at me, full of grief and despair and shame and fury. But behind my closed lids, all I saw were images of all the people my family had hurt. Aaron Jacobs, burned and scarred. The college professor I’d contacted for help back in Twelve Lakes. Gavin, the only boy my sister had ever loved. The waitress at a Georgia truck stop, the one my mother had killed with a heart attack. The politicians and businessmen my parents had blackmailed and killed. Timothy Brunswick and Kip Gallagher. And the loved ones they’d left behind. Melanie. Nathan and Cole. Kellan.
Now Dennis was dying, and he would leave behind Deirdre, and Ember, and Tristan.
So many victims. So much death. So much grief. So much pain.
It was too much. I pried my lids open again, but it did nothing to relieve the ache.
Behind me, Jillian and Logan jerked back and forth as we jostled down the poorly paved road.
Next to me, Cole swerved around a fallen branch. Why were we driving around the lake? The APR was the other way, wasn’t it?
Above me, the Nightmare Eyes continued to glower and burn, dark as a starless night and black as a cavern of coal.
Black as a cavern of coal.
Black as a cavern of coal.
Black as a cavern of…
Cole.
No.
No, no, no, no, no!
No. Please.
But yes. My father. Lady Elke. They hadn’t gotten the Nightmare Eyes from me. They’d gotten the Nightmare Eyes from Cole.
Slowly, I turned to see him watching me, his eyes black, deep, endless, eternal black, and filled with shame and grief and guilt and fury. “The Nightmare Eyes are yours?”
“No, Tessa. The Nightmare Eyes have always been yours,” he said. “But I know exactly how you feel, so I took them and projected them into as many people as I could.”
“Tessa?” Jillian said from the back. “What are Nightmare Eyes?”
Cole raised a tranq gun, and in the space between heartbeats he fired once at Jillian, once at Logan, and once at me.
I had just
enough time to feel a sharp pinch in my neck and the instant spreading burn, and then the fog closed in, and there was nothing.
Foggy.
Groggy.
Muscles deadened.
Pulled from the car.
Tossed roughly over a shoulder.
Heart pounding.
Breath gone.
Jillian and Logan. Where were they?
I put all my strength into lifting my eyelids. Through my lashes, I saw something orange dash by—Marmalade? In the distance, through a snarl of leafless trees, I saw a sliver of Lilybrook Lake, its blue water shimmering peacefully in the sun.
Arms dangling and useless, unable to move, I could only watch Cole’s booted feet trudge down a dirt path strewn with dead leaves. Spring birds chirped somewhere above me in the trees.
His boots making a hollow echoey sound, Cole stepped onto a wooden porch, gray with rot, then carried me inside a cabin. A bright, glowing, luminous cabin. It glittered and glimmered, sparkled and glowed.
With silver.
Cole dropped me, and I landed on my shoulder and hip. It hurt. Not as much as it should have, but any amount of pain was good—the tranquilizer was wearing off already. I blinked, trying to see through the fog, through the fear, through the silver. Jillian and Logan were sprawled next to me, eyes closed, limbs splayed like discarded rag dolls. Jillian’s blond hair covered her face. They weren’t moving, but they were breathing.
“So this is why you wanted me to safeguard you?” a gruff voice said from the other side of the cabin. Though I couldn’t see him, I knew it was Nathan.
“Thought I’d bring you a little present,” Cole said. “Three presents, actually.”
More silver flashed, and I looked up to see what made everything so bright and blinding.
