Then the strangest thing happened: He dematerialized. He became fog and I breathed him in, his essence hot and acidic. It burned my throat as I swallowed him, scorched my lungs as I inhaled until he was no longer and we were one.
“No!”
We turned and saw a man running toward us. A most curious sight, we thought.
“No!” he yelled over the wind, skidding to a stop beside us, falling to his knees. “No, I summoned you, dammit! Not her.”
He was screaming in our face and we didn’t like it. We looked over, found a stick, and decided to stab him. Part of us was surprised at how easily the stick penetrated the material of his shirt and sank into his abdomen. The other part was pleased. The dark spirits no longer rushed past us. If they got close, they would turn suddenly and head in a different direction, like fish in an aquarium. We watched as the gate in the sky closed. We watched as the wind died down and the countryside settled into complacency. We watched as the man staggered away from us, his eyes wide with fear.
And then we lay down and slept.
* * *
I covered my face with both hands as the memory faded. I wasn’t crying. I’d dug in my heels, set my jaw, and held that girlish reaction at bay—and yet my lashes were still saturated, salty tears still ran in rivulets down my cheeks and dripped off my chin as I peeked through my fingers and stared wide-eyed at the gravel beneath my knees.
I sat in stunned stillness. Trying to accept what had happened as reality. Failing. Grasping the edges of reason. Losing my grip. Clawing. Ripping. Sinking.
“The boss wants a word.”
A word. I frowned.
“Now.”
My line of sight slid down to land on an expensive pair of men’s shoes planted a foot apart in front of me. It traveled slowly up dark pants; a light blue shirt, half-tucked; sleeves rolled up to the elbows; and a red tie. The same red tie he wore that night in the forest.
John Dell scowled at me. “I’m sick of this place and I’m sick of you. Get in the van.” He pointed to the official Tourist Channel van parked a few feet away, sliding door open, like a mouth waiting to swallow me.
I blinked back to him. “Go to heck,” I whispered, my voice breathy and tired. It seemed all I could manage. I felt more drained now than I had when Brooke and I decided to stay up for two days straight. If there were ever a time for an energy drink, now would be it.
Before I could even think about standing up, my head whipped around and a blinding pain exploded in it. I spun and fell to the ground as the world tumbled beneath me. After taking a moment to orient myself, I struggled onto my hands and knees, then watched in awe as blood dripped from my head onto the powdery earth below.
And quite frankly, I’d had just about enough of it.
I crawled onto one knee and turned on him. Slipping into my best glower, I lowered my voice, controlled the tone and inflection of every word, every syllable, striving to make myself sound menacing, as I had only days earlier with Glitch. “Do you have any idea what I’m capable of?”
His eyes widened a fraction of an inch before he caught himself and narrowed them on me in suspicion. “Besides painting your nails?”
He’d hit me with the butt of a knife he had wrapped within his meaty grasp. The knife looked old. Ceremonial. Which couldn’t be good.
“Please,” I scoffed. “Why do you think the boss wants me? Wait, he didn’t tell you, did he?” When the man hesitated, I continued. “How do you think I survived a two-ton truck slamming into me, you idiot?” I started to stand, but the world tilted to the left, so I stayed put and continued the menacing bit. This could actually work if one of two things proved true: I had some really cool superpower I’d never known about or John Dell had an unnatural fear of short pixie chicks with unruly hair.
“Oh, my god,” I heard a feminine voice say. It was accompanied by the rhythmic click of heels coming from the sidewalk in front of the store. “Did you fall again?”
No way. Surely the creature whose name shall not be spoken aloud had better things to do on a Friday night than watch me bleed into the dirt.
“Do you even know how to walk?”
I looked past Mr. McCreepy, slammed my eyes shut to stop the spin of the earth, then focused on one of the dumbest people I’d ever known. The guy had a knife, for heaven’s sake.
“I’m looking for my parents. Oh, wait, aren’t you that reporter?” She flipped a strand of long blond hair over her shoulder and flashed him her twenty-dollar smile. “You know, I’ve done some acting.”
“Tabitha, wait,” I muttered, trying to shut her up. Partly to save her and partly because the high-pitched whine in her voice was making my head throb even worse.
Too late. Mr. McCreepy pulled her in front of him and put the knife to her throat. From this angle, her head was so freaking big.
“Oh, my gosh,” she said.
“Get in the van,” he repeated.
“O-okay.”
“Not you,” he said to Tabitha, annoyed, then fixed a warning glower on me. “Now.”
With the world tossing me to and fro, I felt absolutely useless. And I was pretty certain by that point I did not, in fact, have a latent superpower. Surely, he wouldn’t actually hurt her. I couldn’t give up my advantage now. I almost had him convinced I was nigh indestructible.
With a smirk, I decided to call his bluff. “Go ahead, kill her.”
Before I even had time to blink, the knife sliced across her throat. I looked on in disbelief as blood cascaded out of her neck and down her chest to saturate the pretty white blouse she wore. She grabbed her throat with both hands, her eyes wide with shock as the most disturbing gurgling sound bubbled out of her. Dell let go. She slid down his body to land before me, the blood coursing through her fingers unheeded.
I closed my eyes, blocking out the scene, the gush of dark red. When I reopened them, we were … back.
“Now,” Dell said as he held Tabitha against him, the knife at her throat, anger apparent in his volatile expression.
I jumped in surprise, looked around, then swayed a little with the movement. We were back. How on earth? Maybe I really was a prophet. I’d just seen the future, and it did not look good for Tabi. Which was too bad, really.
No, I thought, my hopes dwindling. I couldn’t let him kill her. I would probably feel guilty about it later. I looked up at him and suggested an alternative: “You’re right. We could get in the van, or we could just wait a minute.”
He tightened his hold. “Wait? For what?”
“For him.”
I pointed past him as Jared stepped up, and again before I could even blink, he’d grasped the man’s head between his two large hands and twisted, breaking the man’s neck. I gasped as a sharp crack echoed against the building. Dell’s head sat contorted in an unnatural angle, his stare empty as he crumpled to the ground, and it was exactly what I’d seen in the forest. Every movement. Every sound. Jared hadn’t killed him then. I’d merely seen the man’s future, probably when he tried to grab me and I shoved his hand away. I saw the agony of his last seconds on earth.
Tabitha stumbled to the side as everyone ran out of the store toward us. She caught herself—which, in those heels, was impressive—and flew into Jared’s arms. “You saved me!”
Oh, for heaven’s sake. I was possessed, my head was pounding, and now I had to watch my archnemesis slobber all over my man? Brooke and Glitch got to me first, Glitch literally sliding across the dirt lot to my side. “Are you okay?”
Before I could answer, I heard a woman’s scream.
“Tabitha!”
Tabitha’s mom came running out of the store, her face frozen in shock. But not for the reason I’d thought. She and Tabitha’s dad pulled her off Jared. “Your Grace,” she said, bowing her head repeatedly in reverence, “we’re so sorry. She doesn’t know.”
Jared disentangled himself from her and, ignoring them, kneeled beside me.
“Mom, that man had a knife to my throat.”
“Mom! Are you even listening? Wait, did you call him Your Grace?” She glanced back at Jared, and I could almost see cartoon hearts bursting out of her eyes. “He’s royalty?”
“Lorelei,” Jared said, and without waiting for a response, he scooped me into his arms and lifted me off the ground. I caught a glimpse of Grandma and Grandpa as they hovered around us, Grandma’s hands plastered over her mouth and Grandpa’s brows kneading in worry. But I felt safe, so utterly and completely safe, that I let the tilting and the swirling stop, nestled farther into Jared’s hold, and tumbled into oblivion.
* * *
“No.”
“But, Jared—”
“No,” he said again, refusing even to consider what I’d asked.
With a sigh, I turned to my grandparents, who were standing on the other side of the hospital bed. “Grandpa, make him listen.”
He worked his jaw in discomfort. “I’m not sure that’s a good idea. Prince Azrael is right.” He and Grandma had yet to take to Jared. They tensed every time he got near me, cringed every time he touched me. And when he wasn’t looking, I caught a glint of fear in their eyes. It saddened me. But, ever the hopeful soldier, I ignored their misgivings and hoped Jared would grow on them.
In Jared’s defense, he kept a reverent distance from me in their presence. “We don’t really call ourselves princes,” he said.
“Oh,” Grandma said, her voice tinged with uncertainty. “I just thought Archangels were considered the princes of Heaven.”
“True, but we’re not actually called the princes of Heaven.”
“Are you called jerks?”
Brooklyn backhanded Cameron on the shoulder as Jared said simply, “No.”
“Maybe not to your face,” Glitch said. “So, what does it feel like?”
He’d been asking me the same question all morning. Over and over. Kind of like what I’d been doing to Jared.
“Glitch,” Brooklyn said from atop her perch on the end of the bed, “if you ask her that one more time, I will stab you in the head.”
“No, you won’t.” He turned back to me. “But really, what’s it feel like?”
He wanted to know what it felt like to be possessed. To have a demon living inside me. “I don’t know, Glitch. I don’t feel any different today than I did yesterday, except for the fact that now I know. Please, Jared.”
“No.” He said it with the same inflection, the same gentle tone he’d been using since I started the conversation. Apparently, he was not as easily swayed by my obnoxious repetitive behavior as my grandparents were.
“But it’s not in you. It’s in me. And I trust you completely.”
“Lorelei McAlister,” he said, his voice soft with understanding, “we can’t risk your life by trying to exorcise it. Like I said before, you’ve somehow absorbed it. It’s there, but it’s lying dormant. I’ve never seen anything like this. Most humans don’t live a month with a demon inside them.”
Wonderful. “Brooke got to be exorcised.” I crossed my arms and stuck out my tongue at her. “She gets to have all the fun.”
She laughed with me and tickled the bottom of my foot through the blankets.
“The reaper’s right,” Cameron said. He was standing at the foot of the bed, hood up, hands stuffed into pockets. I had a feeling Brooklyn had dragged him there, and Glitch seemed none too happy about it, if the parade of glares he continually cast Cameron’s way were any indication. “It would fracture your soul. Even if you survived, you would never be the same again.”
Brooke turned back to him. “My soul isn’t fractured, and Lorelei’s strong. I think she could handle it.” She winked in support.
Cameron hunched his shoulders and lowered his head. “Actually, it is.”
“What?” She raised her brows in question.
My grandparents looked at him askance as well. For all of their knowledge, even they couldn’t see what Cameron could.
After taking a draught again, he said, “Your soul. It’s fractured.”
She scooted around to him. “What do you mean?”
“That’s why it’s so different. So amazing.”
“Amazing how?” she asked, her suspicion growing.
He offered a one-shouldered shrug. “I don’t know. I’ve just never seen anything like it. It’s broken. There’s a crack down the middle and while the aura all around you is normal, a light projects out of the fissure, so bright that when you stand just right, you’re blinding.”
“So,” Glitch said, his head bowed in thought, “you’ve been checking out her crack?”
After a tense moment of silence, we burst out laughing. Well, most of us. Apparently Glitch wasn’t trying to be funny. He glared at Cameron accusingly. Naturally, Cameron glared back. Someday I would find out what had happened between the two of them, but for now, the uneasy truce between the two supernatural beings in the room was enough to tide me over.
Grandma had filled me in on the events since last night. Apparently, Jared was being hailed as the town hero after saving Tabitha’s life and thwarting an attempted kidnapping. She told me that, in fact, most of the townspeople did not know about the Sanctuary or the ancient society, which made sense because my grandfather never mentioned it in his sermons. It really was a secret, made up of believers from all over the world, about fifty of whom lived in Riley’s Switch.
My grandparents already had men fixing up the apartment behind the house for Jared, and I could tell they were getting used to his presence. My grandmother wasn’t nearly so jittery, and she’d even joked with him a couple of times. But she still insisted on calling him Your Grace.
So all this was going on while I lay waiting to be discharged from our urgent-care facility after staying all night for observation. I’d suffered a concussion at the hands of Mr. McCreepy. I almost felt bad that he’d died, but Jared said his soul no longer belonged to him anyway. He’d sold it long ago. The sheriff’s report confirmed everything, and I was beginning to see the bright side of having him in our secret club. The fact that he was in on the whole thing, even in Mr. Davis’s office that day, freaked me out. The guy could act.
Mr. Davis, on the other hand, was going to be a problem. He had not been shown the secret handshake and was apparently growing more suspicious by the moment. We would have to walk on eggshells around him for a while.
I sobered and asked Jared the other thing that I couldn’t let go of: “Do you know what happened to my parents?”
He shook his head. “I’m sorry.”
“That’s okay.” I couldn’t help but be disappointed.
With a knowing smile, he added, “But I do know that if your parents were pulled into the lower dimension, Lorelei, if that’s what happened, even the gates of Hell cannot hold the righteous. They would not be there still. There are rules, remember?”
I took a deep breath, determination guiding me. “That may be true, but I have to know, Jared. I have to find them.” A quick glance toward my grandparents revealed the emergence of hope in their eyes. They were thinking the same thing. Surely, with the help of an archangel, we could find my parents, their daughter and son-in-law.
After placing a hand on his forearm, I asked, “Will you help me find them?”
He lowered his head. “I will do everything I can, everything in my power, but I can’t make any promises.”
“No, that’s okay. I understand.” I couldn’t help the zing of excitement that rushed down my spine. We had a chance, and it was more than we had yesterday.
But Jared’s expression turned grave. “Now that you know what I’ve done, perhaps my aid will allow you a small amount of generosity. It’s still early, but someday I will ask if you can forgive me my trespasses.”
I rolled onto my side, astonished that he would even say such a thing. “How can I forgive you when you haven’t done anything wrong?”
�
�Lorelei,” he said, releasing a slow, controlled breath, “I have kept you a prisoner on this plane. When you realize that, when that time comes, I will ask again.”
“I’m pretty grateful for that part as well,” Grandpa said, relaxing his guard just a little. He took Grandma’s hand into his own. “Maybe where you come from what you did was wrong, but around these parts, we call that a miracle.”
I couldn’t have agreed more.
“So what now?” Brooklyn asked.
What now, indeed. I knew one thing for certain: I would never give up on my parents. They had risked everything trying to protect me, to protect the world. I would find them, no matter what it took.
“That woman in our dreams,” Glitch said, “she said you now had a mission. Is it to find the dark spirits? Is that what this is about?”
“That is a good place to start,” Jared said.
Cameron nodded in agreement. “And we need to find the man who opened the gates in the first place. If he has the power to summon demons, there’s no telling what else he’s capable of. Or what he’s done in the last ten years.”
“Do you think that’s who’s after Lorelei?” Grandma asked. “The man that reporter referred to as his boss?”
“It’s possible,” Jared said.
“Well, that’s disturbing on a thousand different levels,” Brooke said.
Once again, I couldn’t have agreed more, only I’d lost myself in the dark depths of Jared’s eyes. I tended to do that when he looked at me. Or when he looked at anything near me. Or pretty much whenever his eyes were open. He’d shaved, but a shadow darkened his jaw nonetheless. His mussed hair fell over his brow, the tips getting caught in his ridiculously long lashes when he blinked. His sculpted mouth was the most delicious thing I’d ever seen, and I wanted so very much to kiss it. But that would’ve been a tad rude with Grandma and Grandpa right there. Especially considering their distrust of him.
“I’ve been thinking,” Brooklyn said as I gawked at the god sitting next to me, “if you two get all lovey-dovey and decide to elope to Las Vegas where Jared uses his powers to clean up at the poker tables and you guys buy a mansion in the Manzano Mountains with twenty-seven rooms and decide—because you’re rich and all—to buy a new computer, can I have your iMac then?”
Death and the Girl Next Door d-1 Page 24
