With a gasp, I broke contact.
He looked at me with concern, a crease appearing between his dark eyebrows. “Are you okay, Elizabeth?”
I forced a smile. “Yes, fine. Sorry, it was the coffee. I ... err ... suffer from heartburn.”
He looked at me quizzically, but I knew he wasn’t about to guess what had really happened. I moved on, trying to brush the moment aside while all the time wondering what I had seen. “Well, thanks for your time. I’ll get this written up. You’ve been really helpful.”
“Anytime.”
He was still looking at me strangely as I picked up my belongings and fled the coffee shop, my heart still pounding. I’d seen something of importance. I just didn’t know what, yet.
Suddenly, the memory of my dream hit me. How I’d been running from something down the coastal road. How someone with big, strong hands had wrapped their fingers around my throat and squeezed until all the air had left my body. I remembered the fog, how it had obscured my vision in much the same way as I’d experienced during my insight into my professor.
I had to stop on the path outside, trying to contain my thoughts and steady my thumping heart. Dr. Spencer was a big man, with large hands too. Was he capable of such a thing? He had a temper, I’d seen that in the flash I’d gotten of him with Dana, but what possible reason would he have for trying to hurt me?
Unless it wasn’t me I’d dreamed about.
There was nothing more I could do. No one listened to insights and dreams. They just made me look crazy.
Chapter
7
As I headed back across campus, lost in thought about everything that had happened, I spotted a familiar blond head and broad shoulders. Instantly, everything fell from my mind and I picked up my pace, hurrying after him.
“Flynn!” I called.
He must have heard me. But he kept going.
“Hey, Flynn?”
I was too close now for it not to look ridiculous for him to pretend he hadn’t heard me, and he slowed before turning around, what appeared to be a fixed smile on his face.
“Hey, Beth. What’s up?”
I gave an awkward shrug. “Oh, not much. I just haven’t seen you around lately. I wondered how you were.”
“Yeah, well, you haven’t exactly been hanging out much, have you? You’ve been … busy.”
The sharpness to his words stung me. I thought he was over the crush he’d had on me, as he’d barely made contact with me over these past few weeks. I’d tried to call him a couple of times and had left messages on his cell, but he’d never called me back. I had to admit, I hadn’t exactly been worrying about the reasons he’d not bothered to return my calls. He was right. I had been busy with Riley. Not much else had crossed my mind since I’d met him. We’d been caught in our own little bubble, and though I had made an effort to get together with Laurel and the others, Flynn simply hadn’t been on my radar.
Maybe he was over the crush he had on me. Maybe now he was just pissed with me.
This whole scenario was starting to feel like a broken record. I wondered who else wouldn’t be talking to me by the end of the day.
“I’m sorry I haven’t been around much. I still want us to be friends.” I chewed my lower lip. “I kind of hoped we were.”
He had the decency to appear awkward, glancing down and scuffing the ground with his sneaker. “Yeah, ‘course we are, Beth. It’s just hard for me, you know? You can’t expect me to sit around like everything is fine while you’re making out in the corner with carnie-boy.”
My eyes widened in surprise. “No. I don’t expect you to do that. And Riley and I don’t make out all the time.” My cheeks flared with heat at the mention of me and Riley together, and at the element of truth in his words.
“You’re still in this new love stage, and even if you’re not actually making out, it’s all the eye contact and touching hands, like you can’t bear to be separated. I don’t blame him, either. I’d be the same way if it was me you’d chosen, but you didn’t.” He gave a shrug. “So that’s that.”
He’d shocked me. I had no idea he felt that way. I’d barely given him a second thought since what had happened by the pools. Flynn was the guy in school all the girls wanted. I had no idea why he was hung up on me.
I didn’t know what else I could say. There was nothing I could say to give him hope that things would change, because they wouldn’t. I loved Riley, and nothing was going to change the fact.
A couple of shouts came from the lawn behind us, and someone else gave a loud exclamation. I heard a gasp, and a female cry of shock. A number of different students raced from group to group, voices rising while a sense of weirdly excited panic spread through the students.
Flynn and I frowned at each other.
“What’s going on?” I asked him.
“I don’t know, but I intend on finding out.”
I had a bad feeling about this.
He caught sight of one of his friends, a dark haired guy who was also on the swim team. “Hey, Scott, what’s going on?”
The other guy’s eyes were bright with excitement. “A body’s been found down on the beach. A girl. The whole area has been cordoned off. The cops are crawling all over the place.”
My stomach dropped, my heart stuttering. A body. A girl.
“Do they know who it is?” I asked Scott.
He shook his head. “If they do, they’re not saying.”
“Oh, my God. That’s awful. Are they treating it as suspicious?”
“From the number of cops down there, I’d say so. The whole of Ocean Drive is closed off.”
“Wow.” I shivered at the idea of someone lying dead on the beach, especially after last night’s nightmare. Had my dream not been about me then, but about someone else? Was there a chance I’d seen the murder happening in my dreams?
Scott noticed another one of his buddies and wandered off, keen to spread the bad news.
“It was probably an accident,” Flynn said, misreading the reason for the worry on my face. “Someone might have slipped from the cliff during the fog last night.”
I shook my head. “No, we were down on the beach last night. We would have seen something.”
Flynn frowned. “What were you doing on the beach?”
I lowered my voice. “I went to Dana’s ascendance.”
He nodded. “Yeah, I know about that. She told me what happened.”
Color heated my cheeks. “Oh, she did?”
“Yeah, but I’m talking about later.”
“Later? Was there more fog later?”
“It came in again during the early hours of this morning.”
“What were you doing up then?” Was I now suspicious of everyone?
“I wasn’t up, I just couldn’t sleep, so I was hanging out on the computer, playing Xbox. I noticed the fog come back ‘cause my drapes were open. It didn’t last too long, but would have been long enough for someone to get caught out and stumble off in the wrong direction and fall from the cliffs.”
I chewed my lower lip. I knew more, but I didn’t feel like I could say anything.
Laurel came running up to us, tears streaming down her face. Instantly, I knew something terrible was about to happen.
“Laurel, what’s wrong, what’s happened?”
“It’s Melissa,” she said, her voice choked. “The body they’ve found is Melissa.”
All the blood drained from my face and I caught her by the upper arm to pull her closer. “What? How do you know that? The police haven’t released any information about the body yet, have they?”
She shook her head. “No, but Melissa’s mom had called around all of us this morning. She said she wasn’t in bed when they got up, and wondered if she’d left early to meet one of us for breakfast or something. Apparently, she was in her room when they’d gone to bed, and then when they woke up, she was just gone.”
Damn, that was right. My cell was fried. I didn’t know if Melissa’s mom even had
my cell number, but even if she had, she would never have gotten through to me. I needed to go to the store and replace that phone.
“But that doesn’t mean the body is Melissa’s,” I said, grasping to the small amount of hope I had left.
Laurel pressed her lips together and shook her head. “We got together just now—me, Kayla, and Dana—and did a locating spell. A member of a coven should always be able to locate where one of its members are, but we got nothing.”
Dread settled in my soul. “What do you mean, nothing? Did the spell not work?”
“It means she isn’t anywhere for us to find.”
We stared at each other, tears still streaming down Laurel’s face. Flynn’s lips were pressed together, his square jaw tight, and a muscle ticked beneath his left eye. I knew he was trying to hold it together. A painful lump grew at the base of my throat and I blinked back tears of my own. Surely this couldn’t be right. I wanted to think Melissa’s death might have been an accident, but this fitted too well with the dream I’d had last night. I felt sure if I managed to get hold of the autopsy report, I’d discover she had been strangled to death. Melissa’s pretty, blonde haired, blue-eyed face came to mind, and with it the image of the red welts that surely would be found around her slender throat. I recalled the fear and pain she’d gone through in those final moments. I’d woken from my nightmare, but Melissa never would. She’d never go on to fulfill her ambitions of becoming a professional photographer, and would never work on the paper again. Then I thought of her parents and how utterly, utterly devastated they would be to learn of their only daughter’s murder, how their lives would be ruined by something they could never come back from, and I could hold back the tears no longer. A sob escaped my throat and the tears spilled from my eyes. Instantly, both Laurel and Flynn moved in toward me, and I reached for them, so we stood in a funny little circle, our arms around each other, united in our grief.
We were gaining attention. Other students gave us curious glances, news of the body found already sparking everyone’s suspicious sides. We weren’t supposed to know any more than them. I realized my friends didn’t yet know about the dream I’d had. Should I tell them? I worried they’d blame me, and accuse me of not having done enough to save Melissa, but what could I have done? Should I have jumped out of bed and run down to the cove to try and find out if what I’d dreamed had already happened? But the truth was, I’d thought I was the person being strangled in the dream, and clearly it hadn’t happened yet, as I’d woken up. I couldn’t go racing off every time I had a nightmare. I’d never get any sleep!
I just hoped my friends would see things the same way.
“We need to talk,” I said, releasing them and moving away slightly so I could wipe the tears from my face. “I think I had a premonition about what happened to Melissa, but I don’t want to talk about it here.”
Laurel’s eyes grew wide behind her glasses. “You saw what was going to happen?”
“This isn’t the place to discuss it.”
“Let’s cut the next class,” said Flynn. “I don’t think any of us are in a state to concentrate anyway. We can go back to my place. My roommate should be out.”
Laurel and I both nodded our agreement.
“What about Dana and Kayla?” I asked. “Shouldn’t we find them?”
Flynn glanced around. “I think we should just get out of here and find them later. The police might come to the school soon and start asking questions. We need to figure things out before we do.”
Secretly, I was relieved. I didn’t want to be forced to sit in close proximity to Dana again.
“I’ll send them both a text and let them know where we’re going,” said Laurel, already pulling her cell from her purse. “They can catch up with us then.”
“Okay,” said Flynn. “But don’t mention anything about the reason we’re taking off. We don’t want to arouse suspicion, and the police can probably hack your phone or some other shit if they want to. We don’t want anyone to find out that we know more than we should, or we’re going to have some awkward conversations in our near futures.”
I didn’t want to have any more conversations with the cops. The incident with the carnival folk and Bulldog Mackenzie had already put me on the radar of the law. I didn’t want to give them another reason to question me again.
“Let’s get out of here,” I said.
We headed toward the parking lot, to where Flynn had parked his old Ford. We piled in, Flynn behind the wheel. I allowed Laurel to take shotgun while I slid into the back seat.
Flynn drove into town. His apartment was a couple of blocks from Main Street, where I’d had coffee with Melissa and Laurel only the previous day. My heart tightened with sorrow at the thought. He parked the car on the street, and led us both inside. His apartment was on the ground floor, with a small courtyard off the patio doors from the back of the living room. The place was clean and tidy, with a few posters of bands framed and hung on the walls. A couple of overstuffed couches were positioned against opposite walls, magazines piled on the coffee table in between. A massive fifty inch television with gaming consoles positioned underneath was on the far wall.
Laurel and I dropped down onto one of the couches, and Flynn sat opposite, leaning forward, his forearms rested on his thighs. Sorrow settled over us like a cloud, and I knew we were all feeling the same—disbelieving about what had happened and unable to imagine never seeing Melissa again.
“So, tell us about your dream,” Flynn said eventually.
I nodded, and recounted everything I could remember, from the chase down the road, to the sudden fog that had left me blind, to the hands around my throat.
“But you didn’t know it was Melissa?” Laurel asked me.
I shook my head. “I thought it was me. I felt like it was happening to me.” But I remembered the couple of things that had been off—not liking sand on my skin, just as Melissa hadn’t, and not having the strength to fight of my attacker. Perhaps if I’d looked into it more deeply I would have realized I was dreaming about her, but I’d been left too shaken by the dream to want to do anything other than forget it. It was only natural to think it had been me considering the presence of the fog and that I’d felt someone in it earlier that day. I frowned, wondering if the two things were connected.
“What is it?” Flynn prompted. “You thought of something.”
“It’s going to sound crazy.”
“Try us.”
“I got caught in the fog earlier yesterday. I tried walking to Riley’s but I got disoriented. Then I thought someone was following me. I could hear this weird noise, and I just got this sense I wasn’t alone.”
Flynn leaned farther forward in interest. “But you didn’t see anyone?”
“I’m not sure. I thought something reached out of the fog to grab me.”
“Something?”
“It looked like a really skinny, long, black arm—as if it might have belonged on a primate or something.” I shook my head. “I don’t know. I might have imagined it. But my point is that it’s the reason I didn’t look into the dream in more depth. I thought it was just a regular nightmare brought on by what I’d experienced earlier that day.”
Laurel twisted around to face me. “Did you check the time when you woke up?”
I screwed up my forehead in concentration, trying to remember. Did Riley keep a clock in his room? Had I glanced at it? I normally used my cell phone to check the time, but it was out of action.
“I don’t think so,” I admitted, “but it was just starting to get light, or at least it was the hour right before it gets light. So I guess around four a.m.”
“Do you think you had the dream at the same time it was happening, or before, or after even?” she inquired.
“I don’t know. It could be either.” I thought of something and looked to Flynn. “You said you saw the fog again, that it came back. What time was that?”
“Early hours of the morning, one or two-ish.”
&
nbsp; “So I dreamed about Melissa’s murder after the event.” The idea eased a tiny part of the tension inside of me. At least if I dreamed it after, it meant there had been nothing I could have done. I wouldn’t have been able to save Melissa if I’d taken the extreme measure of believing the dream and rushing down to the beach. I simply would have been the first one to find her body.
Laurel pushed her glasses farther up her nose. “What was she doing out at that time of night? She wasn’t meeting any of us, so why did she leave the house? Her parents said she snuck out after they were asleep. Where was she going? Who was she planning on meeting?”
None of us had the answer.
The sound of a phone ringing made us all jump.
“Shit.” Laurel scrabbled in her purse. She found the cell and pulled it out, the ringing growing louder as she did so. “It’s Dana,” she told us, and then answered.
I sat, staring at her as she spoke into the phone.
“Yeah … Yeah … We’re still here. Okay … See you soon.”
My heart sank. I didn’t want to sit in a room with Dana hating all over me.
I got to my feet. “Look, I’d better get going. Riley’s going to be wondering where I am.” I couldn’t bring myself to look at Flynn when I said Riley’s name.
“But don’t you think you should tell Dana about your dream?” said Laurel.
“You guys can do that.”
“She’s going to want to get hold of you, you know?”
I was kind of thankful at that point that she couldn’t. “Write down your cell numbers,” I told Laurel and Flynn. “I’ll call you if anything changes, or if I dream something else, but right now I don’t know any more than you do. You can fill Dana in for me.”
Riley probably would be worried. If he got news that a girl’s body had been found on the beach, and had no way of getting hold of me, it would only be natural for him to be concerned. Plus, if he turned up at school and couldn’t find me anywhere, it would only deepen his fears.
Flynn and Laurel both wrote their numbers of separate pieces of paper and I pocketed them both.
Twisted Magic (The Dhampyre Chronicles Book 2) Page 6
