Dr. Spencer moved beyond the topic of Melissa’s death, and began his lecture. I struggled to concentrate. I couldn’t get away from the thought that I might know something that would help the police catch Melissa’s killer. I wished there were some way I could say something without making myself look like a crazy person. Even if I owned up and told the detectives the truth, they’d never believe me.
I wondered what Riley had done, alone, last night and if he’d been worried about me. I missed him with an empty, hollow sensation, as if part of me had been amputated. For the millionth time, I reminded myself to go down to the store and get my phone replaced. Even though we’d fought, I hated not being able to contact him in any way.
The lecture finished and I realized I’d barely listened to a word. Perhaps I would end up being one of those people asking for an extension due to Melissa’s death. I gathered my belongings and headed back down the stairs, toward the exit. Out of the corner of my eye, I took in Dr. Spencer, also picking up his things. I wanted to orchestrate another time where I could touch him again. I didn’t want to do it here, in front of everyone, in case I saw something shocking and reacted in front of a crowd. The less attention I called to myself, the better.
Leaving the lecture hall, I headed down the corridor. Banners for the election were strung across the wall, and on the notice board were the faces of those who had been nominated to be candidates.
“Beth!”
I turned at the sound of my name. Laurel came running up to me, her books clutched to her chest. Her eyes were rimmed red from crying, her skin blotchy. She normally pulled off a quirky, but fashionable style, but today just appeared scruffy, as if she’d thrown on clothes she’d found on the floor without bothering to check herself out before she’d left the house. Not that how she looked was important in the scale of things.
I drew to a stop and offered her a smile. “Hey, Laurel. How are you?”
She shook her head and I realized something was wrong.
“Have you seen Kayla today?”
I frowned. “No, I haven’t.”
“I’ve been trying her cell, but she’s not picking up. I went over to her dorm and her roommate says she didn’t come back last night. She assumed Kayla was with us, or had met a guy.”
The blood drained from my face. “What?”
“She’s missing, Beth. Just like Melissa.”
My tone came out curter than I had intended. “No, we don’t know it’s just like Melissa. She could be upset. Maybe she’s gone home to her parents?”
“She doesn’t have any. It was only ever her and her mom, and her mom died right before Kayla started college.”
“Shit.” I tried to think. “Don’t panic. It’s even more of a reason for her to freak out after Melissa. If she’s already suffered the loss of her mom, she’s bound to be badly affected by Melissa’s death. She might have taken herself off somewhere. What happens when you try and call her?”
“It rings and then goes to voicemail.” Tears trembled in her eyes. “I’m really worried, Beth.”
“What about Dana? Have you spoken to her yet?”
“I called her first thing, but she just said Kayla would turn up.”
I lowered my voice. “Couldn’t you do that location spell you tried for Melissa?”
She chewed on her lower lip, and dots of blood appeared on her skin. “I don’t know if it will work. With Kayla missing—” She choked back a sob and put her hand to her mouth. I rubbed her shoulder, trying to offer her some comfort. “We’re not even a circle any more. We’re just a pair.”
I didn’t know what else to say except, “Let’s go and find Dana.”
Dana was the last person I wanted to see right now, but I didn’t think I had much choice. I owed it to both Laurel and Kayla to try and find out Kayla’s location. The nightmare of the previous night came back to me. Had I seen Kayla’s death as well? I had no reason to think I’d dreamed of Kayla, but then I hadn’t thought I’d dreamed about Melissa either until after they’d found her body.
I squeezed my hands into fists, and prayed this wouldn’t turn out badly for Kayla.
Laurel and I walked through the halls, heading toward the older part of the building which contained the library and the Sage Gazette office, where Dana could most often be found. We gained ourselves numerous curious, sympathetic, or gossipy glances from other students as we walked through. People knew we were Melissa’s friends, and Laurel was obviously distressed.
We found Dana sitting behind her laptop, her head lowered as she concentrated on something on screen. She tapped away at the keyboard, not noticing us approach the glass door.
I didn’t bother to knock.
“Hey!” she exclaimed as we burst through the door. She realized who had arrived and blinked in surprise. “What’s going on?”
Laurel spoke first. “I’m really worried about Kayla. She’s still not answering her phone. We need to do something.”
Dana sighed. “I already told you, Laurel. She’s probably fine. She’s just taken herself off somewhere to get away from the circus this place has turned into. I can’t say I blame her.”
The mention of a circus made me think of Riley. I needed to come clean about my dreams.
I pulled the seat out opposite her desk and sat down. She looked at me with something close to boredom. What had happened to her? The Dana sitting behind this desk didn’t seem like the same, vital young woman who had been celebrating her birthday two days earlier. Was it Melissa’s death? If so, why wasn’t she more worried about Kayla?
“I need to tell you both something.”
Laurel looked at me with wide, worried eyes and dropped into the chair beside me. “What is it?”
“I had another dream last night, about being chased in the fog.”
“You think it might have been Kayla?” Laurel asked.
“I don’t know for sure, but it’s a possibility.” I chewed my lower lip. “There’s something else.”
Both girls looked at me expectantly.
“When the fog came in, the day Melissa went missing, and then yesterday as well, I felt like something was in it with me. I thought I saw something, and there always seems to be this noise …”
“What kind of noise?” said Dana.
“This weird clicking, like someone is standing right next to me, cracking their neck.” Involuntarily, I rolled my head on my shoulders, as if trying to create the sound myself.
Laurel shivered. “That’s creepy.”
“Yeah. The thing is, I spoke to Brooke, and she thinks someone has been following her too.”
“So, you, Brooke, Kayla, and Melissa,” Laurel summarized. “Who else?”
“Have you felt anything?” I asked Laurel.
She shook her head. “No, thank God.”
I turned to Dana. “What about you?”
“No, nothing,” she snapped. “I already told you, this is bullshit. Kayla probably took off with some older boyfriend we knew nothing about, and Brooke is a total flake.”
Dana was hiding something. I felt sure of it. If she would let me get a hold of her, I’d be able to find out for sure, but she was aware of my abilities, and if she didn’t want me to touch her, she wouldn’t let me.
“You’re wrong. This is all connected, I can feel it. Let’s think about things logically,” I said, looking at them earnestly. “If Melissa snuck out of her house in the middle of the night, it must have been to meet someone she knew. She wouldn’t have gone otherwise. And that person is most likely the same one who killed her, or they would have come forward by now.” I studied their faces, making sure they were coming along with my theories. “If Melissa knew her killer, than chances are, so do we.”
Dana and Laurel exchanged a glance.
Laurel turned back to me. “But we don’t know anyone capable of killing Melissa, or harming Kayla, if that’s what’s happened to her.”
“Don’t we? We’ve only been at college for little over a month. How w
ell do we really know the people we’re sharing our classes with?”
Dana was staring down at her desk. She reached out to a pile of paperwork and began shuffling it about, slamming pieces of paper down on top of each other.
“This is ridiculous,” she snapped.
“Is it?”
“Kayla will turn up, just you see.”
“When do we go to the police if she’s not back? We could be wasting time. She might be hurt somewhere and we’re not doing anything!” My frustration was mounting.
Something occurred to me. Could Dana have had something to do with Melissa’s death and Kayla’s disappearance? She was pretty angry the other night for not completing her ascendance. Yes, I was mainly to blame, but she’d also held her circle responsible for not stopping me. Was she angry enough to have done something to them? If so, why hadn’t she gone for me first?
Because she knows you are stronger, a little voice came back to me.
No, I couldn’t believe it. Dana was tough and spiky, but she wouldn’t hurt her own circle, would she?
Unless she wasn’t aware of what she’d done.
It fit. She knew Melissa, of course, and Melissa would leave the house with her at night. She had a motive, even if it was a far-fetched one. Plus, she was being evasive and dismissive of our concerns.
Dana looked back down at her notes. “If you guys don’t want anything else, I’ve got work to do.”
I exchanged a glance with Laurel and gave my head a brief shake. Without saying anything else, we got to our feet and left Dana’s office.
As soon as we were far enough away, I said, “I don’t know about you, but I’m not buying it. I think we need to try and find Kayla.”
Laurel nodded. “Me too. But where do we start?”
“Let’s go to her room. I’ll touch her things and see if I can get a flash of some kind that might give us some idea about what’s happened to her.”
“We’re going to miss our next lecture,” Laurel said.
“This is more important.”
Chapter
11
Midday was approaching, which meant the majority of the other students were heading for lunch. The dorms were quiet as Laurel and I headed over to the building named Caraway, which housed the other half of the girls’ rooms. I hadn’t had any need to be in this part of the school before. Though the building was almost identical to my own dorm, it felt strange walking in, as if I were encroaching on someone else’s territory.
We headed to the elevator and caught it a couple of flights up to Kayla’s floor. I had no idea what I thought I might see by touching her things, but I was willing to try. I hoped we’d find her sitting on her bed, and she’d tell her how she’d hooked up with some hot guy and lost her phone, but the sickening, churning feeling that had been present in my stomach over the last couple of days hadn’t subsided.
I was preparing myself for the worst.
We walked down the hallway and stopped outside of her room. Laurel stayed back a little, giving me some space. I closed my eyes and pressed my palm against the outside of the door.
And waited.
Nothing came to me.
Damn it.
I believed that everything we did in life gave off energy, and I’d been told in enough science classes that energy could not be created, nor could it be destroyed. With that in mind, all energy had to be absorbed and created into something else, so when people fought, the energy their fight created—the movement of their bodies, the vibration of their voices, their raised temperatures and emotional reactions, would all be released into the air around them. The walls and the things they touched would absorb this energy, passing it on as power of their own. A door slamming would pass energy into the walls around it, which in turn would then move into the floor. I believed the flashes I got of things that had happened by touching people or objects was simply me absorbing the energy those moments had created, and it in I saw what had occurred.
I didn’t have quite such a neat explanation for the insight I got into things that hadn’t happened yet. Perhaps that particular talent was something I would never figure out.
Laurel glanced at me and I shook my head. I lifted my hand and knocked, just in case Kayla was busy with some guy. To my surprise, movement came from inside, and my heart lifted in hope. But then the door opened and a small girl with blonde hair and glasses peered back at me.
“Oh, hi,” I said, unable to hide my disappointment. “We’re looking for Kayla.”
The girl’s gaze moved past me to Laurel, and she gave an awkward smile. “She’s still not back.”
Laurel stepped beside me. “You mind if we take a look around, Cathy? We might find something that’ll give us an idea about where she’s gone.”
The girl, Cathy, stepped back from the door allowing us in. “Sure, but I don’t know what you’ll find. She was asleep in bed when I went to bed last night, and then this morning she was gone.”
I glanced over at Kayla’s bed. The sheets were rumpled, a dent still in the pillow where her head had been. Kayla hadn’t gotten up and taken the time to make her bed. I assessed the rest of her side of the room. The pictures were all in frames and positioned with exactly the same spaces between each other. Her clothes were all neatly hung, her toiletries positioned with the names facing outward. I had a feeling Kayla would normally have made her bed in the morning.
With a sigh, I dropped down to sit on the edge of her unmade bed. Without thinking, my hand brushed the pillow, and immediately my head filled with visions.
The bedroom door cracked open, and Kayla woke with a jerk. A voice hissed to her, “Hey, Kayla. Come with me. I’ve got something to show you.”
The voice was weirdly familiar, sending chills through me, but the way the person had whispered, I struggled to place it. Female though, I felt sure it was female. I tried to see out of the door, but though a beam of light from the hallway flooded into the room, only a dark shadow made out the place where the person calling her was standing.
Kayla threw off the covers and climbed out of bed. “Where are we going?” she hissed back.
“Just put on some clothes and hurry up!”
I watched as Kayla pulled on a pair of sweat pants and zipped up a hoody, before stuffing her feet into a pair of sneakers and slipping from the room.
I got no impression that she was in any way cautious or suspicious of the person calling her out. My earlier impressions were right. Kayla, and most likely Melissa as well, knew the person who had lured them from their beds in the middle of the night.
The sight faded and I took my hand off her pillow. Laurel was watching me expectantly, but I didn’t want to say anything in front of Cathy. “Have you tried her phone again recently?” I asked.
Cathy shook her head, but moved to her bedside table and picked up her cell. A couple of swipes on the screen, and she held it to her ear. She started to speak, and my hope lifted once again, but then I registered what she was saying.
“Kayla, if you get this call me back, soon as, okay? We’re really worried about you.” She shook her head, and ended the call. “Just rang and then went through to voicemail again.”
I got to my feet and ran my fingers across the dresser and photo frames, hoping to catch something else, but nothing came.
“If her cell phone is still ringing,” I said, thinking, “that must mean the battery hasn’t died yet. Isn’t there a way we can track her phone to find out where she is?”
“Don’t you think we should go to the police with this?” said Laurel, chewing her lower lip. “If we’re really this worried, shouldn’t we tell them?”
“She hasn’t even been missing for twenty-four hours yet, and she’s an adult. Are they really going to do anything considering there’s been no sign that she’s hurt?”
“But she was Melissa’s friend. There’s a connection.”
“Maybe we can find out ourselves. Does she have a laptop or tablet?”
Cathy nodded. “S
ure, it’s in her desk.”
“If she’s saved her password on her account, we might be able to see if she’d downloaded a tracking app. Plenty of people do these days if they know they’re going to be out places on their own, just in case.”
“Okay, it’s worth a try.”
Laurel fired up Kayla’s Android notebook, and quickly logged in. Kayla had saved all of her passwords automatically, obviously not concerning herself with any lack of privacy. I noted the fact. Someone with a jealous boyfriend, even one she’d kept secret from the rest of us, would surely make her a little more paranoid.
Quickly, Laurel checked the apps Kayla had downloaded, trying to find one that might track her phone, but there was nothing.
“Should we check her emails?” Laurel suggested, turning back to me. “I hate to do it, but if we’re really this worried, I’d rather we breach her privacy and find her alive, than miss something that might have helped her and have her turn up dead like Melissa.”
I couldn’t even stand for her to say those words, and from the tears shining in Laurel’s eyes, I knew she must feel the same way. This must be even harder for her. She was much closer to Kayla and Melissa than I’d ever been. She’d known them for years—they were part of her coven. I couldn’t imagine what she was going through.
I nodded. “Check them. If Kayla turns up back here, unharmed but pissed with us, I can live with that.”
Laurel gave me a sad smile and turned back to the computer.
She clicked through to Kayla’s emails and quickly scanned some of the most recent ones. I stood behind her shoulder, reading them with her, while Cathy sat on her bed, worrying at a hangnail on her thumb with her teeth.
Nothing in Kayla’s emails gave any insight into why she was missing. We’d been hoping for some romantic messages from a guy she hadn’t yet told us about, but all the emails were information from school, and the usual spam.
We’d hit a dead end.
“Nothing,” said Laurel, pushing back the chair and getting to her feet.
Twisted Magic (The Dhampyre Chronicles Book 2) Page 9
