by Amie Gibbons
“And? It’s theme music.” I grinned.
He shook his head. “I hate country music.”
“I can’t believe you just said that. You’re gonna get run outta town the second we get back.”
He grinned. “You’re welcome to try, little girl.”
I stuck my tongue out at him.
And one of Taylor Swift’s songs started bouncing. I couldn’t quite remember which one it was since I hadn’t listened to her in a while, but it was one of her older country ones about breakups.
“I have a bad feeling,” I said.
The flames crackled in front of us, closing off the hallway.
“I think that’s where we need to go,” Carvi said, pointing to the ground.
The thin red line disappeared into the fire and the song got louder in my head.
She was singin’ about getting revenge.
“I think you’re right,” I said. “Do we just walk right through?”
“Yep, think chilly thoughts.”
“What if I start singin’ the let it go song from Frozen?”
Carvi shook his head, pinching his nose. “Lea.”
“Okay, fine.” I shrugged. “Walk through the fire, no big deal. It’s not real. It can’t burn me to a crisp.”
The fire crackled harder and I growled at it.
I was still breathing. That meant the fire didn’t have that much power. I could do this.
“Ready. Okay.” I said, clapping my hands together like I was back in my cheerleader days in high school, getting pumped up for a performance.
“And now I’m picturing you in a cheerleader outfit,” Carvi said.
I looked down and sure enough, I was in my old cheerleader outfit.
“You’ve put me in this before,” I said.
“And will again. Come on.”
He stood forward and I grabbed his hand, my brain screaming to slam on the brakes before we hit the flames and got flambéed.
We hit the flames and I focused on them sliding past us, being nothing more than an illusion in a VR.
A really convincing VR game, but still.
We walked through the flames and I forced my breathing to stay slow and calm, and kept my eyes glued to the floor, keeping an eye on the red thread.
It veered off to the side, through another wall of flame.
“Carvi,” I said, voice loud and clear over the deafening cracklin’ of the flames. “Through here.”
The flames parted as we turned, revealing a door.
I opened it and Carvi tugged my hand, holding up his and going through first.
I followed close behind, hand still in his.
The sound cut off like someone turning off a movie and I looked around.
My stomach dropped to my stomach and I gulped.
I knew this bedroom.
He’d been pretty tidy, especially for a teenage boy. The bed was made, plain green quilt pulled up over the pillows, hiding the white sheets, the clothes were all in the laundry basket in the closet and everything was folded and put away. He couldn’t stand clothes all over the place, especially dirty ones that stunk up the place.
The desk in the corner was dark espresso wood and matched the dresser across from the bed. He’d kept the other side of the bedroom clear so he had room to work out in front of the mirror. He’d kept barbells and an exercise mat in his closet and pulled them out to work out daily.
“Lea?” Carvi asked after a moment.
I walked to the bed.
It hadn’t occurred to me to look back then, but now I wanted to know.
Did I leave blood on those pretty white sheets?
I pulled the cover back and the world shimmered.
A small smear of blood marred all that perfect whiteness.
“Ariana, don’t!” someone screamed very far away.
I was on my back on the bed, him over me.
Hurting me.
“It hurts,” I heard myself say.
“It’ll stop,” he said. “It’ll be okay and stop soon. I promise.”
I closed my eyes, wrapping my arms around him, brain fuzzy and unable to do more than that.
But he knew what he was doing. So if he said it’d be okay, then it’d be okay.
“No!”
A hard hand grabbed my bicep and yanked me away from the bed, clearing my head with the violent motion.
I couldn’t look Carvi in the eye.
“Lea, look at me,” Carvi said.
I shook my head, tryin’ to wrap my arms around myself and only getting one since he held the other fast.
“Ariana,” Carvi snapped, “look at me.”
I looked up and met his eyes.
His were filled with concern.
But I knew better.
Despite what everyone said, eyes could lie.
Zane’s had.
He’d been sooooo concerned for me. So worried he’d hurt me, so understanding.
“So full of shit!” I said out loud.
“Lea, listen to me,” Carvi said. “This place, it’s trying to grab onto you. Don’t let it. You were saying maybe you should sing ‘Let It Go’ earlier? Maybe you should. Because you need to let this go and move on, because right now, it’s got a greater hold on you than even I realized. I physically can not move you right now. You have to.”
I had to see what happened. I had to know.
Didn’t I?
Isn’t that what everyone said?
You had to remember to get over a trauma?
Except that was bullshit.
My brother Mark was in a skiing accident where he broke both his legs when he was a teen and to this day couldn’t remember about ten minutes before the accident up until he was waking up from surgery that night.
That was a huge trauma, and it didn’t haunt him.
“You liar!” I screamed, yanking my arm away and whirling on the bed. “You said you cared about me! You said you were there for me! You swore you would never abandon me the way my sister had. And then you went and did it! You fucking liar! I didn’t do anything wrong that night. You did! And it wasn’t sleeping with me! It was sleeping with me in that condition and then leaving me!”
I imagined exactly what I wanted.
What I’d wanted to do to this room for eight years now.
And the sheets stained with my blood went up in flames, engulfing the room around us so fast if it were real life it would’ve been the world’s best accelerant.
“Wow,” Carvi said.
“I also burned the gifts he’d given me in the backyard after about six months,” I said. “I ran it by my therapist, and my parents of course, first. They all thought it seemed like a good idea. Or at least not terrible.”
“Did you feel better?”
I shrugged. “For a bit. Honestly, I’ve always wanted to torch this room.” I pointed to the inferno eating the bed. “Especially those sheets. I left my childhood on those sheets.”
“I’d make a comment on you being dramatic,” Carvi said, “but I have the same flare for it so who says I have room to talk?”
I took a deep breath. “I can’t find the trail now.”
“Here.” Carvi jerked his chin to the side and I turned, looking in the mirror.
I stared back at me.
Only it wasn’t me.
At least not now.
The girl staring back at me was fifteen and naked, all tiny waist and still blooming curvy breasts and hips hinting at the body I’d have later. Her eyes were huge and more green with the massive amounts of makeup I used to spend half an hour each morning applying.
Her hair was cut to her chin, much curlier at that length.
I’d cut it around six months after all this happened.
I’d needed a catharsis and the bonfire in the backyard hadn’t quite cut it.
Pun intended.
She still had baby fat in her face and a giant nasty scar on her wrist.
“Hey, little girl,” I said, voice soft.
&
nbsp; “Hi,” she said, voice light and high, even higher than mine now.
“It’s okay,” I said. “We made our mistakes, but I swear it turns out okay. And we’ve-”
“Are we happy?” she asked, tears filling her eyes. “The doctor tells me to keep hoping. To know someday I’ll be able to be happy again.”
I covered my mouth, sniffing and nodding as my words caught in my throat. “Yeah, overall, we’re pretty happy. We’ve been having a hard time the last few months, but we never gave up hope. We never will.”
She vanished, leaving me starin’ at myself now.
“Walk through, lea,” Carvi said.
I nodded and did, no fear.
Not this time.
I walked into the lab from earlier.
“What the?” I asked as Carvi came in behind me.
“The lab?” he asked, looking around.
AB, Kat, that horrible Dr. Donahue, a few others I didn’t recognize that I was guessing were from Metro or were witches were all in the lab, two gurneys with dead guys on them pushed in-between the aisles.
Quil walked in with the bounty hunter and I looked around.
“Carvi?” I asked. “It just led us to the guys.”
“No,” he said. “It led us to the perp.”
I stared at AB.
“No way! I touched her. I tested her. She wasn’t… she wasn’t fine, but she wasn’t all crazy vengeful!”
“Maybe because she cut that part out,” he said.
“Yeah, exactly,” I said. “It can’t be her because she’s still in pain. She still has feelings and remembers all of it. The perp doesn’t!”
“Maybe she only cut out the vengeful part, and a part of her pain,” Carvi said. “Maybe what you saw was the toned-down part and she kept her memories because she’s friends with the guy. Maybe she didn’t want to hate him so she just cut that part out. I can’t say. But I can tell you, our perp is in that room. And she has no idea.”
“Holy crap on a cracker. We’ve got to get back there!”
I turned and ran back through the mirror.
Carvi close behind.
Just like I knew he would be.
I ran through the room where I left my childhood, smilin’ as the flames consumed the place.
When we ran out of the room, the mansion wasn’t on fire anymore, the walls all perfect and not even smoke damaged.
Nothing to hint at the damage done.
But that wasn’t how it worked.
Burn scars crept up the walls and ate the lovely green carpet under us and the walls were grey to black in spots with smoke. I looked up and the celling was cracked and had chunks falling down, all black and charred.
There, that wasn’t better, but it was at least real.
We hit the stairs and ran down, Carvi staying on my six even though he could’ve easily ran out in front.
He was watchin’ my back.
And said he’d never leave.
And I believed him.
We hit the landing and it was just as battle scarred as the floor above, but the door was back.
“Yes!” I said, barreling towards it.
I yanked it open into the brilliant, beautiful day, and ran out.
And straight onto a ship’s deck.
I slammed on the brakes and Carvi skirted around me, only avoiding slamming into me and sending me skipping across the deck because of amazing vamp reflexes.
“Shit!” he yelled, turning fast and reaching.
But the door disappeared.
That couldn’t be good.
“Carvi?” I whispered.
“Trap,” he said. “They tracked us down in there and waylaid us.”
“Who?”
“Hey, Carvi,” came from the side.
I whirled and a tall Latino guy smirked at us from maybe ten feet away.
“Marco?” Carvi asked. “No! Whatever they’re paying you, you know I’ll double it.”
Marco shrugged. “You know the deal, I can’t just flip sides on a job. How would that look for business?”
Holy crap on a cracker!
I’d forgotten about the whole assassins after me thing.
“Marco,” Carvi said slowly, “you know me. She is mine. If you kill her, when I get out of here, and you know I will, I will come after you. And your death will last decades.”
Marco frowned, nodding along. “I hear ya. And I get it. Just means I’m going to have to kill you too while I’m there. And now that I’ve caught your scent in here, I know where you both are and that you’re together.”
He shrugged again. “Sorry, old friend.”
He turned and ran through the door next to him.
Chapter sixteen
“Fuck that, traitor!” Carvi roared. “Come on, lea.”
He grabbed my hand and yanked me, letting me go and running full vamp speed through the door.
“Believe you can run like this,” he said in my head as I hit the door. “We can catch him before he makes it out. But if we lose him, by the time we find our way out, he’ll already be to our bodies.”
He blurred down the hall.
There was no way I could run like that.
“Come on!” he screamed in my head. “You can do this. You just have to believe it. Now run!”
I poured on the speed, imagining my little legs zipping me along like a vamp.
I’d never been a runner. Crappy lungs. But I could sprint. I could beat any of the other girls in high school in a dash.
And that’s all I had to do here.
And this wasn’t real.
If smoke couldn’t sear my lungs, then surely I could run like a vamp.
The walls blurred by me, too fast for me to see the paintings and decorations between the close together doors.
Were we on a cruise ship?
The long hall stretched down a freakin’ long way and I hit the center, slamming on the brakes.
The big foyer looked like a fancy hotel lobby with its blue and red decorative carpeting and long mahogany desk that could seat about twenty people along one wall. Chairs and couches dotted the rest of the area and a bookshelf filled to the brim with beautiful leather-bound books lined the wall opposite the desk
A giant spiral staircase took up the middle, leading up to the next floor, and I could hear piano music coming from above.
“Upstairs,” Carvi said in my head. “We ran through the casino and are going up the stairs. Don’t lose us, lea. It’ll take too long to come back and find you. Even if I catch Marco, I can’t kill him in here, and if I have to come find you…”
He didn’t have to say it.
We’d be stuck here for too long. Long enough for Marco to get away from Carvi again.
And to come after us in the real world while we found our way out.
I ran up the stairs and blurred through the piano bar.
“How do we get out?” I asked.
“Stay close enough to Marco to follow him out through the layers,” Carvi said. “Long as he thinks he lost us, he’s going straight for it.”
“So you’re tailing him?”
I blazed through the casino, shooting around the tables and slot machines deliberately placed in the way of the trail in an attempt to keep people in and playing instead of heading out.
“Yep.”
“What if he knows?”
“Then I’ll have to catch him and use his trail to get us out.”
“How will you know if he knows?”
“Guessing.” He sounded annoyed now. “Lea, focus on catching up to me. Upstairs to the ninth floor, he’s running to the pool.”
Right.
We were deep into the astral plane.
I could literally do anything in here.
I took a deep breath and focused, picturing Carvi as I hit the stairs, flying up them without looking.
I thought of him. Of his beautiful mouth. Of his horrible childhood as a slave. And then after that when his powers turned on and he was seen as prey
by everyone attracted by them.
How that made him hard and manipulative.
How he protected his brother from the worst of things so Milo still had a softness to him even after thousands of years of life.
The world shimmered around me and I plopped back into existence right next to Carvi, takin’ off the second my feet hit the ground, keeping up with him.
“That’s my girl!” he said, pouring on the speed.
“Yep,” I said, grinning as I kept up.
My legs didn’t burn and my lungs didn’t ache.
We flew and it was glorious.
The blood pumped through me, loud and obvious enough for me to hear and I drew a long breath, feeling it wash through my body, like I could sense every tiny molecule runnin’ through me.
Powering me.
“How do you know where he is if you have to hang back like this?” I asked, not even winded as we blurred through a giant cafeteria area with enough seats for at least a thousand encircling the long buffet like areas of different foods in the center of it all.
“I know Marco,” Carvi said. “I’ve worked with him before. He may have our scent in the real world, but I have his in here. He can’t get out of here without me being right on his ass.”
“Notice,” Carvi said as we hit open air and ran out on a back deck with a giant pool area, “no joke about being on Marco’s ass.”
I barely had time to wonder if he’d actually been there when something swung out of nowhere.
“Ah!” I screamed, ducking.
But it wasn’t after me.
It slammed into Carvi, knocking him back into the pool with an earsplitting splash that sounded more like a window shattering in a movie with the sound up loud enough to kill people’s ears.
I popped up and uppercutted Marco as his arms came down from the swing, giant metal beam dragging him half around and right into my fist.
His head snapped back and he dropped the beam.
So he had known we were following him.
Oh well. This would be more fun.
Wait, was that me thinking that or Carvi?
Carvi pushed out of the pool, visibly shaking.
Like the water had really hurt him.
“You know too much, Marco,” Carvi said, suddenly next to me.
What did that mean?
He slammed his fist into Marco’s face, plunging through.
No, literally, as in he broke through the cheek bone.
My stomach churned and I grabbed the metal beam to have something to do.
