Despite all that, the pall hanging around after the visit to her mother lifted. Farris didn't feel so depressed. The upbeat tempo of the song helped, along with Beelah's sudden burst of singing.
“Come on, Farris! You know you wanna sing!” Beelah rocked back and forth in the seat.
Farris chuckled. It was their way, when the going got tough, to sing through the stress. She wasn't quite sure she was ready to sing, but Beelah's moods could be addictive, especially her excited ones, and before Farris knew it, they were both belting out the lyrics.
And then, of course, the next song just had to be Katy Perry. Last Friday Night.
Beelah squealed and clapped her hands. She knew every lyric by heart.
Not one to disappoint, Farris turned onto the long road leading to the farm and sang along. The sun felt strong and warm beating down on the Chevy, a welcome change from the snap that had been in the air for two weeks. Farmland spread out in every direction with distant treelines marking off one property from another. Occasionally, cows or horses crowded close to a fence sitting near the road.
Sometimes, it seemed like a person could see for miles in all directions. The landscape flattened out, some of the giant squares of farmland green, some brown. Those that had been harvested, and those that had not.
Holding onto the wheel with both hands, she sang as loud as Beelah. For the moment, Farris could almost believe there had never been a tornado, never been a fire. She could almost forget the aches, pains and stitches.
“Woowoo! Ahhhh-hhhh,” Bee sang, adding in her own vocals.
Farris laughed. “Beelah Bosley, you're the best friend a girl ever had.”
“Aww! I love you too, Farris.” Beelah reached across to give her a one armed hug, careful of both their injuries.
“Hey, maybe we should look into getting an apart--” Farris, in the middle of suggesting a bright idea, frowned when the engine to the truck gunned. It revved and snarled—though she wasn't pressing any harder on the gas pedal.
Bee didn't seem to notice.
“Look into getting a what, an apartment together? Oh wow! Maybe we should! Mom would hate for me to move ou--” Beelah's enthusiasm cut off when the Chevy surged forward.
“...why is it doing that? Is the gas pedal stuck?” Farris tapped the pedal with her shoe. It didn't seem stuck.
“Maybe it's something in the gas line.” Beelah set her organizer on the floor.
The truck surged again. Farris took her foot all the way off the pedal—and the truck didn't slow down.
“What the heck?” Farris fought off a spear of alarm. She depressed the brake pedal next. The Chevy's engine growled in protest and only slowed a little. The speedometer needle swept from eighty down to seventy.
Farris jammed her foot on the brakes that time. “Hold on, Bee!”
Beelah braced her hands on the dashboard. “Why is it doing that? Why won't it stop?”
Not only did the Chevy not stop, it sped up. Something screeched beneath the frame, metal grinding on metal.
Panicked, Farris stomped the brake several times. Hard.
The truck roared forward.
Eighty.
Eighty-five.
“Farris, slow down!” Beelah shouted.
“I'm trying! It's stuck! The brakes won't work!” Farris gripped the wheel so hard her fingers ached. The straightaway they were on wouldn't last. Ahead she could see the first of several curves in the road leading to the farm.
This particular curve wasn't as tight as some of them were.
Taking it at any speed above fifty scared her, however. She glanced at the speedometer.
Ninety.
“Oh gosh, Farris! We can't hit the curve this fast!”
Licking her lips, Farris braced for the turn. The truck wasn't slowing down. The one saving grace was that no other car or truck was coming the opposite direction. She could see for at least a quarter mile across the flat land before trees blocked the view.
“Hold on! Hold on!”
“I'm holding on!”
With the needle at ninety, they came to the curve. Farris underestimated their velocity; she could feel the weight of the vehicle shift as they started the swerve. Cranking the wheel hard to the right, gritting her teeth, she fought to keep the tires on the ground. Rubber screamed on asphalt. Beelah yelped.
The radio blitzed into a moment of static. The happy Katy Perry song abruptly ended, replaced by Guns n Roses Live and Let Die. Tiny bits of white noise littered the song, as if it was an old vinyl recording instead of a digital production.
Farris only noticed the oddity peripherally; most of her concentration was taking the curve without going off the road. Elbows locked, smoke rising in their wake, she managed to get them through it without crashing.
Sweat dotted her brow.
Stomping the brakes again, she vented her frustration by shouting at the windshield. “Why won't it stop?”
The engine roared as if a giant foot landed on the gas pedal.
“Farris, maybe we should try to get into the dirt on the side of the road. That might slow us down!” Beelah pointed to the soft shoulder where a recent rain left the earth pliable instead of hard.
“I'm afraid I'll lose control.” Farris jammed the brakes. Nothing. Their speed had dropped a little from the curve. Already she could feel the engine gunning, feel the tires spinning faster. Half a mile ahead was a sharper curve. Signs leading up to it, black letting on neon yellow, warned drivers to slow to thirty.
A new song cut into the old: Guns n Roses, Knockin' on Heaven's Door.
“Turn it off. Turn the radio off. Please.”
Beelah, like it was an afterthought, reached over to push the volume knob. That usually turned the radio off.
The song, full of freaky white noise, kept playing.
Farris and Beelah glanced at each other.
Swallowing hard, Farris ignored the stupid radio. Everything was broke all of a sudden.
Looking ahead at the road, Farris considered her options. Think. Think.
“Farris, we can't make this next curve. You're going to have to get on the shoulder. Slow us down. It's better for us to try here than up there,” Beelah shouted.
“But the ditch there. It's not deep, but we'll flip if I lose control and go in.” A shallow depression in the earth, perhaps five feet deep and fifteen feet wide, ran adjacent to the five foot patch of softer earth butted up against the asphalt.
“Farris, do it! Get on the side of the road!” Panic made Beelah's voice higher.
“I can't! We're already doing ninety again! We'll flip over!”
“We're going to flip over anyway. Do it, pull onto the side. You're running out of time!”
The shouting and panic made Farris sick to her stomach.
Quarter mile to go.
Out of the corner of her eye, Farris thought she saw someone standing next to a tree on the left side of the road. A dark, still figure just staring straight ahead. It was so unexpected and scary that she whipped a look to the side, out her window. Too late, she was already past the spot.
With chills running down her spine, goosebumps on her arms, she was about to glance in the rear view mirror when Beelah screeched and grabbed the wheel.
“What are you—don't, don't!”
The truck veered to the right. Beelah kept pulling until the front right tire hit the dirt. In the blink of an eye, all four tires left the pavement and Farris lost control. The back end fishtailed hard, driving the front into the ditch.
Farris screamed when she felt her center of gravity become buoyant, as if she was floating free in space.
Beelah screamed too and let go of the wheel.
The sky, so blue, flipped by out the window. Sky, ground, sky, ground. Over and over, as if they were tumbling in a dryer. The truck was too old to have airbags, like newer models, but Farris nevertheless felt some sort of strange pressure against her chest, the back of her neck and around her head.
Landing with a
bang and a thump on all four tires, the Chevy finally came to a stop. Dust billowed up past windows that were still, shockingly, intact. Metal, warped and damaged, creaked and groaned.
After the disorienting roll, it took Farris a minute to shake off her stupor. Jerking in her seat, she put her hands to her face, her chest, her thighs. Seeing what was bloody or broken.
Nothing hurt. It made her suspicious. Was she dead? Where was the blood and broken bones? The seat belt was still strapped tight across her torso.
Remembering Beelah, she glanced across the seat. Expecting, dreading, what she might find.
Beelah was looking at her the same way. Farris saw no blood on her best friend, didn't spy any broken bones. Reaching over, she straightened Bee's glasses. They were sitting crooked on her nose.
“We crashed,” Farris said, as if it wasn't obvious.
“Why aren't we hurt?” Beelah asked, taking the thought right from Farris' mind.
“I...don't know. Why aren't we?” The question was rhetorical. “Are you hurt, Beelah?”
“I don't feel hurt. I mean, not really. Not like I thought we would be when we hit the ditch.” Beelah rubbed her shoulder and stretched out a leg. “I think I bumped my knee on the dash and cracked my arm into the door. It's not broken, though.”
“I feel a lot like someone grabbed me and shook me. Nothing is broke on me, either.” Gingerly, Farris tested her limbs by stretching each one out.
Steam billowed up from under the buckled hood of the truck. Finally, at long last, the engine—as well as the crazy radio—was silent.
“We should get out in case there is a gas leak, though. It would stink to make it through that only to get blown up while we're sitting here congratulating ourselves on surviving,” Farris said. She unclasped her seat belt.
Beelah tittered a shaky laugh.
Looking at the damage once they were free of the vehicle, Farris couldn't believe they'd come out in this good of shape. Both sides of the Chevy looked like King Kong had taken his fists to the metal. The tail gate was missing. The roof had caved in and one of the tires sat cock-eyed in the wheel well.
“Wow,” Beelah said, pushing her glasses further up on her nose. The organizer, which she had salvaged, sat in the crook of her arm.
“I know. I don't understand what happened,” Farris admitted.
“Me either. And what was wrong with the radio? I know I turned it off.”
All Farris could do was shake her head. “It's...possessed.”
Beelah glanced aside with wide eyes. “What? You don't even believe in that stuff.”
“Do you have a better explanation? Maybe that's what has been doing all this. A poltergeist.”
“Farris, maybe you hit your head harder than you thought.”
“Oh, this coming from the girl who likes to do seances every Halloween?” Farris widened her eyes at Beelah. She wondered if they were this feisty because they had both just escaped certain death. Again.
Beelah blushed.
“Besides, I thought I saw a man standing on the side of the road right before we crashed,” Farris confessed.
“What?”
“A man. On the side of the road. It was just a glimpse, you know? Like I saw it out of the corner of my eye at the last second. Then when I was going to look in the rear view mirror, you grabbed the wheel.”
“We would have flipped over at the curve down there anyway. You know we would have. And we might not have walked away. I mean look at us—we're standing here having a conversation when the truck just flipped like three times.” Beelah gestured at the truck. “I didn't see any man.”
Farris sniffed and looked back along the road toward the tree she'd seen the man standing next to.
No one was there, of course.
“Maybe that's because only I can see him.”
“Who have you upset that would want to torment you? No one that I can think of.”
Beelah had a point. Farris couldn't recall any man she'd ever known that had any reason to haunt her.
Unnerved over the situation, Farris nudged Beelah with her elbow. “Let's get out of here. We'll have to walk the rest of the way to the farmhouse and hope that the wild dogs aren't out here somewhere.”
Chapter Nineteen
The sense of power was delicious. Devon stood in front of the altar in the subterranean room of Chaos Manor, ready to perform her first ritual. Usually Audrinne would be standing by to guide every action.
Not today.
To make sure nothing backfired, Devon read through the instructions five times. Even still, there was tiny print all around the edges of the page that she couldn't decipher or read. She had no idea what it meant, or what it implied. Whether they were warnings or assurances or notes from Fates past.
This particular ritual was actually supposed to be a protection rite for a Fate. After carefully marking a map of Newcastle with the appropriate arcane letters all around the perimeter, it should, once complete, protect any Fate residing within the perimeter. Kind of like an invisible bubble.
What she did was reverse the lettering, counter-clockwise, and draw the arrows outward instead of inward, in effect (she hoped), sealing Merwen, Audrinne and Faelynn off from Newcastle. They would be able to move about anywhere but inside the perimeter. Devon didn't want Merwen riding in on a white horse at the last second to wreck all her plans.
As long as Farris stayed in Newcastle, all should be well.
Setting the map inside the stone bowl on the pedestal, Devon stepped back beyond the black markings circling the base and let the book with the violet cover sit open between her hands.
Fifty candles (per instruction) threw off a yellow-orange glow through the room, over the pedestal. With a matchbook tucked into the pocket of her brocade coat, Devon began to chant the ritual. She was supposed to go through it five times and then light the map inside the pedestal on fire.
Chills inched up and down her spine while she read. Devon imagined the power flowing through her, through the room and onto the marked map. It made the hair on the nape of her neck prickle.
Oh, she could get used to this. Magic was made to be used, not filed away in old books collecting dust.
After the last syllable fell from her lips, Devon cradled the book in one arm and reached for the matches with the other. With a little finagling, she got the match lit and tossed it atop the map in the pedestal.
Immediately it caught fire. Flame erupted in a gout of red-orange and consumed the entire map in less than sixty seconds. Devon watched the thing burn, intoxicated by her ability to do these kinds of things.
The next ritual would take her a little longer to set up. Not much, but enough.
Riddled with glee, she walked the book back to the desk and set it down.
One more to go.
. . .
Emerson arrived in Newcastle the same way he'd left. Emerging from thick shadows under an oak tree, he broke into a run. The last place he'd seen Farris was Newcastle Avenue, the main thoroughfare through town. It took him less than five minutes to navigate the back alleys of the businesses and reach the center of town. He had no idea where to look first. The diner was closed, so she wouldn't be there. Same with what remained of the Rocket.
He kept his eyes peeled for Theron, too, while he jogged along the front of a long line of shops. Several people came and went from the businesses and he didn't waste the opportunity to ask them if they had seen Farris. The town was so small that everyone knew everyone else.
No one had seen her.
Ignoring the curious, questioning glances, Emerson moved on. He was just about to go into a bakery and inquire when a car pulled to the curb at his side. The convertible Mercedes, white with silver accents, belonged to none other than Larissa Miller. She sat behind the wheel with sunglasses covering her eyes and a small, flesh covered bandage across her brow from the accident at the Diner.
“Well, look who it is. Emerson,” she said, flashing him a smile.
E
merson stepped to the curb and rested his hands on the door. He cut right to the chase, foregoing greetings and niceties. “Have you seen Farris?”
Larissa pouted, a faint moue of her lips, before she recovered. “Actually, I heard she's on her way to my place with some friends. You know, to help decorate for tomorrow. Are you coming out like you promised?”
Emerson forgot all about decorating and Halloween. But if that was where he could find Farris, then that's where he needed to be.
“Yeah, yeah. I was planning on coming out. Hey, can you give me a ride? Is that where you're going now?” Emerson slid over the car door and into the passenger seat without invitation. He didn't want to waste more time than he already had.
Larissa arched her brows. “Well, I was going to make a couple stops first. I need to run by Daddy's office and grab a--”
“No, hey. Why don't we just go out to your place now? We can run in later and do errands.” Emerson knew Larissa had a thing for him. He wasn't blind to the looks and flirting she'd done so far. Draping his arm across the back of the seat, he smiled, using whatever charm he possessed to try and sway her.
It must have worked. At least to some degree.
“...you want to come in with me later to run errands? I mean, I know Daddy would love to meet you.”
“Sure, sure. I'm anxious to see where we're having this party, anyway.” He widened his smile and winked.
Larissa smiled, too, and shivered with either excitement or anticipation. “All right then, let's go.”
“Excellent.”
Pulling away from the curb, Larissa got them on the road. Emerson tried not to fidget or look impatient. He wondered just how far out of town Larissa and her family lived.
“So, you should tell me about yourself. Do you play sports, go to college? What are you majoring in?” she asked.
“Nah, never went to college and I don't play sports.” He did, but not in any professional capacity. “Not much to tell, really.”
Larissa turned onto Blythe Road and opened the engine up. The Mercedes purred along, putting downtown Newcastle behind them. “Oh come on. There has to be a whole life you're not talking about here. Brothers, sisters...?”
The Fate of Destiny (Fates #1) Page 17
