"That's what I'm trying to tell you," I said.
He seemed unimpressed by my sincerity.
"Who do you think was in the building?" he demanded. "We didn't find anyone in there. Nothing. No one. Just your phone."
"You searched everywhere?" I asked. "Are you sure? I have a text from her. I'm telling you, she told me to meet her here."
He watched me with a sort of detached attention, and I had the feeling he was examining me. He didn't believe me, that was clear. Something else was going on behind that penetrating gaze of his. I had the distinct impression he thought I was guilty of something. I had a feeling I knew exactly what it was. I had seen that look before.
"What were you doing in the building?" he said.
I lifted my chin, stubborn. "I already told you. I came to help a friend."
His hand snaked out for mine before I could react and his fingers found the pulse on my wrist.
"You checked her over?" he asked the paramedic. "She's not delirious?"
"I most definitely am not delirious," I snapped. I had to smother down the retort that I might have been an hour earlier, but he didn't need to know that. "My friend Sarah was supposed to be in there," I said. "She texted me." I pressed the revive button on my cell phone, thinking I could swipe to the text messages and show him. "She was the one that said to meet her here."
The phone refused to turn on. Dead. Great. Just when I needed the thing.
The fireman swung an accusing glare to me.
"If she's alright," he said to the paramedic. "Then she can tell me what she was doing in that church in the middle of the night."
I cursed without caring who heard me. The paramedic's eyes went wide in surprise. No doubt he expected a regular teenager's caution around adults. Well, I was close to escaping teenage years and now that I'd just been through hell, I wasn't going to let anyone bully me, let alone a guy that looked suspiciously close to my own age even if he was wearing full fireman regalia.
"I didn't set the fire," I said. "If that's what you're thinking." I shoved the blank phone in his face. "She texted me. I can prove it."
"We searched everywhere," the fireman said and dropped my hand onto my lap. He turned those eyes onto the paramedic and I watched his jaw clench as he obviously tried to assess whether or not I was too far in shock to understand reality without letting on to me that was exactly what he thought.
"At least the fire is out," he said. "If anyone was in there, they're gone now."
I sighed and pulled my arms around my waist, tucking the blanket in between the crook of my arm and my midriff. If that was the case, and Sarah really was gone then all I wanted to do was get home. Maybe if I charged up my phone, I could return the text and see if she got back to me. The girl didn't just disappear for years and then text out of the blue for no reason.
"My grandfather is probably wondering where I am," I said. I tried to push myself off the back of the ambulance and onto my feet with every intention of heading to my scooter, but my descent was a little clumsy and I ended up grabbing for his arm to steady myself.
He held me by the waist until I found my balance. His palm felt too hot for comfort. It made me think of fire and smoke and it sent an uncomfortable ache along the column of my throat. I could barely swallow for heaven's sake. And there was a weird zinging feeling running down my spine.
Thankfully, he pulled his hand away so I could find some semblance of calm again, but he leveled me with a direct, green-eyed stare.
"Where are you going?"
I nodded at my scooter, where it still sat at the bottom of the steps. It seemed an eternity ago I'd rumbled through the streets on it bound for this church.
"Home."
He shook his head. "You're not driving that. Not in your condition."
He lifted his gaze as though he were searching for something. "My car is over there." He jerked his chin in the direction of the crowd and I noticed a dark little beat up GTI.
He tucked the blanket around me. "I'll take you home and I'll get one of the volunteers with the truck to follow behind with your scooter."
"I can manage," I said.
I didn't want to say that the way that he was bustling about as though he owned the place, presuming things about me that weren't true, the least of which was acting as though I was some kid, was a real big turnoff.
In the end, he did find someone to hoist my scooter up into the back of a truck. I shoved into the passenger side of his car and stared out the window, stubbornly refusing to look at him or talk to him as he buckled up. Quite the little safety officer, apparently. He thought I was an arsonist, that much was clear. I gave him clipped directions on how to find my house and sank into the back of the seat, deciding to wait out the ten minutes it would take to travel across town.
"I can charge your phone if you like," he said, breaking the silence as he turned the key. Whether he was looking at me when he did so or straight out of the windshield, I wouldn't know. I just kept staring out my side.
There was a nasty rumble coming from beneath us as the car sputtered to life.
"I'm Callum," he said.
"I'm unimpressed," I answered. I had met his kind before. Dazzle me with kindness. Think a little bit of pretend camaraderie would make me divulge all my truths. Fat chance of that.
"We have the same phone," he said, sounding almost apologetic. "You can use my charger."
My fingers were clenching and unclenching over my lap. He didn't fool me. I knew what he was trying to do.
I peered sideways at him. "It won't be charged in time for you to see I was telling the truth, so thank you but no."
I noticed the knuckles of his hand on the steering wheel went white.
"Thought so," I snorted and then turned back to the window.
I expected him to try again like most folks did. I almost wished for it.
"Suit yourself," he said, the apologetic tone completely gone.
Well, good. Nobody liked a pretender anyway.
Clusters of bystanders had begun to break apart from the larger horde of looky-loos. One woman with two small children started tapping onto her cell phone and only narrowly missed one of them running in front of our car. She snagged the little fellow just in time and looked sheepish beneath the glower Callum gave her from behind the steering wheel.
So I guessed I wasn't the only one he drilled with that nasty look. Maybe I shouldn't feel so special about his abrasive attitude toward me. Even so, I sat on my side, a sullen presence next to what felt like a tightly wound gear over the next few minutes. He drove in silence.
He pulled up in front of my house. The porch light was on over the front step, emitting a soft and comforting glow. In contrast, the kitchen light was also blazing, but that left me with an entirely different feeling. My grandfather was up. He was waiting.
Callum parked neatly beside the curb and cut the engine.
"You don't have to come in," I said, panicking.
He swung that green gaze to mine. "Your scooter," was all he said, but he delivered the line with a cocked eyebrow that indicated he thought I was stupid. I must have been, too, because I couldn't fathom what he meant by it.
"My scooter? What about it?"
"Charles will need some help getting the thing off the back of his truck."
"Oh," I said. "Right." I fumbled for the latch but the door wouldn't open. I had the awful urge to pinch the bridge of my nose in exasperation.
"Sticks sometimes," he said, reaching across the seat and gripping the handle over the backs of my fingers. I sucked in a breath as his palm brushed across my skin. A kaleidoscope of images reeled about behind my eyes, leaving me dizzy and cringing backward into the seat. I couldn't move as he pulled his hand back as the door clunked open, then reclaimed his position on his side of the car.
He gave me a look that seemed almost concerned. "Sure you're alright?" he said.
He looked at me, waiting as I sat gawking openly at him. I had to blink him back into fo
cus through the remnants of those awful images, the feeling that I was still back in the church.
I finally managed a nod. Two quick waggles of my chin as the light in the car winked on. There. That seemed normal. I hoped.
"Well, okay, then," he said. "You're good to go."
"Good to go," I echoed, hoping I looked less shell shocked than I sounded because whether I believed what happened in the church had been a hallucination or truth, there was one thing I knew right then. Something wasn't right about his touch. Not right at all. And my impression of why it didn't feel right had just one explanation.
It simply didn't feel human.
CHAPTER 5
I couldn't get out of the car fast enough to be honest, and if I slammed the door behind me, it was only because I wanted out of there as fast as my little legs would take me. I certainly wasn't trying to draw attention to my exit. Not at all. The faster I got out of there without any notice from him, the better off I'd be. Who wanted to be stuck in an inhuman thing's memory after all? Not this chick.
Even so, I felt his eyes on me as I speed-walked to the door, trying to be all nonchalant about it and knowing I wasn't successful. I lurched more than strolled, and my knee felt swollen and clunky, making my progress an agonizingly slow one.
I stood on the step with one hand on the knob and the other one clutching my cell phone. Just in case. I had the discomforting thought that Sarah might have been inside the church after all, and that Callum had found her and lied about it.
My fingers squeezed the door handle. I knew how I sounded to myself. Paranoid. That had to be a good sign, didn't it? You only sounded crazy to yourself if you were in your right mind, right? Surely if you had really gone mad, you wouldn't be thinking you sounded crazy.
But I couldn't stop thinking that maybe Callum was partners with that psychopath and had tied her up down there, waiting for the chance to return and feed whatever sick desires had set them on an innocent girl in the first place.
My mind stopped short of imagining what those desires might be. I'd had enough trauma for one night. But thinking about the maniac I'd encountered made my knees shake again. Because there had been a psychopath, hadn't there? I'd killed him.
My fingers spasmed on the metal as I recalled it. I sent a cursory glance down at my clothes, almost expecting them to be filled with blood. Of course, they weren't. Either it had been syphoned off by Azrael or it had never been there in the first place. I swept those thoughts abruptly under a rug in the darker drawers of my mind. I was jittery. That was all. There had been no maniac. No strange smell of fragrant oils or feathers falling from heaven. Just fire and smoke and terror enough to make me hallucinate.
I took a deep breath to calm myself and brace myself for going in. Just get inside and charge my phone and shoot a text off to Sarah. Things would sort themselves out from there. She would no doubt text me back, growling at me a little bit for abandoning her, and I would growl at her for being so cryptic, and then we would send cute smiley icons to each other, relieved we were both fine.
A good night's sleep was all I needed. Just because I had imagined some maniac in the church didn't mean she had been attacked by one. Didn't mean Callum was a maniac. The old Sherlock Holmes rationale that the simplest explanation was probably the correct one was no doubt the right explanation. She'd waited for me and when I hadn't shown, she had left. Or when the fire started, she had left. Or she'd never been there in the first place. No matter which scenario was correct, she was not still there. I repeated it to myself as I stood there on the step.
"Not there, Ayla," I said and felt better just hearing my voice. "Let it go."
I clung to each explanation as I braced myself to push the door open. And it was only as I began to calm down that I realized things weren't quiet inside my house. Sounds of muted conversation came from inside. Gramp was most definitely not alone as he waited for me.
"Crap," I muttered. Surrounded front and back. I almost wanted to peek over my shoulder to see if Callum was still sitting in his car, waiting. I resisted. Barely.
Gramp obviously had been contacted by some Good Samaritan neighbor who thought 1:30 AM was a decent hour to come calling and warn a man his granddaughter had come ever so close to burning to death in an abandoned church. I chewed my bottom lip. No doubt he was worried since I hadn't called. No doubt when he saw me perfectly safe and alive he would have his typical relieved hissy fit because his first instinct after fear was anger. Strange thing for a self-professed druid, but we can't all be perfect.
Despite the druid in him wanting to be progressive, the grandfather in him worried about me constantly.
I considered simply turning back around and waiting somewhere until the old ladies were gone and face Gramp alone. Maybe it might even be smart to slip around back and go up the back way to my bedroom. It was an old house, so there were still servant's stairs winding up a narrow path to the back of the building. I might have considered it if not for the brooding guy in the car behind me with his bead on my head like a sniper's rifle.
I shot a look over my shoulder, checking to see if Callum was still there in his car. He was. The light was on inside, and he was gripping his steering wheel with both hands as he leaned forward for a better look at me. I told myself that if he really was inhuman and wanted me dead, he would have taken the opportunity to end me while I was in the car. He was just a guy waiting to be sure his fare made it home safe.
Or he wanted to be sure I went in and didn't find my way back to the church.
I shot him a feeble smile, testing to see if he really did have a clear sight of my face. He lifted his hand off the steering wheel in salute but his expression didn't change. It still held that suspicious look. It seemed I was stuck here in limbo until either the truck arrived and he could help get my scooter off the back, or I gave in and went inside to face the music.
"Come on," I said through a grit-edged smile, my teeth clenched together, and I wasn't sure whether I was trying to convince myself to go inside or coax the universe to send the truck in rapid delivery of my scooter so that I could rid myself of the unnerving presence in the car.
I sighed with relief when the pickup truck he had commandeered along with its driver, who I presumed was Charles, pulled up behind him. Charles was a burly sort of man. Short and squat. He hollered to Callum who broke into a smile for the first time since I'd met him. My mouth twitched at that. If he was an inhuman thing, I had to admit he was a handsome one with that smile. Maybe even incredibly handsome. Maybe something like gorgeous.
I watched, fingers clenched around my cell phone as they grunted Old Yeller out of the back and rolled it up my driveway.
Callum shot me a look as he tapped the scooter's seat, daring me to hop back on it and grinning because he knew I wouldn't. Not with him there, anyway. Charles lifted his hand in a wave then ran for his truck and pushed behind the wheel. I was surprised at how much energy he had after fighting the blaze in the church, but he roared off in seconds, leaving Callum and I standing there, facing each other.
"Are you all right?" he said, strolling toward me as though he expected me to invite him in. "You look kind of off."
I swallowed down hard. In the full porch light, I knew he could see every move I made. No doubt he could see every expression cross my face. I could see him pretty clearly from where I was. That black hair of his stuck up in the back as though he had been running his hand through it. His eyes were rimmed with exhaustion.
He looked human.
"I'm fine," I said. "Just a little scared." It was true, actually. Even my pulse agreed.
I could swear his whole body softened then. "I can come in with you," he said. "If you like."
I nearly jumped out of my skin at the brash hint for an invitation.
"You're not a vampire, are you," I said, without thinking, then when he gave me a cocked eyebrow for a response, I realized how ridiculous I really sounded. I was glad of it, actually. Saying the thing out loud made it seem les
s possible.
"Never mind," I said. "I'm good. It's all good." In an effort to put a stop to the way my head had started waggling up and down, I swung around and pushed the door open.
The lights inside nearly blinded me. I had to shield my eyes with an uplifted palm. Whatever mutterings of conversation had reached me through the door were nothing to the arguments going on within.
All I could make out through my fingers at first was the cheesy velvet patterned wallpaper and the row of school pictures of my mother that led like bread crumbs up the stairs. I knew the picture of her in her wedding gown was furthest along the firing line, and I did what I always did when I came in the house. I flicked my gaze away from that row of smiling faces because it seemed creepy somehow, except this time I was greeted by more faces. Faces with hostile eyes that met my fidgety gaze with every bit of malice I had just faced back at the cathedral. At least these were no otherworldly monsters. These three very prim looking neighborhood ladies were monsters from my own realm, lined up in the hallway as though they were at a complaint department.
"There she is," Mrs. Vanda said. An accusation I met with bravado before hunching over to see if I could catch sight of Gramp somewhere on the other side of the sea of old women.
"Gramp?" I said, and was a little irritated at myself for the way the enquiry came out like I was some frightened kid. I cleared my throat to remind myself I was not a kid. This was not four years ago when I didn't know these women and I quailed at the thought that they might be angry at me. I casually picked up one of the shells that sat amidst the hundred or so wooden trinkets Gramp had amassed and piled upon the telephone table at the bottom of the stairs. There. I felt more settled.
I looked around the women as though they weren't there. "Gramp, where are you?," I called out. "What's going on?"
"Ayla." A movement from the corner of my eye. I followed it to where he stood somewhere past the hags, and it took a moment before I noticed him waiting fully dressed on the other side of the pass through counter between the living room and the hallway. He used it as a sort of pharmacy counter for the hippies who came for his salves and ointments. I secretly believed he sold pot on the side, but I would never accuse him of that. He was in his 70s, for heaven's sake.
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