Echo Into Darkness: Book 2 in The Echo Saga (Teen Paranormal Romance)

by Skye Genaro

The Smoothie Shack news spread through school, like, well, wildfire.

  "I hear you had an exciting night." Jaxon met me after first period.

  "You don't know the half of it," I said. I told him what had happened.

  His brow wrinkled in confusion. "How did they know you worked there?"

  "I don't think they did. I think it was a coincidence they showed up. Anyway, I won't be running into them at the Shack for a while. I'm out of a job until they clean up the fire damage."

  "So you've got some free time on your hands." He smelled nice, all shampoo and herbal soap. His fingers walked up my throat and settled on a tender spot there. They rose and fell when I swallowed, an uncomfortable sensation. I pulled his hand away. "What are the chances you can get ungrounded so we can go on that date?" he asked.

  "I'd say none to none. I might be able to get ungrounded next week?" Kimber somehow found out I was going to sneak out with Jaxon the night he stood me up. She'd made it clear that dating was off limits. But now, with no job to go to, I'd have time to do extra chores. That might earn me points and get me out of house arrest.

  "I don't think I can wait that long. You've got study hall last period, right?"

  "I do."

  "I'm going to skip my last class, and you and I are going to find a dark corner where we can be alone."

  "You'll get in trouble," I said, but the mischief in his voice was enticing.

  "Trouble suits me just fine." He brushed the hair away from my ear and whispered, "Meet me under the south stairwell."

  My belly did a little flip. This was what I'd wanted, right? Alone time with Jaxon, to help mend that lingering ache in my chest. To help erase the memory of a green-eyed boy.

  "Sure," I breathed. The no PDA rule was well enforced, though, and really, who wanted to hide out in a stairwell? Ick. "The auditorium will be empty. I'll meet you inside the side door."

  I took my seat in Econ as the bell rang. It was Thursday, which our teacher, Mr. Katz, had nicknamed Get Your Goals In Gear Day. Kids called it Don't Get Your Hopes Up Day, because of his outrageous expectations.

  "Everyone pull out the personal economic goals you set at the beginning of the year," Mr. Katz said. "Take a good look at the number you wrote down for your ten-year plan."

  Kids dug out the worksheet from their folders.

  "A million dollars," Lucas said from a back row.

  "Two million," Becca said from next to him.

  "How are you going to make that much as an archeology major?" Lucas chided.

  "I don't need to go to college. Echo and I know where the big money is, right Echo?" Becca flashed toothy grin.

  "Not gonna happen, Becca," I replied.

  "Good, some of you have a plan. What's yours, Becca?" Mr. Katz asked.

  "Oh, Echo and I are going to film a reality show featuring people with superpowers."

  "Yep, we've got our investment capital all lined up." I rolled my eyes. She still thought she could convince me to take my 'magicky show on the road.'

  "I bet that would be worth a few million, but if that falls through, you can learn something from today's Feature Success."

  Mr. Katz held up the current issue of a national financial magazine.

  "This man is an example of what you can achieve a few years out of high school."

  The man on the cover smiled with one eye closed. His other eye, pale blue and fixed on us, negated any sense of warmth that he might have tried to communicate through the wink. His jawline was as crisp as the crease in his collar.

  The man's arms were folded, and one hand rested in the crease of his elbow, where his fingers formed an upside down V.

  "Cheesy," one of the kids said. "Who winks for a photo op?"

  "And yo, let's flash an upside-down peace sign," said another.

  "That's the guy!" Becca shouted and gaped at me.

  All heads turned to Becca.

  "You've met Keenan Feller?" Mr. Katz asked.

  "Oops, my mistake. I thought that was Robert Pattinson," Becca joked.

  All the kids laughed.

  "Not even close. This man hasn't made his millions by sucking people's blood. Keenan Feller entered the financial market straight out of college and went on to start Feller Industries. He's the richest man in Portland, one of the richest on the West Coast, and he's just ten years out of high school. Think about that when you're revisiting your ten-year plan."

  Mr. Katz moved on to a chapter in our textbook. Becca waited until his back was turned and flagged me. "That's him!" she mouthed.

  "Who?"

  She clenched her fists in frustration and signaled that we'd talk after class.

  When the bell sounded, Becca flew to the front of the room. She exchanged a few words with Mr. Katz and he handed her the magazine. At my desk, she held up the cover.

  "This is the guy I saw with Jaxon near Witch's Castle."

  "That Keenan guy? Pfft. Not a chance."

  She sucked in her cheeks, irked. I took the magazine and flipped pages until I came to the feature article.

  "Mr. Feller owns an island on the Columbia River," I read out loud. "Which is the site of his multi-million dollar business." I skimmed further down the article. "He donated over a million dollars to children's charities last year, started a foundation for education…" I gave the magazine back. "This super-generous money mogul was not in the woods in the middle of the night."

  "You're not hearing me. This is the guy who was with Jaxon, and the question isn't if he was there, it's why?"

  The accompanying pictures showed Keenan lounging in his exclusive penthouse. The walls, carpet, and all the furnishings were done up in white. Even the chess game on the coffee table matched the interior—the pieces on both sides of the board were white. Dumbest idea ever, I thought. How were you supposed to tell who your opponent was if all the chess pieces looked the same?

  In another shot, Keenan leaned against a sleek, expensive, high-end car.

  "There's that sign again," I said. His hand formed the upside down peace sign.

  "I guess you can get away with looking like a dork when you're ungodly rich. And this explains why they left in a Lamborghini." Off my perplexed look, she added: "That's the car they got into at the trailhead. You said Jaxon had a brother. Maybe it's this guy."

  "No way. He would have told me if his brother was a bazillionaire."

  I glanced at the classroom clock. Jaxon was expecting me to meet him in the auditorium in a few minutes. I'd spent a good part of Econ thinking about our hook up, but now I was more curious about his late night trip to Forest Park. I wanted to see for myself what was on that trail.

  I thought for a moment. Becca had open study hall with me.

  "Do you know how to get to Witch's Castle?" I asked.

  "I've only been there a hundred times."

  "Well I haven't, so grab your car keys, baby, 'cuz I call road trip."

  Chapter 18

  I texted Jaxon one word to explain that I wouldn't be meeting him in the auditorium: Tomorrow.

  Okay, I was getting back at him a little bit for sending me that same message a few days ago. I'd accepted his apology, but I couldn't resist. By the time we started driving, he'd responded. Your loss. I sighed and tucked my phone in my bag.

  If you spread out a map of Portland, you'd see Forest Park as an expansive green section that hugged the downtown perimeter and extended for eight miles into low, rolling mountains. The park got a lot of foot traffic, but because it was large and rambling, it held its share of surprises. In the time that I'd lived in Portland, two different sets of hikers had gotten lost on its miles of thick, mossy trails, and a jogger had stumbled across the long-deceased body of an ex-convict.

  Becca wove down residential streets. A few minutes later, we were at the trailhead. The parking lot was shrouded in fog. Rain dripped from sluggish clouds that brooded over the treetops. I zipped my coat up to my neck and hunkered under my hood.

  We started down a paved trail, but that soon
turned to mud. Where the footing was slick, we held onto branches to keep from sliding down the steep creek bed. The other side of the trail was thick with ferns and ivy. Dead branches clothed in moss reached for us at unnatural angles, like goblin arms plucked from a frightening children's tale. It all added to the feeling that we were treading on cursed ground.

  "I used to come up here for Wiccan inspiration, like if I wanted to make a new potion or spell," Becca said.

  "You said something about sacrifices being held up here?" I slipped and planted a hand in a mud puddle to break my fall. "Eww."

  She helped me up. Her cheeks were flushed, either from the cold or the excitement of the legend she was about to share.

  "The story goes that the sacrifices were part of an initiation into a secret society. You had to sacrifice another person to show your loyalty. They used to find dead bodies up here all the time. Dozens of them." Her face lit up. Becca did love a good tale.

  I raised an eyebrow.

  "Okay, maybe not dozens," she corrected. "When I was in sixth grade, they found a couple of corpses up here. They might have been prostitutes or druggies, but I like the other version better."

  My heel hit a slick spot and I nearly fell again. "I get it. Nobody in their right mind would come here at night. I'm going back to the car."

  Becca took my sleeve to steady me. "We're almost there. See?"

  Up ahead, where the trail forked, remains of a stone house nearly blended into the foliage. Its side walls were gone but the end walls stood strong, shaping the building's footprint. The window openings cut into the thick stone reminded me of empty eye sockets, vacant and soulless

  She ran up the moss-covered staircase to the arched doorway, made a demon face, and pretended to slash through the air with a knife. Then she laughed and walked into the open-air house.

  I had no reason to follow her. There was nothing about the structure that piqued my curiosity. I still didn't understand what would have sent Jaxon down this trail.

  Foreboding prickled my neck, and before I could dismiss it as unease about Jaxon, heaviness weighed over me. I rested my hand on the damp stone banister for support.

  "Becca? Hey, I'm not feeling too well." A sickness seemed to gather in the air, syrupy and dense, and then like a clap of thunder, it slammed into me full force.

  "Oh my God. Becca! Becca!"

  Remnants of other peoples' auras flung themselves at me. The air around Witch's Castle seemed drenched with the vestiges of human pain and suffering. Auras scratched, clawed, and pleaded for my attention.

  "No, no, no. Get away. Get off!" I struck at the air as though I could physically shove them away. My throat began to close. A pain stabbed my chest. "What's happening! Get away from me!"

  As if prompted by a higher force, the answer rolled through my bones. These weren't auras of the living. They were pieces of souls from people who had died here. Their bodies were long gone, but their agony somehow remained, attaching to the building, to the gnarled trees and rain-soaked moss.

  Desperate to tell their stories, the battered souls attacked my body, communicating their last earthly moments: Strangulation. Stabbing. Gunshot.

  I ran back up the trail. The invading forces thinned by the time I reached the pavement. They didn't follow me beyond the edge of the woods.

  Becca caught up, out of breath from running. "Why did you leave? I was going to show you the little room that's under the house. That's super haunted."

  I took in deep drags of air, and probably looked white as snow. I had never felt dead people before. If this experience was the norm, I hoped I never felt it again, thank-you-very-much.

  "You saw something, didn't you?" she asked.

  "This isn't a safe place. I don't want you coming here anymore," I told her. I rubbed my arms, trying to get the goose bumps to go down.

  "You're freaking me out."

  I took a deep breath and explained what I'd felt.

  "The legends are true? Awesome." Becca said.

  "It's the exact opposite of awesome. Those people didn't die fifty years ago. I think it happened recently."

  "Like when?"

  I wiped the rain off my face. "Last year? Last month? Yesterday? Who knows? I want to get out of here."

  We were on our way back to school when she asked, "Does that happen every time you go to a cemetery? Getting blindsided by dead people?"

  I didn't answer for a while. I was coming to terms with the news that I had another odd talent. I'd walked past cemeteries in the past months and hadn't felt a thing. There was something about Witch's Castle that allowed pain to cling to it, allowed it to act as an afterlife harbor for the lost, the tormented.

  "It's never happened before," I answered, still trying to shake the auras' despair.

  We got back to school with barely enough time for me to change out of my muddy jeans and into my gym sweatpants, and get to the curb outside school. While I waited for Kimber to pick me up, I texted Jaxon, telling him we needed to talk ASAP.

  He texted back saying he had too much homework. Then he asked what I usually wore to bed.

  Downhill skis and a prom dress, I responded. He didn't reply back. So what if I wasn't in a flirtatious mood? Getting bombarded by a bunch of dead people had sucked the life out of my desire.

  A dark BMW with tinted windows rolled to the curb. Little hairs on my neck stood straight up as the side window slowly lowered.

  "Looking for a ride?" my dad said from behind the wheel of a rental car.

  I jumped into the front seat and threw my arms around him. "Why didn't you tell me you were coming home?"

  "I surprised Kimber, too. It's our anniversary tomorrow," he reminded me.

  "I bet she loved that. Way to score the big points, Dad."

  "I'm also thrilled to see you," he said, giving me another squeeze. "It's been too long."

  "Almost a whole month."

  Our conversation turned to general life topics. I filled him in on all the local gossip, save for the bits about violent souls and kidnapping factions.

  "Kimber told me about the license plate number you turned into the police. They got back to Becca's dad today."

  My heart thumped. "Yeah? And?" This was what I'd been waiting for. Luma and Roth could be tied to the hit-and-run and to the vandalism at The Asylum. They'd end up in jail, and I could breathe easy, for a while at least.

  "Are you certain you read the plate right?" my dad asked. "The police say there is no vehicle that matches the information you gave them."

  "That's not possible," I said. "Do they know to look for a black SUV?"

  "They do, honey. Don't feel bad. I'm proud of you for following through and trying to help Becca. Not a lot of people take the time or are brave enough to turn someone in."

  I shook my head, frustrated. The night had been dark and rainy and I'd been wound up from the near miss at the Smoothie Shack. Still, I saw WEOWNU in my mind, as clearly as I had that night.

  "I know I got it right," I insisted.

  He patted my hand, his quiet way of letting me know there was nothing else he could do.

  We were almost home when he said, "I have a favor to ask. Don Crane is getting out of the hospital this week."

  "Oh. Good. Good for him." I'd been so busy with Jaxon that I hadn't thought much about my hospital visit. Every time I did, I felt a mix of regret and disbelief at my hair-brained confession, even if Mr. Crane didn't register a word of it.

  "His family is throwing a welcome home party, and I was hoping you'd go with Kimber."

  My heart fell. "You won't be here?"

  "A firm in Bangkok wants to break their contract with us. I need to fly there and find out what's going on."

  I let out a groan. "You're always leaving."

  "If I could stay longer, I would."

  I took the opportunity to milk his guilt. It was my God-given right as a teenager, after all. "I haven't seen you for more than a weekend at a time since we moved to Portland."

 
"I know, honey…"

  "I'm supremely disappointed. It's just me and Kimber and Tito, hanging around the house by ourselves." I let out an exaggerated sigh to push his guilt buttons.

  "Is this going somewhere?"

  "How about lifting my imprisonment? It's hard to coordinate rides with Kimber and I promise I have learned my lesson."

  My dad nodded. "Fine. You are no longer grounded…"

  "Yes!"

  "…but you don't get your keys back."

  "Whaaaat? That's the same as being grounded."

  "Except I'm letting you leave the house to be with your friends. That's the deal. Take it or leave it."

  "This sucks," I whined. His brows shot up. "But I'll take it!" I said.

  *******

  The next morning, I was leaving the girl's bathroom when Raquelle shoulder-slammed me, sending my books to the floor. Before I could react, McKyla sprung from a pack of kids with her camera phone aimed at me.

  "Aha!" McKyla yelled. "Do it! I dare you." She snapped a series of photos. Of me. Doing nothing.

  Raquelle slapped the phone from McKyla's hand. "You're supposed to wait until she uses her witch power! You are such an idiot."

  "But you said …" McKyla's face heated.

  "Shut up. Just shut up." Queen Bee's lips were chapped and her forehead was breaking out. She looked so unstable, I expected her eyes to spin and steam to fly out of her ears.

  I picked up my books. She was going to have to be a lot more patient and sneaky if she expected to capture me zapping anyone on camera.

  "Try…and fail," I sang to Raquelle. "Desperation is not a good look on you, sweetie."

  She dug her fingers into McKyla's arm and dragged her down the hall.

  I cut down the sophomore corridors that led to the gymnasium. Jaxon hadn't been outside his earlier class and I thought I remembered him finishing P.E. now. If I didn't find him in the next five minutes, I thought my head might explode.

  None of the clues and tips from our search were adding up—not his trip to Witch's Castle or Keenan Feller or the fake license on the SUV. I was frustrated and out of answers and felt the heat of impending disaster closing in. I was betting Jaxon could put things in perspective, and to do that he needed to explain how he knew a man like Keenan.