~*~
“How many times can you watch Pride and Prejudice before you get tired of it?” Rhi asked, digging into the huge bowl of popcorn between them.
All three girls were wearing their pajamas even though it was barely five in the evening. Rhiannon was dressed in white cotton stretch pants with hearts on them and a plain white tank top. Her toned arms and golden hair somehow made the boring clothes chic and stylish. Janet was wearing something obnoxiously loud and bright— neon-blue pants with a striped shirt in shocking pink and neon green. Her thick black hair was gathered back in a messy bun as she shoved another handful of white-cheddar popcorn in her mouth.
Because they’d been so casually dressed, Flint didn’t feel so bad in her faded flannel top and shorts.
Flint’s dad had made a drive-by appearance. A quick kiss, some cash for pizza later, and off he’d gone in all his bedazzled glory to practice with “the girls.”
“Sigh. Never.” Janet giggled just as Mr. Darcy blundered his way through the first proposal.
And while the movie was great and Flint’s toes were an amazing shade of glittering chartreuse, her mind was a million miles away.
Rhiannon pinned her with a steely-eyed glare. “Spill, Flint, because you are totally ruining my Darcy buzz.”
Flint laughed and rolled her eyes. This was her first time ever watching Pride and Prejudice, and she seriously didn’t get the appeal of all the frilly dresses and men in breeches. Then again, she seemed to be the only one who didn’t, judging by all the sighs and giggles both Rhiannon and Janet had been making the past hour.
Janet paused the movie.
“Yeah, what’s up, girl? Your karma is seriously bad right now, all black and gray and... ugh.” She mock-shuddered and Flint tossed a pillow at her head.
“It’s nothing. Just my dad and his... thing.” She rolled her wrist, still not sure why she was having such a hard time even mentioning Katy’s name.
“She’s not all that bad.” Rhi smiled. “She taught me a few tricks on the rope once. She’s kind of quiet, but what’s the big? Don’t you want your dad to be happy?”
Janet frowned and shook her head while Rhiannon shoveled another handful of popcorn in her mouth. “No, I don’t think that’s it.” She stared at Flint with soulful brownish-black eyes, her gaze penetrating so forcefully that for a moment Flint got sweaty and dizzy. “Would you be pissed if it was someone other than Katy?”
Flint thought about it for a moment, staring up at the blank ceiling. What if Dad had brought home the blonde; would she still have been so upset? She’d totally spazzed that night she’d seen the girls, thinking it was the blonde and feeling an edge of protective insecurity. But would she have been so wigged out?
Flint sighed. “I’m not sure. It’s just... I don’t know. Something about her bugs me. And every time I keep telling myself I’m nuts, get over it, I just can’t seem to. The weird thing is, she’s never done anything wrong. Always super understanding. She’s patient. She’s perfect.” Her lips thinned.
Janet nodded and handed Flint the nearly empty bowl.
“No,” Flint mumbled. “Not hungry.”
“Chocolate?” Rhiannon shook a box of Milk Duds at her. “Chocolate always makes me feel better. It’s like a gift from the gods.”
“You would.” Janet snorted.
Flint gestured for Rhi to hand it over. The second the box was in her hand, she was ripping it open and chewing thoughtfully on a gooey piece of chocolate-covered caramel. “It’s just he spends so much time there, and he promised he’d try to hang out with me more. And the worst part is that I’m not sure I’d really even want him in my hip pocket, but I’m worried he’ll fall into bad habits again. The drinking... it was a nightmare. And wow”—Flint eyed the hard nub of candy—“what is in this stuff? Did you dope me up with truth serum?”
Rhi wiggled her eyebrows.
Janet smiled and patted Flint’s knee. “Well you know, Rhiannon and I have to practice a lot in the same area they do. If it makes you feel better, I can keep an eye on things.”
Which only made Flint feel worse. She wasn’t used to being so whiney or mopey. And she hadn’t lied when she said she didn’t want her dad always hanging around. She liked her freedom too, had gotten used to it over the past year. Which was another reason why she couldn’t understand her feelings on the situation.
She’d opened her mouth to say something when Rhi’s phone rang.
Rhi held up a finger. “Hold that thought. Hello,” she said into the phone.
The soft smile on her face morphed into a serious frown. Janet sat still and quiet, her eyes shifting back and forth slowly, as if she was trying to listen in on the conversation. Then she smiled and grabbed Flint by the hand.
“Hey, Flint, I just realized”—she stood up—“you’ve never shown me your room.”
“What?” Flint was confused. It almost felt like Janet was trying to deliberately divert her attention.
“I see,” Rhiannon said, and her eyes were looking crazy weird. It was nothing Flint could get a fix on, but they seemed less shiny all of sudden. Flat and dull.
Janet tugged on her hand, helping Flint off the couch. “Hello, friend here, doesn’t like being ignored.”
“What’s going on with Rhi? She okay?” Flint whispered, glancing over her shoulder while Janet continued to pull her down the hall.
“She’s fine. But her parents are kind of, well... Russian.”
Flint shook her head. “What does that mean?” She’d worked with tons of Russians in her life and found them to be some of the funniest people to be around, especially after a couple of rounds of vodka.
“They’re intense.” Janet dropped her voice. “She told me she got their permission to hang out, but if they know she’s not studying, they might blow a gasket.”
It made sense, but something still didn’t feel right about any of this.
“Hey guys, I’ll be right back okay?” Rhiannon smiled and waved. “Gotta make a run to the store for my umm... mom. I’ll be back.”
“’Kay!” Janet chirped and waved back.
Flint stopped at her door, shaking Janet’s hand off. “Are you sure she’s okay? You’re acting weird, and so is she.”
Janet’s smile couldn’t have looked more fake as she bobbed her head. The front door opened and closed behind Rhiannon, who hadn’t bothered to change. Who went to the grocery store in their pajamas? In see-through ones at that? With no bra?
Flint started to work her way back to the front door.
“Flint,” Janet called and her voice was no longer chipper or perky. It was serious, almost deep. “Leave her alone. She’ll be fine, seriously. Look, we lied—she’s not running to the store. Her sister does this all the time.”
Surprised, Flint cocked her head. “Sister?”
“Yeah, look, her sister is a total tweaker, okay? She’s messed up on meth and comes begging all the time for cash. She doesn’t hang at the circus ’cause Adam threatened to gut her once. So she dials Rhi up and begs to meet her someplace instead. Only way to get rid of her is for Rhi to meet her and give her some cash.”
“But isn’t that wrong? Shouldn’t we help her?”
“Believe me, I’ve tried. This is the best way. Also, Rhiannon is really embarrassed about it, which is why she doesn’t want us out there.” She pressed her lips into a grim smile. “Now, you wanna show me your glass-figurine collection you promised to show me the last time. Or am I gonna have to barge in there and see them myself?”
Suddenly embarrassed that she’d made such a spectacle of herself, Flint nodded. “Yeah, I’m sorry. Go on in, I’ll be there in a sec. Drank too much Coke.”
Flint walked into the bathroom feeling bad for Rhiannon and all sorts of stupid. But as she was locking the door, she caught sight of Rhi running barefoot across the parking lot.
The sun had already gone down and the streetlamps were just starting to flicker on.
A shadowy shape pulled away f
rom the hedge of bushes and what Flint saw next made her pulse stutter and fly straight to her knees. Rhiannon was running one second and the next she was a blur of shadow.
Not that she disappeared into the dark—she literally became one with it. Like she shook off her skin and was nothing but a living, breathing, black film of smoke. Flint pressed her nose to the window, jaw hanging open, unable to believe what she was seeing. Because the shadow that’d been Rhiannon was now swirling around the lone figure that was swatting and slapping at it frantically.
It was driving Flint nuts that she couldn’t hear anything. She unlocked the window and slid it up, but they were still too far away for her to hear anything other than a terrifying humming sound. Like the buzz of thousand wasps swooping in too close.
Flint stuck her head out the small window, gripping the tile wall.
The figure looked dead at her and the eyes were glowing a bright shade of bloody red. Then the shadow swirled tighter, faster, and like a cyclone from Hell, it rammed through the figure’s mouth, killing the hum instantly, and then they were gone.
Just gone.
It took a second for Flint to finally pull her head back inside, and when she did, she realized that not only were her hands shaking, so were her thigh muscles. They were spasming and twitching.
A strange sound spilled from her lips, a mixture of a croak and a sob. She pressed her hands to her mouth, breathing so hard she knew she’d start hyperventilating soon.
She was tired. Tired and crazy.
No way had she just seen that.
No way.
Shadows didn’t kill.
Didn’t move and breathe and... “Ohmygod,” she wheezed, squeezing her eyes shut.
A knock sounded on her door. “Flint, you okay in there?”
It was Janet.
“I’m... I’m fine, start...ed my period,” she said, stuttering her way through the words.
“Okay, well...” Her voice sounded hollow through the door. “You need me to ask Rhi to run to the store? I’m sure she wouldn’t mind.”
“No!” she shrilled and then cleared her throat. “I’m fine... just, can you bring me a new set of pajamas? Top drawer in my nightstand.”
“Okay.” She heard Janet pad off and Flint knew with every breath and fiber in her being, that Janet was part of it.
That was why she’d tried to make her show her the glass-figurine collection. Like who even cared about those things? It was just a bunch of stupid glass animals.
Flint jerked to her feet and somehow was at the sink, splashing water on her face, not sure how she’d walked the short distance between the toilet to there. She couldn’t let them know she’d seen that.
Water dripped off her face; her brown eyes stared back at her. Shock was clearly written on her slack brows, her red hair clinging to her forehead. What was that? What was going on? How was she going to get through the rest of the night?
The front door opened and Flint wanted to scream.
It hadn’t been a trick of the light—she knew it. She’d seen Rhiannon fade to mist. Seen Rhiannon wrap herself around that... thing.
Flint squeezed her eyes shut. She’d seen a ton of TV shows, watched as vampires sucked out blood, became best friends with the local humans, killed some of them. Was that what this was? Had she somehow stumbled onto a—
“No way.” She shook her head. “No way, Flint DeLuca. That crap’s not real. Whatever you saw, it didn’t...” Her mouth turned down in a frown, and she studied her face, her too-big eyes, the twitching cheek muscle (her body accepting what her brain could not). “...really happen.”
~*~
All night she tossed and turned. Wishing so much they would just go and leave her in peace. Terrified of actually falling asleep with them in her home. But even more terrified of asking them to leave, because what if they found out? What if they knew she saw...something, and then they did that same something to her?
Which, seriously, it couldn’t have possibly happened, right? That was just weird Hollywood stuff. But even when she did finally pass out from utter exhaustion she didn’t stop worrying and obsessing about it, if anything things only got worse. Whatever dreams she did have involved a black tornado picking the flesh right off her body as she screamed and screamed. She’d woken up thrashing and kicking the sheets off.
At one point Janet and Rhiannon had to shake her, claiming she’d screamed for ten minutes straight. Which had to be a horrible exaggeration, except her throat was so sore it was entirely possible. Also, being woken up by them, realizing she’d been so tired as to actually pass out with them still in her house, that’d freaked her out even worse than whatever it was she’d seen last night. She was now firmly in the camp that her mind had totally gone schizo for about five minutes last night and what she was remembering was a complete and total breakdown of some sort.
All she knew was now she had a headache the size of Texas and hadn’t been able to hold anything down at breakfast.
They’d ridden the bus with her, casting worried glances at her and each other. But Flint couldn’t talk to them. She had no way of knowing if Janet only knew what Rhiannon was or if she was also some sort of weird killing shadow that liked to eat freaky red-eyed people.
“Flint.” Abel walked up to her as she was leaning against the lockers in front of Mr. Wickham’s class and giving serious consideration to bailing first period for the first time in her life.
Not in the mood for chitchat, she was just about to tell him so when she noticed he looked about as craptastic as she felt. The dark circles under his eyes were deeper and larger, and his skin looked bleached out.
“What’s happened to you?” she asked.
He scratched the back of his head, his eyes faraway and distant. The muscle in his jaw tensed, giving her a weak version of his grin, enough to make his dimple appear for a split second. “Didn’t sleep good last night.”
He sounded sheepish, as if he was embarrassed to admit it.
She shook her head. “That sucks.”
“Heard you had a sleepover with the girls.” He shoved his hands deep into his pockets.
Flint shrugged, watching as two of her classmates—Jaylin and Sarah—entered her class holding hands.
“How’d that go?” He leaned his shoulder against her and it felt nice. Normal.
She swallowed hard, wishing she could tell him. For the first time since meeting him, she really looked at him. Still super scrawny, but his eyes were friendly and he looked so human, and that was just so perfect for her right now.
“Fine.” She closed her eyes. “But I didn’t get a lot of sleep either.”
“Yeah,” he muttered and she let herself relax against his hard shoulder for a split second, feeling strangely calm around him.
“You’re gonna be late.” The rumbly voice drove like a spike through her heart, made her pulse leap into action. Flint snapped her eyes open, only to stare into Cain’s mirrored lenses, but somehow she knew he was glaring at her.
She wasn’t really sure who he’d been talking to, but Abel mumbled something and left. Cain was already walking through the door, no hi, hello, or any other acknowledgement.
“Jerk,” she hissed and then slinked in behind him just as the bell rang.
Flint opened her book, staring at it, trying desperately to scrub the images from her brain.
There was no way she’d seen what she’d seen.
It had been dark.
They weren’t standing underneath the streetlight.
People didn’t just turn into a carnivorous shadow and then reappear a few seconds later as a normal human.
It just didn’t happen in real life.
“Princess,” Cain drawled and her brows dipped.
“What?” she snapped.
“Whatcha thinking about?” His deep voice rolled like sun-warmed honey across her flesh, making her skin tingle.
“Just how much I’d love to smack you right now.”
His full lips curle
d into a half grin. “That’s funny.”
“Glad you think so,” she said, then turned in her seat, making an obvious point of ignoring him. She tipped her face up, pretending she was actually listening to a word Mr. Wickham said, but when she sneezed and cleared her throat, she inhaled his scent of sage and pine deep into her lungs, and her insides went crazy and melty.
She started tapping her pencil, aware that he was slouching in his chair, one of his long legs sticking out from beneath his desk. He was wearing brown boots this time. Dark ones, but brown. And blue jeans again.
She frowned. “Color? Thought you were Goth Boy.”
He licked his teeth, clasping his hands behind his head. “So you do pay attention to what I wear?”
Clenching her jaw, she sniffed and turned back around, knowing she fooled no one because the hot blush creeping up her neck was a dead giveaway that she’d been caught.
From the corner of her eye, she saw him run his pencil up and down through the air.
“What happened to your sparkles today, princess?”
She looked down and was a little bit surprised to notice she was wearing all black. Black skinny jeans, black flats, and a black baggy top. She frowned. She hadn’t exactly been aware of what she’d grabbed this morning in her rush to get out of the house and away from them.
“I didn’t do it for you, if that’s what you’re implying.” Flint looked him square in the eye.
His smile was so wickedly hot it almost hurt to look at it, made her voice quiver. She hated that he had that kind of effect on her. But she couldn’t help it that whenever she saw him now all she could think about was him without a shirt on and how good he’d looked.
“Flint DeLuca.” Mr. Wickham sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose as if in extreme exasperation. “Since you obviously have a hard time paying attention in class when Cain is around”—the class erupted into hushed laughter—“then how about you switch spots with Sarah.”
Sarah rolled her eyes. “Not fair!”
Mr. Wickham lifted his brows, and that was the end of Sarah’s mutiny. Ears burning, Flint gathered up her books, beyond pissed that Mr. Wickham only ever seemed to catch them talking when she was the one doing the talking.
Forbidden, Tempted Series (Book 1) Page 13
