The Girl In Between series: Books 1-4

by Laekan Zea Kemp

  “…see you. I see you. I see you.”

  “Stassi,” I whispered.

  I put my hand on her shoulder and she looked up at me, mouth hanging open.

  “It’s quiet,” she said. “Where did they go?”

  “Who?” I asked, repeating Sam’s question.

  “The dead.”

  “What?”

  I let go of her and she doubled over again, this time clawing at the ground. Her thumbnail ripped clean but she couldn’t stop. I grabbed her arm and again she was still. There were tears in her eyes.

  “You made them go away,” she said.

  “No. I—”

  “Please.” She shook her head, sobbing. “Don’t let go of me.”

  I held onto her all the way to the hotel, Sam and I each gripping one of her hands, and then up the elevator to the seventh floor. When we reached Roman’s room I almost knocked but then I remembered that he was still sleeping, that we both were.

  Luckily I still had the extra key fob in my pocket and after a faint beep, I pushed the door open as quietly as I could.

  “I’m going to wake up,” I whispered.

  Sam nodded but Stassi was still gripping me hard.

  “I have to let go of you,” I said. “Will you be okay?”

  She shook her head then nodded. “I’ll try.”

  I leaned over my body, thankful that this time waking up wouldn’t feel like I was ripping out of my skin. I was staring at my face and then suddenly my eyes were open. I rolled, groggy, and felt Roman lying next to me. When I looked up Sam and Stassi were still standing there.

  That’s when I remembered that I didn’t have pants on. I scrambled under the blankets until I found my sweatpants and then I pulled them on, the movement stirring Roman. He inhaled, hard, and then he jolted. He reached for me, sitting up, and in the dark his veins were glowing.

  “It’s okay.” I gripped his shoulders and used them to climb out of bed. I stood between him and Sam and Stassi, who was already trembling again. “This is Sam.” I sensed that he’d recognized the name and watched him relax a bit. “And this is Stassi.”

  He pulled himself to the edge of the bed, and realizing that he hadn’t slept in pants either, pulled the blankets until he was covered to his chin. “What time is it?”

  I turned to the clock. “Almost three.”

  “And how…?” He stopped. “Weren’t you just sleeping?”

  “I was. And I was dreaming.”

  He nodded, a strange silence filling the room.

  “Roman, would you mind going downstairs, maybe finding something for Stassi to drink.”

  “And food,” Stassi added, picking at the holes in her jacket sleeve.

  “Yeah.” He stood. “I’ll be right back.”

  Stassi stood in the center of the room, shaking, and I led her to the sofa near the window.

  “Thank you,” she said. I thought she meant for sending Roman to look for food but then she looked down at my hand.

  I didn’t fully understand what exactly my touch was capable of or what exactly was tormenting Stassi the moment I let go, but with my hand on hers she was finally able to breathe again.

  “Are you cold?” I asked.

  Stassi nodded and I pulled the blanket from the bed, letting her tug it over her shoulders.

  “Are you tired? You can take the bed if—”

  “No.” She shivered again. “I can’t sleep.”

  Sam came over, sitting on the other side of Stassi and twirling a strand of her hair through her small fingers. Stassi smiled at her, that small flash of her teeth chasing away the shadows under her eyes. Until she faced me again.

  “How long have you had them?” she asked.

  “The dreams?”

  I moved to tuck a curl behind my ear, forgetting, and Stassi gritted her teeth.

  “I’m sorry.” I took Stassi’s hand again.

  “It’s okay,” she said.

  “I’ve been sick since I was twelve.”

  “Sick,” she repeated. “They all think we’re sick at first.”

  “When did you start having the dreams?” I asked.

  “I was thirteen. I practically lived in a hospital.”

  I could have said the same, the smells and sounds of the children’s ward more familiar to me than the house where I grew up or even that old trailer. I’d never met someone else who’d grown up that way, always knowing that something was wrong with them, but no one ever being able to put a finger on exactly what. Sam was the first KLS patient I had ever met but the dreams were new to her and she hadn’t been confined to the dream-state like the rest of us.

  I looked at Stassi. “What…what was it like?”

  “The hospital?” she asked.

  “All of it.”

  Her knees gravitated toward her chest. “I didn’t want to be awake and I didn’t want to be asleep.” She met my eyes. “It was lonely.”

  “Where would you go?”

  She almost smiled, wistful. “I always dreamed of my aunt’s house just outside the city. She had a great room with a big black piano and I would play for hours. Well, it felt like hours. It was actually days, sometimes weeks. What was your longest?”

  “Eight weeks,” I said, expecting surprise.

  She only nodded. “My longest was ten.”

  “Ten?”

  “Towards the end.” She gripped her knees harder, rocked back. “Or maybe I should say the beginning.”

  “What do you mean?”

  She grew still. “The first few times it happened it was so…slight I didn’t even notice. I was just standing in the market and I could feel them, people standing around me, but then I blinked and I wasn’t sure that anyone had been there at all. It was always like that. I’d see someone and then all of the sudden they’d be gone. I used to convince myself they’d just turned up the street or slipped behind a parked car. But when the street started changing too I couldn’t explain it anymore.”

  “Wait, you mean you were seeing these things while you were awake?”

  She nodded. “But then that started to change too. Like it had just been a glimpse or something, of what I could do, of what was going to happen to me.”

  “A glimpse.” I remembered all of the strange things that had happened to me before I’d found Roman—that morning in the bathroom when I’d seen the tub overflow, that day in the art room with Drew when I’d anticipated every word he’d said. They’d felt random, insignificant, another side effect of me getting worse. But what if they weren’t? “What exactly is it that you can see, Stassi?”

  Her eyes flicked up to mine, dark and deep and swirling with the words before she even spoke. “The past.” My hand fell away and she reached for me again. “What is it?”

  “Strange things have happened to me too,” I finally said. “I’ve seen things when I’m dreaming and sometimes when I’m awake.”

  “Like what?” she asked.

  “The past.” Stassi’s eyes grew dark and then frantic as I said, “And the future.”

  “No.” She leaned forward, examining my face. “No, you can’t.”

  “What’s wrong?” My mouth was dry. “Is that bad? It’s bad, isn’t it?”

  “Who else knows?”

  “No one. I mean, Roman knows and so does my grandmother but that’s it.”

  “You can’t tell anyone.”

  “Why?”

  “Just don’t,” she said.

  Sam brushed Stassi’s shoulder and she stiffened again. I couldn’t help but wonder where exactly she’d been and what she’d seen. Something horrible, I could tell that much, although I wasn’t sure if she was afraid of the shadows or Michael or something worse. I couldn’t imagine it, something more evil. But if there was something else out there, or someone, I needed to know who and what might come after me next.

  “Stassi…”

  The door pushed open, Roman carrying in two bags and some water bottles from the vending machine. I finally let go of Stassi
and as she ate, I led Roman out into the hall.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked, reading my face.

  “Stassi…” I lowered my voice. “She can see the past.”

  “Like you,” he said.

  “But that’s all she can see.”

  “So you’re different.” He brushed my arm, reaching for me. “We already knew that.”

  “I know, except now I’m not sure I want to be.” I leaned in close to him, our mouths parallel. “She said no one can know.”

  Roman leaned back, not letting go of me. “Why not?”

  “I don’t know. But it must mean something bad.” I shrunk against Roman’s chest. “Whenever I see things they’re always awful. It must mean that I’m bad too.”

  “You’re not bad.” Roman looked down at his hands still gripping my arms. “You’re not bad or wrong or anything like that. But…Bryn…”

  “What?”

  He shook his head. “There’s…something you need to see.”

  After Stassi finally crawled into bed, Sam watching over her, Roman and I ventured back onto the street. We took the tram as far as we could and then we walked. I saw the police tape first, then the dawn twinkling against the pavement. Glass.

  Roman held out a hand. “Careful.”

  He led me around the barricades so we could get a closer look. The entire building had been sectioned off, broken glass heaved in piles away from the street.

  “It was everywhere,” Roman said. “Yesterday it looked like it had snowed.”

  “Yesterday…”

  Roman pointed straight up, the sunrise glinting against the steel frames of the Köln building. They were empty.

  “I did this.” The words came out in a whisper. I turned to Roman. “How?”

  “You said it yourself,” he reminded me. “And that letter. What your grandmother’s sister Celia said. You don’t see the future. You change it.”

  “But this…what did this have to do with anything?”

  I’d always thought of the future in terms of moments—moments that either moved you forward or moved you back, moments that made you feel or didn’t, moments that changed your life or left it the same. But when I thought back now on all of the things I’d done, mistakes and accidents that had trickled into the present, there were no moments. There was only this.

  I bent down, picking up a broken piece of glass. The shard glinted, I saw my blood, and then it slipped from my fingers and shattered against the pavement. My hands were shaking as I looked down at my palms, the scar still tangled there with the lines I’d had since birth.

  Roman gripped my wrists, lips parted as if he was about to say something. But then he just pulled me in close, his mouth in my neck, my face buried in his chest.

  “What if we’re wrong?” I finally whispered. “What if changing the future doesn’t necessarily mean for the better? What if Celia and my grandmother are wrong about me too, about what I can do?”

  Roman pulled away to look at my face and then he said, “They are.”

  “You think—” I’m a monster?

  “I know. I know you, Bryn, and there is no name, no explanation, no limit to what you are.” His eyes softened. “Michael says that whatever you can do is as unique to you as your fingerprint. That—”

  “Michael.” I stopped him. “You can’t go back with them.”

  “What?” Roman eyed me. “Why?”

  “Stassi…she’s the girl they’re looking for. She’s the one he wants. And if he finds her…”

  Roman’s jaw was tense, his eyes black. “What did she say?”

  “She said that he’s looking for her and…she made it sound like that if he finds her…”

  “What?” he pressed.

  “He’ll kill her.

  40

  Roman

  I left Bryn with Stassi and Sam with the intent to find Vogle. My heart was hammering fast as I made my way toward the hospital, the parking lot already starting to fill up. I wound through cars, cutting off a Volkswagen, the tires almost rolling across my shoes, and then I was jerked out of the way. I turned and saw Domingo.

  “What are you doing?” I hissed, anxiously looking around for Michael.

  “You know where she is.”

  I shrugged out of his grasp, trying to keep my face cool. “Where who is?”

  “The girl.”

  “I don’t know what you’re—”

  Domingo hushed me and pulled me farther into the rows of cars. “Don’t bullshit me, alright. I’m never wrong.”

  “You were wrong about that abandoned factory. Lost her scent more than once if I remember correctly.”

  Domingo was breathing hard, kneading the inside of his cheek between his teeth. He glanced around and then he said, “Or maybe I was just trying to make Michael think that.”

  “Why would you do that?” I said, trying to hide the tremor in my voice.

  “Because I know what he wants to do with her.” He gripped my shoulders. “What floor?”

  I knew he was talking about the hotel but I kept quiet.

  “Look, you can trust me,” he pleaded.

  “Well, I don’t. You’ve been following me and who knows what else. And you’re working for Michael.”

  “He told me to keep an eye on you and Vogle.”

  “Well, it looks like you’re doing a pretty good job. If you thought I knew where she was, why haven’t you found her already?”

  “You think I’m the only tracker Michael has? If he knew I’d found her I’d be dead.”

  “Dead.” I let the word sit on my tongue. I didn’t think Rogues could die. I didn’t think I could die. At least not until fate intervened.

  “We may be harder to kill than most,” Domingo said, “but that doesn’t mean it’s impossible. Regardless of the shadows getting stronger and trying to separate us from our Dreamers, I can’t help but believe one day everything will go back to the way it was, which means that as long as our Dreamers are vulnerable, we’re vulnerable too.”

  I shook my head, confused. I thought Domingo’s Dreamer was already dead. Why else would he be with Michael?

  “Why are you telling me this?” I said.

  “To warn you. Michael likes to pour on the charm for the newcomers but that doesn’t mean he’s not analyzing every move you make and every word you say.”

  “Why does he care what I do?”

  He smirked. “You don’t get it.”

  “Get what?”

  “You’re being vetted for the group.”

  “But I’m not like you.” The words tasted cruel but I said them anyway. “I have Bryn.”

  But Domingo’s words were just as cruel. “For now.”

  I pushed him against the truck behind him, the fire in my arms raging red down to my fists. He flinched at the heat.

  “That threat’s not coming from me,” he said, pulling away. “But if you don’t cut it out with all the questions he won’t hesitate to…”

  “To what? Kill me? Asking a few questions about my origins makes me that much of a threat?”

  “With Michael you’re either with him or against him. There’s no in between.”

  “And yet you seem to be straddling that line as we speak.”

  “I can put up with Michael until Lathan gets back. Besides, Michael’s the one who wants the girl and as long as I’m around he’ll never find her.”

  “But you said he has other trackers.”

  “Shay’s manufactured some kind of device but it only really works when she knows exactly what she’s looking for.”

  “Don’t they?” I asked.

  “They’ve never seen her face.” He looked down on that last word.

  I narrowed my eyes. “But you have.”

  “Yes.” He sighed, shoulders heaving so hard that I thought he was going to sink to the ground. “She’s my sister.”

  Domingo and I stood at the edge of Rheinpark where Bryn and I had met my second day in Germany. The grass was grey now, the tree
s thinning. But as Bryn, Sam, and Stassi stepped into the clearing I knew Domingo couldn’t even feel the cold.

  He ran to Stassi and she crumbled in his arms, the two of them on their knees. They held each other, his wide hand gripping the back of her head, her mouth trembling as she sobbed against his shoulder.

  Bryn found me, hooking our arms as tears clung to her lashes.

  “She thought he was dead,” she breathed.

  “And he thought he’d never find her.”

  She looked up at me, letting the tears fall. “I think I finally understand all of those superheroes with their cliché self-imposed solitude.”

  “Do you now?”

  “Being apart…” She looked back at Domingo and Stassi. “It must have been misery.”

  “He’s her…?”

  Bryn nodded. “I used to think it was about love, the romantic pre-destined kind, but I guess there are more than just one kind of soul mate.”

  “It’s his little sister. I’m not sure how much better of a protector he could possibly be.”

  “She must be really important then,” Bryn said.

  I nodded but I wasn’t looking at Stassi. I was looking at Bryn. After being with the Rogues and after all that Bryn’s grandmother had revealed she was still breaking the rules of her existence. We both were. I was stronger than the others. I sensed it in the way Michael spoke to me and I’d seen it in the way Domingo had flinched when I’d pushed him against that car. And Bryn was different too, not confined to the present or the future but by some strange power that let her navigate both.

  The trees rustled and cutting through the wind was a faint sound like clapping. It grew louder and then Michael was standing in the clearing, flanked on either side by Andre and Valentina and the others.

  “Good work, Domingo.” I could tell by the way he said it that he knew Domingo never meant to bring Stassi to him. But the flat tone to his voice was somehow permission to make a different decision now.

  Domingo didn’t take the bait. He pulled Stassi to her feet and backed up, slowly.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” Michael said, nodding back towards the street. “Truck’s that way.”