The Girl In Between series: Books 1-4

by Laekan Zea Kemp

  He led Vogle and I back to the observation room and I sat in the chair I’d slept in earlier.

  “Try to visualize the photo your grandmother showed you.”

  “Okay.”

  He turned to Vogle. “Sam has been scheduled to stay the night as well. I think it might be a good idea if you went to check on her.”

  I nodded, realizing that Sam should have been one of my first thoughts after I’d been attacked. “Just make sure she’s okay. Maybe we shouldn’t let her sleep until I’ve woken up and one of us can stay with her. I don’t feel comfortable leaving her vulnerable right now.”

  Vogle nodded. “I’ll be right back.”

  “And I’ll return shortly with the nurse,” Dr. Banz said.

  They both left the room and when I heard the door pushing open again I tensed. When I looked up Sam was creeping inside.

  “You’re awake,” she said, confused.

  “Sam, Vogle just went looking for you. Is everything okay?”

  “How are you awake?” she said.

  “I woke up this morning.” I eyed her, confused by the fear on her face. “I only slept through the night.”

  Sam picked at the owl’s felt feathers she was holding. “I’m still sleeping.”

  “What?”

  She pointed, pulling the photo Dr. Banz had given me from between the pages of his notebook. “Did you find what he was looking for?” she asked.

  “What was he looking for?”

  Sam chewed on her lip and then she said, “Eve.” Sam’s eyes grew wide. “He’s coming.”

  Dr. Banz pushed open the door but when I turned around Sam was gone. I wondered if she’d somehow made herself invisible like she’d claimed she could sometimes do or if she’d finally woken up.

  Dr. Banz approached, the syringe in his hand.

  “Wait.” I sat up. “Dr. Banz, what happened to Sam?”

  He managed a thin smile, shaking his head. “What do you mean, Bryn?”

  “She said you showed her the same photo. That you were looking for Eve. What was she talking about?”

  “It was an exercise,” he said, circling the chair, moving closer. “I just wanted to see if she could navigate in and out of the dream-state like you can.”

  “But she can’t wake up.” I shrunk back, edging my legs off the chair. “What did you give her?”

  Dr. Banz held up the syringe with the sedative in it. “This.” He plunged it into my arm. “I’m sorry, Bryn, but it has to be this way. You have to bring her back to me.” I was paralyzed as he glared down at me. “Don’t you dare come back without her.”

  The liquid burned, thick and stretching my artery. I blinked and spots dotted my vision as Dr. Banz lifted my legs back onto the chair. I sunk there, watching him place the electrodes against my skin. I couldn’t move.

  He rested the photo in my hands but I wasn’t looking at it. My eyes were pinned open, staring straight into his. And still…still there was nothing. No shadow. No darkness but his own.

  “I saw her.” My voice was a raw whisper.

  Dr. Banz hesitated. I wasn’t sure why I’d said it. He didn’t deserve to know, not after what he’d done, not after what he was doing now. But he’d spent his whole life looking for her and even though he’d never find her he had to know. So he could stop this. So he could stop hurting people, so he could stop hurting himself.

  My head fell to face him. “I saw Eve.”

  I blinked. Once. Twice. And then everything was dark.

  44

  Roman

  We didn’t walk or tread carefully as we searched every alleyway and empty building that stretched out from the hospital. We ran. Felix was the only one struggling to keep up, the cold and the fear of not finding Dani slowing him down rather than spurring him forward. I looked back every once in a while to catch him spinning in circles, checking dark corners on his hands and knees. He was starting to lose it, the realization that she could be dead, that she could have been dead long before he even arrived in Germany making him lose himself the same way he’d lost her.

  I stopped short and Andre did the same.

  “She could be anywhere,” I said, gripping my scalp. “The second Domingo thinks he’s found her trail we lose it again.” I stared into the darkness. “She can’t be dead.”

  Andre gripped my shoulder but he was quiet.

  “How did you know?” I asked him. “How did you know that Olivia was dead?”

  “It’s been fifteen years since I’ve seen her, since I’ve seen either of them.”

  “But you kept looking for her. Isn’t that what you and the other Rogues have been doing for all of these years?”

  “When Lathan first found me, finding Olivia was all I wanted. For a long time we thought we would find our Dreamers but that was before we realized the shadows were trying to separate us from them even in death. Following your friend Vogle helped solidify that theory.”

  “How?”

  “Eve is dead, not only that but Vogle watched her die with his own eyes. The rest of us never had that luxury,” Andre grunted, “but the fact that he lived on for all of these years without her, it proves that things have changed. The shadows changed the rules or someone else and now we’re trapped here in this purgatory.”

  “But without having seen Olivia’s body how could you really be sure?”

  Andre looked down and I knew that I wasn’t telling him anything he hadn’t considered before. But I needed to know what it was, what finally made him lose hope.

  “The dreams,” he finally said. “She’s not in them anymore.”

  I turned to Shay. “Is that how you knew Calvin was dead?”

  She nodded.

  “But…”

  “What?” Shay said, eyeing me.

  I couldn’t stop thinking about her theory that the shadows weren’t sent to kill the Dreamers but to…collect them. Because she was right. They were much more valuable alive than not.

  “It doesn’t make any sense why they’d want to kill them. It’s like you said before, about Calvin. And Olivia.” I turned back to Andre. “If the shadows just wanted Olivia dead then why wouldn’t they have just compelled her sister to do it? Especially if no one was closer, it would have been the easiest solution. But instead she kept trying to take her somewhere.”

  “What are you trying to say?” Domingo asked, turning back and joining the circle.

  “I don’t know.” I looked down, gripping the back of my neck.

  Shay took a deep breath. “He’s saying that they might not be dead.”

  Domingo’s eyes snapped in the direction we’d just come. They narrowed.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  He took a step, holding his breath and listening for a frequency we couldn’t hear. “Shit,” he muttered.

  “It’s taunting us,” Andre said.

  “It knows it’s being hunted,” Domingo added.

  My gaze drifted over the rooftops to the moon-washed trees and power lines until I could barely make out the hospital in the darkness.

  I looked back at the others. “Unless it’s hunting something too.”

  45

  Bryn

  My grandmother and her family sat at the dinner table, every laugh and every look and every word exactly how I remembered it. She was smiling, almond shaped eyes cut into sweet slits that matched the dimples on her cheeks. Her youth stirred something inside me and so did the sound of her voice.

  She’d only been gone for a few days but it was like my body had absorbed the re-writing of her absence. And I missed her. As if I hadn’t seen her in years. As if I’d never had the chance to know her at all.

  For a while I just watched them, relieved and repeating to myself over and over that that’s all I would do. Just watch. My fingertips trembled against the glass, reaching even though I told myself not to. Because I knew what was coming. What I didn’t know was what I was going to do about it.

  I turned away from the window, pressing my back t
o the cold glass. I knew why I was back here. To undo what I’d done. But could I just grit my teeth and hide while he took her again? Could I let that happen?

  The lights shut off, my shadow disappearing beneath my feet as my pulse spiked. I listened to every creak of the house, waiting for her footsteps, wishing they wouldn’t come. But I knew they would. She couldn’t let him find her inside the house, her daughters in the other room. He couldn’t know she had daughters at all. He couldn’t know about me.

  I heard her footsteps through the room, my pulse hitching with every one. I counted them, wishing they’d slow, that they’d stop altogether.

  Don’t do it, I begged. But I wasn’t just pleading with my great-grandmother, I was pleading with myself because my knees were already quaking, legs trying to force the rest of my body into a run. It was instinct or maybe something stronger—love—and it moved me just an inch away from the window. Then another. The door creaked open and I moved to the side of the house, peering around the corner like I’d done that first time.

  But before I could catch a glimpse of her the flesh of a palm was pressed to my lips. I scratched at the fingers and they spun me, slamming my back against the side of the house. The air knocked out of me and when I realized who was holding me down I knew there’d be no hope of getting it back. My lungs stopped working and so did my pulse. The person in front of me was…me.

  The same strangeness I’d felt when I’d watched myself sleeping in the observation chair came back tenfold. Because this time my body was moving and touching me and whispering.

  “Bryn,” she hissed. She held a finger to her lips, eyes darting to the front of the house.

  “What are—?”

  She slapped a hand over my mouth again and in the silence between our heavy breathing I heard a muffled cough. My gaze shot to the bushes, alive and rustling behind the house, a pair of legs tied up and edging out beneath them.

  “Is that me?” I hissed back.

  Her grip on me tightened and then I heard another sound. Anso’s voice. I told myself not to move, not an inch. But then my great-grandmother let out a scream and I pictured her strung up like a doll, spine snapping.

  My eyes watered and when I looked at the Bryn in front of me, her lashes were wet too.

  I shrugged away from her hand. “We can find another way,” I whispered. “Please.”

  She was quiet, still holding me down.

  “Bryn, look at me.”

  She did, eyes reminding me to lower my voice. “There is no other way.”

  Another scream, this one farther away and I knew we were running out of time. But wasn’t that what I was supposed to do? To stand here and let time run out? I pulled away, half an inch, not enough for the arm barred across me to sense it.

  “Bryn, please. We can help her. We can figure something out.”

  She hushed me. “We make sacrifices.” She pressed down on me. “You’ll learn that.”

  In that moment I realized her hardness wasn’t just from the tense situation or from the sound of our great-grandmother being tortured while we just stood back and did nothing. This Bryn had been carved into a blade by more than that, by the kind of pain that repeats and ruminates, lingering and grinding against your soul until it’s one sharp point.

  “You…” I stammered. “You’re not me in the past, you’re me in the future.”

  She kept her eyes on the empty front yard.

  “What’s happened to you?” I said.

  “To us,” she corrected.

  I didn’t like looking at this version of myself, the deadness inside and all around her. She was angry and vengeful and wore her curse on the outside. She was poisoned. I didn’t want to be like that.

  The next scream that broke into the silence set my feet running. I pushed Bryn back and headed straight for the trees where I knew they’d be. I could see where the darkness deepened and traced Anso’s outline as he lifted his hands, spinning my great-grandmother’s limp and broken body like a spider torturing its prey. I reached the first tree, my foot tangling over a root, but when I fell I realized it wasn’t a branch I’d gotten caught up on but something invisible that had latched around my ankle.

  I ripped across the grass on my stomach, twigs and stones cutting my bare skin. I reached out, clawing at the ground, but when I finally came to a stop, my own face hung over me.

  “How did you—?”

  Bryn slapped her hand over my mouth again, callouses pressing into me as she dragged me back behind the house.

  I scrambled back. “What happened to you?”

  She sat up on her knees, looking down at me with a mixture of longing and pity. “You don’t want to know.”

  Those last words took her, her absence steeling me to the ground until there was silence all around me. No cries or screams or sound of things breaking. I crawled back onto my feet and ran for the trees but when I reached the small grove it was empty.

  My great-grandmother was gone and the pang sent me to my knees again. My hands dug into the damp earth, wishing that I could hurt it, that I could hurt something. I wanted to hurt myself, that future Bryn who was broken and who’d left me with nothing but the knowledge that one day I’d be broken too.

  Sacrifices. That’s what she’d called all of this.

  My face found the ground and I let it stick to me, tears summoning the dirt and making me as dirty as I felt. Because I’d betrayed her. I’d betrayed myself. The entire world tilted and I clung to it for fear of falling off into nothing but when I realized that might be better than returning to a world where everyone I loved was lost or dead or hurting I let go. I curled into a ball, eye-level with the grass as the breeze raked through it. The night was moving all around me and there, glinting just a few inches from my face, was one shard of light.

  It blinked, beckoning my hand, and I reached across the grass. It was cold and when I held the tiny square up to my face I realized it was a pendant. The chain fell against my wrist, so thin it looked like a strand of silver hair. I picked at the strange charm and at the brush of my thumb, it popped open. It was a locket and inside there was a small photograph of my grandmother and her two sisters. They were smiling just like they had been tonight. Just like they never would again.

  I clutched it in my fist, knowing that just like the Cardinal’s feather Roman had tucked behind my ear in the dream-state I could bring it back with me if I concentrated hard enough. And just like that the thought of waking up was all it took to carry me out of that nightmare. When I blinked I was back in the hospital, standing over my unconscious body lying in the observation chair.

  My neck was twisted and my hair was in a mess across my face. I moved closer, brushing the strands behind my ear and placing my head against the back of the chair. I leaned down, breathing against my lips but I knew it wasn’t going to work. I remembered what Sam had said about not being able to wake up and I felt the sleep dragging me down even as I stood there.

  I heard hard breaths that weren’t my own and when I turned I saw Vogle. He was kneeling over Dr. Banz who’d been stuck with the same type of syringe he’d used on me.

  “Vogle?”

  He trembled, turning at my voice. “Bryn?” He stood. “You’re…” But then he saw my body still lying in the observation chair.

  “I’m sleeping,” I said. “But I’m alright.”

  He hugged me and it felt as strange as it did necessary.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “I had to…” He pinched his eyes shut. “I tried to stop him but he’d already injected you with two doses before I could wrestle them away from him. I plunged the last syringe into his arm.”

  “He’s sleeping?” I said.

  Vogle nodded. “Just sleeping.”

  “We need to find Sam,” I said. “She came into my room before Dr. Banz did and she said that she couldn’t wake up. I don’t know which observation room Dr. Banz has been keeping her in or if she’s been unconscious at the hospital all this time but she
’s been asleep for days.”

  When Vogle and I went in search of Sam the hallways were empty, my footsteps pinging off the walls and making the hairs on my arms stand on end. We checked every observation room on the main floor but they were all empty, most of the nurses and interns already gone for the night.

  “Wait.” I stopped in the middle of the hallway, looking from one end to the other. But instead of looking for Sam I tried to feel her this time—her consciousness, maybe even her fear.

  “Bryn?”

  I held up a hand and closed my eyes. When I opened them again Sam was standing in front of me, delirious as if something had physically moved her.

  “I found you,” I said.

  She smiled, relieved to know that whatever tug she’d felt was me.

  “Where are you sleeping?” I asked.

  Sam pointed straight down.

  “In one of the labs?” Vogle said.

  Sam nodded. “It’s cold.”

  Vogle took the elevator while I took Sam’s hand, one blink covering the distance from the main doors of the hospital to Sam’s room. Vogle was right. It was nothing more than a crowded lab full of sparkling glass and humming equipment. Sam was right too. It was like ice, her cheeks flushed as her sleeping body lay buried under blankets. She’d been hidden away on a cot, unopened boxes and tall tables blocking her from the view of the main hallway, the dust on the equipment revealing that Dr. Banz’s staff hardly ever stepped foot in here.

  “How many days has it been?” I asked, examining the IV stuck to Sam’s wrist.

  She wrinkled her nose, preoccupied. “Did you find her?”

  “Who?” I said.

  “Eve. I told him I couldn’t find her,” Sam said. “I tried to tell him…” Her face scrunched, exasperated.

  “It’s okay,” I said.

  She buried her face in my chest. “I just want to wake up.”

  “I know.” I brushed her hair. “You will.”

  When Vogle found us he was still, staring down at Sam’s body in horror. “We have to get her to the main floor of the hospital.”