The Girl In Between series: Books 1-4

by Laekan Zea Kemp

  I didn’t understand what I was seeing. I didn’t understand... The Dreamers Sebastían killed were no more than names on my list. Number five. Number eight. And now they were dead.

  Would be if I didn’t get to them first.

  “You will dig their graves.” Anso’s voice was faint but familiar, the echo of him inside my head the same as when I’d touched Kira.

  Alma’s vision turned to storm clouds, the moon behind them gone—so black I could barely see its outline. Beneath it there was nothing but rain. Red. Blood. Mine. I lay in it, gasping, reaching, trying not to drown. I was dying.

  “You will dig their graves until you’ve dug your own.” Anso’s voice cut through me like a blade this time. “Until I have one of my own too.”

  I remembered the Bryn who’d dragged me off those railroad tracks after Anso’s daughter had tried to convince me that I was too dangerous to live. She’d used my grandparent’s ghosts as proof of my own destruction and I’d listened. But then I’d stopped myself, another Bryn rescuing me from…me. I remembered examining future Bryn—the blood trickling down her leg, the dry wounds that I’d thought meant victory. But this Bryn…this version of me in Alma’s vision was nothing but twisted limbs and tears…breaths slowing, eyes growing still…dead. I was dead.

  Just like Anso promised. Until you’ve dug your own.

  I was dead.

  But so was he…

  Through Alma’s eyes I saw the grey landscape, the destruction, the silent ashes of war, her vision as wide as the night sky. Then I saw Anso fall. I watched him…die. And I didn’t know how. I didn’t know when. But the end…I’d seen it.

  The end.

  The storm inside me quieted and Alma collapsed. That’s when I heard their voices, the silence finally making them clear. Alma’s mother and father were wandering the yard, searching for her. But just before they reached the road and saw us there, I squeezed her hand, then Roman’s, and we were gone.

  13

  Ian

  The sheets stick to me again. I tear out of them, trying to remember where I am. You’re in your room. Your mother is down the hall. You’re safe. It was just a dream.

  I have lots of dreams. Sometimes I’m alone and I go places I know. Other times I’m not alone. I can’t see anyone but I know they’re there.

  I dream about the sky a lot. I tear apart the clouds like cotton candy and the wind tastes just as sweet. The sun sits in my hand and I spin it like a top. Sometimes I toss the moon like a baseball. Sometimes someone throws it back.

  I stare at the shadows on my bedroom ceiling and they make the solar system mobile above my bed look like it’s moving. They get darker and I stare into the black until it’s all I see.

  I-A-N

  I-A-N

  I-A-N

  I say my name the way the therapist taught me until the things I see are just thoughts and those thoughts are replaced by the three letters that spell my name. I think I must be sleeping again but then the curtains flutter.

  I feel the breeze and sit up, letting it hit me in the face. The window’s half open and the moon is so bright my eyes water. I blink until I can see two crows perched in the pecan tree over my head. I blink until I can see the stars too. They’re just as bright as the moon. Just like in my dreams.

  I-A-N

  A star falls straight down, then another.

  I-A-N

  The moon shakes shadows from its face until it’s full and looking right at me.

  I-A-N

  The stars shift like building blocks, moving from side to side and up and down. They glitter and spell my name.

  My name.

  I fall into the curtain, tangled. The window slams shut and then I hear footsteps. My bedroom door pushes open and my mother leans inside.

  “Ian? Are you okay?” She wipes her eyes but she’s in a daze. “Ian, it’s way past your bedtime.” She yawns. “Go back to sleep.”

  She closes the door and I reach for the blankets. When I pull them back I see my face pressed against the pillow, my arms and legs tangled in the sheets, and realize that I already was.

  14

  Roman

  We landed on Celia’s front steps and Bryn turned her back, wandering as far from the house as she could. I stood in the doorway, one eye on Bryn as she sunk to her knees in the grass, the other on Rafael as he carried Alma’s body into the living room and then placed her inside of it.

  She’d fought, consciousness still stirring her limbs. But it was weak and wild as if she were a child who’d just been born. Then she was forced her into her corpse and it was silent.

  Bryn was too. As she tore at the grass. As she finally got to her feet and held out a trembling hand. I hesitated before reaching back, wondering if we should stay, if we should run. But the look on her face was adamant and I thought that maybe faster was better. That the sooner we found the Dreamers, the sooner all of this would be over. The sooner Bryn’s eyes would resemble the ones I’d first fallen in love with instead of these dark shifting things that made me feel empty.

  Chicago was the color of cough syrup, the shadow of overcast clouds shifting across the pavement beneath the streetlights. We landed somewhere downtown, something broken everywhere we looked. The street was empty and we stood there for a few moments as Bryn fought the fatigue from carrying our dream-selves somewhere new.

  As we walked I could feel eyes everywhere and I watched every dark corner, instincts on high alert. Even though being attacked wasn’t the most immediate danger anymore. Being found was. Being seen. If someone tried to rob us, or worse, Bryn could ignite just like she had inside the greenhouse.

  I could ignite too. Carlisle’s ghost was like a chain around my insides, the links still glowing hot. It wasn’t so much instinct that had set me aflame in Dr. Lombard’s greenhouse but anger. Even now it sparked at every suspicious sound and shadow. If I didn’t control it, I’d risk exposing myself again the way I’d exposed myself to Dr. Lombard and his bodyguards.

  It was a potentially tragic mistake…for all of us. But it had been quickly remedied by Bryn’s decision to set them all on fire. Something the Bryn I’d met almost a year ago never would have even considered. But the Bryn walking next to me now was a different girl. A girl who’d sent a bullet straight into the chest of a stranger. A girl who’d used my flames to destroy two gunmen, a doctor, and an entire city. I could hear it in every exhale; I could see it in her eyes. This Bryn wasn’t just bolder. She was stronger, colder, and much, much scarier.

  Bryn’s footsteps turned to stomps. She seemed oblivious to the voices shouting over fences, to the hiss of running engines. I wondered if putting one step in front of the other was the only way…as if running towards the thing she feared was the only way she thought she could conquer it.

  I was afraid too. I wanted to tell her, to stop her and let her see it on my face. But she’d kept her promise letting me come with her and I knew that no matter what, I’d have to keep mine too. Bryn didn’t know about what I’d done to Carlisle and after all of this was over she wouldn’t need to. Soon his death would be buried under countless others and maybe that was the key to not feeling it anymore. Maybe that’s why some people became addicted to causing pain. Because the more you hurt others, the more numb you were. It was what my mother wanted. It was what I wanted for a long time too.

  We passed an old church, a glimmer in the stained glass window yanking me back. I stared past the grime, past the smear of candlelight, and the red stain of the moon. A pair of eyes steeled me to the pavement.

  My mother.

  She looked back, watching me just as anxiously as I was watching her. I hadn’t seen her this close since the shadow had slipped on her skin and before that when I’d found her body. Both times she’d been empty. Both times she’d been a mirage. But something about this face…was real…was hers.

  I waited for her to speak, to shatter me again with her regret. But when she opened her mouth nothing came out.

  Say som
ething. I boiled, missing her, hating her.

  I knew she could hear my thoughts. Just say it!

  Her eyes spoke the loudest. I counted the tears.

  “Roman, what are you doing?” Bryn nudged me, staring too. “What is it?”

  My mother was swallowed by the candlelight flickering inside the church. I waited for another flash of her face, for her voice but there was…

  “Nothing.” I faced Bryn. “It’s nothing. We should hurry.”

  The rest of the way I thought I saw my mother peering at me from behind every dirty window, my doppelganger leering at us from every dark alley. Or maybe they were watching me from the inside, monitoring everything from my pulse, to the anger like simmering coals in the pit of my stomach, to the thoughts running through my head.

  You’re in control, Roman. You.

  We turned the corner, Bryn stopping in front of a door marked with a big blue S. The building looked abandoned and it reminded me of the warehouse in Cologne where the shadows had taken the Rogues. My stomach tightened as I realized that whatever we were about to find behind this door was probably going to be worse.

  Alma had been trapped in a hole underground, slowly suffocating on the stagnant heat and the smell of chickens rotting in their cages. She’d existed in a nightmare and all I could do was brace myself for the one we were about to walk into now.

  Bryn hesitated, her breathing labored as she stared at the grain of the door.

  After a few more moments of silence I looked at her. “What will you tell them?”

  Kira trusted Bryn and Alma had already seen her death but this Dreamer and all the others would be oblivious to the real reason Bryn and I had come for them.

  Bryn flinched at the sound of my voice, as if suddenly realizing I was there. Then she swallowed hard, a foreign voice slipping past her lips—one that was made of stone and warned that she was too. She looked at me, desperate. “I’m going to tell them they’re going home.”

  “You’re going to lie.”

  She clenched her fists. “Would you want to know?”

  I thought back to Bryn’s dream-state, back to that agonizing moment when my memory had stitched itself back together and I’d realized where I was and why. I remembered lying under the blanket inside the farmhouse as I waited for Bryn to find me in that hospital bed. I’d told her not to, the thought of what had happened to me…of what I’d done to myself too painful. The last thing I wanted was to wake up in that broken body, all of my worst fears realized. And after being kidnapped and enslaved and tortured, wouldn’t that be the Dreamers’ worst nightmare? That death was their only escape?

  “I’m doing the right thing.” It was the first time I’d heard Bryn sound uncertain since she’d woken up as a stranger.

  My chest squeezed. Maybe she wasn’t so far away after all.

  “You said it yourself,” I agreed, for her sake. “We don’t have a choice.”

  “And they belong in their bodies.” Her voice quavered again and I knew she was thinking of hers. I was too. “Don’t they?”

  I didn’t like not having the answers to her questions but what if there weren’t any? What if there was no such thing as right or wrong or good or evil? Not anymore.

  “What do you feel?” I asked her.

  Bryn closed her eyes, her breath slipping. It finally steadied and then she reached for the doorknob.

  The room was dark one moment and the next it was grey. I knew by the look in Bryn’s eyes that she’d done it. Her gaze travelled around the room, silently shifting the abandoned furniture, making a way for us. The light travelled up a set of stairs, fresh footprints pressed into the dust.

  I held out a hand, kneeling to examine them. One set—not as big as my feet but not as small as Bryn’s.

  “Up there,” Bryn whispered. “Ian.”

  She crept up the stairs, silent, and I followed, stepping in front of her just as we reached the landing. There was a single window, the glass partially covered in brown packing tape, the silhouette of a neon sign stamped onto the floor. And standing in the pool of light was a young man with red hair, dark eyes scanning the walls that weren’t bare but covered in scroll—white words, numbers, and other strange shapes. He muttered to himself, the ping of his voice like some kind of recitation or calculation.

  It wasn’t at all what I had braced myself for before we’d stepped inside. The building was dilapidated and the inside was abandoned, nothing prison-like or powerful about it. I thought of Kira’s glass cage and Alma’s underground tomb. And here Ian was. Alone. Hiding.

  I took one more step, the floorboard creaking, and Ian spun.

  “You’re here to take me back.” He scratched at himself, frantic as he backed towards the wall. “You won’t. I can’t. I won’t go back there.” He fell against the brick, startled as if the walls were already closing in.

  “We’re not here to take you back,” Bryn promised. “We’re here to help you.”

  “You’re lying.”

  Bryn abandoned her words and held out her hand instead, not for Ian to take, but for him to see. Light sprung up from her open palm, constellations expanding and swirling around the room. His mouth quavered, falling open.

  She snapped her hand closed and the stars fell. “How did you get away from them?”

  Ian was placid, his body perfectly still as his focus moved back to the writing on the walls. He traced the symbols with his finger, mesmerized as he said, “How did you know I was here?”

  Bryn crossed the room, treading carefully. “I find things.”

  It was only part of the truth but any more than that and some of the Dreamers might come to realize why Bryn had really come for them. Bryn and I had both heard multiple versions of her origin story but we knew how it was supposed to end and we both knew that it wasn’t necessarily good for the other Dreamers. Whatever Bryn was supposed to do in order to put the pieces back together wasn’t good but it was also inevitable, especially now that the Dreamers were trapped outside their bodies in some earth-bound purgatory that made them both stronger and weaker at the same time.

  I examined Ian’s face, his eyes the only things that seemed to be alive at all. But there was nothing on the surface that revealed what he could do. I wondered if it was something important or something he hated. I wondered what they’d tried to use him for and who exactly they were.

  “What is this place?” Bryn asked.

  “This used to be my grandfather’s barber shop,” Ian said. “He retired a couple of years ago when the bank closed it down.”

  “How long have you been here?”

  He shuddered, looking human for the first time. “A while. I don’t really know.” He looked at Bryn. “Did you run too?”

  She looked to me and then back to Ian. She nodded.

  “Where did they take you?”

  “They didn’t,” Bryn said. “I got away before they could.”

  Ian was still tracing the symbols, hypnotized.

  “Ian,” Bryn took another step towards him, “I need you to tell me who took you and why.”

  I almost stopped her. I wanted to. The people who took Ian were irrelevant now. We had his body and all Bryn had to do was take his hand and place him back where he belonged. But I knew exactly what she was thinking. That the people who took Ian deserved to be punished the same way she’d punished Dr. Lombard. But she hadn’t just punished him. She’d killed him and she’d used the fire inside me to do it.

  Ian tapped the glass window in front of him and I moved closer, watching the street. But then Bryn took a sharp breath and I followed her eyes to the sky. Within the clouds there were sparks, stars being born; stars falling, moonlight shifting as if it was ink trapped in a vat of water. Ian swiped his palm and the clouds disintegrated in a gasp.

  “They don’t have a name,” he said. “Organizations as top secret as theirs only exist in code and encrypted data.”

  “How many are there?” Bryn asked.

  “Hundreds,” Ian s
aid.

  I thought back on the fire in the town square in Andalusia. All of that chaos. We’d left Alma’s captors to destroy themselves and Dr. Lombard was only one man, his guards unintended casualties. But what if Ian’s captors had to be dealt with one at a time? Could Bryn look into that many pairs of eyes, could she hear that many pleading voices and still kill them anyway? Would she still want to?

  “But she was the one,” Ian went on. “She was the one who found me, who forced me to…”

  “Tell us, Ian,” Bryn said. “You can trust us.”

  He pressed the heels of his palms against his eyelids. Then his shoulders fell. “Everything above and just below our atmosphere is made of string.” He lifted his hands, stretching each finger. “I started yanking on them as a kid, dreaming up patterns and formations that weren’t supposed to exist. I can excavate old stars like diamonds and shift meteors centimeter by centimeter.”

  “Are you the one who changed the moon?” I asked.

  “I didn’t do this,” Ian said, breathless as he stared at the blood smeared over the sky. “They wanted me to maneuver a meteor within striking distance of earth.”

  “But why?” I said.

  Ian tore his eyes from the sky for just a moment. “The woman who took me belonged to an organization made up of the most powerful people on the planet—government officials, military leaders, scientists, engineers...” He paused. “They’ve been investigating countries harboring weapons of mass destruction and discovered an atomic arsenal big enough to kill everyone on this planet.”

  “Someone’s trying to start a war?” Bryn asked.

  “I don’t know all of the details,” Ian admitted. “What I do know is that there is a weapon in existence at this very moment more powerful than anything you could imagine. Creating an imminent threat to the entire world is the only way to expose who’s in control of it.”