The Girl In Between series: Books 1-4

by Laekan Zea Kemp

  Adham called to us but I couldn’t move. I imagined Felix being dragged away from one of Celia’s antique mirrors, Dani begging Vogle to fix him somehow. I imagined them all waiting for us to come inside, to explain, to concoct some supernatural cure. I didn’t have one. I couldn’t keep Anso from finding us. I couldn’t destroy the locusts in time. I couldn’t even control the storm I’d created.

  I couldn’t face Felix.

  I narrowed my gaze on Adham and forced him back inside the house, his voice trapped behind the door as it fell closed.

  “What are you doing?” Roman asked.

  I shoved out a hand, stone encapsulating the house again. Then I let out a slow breath, the stone and the house disintegrating one piece at a time until there was nothing in the clearing but the two of us. I maneuvered the forest, trees cinched in close until the entire lot was hidden, the house invisible, and the dirt road washed away.

  I turned to Roman. “Keeping them safe.”

  18

  Malin

  I scrape my belly over the side of the boat, trying to get a good look at the sandbar as we pass. My mother snatches me back, plopping me down on the seat beside her.

  “I want to see,” I say.

  “You can see where it’s safe,” she says.

  “Here, Malin, come take hold of this rope.” My father helps me climb over his tackle boxes and fishing poles.

  “Be careful,” my mother says.

  “She’s fine.” My father smiles. “Girl just wants some adventure.”

  “What do you mean?” My mother huffs but I know she’s being funny. “Are you saying she’d rather get all mucky catching and carving these fish than frying them up in the kitchen with me?”

  “Cook with you in the kitchen?” My father laughs.

  I put my hands square on my hips. “He’s saying I’d rather die.”

  “Oh, hush,” my mother says. “Don’t talk like that, Malin. You’ll call Death right to our door.”

  “I’ve seen him,” I say. I smirk only because I don’t want my mother to believe me. She never does. But better safe than sorry after they took Alice to the convent after she started claiming she could talk to the dead.

  But maybe she could. Maybe that’s who Death was always stopping to visit in the middle of the night when he’d pass by my window. I’d seen drawings of him before in the old books my mother used to read to me and my brother when we were being bad or when one of the neighbors died and we had to get all dressed up to go to their funeral.

  There were poems and prayers in the book, Death just a hooded ink scratch in the background. A reminder just in case the shock of actually dying made you forget who to follow on the way out. But Death didn’t wear a long robe. He didn’t carry a scythe. He was a storm cloud, cold, and smelling like sleep.

  “Malin, you’re too close to the edge again.” My mother pulls me back, twisting my arm on the way.

  I squeal but she doesn’t let go. “It hurts!”

  “It’s supposed to!”

  She stumbles over the fishing poles and I wriggle from her grasp. I trip too, her fingers barely grazing me as I tumble over the edge of the boat, knocking my head just as I hit the water.

  The ocean is a grey smudge, wisps of white tangled in murky brown. The current tips me over and when I look down I see my coat twisting in the water. My boots. My brown hair tangling in a knot. I see myself sinking. It’s me. I know it’s me because my grandmother made those boots for my older brother, the leather cracking near the toe where he started to grow out of them.

  It’s me. But…how?

  I reach, stretching a hand that looks just like the one fluttering beneath me. There are two of me, except only one is awake. The down current is strong and I see the shadows of the ocean floor growing darker. But then the shadows grow arms, reaching for my sinking body. They wrap around my ankles, climbing, climbing until they’re hugging my waist. The current tosses my jacket and I see a pair of eyes, a face pressed to my ribs. It smiles and my body sinks fast, snatched into the darkness.

  I scramble and start to panic, the current frenzied just like my heartbeat.

  Slow. Slow. Stop.

  Dirt and seaweed drift past and then they freeze. The water stills and the current slows. Everything just hangs there, the ocean like a bowl of gelatin. I wriggle, kicking, and I realize I’m still free. Because I’m awake…

  I kick my legs and swim like an arrow, catching my coat sleeve and wrestling with my body until we’re face to face. The hands are gone, the ghost they were attached to drifting like smoke towards the ocean floor.

  I hear a splash, my father barefoot and rising out of a cyclone of bubbles. I hug my body, holding it close.

  Wake up.

  Wake up, Malin.

  I choke, salt burning all the way down. Hands fit under my arms and I realize my own are empty. I’m not holding my body anymore. I’m holding onto my father. As he drags me towards the surface I realize that I’m drowning. And it hurts. And I realize that as I held my body, as I tried to keep it from sinking, it wasn’t wakefulness that had filled me like a balloon. It was something else.

  19

  Bryn

  I ripped Roman from his body, sending his flesh inside Celia’s house with the others while I carried his consciousness with me somewhere cold and wet. My stomach was a ball of static. I had no idea where exactly we were, the Dreamers’ memories washed clean of street signs and city monuments. Even worse, I had no idea what awful nightmare we were carrying with us.

  The prick of cold air swirled up from the floor and down over our heads, dank and making me want to sneeze. I blinked, straining against the darkness of the room. It pulsed in and out, a faint red light blooming from somewhere I couldn’t see. It felt like we were underground and the muffled creaks and moans made it sound like we were moving.

  Roman startled as a loud horn blared. I took a few steps, dazed, the dim lights making me feel nauseous. I couldn’t tell if the motion I sensed was beneath my feet or between my ears. Moving us was getting harder, my body feeling more and more impermanent with every new destination. Or maybe the dizziness was worse this time because of what we’d left behind. Dani. Felix. I didn’t want to think about his shock, his screams. His pain.

  I pulled the list of Dreamers from my pocket—the paper damp, Kira and Alma’s names swimming together—a reminder that we couldn’t stop. Not now. Roman cast a glow over the name I’d circled. Malin. She was the second Dreamer I’d seen in Alma’s vision, which meant she was the next one on Sebastían’s list too.

  “It feels like Anso’s prison,” Roman said.

  The floor fell at a slight slant, things rolling in the shadows, the sound of crates scraping across the floor. The horn sounded again followed by the tug of machines.

  My gaze drifted toward the ceiling. “I think we’re on some kind of ship.”

  A ladder was raised beneath a round door cut just above our heads. Roman jumped, yanking it down with one hand. He pulled himself up two rungs at a time and when he reached the door he heaved it open, his hands reeling from the cold and almost melting the metal surface.

  I managed to wedge myself through the opening, both of us peering out as men walked back and forth across the deck, carrying supplies and calling to others off the pier. Preparing for send-off. We weren’t in our bodies but something about pulling away from the dock made me feel trapped. Something about the very air we were breathing felt traumatized.

  Several times the men turned in our direction, looked right at us, and Roman ducked. But I kept a steady hand on Roman’s back, manipulating both of us until we were as transparent as the wind, and I knew they could only see the open door. We hopped out just as one of the men reached for the handle and threw it closed.

  The men started shouting, each one passing along the same foreign phrase until the order or warning had been carried from one end of the ship to the other. It was long and narrow, but not so big that I couldn’t see where one level ended
and the next began.

  Waves lapped against the boat, the spray washing over the railing. I examined the horizon and there was nothing but black sky sinking into black mist, the sound of it all crashing into each other making the hairs on my arms stand on end.

  “Where is she?” Roman whispered.

  I concentated, trying to reel her in, to feel the thread growing taut between us. I took a deep breath, the mist full of sea salt and tears. The soft patter turned to a shallow pulse, Malin’s heartbeat guiding my steps.

  “This way.”

  Men passed right by us, several of them startled by the brush of my arm or the strange pocket of warmth, but they just kept going, not even bothering to look back. I nodded to another set of stairs that led back into the bowels of the ship. Roman and I descended, trying not to lose our grip on each other and risk being seen as the ship moaned and pulled into deeper waters.

  A man emerged from the darkness below us, too close to dodge. We held our breath, sinking as close to the wall as possible, but I knew he would feel us there. It would be impossible not to. I counted the steps. Four. Three. Two.

  The man grazed me, his feet faltering down one step. He looked around, examining the walls, the open air. He finally shook his head, probably chalking it up to the wind or his tired mind playing tricks on him. When he reached the next step, his arm knocking Roman’s, he called out.

  He fell against the stairwell, looking right in Roman’s direction. He searched up and down the wall, one hand hovering between them, reaching. I slipped down one step, pulling Roman behind me. But not before the man’s fingers grazed Roman’s chest, his grip tightening around the collar of Roman’s shirt. Roman stumbled, losing my hand for half a second, and that was all it took for him to expose himself.

  My fingers snapped around Roman’s wrist, making him invisible again. The moment he vanished the man’s mouth slackened, a scream ringing through the stairwell as he raced for the deck of the ship. But he only made it a few more steps before Roman caught him by the jacket. I laid a hand on his skin and the man collapsed, his snores muffled by the wind.

  “We have to hurry,” I whispered. “It won’t be long before they find him.”

  When we reached the lowest level of the ship there was nothing but crates, stacked high and receding into the darkness. We wound between them, trying to get lost, but they seemed to go on forever. Frost covered the wood, hiding the labels on cans and bags that looked like they’d been down there for years.

  The walls of crates grew taller until they weren’t wood anymore but metal, the makeshift barrier like an iron prison. I peered between the slats but it was too dark to see now that we were so far from the stairwell. The air turned stale, the cold here even more biting than it had been on deck. I spotted a large thermostat in the corner, the face frozen and cracked.

  “Can you move these?” I asked Roman.

  He shoved the wall of crates in front of us, testing the stability. They didn’t budge.

  “I could knock the whole thing over,” he said, “but it’ll draw attention.”

  I looked them up and down, imagining they were light as air; strung up on pulleys that I could maneuver on command. I took a deep breath, concentrating, picturing the ropes moving up as the way before us cleared. When I exhaled, I heard the light scrape of metal on wood. I opened my eyes as the crates split apart, each one suspended and slowly drifting away from the others. They rose to the ceiling, shifting around like giant Tetris pieces. When they cleared our heads I stepped beneath them, a hand beckoning Roman forward.

  The floor was slick and I slipped, almost losing my balance. I took another step and my feet flew out from under me. I came down hard on a patch of black ice, pain severing my focus. The crates all dropped at once and I looked up just before being crushed. I imagined the pulleys locking in place, ropes straight and stiff, stalling them just before the first ones hit the ground. I sucked in air, muscles fraught as if I was supporting their actual weight. Then I lowered them slowly down, the soft sound of their descent too faint to reach the deck.

  “Are you okay?” Roman asked.

  He reached for my hand, his fingertips glowing red. I led them along the icy floor, a flame carving a trail for us into the darkness.

  A figure cowered beneath the glow and then I heard, “Stay back.”

  Roman held up a hand, the light bright and catching the walls. More ice. It was everywhere; thick and hanging from the ceiling like jagged teeth. I knew by the look in the girl’s eyes that at any moment it could come crashing down.

  She was crouched and small, wearing rags. The chill stained her blue, ice even hanging from the tips of her brown matted hair as crystals dusted her lashes. I couldn’t tell if she’d constructed the ice as some kind of fortress or if someone else had constructed it as some kind of trap. She was so stiff she barely shivered, the chill clinging to her voice instead.

  “I said don’t move.” Her accent was strange, every word rolling into the next.

  “We’re here to help you,” I said.

  Malin froze, the fear in her eyes accompanied by a flash of wonder. “Who…?” She couldn’t speak.

  I took a step forward, the ice along the floor melting beneath Roman’s stare. But Malin wasn’t just surrounded by ice, she was made of it, and the closer she came to Roman’s flames, the more she shook.

  She stood, her voice a painful whisper. “Are you going to take me home?”

  I wondered if she knew why we were there the same way that Alma had known or if she begged every stranger who wandered to the depths of the ship to take her home. I wondered if they stared at her the same way I was. In awe and horror. She looked more like a corpse than the sleeping body I’d found in Anso’s prison. It had been burned but not fatally. I wondered if she’d be able to sense the memory of the flames once I placed her back inside, if that memory would keep her warm.

  She watched Roman’s light crawl across every surface, flames melting holes in the ice. I waited for her to throw herself straight into them, burning to ash whatever will to live she had left. But she only trembled, this ephemeral body stuck in a state of dying while never actually achieving it. I wondered how long she’d been trapped down here and then I stopped wondering. Because as soon as I touched her I’d know everything.

  There was a faint whistling as voices swirled near the stairs. They grew louder and more frantic as people called to the others on deck and I knew they’d found the body we’d left unconscious in the stairwell.

  “Malin,” I pleaded, inching closer. “You have to come with us.”

  “How do you know my name?” She shivered. “How did you find me here?” She shrunk back. “They took me and kept me in the dark for so long.” She bit into the back of her hand as if trying not to scream. But she was just as numb as she was afraid. “I woke up here, nothing but water for miles and miles. And they knew I could speak to it, that it listened.”

  “The ocean,” I said.

  Malin nodded. “It whispers things to me too.”

  “You said it listens.” I took a few more steps, still watching the icicles hanging over our heads. “Is that what you can do? You can control the ocean?”

  “Only when it lets me.” She hung her head, matted hair swaying. “Sometimes I can make it move and sometimes I can make it lie down and sleep.”

  The way she spoke unnerved me, like the madness had already set in long ago. I wondered if I would absorb that part of her too, if the Dreamer’s essence wasn’t just the dreams but the mind that created them. The thought stopped me short just as the first icicle came down. It shattered to pieces at my feet and I shielded my face. Roman coaxed his flame back to the source, snuffing out the heat as water dripped down like rain.

  “Malin, I just need you to take my hand and it’ll all be over. I promise they won’t hurt you anymore.”

  Roman moved to my side and I knew he’d heard the ache in my voice. He watched my every move, my every breath, trying to anticipate the moment
I would finally unravel. Because this girl was too much like Sam, the ghost of her voice attached to every sigh and every syllable Malin spoke. I could see the sound piercing Roman too.

  “They…” Malin grimaced, absorbing the cold again. “Not they.”

  I eased closer. “Who, Malin? Who trapped you here?”

  There were footsteps but I couldn’t tell if they were coming down the stairwell or directly above our heads. More icicles shook free, exploding like translucent bombs. I crouched, Roman catching one with his bare hands before turning it to slush over my head.

  “Who are you?” Malin asked, as if she’d reached a strange break in her stupor. “What are you?”

  I led a hand toward Malin, thinking of the way she’d been staring at Roman’s flames, thinking of the only thing that might make her feel safe. I cast a warm summer breeze in her direction. It burned pink and gold. The sunset swaddled her until she was flesh and blood again, a smile drawing tears.

  But then the smile ripped straight down. She clutched herself, shaking her head. “It won’t let you take me.”

  “What won’t?”

  A faint knocking circled us, the walls popping and pressing in. The ship lurched, crates tumbling.

  Malin closed her eyes. “It’s listening.”

  I listened too.

  A loud moan pressed us in, the pressure making my ears pop. The spontaneous summer disintegrated and Roman snapped the shackles around Malin’s arms and legs. They were bruised and blistered, her fingernails bloody from where she’d probably tried to tear free.

  “It won’t let me go.” Malin backed away from every sound, stumbling as her heel snagged on one of the crates.

  The walls bowed as metal snapped and screws shot out of place, the force igniting sparks.

  Malin looked up. “The people.” She raised her voice. “What about the people?”