The Girl In Between series: Books 1-4

by Laekan Zea Kemp

  My face fell against my knees, the air so thin it barely made it’s way down to my lungs. A sob slowly tried to rip me in two but this time I didn’t choke it back down.

  “I’m sorry.” I shook. “I’m sorry, Dani. I’m so sorry…I’m…”

  She wrapped her arms around me. “You didn’t know.”

  I sat up. Angry. “That doesn’t matter. I killed him. I did that and now Roman’s in danger. He’s going to die because of me.” I buried my face in my hands. “Because of me!”

  She stood, letting go of me. “Then don’t.”

  My arms fell limp. “What?”

  “Don’t die.”

  I stood too. “What are you talking about?”

  She pushed me back down, just as angry. “I’m talking about fighting. Stop treating your death as some kind of inevitability and fight. Find a way out of this. Find a way to wake yourself up.”

  I shrunk. “It’s not that easy, Dani.”

  “Of course it’s not easy. But do you want to save him or not?”

  My voice was thin. “Yes.”

  She stood over me, looking down. “Do you love him or not?”

  I’d been asking myself that question since finding my body in Anso’s prison. All this time I’d thought death had stripped me of feelings but now I realized that it had only amplified them. Death had made every feeling so loud that I’d had no choice but to shut them off. Now they were burning through like sunlight between the leaves, waiting for me to step into the light.

  Dani knelt. “Bryn, do you love him?”

  I scraped the tears from my face. “Yes. More than anything.”

  She hugged me, finally softening. “Then we’ll find a way to save you both.”

  Kira suddenly appeared in the doorway. Dazed. She looked towards the stairs as she said, “He’s here.”

  Dani and I exchanged a look.

  “Roman?” I breathed.

  We both stood, following Kira to the living room. She’d been resting since Roman and I had rescued her, recuperating in solitude as she waited for her nightmares to let go of her long enough to sleep. I wasn’t sure if she had but this was the first time she’d left her room since spooking Cole and my heart skipped at the thought of what might have finally drawn her out.

  The front door was open, everyone venturing back inside, their search for Valentina fruitless. But they weren’t alone. A young man in winter clothes was shaking dry leaves from his coat. His face was smeared in mud or blood, his hair a static mess. I imagined what he’d looked like when he’d first left home—just a boy. Now it was clear, he was a Rogue.

  Kira approached him tentatively, both of us remembering the last time she’d gone to see him. He’d been ignoring her, the power behind his draw to her overwhelming him to the point of terror. He hadn’t answered the door and on her way back home she’d been attacked by the shadows. Then she’d vanished.

  Kira stood in front of him, probably wondering if he was still too afraid to admit what he felt. But then his face twisted, a child’s sob erupting as he fell into her arms.

  “He’s the first one,” Dani said, her face just as pained. “We didn’t think it was safe enough to send Kira off alone. Not like the other Dreamers we’d sent on planes and trains to be reunited with their Rogues.” Her breath caught. “What did we put him through?”

  “You made the right decision,” I said. And then it hit me. I should have been the one making these decisions. I should have been the one reuniting the Dreamers with their Rogues.

  I pulled Dani into the dining room, shutting the sliding doors behind us. I examined the maps on the wall, fingertips drawn to the one not covered in string.

  I touched each tack. “Are these them? The Rogues who are still living?”

  “Just the white ones. Red are…”

  My fingers hovered over each red tack, the pull back to the white ones like a magnet. “I can feel them.” My hand fell. “I can sense them out there.”

  Dani stepped to my side. “Me too.”

  I stared down at her hands, the same slight tremble in hers that was racing through mine. Then I looked at the other map, not the one tracking the Rogues but the one tracking the danger they would have to dodge on their way here.

  Dani was right about it being safer for the Rogues to travel than their Dreamers. But the truth was it wasn’t safe for anyone out there. Not anymore. My eyes traced an invisible line between the white tacks and the ones marking each disaster. How many Rogues were fighting for their lives right now against a monster from their own imagination? How many were wounded or just terrified? How many had no idea the strength that hid inside them to fight back?

  I stared at Dani’s hands again, wondering how much strength was hiding inside her now too.

  “I want to try something,” I said. “But only if you—”

  “Yes.” Dani’s gaze was still pinned to the map. “Just tell me what to do.”

  I raised my right hand, finally sensing Dani’s sight like an electric current. She did the same until our palms and splayed fingers were mirror images.

  “We know you can find things that are lost,” I said. “But maybe with both of us we can do more than that.”

  “You want to bring them here,” Dani said.

  I nodded. “I want to try.”

  Our fingertips were just centimeters apart.

  “I need you to find every single one.” A drop of sweat slipped down my hairline. “Bring me to them,” I laced our fingers, her sight casting my light like the rising sun over every map, and tack, and piece of string, “and I’ll do the rest.”

  38

  Roman

  Calvin lay beneath a cherry tree, the patch of disturbed earth marked with a single flower, too small for a man. Shay knew she’d find him in pieces. I wondered if he’d been shattered as infinitely as the stars or if he’d been whole enough to recognize. I wondered how she’d survived it. Finding him, bringing him here, burying him alone.

  She sat holding her knees, the toes of her boots brushing the loose dirt. Collin sat across from her, staring hard at the ground as if Calvin might whisper something to him about his own death. I tried to pull him away—my weak effort at warning him of the seductive power of giving up—but he wouldn’t move. Neither would she.

  As the wind picked up, a remnant of what the nights were like before the world began to rip at the seams, Shay finally spoke. “He tried to find me. In the real world.” She scraped tears from her cheeks. “That’s how he ended up in Kilrush. I grew up here with my grandmother. I’m sure it ended up on some school roster or government record after my parents died. Before my grandmother died too and I vanished…” She sighed, leaving the rest of her tears to the wind. “He almost found me.”

  “Where was…” Andre stopped, ripping a few blades of grass. “Where did you find him?”

  She stared straight ahead as she said, “In a ledger at Innwood House.”

  “Wait…” I sat up. “A ledger?”

  “His name,” Shay spat, twisting her hands. “All I found was his name.”

  My chest clenched. “You mean you found the last place he’d been but not…his body?”

  Shay stared up at the moon, exhausted, angry, a challenge in her eyes. “I looked for him. I searched every inch of this godforsaken island.”

  “But Celia’s directions…” I said.

  “She sent me right to Innwood’s doorstep. But when I saw his name I knew it didn’t matter.” Shay kicked at the dirt, nothing but the flower planted there. “The woman of the house said he’d disappeared without paying, his belongings still in the drawers. She said even the bathtub had still been full of water.” Shay looked up at the sky again. “There’d been blood on the tile floor of the bathroom. She’d seen drops of it beneath the door before she dared to open it. But the room was empty. Calvin never came back.”

  “I’m so sorry, Shay.” It wasn’t enough but I didn’t know what else to say.

  She pulled her hair tight
away from her face. “I’m so tired.” She clutched her neck. “I’m just so tired.”

  With those words I’d thought Shay would stay still, that she’d stop, or even slow down. But without another glance at the small memorial she’d made for Calvin, she stood with a huff and marched back towards her childhood home, the rest of us following her inside.

  The small cottage was empty and it reminded me of the bare floors and walls of the safe house where Michael had dragged me and Vogle the night the Rogues kidnapped us. It was the perfect hiding spot. Unfortunately, we wouldn’t be hiding for long. Andre had known Shay much longer than I had and he remedied her frustration the only way he knew how—with coordinates and strategies, giving her a mission to set her sights on before whatever hopeless tide she’d been swept up in carried her too far out of reach.

  “Your harnesses worked like a charm,” Andre said. “Saved our asses from getting eaten by those sharks.”

  I crossed my arms. “Yeah, sure wish I would have been given a demonstration before we crashed into the ocean.”

  “Well, lucky I’m here then,” Shay said, forced but bright. “A demonstration from Andre would have certainly gotten you all killed.”

  Shay toppled the contents of a black bag onto the floor in the center of the empty kitchen, wires and gadgets and shreds of metal clanking like Christmas.

  “According to our coordinates we’re heading to London next,” Shay said, handing each of us a metal strip that looked and felt like an ordinary magnet. “The girl could be anywhere in the city. Especially if she’s smart and unharmed, she’ll be on the move, never staying in any one place for too long.”

  I held up the magnet. “That’s where these come in…how exactly?”

  Shay hurled hers like an arrow at the door, flat side landing diagonally above the doorknob. She held a finger to her lips and I heard the low grind of metal followed by the click click click of the lock as it released.

  “It’s a skeleton key,” Andre marveled.

  “Better,” Shay said. “There’s a small chip inside that works on electronic locks too. Anywhere you need an ID card or even a retinal scanner we have access to.”

  “That’s some high-tech gear,” I said.

  Shay crawled to the strip and peeled it from the door. “I’ve spent a lot of time unlocking doors.” She glanced back at Andre’s map, her finger tracing the circle around the next Dreamer’s location. “’Bout time I actually found something behind one of them.”

  39

  Kascidee

  I crack the door, the sound of the shower running easing me inside. Each step makes me wince. I carry my arm like something dead, my shoulder joint still pinched out of socket. It aches and burns, the pain making me dizzy as I pass the old television set on the kitchen counter. They’re still showing still shot after still shot of the moon and I envy their ignorance. Their horror, their awe.

  The first time I come close to feeling anything real is when I see my little sister lying on her bed, listening to the sound of the whistling pipes. She’s waiting for him to finish. She’s counting down the minutes, the seconds, trying to brace herself for the chaos. But she’s not afraid of the unknown. She’s afraid of the familiar. The familiar sound of his voice, the smell of alcohol lacing every word; the familiar look in his eyes, blood-shot and seething; the familiar blow of his backhand just because she breathed.

  Don’t breathe. Don’t breathe.

  I know what she’s thinking because I used to spend every night thinking, wishing, praying for it too. Praying that he wouldn’t notice me. Praying that I wouldn’t wake up.

  I guide the door open, stopping short of the moan left over from being flung against the wall too many times. “Bailey…”

  She sits up, hands shoving an excited sound back down her throat. Her eyes flit from me to the hallway leading down to the bathroom.

  I beckon her forward and she knows we’re leaving, one hand reaching for her jacket while the other plucks an old birthday card from the mirror above the dresser. It’s the last one our mother ever gave her, the letter inside using the word love eight times to match the number of years my sister had been alive. But our mother is dead now. Pieces of us are too and all I can do is try to salvage what’s left.

  When Bailey reaches me she whispers, “You’re hurt.”

  I hear the water shut off.

  We race for the front door and then I hear a click.

  “Kascidee.”

  I don’t have to see the gun shaking in my stepfather’s hand. It pulls me like a vortex, hollow and ready to do the same to me. But I’m not the same girl who was crying and clutching herself a few months ago in the corner of this kitchen. I’m not the same girl whose bloody lips and bloody noses stained the grout between the tiles grey. I’m not the same girl who used to cower; who used to be afraid.

  I am not afraid. Because I am not just a girl.

  But he is a man.

  Just a man.

  I face him, rage so hot the words turn to silent smoke on my lips.

  “Bailey, go back to your room.”

  She doesn’t let go of my hand.

  “You know what hap-pens,” he stammers, face flushed, “when I have to count to three.”

  Bailey lets go of my hand but she doesn’t leave. Her eyes abandon the gun; her trembling paused by the glow of the television.

  My stepfather looks too. On the screen there is a girl standing in a restaurant. On fire. It races red around her arms and legs, dancing, listening. She wears it like a crown and veil. She is beautiful.

  My stepfather huffs. “You thought you were the only one.” He shakes his head, the gun lazy in his hand but still pointed in my direction. “You know what they say about that girl? About you?” He takes a step towards me. “You’re the devil.” Then another. “You’re a witch!” He jabs the gun, slurring. “You’re the reason the world is ending. And now I know. Now I know why I drink, why my mind races, why I hear things I shouldn’t. Why it hurts so much to be in this house.” He rakes a hand across the counter, my mother’s empty teacups and jam jars crashing to the floor. “You. You did this to me.”

  He takes another step, the space between us a wick and I am the flame. I take a step back in response, the tiles slick. That’s when I notice that the old apartment building sits on a slight tilt, the water dripping from my stepfather’s legs carving tiny rivers under my own feet.

  He takes another step but I don’t retreat.

  “You killed her too,” he spits at me. “Didn’t you? You crawled inside my head and then you killed your own mother!”

  My fists clench and then I drive my foot into a shallow puddle as the rest of me turns as blue as my drugstore-dyed hair. Electricity races like a swarm of hornets, sparking a lasso around my stepfather’s arms and legs. He fires a shot, Bailey ducking as the bullet cuts between us and carves straight through the door.

  The current turns him blue. Then white. He stiffens. He falls.

  Sparks die as the smoke clears. Bailey stares, afraid to reach for me; afraid not to.

  “Holy mother of—!”

  She falls against me as someone falls against the door, groaning.

  “Hold still.” A younger man’s voice.

  “You’re such a baby.” Female.

  I tuck Bailey behind me as I reach for the door. Her eyes plead with me not to but I know someone’s been struck by the stray bullet that was marked for me. I pull it open and reveal a large bald man clutching his arm while a blonde-haired girl wearing a strange looking tool belt sutures the wound back together. With the tips of her fingers.

  “Excuse us,” she says, backpedaling into the kitchen, hands still maneuvering a small flame across the man’s skin.

  The young guy whose voice I heard earlier shuts the door behind the brood. He glances at my stepfather’s body, the disheveled towel barely covering him.

  “Guess we should have gotten here a little sooner,” he says. “I’m sorry about that.”

  �
��Sorry?” The bald man grunts. “I’m the one who’s been shot for Christ’s sake.” He winks at Bailey and she smiles.

  40

  Roman

  It was the only house with the lights still on, the window open right next to an old record player. I watched the needle as it read the grooves, remembering the old records Bryn had played for me in the hope that something would spark a memory. When she’d loaded the Rush album, my body following the baseline, we’d finally found our first clue.

  It felt like so long ago—the waiting to be found, the waking up. In the past year I had relearned how to walk and talk and set myself on fire. So much had changed. Even now Bryn and I were still being torn apart by something, fighting the same fight but in separate time zones.

  I had no idea where she was or if she was okay, if she needed me. I didn’t know how much time we had left or if in the midst of fighting for her life she was somehow manipulating that too. I prayed that someone was, that the universe or God or even the Dreamer who’d started it all was out there somewhere pulling strings and shifting time and space in our favor.

  But there was also a part of me that wondered if this was it. If Bryn and I were never meant to reconnect, to realize some kind of normalcy. Maybe we were meant to run, crossing paths the way that only star-crossed lovers do, something more powerful than both of us constantly hurling us in opposite directions.

  For a long time we’d refused to give in, fighting our way back to each other no matter the cost. We were still fighting but while I fought for Bryn she fought for something else, the fate of our relationship not just tied to whoever won but who survived. Because even if we stopped the world from ending; even if we found our way back to each other, if she wasn’t the same girl who’d breathed me back to life and if I wasn’t the same boy who’d landed in her dreams, maybe none of it would matter.