Smoke and Mist (The Academy Book 1)

by Kate Hall

  “It’s going to be okay,” Mom says again, massaging her scalp with water.

  “No, it won’t,” Gabby whispers. “Everything is going to shit.” She doesn’t usually curse in front of her parents, and this would normally earn her a light smack upside the head, but nothing about this is normal. They’ve barely had so much as a conversation for months.

  Mom sighs and takes her hands out of Gabby’s hair in order to turn the water off and grab a towel. The entire room is fogged up, and she gives her fragile daughter a kiss on the forehead before leaving. A final shudder runs through Gabby, but she’s done freaking out for now. She dries off as well as she can, leaving all her clothes on the floor for now as she wraps herself in the soft black bathrobe hanging off the back of the door.

  Out of the hot water, she feels vulnerable, like the darkness suffocating this city—especially St. Merlin’s—is reaching and clawing, getting closer and closer to her.

  No. Helen is gone. Captured. She can’t hurt anybody else. It’s fine.

  She sits on the toilet seat, wrapping her arms tight around her stomach. Of course it’s not fine. Two girls are dead, and one is in the hospital. And Kelly is gone. Out of her life in the span of an afternoon. The air goes thick and heavy, pressing her down and into herself. It’s sticky, like a hot summer day that leaves her dripping with sweat, except she isn’t actually sweating.

  She has to call Sarah, or Alex, or someone. This feeling is absolutely unbearable, and she can’t be alone right now. She just can’t. After looking over the counter, she remembers that her phone is still in the car. She tightens the bathrobe around herself and grabs the door handle. If she can just call somebody, she’ll feel better. This dark stickiness will go away.

  The handle won’t budge.

  She double checks, and then she triple checks to make sure it isn’t locked.

  Her breath catches. She wants to call to her parents for help, but the calmest presence she’s ever felt—no, not calm, empty—sips all her panic away in a moment, washing it down the drain with her soiled bath water.

  She turns her eyes to the foggy mirror. The reflection isn’t her own.

  A dark figure with a mane of red hair stares back at her, but she can’t make out the features. She drops the door handle and reaches to the sick reflection, and the hand in the mirror, fingers far too long, reaches back. Another tear rolls out of her eye, and then another.

  Ice trickles down her spine, and she understands, logically, that she should be terrified, but the presence in the room is too calm, too empty, and it’s stealing all her emotions and leaving her with its emptiness. It’s the absolute opposite of her empathy, taking things out of her head instead of putting them in. When her fingers brush the mirror, it explodes, glass shattering everywhere.

  When the emptiness breaks, she finally screams.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Alex

  WHEN ALEX’S PHONE RINGS, IT’S NEARLY MIDNIGHT. He scrambles toward his phone, but after a moment he remembers that he’s not in his dorm, but in Sarah’s bed. He has to dig around the blankets while trying to not wake her, and a photo of Gabby’s smiling face is staring at him from the screen. He clicks the answer button but doesn’t speak until he’s out in the hallway.

  “Hey, what’s up?” he says, shivering in his thin pajamas, which he’d grabbed from his dorm earlier this evening. The heat hasn’t been turned on yet, so he tries to focus on using his fire to warm himself internally. Gabby’s breathing is heavy, but she doesn’t say anything. He goes to sit on the couch, his eyes drooping with exhaustion. “Gabby, are you there?”

  A broken sob barely makes it through the phone. He sits up, all his senses heightening at the sound. The fire in him is on high alert, ready for anything.

  “Gabby, what’s going on?” he demands, his voice hard. He can’t let her know how scared she’s making him. If she’d just answer, maybe his heart wouldn’t be trying to beat out of his chest.

  “I don’t know,” Gabby finally replies, her voice meek and shaky. He switches his phone to the other ear. After a long pause, he’s about to ask what she means, but she continues, “I don’t remember. I got home, took a shower, and then….” The line goes quiet once again. Something is so wrong about this moment—perhaps it’s the chill in the air, or the darkness pressing in, but Alex stands to leave.

  “I’m on my way. Wait right there.” He glances into Sarah’s room, where she’s still asleep, her bare shoulders just peeking out over the top of the blanket.

  “There’s broken glass everywhere. I don’t—“ her voice cuts as another sob comes out. He can picture her curled up and crying, and he can’t stand it.

  “I’m gonna bring you back to Sarah’s house. Elizabeth is a psychic. She can help you figure it out. It’s gonna be alright.” Leaving Sarah alone for even a moment is eating him alive, gnawing at his stomach.

  He has to, though. Gabby is his friend, too, and she needs him. She needs both of them. Sarah is safe, and he won’t be gone more than a couple hours.

  He places the gentlest of kisses on her forehead, glancing at her one last time before walking out the door, but she doesn’t even stir.

  GABBY’S PARENTS HELP HER OUT THE DOOR when Alex arrives, her mom carrying a backpack. Gabby is looking around wildly, as if waiting for something to get her. She sits in the car and holds the backpack to her. A thin red mark is sliced across her cheek. She had mentioned broken glass on the phone.

  “Keep her safe,” her mom tells Alex before giving Gabby a kiss on the forehead. “It’ll be okay. It’s probably just your anxiety. Like with Rudy? And he’s okay now. It’ll be okay.” Alex wonders if maybe she’s just trying to convince herself. Did Gabby break something? Is that what this is about? “We’ll call someone to fix the bathroom mirror tomorrow.”

  “It’ll be alright,” he assures them both. “Elizabeth should be able to figure out what’s going on.” His voice doesn’t betray his own fear. This isn’t normal. Destroying a bathroom and then forgetting it happened? That doesn’t sound like something that Gabby would do. With all of her anxiety problems that he’s witnessed, it doesn’t seem like she’s ever just forgotten something.

  A darkness hovers around the edges of the neighborhood, though. Sticky and oppressive. It isn’t just in her mind. There’s something out there. Watching. Waiting.

  He has to remind himself that Helen is in police custody. They’re safe.

  The thoughts don’t reassure him.

  While he drives, he keeps an eye on her as well as he can, gauging her state. Her hair is up in a tight bun, and she keeps chewing her nails, but they’re already worn down to the quick. She isn’t even wearing her usual acrylics. As an empath, she can feel others’ emotions, but she can also sometimes project her own, and fear is rolling off her, tightening Alex’s gut and breaking him out in a cold sweat. His fear is then projecting back into Gabby, so they’re a complete mess by the time they’re on the interstate, headed back north. On a normal day, the drive would take at least an hour. Without traffic, though, he goes as fast as he’s willing to risk.

  Gabby takes his hand in hers, and he squeezes. He’s trying his best to be comforting, but his heart is still pounding out of his chest, and his breath is caught in his throat. The winter air should feel dry, electric, but it just feels sticky, like it’s trying to slow them down. He doesn’t look in the rear-view mirror, mostly because he’s afraid he’ll see someone in the backseat who shouldn’t be there.

  Gone. She’s gone. We’re safe. It’s over.

  “Almost there,” he whispers when they pass the exit that would take them to St. Merlin’s. One of the lights along the interstate flickers and then goes out, and his hand tightens on Gabby’s, betraying his ever-growing fear. He isn’t even sure if she heard him—the Ford sits low to the ground and rattles when it goes over sixty, and one of the windows isn’t sealed quite right. The car is loud as he speeds through the autumn city.

  They have to wait at the
stoplight off the exit in Chesterfield, and he can almost feel the gooey blackness approaching, ready to eat up the car and swallow them whole. There’s nothing there. He checks over and over, and there isn’t anything to be afraid of.

  A police car pulls up in front of them, lights and siren blaring. Sarah’s house is quite a ways off the interstate. This means nothing. Nothing at all. The car is going far over the speed limit, and Alex uses this as an excuse to speed up—not quite enough to keep up, but enough to keep it in sight.

  It turns right at the stop sign where Alex always turns.

  His phone is ringing, but he doesn’t recognize the number. He sends it to voicemail and speeds up. Everything is fine. It has to be.

  Gabby’s phone rings, and when she shows it to him, it’s the same number. She doesn’t answer.

  “We’re almost there,” Alex says, keeping his voice carefully light. “Everything is fine.”

  His phone rings again. Gabby answers it for him.

  “Who is it?” he asks at a normal volume. There’s no reason to yell, to panic. Again, he turns onto the same street as the police officer—Sarah’s street.

  She holds up a finger and listens.

  “Okay,” she says, her voice suddenly serious. “Thank you for letting us know.” She hangs up and tells Alex, “Speed up. You won’t get pulled over.”

  “What’s going on?” He asks for what feels like the thousandth time tonight. The speedometer is reaching a dangerous high, but he doesn’t slow until he has to slam on his brakes to turn into the driveway.

  Gabby leans forward in her seat, squinting out the windshield. The police car is in front of the house.

  “Helen escaped,” she says, her voice not more than a breath.

  Alex’s heart drops, and his fingers run cold. He puts the car in park as soon as he’s close to the house, running in behind the cop, who’s speaking with Elizabeth and Mark in a very serious tone. Sarah had been in a dead sleep when he left, so she might not have heard all the commotion.

  He swings Sarah’s door open, ready to relieve his fear by seeing her sleeping peacefully in her bed, Arthur at her side. When his eyes adjust to the darkness of the bedroom, her bed is a mess, blankets strewn half on and half off. A breeze wraps around him, and the curtains flutter. A shudder runs through him.

  Sarah and Arthur are gone.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Sarah

  WHEN SARAH WAKES UP, A FAMILIAR FAERIE song is playing. She stands, wrapping herself in a quilt that Mark gave her to keep warm as the temperature plummets overnight. Alex is no longer in her bed, but he should be back soon. Where could he have in the middle of the night, anyway?

  Lights dance through the trees, as clear as they ever were now that the protective spells have been taken down. It’s not like they need them anymore now that Helen is out of the way. She pulls on a pair of fleece leggings and a heavy knit sweater. She has to follow the lights, to find the party once again. Something in her heart is telling her that that’s where she’ll find Alex, just like last time. They will have come full circle—strangers their first time, in love the second.

  Rather than going through the front door and risking waking Mark and Elizabeth, she slides her window open and quickly pops the screen out. The revelry only gets louder when she lands on the ground, the soil of Mark’s garden soft under her hiking boots. Her skin tingles with excitement. She walks slowly through the yard, a small smile on her face as she goes to meet Alex.

  The moment she crosses the iron fence line, all sounds cease to exist. The music and rabble from the party are gone, and there aren’t even birds or insects making noise. The moon and stars have disappeared behind a sudden thick of clouds.

  She moves to turn around, to go right back to her room and get Elizabeth or Mark or someone. Something in the air isn’t right. As soon as she begins to turn, though, all the air is sucked out of her. She tries to breathe in, but her lungs aren’t working, no matter how hard she gasps. Her heart pounds, and her head spins. Her chest is sharp with pain as she desperately tries to take in air.

  “She who intervenes must be the last to die,” a syrupy voice says. She looks into the trees, clutching at her throat. Helen is standing there, hair in a braid, clothed in a pair of jeans and a long-sleeved black t-shirt. She looks so normal. Her face is encased in shadow, hiding the one feature that scares Sarah the most. From here, she looks just like the woman who’d given Sarah cake for breakfast for her birthday. The woman who taught her to ride horses—to really ride them, not just pony behind her on Dad’s old gray mare.

  Helen takes another step, and her black eyes are revealed. Unlike Alex’s pooling dark irises, the blackness encapsulates all of Helen’s eyes—the pupils, the irises, and the sclera. Sarah falls to the ground, holding herself up just enough that she’s on all fours like an animal.

  “Come with me,” Helen commands. Her voice is just as Sarah remembers from her dreams—not the ten years of excitedly announcing their trip to Chuck-E-Cheese’s for Sarah’s birthday, not the whisper telling her to make a wish, which always came true, as she blew out her candles early in the morning. It’s the voice she remembers screaming at her to go away as she tortured the unicorn. A twisted darkness that Sarah has only heard from this woman.

  When Sarah tries pulling away, the invisible hold tightens around her neck like a noose. When she falls forward, it releases just enough for her to gasp in the hint of a breath before she’s suffocating again.

  She drags herself forward so that she can breathe.

  “Good girl,” Helen says, helping Sarah to stand. Tears prick at her eyes, but she doesn’t let them fall. “If you listen, it will all be over soon. It won’t even hurt.”

  She doesn’t want to die.

  Oh, god, she’s going to die.

  If she keeps walking forward, she’s not going to make it out of this alive. Still, she keeps walking. It’s either that or suffocate. Maybe this will at least buy her some time.

  Helen follows her through the woods, directing her where to go. All the while, Sarah is straining to project her mind to anyone who could be listening. Where is Alex? He should be able to hear her if she projects loudly enough. He couldn’t be gone, could he? No matter how far she reaches, though, she feels nothing.

  Except Arthur.

  She’s used to only feeling his feelings, seeing his memories, but this time, she pushes for him. She tries to communicate the danger and urgency, but it’s complicated since she’s worried about whether or not her next breath will come to her. The trees reach out to them, the brambles dragging her along as she stumbles across the suddenly unfamiliar landscape. She flinches at every touch—she can’t tell if it’s the jagged branches or Helen’s sharp claws brushing against her arm, her back, her neck.

  When Arthur sends her the color red, she responds by picturing Alex and Elizabeth and Mark and Gabby as strongly as she can. If this works, he’ll go get them. They’ll know something’s wrong. She concentrates so hard that she doesn’t see the river until she’s ankle-deep in it.

  “Get in the boat,” Helen says. “Careful, it’s unsteady.” She helps Sarah in, her nails digging into Sarah’s forearm, a steep contrast to the false kindness in her words. After the whisper of a spell, the boat takes them downriver at a breathtaking speed. Soon enough, Sarah will be completely out of range. In one last burst of desperation, she sends Arthur everything she can see right in front of her—the hull of the boat, Helen’s relaxed face smiling at her like a chiding mother, the river as they head West.

  “It’s a lovely evening out,” Helen says, leaning against the side of the boat. What would happen if Sarah pushed her over? She considers is, but the risk of suffocating is too great to attempt it. “I should’ve brought a sweater. Silly me, forgetting everything.” The voice is wrong, so wrong. With it comes that same sticky darkness, prodding and pulling at Sarah’s hair, her clothes, her skin. The words dig into her, scraping and making her raw.

  When the boat
slows toward a dock, Sarah’s vision goes black. She lets out a little gasp, reaching out to grab anything she can. Helen helps her slowly stumble out of the boat and onto a dock. She leads her into the back of a van, by the sound of the doors and the bare metal floor. If she could see, she’d get the license plate in order to….something. Project it to Arthur? Call for help? There’s nobody around to help her. She’s on her own.

  “You might get some sleep,” Helen suggests. “It’s going to be a long drive home.” The door slides and slams shut, and, as soon as the van starts moving along the bumpy ground, Sarah falls to the floor, her cheek resting against the cool metal.

  Not long after the start of the drive, the vehicle stops. The familiar sounds of a gas station comes in through the thin metal walls, and the corner where her head is lying vibrates just a little when Helen starts filling the gas tank.

  She turns her body enough that her feet are touching the far wall, and she kicks it as hard as she can. A mistake.

  Her body freezes in a convulsion, a shock running its way through her, paralyzing her. Her muscles contract, and she tastes blood when she bites the tip of her tongue. The electricity only lasts a moment, but the agony stays. She has to cough and sputter to get the blood out of her mouth, but it just keeps coming.

  Minutes tick by, and the van doesn’t move. Eventually, the driver door opens again. Sarah’s tongue has stopped bleeding, but her face is in a small pool of blood, and she retches. Her stomach only has a little water and acid in it, and it all ends up in that same pool. Tears spring to her eyes, and a sob bursts out of her—the first vocal response she’s allowed herself all night.

  “Try something like that again,” Helen says, her voice poison, “and I will take much longer killing you. Besides, the van is completely soundproof. You hurt yourself for no reason.” The last sentence is sickly sweet once again.