Tonight, however, I had chosen to ignore my emotions in favor of logic. I needed to help figure out what was going on. And the best way—maybe the only way—to do that was to find out what exactly Laney was, what her powers were, how others might want to use her, and how we could keep that from happening.
Therefore, step one was figuring out what her father wanted from her.
That became something of a mantra for me as I watched through the restaurant windows. As we had agreed, Laney had arranged to be seated in a booth by a window. From the outside, their conversation seemed normal enough, if a little stilted and uncomfortable.
About thirty minutes into my surveillance, Mason showed up at my truck window with a burger, fries, and a drink. “How’s it going?” he asked when I rolled down the glass.
“Boring.” I took the food from him. “Thanks, man.” Shoving a handful of fries into my mouth, I chewed for a moment before speaking. “Did you check Gunn’s truck?”
“Locked. I couldn’t see anything from outside.” He leaned one hand against the top of the truck and glanced toward the restaurant, where Laney and Gunn were still talking.
I considered our options. “Think we could jimmy the lock?”
“Definitely. But he’s parked pretty close to the door. Wouldn’t take much to be seen.” Mason tapped on the roof. “We’ll have to watch for another chance, once we know where he’s hanging his hat.”
Which brought us to the next issue. “You ready for your part of this?”
“Yep. Kayla’s in my truck in the back row, ready to rock and roll. All the parents think we’re on a double date.”
I grimaced at the idea of spending more time with Laney, then tried to cover it with a joke. “Like I’d go out anywhere with you.”
Mason laughed, but I don’t think he was fooled. “Watch Laney. We’ll follow Gunn when he takes off from here. We’ve both got our phones. Stay in touch, okay?”
“Will do.” I tried not to think too hard about step two of our plan, primarily because it involved Laney getting into my truck with me.
It would be the first time we had been alone together since I was released from the hospital.
The mere thought of being that close to her made my chest hurt. I didn’t know if I would be able to keep from exploding at her.
I hate her.
The thought took me by surprise. I didn’t think it was really true. I tried to shake off the idea.
Something is wrong with me.
That was truth, and the realization shocked me.
Blinking, I turned the knowledge around in my head.
Yes, I was hurt. Damaged. Maybe broken. But this awareness was of something different. Something deeper, something I had been sensing for a long time, but hadn’t had the words to express.
I still didn’t know how to say it, exactly, how to turn this understanding of something inside me, eating away at me like a cancer, into an explanation that anyone else would grasp.
I’m in trouble.
I think I’m dying.
I knew it was true, even as I knew I wouldn’t be able to say it aloud. The realization left me gasping in terror.
Laney.
Laney would understand.
With that thought, the rage that had abated while I considered the sickness inside me came rushing back in. This time, though, it felt foreign, and I recognized it as a symptom of whatever else was wrong with me.
Somehow, knowing that made it easier to fight off.
When I looked up, Laney and Gunn were standing outside the restaurant, saying their goodbyes. She shook her head and pointed down the street toward the library.
With all these visits to the library, her father was going to think she was the most studious teenager in the world.
I pulled out of the back entrance and drove away without looking back, trusting Mason and Kayla to keep an eye on Laney for the first part of her walk. By the time Gunn’s old Ford left the parking lot and turned the other direction, I saw Laney in my rearview mirror as she walked down the sidewalk toward the library.
I passed the building, still checking my rear view.
A few seconds later, Mason’s truck followed Gunn’s.
When they were both out of sight, I pulled over and turned around, reaching the library at almost the same moment as Laney.
Leaning over, I shoved open the passenger door for her. “How did it go?”
She shrugged. “Okay, I guess. I didn’t give anything away, at least.”
“Did you get any information?”
Blowing out a breath, she shook her head. “Not really. He tried to ask again about the night of the accident. I channeled my inner Kayla.”
That made me snort. “Which one? Ice-bitch, or the one she uses when she wants to pretend she’s not nearly as smart as she is? What is that one? Cheerleader ditz?”
Laney’s laugh made me smile, and some of the pain around my heart eased. “Definitely cheerleader ditz,” she said. “I smiled a lot and blinked and flipped my hair.” She demonstrated.
“Oh, nice. Did he buy it?”
“No idea. But he did let me change the subject. We ended up talking about my classes for most of the meal.” She sighed. “It might have been the most painfully boring conversation I’ve ever had in my entire life.”
I laughed again, but this time it was a distracted sound, as I tried to think of a way to tell Laney about my epiphany.
About whatever it was that was eating away at me from inside.
As I opened my mouth to speak, my phone rang.
I checked the caller ID. Mason.
“Gunn just turned into Oma Elaine’s place,” he said when I answered. “I’ve got a bad feeling about this, man. I think you need to head out here.”
* * *
Laney remained silent as we drove out toward Oma Elaine’s place, just a few miles out of town. Her hands kept twisting in her lap, her fingers wrapping around each other and letting go, over and over again.
“Should I try to call her?” she finally asked, glancing at me with wide eyes.
“No,” I decided. “If she expects him, it will give us away. If she doesn’t expect him, well…” I glanced at the clock on the dashboard. “If she didn’t expect him, she knows he’s there now.”
Laney went back to wringing her hands, and I sped up.
At a slight rise overlooking the acre or so of land that Oma Elaine’s house sat upon, we pulled up and stopped behind Mason and Kayla. His truck was parked at the side of the road, and the two of them stood in front of it, watching the house through a pair of binoculars Mason kept in the toolbox in the truck bed.
“Anything?” I asked as we moved up to stand on either side of the other couple.
Mason shook his head. “Gunn knocked on the door. Someone answered—I couldn’t see her, but I’m guessing it was Oma Elaine—and he went inside. Nothing since.”
Something terrible twisted in my gut, and this time I was certain it wasn’t whatever was killing me slowly. It was something more imminent.
“What now?” Kayla asked softly.
Laney and I shared a glance. “I don’t think there’s much we can do, apart from storming in and demanding to know what’s going on,” I said.
“And if Oma Elaine is connected to Gunn, that could be a really bad idea,” Laney added. She turned to Mason. “Have you checked to see if you can tell if anything’s different in the ether?”
“No, but that’s more your department than mine.”
“We should try it,” I said, holding out my hand for Laney to take it. This time, I barely flinched at her touch.
Mason was right—as far as I could tell, in the ethereal realm, Oma Elaine’s house looked just like it did in the human world, except gauzier, and slightly more shimmery.
Laney gasped, though. “What is it?” I asked.
“Something bad,” she managed to choke out.
I pulled us back into the regular world just as Mason said, “Gunn’s on his w
ay out.”
“We need to get down there,” I said tersely, even as Gunn threw himself into the driver’s side of his truck and tore out of the caliche-covered driveway.
“Y’all follow him,” I instructed Mason and Kayla. “Don’t let him see you. If he spots you, take the first turn you can, and then you turn around and come back. And Kayla, you stay on video phone with me the whole time, okay?”
Without a word, both of our friends nodded and climbed into the truck. When the call from Kayla came through, I handed the phone to Laney.
“You ready for this?” I asked as I started my own truck and pulled back out onto the road.
“No.” She sounded shaken, and I knew whatever we were about to find was going to be bad. When I reached out and took her hand this time, I felt none of the anger, none of the reluctance to touch her that had been plaguing me—only a desire to protect her.
She squeezed my fingers in return, then took a deep breath as we halted in front of Oma Elaine’s. “Let’s go,” she said.
Chapter Ten
Laney
I knew it was going to be awful.
But I couldn’t have predicted just how horrific it would be.
The house still smelled of that awful tea Oma Elaine had tried to convince me to drink the last time I had seen her.
But this time, it was overlaid with the smell of actual death, and having smelled the combination, I didn’t think I would ever forget it. I gagged at the amalgamation of scents, pulling my shirt up over my nose and mouth as we moved farther into the house.
We found her on the living room floor, open eyes staring blankly at one wall.
She had fought against him. Bruises had formed on her face where he had hit her and her face was misshapen where his fist had smashed one cheekbone. One arm lay at an unnatural angle, a bone poking out through the skin in a compound fracture.
He had beaten her badly in the short time he had been in the house.
But I was absolutely certain that wasn’t what had killed her.
“Take me into the ether,” I whispered, holding my hand out to Josh without taking my eyes off the body.
“What is it? What happened?” Kayla’s slightly tinny voice came from the phone in Josh’s hand, startling us both. He lifted the phone from where his hand had dropped down to his side and without a word, panned the room slowly so she could see.
I heard her gasp, then Mason’s voice. “Show me.”
As Josh went back over the scene again, I knelt next to Oma Elaine’s body. I knew I should feel something, but all I felt was empty.
She had been power-sucked.
Even without stepping into the ether, I felt it—the nothingness that was left behind. Not the normal emptiness of death, but an absolute absence of whatever it was that made us part of this world.
That was it, I realized. Whatever that power was that I could drain from the demon-fairies of Fairy, Texas, that thing that they deemed their special Power--it wasn’t exclusive to their kind at all.
Everyone and everything had it.
The fairies simply had more of it.
Oh, God. I could kill anyone, just by draining away that life-force.
The idea twisted in my stomach, propelling me to my feet, away from the body on the floor, the body that was there because of me. The woman who was dead in a way that I could have caused.
Feeling nothing was definitely better than this.
Scanning the room, my eyes lit on the teacup on the coffee table in front of the floral couch. A tiny spoon rested across the saucer holding the cup, as if Oma Elaine had set it down to answer the doorbell.
She’ll never use it again.
Picking up the teacup, I sniffed the contents and tried not to gag. Oma Elaine’s disgusting tea was cold now, and a slight green scum had formed across the top.
“Do you know what this is?” I interrupted Josh’s conversation with Mason.
Josh glanced at the tea and held up the phone so Mason could see, too.
“Yeah,” said Mason. “They make it out of some plant. It’s the same stuff I brought out to Oma Raina the first time we went out to sell yearbook ads, Laney. You remember?”
“The same stuff Bartlef put in the blood spell thing he tried to do on me. Yes. I remember.” I spun in a circle. “Where would she keep the rest of it?”
“What are you going to do?” Josh asked warily.
“Refrigerator, probably,” Mason said at the same time.
Easy enough. Keeping the cup in my hand, I walked into the kitchen. I remembered the small, flat, brown-paper package Mason had delivered to the previous Oma what felt like years ago—but had only been months.
The previous Oma. Now this one. Both dead because of me.
I pushed the thought back.
I would have time to think later.
There, on the bottom shelf of the refrigerator, was the package I was searching for. I took it out and gently opened it to examine the green powder inside.
Bartlef had used maybe a couple of teaspoons of the stuff when he mixed it with blood to feed to me.
There was probably a half-cup of it in this package.
It didn’t have to be brewed. Bartlef’s actions had proven that.
“Laney, whatever you’re planning, I think it’s a really bad idea.” Josh’s voice came from right behind me.
“Could you get me a glass of water?” I asked.
He frowned. “I guess.”
When he turned his back, I gulped down what was left in the teacup. The taste burned down my throat, causing my eyes to water, but by dint of sheer willpower, I didn’t make a sound. By the time Josh turned back to me with a glass in hand, I had placed the teacup down gently on the counter and shoved it behind me.
I took a drink of the water. “Thanks.” I paused, trying to make my voice come out sounding normal. “What next?”
Josh frowned, but he answered me. “We need to call my dad.”
“I agree,” Mason said from the phone. “In fact, we should call in the whole Council.”
They were almost certainly right. It was probably time to call in the adults.
But I would be gone by the time they arrived.
“Good idea,” I heard myself say, as if from a distance.
I felt the tea beginning to work already. I didn’t know exactly what it would do, but I knew I was right to have drunk it. It had been in my system before the confrontation with Bartlef. I needed it to face off with Gunn.
Because no matter what, I knew that I was going to have to be the one to take him out.
Josh and Mason disconnected to begin making their phone calls, and I wandered back into the living room, staring at Oma Elaine’s body. She seemed even tinier in death than she had in life.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered. And then, checking to make sure Josh was occupied with his phone, I dumped the powder from the package I carried in one hand into the half-full glass of water I held in the other. Picking up Oma Elaine’s spoon, I gave the resultant sludge a quick stir. It still had lumps, but I was out of time. If I didn’t do this now, Josh would try to stop me.
Holding my breath, I tilted back my head and tried to open my throat enough to let the horrific mixture slide down without ever touching my taste buds.
It didn’t work, of course, and I gagged when I swallowed, but I managed to keep the stuff down, if only barely. By the end, I was scraping it out with the spoon, certain that I would never taste anything but death again.
When I was done, a green slime still coated the inside of the glass. I wanted to get the rest of it, but I would need to rinse it down with water, and Josh was still in the kitchen.
But I needed to try, at least, so I spun around, hoping Josh was too busy talking to the adults he wanted to call in to notice me.
I made it to the sink and ran water into the glass. I even managed to get that dose down and fill the glass up a second time—getting the very last of the mixture off the interior and swishing it around b
efore Josh saw what I was doing.
“Laney, stop,” he said, sounding frantic. “Let me see that.”
I held up the glass, and he ripped it from my hand. Some of the green water sloshed out of our hands as we briefly struggled. Once he had control of it, Josh held it up to the light and examined it.
“Didn’t Oma Elaine teach you anything?” he demanded. “You used way too much of this stuff. You could kill yourself if you drink it this strong.”
At that moment, the world around me exploded.
Josh
Initially, I thought Laney was handing the herbal drink to me. Her hand twitched in my direction and I reached for it, but the liquid inside sloshed over the side, pouring out onto Oma Elaine’s beige carpet as the glass tumbled away from Laney’s fingers and spiraled toward the floor.
I realized what was happening in time to catch Laney as she crumpled, but only barely. My panic, barely under control as it was, increased tenfold as her eyes rolled back in her head and her limbs twitched spasmodically I lowered us both gently to the ground, feeling around me for the phone I had dropped when I caught her.
When my hand clasped it, I sighed in relief, then hit redial, but no one answered, so I left a message. “And Dad? Hurry. Please. Laney’s OD’d on that nasty tea the Omas always drink.” Disconnecting, I spied the empty paper bag on the floor, ripped open, only a few crumbled green leaves showing, and my stomach dropped.
I knew there was something you’re supposed to do when people have a seizure, but I couldn’t remember what it was, so I just sat on the floor with Laney’s head on my lap, trying to keep her from rolling away from me.
Scrolling through my phone list, I hit Mason’s number again. At least he answered. “Mace? Your dad grows the Oma’s stink-weed, right? Get him over here now.”
Never had I been as thankful for Mason Collier as I was right at that moment, when he didn’t even ask any questions. “Will do,” he said, and he was gone. I went back to making sure Laney didn’t slam her head against anything in the midst of her fit.
Then Laney quit moving entirely, and my breath froze in my chest.
I can’t lose her.
Flightless (Fairy, Texas Book 2) Page 7
