Ember (Death Collectors, Book 1)

by Jessica Sorensen

  “Sounds like your type.” Jealousy burns under my skin. “But I mean, you said he wasn’t into you, right?”

  She narrows her eyes at me. “Not yet, but he will be. And you’re going to help me.” She pulls me up by the arm and I wince. “His first day of school is tomorrow so I have to look fabulous.” Her eyebrows furrow as she stares at the empty driveway of my house. “You never told me where your car was.”

  “I wrecked it last night,” I say with no desire to explain it to her. “On my way home.”

  “Oh no, Emmy, I’m so sorry.” She gives me a big hug.

  “It’s okay.” I give her a soft pat, desperate for her to let me go. “It was just a car… Raven, can you let me go please.”

  “Oh, sorry.” She frees me from her arms. “Is the car fixable?”

  “Not unless we can get it out of the lake.” My tone is sunny, but my heart is dark. It’s just a car.

  “Wait a minute. You drove it into the lake.” She swats my arm and I flinch. “Why didn’t you tell me last night when I made that comment about your clothes?”

  “You were upset.” I scuff the toe of my boot against the rocks in the driveway. “I didn’t want to make it worse.”

  “I’m sorry.” She frowns. “I’m a terrible friend.”

  “You’re not a terrible friend,” I reply. “You were just distracted by your own problems.”

  We wander down the sidewalk toward her townhouse right next door. The street is quiet and the air is gentle against my skin. Crisp leaves flurry from the branches of the trees and cover the lawns with pink and orange. It’s late October and the lawns are ornamented with Halloween decoration: giant witches, fake tombstones, skeletons.

  “Em, how did you get out of the lake?” She pauses to readjust a loose strap on her sandal. “Alive?”

  “All those survival tips my dad always crammed into my head finally came in handy.”

  “You got out by yourself? How? And how are you walking around completely okay?”

  “I guess I’m just really lucky.” I don’t know why I lie. It’s like there’s this part of me that doesn’t want her to know.

  “Lucky? More like a freaking walking miracle.” She steps in front of me and looks me in the eyes. “I can’t believe I wasn’t there for you. I’m so sorry.” She pauses and then shifts the subject. “Come on. You and I are going shopping because you need some cheering up and I need a sexy new outfit for school tomorrow.”

  I follow her up the driveway and wait by her Corolla while she runs inside the house and gets the keys. That’s the thing I love about Raven. She hardly asks questions. She didn’t ask how I got home. What I was going to do about my dad’s car. Why I didn’t go to the hospital. But as much as I love not being grilled, I wonder if there is something wrong with our friendship, if she should have asked those questions. I once read a quote by William Shakespeare about friendship: “A friend should bear his friend's infirmities.” If I told Raven the wrong thing—something she didn’t want to hear—would our friendship end?

  “Okay, so we have to stop and put some gas in because it’s low.” She swings the keys around her finger.

  “I think I might stay home,” I tell her. “I’m feeling kind of sick.”

  She points a finger at me. “No way. You have to come be my fashion advisor.” She eyes my clothes over. “Or at least keep me company.”

  I surrender and get in the car. “Can we at least stop and pick up a new cell phone? Mine is somewhere at the bottom of the lake.”

  “Sure.” She backs down the driveway, but slams on the brakes as a U-Haul drives up the road, followed by a red Jeep Wrangler. The U-Haul parks in the driveway of the house across the street and two doors down, and the Jeep parks out front. It’s one of the larger houses on the street, two stories with an upper deck and rose bushes blooming in the yard.

  “It looks like someone is finally moving into Old Man Carey’s home,” she says with inquiring eyes.

  A man and woman climb out of the U-Haul. The woman is wearing a black pencil skirt, a white cashmere sweater, a pair of stilettos, and her blonde hair is done up in a high bun. The man looks very businesslike, in a collar shirt and slacks, and blonde hair slicked to the side.

  “Oh my God, they so don’t fit in.” Raven laughs and backs down the driveway. “Which instantly makes me like them.”

  We’re pulling onto the street when the long legs of the driver stretch out of the Jeep. His blonde hair shines in the sun and his ash eyes glow with intensity. Dark jeans hang on his hips, fancy leather shoes cover his feet, and a tight-fitting Henley shows off his rock-solid abs.

  “That’s the guy from the cemetery,” I say aloud.

  “What guy from the cemetery?” Raven watches him like he’s something delicious as he struts across the lawn. She fans herself. “Good God, he’s hot.”

  “We should get going.” I shift the car into drive for her. “I promised Ian I’d be back by dinnertime.”

  We’re parked in the middle of the street and it’s obvious we’re staring at the new neighbors. The guy from the cemetery stops in the middle of the yard and watches us with an amused glint in his eyes.

  “Oh! You mean he’s the grave robber.” Raven slams her hand on the steering wheel animatedly. “We so have to go over there.”

  “Don’t even think about,” I hiss, but she’s already turning the steering wheel. “You just said it yourself—he’s a grave robber.”

  Her eyes sparkle mischievously. I slouch in the chair as she drives toward his house.

  “What’s your problem?” she asks. “Don’t you want to find out who he is? And why he was digging up a grave in the middle of the night. I mean maybe you misunderstood what was going on and now he could explain it to you.”

  I shake my head and shield my face with my hand. “Why? So you can date him?”

  “Or maybe you could?” She parks in front of the Jeep and turns down the radio. “You really need to get over this fear of men, Em.”

  “It’s not a fear of men, but a general fear of people. And can we just go? Please,” I beg. “We’re not going to make it back in time if we don’t get going.”

  “You are so weird sometimes.” She rolls down the window and waves him over. “Lighten up.”

  He swaggers over with a predator’s smile. Each movement states self-assurance and cockiness. He bends down and rests his arms on the door.

  “Hi there,” Raven purrs in a seductive tone. “We noticed someone is finally moving into Old Man Carey’s house and we thought we’d come over and introduce ourselves.”

  “Old Man Carey’s?” He cocks his head, amused, but beneath the surface, pain emits. “I assume you’re talking about my grandfather.”

  “Oh, he was your grandfather.” Raven presses her hand to her heart. “I was so sorry to hear that he died.”

  “You knew him?” The stranger asks warily.

  “Oh yeah, I used to bring him soup all the time when he was sick.” She traces her fingernails up his arm. “I was very heartbroken when he died.”

  “I bet you were.” His dark eyes focus on me and my adrenaline surges. “Did you get your notebook back, Ember?”

  I’m shocked. I thought he would deny he knew me, considering the circumstances under which we met.

  “I did.” I straighten up in the seat. “Thank you for dropping it off at my house.”

  “I could tell it was important to you.” His gaze penetrates under my skin. “Did you get my message?”

  “You mean the poem,” I correct. “Yeah, I got it.”

  “But did you get it get it?” His voice floats out hauntingly like the night I first saw him.

  “I’m not sure.” There is a need to touch him, a fire in my veins burning to connect with him. It’s intense, like standing at the edge of a cliff preparing to base jump, but I’m not sure if the parachute will open.

  “Read it closer.” His eyes smolder. “I think you’ll get it eventually.”

  Raven c
lears her throat. “Um, sorry to break up your little moment, but we gotta get going.”

  I forgot she was there. “Yeah, we should get going.”

  He pats the car door and backs away. “Perhaps I’ll see you around later tonight.” He winks at me. “At the cemetery maybe.”

  My stomach flutters with fear and exhilaration. “Yeah, maybe.”

  Raven rolls the car forward and he starts to walk away.

  “Wait,” I shout and he pauses. “You never told me your name.”

  Raven cocks a reprimanding eyebrow at me. “Don’t you mean us?”

  “Cameron.” He flashes me a sexy grin. “Cameron Logan.” He waves and turns back to his house.

  Raven rolls up her window and turns the car around. “Okay, what the heck was that about?”

  I bite on my thumbnail to hide my smile. “What was what about?” I ask innocently.

  “You never talk to guys like that.” She floors the car to the end of our street and then speeds onto the highway. “And how did he know your name? And where you live?”

  “They were on my journal.” I shrug.

  “Still, it’s really creepy.” She flips down the visor. “And what poem were you guys talking about?”

  I roll down the window and let the breeze cool off my overly warm skin. “The one he wrote in my journal.”

  “You mean that creepy one on the wall?” She frowns. “The one that sounds like it was written by a serial killer?”

  “That’s what you say about all poems,” I remind her. “And his was just deep.”

  “Whatever, Em. In my opinion the guy was a total creep.”

  “Why? Because he knew my name and writes poetry?”

  She rolls her eyes and laughs. “I’m not jealous of you.”

  I flip through the radio stations. “I never said you were.”

  She swats my hand away from the stereo and cranks up some song by Katy Perry. She sings along at the top of her lungs, waving her hands and bobbing her head. I rest my head back and watch the trees drift by. I’m almost asleep when she slows down the car.

  I open my eyes and start to unbuckle my seatbelt. But we’re stopped in a line of cars, not at the store. “Where are we?” I rub my tired eyes.

  “Stuck in traffic.” She impatiently drums her fingers on the steering wheel.

  “Wait, what… traffic?” I sit up. The town is too small for traffic. But there is a row of cars running each way over the bridge and down the road. Police cars barricade the street and policemen are sectioning off the middle of the bridge with tape and trying to detour everyone to the side.

  “What’s going on?” I mumble, rolling the window all the way down to get a better look.

  “Somebody probably did something stupid,” she replies in a bored tone as she inspects her fingernails for chips.

  The line of cars crawls forward. Raven presses on the gas and drives by slowly. In the middle of the taped off section, an X is spray-painted across the asphalt. Smashed into the cement barrier of the bridge is a rusted black Cadillac. The windows are broken, the hood is smashed in, and there is blood dripping from the back tire. And there are black feathers on the ground and on the hood.

  “Isn’t that Laden’s?” I squint at the car. “Oh my God, it is.”

  “Hmm… I guess he must have got into some trouble last night.” She smiles at the thought.

  “This couldn’t have happened last night,” I say. “I just saw Laden this morning.”

  “How can you be sure of what you saw?” She questions with a sparkle in her eye.

  I eye her over questionably. “Is there something you’re not telling me?”

  “There’s a lot of things I’m not telling you.” She grins and blasts the stereo.

  I turn back to the scene. There’s an hourglass painted on the back of the window in red and feathers all over the hood and the ground. It’s the exact scene of when the police found my dad’s car, just a different location. And I worry that, like with my dad’s disappearance, I’ll become the prime suspect.

  Chapter 6

  When night falls, I don’t visit the cemetery. The news announced that Laden is considered a missing person and that there is evidence of foul play. My mom ended up skipping out on dinner and so Raven took her place at the table. She acted like a lunatic, like she was high on the news of Laden’s disappearance.

  While Raven and I were shopping, I tried to press her about the details of last night, but she shifted the conversation to clothes every time. I end up going to bed early. But late during the night, I’m woken up by the sound of my mom’s voice.

  “Ian,” she yells up the stairs in a drunken slur. “I need your help.”

  Ian is locked away in the attic, with his “muse,” a mysterious person that sneaks in every night so he can paint them. I climbed out of bed and pad to the top of the stairway.

  “Mom, Ian’s in the attic,” I say tiredly. “What do you need?”

  She frowns up at me, disappointed. “I need help getting up the stairs.”

  I sigh and trot to the bottom. Her brown hair is disheveled and her eyes are bloodshot. She used to be pretty, but her lifestyle has aged her. She tugs down the hem of her dress and drapes her arm around my neck. She smells like tequila and cigarettes. Her death omen smothers me, like it always does: lying in a bed of pills and bottles, dying in her own flames. Holding my breath, I help her to her room, lie her down on the bed, and pull off her high heels.

  She blinks at me through her blurry eyes. “You look so much like him,” she mutters. “You have his eyes and everything.”

  She’s referring to my father. “Shhh… get some rest.”

  “I wonder if you’ll turn out like him,” she says, rolling onto her side. “I bet you will… a killer…you did kill your grandma.”

  Her words stabbed at my heart, but it’s not the first time she’s uttered them. “Mom, Dad didn’t kill anyone.”

  “Yes he did… yes he did.” She drifts off to sleep.

  I force back the tears and rush out of her room. I don’t cry, but I can’t fall back asleep. So I read Cameron’s poem, over and over again until the words blur together and make no sense at all. Just like my life.

  ***

  I’m running late the next morning. There are bags under my bloodshot eyes and I look pallid. I quickly get dressed in torn jeans, grey combat boots, and a black vest over a striped T-shirt. Raven texts me as I’m barreling down the stairs, pulling my hair into a ponytail.

  Raven: Need 2 get ur own ride 2day.

  I halt at the bottom of the stairs and text back.

  Me: Why? Is something wrong?

  It takes her a second to answer.

  Raven: I got things 2 do 2day. Can’t b late.

  Me: Just hold on. I’m almost out the door.

  Raven: Already gone.

  Raven: FYI the news said Laden disappeared the night of the party

  Me: … that makes no sense. I saw him outside the house.

  Raven: whateva u say. U would know how he died though. U saw it remember. It’s why I had 2 hang out with him

  Me: He’s not necessarily dead yet, only missing.

  Raven: If you say so. But anyway gotta go. C u at skool ;)

  I throw my phone into my bag. I consider hitting Ian up for a ride, but then I’d have to explain what happened to dad’s car. And I’m not ready for that yet. The only other alternative is to ride the overly crowed bus that is brimming with unavoidable death omens.

  “What’s up with you?” Ian asks, munching on a Pop-Tart in the kitchen doorway.

  “Nothing.” I snatch my house keys off the table. “I’m just tired.”

  “Did mom say anything to you last night?” he asks. “Like maybe why she hasn’t been taking her meds.”

  “Does she ever talk about anything?” I snap.

  Ian holds up his hands. “Sorry. I was just asking a question. But I guess I’ll keep my mouth shut.”

  I open my mouth to apologize, but h
e turns back into the kitchen. I grab my jacket off the banister and step outside. I slip on my jacket and stare at the end of the street. Walk or ride the bus?

  Cameron’s Jeep pulls up to the curb. He rolls down his window and crooks his finger at me. I hesitate.

  “I promise I don’t bite.” He dazzles me with an exquisite smile.