by Fleur Smith
I froze and my heart leaped in horror at her words. Was she Rain? Did she know about Clay and me? “How did you . . .”
“It’s always them boys that make us frazzled, sweetie.” She smiled knowingly and actually winked at me.
An anxious chuckle rushed from me as relief over the fact that it was just waitress’s intuition that caused her assumption. “Yeah. Of course.”
It was almost impossible to ignore the weight of Rachael’s gaze on me as I rushed out of the diner to follow her directions to the payphone. I was certain my behavior had struck her as odd, and I only hoped she continued to put it down to boy troubles.
She is right after all. I mean, technically speaking.
Finding the courthouse with ease, I searched around for the payphone. Once I spotted it, a stab of fear rushed through my body as I appraised the solitary phone.
Can I really do this?
“Can I really walk away without doing this?”
The sunbird agreed. We have to do it. We need to know.
Balancing my pie on the small shelf under the payphone, I pushed in the right amount of change and then stared at the receiver as if it would grow fangs and bite me.
It’s now or never.
Picking up the handset, I dialed the number before I could second-guess my choice. It rang once.
Twice.
Three times.
It kept ringing, and I began to doubt anyone would answer it. Maybe I was wrong; maybe Charlotte’s Hand-Fired Clay wasn’t a hint after all. Maybe my mind had just imposed the image of Clay over some random person because I’d been so focused on him lately. I’d been so desperate for any hint of the past, any reunion, that it was certainly a possibility.
Just as I was about to give up completely, the phone connected and the one voice I thought I’d never hear again—but so desperately wanted to—said, “Hello?”
I couldn’t speak.
I couldn’t breathe.
So much time had passed since I’d last seen or spoken to him. We hadn’t exactly parted on the best terms. The burden of every minute since then yanked my stomach down into my feet and stripped away my vocal cords.
“Hello?” His voice was quiet and questioning. Like he’d just received information that he desperately wanted but never thought he’d get, only to have it snatched away.
I exhaled one long, shaky breath.
Hang up, just hang up. Hang up now before it’s too late.
“Evie, is that you?” His voice was little more than a whisper but held a barely contained elation as he said my name.
My heart jumped at the sound before running a victory lap around my body. I’d spent so long in denial that it was hard to admit just how desperately I’d wanted to hear him say my name again. Based on the sound of his voice during the four words he’d just spoken, it was easy to believe that his last ones had been a lie, or that he’d moved on from the anger that had been so thick with disgust.
In response, those very words that he’d uttered last, “I’ll never forgive you,” echoed in my mind, spinning around again and again, and stole my courage to speak to him.
“Please, tell me that it’s you.” There was a desperate edge in his tone that I needed to answer, but I still couldn’t find the ability to form words. “Please, give me something. Anything.”
I was seconds away from telling him where I was and begging him to come to me whatever the consequences might be. Almost as soon as the desire to spill everything surged through me, I’d smashed the receiver back down to hang up the phone. The survivor in me had kicked in and acted before I had the chance to do or say anything stupid.
My heart smashed heavily against my ribcage as I stared at the phone. It was as if it were trying to burst free to find its match in Clay’s chest. My survival instincts screamed, trying to make me walk away before I called him back and put myself squarely in the line of danger. Even though my head resisted the action, barely five seconds passed before I fed more money in and redialed the number.
The phone didn’t ring for as long the second time.
Almost instantly, Clay’s voice came onto the line.
“Evie?” he whispered.
I cleared my throat, trying unsuccessfully to find a way to make my voice work.
“Oh, thank God. You’re alive. Listen, I don’t have a lot of time, and I can’t say much right now, but I need to see you again. I get why you ran, but I have something important that you have to know.”
I worried that the Rain was setting a trap and using Clay for bait—or as the spring. It would certainly explain his eagerness to meet with me. I closed my eyes as I thought about the gun raised at the car, his harsh words, and the graffiti on the hotel wall. All of it pointed to his hatred of me, but his voice sounded more anxious—desperate—than hateful.
Can someone change that much? Can they go from complete and utter disgust to elation just from hearing from you? Can they do it so quickly?
“Can you meet me at the place on the card?”
Card? I thought, but couldn’t voice. What he’d left for me was a letter, not a card. The only time he’d given me a card was in Charlotte. An image of his warehouse grew in my mind, and I realized what he meant. He must have still been near Charlotte; after all, that was where I found the letter.
And where he’d attacked my motel room.
Unless that wasn’t him . . .
“Do you know where I mean?” he asked, his voice still filled with need and something easily mistaken for want.
I knew my time for silence was up. I either had to agree to meet him or give up on the idea of him forever.
Good luck with that plan; it hasn’t worked so great so far.
I cleared my throat again and swallowed heavily to shift the lump on my vocal chords.
“Yes,” I murmured with so little volume that I was certain he wouldn’t hear.
“When can you get there?” he asked, relief flooding his tone.
Even traveling with the utmost care, it was possible to make it back to Charlotte in about three days, but I wanted to make sure I had enough time to put in place an escape plan in case I was wrong—or right—about Clay’s motives. My throat tightened as I thought about speaking again.
“A week,” I whispered, the words so tiny and quiet but meaning so much. It was me agreeing to take the chance on him—possibly on us—again. Or it was me stupidly walking into a trap. My body quaked at the thought.
“Thank you.” He exhaled heavily. “I’ll be there Tuesday at four. I promise.”
I hung up without saying anything further. Now that I’d heard his voice, I knew I had to see him again. Regardless of his motives, I didn’t feel like I had a choice in the matter. My heart had decided long ago that I had to find him; my head just took a while to catch up.
For a moment, I stared at the payphone as if Clay would materialize from it.
Eventually, I found the strength to pull myself away.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
I’D LEFT THE bank of phones at the county courthouse almost floating on air. The tiny bubble of hope for the future that had started with the phone call gained inertia and carried me through the rest of the day. Instantly turning back toward North Carolina, I reached the edge of the Daniel Boone National Forest by nightfall. Checking in to a small motel that bordered the forest, I decided to spend the night figuring out the best, and safest, way to continue on to Charlotte.
For the first time in as long as I could remember, I didn’t have any nightmares. I slept a solid night filled with the memory of Clay’s embrace. In the time since leaving the hospital, I’d learned so much about how to survive without someone else protecting me, but I hadn’t discovered anything more about how to live. If anything, I was more dead inside than I’d ever been. Just the thought of being at Clay’s side again breathed life into me.
After checking out of the motel the following morning, I scouted the local streets for a car that would take me to Charlotte as fast as possib
le.
“You told Clay you’d be a week,” I reminded myself.
You can’t hang around in one place for too long.
“I’m not hanging around,” I justified. “It’s called reconnaissance.”
Just don’t do anything stupid.
While I wandered around the quiet streets, trying to avoid an argument with myself, a terrible headline screamed at me from the window of a small corner store.
“Two Dead in House Fire.”
My stomach twisted, and I wanted to scrub my eyes clean.
No!
On the front page, my face stared back at me from alongside a picture of two others.
No, no, no! I trembled as I dared to take a step closer. This can’t be right. This can’t be happening.
One was a woman I didn’t know—someone whom I’d never even met, but whose life I’d unwittingly stolen—the other was Hightops, the boy I’d befriended just over a day earlier.
Even as disbelief still raged in my mind, my instincts kicked in. I couldn’t be caught standing, staring at a newspaper that ousted me for a murder I didn’t commit. I cast a sideways glance up and down the street before tucking the newspaper under my arm and rushing away from the scene.
When I reached the end of the road, I pulled the newspaper to my chest so that I didn’t accidentally set it alight and then sprinted desperately toward cover, allowing my feet to carry me into the depths of the forest. My mind ran over the headline again and again, and each step I took was like another punch to my stomach. I wanted to know how it all went so wrong. Once again, the cost of my true nature had returned to take a life. An innocent life that’d done nothing to deserve the fate he’d suffered. Every time I thought it was impossible to hate myself more, I stumbled into a new low.
It was only once I’d run as far as I was able that I stopped and fell to the forest floor, panting and trying unsuccessfully to beat back the tears that filled my eyes. With my chest heaving from lack of oxygen and hyperventilating over what I’d done, I dropped the newspaper to the ground so that it was away from my incendiary touch and ground my fists into my eyes to clear away the tears.
I stared at the boy’s face again. It was clearly taken from his school yearbook, the mottled blue background behind him and the forced stance made that evident. The caption under his face told me I’d guessed wrong about his age.
“Luke Sutton, 16.”
Luke. I’d taken advantage of his hospitality and hadn’t even asked his name.
He’s dead because of you. It wasn’t the sunbird’s words but my own running through my mind, and I had no reply to the thought because it was true.
You can’t stay here. This time, it was the soothing voice of the sunbird prompting me up. To get up on my feet. Although I couldn’t always tell the difference in times like this—when she compelled me forward—it was easy to know.
“I know,” I murmured. “I just need a moment. I need . . .”
Clay?
I nodded. It was hard to resist when the sunbird offered up his name or an image of his face. Sometimes it was as if she wanted me to find him. For what purpose, I didn’t know. In that moment, he was what I needed—the him I’d lived with in Detroit at least. He would have soothed me and reminded me that it wasn’t my fault. That I didn’t choose to be this way. That I never asked to have such ruthless people hunt me. I didn’t set the fire or deliberately hurt Luke and his mom.
There was only one fire that I had to take responsibility for—the one that caused me to be alone. The one that destroyed the life I’d had in Detroit.
Enraged and filled with sorrow over what had been done in my name, I poured over the words on the page voraciously. I had to know exactly what had happened—needed the information that reading between the lines might give me. I used what little information there was to try to piece together the timeline.
Apparently there had been a deadly fire at the house of the boy who’d shown me a smidgeon of kindness. The article added that there was evidence the victims had been killed before the fire started. I could feel the life draining back out of me with every word I read.
A police spokesperson advised they had eyewitness reports of someone matching my description leaving the house on the day of the murders.
I’d been there.
I’d been spotted.
And the Rain had used that to set me up. When listed together with my apparent prior offenses, the evidence was pretty damning.
There wasn’t a doubt in my mind that it was the Rain who had killed Luke and his mother. I had no idea how they’d known that Luke had helped me, or how they’d got to him so soon after I’d left. The only thing I could think of was that the shadowed figure I thought I’d spotted must have been part of the Rain. It was too much of a coincidence for it to be anything but a set-up.
Rage clawed at my throat until I could do nothing more than scream at the heavens. The way Clay had spoken about the Rain, he’d made them seem like a force for good. I couldn’t see any damned good in killing an innocent kid.
A renewed hatred for the organization that had ruined so much of my life and had taken so many lives, including my father’s, surged through me.
It can’t surprise you. You know that they’re dangerous. Remember the Rain massacre Aiden mentioned when you were at North Brothers Island? That had been a refuge for your kind, and they destroyed it.
“Yeah, I remember,” I snapped. I didn’t want to have to listen to the sunbird’s voice right then. I wanted to be alone. Truly alone like any normal person would have been in the same situation. “But they were slaughtering others there, not their precious humans.”
How exactly the lines had become so blurred that they’d stopped just ridding the world of evil and started punishing those who had unknowingly helped those apparent monsters, I didn’t know. Based on everything that Clay had told me about the Rain, the senseless murder of innocent victims was something I would never have expected. Then again, even Clay had been able to justify the murder of potentially innocent women just because some research suggested they were witches. I recalled the girls I’d encountered in the ladies’ room of the Hawthorne Hotel. They’d appeared normal, not wicked or evil at all.
Maybe it’s not that big of a leap from defense to offense.
I growled. Not for the first time, I wished there was some way of simplifying everything. The first kiss I’d shared with Clay had awoken sleeping beasts within me and introduced me to the true dangers of this world.
How long after I’d left had the Rain arrived?
“Was that where Clay was when I’d called him?” I wondered aloud.
Do you think he was involved?
“I don’t know,” I whimpered. “Someone’s been hunting me. It has to be him, doesn’t it? But why would he come so close and yet lay such an elaborate scheme to get me to meet him.”
It makes sense if the meeting’s a trap.
“I’m not sure I believe that it is anymore,” I admitted to myself. I recalled the tone in his voice when I’d agreed to meet him and given him a day. It wasn’t celebratory like someone whose well-constructed conspiracy was beginning to piece together. It was more of the relieved tone of someone who’d been desperate for something and had been granted their wish. I knew the tone because it would have been evident in my own voice if I’d found the ability to say more than just those few words.
What if it is?
My rage came tumbling down to earth, cooling my skin and leaving me empty. A loud sob escaped me. “What if it’s not?”
Then it’s not. There isn’t much you can do but wait and see.
“But maybe it’s changed now.” I pushed myself off the ground and started to pace. “What if he had forgiven me, and then he sees what happened to Luke? Will he hate me all over again?”
There’s only one way to know.
I bent down and picked up the newspaper waving it in front of me as if the sunbird was a person standing there that I needed to rant at
. “What if he sees this and decides it’s safer to just destroy me before I can kill anyone else?”
We’ll burn that bridge when we get there.
I stilled as a cold shiver ran down my spine. The tone was one I knew—the deathly certainty that the sunbird would do what it took to keep us safe.
“No,” I whispered. “We can’t hurt him.”
Whispered apologies raced through me, but I knew they were false.
I threw myself onto the ground, sitting with my arms crossed. “I won’t go.”
As if you can stay away.
I sighed. She was right. It was useless to try to resist the meeting I’d set up with Clay. I had to know what he needed to tell me. Determination overtook me, and I prepared to leave. I pulled the front page off the newspaper, folded it, and then tucked it away into my bag. With a carefully placed touch, I burned the rest of the pages before leaving the ash on the ground.
Once I was certain the embers were all extinguished, I moved even deeper into the forest. Picking my way through the rugged terrain, I tried to find a place far enough away from the recreational tracks to hide from the mess I’d made just by being me.
Finding a suitable campsite, I gathered a few dry twigs and kindling and set a small fire to help keep me warm during the night. In less than twenty-four hours, I’d gone from optimistically joyful to being reminded of all the reasons I should keep running forever. After poring over the article multiple times to try to find anything to suggest who else might have been involved, I curled tightly around myself and tried to get some sleep.
My night was haunted.
The ghosts of all the people who were dead because of me lined up for their turn at punishing my already tortured mind. Dad, Nurse Nancy, Luke and his mother, and Louise. One after another they showered me with their contempt and forced the blame for their deaths to manifest inside of my body like a thousand insidious tiny worms wiggling and writhing beneath my skin until my body shook awake.
Shadowed figures lingered at the edge of the campfire, maybe as many as twenty—or possibly as few as one. Their specters waited just outside the light provided by the fire. The menacing watchfulness I’d experienced so many times overwhelmed me, pinning me in place and making me long to run at the same time. Ash invaded my throat, causing me to choke as I tried to force myself to breath normally.
