by Sonia Hartl
“Fuck you.” He spat a mouthful of blood at my feet.
I crouched down and took a fistful of hair as I grabbed the back of his head. “No, I’m afraid you’re the one who’s fucked.”
Fear filled his expression as death crept around the corner of his dwindling existence. The light in his eyes began to dim. “I hope this moment haunts you.”
“Ending you has put my life back in my hands. I regret nothing.”
Night fell darker as even the stars looked away. Elton had no one to stand by him while he died, and I couldn’t bring myself to feel bad about that. It was a choice he made the moment he took the mortality of four girls to feed his ego. He underestimated us at every turn, treated us as if we were disposable and replaceable, and never once considered us worthy of care. He never would’ve stopped.
While I’d probably always consider his end bittersweet—I had loved him once—I could only feel a sense of peace as he took his last breath, still staring at me like he couldn’t believe we’d gotten the best of him.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Standing over Elton’s dead body turned out to be pretty anticlimactic. Not that I had expected balloons and confetti to drop like I was the millionth shopper at the Piggly Wiggly, but I thought I’d feel … something. Anything. A fleeting bit of emotion for the boy who had taught me how to dream in centuries. But I had nothing left for the corpse at my feet.
“Did I really kill him?” Parker stood beside me, her voice barely above a whisper.
“No.” Not in a direct way. I tried not to take it personally that she sounded so horrified by the prospect. She didn’t remember me. “Did you miss the part where I pulled out his heart?”
She shook her head, and an uncomfortable silence settled between us.
I had so many questions about her heirloom. When had she planned everything? Did she always intend to let Elton turn her? Did she ever leave town at all, or did she go straight to Elton? She played a dangerous game, assuming I’d burn it. If I’d left it behind at Stacey’s house, or hurled it into the woods, tonight would’ve gone a lot different. I wanted to know every detail, but I’d never get them. Her memories were gone. Which included all the feelings she had for me.
Parker pulled a piece of paper out of her back pocket. “You’re Holly, aren’t you?”
“I am.” Hearing her say my name squeezed the air from my lungs.
“I wrote myself this letter. I think maybe you should read it.”
I took the paper from her and scanned over the words in her handwriting, written before she’d been turned. She told herself not to trust Elton. That if she was reading that letter, then her memories were gone. She explained what it meant to be a vampire and warned herself that she’d probably believe Elton at first. She broke down all of his history. What he’d done to Ida and Rose and me. My throat tightened when I got to the part where she talked about us, the time we spent together. Her last words to herself: Trust Holly. You’re doing this all for her.
“You did this for me?” My voice cracked as I handed her back the letter. “Seems like you lied to yourself, then, because I tried very hard to keep you alive.”
“I know.” She folded the paper back up and tucked it into her pocket. “I must’ve loved you very much if I was willing to give up my entire life of memories for you.”
“I think you did.” I pulled on the neck of my sweater, finding the air to be a little too tight. “But you probably don’t now.”
She stared at her knotted finger. “I don’t. I’m sorry.”
I’d been prepared for the words. Without her memories, she had no feelings attached to me, but it hurt nonetheless. I should’ve been happy I had this final moment to say goodbye to her. I couldn’t find the silver lining, though. Everything had gone wrong. We killed Elton, but we failed to save the girl. As far as I was concerned, we didn’t end with a win today.
I had started to turn away when she caught my hand. Just like she did that day at her apartment. Like she couldn’t let me go. “Are you leaving?”
“I have to dig up my friends.” A sentence I never thought I’d say out loud. “I promised Stacey we would leave town as soon as it was over.”
“Oh.” She shuffled her feet. “It’s just …”
She stopped talking as Frankie and Gwen drew nearer. Her gaze passed over Gwen and her shoulders hunched, as if she wanted to disappear. Gwen had that effect on people. Frankie increased his stride across the field, his footsteps gaining speed. He must’ve seen Elton lying on the concrete. That was going to be a fun surprise.
Gwen let out a terrifying scream as she fell over Elton’s body. “What did you do to him?”
“What does it look like I did to him?” I had no love lost for either of them.
“How?” Frankie scratched his head. “You don’t have Parker’s heirloom.”
If they believed Parker’s heirloom to be hidden, who was I to correct them? “I found a way to kill vampires without destroying the heirloom.”
“No, you didn’t.” Gwen leaped to her feet. “It’s impossible.”
She was on me in a flash, wrapping her hand around my throat and dangling me off the ground. I didn’t feel pain though. Not this time. The adrenaline of having the upper hand ran through my veins. I glanced at Frankie. A worry line creased his brow as he looked between Gwen and me. He knew more about heirlooms than Rose and Ida. He must’ve known I was bluffing. Maybe he thought he owed us, or maybe he couldn’t stomach what he’d just done to Ida, but he gave me a slight nod. A sign he was willing to play along.
“Put her down,” he said to Gwen.
“But she’s lying.” Gwen shook me like a rag doll. “I know she’s lying.”
I bared my fangs. “I’d be happy to give you a demonstration.”
“I don’t think she’s lying.” Frankie grabbed Gwen by the arm, forcing her to drop me. He backed them both away. “I watched Elton bury Parker’s heirloom. We should go.”
I held my breath as I waited for Gwen to decide if I had some kind of powers she never knew about. Other than being magnificent at bullshit, I didn’t have any special skills. Something she’d realize if it dawned on her to ask Parker what she had for breakfast yesterday. Frankie laid a hand on her shoulder, and a meaningful look passed between them. The kind of look I often saw pass between Rose and Ida in their silent communication. She took a step back.
“Fine. Let’s go.” With a last lingering look at me, as if she could sniff out the truth beneath my lies, Gwen spun around. “I’m over this town, anyway.”
I blew out a breath as they walked away. They had no more ties to Elton, and neither did we. If we were lucky, we’d never cross paths with them again. Though I did hope Frankie would get good and fed up one day and end Gwen. She was too dangerous to keep alive.
I turned to Parker, still careful in my interactions with her. She had lost so much more than any of us today. All she had were the clothes on her back and a single day of memories. Could that feeling we had in the apartment even be recaptured? All the circumstances that had drawn us to each other were gone. It had been such a small, fleeting moment in my existence, but one that had been everything.
I lifted a hand, as if to touch her, and dropped it again. I clenched my fingers against my palm. “I’m sorry, what were you saying before those two showed up?”
“I was saying …” She twisted her fingers together. “If it’s okay with you all, can I go with you? I don’t have anywhere else to go.”
“That all depends.” I gave her a playful smile as relief rushed through me. I couldn’t make her come with us if that wasn’t what she wanted, but I didn’t know how I would’ve been able to leave this place without her. “Can you help me dig up a few boxes?”
“About that …” Parker gave a nervous glance across the field. “I might’ve helped Elton put one of your friends in a box. The small one. I thought it would be a good idea to play along until I could figure out what was going on.”
I
had a feeling Rose would find a way to forgive her.
Stacey pulled up in front of the school with a van. It was a dull blue and smelled like paint and gym socks, but beggars couldn’t be choosers. None of us asked how she’d gotten it. The blood on the driver’s side door didn’t leave us with many questions. She didn’t want to hang around this town any longer than necessary, and with nothing left to tie us to this place, we threw all of our stuff in the back and piled in though the side door. There were two seats in the back that could seat three each. Plenty of room to spread out.
Parker ended up bringing a small backpack with a few possessions that didn’t have meaning to her anymore. She rifled through the backpack with a blank expression on her face, growing increasingly frustrated when she couldn’t make sense of the objects that had once mattered enough to carry into death.
“You can leave that here.” I gestured to the parking lot. “If it bothers you to have attachments to the things you can’t remember, you can dump it and make a fresh start elsewhere.”
“I can’t.” She closed the backpack and held it to her chest. “It’s all I have left.”
In a way, I understood what she meant. For years, I carried around a ratty old sweater with more holes than Swiss cheese because it was all I had left from my time before. When you had nothing, even the most worthless things felt like an anchor.
My heart sped up when she took the seat beside me, but I really tried not to read too much into it. She didn’t remember me. Those feelings she had might never come back. I had to settle into accepting that.
Ida brushed dirt off her arm as she climbed into the front seat next to Stacey. “You could’ve at least let us take a shower.”
“You can shower in Indiana.” Stacey slammed her foot on the gas, leaving rubber tracks in the asphalt as she peeled out of the parking lot.
Unburying them had taken all my remaining strength, and I’d collapsed in the first seat I’d crawled into. I rested my head against the window. The city where I’d been born, lived, fell in love, and ultimately died held nothing for me anymore. No memories, no obligations.
It could’ve been worse. At least I had thirty-plus years of memories to fill my mind and smooth over the empty void. Parker had today. That was all. As we left behind the places that should’ve been familiar, she stared out the window with a sense of wonder.
Rose leaned forward and squeezed my shoulder from behind. “You doing okay?”
“I’ll be fine.” I patted her hand. “We’re all going to be just fine.”
It scared me how close I’d come to losing them. I thought of them like family now, and I couldn’t imagine eternity without them. For three girls who had fallen so hard for the same guy, we didn’t have a whole lot in common. Necessity brought us together, but the bond we had formed would keep us with one another. I didn’t have to be alone anymore.
They gave me a recap of everything I’d missed while I’d been occupied killing Elton. Rose had gone into the box first, assisted by Parker, which caught her off guard. Parker apologized profusely, but Rose was too much of a softie to make it an issue. Frankie and Gwen had overpowered Stacey and Ida, dragging their remaining pieces across the field and ripping away whatever grew back before they could gain any kind of upper ground. The three boxes had been tied shut and buried under three feet of dirt. Just deep enough to muffle their screams.
I had unburied Ida first, and she clawed at me, her eyes frantic as I lifted the lid. She didn’t speak for a solid hour while I dug into the earth to pull out Stacey, then Rose. None of them wanted to talk about the limited time they had spent below ground, and I had no idea the thoughts that had crossed their minds when that first shovel of dirt covered their boxes.
Some things were better left unsaid.
As soon as Stacey drove past the Now LEAVING GLEN RIVER sign, I tapped Parker on the shoulder. “How are you feeling about leaving here? You didn’t live here very long, but I think you started to view this place as home.”
“I don’t feel any kind of way about it.” She bit her lip. “It’s a little disorienting.”
“I can imagine.” I wanted to run my finger over her bottom lip and wipe the worry from her eyes, but what she needed most was space and time to process. “Regrets?”
“None.” She gave me one of her brilliant, brighter-than-the-sun smiles. “I guess that’s the one good thing about giving up my memories. I have nothing left to regret.”
That was how I chose to view it. Thirty-four years was long enough to pay for whatever mistakes I’d made. Without memories, without Elton, we all were blank slates. We could finally write our own stories and test who we’d be without him.
I looked forward to seeing what we discovered.
At a rest stop on the Michigan-Indiana line, Ida took over driving from Stacey. Rose moved up to the front seat, and we put in a DVD of 30 Days of Night on the portable player in the back. Stacey had found it tucked in the center console, and we couldn’t resist.
As soon as the movie started, Stacey put her feet up on the seat behind me. In the dark, Parker placed her hand on the seat between us. Halfway through the movie, her pinky overlapped mine. We stayed like that for an hour, until I worked up the nerve to turn my hand over. Our palms connected, and her pulse beat against mine.
In that moment, I knew we’d figure it out.
It wouldn’t be exactly the same as it had been before, but maybe that was okay. Without the intensity of trying to keep her alive, we could take some time to learn each other again. As we were now. Lucky for us, we had all the time in the world.
We made our way toward a little-used highway headed south, and Rose turned to face us, sitting on her knees on the passenger seat. “Where are we going?”
I looked out the window to the open stretch of road before us. “Anywhere we want.”
The End
Acknowledgments
First, I’d like to give a huge thank-you to my readers. I hope you enjoyed going on a little revenge adventure with Holly.
To my agent, Rebecca Podos, thank you for reminding me that I am, in fact, a writer when I first posted this idea on Twitter as a book I’d like to read. You remain my greatest advocate and I couldn’t imagine a better partner in this wild business.
To my editor, Tamara Grasty, it has been an absolute pleasure working with you. You have incredible insight and were so helpful during the editing process. Thank you for all your wonderful suggestions that allowed me to smooth all the rough edges of this story.
To my copy editor, Rebecca Behrens, thank you so much for catching all my repeats and off-key wordings, and a huge thank-you to Lauren Knowles and Laura Benton, my designer Kylie Alexander for another amazing cover, publisher Will Kiester, and the wonderful sales team at Macmillan.
Jen Hawkins, my literary soulmate, when I come to Texas again, we’re absolutely going to have a water … or four.
Kellye Garrett and Roselle Lim, we’re still dancing.
To my coven: Kelsey Rodkey, Annette Christie, Andrea Contos, Auriane Desombre, Rachel Lynn Solomon, and Susan Lee, I love you all forever. Thank you for everything.
To my husband and my girls, your endless support means the world to me.
About the Author
Sonia Hartl is the author of Not Your #Lovestory and Have a Little Faith in Me, which received a starred review in BookPage and earned nominations for the Georgia Peach Book Award, YALSA’s Quick Picks for Reluctant Readers, Bank Street College of Education’s Best Children’s Books of the Year, and ALA’s Rise: A Feminist Book Project List. She is also the author of an adult rom-com, Heartbreak for Hire. When she’s not writing or reading, she enjoys playing board games with her family, attempting to keep her garden alive, or looking up craft projects on Pinterest she’ll never get around to completing. She’s a member of SCBWI and was the Managing Director for Pitch Wars 2020. She lives in Grand Rapids with her husband and two daughters. Follow her on Twitter @SoniaHartl1.
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Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Copyright
Copyright © 2021 Sonia Hartl
First published in 2021 by
Page Street Publishing Co.
27 Congress Street, Suite 105
Salem, MA 01970
www.pagestreetpublishing.com
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or used, in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.
eISBN 978-1-64567-315-6
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