I pushed away the feeling and concentrated on his breathing instead; something that stirred tangibly against my hair, controlled and even—betraying the truth that danced in my chest. He typed away stoically, ignoring us all.
“So…” Cabe sounded downright jovial. “The dating idea was terrible.”
“No talking.” Silas’s snarl ripped into the tense room, spilling silence in its wake.
Eventually, one of his hands fell from the keyboard and circled my back, his fingers moving in seemingly absent, distracted patterns. I tried to ignore it, but it was slowly driving me insane. Insane, because no sane person would grow breathless from a man like Silas touching them, surely. I wondered if he was aware of what he was doing to me. He was always deliberate in the way he interacted with me. His every touch was thought-out, his every action concealing some deeper meaning.
I suspected that he was trying to distract me.
I also suspected that it was working.
“Found it,” he eventually said, jolting me back to reality.
I turned my face slowly as the others jumped up and gathered around. I shouldn’t have been surprised to see a CCTV recording of the bowling alley on the screen, but I was—because Silas had lulled me successfully into a trap of my own musings. I pushed off him and jumped up, sitting on the keyboard and leaning back to block out the monitor. I folded my arms tightly over my chest and anchored my feet against the base of Silas’s chair, between his legs.
“No,” I seethed.
They stared.
I tensed my legs, ready… and when Silas pitched forward, I kicked with all of my strength, sending his chair wheeling backwards. His mouth fell open, shock etched into every feature. I reached behind the screen and pulled out cords until the image faded into blackness. I got up off the desk, crawled beneath it, and pulled out all of the plugs. All of the laptop screens remained unaffected, but none of those were displaying the footage, so I left them alone. Most of the blinking machinery had fallen quiet. I walked up to Silas and poked his chest.
“You aren’t allowed to watch that.”
He looked down at my finger, and then he stood, causing my hand to fall back down to my side. The wildfire in his eyes burned in a feral way as it traced along my face, categorising the defiance in my features. His lips twisted into a grim line. I could feel the furious pulse of his heartbeat again, and I was secretly glad that the others didn’t have the connection with Silas that I did, because it was overwhelming. It burned all the way to my cheeks, causing spots of heat to flush down over my neck. I hoped that he wasn’t angry with me so much as he was angry at the fact that there was clearly something on that footage that I didn’t want him to see… but that hope didn’t hold much traction.
“I should be concerned that you just did that,” he said, his voice low and quiet, thick with danger and rounded off by the sudden pronouncement of his accent.
Something strange happened then, and it knocked me off balance. The other three faded away from me. I couldn’t feel Quillan’s influence anymore. I forgot where I was standing, I forgot about Weston, the messenger, and Gerald. My world narrowed to a singular point of reference, and Silas stood in the centre of it.
The boy was older than me—he seemed taller than the boys at the high school that I had just been enrolled in. It wasn’t the first time that I had dreamed of him, but it was the first dream in which he had seemed so real. His hair was as dark as mine, cut short at the sides in a practical sort of way, and flopping forward in disarray to obscure his eyes. He flicked it back and wiped a hand over the back of his mouth, leaving a smear of red on his skin. This movement revealed his eyes to me, and I felt a lurch in my chest at the sight of them. They were the kind of dark that didn’t stem from colour, but from experience. They burned hotly, and the fire seemed to scream from within. I imagined people becoming victim to that fire, tripping and falling into it. Their screams would mix with his. He seemed to have that power; the particularly violent capacity to collect pain. He licked at the blood seeping out of the side of his mouth and laughed.
“Fuck you, Weston.”
I reared back, blinking rapidly, and Silas watched my reaction without any answering emotion of his own.
Was that a memory?
“Cabe said doe-eyes wouldn’t work,” I choked out.
Silas’s expression narrowed into something resembling a glare, and he bent until we were eye to eye. “I’ll tell you what I’m going to do,” he said, slowly—making sure that every word penetrated me with the force of the threat that was his very person. “I’m going to throw everyone out of this room, and then I’m going to watch that footage. If someone so much as—”
“You don’t own me, Silas.” I was being harsh, but the familliar cocktail of fear and anger was beginning to cavort with my sensibility, tossing reactionary words from my lips.
I hated to fuel the demons that Silas harboured. I hated that I made him worse. And yes… maybe I hated that my every movement was watched, my every altercation with an ‘outside’ person scrutinised. Was that the messenger’s fault? Or was that simply the nature of the bond? “You don’t have to beat every person that touches me into a bloody pulp.”
He took a step closer, straightening until I was forced to look up at him. His hands suddenly gripped around my waist, his fingers digging into me. He hauled me up, his cheek pressing to mine, his voice stirring against my ear. “But you own me, is that it? Would you rather I take it all out on you?”
I wanted so badly to float away with the boy. I didn’t want to release his presence in my head. His pain had called to my pain, he had collected my screams the way he collected his own, and now I didn’t want to leave him. Selfishly, I wanted to leave my house, leave Gerald, and forget that I had a baby brother to look after. I wanted to forget the reason that I sat here, night after night, forcing compliance. I wanted to disappear into the world of screams and fire, where I could force the boy to fight against the monsters that battered at my mind.
I wanted to embrace the looming insanity.
A violent tremor raced through my body, and I knew that he felt it, because he pulled back to look at my face. I wasn’t sure what I was feeling, only that it was strong. My palms were sweaty, I couldn’t stop blinking, and my mind was in utter turmoil.
I didn’t know what was happening, what these memories were doing inside my head. They felt like mine, but surely… surely, they weren’t real. Something in Silas’s expression shifted as he watched me. His eyes fell to my mouth, and I realised that I had stopped breathing. He glanced further down, and I tried to reign-in the violent tremor that had taken up residence in my heart with little success. He looked back into my eyes, and for the second time that day, I felt as though he were staring past me, past the room we stood in, and witnessing everything that played out inside my head, tasting every thought for the truth that stirred it into existence.
He stopped breathing, his eyes clearing of darkness in an instant, and then suddenly, the others were there. Noah and Cabe had to both pull me away, and Quillan inserted himself between us, facing Silas. They glared at each other, having some kind of silent battle as Noah shoved me behind his back and Cabe hovered uncertainly behind me.
“That was out of line.” Noah was angry.
Silas’s eyes flicked from Quillan to Noah, and then back to Quillan. Inexplicably, his mouth tilted up into a semblance of a smile.
“You’re right,” he said. His voice was now lacking the dangerous edge, and I wondered what had changed. His attention shifted back to me. “That was my server computer.” He stretched out as though working away the tension that had wound him so tightly. “You just crashed my system, angel.”
“You don’t do things by half,” I offered, referring to what he had said to me after getting the tattoo on his forearm. “I’m just speaking your language.”
He moved to the workstation to repair the damage I had wrought, apparently dismissing us. It took a long time for the others to
relax, but I was still preoccupied when the sound of a doorbell downstairs caught our attention.
Cabe and Noah glanced at each other, and then they both left the room without a word. I followed them, padding down the stairs to the front door, which was now hanging open. I couldn’t hear voices, and didn’t see Abe or Tabby; and as we reached the doorway, there didn’t seem to be anybody waiting outside. A trickle of dread worked its way into me, and I stood by silently as Cabe and Noah split up to investigate—with Cabe heading into the kitchen and Noah jogging outside. It was already dark, so I stared after Noah until he disappeared. When he came back, there was a frown pulling at his mouth, and the same uneasiness was lighting his eyes.
“Nobody here,” Cabe returned. “Lock the door. I’ll check the back.”
He turned and I followed him to the back of the house, where the back door was also hanging open.
“What the hell?” he muttered, grabbing the handle and beginning to slam it shut.
I shot a hand out, catching it at the last second. There was a bucket at the top of the steps, full of water. It wasn’t that strange, but I’d eaten my breakfast on the back porch that morning, and it hadn’t been there then. I slipped past Cabe and approached the steps, glancing down to the bottom, where the dull shine of cloth in the dirt grabbed my attention.
“Can you turn on the light?” I asked over my shoulder.
A moment later, the porch steps flooded with light, and I blinked, my unease morphing into something more.
Two porcelain dolls lay at the bottom of the steps, one dressed as a boy—with little denim overalls and gumboots—and the other as a girl. The details were precise, seemingly hand-sewn and intricate enough to call attention to each tiny stitch, each pleat of the girl-doll’s frilly dress and leather shoes. They were both large, around knee-height, with limbs askew in the grass, but that wasn’t what had inspired the terror that shivered down the length of my spine.
Both of their porcelain faces had been shattered.
I could make out an untouched section of the girl’s jaw, a perfect line of painted red lips and a button nose, teetering like a half-cracked eggshell. Their corn-flower hair was a matted mess, congealed with the spread of red liquid that pooled beneath them.
I heard Noah calling out for the others, and I moved numbly down the stairs as their footsteps thundered across the porch. I wasn’t sure what to think of this. Was the messenger back? Had I done something wrong again? Somehow, this didn’t seem like his style. There were no photos, no riddles—
The realisation smacked into me so hard that I rocked back on my heels. “It’s h-him,” I stuttered.
“How do you know?” I could hear Quillan’s voice, but couldn’t tear my eyes from the broken dolls and their pool of red long enough to look at him.
Was that blood? Paint?
“It’s Jack and Jill,” I said, pointing to the bucket of water at the top of the stairs. “The pail of water.” I pointed at the dolls. “Jack fell down, and broke his crown. It’s another warning. I did something.” I groaned, losing my balance and collapsing to my knees.
“You can’t blame yourself,” Cabe said. “That’s messed up, Seph. This is his sickness, not yours.”
What did I do?
I was shaking now, my palms clammy and my breath choppy. Cabe’s hand was pressing between my shoulder blades, the voices of the others floating over my head.
Three months of nothing, and now the messenger was back.
I was furious. I was terrified. Frustrated. Confused.
“A-are there any m-messages? N-notes?” I asked, my teeth mashed painfully together.
“None,” Silas answered.
I lifted my eyes, realising that I had been staring at my hands, transfixed, as though the answers would land right there, in my palms. Silas was crouched over the dolls, his back to me, blocking them out.
“None,” Quillan confirmed, still standing on the porch. “Cabe, get her inside.”
Cabe’s hands moved to my shoulders, coaxing me up, and I let him walk me to the back door.
“Noah,” Quillan caught Noah when he moved to follow us, “both of you stay with her tonight. She leaves early tomorrow and her head needs to be screwed on straight. We can’t have her straining on top of this.”
Noah nodded, and the three of us left together. I put myself through a shower and dressed in cotton shorts and a baggy sweatshirt. I fell into the bed as Noah ducked into the bathroom.
“This hasn’t been a good day,” I muttered against the pillow, not caring that they were both intending on sleeping in my room. They stayed with me like this, on occasion.
Whenever the bond had strained me in the last months, Noah and Cabe had always been the ones to comfort me, never Quillan or Silas. Already, my head was swimming and my strain-induced state of semi-awareness was warring with the need to stay focussed, just in case the messenger came back, or exploded something. In the end, the strain won, and I closed my eyes briefly, wincing at the inebriated feeling that settled into my limbs, weighing me down.
Cabe propped himself against the backboard of my bed, pulling my head to his shoulder as his hands tangled in my hair, stroking absently.
“I’m still astounded you managed to avoid Silas flipping out,” he said. “We’ve never been able to do it.”
That was him not flipping out?
“Why is he like that?” I glanced up from the pillow and Cabe’s fingers grazed over my cheekbone.
I was glad that he was avoiding talking about the stalker’s latest message.
“He had a hard life.” Cabe grimaced. “Him more than all of us. Weston hated him.”
“You’re really good at saying stuff without really saying anything.”
His hand was brushing below my chin now, and I pulled my face out of his grasp, burying it in my pillow.
“And you’re going to force me to go to sleep holding your hand again, but you don’t see me complaining.”
“Bite me,” I mumbled into the pillow.
“Don’t tempt me,” he returned, flippantly.
The bathroom door opened and I felt the bed dip as Cabe stood and Noah pulled the blankets up and slid in next to me. I held back the strain for all of thirty seconds, before my body was moving of its own accord, turning and cuddling into Noah’s side.
There was a tap on the door and Tabby’s voice carried. “Stephanie? I just wanted to check that you got home okay.” She always used my fake name now.
Noah got up from the bed and I watched him move to the door and pull it open. He wasn’t wearing a shirt. “She’s asleep,” he said gently. “You should go to bed too, Tab.”
I peeked out from the blanket. Tabby was trying to see over his shoulder, but the room must have been too dark, because her eyes skipped right over me and landed on the bathroom door.
“Is Stephanie in the bathroom?”
“No, that’s Cabe. I just told you, she’s asleep.”
The confusion on her face doubled, and it left a pang in my chest. This felt unfair, but I knew better than to fall victim to Tabby’s innocent expression. That wasn’t a mistake that I was going to repeat twice.
“Where are Silas and Miro?”
“Downstairs.”
“Why aren’t they here?”
“Because we’re here.”
Tabby let out a frustrated breath, her eyes flashing with the rare glint of hysteria that I sometimes encountered in her.
“I’m going to find out what’s really going on, Noah. I will. I’ll find out what it all means.” She straightened, tempered the foreign look in her eye, and cupped his cheek. “Goodnight, honey. You’ll be sleeping in your own room tonight, won’t you?”
“Sure. Night, Tab.”
She left and Noah closed the door. Cabe opened the bathroom door at the same time. “I’m not so sure this is a good idea,” he said. “Confusing her is good, but I don’t want to push her too far. She might overreact. She might do something drastic to prove it one way
or another.”
“We’ll see,” Noah replied. “She hasn’t known about any of us sharing Seph’s bed before now. We’ll see if it changes anything tomorrow.”
I peeked out at them from my huddled spot in the bed. My skin was hurting, my limbs heavy. It was a more painful strain than the last one, but less overwhelming. I had grown stronger over the last few months, so I felt that I could handle the strain better when it happened… until they remained where they were, standing, talking quietly. I shuffled to the other end of the bed and wrapped an arm around Noah’s leg. The material of his sweatpants slid softly against his skin and his hand landed on my head, digging lightly into my hair. It made me feel like a puppy, but I didn’t have the energy to complain as the pain started to fade away.
“No, she hasn’t said anything to me either.” He spoke in response to something Cabe had said—I hadn’t heard. I rested my head against Noah’s hip, my free hand creeping up to his stomach.
I traced the outline of a muscle from one side of his stomach to the middle, and then skipped up and traced the next one. His fingers shifted in my hair, cupping my skull.
“I feel like this is a disaster waiting to happen,” Cabe said, his eyes trained on me.
I finished tracing the muscles that I could reach and then dropped my hand back to the top of his sweatpants to start again.
“It is.” Noah bit out the words.
I glanced up, meeting his stormy eyes, and he turned, pushing me lightly so that I fell back against the bed, my hands leaving him.
“Stay right there.” He pointed at me, and then disappeared into my closet.
He came back with a thin scarf, and Cabe took one look at it before springing into action. He swooped me into his arms and positioned me back on the pillows, capturing my wrists and raising them above my head.
“This is for your own good,” he whispered as Noah kneeled on the bed next to me. “Don’t hate us in the morning.”
Noah looped the scarf lightly around my wrists and then tied it off against the headboard behind me. I leaned back, trying to tip my head back far enough to watch. The blood in my veins was singing from their proximity, the itching completely muted, and I didn’t really care what they did anymore, as long as they kept close to me. When Noah was finished, Cabe released me and they both sat back to look at me. I tried to move toward them, but the scarf caught my wrists and held me back. It wasn’t painful, but it was frustrating. An annoyed sound left my throat.