If I keep ignoring him, eventually he’ll get over me. He’ll never know that I’m letting him have the better path. And he’ll be safer. That has to be enough for now. It has to be.
About halfway to Sophie’s I realize she might be sleeping—that I seriously shouldn’t wake her up if she is. With my brain on low gear—whether from lack of sleep or kissing—I stand in the middle of the sidewalk trying to decide what to do.
At least I have the sense not to stand in the middle of the road.
Finally, I pull out my phone and text her, hoping that if she is sleeping, she’ll have turned the volume off.
I have your homework. Are you up for company?
A full minute passes, then my phone chimes.
YES!!! I’m SO bored. Come save me!
I grin, shove my phone into my pocket, and start walking again. A few minutes later, at Sophie’s textual insistence—followed by her confirmation that her mom isn’t home—I let myself in her front door and, for the second time that day, make my way back to Sophie’s bedroom.
“There you are,” Sophie says. “I was afraid you got lost or something.”
“In this town? Please.” I sit on the edge of the bed—ready for the give this time—and study her carefully. She looks a bit less peaky, but that may be simply because she’s gotten some sleep. Or because the sunlight coming in the window is brighter than it was this morning. I don’t know how this whole Sorceress recovery thing works, so I also don’t know how to judge how it’s coming along. I could just be seeing what I want to see. I’ve certainly been guilty of that before. “How long do you expect it to be before you can come back to school?”
Sophie groans. “Probably a week. Maybe more. Tomorrow Mom will take me in to a doctor who’ll diagnose me with something official so we can have a doctors’ note for my excessive absences,” she says, making air quotes with her fingers. “I’m generally pretty anemic by this point and that’s what they usually go with.”
“She must be so mad at me,” I say, twisting the edge of Sophie’s comforter between my fingers.
“My mom?” Sophie shrugs, more nonchalant than her current physical state justifies, in my opinion. “Not really. I mean, not you specifically. Sort of. She’s just super protective. Besides, it was my choice to jump you back. My mom knows that she has to let me make those kinds of decisions for myself.”
I nod, thinking of the understanding that Sierra and I have come to. It’s tense sometimes, but I wouldn’t go back to the way we were for anything. Having a choice is an incredibly freeing thing.
“I’ve been watching the news,” Sophie says, pointing to a muted television set up on a barstool against the wall behind me. I didn’t notice it when I came in. “I imagine if the police actually caught someone last night, they would have mentioned it. This doesn’t seem like the kind of town that can keep a secret.”
“Not a chance,” I say, and my heart aches—but for all the recent pain, the injury itself is months old at least. “News travels faster than light in a small town.”
“It must have been awful last time,” Sophie says softly.
“It was.” My throat is tight and I’m so tired and distraught that even the slightest emotion feels overwhelming. And memories of Jason Smith are not slight.
“So… are we still trying to catch a killer? Or did we just prevent some weird outlier?”
I shrug. “I haven’t had any more visions, so we haven’t really got anything to go on. But I don’t like this thing we stumbled on, with Daphne. It still feels like the job is half done, you know?”
“Don’t I just,” she grumbles.
“Should we call? Child protective services, I mean,” I say, bringing up our original plan.
Sophie folds her arms over her chest and considers. “Maybe? When did you tell Daphne you’d come back?”
“I just said in a couple days so that I wasn’t tied to anything.”
“Seems kind of pointless to call anyone, if Daphne is prone to telling strangers that she’s safe and happy.” Sophie sounds as lost as I feel.
I let out a sigh and flop onto the pillows beside Sophie so our heads are close together. “I hear you, and you’re right.”
“But …” Sophie prompts.
I stare at her ceiling. “But that room. It was creepy. And I know saying you weren’t there is totally lame of me considering you’d have liked to be there, but the way she looked at me when she was soaked in blood that night—the one you took back. Her eyes. It was …”
“Sad?” Sophie suggests when my voice trails off.
“Terrifying,” I whisper. “I know she must have just gone in and found her parents dead—insanely, violently dead. But it was like she understood.” I close my eyes and begin rubbing them. Weariness is closing in on me now that I’ve let myself relax and lie down. “And then when they dragged her out of the car and she was screaming it—it didn’t even sound human. It was awful,” I finish in a rasp. “Then they freaking Tased her. That’s when I called you. I knew I would do anything to stop it from happening. It was a nightmare.”
“I could tell,” Sophie says softly.
Her bed is so soft and comfy, with the pillows molding around my head, and even though a million thoughts are whizzing through my mind I feel my muscles relax and my breathing slow as drowsiness hovers above me.
“Are you going to sleep?” Sophie teases softly.
“No,” I lie.
“Did you sleep at all last night?”
“Not really,” I respond, much more truthfully this time.
“I don’t mind if you do.”
“Bad manners,” I insist, trying to force my eyes to open. My ears are tingling now and I groan as I realize I’m about to have a vision. “Don’t freak,” I tell Sophie. “I’m going to totally space for a minute or two.”
I close my eyes; I’m not going to fight it. Not today. We saved the Welsh family but the killer is still out there. That, and I’m simply too exhausted to fight off a vision anyway. So I scoot a little closer to Sophie to make sure I don’t fall off the bed—realizing wistfully that I’ve never done this before; allowed myself to have a vision in front of someone who knew what was happening. It’s nice.
I surrender.
Chapter Twenty-Two
I’m standing in the middle of an ice-slicked street on a clear, chilly night and there’s nothing to observe except a traffic light, flashing yellow at the empty streets. The intersection stays empty for a long time and I’m not sure just what I’m supposed to see—I feel no pull in any direction at all.
It happens, sometimes—not every vision is momentous. That’s easy to forget in the midst of an ongoing crisis, but sometimes the only meaningful difference between today and tomorrow is that tomorrow hasn’t happened yet.
But a dark shape comes into focus down the street. At first I worry that I’m seeing the blurred, unidentifiable killer again, but soon I realize that it’s a car with its headlights off—a nondescript sedan, lit so dimly by the traffic signal that it could be any color from red to orange to black.
And it kind of looks like it’s coming at me … sideways?
Crap! It is! The car is sliding on the icy street, heading right for me. I scramble for the side of the road, slip-sliding my way out of the intersection. I may be invincible in my visions, but I’m not immaterial; sensation is often dulled but right now I’d rather not feel even a tenth of what it would be like to be hit by a car.
When the car plows into a snow bank behind me, I flinch at the sudden crunching noise; this costs me my footing completely and I land, hard, on my tailbone, followed by my shoulders and then the back of my head.
Even in the vision, it smarts like crazy.
I lie in the grubby, icy snow and look up at the star-speckled sky, immensely annoyed with this pointless vision. Unless the universe is telling me I should become a salt truck driver—de-icing roads for a living—there’s nothing useful here; nothing to prevent. Even sliding out of control,
the car wasn’t going fast enough to kill the driver and, judging by the fact that they didn’t have their freaking headlights on, they’re probably under the influence of something and deserve to get their car rumpled.
I’m too tired for this. Too full of emotions and empty of sleep. “I’m done!” I shout up to the star-dotted sky. As the sound of my own voice echoes off the icy snow, I feel the subtle tingling that tells me the foretelling is over.
I’m grumpy as the vision fades, as my sight coming filtering slowly back, and I blink with heavy eyelids.
“Holy shit,” Sophie says a few seconds before I can actually make out her features, even in the bright sunlight. She’s … smiling. Gleeful, even. “That was amazing. I mean, I saw it before that day in art class, but you were right here, and I could feel it. How do you even handle that?”
“Handle what?” I ask, pushing myself to a sitting position. The thought of the ten-minute walk it’s going to take to get home is really daunting at the moment. I’m Just. So. Tired.
“That much energy,” Sophie says, and her eyes are glittering.
“I don’t know what you mean.” I’m mumbling now, but that vision was the last straw. I want to go home, lie my ass off about homework, and bury myself in my bed.
“You don’t even notice? Man, that’s so unfair.”
Her tone finally worms through my apathy and I peer at her face, alight with discovery. “I’m so confused,” I finally say, giving up.
“You just had a vision, right? Of the future.”
I nod, still unused to being able to talk about something so forbidden.
“Anything exciting?”
A scoffing sigh bursts from my mouth. “Hardly. Somebody hitting a snow bank in the middle of the night. Definitely not fatal, unless he had a heart attack or something first.”
Sophie shakes her head. “A totally pointless vision and you got that much energy? Seriously, if I could absorb as much as you just took I’d be recovered in days. Maybe less.” She looks down at her arms and though I can’t see any difference she seems satisfied. “I think I’m improved just for having had you with me when that happened. It felt amazing!” She glances sidelong at me with a wry grin. “Don’t suppose you could just, like, have another one?”
I snort at the sheer absurdity of her question and shake my head.
“Shame,” she says wistfully. “But maybe you’ll get one next time you come over. Gives you all the more reason to visit,” she says, not meeting my eyes. Almost … shyly.
“Who needs a reason?” I say softly, smiling when she finally looks up.
She grins back, then takes a deep breath. “Not to bring up unpleasantness, but before you fall asleep again, you should probably give me my homework.”
“I did not fall asleep,” I argue, digging into my backpack.
“Did you say hi to Linden for me?” Sophie asks, peering playfully at me as I hand over a stack of papers. My hand freezes and Sophie has to pull on the pages before I come to enough to let go.
“Please … please don’t tease. Not about him,” I mumble, unable to look her in the face. Not after nearly making out with him an hour ago.
Oh lord. I totally did half-make out with him. Every time I remember that it’s a slap in the face from my good friend reality.
“Did he dump you?” she asks, but her playful tone is gone, and I remember that she doesn’t have much of a love life to speak of either. Maybe she doesn’t know how much it can hurt.
I shake my head. “Technically no, but it’s so much more complicated than that.”
“Really?” she asks skeptically, and I can tell she’s one hundred percent Team Lindlotte.
I wish I could be too.
“Like more than because you can’t tell him about yourself?” she presses. “Because take it from a Sorceress, you’ll get used to lying. And in the end it’s best for everyone involved. It really is.”
“The girl he’d just started dating was the first one murdered,” I say, staring at the ground.
She sucks in a loud breath. “Damn,” she says quietly. “And he went right to you? No offense, but that’s cold.”
“It wasn’t his fault. He was …” I twist my fingers around each other until it hurts. It feels like knives are stabbing into my chest with each breath. When I told Sierra, I thought that was just the pain of breaking up with the guy I was still in love with. But now, something about saying the words out loud is every bit as painful as before. Maybe more. Pouring salt in the wound.
But I can’t stop. Even if I wanted to, it feels like the secret has needed so badly to be free that it’s pouring out of me of its own free will. “Another supernatural got into his head,” I finally say. “Controlled him. His actions, his emotions, everything. It’s the only reason we got together at all.”
Sophie’s eyebrows scrunch down. “Why would anyone do something like that?”
“To get to me.” The words hang for a moment, and then I let out a long, silent breath and the pain in my heart lessens. This week I’ve been so focused on other things that I let myself forget the weight of secrets.
Only now that this one is gone do I remember.
Sophie stares at me with her dark brown eyes for so long that I almost get uncomfortable before she whispers, “I guess there’s a downside to being so powerful, huh?”
I nod. Because essentially, that’s the truth behind The Linden Thing. There’s so much more, and I know I’ll tell her the whole thing someday, but right now I’m so weary I just can’t get into it. This is enough.
“You still like him?” Sophie asks.
I swallow hard and nod. Like is such a paltry word for the heady mix of euphoria and slicing heartbreak that threatens to overwhelm me every time I come into contact with him, but it’ll do. For now. “And I can never be with him. Never.” My voice cracks as I say it, and I shrug and am more than chagrinned when I have to wipe away a tear. “I must be really tired,” I say, trying to laugh it away. “I’ve been over him for ages.”
Sophie just arches an eyebrow. “Is that what you tell yourself?”
I’d forgotten this part of having a friend. They tell you the truths you don’t want to hear. I chuckle. “I certainly try.”
“Good girl,” Sophie says.
I lay back down and she rests her cheek against the top of my head and we recline together in silence, broken occasionally by a soft sniff from me as I try, unsuccessfully, to shove back my tears. I let the memory of his lips on mine wash over and drown me. Just for a little while. When several minutes have passed with no sound whatsoever, Sophie asks, “All done now?”
I snicker at the utter absurdity of the moment, but say, “Yeah, I think so.”
“That was … quite a kiss,” she says softly, and I laugh bitterly when I realize that of course she would have seen it as soon as she touched me. It’s absolutely at the forefront of my mind and probably will be for days.
Weeks.
Ah. That’s why the memory was so vivid—I was seeing it, and I was also seeing that Sophie was seeing it. I’m going to have to get used to her automatic readings, but oddly, I don’t mind. Some things are hard to say, and maybe it’ll be easier to show her.
“Here’s what I think,” Sophie says. “I think that you need to go home and get some sleep. You’re in no frame of mind to make any kind of serious decision at all. About Daphne,” she says when I look at her in question.
“Right,” I say, berating myself for losing sight of the more important issue over my own forlorn love life.
“Come over again tomorrow and we’ll really talk. And you can work extra hard to get another one of those visions,” Sophie says, less-than-half joking. “I’m telling you, being in contact with you during that seriously helped. It was pretty incredible, to be honest.”
“Well, I’ll do my best to provoke something I have absolutely no control over whatsoever,” I drawl. Then I shoulder my backpack and head toward her bedroom door.
“Charlotte?”
I turn and look at her.
“I’m really glad I moved here and met you.”
I smile, feeling quite a bit more awake. “Me too.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
“Charlotte! Charlotte, I need help!”
“What? I don’t … shit,” I curse sleepily, rolling off my bed, barely managing to keep my phone in my hand as my butt hits the floor. “Who is this?”
“It’s Daphne. I took your phone number. You told me to call.”
I’m instantly awake. Possibly beyond awake. “What happened, Daph?”
“I think they’re dead. There’s blood everywhere.”
Damn it! “Don’t move, Daph. Don’t do anything. I’ll be right there.” I say, then change my mind as I shove my bare feet into shoes, not bothering with socks. “Hide. In the shed in your back yard. No one will find you there.” Surely, if she was safe there last time, she’ll be safe there tonight. I’ll get to her before hypothermia sets in.
More importantly, I’ll get there before the cops.
“I’m coming.”
I sprint down the hallway as quietly as I can and grab my keys from the hook on the kitchen wall. In the foyer I pause and look toward Sierra’s room at the end of the hallway. Part of me aches to tell her. But I know what she’d say; I can practically hear her voice scolding in my head. Leave it alone, Charlotte. Call the cops. This is their job, not yours.
But then I remember last time—the night that never happened. Not for anyone but me. The worst part wasn’t the blood or the cops or the fear that froze me worse than the cold.
It was the sound Daphne made as the cops tried to subdue her.
Those screams echo in my brain so loudly they chase my aunt’s words away. I can’t let that happen again. She’s an innocent girl. I’ll just go get her and take her with me until everyone has calmed down. Then we’ll figure something out.
We will go to the cops. Just not right this second. She’s a child—surely they’ll understand. Eventually.
As I drive I’m careful on the snowy roads, but inside I want to punch something. Like the accelerator.