The forest is heavily scented. The pines release their oils into the night air creating a dramatic, sweet, woodsy scent that awakens your memory, reminds you of all the things you cherish.
Logan’s T-shirt and my cheer shorts cling to me like a second skin. I turn to face him and my hair whips around in sopping thick tendrils.
I love being alone with Logan, lost in the shadows, nobody around to distract us from one another. In the distance we hear errant screams, voices sounding off like a riot in some other dimension.
“I miss this,” he whispers warm in my ear.
I push him against the trunk of a tree and examine him in this blue filtered light. Logan looks amazing, like he belongs to some noble race.
He gives the slight huff of a laugh and holds our conjoined hands up. He heard, and this makes me suppress a nervous smile.
He pulls me in and offers a sweet kiss. Logan gives powerful kisses. There is nothing that Marshall’s body can pulse through me with his feel good vibrations that could ever compare to a moment like this. It more than feels good. With Logan I can feel the love behind it.
“Skyla,” he whispers pulling me close.
“Yeah?” I like holding Logan like this.
“You read the diary?” He pulls back a bit. I can see the question circulating in his eyes.
“Just a little. I found out Lexy knows a way to bind Fems.”
“What?” He looks disbelieving. “Really? I don’t think she’s one of us.”
“She must be. She told Chloe she’d tell her how to do it.”
“Did she?”
“I haven’t gotten that far, but if Chloe was taken by Fems probably not.”
The whites of his eyes dart around in the dark.
“You think there’s a way to bind Fems? She said she could do it without lifting a finger,” I say.
“I don’t know, but if there is, we need to figure it out fast. That could save us—you.”
“She said you were with Lexy.” I shrug. It’s stupid to hurt over something that’s ancient history.
“With Lexy,” he says it like a fact. “We hung out.” He shakes his head. “But she was never anything more than a friend. I’ll try and talk to Lex, see what she can tell me about binding Fems.”
I don’t like the way he sinks effortlessly into calling her Lex.
“OK. I’ll try and see if the diary has anything else to say about it.”
The loud shrill cry of a female voice reverberates all around us. Then the very distinct sound of two guys yelling.
“That’s Gage.” Logan leans in to listen as the shouting intensifies. “I better go see what he’s gotten himself into.”
We head out of the forest at a decent clip.
“I’ll go get my clothes,” I say, parting ways with him at the south end of the lake.
It’s so still here, scary. Even though I can hear the volatile voices from a thousand manic teenagers, it’s freaky being on the dead end of the lake—just me and the moon, an owl sounding off in the distance. I make my way over to the giant rock where Brielle and me left our belongings. It looks like the girls all took off toward the cliffs. Not one soul lingering down at this end of the water, unless of course Brielle drowned them all.
I pluck through the pile of cheer uniforms and pull my skirt over my kick-pants.
“Don’t I know you?” A male voice disrupts the silence from behind.
I turn around and take in a sharp gasp.
Shit!
It’s a thing! It’s covered in mud, or crap, or maybe that’s just the texture of its freaking skin?
“I don’t think so.” The words stutter out of me as I try and make my way around him. I lunge toward the edge of the waterline in an effort to make a break for it, but he snatches me up by the wrist and pulls me in hard.
He bears his teeth and hisses with an awkward smile.
Fuck! It’s a Fem.
“Lo—” It clasps its hand tight over my mouth and drags me backward into the overgrown brush. I give a swift hard knock to its stomach with my elbow, four or five times, before it clasps both my hands behind my back. Dark slime rubs off all over Logan’s white T-shirt and down my legs, thick as grease.
It swipes my feet from underneath me and lands itself on top of my chest, hard.
Can’t breathe! I try pushing it off as it crushes me under the weight of its body. I open my mouth to gasp for air as it impales me with its tongue.
A warbled scream gets caught in my throat. Instinctually I bite down hard causing it to writhe and twist away. I try to slither out of its slimy grasp as it struggles to restrain me.
Its eyes glow an eerie shade of yellow as they squint out in pain. I try to harness my anger against Carly, for fuel to fight him like I did when I killed that last Fem, but now that I know she’s somebody’s mother, it doesn’t yield the same effect on me.
My father’s face brims to the surface.
I remember the way they accused him of killing those vagrants, the way the Counts had him burn, and I gouge into the Fem’s soft neck with my hands, dig in with my nails, and rip at its flesh, shredding it with my fingers.
It gurgles and groans beneath me. I can feel my thumbs connecting in the sinews of his body, touch his spinal cord, feel its veins wrap around my fingers like spaghetti. Logan is right, anger magnifies my strength, turns me into a rabid beast, hungry for the blood of this creature.
Its hands wrap around mine in an effort to pluck me off, but its efforts wane quickly. I’ve honed in my wrath. I want this to be a warning to others like him. I hope they think twice before trying to violate me. Lexy may know how to bind a Fem, but I know how to kill them.
It falls limp, and I crawl away until I can get back on my feet.
I dart over toward the voices, now jovial and laughing as though the fight that was breaking out had never happened, as though there weren’t a dead Fem lying fifty feet away. I scan the crowd for Logan and Gage as everybody starts to move down toward the south end of the lake to gather their things.
Michelle backs into me and turns around. She studies my arms as I hold them out like a surgeon prepped for duty.
“What the hell happened to you?” Her face flickers in disgust. The rose pendant Marshall gave her hangs around her neck from a thin silver chain, catching the sparkle of moonlight like a fractured shard of glass.
If I were nicer, I’d yank it off her. Judging from the severe dark circles under her eyes, she’s still having Fem terrors in her sleep unlike me who has them right here in the open.
“Where’s your boyfriend?” I ask searching the vicinity. It wouldn’t entirely surprise me to see Marshall lingering in the crowd somewhere—nude.
A series of piercing screams erupt from behind.
“Wouldn’t you like to know,” the words jackknife through her. She slams hard into my shoulder as she makes her way back into the crowd.
“Yes, I would,” I whisper as my teeth give way to a hard chatter. Marshall could help me get rid of a dead Fem if I needed him to.
The crowd drains in the direction of the deceased creature. Another round of cries and gasps erupts.
Oh crap. Judging by the look of horror on people’s faces he didn’t disappear.
Logan and Gage emerge from the mass of onlookers gawking at the Fem.
“Did you see it?” I jog over, fogging up the air with my heavy panting.
“Shit,” Gage moans as he inspects my bloodied hands. The moonlight bleeds out all color, leaving a dark, glossy, residue on my skin.
Logan gives a depleted smile.
Someone in the distance shouts that the paramedics are on their way.
“They’re going to take the Fem!” My fingers come just shy of covering my lips.
Logan scoops me into his arms and runs us over to the peak just above the deepest portion of the falls.
“What’s going on?” I ask. There’s something written on his face, a tension I’m not familiar with.
He gives a b
leak smile.
“It wasn’t a Fem,” he says out of breath. “You killed him, Skyla, and now we’re going to wash the blood off.”
He plunges us both into the icy biting waters.
11
Police
The smoky air illuminates in spasms with alternating shades of soft blue and red. With an escort of flashing black and whites—an entire army of police cars—each one of us is instructed to follow them down to the Paragon precinct for questioning. Dozens of vehicles commence in a line that clogs up the main artery of the island—they even shut down the other side of the highway to accommodate us.
“There are two ways we can do this,” Logan says, over the phone.
I’m riding with Gage, but I have Logan on speaker.
“The truth and a lie?” Gage says running his hand over the steering wheel as we wade through traffic.
“Exactly,” Logan states.
“I choose the lie.” I raise my hand slightly. “It’s not like anybody saw me, plus I’m dripping wet, there’s not an ounce of blood on me. And it’s not like anybody’s going to understand what the hell I’m talking about when I say I thought I was being attacked by a Fem.”
“If I saw him attacking you, I would have killed him myself,” Logan adds.
“Right,” I whisper. I sort of wish he did. “Maybe we should hang up now. With my luck this will accidently get keyed in over the radio,” I say, eyeing the barrage of cop cars escorting us like a funeral procession.
“See you there,” Logan’s line goes dead.
I slip down in the seat and watch the fog swim by like an apparition.
“It’s gonna be OK.” Gage cups his hand over mine.
“Is it?” I spike up hopeful. Gage has the gift of knowing. He knows all kinds of strange things about the future.
“No, I mean, I’m pretty sure it’s going to be OK.”
“Oh.”
I slump back into my seat.
I don’t think it’s going to be OK. I don’t think you can just kill somebody and have it be OK.
***
At the station, mass confusion erupts over who exactly the dead body was. Apparently a bunch of guys from East decided to crash the party and douse themselves in mud, because apparently, they’re idiots.
I hear names whispered all the way down the long hall as Logan, Gage, and I try and find a place to sit.
“Logan Oliver?” I hear Michelle say as we come up behind her. She turns around and lunges at him with a hug, Lexy follows suit.
“We heard it was you!” Lexy cries in a panic. Her arm lingers up over his shoulder as she cups the side of his face.
“Wasn’t me.” He turns a bright shade of red from the attention.
Lexy’s hair has turned into a giant ball of frizz, her mascara is dripping down the sides of her cheeks and she looks darn right scary. I don’t like the way she’s letting her arm gather dust on Logan’s shoulder, so I squeeze in between the two of them pretending to get out of the way of the crowd.
I’ve never thought of Lexy as anything special before. Sure she’s pretty in her own way, but I’ve always classified her as more of a bitch than anything human or female.
“Anyway…” She looks over my shoulder at him as though I were invisible. “I’m glad you’re OK.”
I can see it now, that sad underlying spark in her eyes wishing he was still with her, and it makes me want to vomit on her shoes.
The clock ticks away in morbid slow motion. They have four staging areas set up. We wait impatiently until they finally seat Logan, Gage, and me in a room with the bitch squad where we wait another twenty minutes. Michelle keeps nodding off, hitting her head against the back wall from exhaustion. Strangely, I find this the highlight of my evening. I watch her eyes bolt open as she inhales a scream—all the while that black rose gleams under the harsh light from above.
A woman officer with her hair pulled back in a shiny dark knot asks banal questions about our connection to one another, the party, the location of where each of us were before the body was discovered.
Logan was plucking Gage off some guy from East, the bitch squad was swimming under the third tower of the falls, and I was wandering out by the forest with my hands buried deep in someone’s neck. Of course that’s not what I say.
“I was over there, too,” I say in a whisper, “by the falls.”
“No you weren’t.” Michelle moans half asleep. “I saw you by yourself. You were all dirty wearing some guy’s shirt with weeds in your hair. Cheating on Gage much?”
Great. She’s perfectly lucid now.
“So why were you dirty, and whose shirt did you have on?” The officer makes a notation in her journal.
“Well, let’s see…” Emily bears her canines in my direction. Her dark hair has shrunk four inches and sits on her head like a slimy black helmet. It’s hard to imagine Emily with long flowing hair the way Chloe described. “You’ve got on a guy’s T-shit, and Logan is shirtless under his jacket, which is hot, but weird, and, oh yeah? Weren’t you with Logan before you hooked up with Gage?” She dips her finger in her mouth. Her emerald eyes light up from the pleasure of it all.
“That’s right.” I cut her a long hard look before turning my attention back to the officer. “I was…” My eyes close. I can’t look at Gage—Gage who is holding me right at this very moment, nudging me to go on. I’m not going to smash his heart into a million little pieces, in a room full of people, just to save myself from the possibility of prison. And with that reality looming, I say, “I was naked, and I ran into Logan, so he gave me his shirt. Then he took off, and I fell in a puddle. That’s when I saw you.” I nod over to Michelle. “And then everyone started running around, and the next thing I knew, some jerk pushed me in the water.”
Logan raises a brow over at me.
There. I give a big sigh of relief. It feels safe here in the lie, so good. I recline into Gage and relax.
“OK.” The female officer taps her pen down on the table. “Now I’m going to have each of you phone your parents, and then you’ll be released.”
Shit.
I knew this wasn’t going to end well.
***
The bitch squad disbands pretty quickly. Turns out none of their parents wanted to crawl out of bed at three in the morning, dead body or not. I was able to hear Michelle’s dad scream over the phone that he wanted her ass home pronto.
Of course, my mother insists on coming down herself to see what all this debauchery is about. And since Dr. Oliver gave Logan and Gage the OK to drive home, they hang out until we hear the wild ruckus, which is undoubtedly Mom and Tad, erupting in the hall.
My mother frantically pokes her head into the room.
“She’s in here,” she shouts. Before I know it, her arms are squeezing the life out of me. “God! You’re OK! I’m so glad you’re OK.” She runs her fingers through my hair. “You’re wet.”
“You two jokers,” Tad jabs his fingers at Logan and Gage. “Get out now.”
“See you later.” Logan pats my leg as he and Gage disappear into the hall.
“What the hell is going on? You kill somebody?” Tad asks, gripped in a purple-faced tirade. He’s wearing pink and white pinstriped pajamas, so it’s hard to take him seriously.
“No.” Technically yes.
“Let’s get out of here.” Mom tries to pluck me off the bench just as Tad steps between us, examining me with a curious stare.
“Lizbeth, go get her cleared with the front desk. I’ll stay here.” His eyes remain locked on mine. Soon as she steps over the threshold he yanks down my scarf.
“Holy shit!” He jumps back. It takes him a full three seconds to catch his breath. “I don’t know what the hell kind of satanic crap you’ve managed to get yourself into, or if this is some new dress in black, stick an earring through every orifice in your body to piss off your parents stage you’re going through, but while you’re under my roof you’re going to knock this shit off. You can save this exper
imental phase for college for all I care. Got it?”
I pull the scarf back up to cover the tiny neat row of X’s that skip across my neck.
He thinks it’s some kind of weird piercing I’ve inflicted upon myself.
“If I see you prancing around with your face made up like a corpse, wearing thigh-high boots and your hair frozen up like the Statue of Liberty, I’m shipping you off to nearest boarding school.” He adjusts the invisible tie on his nightshirt in a fit of frustration. “They can deal with you,” he mutters mostly to himself.
My mouth falls open. Mom swoops back in and helps usher me into the hall. Something tells me Tad would love for me to be at that boarding school anyway.
He speeds down ahead of us, pushes the door to the precinct open so hard the glass considers shattering from the violent jolt. A frigid blast of air pours over me, reminds me with its bitter fingers that my hair is still wet in the back.
“And that boy you’re seeing?” His face ignites with color. “That ends tonight!”
12
Sorrow
His name was Holden.
I carefully peel back another page of Chloe’s diary, trying to push away the idea that I was responsible for removing a soul from this planet—that a family was locked in grief over something I had done.
August 7th,
Gage is SO mine. We talked for HOURS at a party, then walked down the road and sat under the stars. I love the fact we can talk about all this angel crap. It’s such a relief to talk to someone nice, who’s not going to go all psycho or octopus on me any second. I swear Ellis is like some hormonal grenade. Just being near him is enough to pull the pin. Anyway, I think Gage and me are about to have a breakthrough. Something about tonight tells me that we’ve turned a corner in our relationship. I’m going to give him something. I don’t know what, but something special that he’ll always have just from me.