Death and the Girl Next Door (23 page)

I would look distressed and worried and on the verge of tears for missing the curfew that I would never dream of missing, ever in a million years. Grandpa would slide Grandma that
let’s forgive her
look,
just this once.
Grandma would give in with a smile that held the tiniest of warnings. And life would return to normal.

Well, maybe not normal. Probably never normal again.

Anyway, all that should buy us just enough time to do some paranormal investigating.

I shook out of my thoughts, trying to remember what Brooklyn had commented about. Oh, right. The pep rally.

“Yeah, it was very interesting. Did you see how the cheerleaders were staring at Jared? It was bizarre.”

Brooklyn’s brows knitted together. “Lor, the entire student body was staring at Jared. He was kind of the main attraction.”

“I know. But did you see Ashlee and Sydnee? They were totally freaked out.”

After a quick shot at Jared from over her shoulder, Brooklyn said teasingly, “You were pretty freaked out when you first met him too.”

I leaned in to her. “Yeah, but I was hot and bothered by him. They’re just, like, bothered.”

Brooke laughed.

Of course, Jared seemed bothered too. When we met up with him after the pep rally, Cameron smirked and said, “You’re just going to fit right in, aren’t you? Be a part of the in-crowd.”

Jared ignored him, but he kept his head down as we walked to the parking lot. He seemed embarrassed, uncomfortable. The tension between him and Cameron hung thick and palpable in the air, and I wondered if they could ever be in the same room together without exhibiting homicidal tendencies.

I guess after his lunchroom confession, I wanted soft, knowing glances from Jared and winks full of affection. I also wanted promises of undying love and an endless supply of backrubs, but that could wait. Instead, all his energy was focused on postal boy. Cameron was totally stealing my bliss.

When we got to Cameron’s pickup, he shoved the key into the lock cylinder. “So who prayed?” he asked without looking at anyone in particular.

I looked at him, confused, but Jared answered before I had a chance to ask who Cameron was talking to.

“Everyone prays eventually,” he said as though they’d been talking the whole way.

Did I miss something?

“I just bet they do.” Cameron scowled at him from over his shoulder. “You must enjoy that. Prayers of desperation. The suffering of others.”

“Not especially.”

Without warning, Cameron took hold of the jacket Glitch had loaned Jared and shoved him against the pickup.

Jared spread his palms apart and let him. Completely unafraid.

“You’re a thief,” Cameron said in a whispery hiss, “the worst of your kind. You come down to Earth and take what you want without considering the consequences, the chaos you leave in your wake. You hide behind shadows and legend and pretend to be noble.”

While Jared’s expression remained impassive, mine was not. I decided to put an end to this once and for all. So, like the idiot I tended to be in crisis situations, I tried to jump between them for, like, the millionth time, but Cameron turned on me, furious. His vehemence startled me and I stood there, unmoving, like a deer caught in the glow of headlights.

Jared’s hand shot out and wrapped around my upper arm. He pulled me beside him protectively, his long fingers locking around my biceps, his expression no longer impassive. A hard warning glinted in his eyes. But Cameron grabbed me as well and tried to shove me out of the way.

It was the wrong thing to do.

The emotions coursing through Cameron’s veins seeped into me, mixed with mine, churned and swirled. They encircled me like a vise, tightening around my chest. I gasped for air as breathing became almost impossible. For Jared as well. As though I were a conduit, I siphoned the turmoil out of Cameron and into Jared.

“Stop,” Jared said as he pushed at Cameron, trying to catch his breath. I clutched on to Jared’s jacket. “Lorelei, stop.” This had never happened before. For some reason, I could feel Cameron’s pain and I was passing it on to Jared. All the emotion. All the anguish. All the rage.

“So who prayed, hot shot?” Cameron continued, oblivious of what was happening, his anger leaching into me, his pain shooting through me and into Jared. “Some little brat from Timbuktu who wanted you to make sure her uncle arrived in time for her birthday party? God forbid that Barbie Vette show up late.”

Jared grabbed Cameron’s wrist with his free hand as Cameron pushed into him. The anguish was overwhelming. Cameron’s agony had latched on to me with razor-sharp claws, slicing, suffocating.

“Cameron, stop,” Jared said between gasps.

“Who?”

“Cameron, we can’t breathe.” His concern settled heavily on me. His fingers were still padlocked around my arm, and I could feel things I never thought possible. The world began to spin around me. I could feel consciousness slipping out from under my feet.

“Lorelei!” I heard Brooklyn shout as though from a great distance.

“Who prayed and changed history? Who made it possible for you to kill her?”

The darkness Cameron had kept buried for years consumed him. I could see it in his eyes, could feel its strangling hold envelop me, entwine its tentacles up my arm and around my throat.

And apparently it was doing the same to Jared. He had no other choice. I could feel it the second he made the decision, the moment he resolved to do what he was about to do. He had to show Cameron what happened.

With tremendous effort, he forced himself to concentrate despite the smothering fog. He placed a hand on Cameron’s chest, nailed him with an intent look, focused all his energy. And just before he let the past devour us all, he whispered the truth.

“She did.”

The past rushed up like a roiling sea beneath us, swallowing us whole. The world tumbled, spun out of control, then stopped. We were suddenly in a different place, a different time. Birds chirped and the sun peered through pine needles on the trees surrounding us, casting soft rays through the atmosphere to rest on the forest floor.

“Look, Cameron,” a woman said.

Cameron looked to the side of the bicycle as his mother pointed to a bird running into the forest. We were in the past—I was in the past—and I was seeing the world through Cameron’s eyes.

“That’s a roadrunner.”

He twisted back in his plastic yellow seat and watched as she pedaled up the mountainside, and she winked at him before turning back to the trail. I knew instantly who she was. I saw her as Cameron did. Beautiful. Young. Expression soft with unconditional love. Her blond hair gave in to the breeze, fluttering like butterflies around her backpack. He loved her hair. It smelled like apples.

She pulled over to look down the side of the canyon, being very careful not to get too close. The rich greens of the mountainside filled his vision on the right. The deep reds of the iron-rich canyon met him on his left.

“Isn’t it lovely?” She turned and glanced over her shoulder at him. Her smile glistened in the sunlight, as bright as her aura and just as warming.

Then, for no explicable reason, she gasped and jumped back, falling with the bike to the ledge that overlooked the canyon wall. Harnessed in the safety seat, Cameron fell along with the bike into a bush. Its needlelike thorns punished him for invading its territory, but he didn’t care. What had happened? Why did his mother jump like that?

With panic setting in, he tried to unfasten the safety belt, but his chubby fingers couldn’t budge it. He craned his neck to look at her and managed to glimpse the top of her head. Her backpack had caught on the handlebars, dangling her over the edge. The back wheel had wedged on a fallen log, but her weight was rocking it loose.

He called out, tried to reach her.

“Cameron.” Her voice quivered. She was scared and it broke my heart. “Cameron, honey, don’t move. Whatever you do, don’t move.”

Refusing to listen to her, he pulled at his restraints.

“I’ve been bitten by a rattlesnake. I must have stepped on it.”

No. She was wrong. She had to be. Rattlesnakes made noise. He hadn’t heard anything.

The bike slipped, and she reached for a branch reflexively. But when the bike slipped a notch more, she relaxed her arms and forced herself to go still.

“Please,” she whispered as she looked toward the heavens. “Please, I beg you.”

He felt it coming before he saw it, the entity, the dark one. His lungs refused to expand. This one came for one reason and one reason only: It took people. He had seen it twice, and each time it left death in its wake. And sadness. A devastating sadness.

When it appeared, it knelt beside the bike and looked down at his mother. It was part fog and part flesh. She raised her eyes to it. This startled him. Could she see it? She had never seen them before.

“Are you sure?” it asked her.

No!

“Yes,” she said. “I’ve never been more certain about anything in my life.”

Without hesitation, it leaned over and touched the strap on the handlebars, releasing it.

His mother looked back at him, her eyes sad and desperate and full of love. In a blinding moment of panic, he pulled furiously at his restraints. He fought with every ounce of strength his three-year-old body had until she slipped quietly out of sight, falling into the canyon below.

The silence in the wake of his mother’s death was deafening. He lay in the bushes for hours before a rescue team found him, letting the thorns punish him for not being strong enough, hating the thief for what it was.

He would never forget what it looked like. It was already gone, naturally, disappearing like the coward it was. But he would never forget it. And he would find a way to destroy it, to destroy them all, yes, but especially the dark one.

“Stop,” Jared said, gasping for air.

Cameron blinked back to the present. He shoved Jared away from him, tears streaming down his face.

Jared released me, stumbled, and fell to his knees. I stood in shock, afraid to move, afraid to breathe. It felt so real, like I was there, like I loved her and knew her and died when she died.

“Lorelei.” I realized Brooklyn was in my face, screaming at me. I could barely hear her. “Lorelei, what’s going on? What happened?”

My attention floated to Jared as he kneeled on a patch of grass, drawing in huge gulps of air. Then I felt the bile at the back of my throat and fought it with a hard swallow. With each heartbeat, Cameron’s pain reverberated through my body.

A crowd had gathered. I saw faces around us, yelling like bloodthirsty spectators, encouraging Cameron and Jared to fight.

“Lorelei,” Brooklyn said, quieter.

I reached up and squeezed her shoulder reassuringly; then she helped me to Jared, where I knelt beside him.

“You could have saved her,” Cameron said, panting in turmoil and anger at what Jared had shown him. He slid down the side of his truck to sit on the pavement. “You just took her. If it had been anyone but you.”

Cameron’s sadness deepened to a mournful despair, but his hold on Jared seemed to ease. He could breathe almost normally again.

Jared turned to sit on the grass and surveyed Cameron from underneath his long lashes. “She called me by name,” he said.

After a moment, Cameron’s words sank in. I thought back to his memory. I looked through his eyes and glanced up at the entity enshrouded in darkness as it released the strap from the bike, as it sent Cameron’s mother to her death. Then it looked right at me, eyes boring in to mine, but only for a microsecond before it vanished.

It was Jared.

I covered my mouth with both hands and sank to the ground, my heart breaking.

“So, that’s your job?” Cameron said, wiping at the tears streaming down his face. “You give whatever people pray for?”

“No,” Jared said between coughs. “There are rules.”

Cameron laughed humorlessly. “Aren’t there always.”

“She did it for you.”

“Ah, yes. Well, that makes it all better.”

“You’re still alive.”

“And you’re still a bitch.”

The crowd wooed, waited to see what Jared would do.

I peeled my hands from my mouth and forced myself to focus on the more immediate risk, namely another Battlefield Earth. “Jared, please don’t fight again,” I said.

He turned to me, his dark eyes bright with emotion. I reached over and wiped a wetness from his cheek. His eyes had watered. He bent his head and buried it in a sleeve.

“I’m okay,” he said after he wiped his face. “Is this over?”

Cameron sniffed, wiped his face again, his eyes slitted at Jared. “It will be when you’re dead.”

“But, Cameron,” he said with a sigh, “I just got here.”

“And I’m going to send you back.”

“That’s it.” He stood and shrugged out of the jacket. Cameron followed suit. “Your mother sacrificed her life for you, and this is how you repay her? You sulk and pout and throw tantrums like a two-year-old?”

“You’re pushing it, Reaper.”

I scrambled to my feet as they faced off in the parking lot.

“Do you know what she’d say if she were here right now?” Jared asked.

Cameron stepped closer. “You’re a bitch?”

“Exactly.” He closed the distance, meeting him head-on, challenging him with the heavy set of his shoulders. “Only she’d be looking at you.”

“What’d I miss?” Glitch ran up to the melee with an excited grin on his face until he saw who the crowd was watching. He looked over at me. “Again?”

“Again?” A strong masculine voice echoed around us as the crowd parted and scattered immediately. “So there
was
a fight before,” Principal Davis said as he approached us.

Brooklyn spoke up immediately. “They weren’t fighting, Mr. Davis.”

“They were never fighting,” I said, jumping to their defense. “It’s just an argument.”

Mr. Davis said nothing, so I turned to him. He was staring wide-eyed at Jared’s arms. At the tattoos. He paled and took a minuscule step backwards.

The instant Jared realized what Mr. Davis was looking at, he turned and searched the ground for the jacket. But it was much too late for that. Mr. Davis saw the one thing that would spark his memory of Jared from before. The same age. The same face.