Death and the Girl Next Door (7 page)

“No, it’s nothing.” I fished a fry from the carnage and ate it while trying to ignore the doubt on his face.

“I think the more pressing question,” Brooklyn said, concern lining her eyes, “is what the bloody heck was Jared talking about? What won’t hurt?”

My gut tightened at the mention of Jared’s statement, knotting painfully. Both of them looked at me as if I’d know the reason for such a bizarre promise. Well, I didn’t. But I did know it was bothering me a lot more than it was bothering them.

WAKING UP DEAD

For the first time in three days, Cameron Lusk seemed nowhere to be found. I walked out of the Java Loft and glanced around warily, expecting to find my stalker skulking in the shadows.

“Want me to walk you home?”

I turned as Glitch poked his head out of the coffee shop, whipped almond toffee cappuccino with nonfat milk in hand.

He raised his brows in question. “My pie’ll be out soon. What’s your hurry?”

With a smile, I said, “No, you and Brooke enjoy. And don’t fight! I have some research to do.” We hadn’t seen either Jared or Cameron since lunch, and Glitch’s confession about Cameron had me super curious.

His gaze traveled across the street to the town square. “What are they doing?”

A camera crew had set up shop in front of the old Traveler’s Inn, a historic and—according to town gossip—haunted hotel. It was the biggest tourist attraction Riley’s Switch had to offer,
big
being a relative term.

“I think it’s the Tourist Channel,” I said, shielding my eyes from the sun. “They’re doing a special on haunted hotels in America, and ours made the top ten.”

“Cool … and yet, creepy.”

“This coming from a guy afraid of turtles.”

Taking offense, Glitch straightened and pointed a finger at me in warning. “Turtles are not the innocent, harmless creatures everyone thinks they are. Mark my words. They’re secretly planning to take over the world. And then where will we be?”

I couldn’t help but giggle at the seriousness of his admonishment before shrugging my shoulders.

“Taken over! That’s where.” He glanced at his table. “Oh, my pie’s ready. Sure you don’t want some?”

“Positive.”

“Okeydokey, then. We’ll be over later.”

Just like every year, I was apparently still under a suicide watch and would be for the next week. I had to admit, with those two around, I didn’t have time to get too terribly depressed about my parents. Still, the minute they left my company, the sadness leached back inside me, as if it had been waiting all along, lurking in the shadows until it got the chance to slither inside. My dependence on their presence was getting ridiculous. It was high time I grew up and learned to cope with my parents’ disappearance on my own.

With a wave to shoo him inside, I turned and headed toward the library, determined to overcome the blahs all by my little lonesome. The public library stood in the middle of the town square in what was once the courthouse. Though I often went there to read and relax and just catch my breath, I usually ended up chatting with the director of the library, and my grandmother’s best friend, Betty Jo, instead. But what better place to do research? Librarians had an uncanny knack for amassing not only the talk around town, but the talk’s history to boot.

As I approached one of the three stoplights Riley’s Switch had to offer, an overenthusiastic skateboarder decided to stop right behind me. He failed. He tumbled off his skateboard and crashed into me, knocking me off the curb.

After almost twisting an ankle, I turned and stared him down, impatiently waiting for an apology. He was young and Asian with a slight build, which was probably a good thing. I could have been crushed.

“Sorry,” he said as his friends snickered behind his back, joking and shoving one another.

“No problem.” I stepped up and turned back to the light. Freshmen.

An October chill had settled in the air, making me wish for a jacket. My thin apricot shirt did nothing to block the crisp wind, and my capris left my ankles exposed and goose bumpy. I totally should have listened to my grandmother this morning. She always seemed to know what I should and should not wear in an eerie, sixth-sense kind of way.

As I waited for the light to change, the skateboarder, who’d been practicing tricks on a park bench, lunged into me again. I couldn’t believe it. I turned and narrowed my eyes on him, forcing him to mumble another insincere apology between laughs. This was getting ridiculous. Still, as a sophomore, I needed to exude a certain level of maturity. Maybe it would rub off, though not likely.

When I turned back to the light, I heard his friends teasing him, and a pang of empathy stabbed me. I shouldn’t have given him such a cold glare. He was just being a boy.

Probably more to save face than to retaliate against any actual offense, he pushed one of his annoying comrades. The friend pushed back, hard, ramming him into me for the third time.

But this time the force was too great to keep my balance. I stumbled into the street, dropping my backpack and skidding across the graveled road on my palms and knees. Before I could even conjure an emotional reaction, I heard my name behind me, like a whisper on the wind.

I struggled to my feet and turned to see Jared, tall and solid, on the curb where I had just been standing. My breath caught at the sight of him. The breeze tousled his dark hair. His full mouth curved into the suggestion of a smile, just enough for a dimple to appear at its corner. He stepped off the curb and walked to me, an animalistic grace controlling his every move.

Looking down into my eyes, he asked, “Do you trust me?”

I smiled warily. “Shouldn’t I?”

“Close your eyes,” he commanded gently.

I wanted to ask why, but found it impossible to question him. Unable to disobey, I let my eyelids close and lifted my face toward the sun. Its warmth soothed me, but Jared’s presence comforted me as well, lulled me into a state of abandon.

“It won’t hurt, Lorelei. I’ll make sure of it.”

I frowned in question. “What won’t hurt?”

Before he could answer, I felt the impact.

Something very large and very heavy slammed into my body. It ripped me from gravity’s selfish hold, and I flew through the air an unfathomable distance. My body quaked violently when it landed, broke as it slid into a lamppost.

I waited a short time before asking, “Can I open my eyes now?”

I heard Jared kneel beside me. “Yes.”

I peeked and then laughed at the glittering, magical air around me. “This is strange.”

He smiled at me again, a smile that seemed to know everything unknowable. “Yes, it is.” He placed a careful hand on my chest. “Close your eyes again.”

“Uh-uh. Not this time.”

“Please.”

I tried to shake my head, but my neck seemed to be broken. Curiosity drew my brows together. “Am I dying?”

“Yes,” he said, regret softening his voice.

“How odd. I didn’t think it would feel like this. And it’s the anniversary of my parents’ disappearance.”

“I know.” He seemed sad and I wondered why.

As I watched, he lowered his head and squeezed his eyes shut in concentration. Then, after a brief hesitation, he removed his hand from my chest and shook it. He sighed in frustration and watched me a long moment before looking up toward the heavens.

“I’m sorry,” he said, speaking as though sure someone was listening. He glanced back at me. “I’m sorry, Lorelei.” He placed his hand on my chest again. “Please, forgive me.”

I wanted to say I would forgive him anything. I could feel power emanating from him. I could feel the conflict warring inside him, ripping at his resolve. But before I could respond, he closed his eyes again. And in an instant, life began to flow back into me in great, pulsing waves. I gulped huge rations of air as the stifling weakness I felt evaporated. Strength flooded every atom in my body.

I rested a hand on his, and he opened his eyes again. They were ablaze, bright, like fire at midnight. It startled me at first. As he looked on, an electric current passed between us. It rushed over my skin, causing my insides to tingle in almost painful delight. Slowly the fire in his eyes faded to smoldering embers before the deep darkness emerged again.

“Is she gonna be okay?”

The skaters had gathered around, all color drained from their faces.

Jared winked at me before turning to them. He placed a finger over his mouth. “Shhhh,” he whispered.

Their eyes opened and shut as though trying to clear their heads. They stood up straight, then went back to jumping anything unfortunate enough to be in their paths, laughing and shouldering one another as they rolled down the street. The fact that I lay on the pavement after being hit by a truck seemed to have been forgotten.

I beamed at him. “How did you do that?”

A dimple appeared at the side of his mouth. “Magic.”

His eyes sparkled like the air around us, and I had to force myself to focus.

A male voice intruded into my thoughts. “I know a little magic myself.”

I looked up and gasped. Cameron was standing on my other side, aiming a rifle point-blank at Jared’s chest.

Jared raised his hands instantly as if to block the gunfire. “Be still,” he said in a harsh whisper. And the air thickened, the world slowed to a surreal halt, a frozen labyrinth of objects and people—either out of place or out of time, I couldn’t decide.

Despite this, Cameron discharged the rifle. Bullet after bullet collided with Jared’s chest.

I jumped wide-eyed with every shot fired, feeling as though each deafening sound struck me physically. But no bullets hit me. They hit Jared, each round punching through his body.

The shock of witnessing such violence immobilized me. But only for a minute. Instinct took hold. Without thought, I tried to get to my feet, to block the lead from entering Jared’s body. Before I could lift myself off the ground, however, Jared placed his knee on my chest and held me down.

“What are you doing?” I screamed, clawing at his leg, trying to squirm out from under him, to no avail. I turned my head from Jared to Cameron. “Stop!” I tried to be heard above the roar of the gun. “Cameron, please stop!”

When the rifle was spent, an eerie silence echoed off the buildings around us. The acrid smell of gunpowder stung my nostrils and left a smoky trail in the air.

Cameron grinned at Jared. “Be still?” he asked with a chuckle. “That’s the best you got?” He pulled back the bolt and began reloading the rifle. “News flash, Reaper, that crap doesn’t work on me.”

Jared stood and I took the opportunity to scramble out of the way. Then I realized he’d just done the impossible: He stood.

“I wouldn’t say that’s the
best
I’ve got,” he said with a shrug, “but it impresses the girls.”

“Yeah, so do bottle rockets.”

“There’s no blood.” I stared up at Jared in disbelief, unable to blink, to comprehend what had just happened. “There’s no blood. He just shot you.”

I studied the frozen world around us: A mother peered into a store window as her daughter giggled and licked a dripping ice-cream cone, a sizable dollop inches from the ground. A skateboarder hung suspended in the air, his skateboard clinging to his feet as he jumped a park bench. His friends cheered, their laughter captured in time like a movie on pause. The camera crew across the street was staring as if in shock at a delivery truck as it passed through the intersection.

Still lying on the ground, I looked back at Jared, at the holes the bullets had torn into his chest. Yet he was standing, breathing. None of it made any sense.

Especially the smile on his face.

He eyed Cameron from underneath his lashes, flashed him a menacing grin. Then he changed, almost glowed, became so transparent, the bullets fell through him to land on the ground in a succession of light taps.

“That wasn’t very nice,” he said, becoming solid again. His white T-shirt still bore the holes of its recent abuse, each blackened by the blast of gunpowder. But not even a blush of red stained it.

Cameron sighed as he dropped another shell into the chamber. “I know,” he said in almost bored contemplation. “My manners suck. I like to chalk it up to a dissatisfying childhood.”

“I’d chalk it up to that narcissistic personality disorder laced with a smidgen of schizophrenia. Your mother would be proud.”

Cameron’s head snapped up in disbelief. Anger watered his blue eyes and hardened his strong features as he chambered a shell and again pointed the gun at Jared.

I leapt to my feet. “No, Cameron!”

Without unlocking his gaze, he shoved me roughly back to the earth, too intent on baiting Jared to bother with someone so apparently inconsequential.

“You’ll tell Mom hi for me, won’t you?” Cameron asked as he eased the trigger back. He received only a click for his effort.

“Magic,” Jared said with a wink.

Undeterred, Cameron took the rifle in both hands and swung. But Jared caught it millimeters from his face and slammed it back into Cameron’s jaw. He stumbled back, tested his jaw, then charged.

The fight that ensued seemed more mystical than real, as though two gods had chosen Earth as their battlefield. Each possessed strength beyond explanation.

I sat horrified. I winced with every throw, tensed with every collision of fist and body. While the earth stood still, a heated battle raged on the quiet streets of Riley’s Switch. And with every swing, my breath caught, certain it would cause the death of one of them.

But the battle raged on. A fine sheen of sweat covered Cameron’s determined face. Smeared blood trickled from his mouth and temple. He fought as if possessed, as if killing Jared were his one and only goal in life and he was more than willing to die in the process of achieving it.

While Jared seemed physically impenetrable, emotionally he was not so tempered. I felt a war within him. I felt it as easily as I could feel heat carried on a wind. Anger and indignation warred with something higher, something more noble, perhaps empathy or compassion.

The skirmish tumbled across the street, where mother and daughter stood frozen. The only sounds I could hear in the stillness were the raspy breaths of the gladiators and the harsh blows of combat. Even the scents of autumn had ceased to exist in the thick air.