Of Starlight (2 page)

“Why didn’t you play?” I asked.

He shook his head. “I’m not a leader. I’m not a hero. I’m just trying to get by, just trying to make it through the day.” He looked down. “I don’t know why I wanted to tell you first. Maybe it’s because you actually seemed to care about her, unlike her stupid shallow friends.” He grabbed another palm of sand. “They dumped Ashley’s body in Rattlesnake Canyon . . . whoever killed her. Those worthless scum left her there to rot.” He flung the sand toward the ocean, and the tiny grains blew back and pelted my face.

I didn’t trust myself to speak, so I nodded.

He stood up. “Yeah, so that’s what I wanted to tell you. I found my sister. What was left of her, at least. Thought you’d want to know.” He glanced over for my reaction.

I froze under his gaze, no clue what to say.

How was I supposed to react? I had been the one to lead him there, and now I couldn’t fathom how to respond as if I hadn’t. What would someone say? My brain worked furiously to come up with a reply, and I settled on, “So . . . you found her body?”

It came out dry and wooden.

“Yep.” He hoisted another stone and flung it into the waves. “That’s why I cancelled our date last night.”

Our date . . .

He wanted me to ask more.

But all I could do was nod like an idiot. What else should I say? Was that a weird thing to tell someone? Was it weird for someone to find their sister’s corpse in the woods? He glanced sideways at me, watching my reaction with a raised eyebrow.

Duh, Leona, act surprised!

“Wait, what did you just say?” I let my mouth fall open, playing it off. “You found her body?”

“Mm-hmm. They dumped her in the woods.”

I hoped he registered the dumb look on my face as shock rather than me frantically trying to calculate the next question. “And you found it? How did you know where to look?”

He picked up another stone and studied it. “Her ghost.”

“What do you mean?”

“Her ghost led me there,” he said. “You know, I could have sworn my house was haunted—doors opening in the middle of the night, floorboards creaking when no one’s there, the sound of someone breathing but it’s not coming from anywhere, that kind of stuff—and now I realize it’s been her the whole time. Her spirit couldn’t rest until her body was found. God, she was so real, I could almost reach out and touch her. She even spoke to me.” He looked up. “You think I’m crazy.”

“No, I don’t,” I whispered.

He held my gaze. “You believe me?”

“I believe that . . . something led you to her body. That you were meant to find it.”

“It’s kind of a funny thing,” he said. “I actually feel really good about this. Like a huge weight’s been lifted off me. I got to say goodbye to her, and now I can finally let her go, finally move on. I think maybe that’s why she did it. She was telling me to move on.”

“I think you’re right,” I said. “She would want you to be happy.”

His brows tightened. “Either that, or she can’t rest until I avenge her murder, and I’m kind of leaning toward that one.”

My heart gave a jolt. “But avenging can be more general, though, right? Like just doing good on her behalf?”

He made what looked like a snarl. “Avenging her means I take a knife and stab it right into the eyes of whoever did that to her, then cut them open and turn them inside out and burn them while they scream.” He made a demonstration with his hands. 

I turned away, feeling faint. “Did you . . .” the words barely came out, “did you tell anyone else about her bones?”

“Yeah, I called the police. They’re looking into it now. As soon as they identify the remains—and I know it’s got to be her—they’re going to reopen the investigation.”

The lump was back in my throat. “Good,” I croaked. “I’m glad. Whoever did that to her should pay.”

Guilty, guilty, guilty.

He grabbed my hands and pulled me to him, and my body instantly went rigid. I felt his hands slide possessively down my lower back. “I bailed on you last night,” he said. “Now I’m making it up to you.”

Then he kissed me by the crashing surf until my toes curled in the sand.

Chapter 2

“What about these
guys?” said Megan, cruising behind a couple of tattooed teenagers with shaved heads and wifebeater tank tops. They halted and watched us pass with glowering eyes.

“Keep going, keep going,” I hissed, shrinking down in my seat. “They’re going to mug
us.
”

“This is a lot harder than I thought it would be,” said Megan, pulling onto another street. “How do you find criminals before they’ve done anything wrong? Aha! Here’s our guy.”

A figure in a long black hoodie swaggered up the street, hair done up in cornrows. 

I crossed my arms. “You’re profiling. That’s
wrong
.”

“He’s kind of cute,” said Megan, craning her neck as we passed. “Let’s go talk to him.”

I grabbed her arm. “Are you crazy?”

“Who’s profiling now, huh? Maybe he’s really nice.”

“Just keep driving. Anybody walking around this neighborhood at night is potentially dangerous.”

“Bet you wouldn’t say that about a guy wearing khakis and a button-down.”

“The guy wearing khakis and a button-down is the one defrauding his investors and cheating on his wife and stealing from the American people,” I said. “He’s the worst one of them all.”

“What about granny?” said Megan, pointing to an elderly woman pushing a walker across the street at a snail’s pace.

“She entices children with homemade cookies and sells them into slavery.”

“And little Billy?” She nodded to a boy playing with a yellow dump truck in his weed-infested front yard.

“Killed his parents and hacked them up into little pieces.”

“Impressive. It’s like dark matter has given you super insight,” said Megan, rolling slowly through another dark neighborhood and peering into kitchen windows. 

“Let’s just go and park. You’re freaking everybody out.”

“Hang on, I’m going to go around one more time.”

We drove on in silence. I pressed my forehead to the glass. Narrow, dilapidated houses guarded by chain link fences and rabid bulldogs slid by, along with groups of what looked like gang members. They jockeyed with each other, trying to look tough. Just kids being kids.

This was wrong to be here profiling them. Why weren’t we looking for criminals in a rich neighborhood? All this time we thought we were open-minded, and here we were perpetuating racial and social inequality like the worst of them. On top of everything else we’d done, it didn’t feel good.

“You’re going to have to tell him,” said Megan.

“Who?”

“You know who.”

My mind went back to Emory kissing me on the beach, making me dizzy all over again before the guilt kicked in. I groaned and dragged my hands down my face. He did whatever he wanted to me and my body fell into line like a whipped puppy. A guilty, whipped puppy that would do anything to please its master. I was helpless.

“I get it,” said Megan. “You killed his sister, so now you think it’s okay to fuck him too. Why not, right? Might as well score while you can.”

I stared at her. “Why on Earth would I think that, Megan? I don’t think that way.
You
think that way.”  

“I’m not the one fucking him,” she said.

“I’m not
fucking
him,” I spat.

“Then what are you doing, Leona? Why are you hanging out with him? You’re violating your own rule.”

“I know what I’m doing.”

Megan chewed her lip. “You’re not going to tell him, are you?”

A pause. “No.”

“Because that would be something we’d have to talk about. Telling him. We’d have to decide on it together. And you do realize he would hate you for the rest of his life, right? He would never forgive you.”

I nodded, my throat dry all of sudden. “Yeah . . .”

“But have you thought about it?” she said.

“Thought about what?”

She kept her voice casual, but her knuckles whitened on the steering wheel. “You know . . . telling someone.”

I looked sharply at her. “Megan, I’m not going to tell anyone.”

“I’ve thought about it,” she said quickly, and her throat jogged as she swallowed.

I said nothing.

She added, “I mean, we could if you want to . . .” Her voice trailed off into silence. “Never mind. It was stupid.”

I shifted in my seat. Here I was lying to her—not only had I thought about telling someone, I’d shown someone Ashley’s body without telling her—while Megan was just trying to work through her own guilt. The thought made me feel even lousier. To distract myself, I pulled out the contact lens case containing dark matter and unscrewed one of the caps. One touch, and the dark matter jumped to the tip of my finger.

I held it up, examining it under the cabin light. Like someone had sliced off the very tip of my finger. Invisible. As I watched, it began to creep down the digit toward the knuckle, spreading out over the skin and swallowing it from view, revealing a growing cross section of flesh and bone.

“Huh, that’s weird,” I said.

Megan glanced over. “What?”

“It wants to spread out on surfaces until it covers them completely, but only some surfaces—like skin. You have to coax it around inanimate objects, or else it won’t do it. It hasn’t latched onto the ground or our cars or our houses, even though we touch that stuff all the time.”

“Why is that weird?” she said.

“It could if it wanted to. If it started spreading on the ground, it would eventually swallow the entire earth.”

“How do you know it isn’t?” she said.

A chill slipped down the back of my neck. “It doesn’t get on anything else when we wear it, because it stops being sticky. It wants to wrap around
living
things, but when it finds one—when it finds a host—it becomes part of its skin and doesn’t spread anymore . . . like that’s its only purpose.”

“To get under our skin,” said Megan.

The dark matter spread across my palm and swallowed the other digits, disembodied fingertips shrinking to nothing. “It’s just weird.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa—” Megan lowered her head to peer out my window. “Check out the car, three o’clock.”

I followed her gaze to a BMW that had just pulled up to a house. The passenger door opened, and a very drunk woman took a lurching step onto the curb, rolled her ankle in her heels, and collapsed onto the sidewalk, her tight dress riding up indecently. The guy swooped around and hauled her to her feet. She shoved at his arm and tried to get away from him, but her movements were feeble and uncoordinated. He held on tight and marched her straight to the door, glancing both ways before he pushed her inside.

“That doesn’t look right,” I said.

“She’s way too drunk,” said Megan.

“And he’s completely sober.”

“Anybody smell rapey rape?” she said.

“Pull over, pull over,” I shouted, hurriedly stretching the sheen of dark matter down my arm. “We’re going in.”

The squat chain
link fence rattled in front of the house, even though nothing appeared to have disturbed it. Naked and invisible, Megan and I stole across the front yard. The nervous rush heightened my senses and amplified my pulse into a terrifying pounding. The night air electrified my skin.

We reached the front door at the same time, and our invisible hands collided. From inside came the sound of a man’s voice.

“Locked,” Megan whispered.

What if we were too late?

“Find a window.” I hurried around the side of the house, where a pair of windows opened over a row of trash bins. One was open a few inches. The screen behind hung in tatters, easy enough to break through.

“That one,” I said, starting toward it.

“Leona, where
are
you?” came Megan’s voice, still at the front door. Oops, I thought she’d been following me.

“Over here!” I hissed, and waited.

The weeds flattened right in front of me, just as a breeze rushed out of the night. Her body slammed into mine. We flew into the trash cans and scattered them like bowling pins, spilling trash into the side yard.

“Ow! Watch where you’re going,” I said, untangling myself from her and rubbing my bruised limbs.

“I
was
,” she groaned. “You’re invisible.”

“Shh.” I righted the trash can under the window and climbed on top, balancing a little. Carefully I hooked my fingers under the gap and gave a sharp tug. The window screeched the rest of the way open. I froze. Voices drifted out from the other room. One slurring and pathetic, one calm and creepy. I pushed in the bottom of the screen, tearing a flap loose from the frame. Wide enough for a person.

The lights blazed on, and I saw I’d opened the window into the bathroom. In walked a well-groomed guy with chubby cheeks, khakis, and a cashmere sweater over a collared shirt. In his thirties, probably. The kind of guy who looked like the “safe” choice at a bar.

Apparently, he was anything but safe.

He unzipped his fly and kicked up the toilet seat. His urine stream missed the bowl entirely and sprayed on the floor before he pivoted it back and hit water.
Ew
. So gross.

My blood simmered under my skin, but I stayed perfectly still, leaning on the windowsill. I wouldn’t ruin his night until I knew his intent for sure.

He zipped up his fly and glanced over at the open window, the screen fluttering open. He reached out and crushed the window down on my fingers.

I stifled my scream, and let out a tiny whimper instead. A bone-crushing throb lingered in my fingers, which felt like they had swollen to the size of baseballs. But at least they had kept the window from closing.

The guy left the bathroom.

I wiggled inside and backed up against the wall, panting. I now stood in a complete stranger’s house.

“Megan, give me your hand,” I whispered out the window. Groping around, I found her arm and helped her climb inside. She landed on the linoleum with a bang, knocking a mildewy towel to the floor.

“Now what?” said her voice.

I wanted to look at her face for reassurance, but there was nothing there but empty space. Her heavy breathing would have to suffice. 

A girl’s whimpering voice broke the silence. “No, stop . . . I have a boyfriend.”

Then a man’s voice. “Shh . . . he’s never going to know.”

Megan squeezed my hand, and together we slipped out of the bathroom into a dingy hallway. A wide open door led to a bedroom, where the girl had collapsed against a bed, hair stuck in sweaty strands to smeared mascara. Vomit crusted the side of her dress. She looked about college age, only a few years older than me. The guy leaned over her, kissing her neck as he eased her dress strap off her shoulders, then ran a palm down her collarbone toward her boobs.

My hand curled into a fist, nails digging into my palm.

The girl pushed him away half-heartedly, but her eyes were losing focus, her lids drooping. He pushed in and kissed her, and for a moment she kissed him back, her jaw working automatically against his, before she realized what she was doing and turned away. “Go away,” she moaned. “I don’t even know you . . . Where’s my phone?”

“Shh, it’s okay.” He kissed her forehead. “Here, let me get you some water.”

“Thanks,” she mumbled.

He brushed the hair off her face, stood up, and came out into the hall.

Megan’s arm flattened me against the wall, and he walked right in front of us, oblivious.

I resisted the urge to trip him.

In the bedroom the girl slumped to the side and her stomach did something funny, like she was trying to vomit but didn’t have the strength. All she managed was a pathetic cough, after which a tear slid down her cheek.

I felt around for Megan’s head and pressed my lips to her ear. “Go check on her and see if she’s okay,” I said. “I’ll stay on him.”

“Okay,” she whispered. Her hand unclasped from mine, and I was instantly alone. The rickety hum of a nearby fan masked her footsteps. I followed the guy to the kitchen, where he was fixing a drink on the kitchen table. A glass of water.

A Ziploc bag of white pills.

He dropped a single pill into the glass, and it bubbled all the way to the bottom.

Uh-oh
.

A pink cell phone buzzed on the table next to him. I crept closer and read the caller ID—someone named Josh, a big red heart next to his name. Her boyfriend. The guy silenced the call and carried the water back to the bedroom. I tiptoed after him, riding a panicky wave of adrenaline.

What could I do?

Behind me, the phone was buzzing again.

The girl lay on the floor in the bedroom, inches from unconsciousness. He set the water on a dresser so he could scoop her up and lay her on the bed. I slipped inside, glancing around frantically.

Where was Megan?

Was she still in here?

“Hi beautiful, I brought you some water.” The guy roused her from sleep. Her eyelids opened a crack, and she mumbled something incomprehensible.

“You want some water?” he said.

She nodded, wincing.

“That’s a good girl,” he whispered into her hair as he scooted off the bed. My gaze froze on the glass of water, gently rocking on the dresser right next to me, which he was now reaching for.
No—

I beat him to it and gave it a nudge.

The glass slid off the dresser and thumped on the floor, splashing water across the carpet. My heart took off galloping.

I felt sick to my stomach.

“Shit,” he muttered, and he started back toward the kitchen, forcing me to the side. But then he paused in the doorway and glanced back at the girl’s unconscious body, the skintight dress now riding up her thighs. He licked his lips. Quietly, he pulled the door shut and pressed the knob, locking me in the bedroom with him.

Which meant I was locked in a bedroom with a rapist.

At the thought my breath cut off, and I felt around frantically for Megan.

Where the hell was she?

She better be in here to back me up.

I glanced around for a weapon. A few picture frames sat on the dresser, but nothing else. The room held no personality.

Like my room.

The guy rolled the girl onto her stomach. She gave a quiet whimper, but otherwise didn’t stir. He was going to rape her right in front of me. I tensed up, and my insides scrunched into a little ball.

I seized the nearest picture frame and flung it at him. The frame whizzed over his shoulder and struck the far wall, denting the plaster. Glass showered the floor.

He looked up briefly, then turned his attention back to the girl, spine bowed forward like a hyena. Nothing could distract him from his prey. He grabbed her hips, and that was what finally pushed me over the edge, seeing him touch her like that, seeing him move his own hips closer and closer, wheezing in anticipation, thinking he could violate her however he wanted.
Rape.
He would use her body for a single night, and she would have to cope with that disgusting knowledge for the rest of her life.

“Touch her again and you die!” I shouted, charging the bed. His head snapped up, just as I slammed into him with all my weight. He tipped to the side. I rolled onto my back, took aim while he was still off balance, and thrust my heel up into his nose. The cartilage cracked and his head snapped backward. He fell off the bed, clutching a bloody nose. Over his fingers his terrified eyes searched the room for what had hit him.