The Space Between (The Book of Phoenix) (28 page)

He shrugged. “I don’t know. But I don’t think I want to find out. That place . . . ever since I drew it months ago . . . I don’t like it.”

“What? Are you scared?” I teased.

He rolled his eyes. “There’s something about it . . .. The house, the pictures of it anyway . . . they piss me off. Make me hate it with a vengeance.”

“You hate this house? Have you ever been there?”

He didn’t answer me at first, but eventually shook his head. “Not that I know of. But . . . I feel like I have, though.”

I let out a sigh. “Me, too. Maybe that’s all that’s bothering you about it.”

He shook his head again. “No. It’s something more. The house feels . . . sinister. Like bad things have happened there. Terrible things.”

I studied the pictures. I thought they were beautiful. The house gave me a warm feeling. And the message on the postcard—maybe it really did have the answers we needed. Another jolt in my gut confirmed this idea.

“I think we should go,” I signed again, and the feeling to move out instantly strengthened. “I don’t think we’re really safe here, anyway. The Shadowmen could come back any time. And if we’re both feeling the pull there . . . if the card says it has answers . . .”

Jeric looked at me with his brows raised. “You’re going to listen to a card that’s how many years old? We don’t even know if the message is for us.”

“I think it is. I
feel
like it is.” Again, the feeling I was right strengthened. Became more urgent. “I
know
it is. We have to go there, Jeric.”

He peered at me, as if gauging if I was actually serious. But his face disappeared from my sight. Flashes of images took over my vision—dark eyes full of worry and fear; huge shadows flying through the air; blurred faces I somehow knew were Uncle Theo and Mira; then a huge body of water with lights on the far side, a chill rising from the surface and into my bones, and a bright light beyond the water, sending warmth, beckoning me, offering shelter, safety,
love
. . . then complete blackness.

When my vision returned, I was staring up into Jeric’s face, the camper’s ceiling behind him. I lay on the floor, his arm underneath me. No, not on the floor. In his lap. Relief washed over his face.

“What happened?” I asked.

“You passed out. Are you okay?”

I struggled to sit up, and he lifted my shoulders, but held me in his lap.

“I think so. That was weird. Those visions—they almost felt like memories.”

His brow wrinkled. “Visions?”

“Just now. But they were more real than visions. As if I’d actually experienced it all before.”

He eyed me for a moment, skepticism filling his face. “Are you sure you’re okay? Did you hit your head?”

I pushed my way out of his arms and off of his lap, up to my feet. He rose with me, his hands out in case I collapsed again.

“I’m fine. No, I didn’t hit my head.” I rubbed it, in case I was wrong and had hit it on my way down, while the visions played in my mind. I didn’t find any bumps. Still, I leaned my hands on the counter, bracing myself just in case. The postcard lay backside up now. My heart rate spiked again, and I picked the card up, holding it close to my face. The more I squinted at the handwriting, the more it looked like Uncle Theo’s. “He left this as a message, maybe before he was taken.”

“Who?” Jeric asked.

“My uncle. Maybe Mira, too. Oh, my God! That’s it. They’re at the house.” The warm feeling of the visions overcame me again. This was right. I knew it. “We need to go there. Right now.”

I turned away to glance around the Airstream, making a mental inventory of what to take. Maybe we should pull the whole camper? It sure beat staying in motels on our way down. On the other hand, we should probably drive straight through. If my truck would make it.

Jeric grasped my shoulders, grabbing my attention. When he knew he had it, he let go and signed, “We’re not going.”

His expression was firm, and his hand motions deliberate.

“I felt it, though,” I insisted. “In the vision, or memory, or whatever it was.”

“That’s exactly why we’re not. I don’t trust it.”

“You don’t trust what? Me?”

“No. The house. What just happened to you. It will only get worse.”

I didn’t understand him, but it didn’t matter. “We
need
to go. Mira is there. Maybe you feel bad about the place because you know they’re keeping her there.” My breath caught. “What if the Shadowmen are holding them hostage? What if they plan to do what they did to Bex?”

Jeric gave me a look as if I should know what he was thinking. When I didn’t, he said, “Then they’re probably already dead.”

My breath caught, and I shook my head in denial. “They would have told us. Left an article taped to my truck. They could be torturing them instead. Jeric, please. We have to go. It’s where our answers are!”

His hand shot out, waving at Jacey’s journal on the counter. “What about that? Our answers are in there!”

“We can read it on the way.”

“Not together. We can’t even read aloud to each other.” His eyes flashed anger at this.

Being able to read aloud while the other drove would have certainly been more convenient. I, too, wanted to know more about Jacey and Micah. But I needed to solve my own mystery, find Uncle Theo and personally take him to Alaska, if I had to, to bring my parents back to reality. Or at least to get the truth out of them. Sure, Jacey’s journal might have had answers, but so did this old house in Florida. The pull to go was too strong to ignore.

“I’m going,” I said. “If you don’t want to go, fine, but I am. You were right—I was pretty clueless before. But not anymore. I won’t take the risk that my uncle and your grandma are locked up somewhere, and we’re the only ones who know where.”

I crossed my arms over my chest and waited for Jeric’s answer.

Chapter 21

  Leni had no clue what she was doing to me, making me choose like this. She may as well have asked me to choose between watching her murder or her rape. Either one would kill me, and something about the mansion made me feel like either one could likely happen if we went. I had mixed feelings about Mira—wasn’t sure if I cared where she was—but Leni loved her uncle and I wanted her to find him. But why did it have to be there? Bad vibes. The place gave me bad fucking vibes.

Everything inside me screamed not to go, but I couldn’t let her go alone, and I had to help her. I had to protect her. Maybe her truck would break down right outside of town when she tried to leave me, like my rental car had, but I had a feeling that wouldn’t stop her. My Beautiful Girl was stubborn as a damn mule. Even more stubborn than me. Which only confirmed the real Leni wasn’t as carefree and laid back as she put off.

I slid both hands over my head, then tossed them in the air with frustrated resignation. “Fine. Let’s go find your uncle.”

Her face broke into a grin, and she threw her arms around my neck and planted a kiss on my lips. Oh, hell yeah, this was worth putting up her with stubbornness. I leaned in for more, needing to taste her sweet mouth. She parted her lips and gave me a teasing swipe of her tongue before pressing her hands against my chest and pushing me off. Her face flushed as she looked at me with those silver-green eyes.

“That will lead to things we don’t have time for right now,” she signed.

“Just a kiss . . .”

Her mesmerizing lips turned up in a smile. “More than a kiss, and you know it.”

She glanced down at the bulge in my pants. Damn, she’d turned me into a freakin’ middle-schooler who got hard as a rock from a simple lip-smack. But maybe if I could distract her, she’d change her mind about going.

“We could make time now and leave tomorrow,” I suggested with my best smile. Her reaction was palpable—my scheme almost worked—but she shook her head, her curls flopping in their ponytail.

“I can’t decide whether to take the camper or not,” she signed. “It hasn’t been farther than the dump station in years, and I don’t know how my truck will do pulling it.”

I sighed. So stubborn. “The Shadowmen also know it.”

“Right.”

“But motels require IDs.”

“Except if we drove straight through . . .”

I lifted an eyebrow. “I’m pretty sure your truck can’t handle that.”

She grimaced. “Probably not. But it’ll go farther than with a camper on it.” Her chest heaved and her brow puckered as she glanced around again, then her face became resolute. “We’re taking it. Besides my truck, it’s the only thing I own and who knows if it’ll be here when we get back.”

“
If
we get back,” I corrected.

She ignored this statement.

Prepping the camper to be hauled on the road for the first time in years ate up the rest of the morning. I tried once more to convince her to wait—if I could delay her one day at a time, maybe she’d drop the idea of going altogether. But she wouldn’t give in.

By noon, we were on the road headed south. By four o’clock, we were stranded on the side of the road.

Well, not exactly. We’d crossed the state line into Florida and pulled off the highway for gas when the truck decided not to start. Leni popped the hood, and we both peered at the engine compartment, but I saw nothing obviously wrong. Nothing that would be a quick fix, or even a temporary one to at least move the truck away from the island of gas pumps.

“It’s a sign we should go no farther,” I suggested. Leni flashed me a dirty look.

“This isn’t funny! Now what?” She kicked the truck’s tire in an uncharacteristic show of anger, then strode off for the truck stop’s entrance. I kept my eye on her through the glass wall as she spoke to the attendant inside and then to another guy, and she stomped back to the truck several minutes later, her angry strides betraying her stoic expression.

“They can’t look at it until tomorrow, and there’s no rental car place for seventy miles, so we’re stranded,” she signed. At least, I thought that’s what she said. Her hands jerked with anger, skewing her signs. They moved slower and more fluidly with her next sentence as she once again gained control. “But there’s an RV park across the street. A truck driver inside said he’d pull the camper over there for me.”

Yeah, I’m sure he did.

The truck driver looked none too happy to see me climb into the cab with Leni after her truck had been pushed over to the mechanic’s bay and he’d hooked her camper to his rig. His expectations for a special thank you must have been ruined when he realized she wasn’t alone. I returned the driver’s scowl with a toothy grin as I swung my arm over her shoulders and pulled her close to me.

A small building with only a tiny window and a wooden door housed the RV park’s office. I couldn’t see inside from the truck cab, so I followed Leni into the building, too paranoid to let her out of my sight. A chick about our age with cherry-red hair looked up from a magazine spread open on the counter. Something about her felt vaguely familiar, but I was pretty sure I’d never met her. If so, I would have definitely banged her, and I’d never forget that red hair. She was the right type for the pre-Leni me, but now she was just another girl, making it easy for me to pretty much ignore her so I could focus on our surroundings and remain alert for any problems.

Every time I looked at Leni, however, her brows were pushed together as she stared at the redhead, who was filling out a registration card. Leni looked to be in deep concentration.

“Bex?” Leni finally mouthed. At least, that’s what her lips seemed to say. Her face flushed, and I figured she must have blurted it out. Red’s head snapped up, and her eyes squinted.

“Uh, no. Bethany,” her lips said. “But close. How did ya know?”

My eyes returned to Leni. She seemed to be stammering, and her face reddened even more.

“A, uh, a wild guess,” her lips said before she offered her signature smile. “Actually, you remind me of someone named Rebecca, but she went by Bex.”

“Went?” Bethany asked, catching the past tense.

Leni became obviously flustered, and I felt bad for her, but there was little I could do. The fact that she spoke about Bex—who I could only take to mean Jacey’s Bex—freaked me out, too.

“I, uh, never really knew her myself. Someone I met in passing.” Leni looked up to me, obviously wondering if I caught the conversation.

I couldn’t help but bring it up later, once the camper was dropped on its site and the truck driver had skedaddled, probably off to prey on some other pretty girl.

“Bex?” I asked Leni as I leaned against the kitchenette’s counter while she opened a can of cat food. Ghost had leapt out when we opened the camper door, surprising both of us. We hadn’t known he’d been inside when we locked up before leaving. “What was that about?”

She set the food on the floor for the cat, then shrugged. “No idea, really. She just . . . she felt so familiar and Bex’s name popped into my mind. Weird, right?”

“You could say that.”

“She could barely take her eyes off you. I’m surprised she managed to give me correct change.”

I shrugged. “Didn’t notice.”

She gave me a crooked grin. “Yeah, it must happen all the time. You probably don’t notice it at all anymore.”

Actually, I did. I used to anyway. “Before you, I noticed everything about every girl around me, especially if they were looking at me. All I can tell you about that girl is she had red hair and her name’s Bethany. Which I only know because of you.”

She eyed me for a moment, as if considering whether to believe me. I grasped her hips and pulled her to me. I pressed my finger to her chest.

“All I see anymore,” I signed with one hand before leaning down and grabbing that taste of her I’d been craving all day.

She reacted the way I was used to—arching her body against me, opening her mouth for my tongue, allowing my hands to finally explore. I didn’t know if it was the connection we had or if she really was better than everyone else I’d ever been with combined. She kissed me expertly, her mouth and tongue moving exactly the way I liked. Her hands rubbed the back of my head and she may has well have been stroking my other head, it felt so good. And her body. Damn, it was perfect. When she allowed me to pull her top over her head, I thought I’d lose it right then. I wanted to rip her bra off with my teeth, feel those soft tits of hers, suck on them until her nipples were as hard as my dick. I forced myself to go slow, to enjoy every second, every inch of her dark honey skin. Trying not to scare her away with how bad I fucking wanted her.