by Holly Hook
Of course, Stanley narrows his gray eyes at me. I'm the Trueblood lover. I want to suspect him, but after Riley got attacked, I can't. And that makes finding the suspect all the more terrifying.
“All we have to do is convince them to vote for us. We can do that, right? There will be thirty covens there, so the best plan of action is to impress, persuade, and get out.”
“Only force will show them we're worthy,” Stanley says in a low voice.
Riley looks at him with a stern calm that reminds me so much of Dominic that I cringe. I hate seeing that look on Riley, even if it means that the confidence I knew and loved when I first moved to Moon's Peak is back.
“Force has to come later,” he says. “Using other forms of control can be even more powerful than physical force.” He winks at me, and my cheeks flush.
Stanley's not having it. He splays his hands out on the table, but says nothing. Yeah, he's definitely feeling the sting of rejection and taking it out on us.
But that's less harmful than other things.
Such as that silent control that Riley mentioned.
Thankfully, Trish, Walton, and Becky all nod at Riley. Walton gets up and smooths out his jacket. “Thank you for calling this meeting. I have the feeling the two of you will prove yourselves.”
The others rise, and Riley and I are free to move on with our night.
* * * * *
The Nightsides pair off to train with each other throughout the week, and I ask Walton and Daeshawn to give us regular updates on how everyone's doing. They agree. I trust them the most out of everyone, thanks to their experience and skills in the actual world.
Riley, Lily, and I have our own training to do. As the rest of the week passes, the bags under Lily's eyes deepen. She still comes to classes with us, and each morning, it seems she's getting closer and closer to getting sick.
“I've been trying to find signs of your father here in town, but he's definitely not here unless he's using cash,” Lily says. “I'm going to expand my search to the towns nearby.”
“Thanks,” I tell her over lunch. “You're awesome. I don't think Dad would have fled across the country again. At least, I hope.” He's ashamed of what he did, of getting me into this mess. I've been repeating that to myself over the past week, trying to stop the volcano of hurt and anger that's rising inside of me. That's why he ran. Dad is still mentally human, just as broken as the rest of us, and he's acting accordingly.
I'm taking Riley's advice and Lily's advice to just sit down sometimes and meditate. I might get control of my powers. The urge to lash out is vanishing. And I haven't felt that desire to control Riley in a few days.
I share the good news as Riley, Lily, and I meet up at the end of the school day on Thursday. Lily grins and wraps me in a hug.
“I knew you could overcome that anger and get control,” Lily says, threatening to break my arms. I can tell she's been training in her spare time, too. And I'm willing to bet she's sleeping about as much as Riley and I am.
“I'm trying,” I say. “Let's go to the little beach again to train. I want to keep working on changing my appearance.” I'm super aware of how much time we're losing. Over the past few days, I've been working on altering myself in the mirror, changing my perception, but that's been a bust. Today, I'm going to go with the off-guard idea to make Lily and Riley think I’m that redhead.
What will happen if someone doesn't expect me to change my appearance?
I've purposely left that out of the conversations with the other Nightsides. I need to have an edge over the killer, whoever he is.
We drive out to the beach in the chilly rain that day, draped in coats that don't even look sexy. Thanks, cold. By the time we park, the rain is coming down full force, and the gray lake is frothing from the downpour.
“This sucks,” Riley says with a grimace.
“It's all we have to work with,” I say, tingling with excitement as I prepare to hatch my plan. Riley is looking out the window at the dark woods, making sure no one's with us, and Lily's in the backseat, on her phone and going through a database. They’re both looking away. I have the chance to catch them off-guard.
I focus on my hunger, and everything pops to full life, and I can see the colors bending through each raindrop as they run down the windshield. But I'm not focused on the environment. I wrap my awareness around Riley and Lily, sensing the electrical, distracted impulses of their minds. They're going to look up and over to find a bad-tempered redhead sitting in the front passenger seat. She's sitting beside them, looking at the weather with narrowed green eyes, with her arms crossed. Riley looks over at me—
“Whoa!” He jumps in his seat and blasts the horn by mistake, sending a flock of crows out of the trees. They caw as I jump in response to the sound.
Lily lets out a little scream, and I whirl to face her. “Did I do it?” I glance down at myself to see that I look the same, at least to me, but Lily's wide, round eyes tell me I've accomplished something. And a new type of pressure has settled on the top of my head, staying steady as I focus on keeping up the redhead image.
“Olivia. Is that you?” Riley pokes me in the arm.
“I did it?” I ask, looking between him and Lily.
“Well, you need to work on making us think you have another voice, but yes. You look just like the redhead,” Lily says. Then she leans closer and blinks. “I can see you getting blurry again if I focus, because I know it's you, and yeah. It's you. How did you do that?”
I let the pressure drop and Riley sighs as he must see the regular Olivia again. “Yeah. Work on sounding different, and you're all set. How did you do that? And by the way, I'm glad you didn't do that while I was driving or we would have crashed.”
I doubt that, with the new, super confident Riley. “All I did different was that I caught the two of you off guard. You weren't expecting me to try that on you, so I think that's why it worked. And I bet that's what Dad did, too. I saw who he was when he revealed it to me and I knew what to look for.”
I'm over the moon. After the meeting and having this breakthrough, and all without losing control and hurting someone, I'm getting more confident that we just might survive this and go on with our lives, with or without Dad. We just might wow that council, and I just might have an edge against them. But first, I must master changing my looks and my voice, and that means controlling minds that have centuries of defenses against people like me.
We're still not done. I open the door to the car and step out into the rain, which is calming down. “Come on. I'll practice keeping up the redhead look. Just give me a signal when it's not working, like a thumbs-down or something. And as I'm doing that, I'll try to convince you that the sky is green or something. If I can do that, we might have a chance.”
“I agree,” Riley says.
The three of us get out of the car and overlook the steep beach that leads down to the lake. Riley and Lily go to stand on the sand and look at the water while I pace behind them, thinking of which voice I can use to make them think I'm someone else. Dad did it and that means so can I.
But I struggle for a bit and my mind gets cloudy while I search the trees. No one's out here with us, and Riley and Lily sidestep closer to hold out the cold. I eye them and focus on sneaking up from behind, and popping in front of them as Angry Redhead and shouting at them for a public display of affection. Except they're not attracted to each other and had better not be. Riley and Lily would never date, would they?
I shake my head, but my thoughts keep gravitating to that, and a sick feeling fills my stomach and squeezes at my insides. Riley and Lily?
Lily reaches up and puts her hand on Riley's back.
And I explode.
“Get your hand off him!” I shout, my thoughts turning to nothing but breaking the two up. I circle them, still projecting my angry redhead image, and their eyes pop open in shock as I stand there, hands on my hips. My heart thumps as adrenaline pumps through my body. Every muscle tenses. I imagine backhan
ding Lily. Shoving Riley.
“Olivia?” he asks, eyes widening.
I push Lily back. She goes down on her back and grunts.
Then I reach out with my control.
Lily's eyes widen as she tries to get up, but I do the job for her, forcing her to rise to my eye level. She sways on her feet, eyes going glassy, but that does nothing to stop my quaking and my hunger. I want to throw her in the lake. No. I want to bite her and drain her. Lily's blood smells like cinnamon. Like breakfast.
Come here.
Lily slowly walks closer, breathing heavily. Some part of her knows she's doomed, but that will only make this better.
“Olivia!” Riley shouts.
He jumps between us, breaking us apart with his arms, and then he faces not me in anger, but the woods.
I snap out of the rage and Lily screams, backpedaling. Riley keeps his hand on my shoulder and keeps looking into the trees, and as the pressure in my skull dissipates, I follow his gaze.
Someone is out there.
And that someone is crashing through the trees, image blurry. Another Nightside. They're using the same image trick as I am. They’re spying on us and they just saw me lose it.
I’ve never had anger like that before. Ever.
“You!” I shout, and as I give chase, the spy vanishes into the trees, blending into the shadows. I blink, but the blur remains, masking our attacker.
“They're gone,” Riley says, re-clamping his hand on my shoulder. “Stop. We’ll never catch them. Who did this to us?”
I stop and face the dark woods, barely able to breathe. “Someone was watching us. I lost...I lost control. Shit, I suddenly wanted to kill Lily!”
“I know it wasn’t you,” Riley says, pulling me close. “If I find who did this, I’ll kill them myself!”
I let my head rest on Riley’s chest as Lily backs away. Tears come, but I blink them into oblivion. “I thought you and Lily were together and I know you're not, and then I had so much jealousy and rage that I wanted to attack her.” I whirl out of Riley’s embrace. “I thought I was getting control over this, and I'm sorry. I don't deserve either of you.” And now someone saw this and is going to report back to the other Nightsides.
“Olivia? Did you hear what I said?” He jumps in front of me just as I glimpse Lily, standing against the car. But Riley doesn't narrow his eyes at me. “Someone messed with you. We have to go over there and see if we can find out who that was. Don't beat yourself up. Something weird happened. Lily and I never got within ten feet of each other. You must have seen something that isn’t real.”
“What’s going on?” Lily asks, reaching for her ankle. She hasn’t parted with her weapons.
I hiccup as it sinks in. Not me? I saw Lily put her hand on Riley's back and I lost it. I wanted to bite Lily and drain her. That's an urge I've never had with a human. I shake my head. Lily would have to be stupid to put her hand on Riley’s back with me standing there. Riley has never given me a reason to think he'd cheat, and Lily has never given off any boyfriend-stealing vibes.
I sidestep around Riley and look at Lily.
Her stare warns me to stay back. Riley's fine with my outburst, but she isn't, and she shouldn't be.
“I don’t know what happened,” I choke.
“Another Nightside was in the woods, and controlled Olivia,” Riley says. “They’re gone now. We have to investigate.”
I take a breath, urging myself to calm down. “Lily. Wait in the car. Riley and I are going to sniff out the area. Someone was here.” I wanted to hurt her. And if Riley hadn't been here, Lily would be dead by now.
She just nods and gives me no sign that she'll ever forgive me. “Okay. I will.”
Lily retreats to the car and locks herself inside. I hope that she's safe from whoever was spying and from me.
Once she's inside, I turn to Riley as he studies the tree line again. Then he takes off towards the trees, and I follow.
He frowns. “I felt strange, like someone was making my mind blurry. Then I saw the dark figure in the woods, watching us, and I knew it wasn’t you.”
“I’ll never forgive myself,” I choke. “I...I saw the two of you standing together, and then Lily putting her hand on your back, and then I wanted to hurt her. Riley, I almost killed her.” I can barely force out the words.
Riley blinks in confusion. “They made you see that. Then they messed with your mind and made you so angry you had to kill. Whatever swept over all three of us was not from you. Your power feels strong, but chaotic. This power was more of a complete shift in reality and emotion. Right before you stormed in front of us, I had a strange urge to, well, I have to confess this. I wanted to kiss Lily out of nowhere.” He finishes by gulping.
“You what?” Then, slowly, I get what he's saying.
Another Nightside just used their power on us.
All three of us.
Were they trying to make us fight?
And worse, was this person trying to make me kill my friend?
Yep. Our enemy is close.
A chill runs down my spine. “I saw Lily putting her hand on your back. Please say that never happened.”
Riley shakes his head and quickens his pace. “I can grant your wish there, but what I can't do is figure out who was doing this to us. We must clear it up with Lily.”
Nightsides can control each other.
One of them is strong enough to warp my reality, and enough to make me undo all my progress in a heartbeat.
I eye the trees. We’re almost there, but I see no one in the woods.
Someone is trying to control me.
I gulp as the implication sweeps over me.
“Does someone have plans for me?” I ask. That last burst of anger came suddenly and out of nowhere, where the others all had a reason.
We enter the trees before Riley speaks. “We have to check and see who was out there. We should stay close. If we're far from Lily, then we're less likely to want to hurt her.”
I sniff and smell nothing but the woods themselves. I can smell blood, but not Nightside blood unless it's open to the air and very close. I turn my face to the wind, and pick up nothing but tree bark, half-frozen soil, and a stray dog that's wandering around the woods about a mile in front of us. Our attacker is long gone.
“Shit,” I say.
Riley nods. “I sense nothing. But someone was here. What if they've been here the whole time, making you lose control?”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Lily's quiet when Riley and I get back to the car and Riley takes the driver's seat. Lily moves to the back, away from me, and we don't speak until we roll out of the woods and back onto the main road, the same one that leads to the mansion.
Riley hesitates before he turns not left, but right, downhill towards town. “We have to get out of here when we train from now on. A powerful Nightside was out there, altering our reality and making us turn on each other.”
“I didn't see anyone,” Lily announces. I read nothing but shock and anger in her words.
“I barely saw that someone was out there,” I choke out, “so don’t feel bad.”
Riley takes over. He wasn't the one who almost did the unthinkable. “Someone made Olivia think you and me were together, Lily. It was insane. Then they took over her emotions and made her almost attack you. Did you feel our whole reality shift?”
Lily's quiet as town spreads out downhill and slowly draws closer. Its lights shine in the gray and brown expanse that is this bleak day. “I felt something weird.” She cuts it off there, like she doesn't want to tell me the rest.
Riley already confessed to his part of the ordeal, and I know she's got a part that she doesn't want to say out loud. We all have something to feel bad about here. “If you felt some weird attraction to Riley while it was happening, I know it wasn't you,” I say at last, hoping to clear the air. I won't let this rogue Nightside—the probable killer—ruin what the three of us have worked so hard to have.
Lily sighs. “T
hat was weird. And very dangerous. We can't go back to that spot, ever. It has to be someone from the mansion.”
“I agree,” Riley says. “We talked about having everyone train, so this person knows that the three of us have been meeting. It's possible they've even been trying to mess with Olivia from behind the scenes this entire time, so they can take advantage of her powers.”
“What?” I ask. The sense of violation brings the chest pressure back in a blink. The dark feeling that follows is worse than the thought of me losing control of my emotions, because at least I can work on my own emotions and issues. This is different. I can't control another, least of all another, more powerful Nightside who's pulling the strings.
Riley reaches an intersection and stops, waiting for a logging truck to go through. “There must be a reason this person wants to tear the three of us apart. If I hadn't taken Dominic's blood, I may not have been able to resist what happened at all. The three of us might be dead by now.”
“If that's even their goal,” I say. “Why do this right before the Convening?”
Silence falls as we get rolling again, now through the outskirts of town. “This killer, or Originator, if that's who it is, might have a plan for the Convening. Maybe you're not the one in the Nightside Prophecy after all.” Riley faces me. “Think about it. The Originator will want revenge after Dominic threw him to the hunters and had his manor burned. He wanted a place in vampire society that wasn't slavery, and he lost it because of a Trueblood. I think this guy's got a plan for the Convening, and it might involve using you to meet his ends.”
“I am not this Originator's puppet.” I beat on the glove compartment, which comes open and spills insurance papers on the floor. “If this guy wants to be the one in the Prophecy, fine.”
“We have to find him as quick as we can,” Lily says. “I've been tracking unusual activity in nearby towns, and I've seen some new credit cards being used over in the next one, but that could be anyone. I think we should go there and look around.”