by Eva Chase
Mildred paused. She searched my face, but not as if she was ignoring me this time. More like she thought I might be Winston in some way. The energy inside me stirred, with a tickle of emotion in my chest that reminded me of standing on the edge of the lawn in his memory, accepting the bow and arrows from that past version of her.
He was here with us in his own way. He was listening. I had no idea what he actually made of all this or of her, but a flicker of warmth traveled through my chest, like a touch of reassurance. He wasn’t pissed off about the things I’d said on his behalf, as far as I could tell.
Mildred’s lips parted. Whether she was going to argue more or start to back down, I didn’t get to find out. An instant later, I was wrenched backward, away from her.
My mind flashed into blackness, and then I was falling on my ass on the campus lawn. The other spirits streaked by through the darkness. Oscar came at me, his eyes scorchingly bright.
“I’ve had enough of your idiocy,” he barked. “We’ve got more important things to do than coddle you. You want to see what happens when you try to challenge us? It didn’t go well for anyone before you.”
He reared back, several other glowing forms joining him in one blazing mass. I scrambled to my feet, finding my three guys still around me. My hands groped out and caught Elias’s at one side, Ryo’s at the other. Jenson stood next to us, his eyes shooting daggers at our attackers.
“Whatever they throw at us, we can handle it,” Elias said.
Ryo laughed, a little raggedly. “They’ve got lots of big talk, but not much real action yet.”
Jenson’s lips formed a grin that bared his teeth. “If I’m going to die here, who says I can’t make things as difficult as possible for them along the way?”
The words had just left his mouth when the merged spirits charged at us with a roar of energy so loud my ears rang with it. I clutched the guys’ hands, not hard enough. The joined lights blasted into our midst and then burst apart with a heave that knocked the air from my lungs and sent me flying away from the others.
I had just enough wherewithal to shield my head. The air whipped past me, my head spun, and I crashed to the ground at the base of a tree. My spine slammed into the roots.
Pain splintered through my back. I groaned. When I willed myself into action, I was half afraid my legs wouldn’t move, but they shifted at my attempt to wriggle them.
I had to get up. Oscar and the others might come after me or the guys again.
Wincing at the aches running all through my body, I shoved myself onto my hands and knees and then stood, bracing myself against the tree. More trees surrounded me on all sides. The spirits had thrown me all the way into the woods. Several paces away, I could make out the school’s lights between their trunks.
Where had they tossed the guys? I started forward—and my gaze caught on a hunched form, coarse black fur glinting in the muted light, between the trees to my right. My legs froze.
They’d thrown me not just to the woods but straight to my foster brother.
Chapter Fourteen
Trix
“Cade,” I said tentatively, braced to run. A fresh pang of pain echoed through my shin where he’d clawed me. I had no idea how he’d respond to me now in his beast form.
Had he seen me standing with the other guys—holding hands with them? Taking their support the way I couldn’t take his? He might be even more worked up than he’d been before.
The furred shape didn’t move. In the dim light, I couldn’t tell what part of him I was even seeing—his shoulder? His haunch? Was he okay?
The jolt of fear that came with that question propelled me forward. I eased between the trees, my nerves jumping at every rustle my feet set off in the quiet of the woods. I’d only taken a few steps when it became clear that the light catching on Cade’s beastly fur wasn’t just the little that seeped this far from the school.
He was crouched, still and stiff, on the other side of the tree, his wolfish head bowed to the ground. Another of those eerily glowing figures bent over him, hands deep in his back.
It wasn’t just any figure. The ghost that had come for him this time… looked like me.
Not exactly the same as I was now. My—her?—hair gleamed with the purple shade I’d dyed it a few months before Cade had left for Roseborne rather than its current brilliant orange. I’d had to throw away the zigzag-pattern top she was wearing this past winter after Mrs. Monroe had “accidentally” spilled half a glass of red wine on me. Seeing the apparition was like looking into a mirror and being faced with a reflection cast from a year ago. A shiver ran over my skin.
How could I be haunting him when I was already right here in the flesh? What unresolved business was this version of me challenging him with? While I’d come to realize that Cade had controlled me and my emotions in ways that didn’t sit right with me, that so many times I’d acted more because he’d made me afraid that I’d lose him than because I’d honestly wanted to take those risks or go that far… that was on me as much as it was on him. He hadn’t forced my hand.
How could anything that had happened between us compare to the people he’d physically hurt in his bursts of temper? It wasn’t as if I had anywhere near as much to accuse him of as, say, Richie had.
I guessed I was going to find out the answer to those questions. My heart thumped faster, painful against my ribs, but I already knew there was no way I could just leave Cade to take on this test alone. Maybe I hadn’t owed him everything he’d ever asked for, but I’d sworn to stand by him, to save him from this place if I could. Memories of the times he’d swooped in to shield me from harsh words or violent hands flitted through my mind. How many times had he saved me? More than I could count.
I walked up to the joined forms, fighting my hesitation. Would entering this vision go differently because the vision was somehow provoked by a version of me? Could I exist in the same space as my apparition?
No way to know other than by diving in.
I braced myself and grabbed hold of the ghost that wore my face.
The tumbling sensation felt just as stomach-lurching and disorienting as usual. I fell through the now-familiar darkness and landed in a room even more familiar—so much so that I instinctively hugged myself.
It was the little, musty-smelling bedroom Cade and I had shared in the Monroes’ house for the past six years. The bunkbed with its lumpy mattresses stood against one wall, the dresser with its wobbly drawers by the one opposite. The desk in between, beneath the tiny window, was barely large enough for us both to set down a textbook at the same time. The rattle of the basement vents sounded just outside—someone was running the clothes dryer.
My foster brother was in his human form, standing to the side of the bunkbed with one hand set against the frame. His body tipped slightly toward the younger, purple-haired version of me in front of him, whose shoulders were braced against the top bunk.
I recognized Cade’s pose before I heard a single word come out of his mouth. It was his persuasive stance: close enough to make the moment feel intimate but not so close it was smothering, gaze intent, all attention fixed on his target.
Being the focus of that intentness used to give me a weird mix of emotions: a sort of comfort that he cared that much about my responses, a thrill that there was something I could give him that he wanted, and an underlying jittering of my nerves that this time he might ask for more than I could bring myself to go along with. I’d always ignored the last part as well as I could. Now, when I watched as an outsider, seeing how stiff the other me’s posture had become, my uneasiness overwhelmed everything else.
Had I actually looked like that during those moments way back when, tense and uncertain, or was that just Roseborne ramping up the awfulness of the situation? If I had… how had Cade not noticed my discomfort? Wouldn’t seeing it have made him back off? He’d always talked as if he only wanted what I was willing to give. He’d just… made it hard for me to feel I could say no without damaging our
bond and proving myself less committed than he was.
“Come on, Baby Bea,” he said now, in his cajoling tone. That and the nickname raised my hackles in a way they never had before. I didn’t think he’d noticed the arrival of my real self at the other end of the room. He brushed his fingers over the conjured me’s upper arm. “You know I never meant any of it like that. I have moods. You can’t take them too seriously. I’ve always been here when you really needed me.”
The other me raised her chin. “And you held that over my head every way you could. When did I ever challenge you or go against what you wanted? You knew you had me wrapped around your finger—that if you questioned whether I cared enough or went cold, I’d give in rather than risk losing you.”
“So it’s wrong that I wanted you with me in every possible way? Isn’t that what we’re all about?” He trailed his fingers lower to the spot where I’d carved up my arm to create a scar that would match the starburst birthmark just beneath his wrist. “Didn’t we swear to always be there for each other?”
“It’s not really being there for each other if you’re the one always calling the shots, and I have to go along with them or get iced out.”
“I can’t help it if I’m going to feel hurt when you decide you don’t want anything to do with me.”
“That’s it right there,” the other me burst out. “It’s always all or nothing. You put it out there like I have to either give you everything you want, or I’m shunning you. You know that’s not true. I can care about you more than anyone else in the world and still have limits.”
My throat constricted with every word she spoke. Had the supernatural energies that infected Roseborne seen all those thoughts and feelings inside me, without my even being conscious of them? Were they coming from Cade’s impressions, what he thought I’d say to him if I ever told him off?
A note of irritation crept into Cade’s voice. “Well, sorry if I need to know you’re all in. You of all people should know what it’s like to be ditched over and over by people who’re supposed to be looking out for you. How can I feel good about putting everything on the line for you if I can’t trust you’ll do the same for me?”
“How can you act like talking me into crazy stunts or into having sex with you is the only way you’ll trust me?” my other self demanded. “How are you looking out for me if you’re constantly pushing me in directions I don’t really want to go in?”
“If I thought anything we did would hurt you, I’d never ask you. I’ve always taken care of you even when you weren’t sure, haven’t I?”
The constricting sensation in my chest ran down to my gut, clutching my stomach so sharply I winced. He had known. He’d basically admitted it. He’d known he’d kept working at me when I wasn’t sure, that he was pushing past my resistance… and he’d kept going because he’d decided he knew better what I’d be okay with than I did.
My mouth wouldn’t stay shut. “Cade,” I said with a rasp.
He flinched and jerked around. He’d clearly been so intent on the vision of me that my appearance in the room had totally escaped him. At the sight of the real me, his back went rigid. His mouth slanted into a crooked line far more sour than his usual wry grin. The other me watched in silent shock.
“Two of you,” Cade said in an amused tone that sounded forced. He glanced back and forth between me and my younger self. “Great. Maybe you can talk some sense into this made-up version the college threw at me. I’m taking a real pummeling here, and nothing I’m saying is getting through.”
Did he not suspect how long I’d been watching—or was he so caught up in his justifications that he couldn’t see how bad the entire conversation made him look?
I took a step toward him. “That’s because nothing you’re saying makes the things she’s pointing out better. You’re making excuses, not owning up to it. That’s what Roseborne wants—for you to admit where you’ve done things wrong.”
Cade made a dismissive gesture. “This place just wants to torture us any way it can. Obviously this is all bullshit. I know things have been a little tense between us here, but it’s here that’s the problem. All the rest of this garbage—” His gaze dropped to my leg with the makeshift bandage wrapped around it, and his hands clenched. “Shit. Was that me? I remember—it’s all kind of foggy when I’m in that state, transformed into that thing—I was so pissed off about my dad and having all those memories brought back up—”
I couldn’t let the remorse in his voice deflect me. He was trying to change the subject.
“I’m not upset at you about that,” I said quietly. The twisting inside me had turned into an ache so deep the burn of tears was forming behind my eyes. “But the things she’s saying aren’t bullshit. If you knew I wasn’t really okay with some of the things you asked me to do, why did you keep pushing for them? My whole life, all I’ve wanted was to make you happy. It seems like that’s all you wanted too. Which doesn’t leave anyone taking my feelings into account, does it?”
I saw Cade waver on his feet. He didn’t normally show any uncertainty, but between his extended isolation at Roseborne and the emotional whiplash of these visions, even his control must have been getting shaky. For a second, I thought he was going to break down and make a pleading apology. Then his expression hardened.
“I can’t believe they’ve gotten to you too. Warped your mind into thinking I’m just as much of a monster as the thing they forced me to turn into. I guess all that loyalty wasn’t worth much as soon as some other guys gave you the time of day, was it?”
The words hit me with a punch of guilt, but anger flared up under it in a way it wouldn’t have before, when I hadn’t seen what he was doing so clearly. A crack split down the middle of all the memories that had been holding my faith in him steady. How could they mean anything when he was talking to me like this?
Had they ever meant anything?
I swallowed past the choking sensation in my throat. “You can’t shame me into doing things your way anymore, Cade. I’m allowed to have my own opinions. I’m allowed to say no to you. Just like you’ve always been allowed to with me. I’m not asking to get away with caring about you less than you do me. I’m asking you to step up and care about me as much as I have for you.”
“Don’t you think I have? For fuck’s sake, Trix. It’s because you matter to me that I want you as close to me as I can have you. You can’t expect me to lean back and let whatever happens— I can’t just assume what you do and say now is enough—” His hands flexed at his sides as he appeared to grapple with his thoughts. His voice turned raw. “People say things they don’t mean all the time. People who are supposed to be there for you treat you like shit. You should know that better than anyone, after how your parents were with you. There’s no way to be sure.”
Was that where this all came from—the rages, the wheedling, the need to jerk me around? The vision I’d seen of him confronting his father echoed through my mind. Did he think that if he had me under his finger, he could be sure he wouldn’t lose me?
“Maybe there isn’t,” I said. “But pushing me around, pushing me into things—that’s more likely to make me want to back away from you than anything else.”
“Is it? It seems like you were already getting soft on those other guys and leaving me behind before any of this came up. As soon as I wasn’t right there to remind you what we have—”
“I’m still here!” I interrupted. “I’ve been thinking about you the whole time. I never abandoned you. You’re the one who stayed away from me after I got to Roseborne.”
Cade flinched. Then his expression iced over. So did his tone, as he raised a careless shoulder. “If that’s the way you’re going to see it…” Then he turned his back on me, fixing his attention on my younger self again without another word.
Every instinct that’d been drilled into me over our years together screamed at me to make this better, to show him I wasn’t turning my back on him—as if that made any sense. As if his rejectio
n were my fault.
I gathered all the strength of will I had in me. The Cade I loved, the Cade who’d protected me—he had existed. The eight-year-old who’d come to me promising we’d get through our time at that first foster home together hadn’t been an act. However things had gotten twisted over the years, the genuine devotion we’d started with was still in there. I’d seen hints of it even now during our argument.
I didn’t know how his affection had gotten so entwined with this side of him that couldn’t believe I’d stay unless he had me on a leash, when that shift had happened, or whether the two aspects could be pried apart. Now that I’d seen it, I wasn’t going to give in and beg forgiveness… but I wasn’t giving up on him either. That was what Roseborne would want, and they were the real villains here.
I turned my own attention on the other me instead of him. “Hey,” I said, walking up to her. “You’ve said enough. It’s my turn to deal with him.”
“You can’t let him get away with the way he’s treated us,” she said with a cringe.
“It’s not our place to punish him. Is that really what you want? It’s not what I want. If he won’t listen, then we walk away. That’s the only way we can really look after ourselves. What Cade decides to do… that’s got to be up to him. We have to give him that freedom just like we’d want it for ourselves.”
“I’m still here,” Cade snapped, but just this once, I ignored him.
“I can’t go,” the other me insisted. “Not until he shows that he sees. And if he doesn’t, I can’t let him go at all. No one leaves Roseborne.”