I chuckled to myself as Leon lifted a hand to wave without even bothering to look back. He knew I’d be watching him the same way I knew he’d wave. We were a team, he and I. A package deal. A package without a label.
As I slipped into the girls’ locker room minutes after the bell rang, I was already missing Leon. P.E. was one of the few times during school hours that he and I were separated. Sometimes, I wondered if that was what having a twin brother felt like. And then I remembered the color of his eyes and how he always glanced at me through those unearthly blonde strands of hair. Nope. Not brotherly.
Jo waved at me from the other end of the gym when I made it there a minute later, having changed into my sports uniform so fast it made me wonder if I had just slowed time.
“He didn’t let you go?” she asked with a significant look.
I rolled my eyes. “You know Leon.” It was enough explanation for me, but Jo shook her head.
“That’s the thing, Laney,” she started, not without humor as she shoved her glasses further up her nose. “No one really knows Leon.” She pursed her lips. “No one but you.”
She was referring to the summers Leon and I had spent together as children before Dad had left and we’d moved to Glyndon. And the almost twenty-four-seven we spent together ever since Mom and I had moved here for good.
“He’s Leon,” I explained with a shrug. “He doesn’t care if I forget where I am or what I wanted to do.” Which frequently happened, and Leon regularly saved me from ending up in the wrong classroom.
Jo raised an eyebrow and tugged on her chin-length chestnut hair, eyes stern behind her glasses. She was one of the few not to care if Leon was charming and radiant and left most girls gaping. She didn’t envy our friendship. On the contrary, if there was a reason Jo complained, it was because Leon monopolized me and left little space for our rare girls’ nights.
I shrugged again and started running laps as the coach gave us a sharp look, ignoring the chatter and the stares of the others. Ignoring them had become my routine.
Yes, Leon was demanding, time-intensive, but there was no safer place than with Leon. After what had happened… A shudder spread over my shoulders and up my neck to my hairline, as if it was happening again. But I glanced around, and there was nothing unusual there. Just the girls staring and talking. As if a year wasn’t enough time to find a different topic to obsess over.
The truth was that they didn’t avoid me because Leon preferred my company over theirs but because he—besides Jo—was the only one who didn’t care that after being relatively sociable and easy to be around, from one day to the other, I had turned into a distracted odd-ball who stared into blank spaces, on the constant watch for more of them—souls. I liked to think of them as souls. It was easier to give them the name rather than something from a horror movie.
Leon had seen them, there at the accident, too. I wasn’t crazy. Just—preoccupied in my mind. And on constant guard of drifting back into those memories.
I thought of Leon’s smile and felt the cold on my neck fade.
“Laney?” Jo’s voice and uneven breathing brought me back to the present.
I nodded. Everything was fine. Nothing to be afraid of.
With a few strong kicks, I launched myself into a faster pace, waving Jo along with me.
She gave a grin of relief as I acted normal, and she ran with me.
The next day, after school, Leon walked me to his pickup, playing with the car key … and oddly silent.
He had been thoughtful most of the day since he’d picked me up in the morning. He hadn’t grinned or winked. His humorous side had not yet shown today even when I had doodled weird animals on my notebook during classes—something that usually entertained him.
There was a frown on his lips that was highly unusual—even for his worst days—as he unlocked the door and watched me climb in and settle in the passenger seat. He closed the door behind me and reluctantly got in the car.
“We don’t need to go,” I told him, wondering if he would talk to me if I asked what was wrong.
He glanced at me with a look that was almost offended and started the car without taking his eyes off me. “That’s the only thing I am looking forward to today,” he said with a half-smile. “You don’t want to rob me of our afternoon, do you?”
Returning his smile, I shook my head. “Not if I can help it.”
For a moment, there was something in the air … an electric current as he held my gaze, frown dissolving entirely into a full-lipped smile.
“Not if I can help it, either.” He slid one hand off the steering wheel and took mine from my lap where I was clasping my backpack. “Ready?”
I nodded, letting him, squeezing my fingers not affecting me. Friends. He was my best friend and confidant. The sensation in my palm as he touched me didn’t mean a thing.
At least, that was what I told myself.
Leon didn’t let go as he steered the car out of the lot, taking us right to the main road that took us out of the small town that had become my mother’s and my refuge. The warmth of his fingers wasn’t something I wasn’t used to. Just the feeling of his skin on mine triggered something today—
For a while, I watched the old houses as we passed out of the town, the white fences of the farms, the meadows dotted with horses … it was a beautiful, peaceful place that was just right for my mother and me.
“What are you thinking?” Leon leaned over just a bit as if he was asking me to share a secret, his face still holding the smile from before as he glanced at me with interest.
I shrugged. “How beautiful it is here,” I told him the truth.
He nodded and fell silent again.
So I studied him from the side—the white-blonde hair, the dark lashes, and sun-kissed skin. I frequently forgot that my best friend was also the most beautiful boy in my high school. Watching him drive in silence, focused on the road, and with his smile gradually fading into the pensiveness from earlier, I nodded at my own assessment. He truly was.
But his quietness was new. Even after the accident, when we had made the pact not to speak about what we had seen on the street, he had resumed his cheerful nature quickly—trying to be happy enough for both of us, it sometimes seemed.
“What are you thinking?” I asked, forcing nonchalance into my tone.
He glanced at me and met my gaze for a fraction of a second before turning back to focus on the street.
He didn’t speak until we made it to Towson where he pulled into the parking lot at a bookstore near the city center. There, he gave me a long look, cutting off the engine and turning to face me as he spoke, “I don’t know if I should tell you this, but…” He let his voice trail off, his eyes lingering on mine, drinking in the questions in them.
“Tell me what?” I prompted, my body suddenly very much aware that he had never let go of my hand.
His fingers closed more tightly around mine, his gaze lost. “I shouldn’t,” he came to his own conclusion and reached for the door, letting my hand slide out of his grasp as he unfolded from the car.
I followed his lead, for once frustrated with my best friend. We didn’t have secrets. That was the whole point of our friendship. We had gone through the same shit last year. We had gotten over it together even if we had never truly talked it through. We had both seen dead people, and I wasn’t speaking about the corpses—those, too—but about the essence of the people who would never again wander the earth.
Leon had taken me away from the accident so fast that I couldn’t tell what had happened to those souls. If they had simply dissolved into thin air, if the ground had opened beneath them and swallowed them; I would never know. Maybe it was best not to know. It allowed me to hope for something better after this life.
As we walked into the bookstore, his face had smoothed over, his smile back in place as if he had never tried to stammer words he wasn’t ready to speak.
Chapter Five
Cas
Her breathing was l
ow, labored, silver-gray hair pasted to her sweating forehead, heart struggling with every weak beat as it galloped toward the certain end.
It would be moments, mere seconds before it was over. I watched her, my breathing half-speed of hers, taking in her features, the wrinkles around the eyes that spoke of the happy moments of her life, and the stark, edged lines between her brows that told me she had spent a majority of her years worrying. Each line told a story, each experience, each thought, positive or negative, permanently marked on her face. An interesting face for sure. And one that had hidden secrets over the span of decades.
I couldn’t say I enjoyed waiting for her heart to stop beating, but, most certainly, it was better than being the one I was going to take.
Her heartbeat stuttered.
Any second now.
It was early in the morning, the nursing home quiet except for the muffled voices in the staff room where the night nurses were handing over protocols to the day shift. I smiled as I realized I could as well have been in my visible form, and no one would have seen me but my target.
A few more thuds, and Mrs. Parker’s heart would stop for good… or for bad if she came with me.
Surprisingly, none of the others had appeared. Others meaning the ones who ensured a good soul went to heaven. While I—
Mrs. Parker tore open her eyes and looked at me, right at me. Not the wall behind me, or the ugly, eggshell-and-pink curtain, but right at me.
I froze. Turning to see if I had missed a human, if someone had snuck past me as I had almost dozed off, waiting for her to come around.
Her eyes widened as she recognized me for what I was, and her lips trembled as if she was going to say something—not scream but tell me something, let me in on a secret…
Her heart faltered, and her last breath left her a moment later, eyes still staring … and staring.
I squared my shoulders and got out of the chair where I had been lounging for the past hour. Time to get ready for work.
With a glance around, I made sure there was no one else there to claim her soul. Even if the old lady might deserve to go with one of them rather than with me—at least, to give her a choice—none of the Lightbringers had come.
I didn’t know about her life, but it was likely that she hadn’t done all bad.
I glanced at the clock on the wall. 7:39 AM. It had almost been a minute when finally one of them showed up. A boy hardly eighteen, dark eyes ferocious as he noticed me standing by the woman’s bed.
From the way his eyes locked on mine as he stalked up to me, I knew what he was, that he saw me.
“Lightbringer,” I greeted him, a common courtesy among our kind.
He nodded in return, not half as civilized as our relationship with the other side usually was.
“I was wondering when one of you would show up.” I straightened, my eyes drifting back to the woman whose struggle was over—at least the struggle of her body. Her soul was still there, hovering within the tissues of her dead flesh.
The Lightbringer stepped to the other side of the bed, squaring his shoulders, shaking back his ridiculously blond hair. With a quick look, I assessed whether he was a real opponent if it came to a fight.
Wearing a loose white shirt, faded jeans, he was fashionable, young, good looking, I had to admit. But the expression on his face was nothing like the other Lightbringers I had met. There was more about this soul than just wanting to outsmart a Shadowbringer. For him, this was personal.
“I’ll let you take the next one, kiddo.” I smirked at him and was ready to breathe upon the old lady, flushing her soul out of the lifeless body where it seemed to be cowering, waiting, reluctant to meet its fate—whether it was to go with the infuriated Lightbringer or me.
“No.” His tone was dark—the opposite of the shiny bright strands dancing on his forehead—as he held my gaze, leaning in himself, ready to hijack the soul if I dared breathe.
“Okay, the next two,” I offered playfully, no longer interested whether this soul deserved to go to hell or to heaven but with annoying the Lightbringer who seemed so prone to letting the situation escalate. My code bound me to not attacking unless I was attacked. It was the one thing that kept the peace between the two sides of the afterlife.
Negotiating for a soul, however, was something that was as common among us as it was for humans to bargain for goods in a market.
“No.” His eyes were a dark shade of brown and hard as stone as he answered.
This Lightbringer wasn’t ready to bargain.
I stared him down, inhaling deeply, readying myself to do my task regardless of what the boy’s claim on the soul was. I had been there first, sent to harvest the old lady and carry her back to the fiery pits of hell. So here I was. That boy wouldn’t get in my way, not unless he was ready to give something up for it.
Chapter Six
Laney
It was about the one-millionth time I wished the clock would stop ticking so I could spare myself walking out into the first truly cool morning of this fall—
This time it did.
I started from the bed to check on the antique alarm-clock on the plain wooden nightstand, hardly believing my own eyes.
“Shit,” I whispered as I hit my toe on the stack of books beside my bed, and I crouched down to find myself sitting on top of Wuthering Heights.
I would apologize to the book later, but for now, all of my attention was captured by that second hand, which no longer was doing its job.
My hands were shaky as I picked up the heavy metal piece and reached behind it, fingers searching for the small wheel that allowed me to adjust the time and then further up to the bigger, wing-shaped thing that was meant for restarting the clock when it died.
I twisted and let go, expecting the second hand to pick up its duty at release.
But it sat still as the dead.
At 7:38 AM.
I cursed again as I realized that I had almost as much time to get to school as it took to drive half the distance there. Being late wouldn’t help the unnoticed entrance I’d been planning.
“Breakfast, Laney!” My mother’s call—the same urgent call as any morning—made me abandon my little project and aim for the closet instead.
“Coming!” My jeans were still only half-buttoned as I rushed down the stairs, stumbling over a laundry basket and stack of newspapers.
Mom had a bowl of cereal ready for me, and my hands, just having finished the buttons on my pants, darted out to grab it when Mom’s phone rang and I glanced at the clock above the kitchen table.
I halted. 7:38. It was 7:38 there too. It should at least be 7:43.
Mom’s lovely face turned to stone as she listened intently.
“What is it?” I whispered to her without failing to keep an eye on the clock. The second hand wasn’t moving; the minute hand wasn’t moving.
Mom shook her head, nodded, and then she lowered the phone just in time for me to see who the caller was before they hung up.
“Gran passed away.” Mom’s features were smooth, frozen, no tears freeing themselves—yet.
But I could tell from the way she pulled on her short, coffee-brown hair that she was using her lawyer mask to keep her emotions contained.
And while she remained the image of serene composure, my own eyes grew moist.
“Let’s go,” she ordered, and I put down my bowl to pick up my jacket, forgetting 7:38 AM as we walked out the door to see my grandmother for one last time.
We were out the door and in the car within a minute and then on the road, winding through the morning traffic.
My stomach tightened at the thought that I had missed my last afternoon with Gran to go book shopping with Leon. Leon whom I saw every day at school, who was available any time, night or day if I needed him. And Gran … I had stood her up for him.
I pulled my phone out, texting Leon that I would be late for school today, and shoved it back into my bag. Even if Jo would wonder where I was if I didn’t show up tod
ay, she wouldn’t call before the lunch break to check in. But Leon … he would probably walk out of the school by the end of the first class and drive through the town until he found me if I didn’t let him know I was all right. That was how protective he had become since that accident. Even if we hadn’t been scathed.
“It’s okay, Laney,” Mom said and rested her hand on my forearm as she drove, her face still calm and composed. “I’ll call the school for you later and let them know you’re not coming in today.” Her voice was still that of the lawyer, her words almost cold as if there weren’t any emotions under that calculated face of hers. It was her protective mask. The mask that got her through the day when she negotiated for clients when she fought their battles. When she was the strong, independent woman she had chosen to be.
And she was the best. I could tell from her stories. She won for a living.
I swallowed, watching her brave face and wishing I had only a fraction of that courage.
Mom pulled into the parking lot at the nursing home and took a deep breath. “We can do this,” she said and gave me a look with her electric blue eyes—the same color as mine. The same as Gran’s.
I nodded. And something other than the sorrow of losing Gran crept up on me as Mom got out of the car and we headed to the yellow doors, Mom breaking into a jog as if being there a minute or two sooner would make a change. As if Gran wasn’t already dead. As if we could somehow save her. Fear filled me. Fear that seeing a dead body meant seeing a soul.
Wrapping my arms around my torso to brace myself for what awaited us inside the building, I followed Mom as she picked up her pace so she wouldn’t have to face Gran alone. So I wouldn’t walk in there alone.
Mom’s mask had crumbled by the time we crossed the threshold, and when the nurse welcomed us with a grave face, tears were running down her rouge-blushed cheeks. I looped my arm around my mother’s and gritted my teeth against the fear—and the grief that was already filling my body head to toe. Mom needed me.
Torn: A young adult paranormal romance (Breath of Fate Book 1) Page 3