“How?” Tess demanded. “By crawling into your lap and moaning ‘Take me, I’m yours?’”
Elizabeth choked on her drink. “Wait, what happened?”
Maybe bowling wasn’t such a bad idea. I slid out of my chair as Tess filled her in. The lights lowered as I approached the lane, cloaking the alley in darkness for a split second before everything went neon under the black light and colors danced along the walls in time to the music.
“So . . .” Elizabeth said as I rolled the balls toward the pins. “A demonic, succubus, vampire thing from hell ships you two. Wow.”
“Nothing happened,” I called over my shoulder, grabbing another ball and lining up my shot. “And maybe that was the point. Maybe it wanted me to figure out it wasn’t Tess. If that thing is trying to drive a wedge, then maybe it’s seeing a threat we don’t.” I could feel the heat of Tess’s glare on the back of my neck as my ball sailed into the gutter. “Could you, for one second, stop acting like I’m a complete scumbag and hear me out? I never said it had to be with me.”
“Oh, wow.” Elizabeth took a sip of her drink.
“It doesn’t have to be with anyone,” I clarified quickly. “Medically speaking, it’s just a matter of a broken—”
“Virginity is a complex social construct,” Elizabeth interrupted. “You can’t just look at it from a medical standpoint. Jenny Johnston had tons of kids, remember? Depending on who wrote the ritual or when, they might not even mean virginity in a sexual sense at all. Virgin could refer to blood untainted by a ritual, or a woman who maybe did go all the way, but remained unbound to a man through vows. Culturally, it could be a matter of bases. Even if it’s just a matter of having an unbroken hymen, if Tess can heal the way you say she can, then she may never technically—”
“And we’re officially done talking about my virginity.” Tess held up her hands. “Anything in that book about weaknesses?”
Elizabeth reached into her bag and grabbed a notebook. “There’s not a lot out there on Estrie herself. But separate the vampire, demon, and succubus components and . . .” She dropped a notebook onto the table. “We’ve got a few hundred weaknesses to rule out.”
“What about St—” I caught myself. “Mr. McPherson.”
Tess shot me a confused look. “What about him?”
“He was on to something with the incense. He probably knows more stuff that could be helpful. We should talk to him.”
Elizabeth shook her head. “I already have. He doesn’t want either of you anywhere near the shop or him. He doesn’t want to get on Estrie’s radar. But he did help me make the list. I think we should divide and conquer. You guys work on ways to stop it from your end. I’ll work on ways to keep the sacrifices safe. I’ve got some leads from the book. You said Matt’s next?”
I nodded. “And ready to try anything at this point. I can give you his contact information.” I pulled out my phone. “But I’d avoid Josh. He’s going to be pretty impossible to get to, and he’s not exactly . . .”
“Sane?” Tess suggested. “Stable? Safe?”
“I don’t particularly want to go near either of them.” Elizabeth programmed Matt’s number into her phone. “As long as Matt can read a text and follow directions, I shouldn’t have to.”
“I’ll let him know he should listen to you.” I took the list. “I guess we’d better get started then.”
Chapter 43: Tess
Tuesday, October 4th
DERRICK AND I pored over every detail of Elizabeth’s translation and researched everything we could find on the Estrie, succubae, vampires, and demons. Every second we weren’t reading over that, we tested out potential weaknesses. Drowning, dismembering, burning, or shoving a stake through my heart were out, for the obvious reasons. But I showed up in mirrors, ate garlic with pleasure, walked through circles of salt, crossed running water, and remained impervious to silver, wood, iron, and crosses. Prayers didn’t do anything, but that could have had more to do with our beliefs than the demon. As much as I wanted to go find some devout religious person, there really wasn’t a good way to ask someone to pray my possession away.
By the time Derrick’s mom left for work the next afternoon, we were exhausted and desperate for ideas. So when Derrick said he wanted to try something different and ushered me out to the car, I followed without question.
“We need a way for you to tell I’m me,” I realized as Derrick cranked up the car. “Or rather, for you to know when I’m not me. Or—” I broke off, unsure how to grapple with this whole possession thing.
“Lie to me.” Derrick adjusted his mirror. “Tell me we’re standing in the center of a pit of lava or something.”
“What if it lied about not lying?”
“Then that’ll solve that mystery, won’t it?”
I tilted my head. “Why does that matter so much to you?”
Derrick swallowed hard. “Because I want it to be lying.”
I didn’t know what to say to that, so I studied the shadowed landscape rushing by in my mirror. “We already tried the ‘crossing over running water’ thing,” I reminded him as the car turned into the National Forest and its plethora of bridges.
“I know. Now we’re trying the ‘let’s get as far away from here as possible’ thing.” Derrick fingers tightened against the steering wheel.
“You’re serious?” I sat up in surprise as we merged onto the highway. “Aaron already tried that.”
“Aaron’s timing sucked,” Derrick declared. “We’ve got six hours to drive until moonrise, then a little over two hours between moonrise and the next sacrifice. Math is with us tonight.”
“I’m pretty sure distance isn’t an issue. Remember how fast I got to you after the bonfire? Not to mention getting to and from each kill since? We need to figure out how it’s doing that.”
“It’s a long shot, I’ll admit.” Derrick risked a glance at me before turning his attention back to the road. “But why would it bother making Aaron turn around and drive back, if distance didn’t matter?”
“It took joy in his slow, horrifying realization that he was going to die?”
“Got any other ideas?”
“No,” I admitted.
“Then let’s try this. Something worked for that last soldier—the one who managed to get away. We just have to find out what it was.” He shot me a grin. “I’ll let you pick the music.”
I grabbed his phone. “Well, in that case.”
Chapter 44: Derrick
Tuesday, October 4th
THE FURTHER WE drove from Fairdealings, the brighter Tess got, despite the sinking sun. She didn’t know about the texts I’d sent Matt, making sure he was someplace safe tonight. She didn’t know about the three bags of powdered incense in my pocket. And she didn’t need to.
Seeing her happy felt great and all, but I drew the line when her playlist shifted to songs from animated musicals shortly after crossing into Florida.
“Oh, come on!” She blocked my hand from reaching the skip button. “It has words and everything!”
“Stupid ones.”
“You didn’t think they were stupid when you made me watch this movie every day for a—Unbelievable Skies!”
“Oh, my God!”
“Indescribable feeeeeeeelings.”
This drive would never end. “Tess, I will pay you money, just stop—”
Her voice cracked on a high note, and I gave in, reciting the words in the most irritating monotone I could manage. Tess shoved my shoulder, but her eyes sparkled. I upped the ante, infusing every line in “my” part of the song with whatever annoying technique—shouting the lyrics Marine style, introducing accents, or shifting the words around until they said something perverse—I could.
She kept singing through peals of laughter. I might have sung a line or two in earnest by
the end, but she’d never be able to prove it.
When my alarm went off, signaling half an hour before moonrise, we parked in a beach lot and headed toward a set of wooden stairs leading toward the ocean. Fishing my keys out of the pocket, I dropped them over the railing.
“Were those your car keys?” Tess leaned over the railing. “Derrick! Why would you—”
“Just making sure we can’t go anywhere if the Estrie takes over.” I glanced at the shadowy scrub brushes they’d landed in, barely visible in the dim light coming from the street light above the stairs. I’d find them, eventually. “Come on.” I kicked off my shoes, grabbed Tess’s hand, and pulled her down the stairs and toward to the shoreline, stopping when the edge of the waves licked at our feet.
With a mischievous grin, Tess kicked the freezing water toward me.
“Hey!” I cried, kicking it right back.
She dodged, shrieking, and ran up the shore. Laughing, I followed after her, launching an all-out sand fight, running up and down the beach like the idiot tourists we were.
“I surrender, I surrender,” Tess gasped a few minutes later, out of breath. “God, this is so incredible.” She spread her arms wide, her gesture taking in the whole ocean. “I mean look at this.”
“It’s really dark.” Another few miles and we’d have made it to the populated strip down the beach, but I didn’t want to risk being behind the wheel at moonrise. The twinkling lights from hotels, bars, and the tiny parking lot behind us provided some illumination but not much.
“We could stay here, you know? Find our own little street corner. Set out a hat. Sing our amazing duets. There’s got to be some demand for mangled cartoon lyrics.”
I sputtered a laugh.
“It’s not even a little tempting?” she teased.
“Actually, it kind of is.”
Now she laughed in earnest. “Which part?”
The part where I’m with you. I glanced down at my feet, half buried in the sand. “Why haven’t you asked me what I said the first time? When it stole your words.”
“Maybe I’m afraid of the answer.”
“You shouldn’t be.” I leaned toward her, my lips so close to hers the space between us felt charged. It was like holding my hand over a flame. Her breath blended with mine, and I realized she’d leaned forward, too. Now the only thing between us was hesitation.
Our feelings for one another may have evolved, shifted contexts, but they were cloaked in the familiar. We’d always loved each other. But if we pulled our feelings from Platonic Land to someplace physical, everything would change. Nervous, I cleared my throat. “Can I—?
“Please,” she breathed, and we moved together, lips skirting the border of touching and not. In one breath, we stepped off our safe and familiar cliff and plunged into the unknown. But the fall felt exhilarating.
The sound of the surf crashing against the sand pulsed through us, creating a rhythm we fell into. Fear melted into confidence, sweetness into wanting. Almost eighteen years of history led to this perfect moment. Pulling her to me with a level of suave I didn’t know I possessed, I dipped her in my arms. We kissed so long, my lips went raw, but I couldn’t imagine ever stopping.
Her breathing went ragged, and I pulled away, worried that maybe I’d moved faster than she wanted, but her hands gripped the front of my shirt and yanked me back to her.
This angle was killing my neck, but I barely noticed because her hands moved under my shirt, and I didn’t have the slightest clue what to do with mine. Fortunately, they went solo, acting of their own accord and ran down her slender frame, pulling, lifting her against me.
“Lava,” she gasped. “We’re, uh—” She kissed me again, fingers tangling in my hair. “Standing in lava and stuff.”
“I—” My phone buzzed, and I shoved my hand into my pocket to silence it with an impatient click. “I know it’s you.” I’d memorized her kiss, the way she moved against me, her every breath. I could never be fooled again. Anyone else, anything else, would be a pale imitation. “You don’t have to—I mean, we don’t have to—I’m okay with just—”
I felt her smile and pretty quickly determined if I could make that happen every day for the rest of my life, I’d die happy.
“You’re getting ahead of yourself.”
“Well . . . yeah.”
“I like this.” She kissed me for emphasis. “Let’s see where this goes.”
She didn’t have to tell me twice.
Chapter 45: Tess
Tuesday, October 4th
I FELT FINE UNTIL my back touched the sand. Then all at once, my mind flashed back to Kinlock Falls, where I’d been pinned between a large rock and Josh.
“Tess?” Derrick murmured. He’d wrapped one arm around me and used the other to keep himself propped up. “You okay?”
“Fantastic.” I pulled Derrick back to me, capturing his lips with mine. But my body didn’t buy the lie. My chest constricted, heart pounding in a very different way than it had a moment before.
No. Josh wasn’t going to ruin this for me. I fought past my rising panic, but Derrick pulled back.
“What’s wrong?”
“I’m sorry.” I squeezed my eyes shut. “I wanted this. I don’t want you to think I—I didn’t want to think of him. I didn’t mean to—” A sob escaped my throat.
“It’s okay.” The pressure on my chest eased when Derrick moved off me, shifting to sit in the sand beside me.
“No, it’s not.” I pulled my knees to my chest and brushed off the sand, grateful beyond belief—and more than a little disappointed—we hadn’t progressed to the point where clothing was shed. “Nothing is okay. And I’m tired, I’m so tired of it. I’m so sick of crying and—and reacting and being a victim.” I spat out the word.
Derrick’s phone buzzed, but he silenced it without looking at the screen. “Something happened to you. Someone else did it. That doesn’t make you weak or powerless, or I don’t know, something less. You get to react. You get to process, and—”
“I don’t want to process!” I slammed my hands down into the sand. “I don’t want to just react. I want to do something.” I pushed to my feet, kicking up a cloud of sand in my wake. “But they took that from me, they took everything, and I can’t take it back. Not on any frickin’ level. I want my life back. I want a life back. My body.” I jabbed a finger toward him for emphasis. “My mind, my family. I want to draw a fucking picture without worrying it’s going to turn into some crazy, twisted thing. I want to stop crying.” I wiped the tears off my face. “I want to kiss you.” My voice cracked. “And not wonder if it did a better job than I do. Or remember—” I broke off. “I just . . . want.”
Derrick’s eyes widened in that ‘I’ve got an epiphany’ look that meant he was about to start talking fast, but his phone buzzed before he could draw in a breath. When he hit the button on the side to stop it, I remembered he wasn’t connected to Wi-Fi out here. The phone wasn’t ringing. His alarm was going off.
“Derrick.” I spun toward the ocean, searching the horizon. Silver tipped the waves, creating a glittering path that seemed to lead straight toward me. A moon, missing only a sliver, hovered above the waves.
Pain tore through me. Blinding, white hot agony so intense, I stumbled back clutching at my head.
“Tess!” Derrick moved toward me then drew in a sharp breath, jerking back like he’d been stabbed.
“Derrick!” I reached for him, but my hand passed through him.
Chapter 46: Derrick
Tuesday, October 4th
SHE COULD APPARATE? Oh, come on!
It makes sense. We’d never figured out how Tess got home from the bonfire, or how the demon could be possessing her body while killing off football players miles away. Why hadn’t I thought of it before?
Because it’s
not supposed to be possible. I dug into my pocket and tore a bag of incense open. The wind was with me. When I threw the plastic bag at Tess, the powder flew to her like a magnet.
She hit the ground, her small frame shuddering under the onslaught of the horrible wet, hacking sounds bursting from her throat.
“Tess!” I knew better, but I couldn’t stop myself from dropping to my knees beside her.
Her hand shot out and wrapped around my throat. “What,” she demanded, her face a twisted mask of rage as she lifted me from the ground, “have you done?”
It’s not Tess, I reminded myself when my vision blurred. It’s not. Pain radiated from her hand to my throat. She wouldn’t do this. She’d never do this. Deep within my chest, white-hot throbs of agony stabbed at me with each struggled breath. It’s not Tess. I tried to pry her hand from my throat, but she held firm.
We pulsed in a sickening twist of vertigo that left my head pounding. The world spun and unraveled. Every iota of my being ripped apart and crashed together into darkness.
Seconds later, the world reappeared in Technicolor, only we were somewhere else.
I collapsed onto the ground, carpet fibers digging worm-like indentions into my knees where seconds ago, sand had left pinpricks. What the—? Immense pain doubled me over before I could complete the thought, blood and spittle exploding between my lips.
“Get him out of here!” Elizabeth shouted.
Elizabeth Dare? What was she doing here? Where was here?
Rough hands yanked me back so fast, I sucked in a surprised gulp of incense. Behind me, the creature inhabiting Tess shrieked with rage.
“Did you really think you could get Matt to roll over on me, Hernandez?” Josh Worthington leered as he hauled me over to the nearest wall. “And everyone says you’re so smart.”
I flipped him off half-heartedly. God, this hurt like my insides were being stitched back together piece by piece after being passed through cheesecloth. Was I in Josh’s basement? I glanced around, disoriented. Memories long past filled the room, jarring against the reality of now.
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