The Mortal Sleep (Hollow Folk Book 4)

by Gregory Ashe

  And Jesus Christ. The veins. Getting his pump. Getting his swell.

  When I took my next breath, it sounded like a train whistle.

  “What’s going on? Why are you yelling?” Another step up. His head swiveled, and one of those huge arms came up as he scratched behind his head. Good Lord. “Are you ok?”

  “What?”

  “Is something wrong? You sounded upset.”

  “What? I mean. No. Yeah. I don’t know.”

  Those thick eyebrows shot up. He swiped at some of the sweat on his face. “Are we fighting? Because last time, at least I knew we were fighting. And if we’re fighting, I’ve got to start thinking of a way to make it up.”

  “We’re not fighting.”

  Another step up. The heat pounding off him threatened to give me a sunburn. “You’re sure?”

  “We’re not fighting.”

  One of those huge arms wrapped around my waist, tugging me forward. For a moment, I balanced on the lip of the step, and then I teetered forward as Austin hugged me to him. Easily. He lifted me, wrapped me against him, and squeezed until I grunted and whopped him on the back.

  “God, you’re going to put me in a wheelchair.”

  He buried his face in my neck, kissing, his teeth nipping lightly. The hard-on, which had started to fade, came back like the goddamn Terminator. I ran my hand through his short, short hair, enjoying the way it bristled just above my fingers.

  When he set me down, I wiped at his sweat slicking my chest and arms. “Now I need another shower.”

  “You had an interesting idea about that earlier.”

  “Yeah. Well—”

  His fingers looped the elastic at the front of my waist; his knuckles dug into that strip of blond fuzz that was just barely visible. “You’re not going to be a tease about this, are you? You know how I get when you tease me.”

  “Emmett’s here.”

  His hand slackened. Blue-green eyes swept to the door. Then he elbowed past me, taking the last three steps together and launching into my room.

  I flew after him. “Hold on, Austin. It’s not what you think—”

  I expected to find Emmett on the ground with most of his teeth sparkling on the floor around him. I expected to see just how hard Austin could hit after lifting weights for the last four months. Hulk smash. That kind of thing.

  Instead, Austin stood in the center of the room, facing Emmett with an intense expression that I couldn’t quite read. I opened my inner eye a fraction. Concern wisped off Austin. And a last smoke signal of lust. But mostly he was a tangle of noxious green jealousy and frustration, a fever blister that he couldn’t quite scratch. Somehow he managed to keep it from his face, and that worried me more than anything else. I had tried, for most of our relationship, not to read his mind. It didn’t seem fair or right. But right then, I was really tempted.

  “Look at you,” Emmett said. “All oiled up. Those tiny shorts. Abs like a goddamn mountain range. You turned gay six months ago and all the sudden you’re a gym bunny?”

  Austin’s response was to cross his arms over his chest, and a pretty pink blush, almost girlish, ran up his cheekbones. “You’re starting tonight?”

  “Waiting isn’t going to help.”

  “We talked about the end of school.”

  “You talked about the end of school. You talked about waiting. You talked about giving him more time.” Emmett’s grin hooked the corner of his mouth. “Then I heard what happened tonight.”

  Austin’s hand compressed. Knuckles sheared steep ridges across the top of his hand. I waited for it: that fist to hit like an asteroid, the force of impact rippling through Emmett’s smooth, soft skin.

  But even though the pink in Austin’s cheeks intensified, dusky and rosy all the way to his jaw, all he did was nod. He was gritting his teeth like he could chew through the hull of a battleship. But just one simple nod.

  Then he turned and kissed me. Hard. His arms went around me, and he pulled me to him. That kiss melted me. It liquefied me. It was the kind of kiss that in a cartoon would have left nothing but a pair of steaming socks.

  “All right,” Emmett said, and he didn’t sound quite so cool and collected anymore.

  One of Austin’s hands slapped the wall, and he leaned into me, his tongue deep in my mouth, his arm bracing me against him.

  “Cut it out.”

  Austin loosed me just long enough to run his hand down my chest, his nails biting into skin hard—hard enough to sting, hard enough that the kiss took on a painful intensity. He drew my lower lip between his teeth, biting, pulling his head to the right—toward Emmett, I realized, and at the same moment I realized I could hear Emmett, could hear a hate-filled hiss in his throat and the rocking chair squeaking under his weight.

  “Get a fucking room.” It didn’t even sound like him anymore. It didn’t sound like anyone, not anyone human.

  Austin gave one last savage tear of his head, and then he released my lip and pecked me on the mouth. With a grin, he said, “We’re in a room.”

  “What the hell was that?” I said, my fingers pressed to my throbbing lip. On my chest, five sharp red lines ran to my navel.

  “Just a reminder,” Austin said. “That we’re not fighting.”

  Good Christ. I definitely wanted to go on not fighting with Austin. I could not fight with him until my head exploded.

  “Get lost, Austin.” Emmett’s fingers curled around the rocking chair’s arms. His nailbeds were white from pressure. Ugly purple mottled his face and throat. “You agreed.”

  “I agreed to after school was over.”

  “What are you two talking about?”

  “Will you get the fuck out of here? I don’t have all night.”

  “Somebody tell me what’s going on.”

  “Night, bae,” Austin said, squeezing my wrist and heading for the door.

  “Night?”

  “Yeah. He’ll stay until Sara comes.”

  “That’s not what I meant. I’m not worried about—”

  “But I am. Night.”

  And then he was out the door, clomping down the stairs, and a moment later, the front door squeaked shut.

  My lip was still throbbing. Emmett was glaring at me, and I yanked my fingers down, but it was too late. He shook his head in disgust.

  “Don’t say anything,” I said.

  “What? You don’t want to talk about your boyfriend pissing all over you to mark his territory? Fine. I won’t say anything. I won’t say a word. Nothing about how insanely jealous he is. Nothing about how weird that is, how fucking messed up, that he has to mark you like that. Nothing about how he doesn’t trust you, doesn’t even pretend like he can trust you to be alone with me—”

  Easing the door shut, I put my back to it and studied Emmett. The purple still hadn’t left his cheeks. He met my gaze for a moment, and then his eyes cut to the rug, and he ran his hand over his mouth once, and then twice, as though Austin had been on his mouth—or as though he wished he’d been on mine.

  “Let’s get this over with.”

  “Not until you tell me what’s been going on with you.”

  That, to my total surprise, changed everything. Emmett’s shoulders went back, his head came up, and the tension oozed out of him. He looked all of a sudden the way he had when I’d first found him in my room: cold and distant and totally in control.

  “I already said this, but I’ll say it again: no. I’m not talking about that. Any of that. Not with you. Now, sit down.”

  He dropped onto the rug, legs crossed.

  “I want to know—”

  “Tweaker.” It was almost gentle. Almost. “No.”

  “Then fuck you.”

  “Sure, fuck me. But sit down.”

  I sat. My fingers teased out strands from the rag rug.

  “They’re here. They’re here for you.”

  “Jesus Christ. We already talked about this, and I don’t
want people worrying about me—”

  “No, that’s pointless.”

  “—just because. Wait. What?”

  “It’s pointless. Stupid. A total waste of everyone’s time and resources.”

  “Hold on. I mean, it’s not a totally stupid—”

  “Yes. It is. We’re wasting our time.” His dark eyes slashed across my face. “On an ungrateful asshole.”

  “I’m not ungrateful.”

  “Sure you are. For some reason, we all just put up with it.”

  “I’m not ungrateful. I’m really grateful. The things—”

  “Tweaker, I’m not here to argue with you.”

  “You’re here to break into my room. You’re here to eye-fuck me. You’re here to pick a fight with my boyfriend—”

  That iron control slipped, and Emmett growled, “He was the one chewing on your lip like it’s a goddamn dog toy.”

  “You’re here to mess with my head. But you’re not here to tell me what’s going on with you. You’re not here to tell me if you’re ok. So why are you here, Em?”

  I didn’t mean for it to come out like that. I didn’t mean to say his name like that, catching so hard in my throat that I couldn’t get it all out. I didn’t mean for my whole chest to lock up so I couldn’t take the next breath.

  He stared at me. For the second time that day, for an instant, the floor dropped out from under me, and everything went dark, and I was in that funhouse suspended in nothing. Those dark eyes. I was floating in those eyes.

  He had to clear his throat, and that noise broke the stillness.

  “I’m here to make sure when they try next time, you don’t make a total jackass of yourself.”

  I STARED AT EMMETT. He had this annoyingly smug little smile. I was thinking about smacking it off his face. Again.

  “What?”

  “I’m going to get you ready.”

  “Yeah. What the hell does that mean?”

  “I’m going to train you.”

  “Oh.”

  “Genius, right?”

  “Yeah, yeah.”

  “That’s all you’re going to say?”

  “Just taking it all in.”

  “See, you’ve got these amazing abilities.”

  “Right.”

  “But you’re a chickenshit.”

  “Uh huh.”

  “And so you haven’t done anything with them except when you’re absolutely, completely, totally pushed, like, back-to-the-wall pushed.”

  “Sure.”

  “So I’m going to fix that.”

  I nodded. “Let me get this straight. I’m a chickenshit.”

  “With powers.”

  “I’m a chickenshit with powers. And you, with no powers—”

  “I’m really, really, really hot.”

  “With no psychic powers—”

  “Sometimes I know what you’re thinking.”

  “With no legitimate psychic powers. And I don’t trust you. And you’ve shut me out totally, like blackballed me from your life. And you refuse to tell me anything remotely significant about what’s been going on with you after vanishing four months ago. And you’re going to train me to use my abilities, which, by the way, are the thing I hate the abso-fucking-lutely most of everything in my life. Is that about right?”

  He ticked items off on his fingers. “You do trust me, even if you feel like you have to lie about it. I didn’t vanish four months ago—I’ve been here the whole time. And I did tell you something significant: I told you I’m hot.”

  “You need to leave.”

  “Make me.”

  “Ginny already did this, you know? She opened up my abilities. I don’t need any help.”

  “Sure she did. So make me.”

  “I don’t want to hurt you.”

  “Tweaker, you have never, ever been able to hurt me. If you want me to leave, you’re going to have to make me.”

  “If I have to.” I rocked forward, but he pressed a hand against my chest, and the salt on his skin stung the furrows that Austin had left.

  “No. The other way.”

  It was so easy when he was touching me. I opened my second sight and—

  Someone was laughing. Giggling.

  The sound was so shocking that my second sight shuttered, and I stared at Emmett.

  “You can’t, can you?”

  “Shut up for a minute.”

  I opened my second sight again. Nothing. No giggling. No laughing.

  Had I imagined it?

  Another few seconds passed, and then I turned my attention to Emmett. With his skin against mine, it was so easy. I could do it without touch, but it was so very easy this way. So easy with him, in particular, like trailing my hand through water, like there was nothing separating us. I opened my inner eye and reached.

  I had done this before; only a handful of times, to tell the truth, only since I’d managed to unlock the full extent of my power. I could send emotion, trigger physical reactions, search thoughts and memories. Getting Emmett to leave? That was going to be child’s play. I’d give him a scare—just a little one. And then, when he bolted, I’d chase him down. Maybe give him a hug. Just to be sure he was ok. Just to be—

  The memory hit me so hard that I actually felt it whump in my chest. Me. I was seeing me, like I was looking in a mirror.

  No, that wasn’t right. Because I’d looked in plenty of mirrors before, and it hadn’t been anything like this. And anyway, I didn’t look like that anymore. This version of me had dark hollows under his eyes, cheeks stretched tight, face like the period at the end of a nasty sentence. This was me eight months ago. This was me right after I’d arrived in Vehpese.

  And then the rest of the memory began to take shape: the part of me viewing the memory was sitting on a brick landing near a flight of stairs. I recognized the spot; it was the courtyard in front of Vehpese High School. My stomach dropped. I knew, then, what I was seeing. I was seeing the first day I had shown up for school. And I was seeing it from Emmett’s perspective.

  Memory-me stepped down from the bus; Tyler and Hannah scurried past me, tugging at my arm, waving, and then zipping toward the elementary building. Memory-me swung his head in both directions and glanced toward the high school’s front door.

  Desire prickled down my breastbone: a series of discrete sparks, like someone striking match after match. I wanted this big, hulking blond stud. I wanted—

  I jerked out of the memory. Something cold tickled my throat. My eyes focused, unfocused, and focused again.

  I was staring up at Emmett, who had pulled my head back by the hair. In his other hand, he held a knife to my throat.

  “Boom, tweaker. You’re dead.”

  Shoving his wrist away, I fought to control my surge of disorientation. The lust flickered out slowly, and that was a damn confusing feeling since it was directed at me. Thoughts began to cohere. I was going to kick Emmett’s ass. I was going to show him exactly who he was messing with. I was going to give him nightmares that would keep him awake for a week. But through all of that, the only thought that I could really hear, the only one that came through clearly, was: had Emmett really felt that way the first time he saw me?

  “Just like that,” he said, wagging the knife at me. “Dead.”

  “That was a trick.”

  “Of course it was a trick. Do you think they’re going to play fair?”

  “I wouldn’t fall for something like that.”

  “Try it again.”

  This time, I wasn’t touching him, but it was still like parting water with my hand. With my inner eye open, I reached for him and—

  The big, hulking blond stood on the bottom-most step of the bus. It still rocked a little under his weight. He had deep hollows under his eyes, and his cheeks were so tight that it looked like he hadn’t had a decent meal in his whole life. He bounced down another step, and two little kids streaked past him. The way they tugg
ed on his arm, the way he looked at them as they ran toward the elementary building, struck a fire in my belly. Not just in my belly. A line of hot points from my breastbone down—

  I shoved the memory away again and came back, again, to cold steel.

  “Stop fucking doing that.” I knocked his arm away, and Emmett danced back with a smile.

  “You’re dead.” His smile flattened. “Again.”

  I wasn’t going to fall for it this time. I flowed. The world vanished between us, dissolving like sand falling into a strong current, and the blackness of his mind swelled around me. As the last of the world disintegrated, I readied myself for the memory. His memory. Of me. And I was so busy getting ready, so busy bracing myself, that I saw his fist an instant too late.

  He hit me. He didn’t pull the punch, and he didn’t just give me a tap. His fist connected at my solar plexus. All the breath rushed out of my lungs—and a lot of spit, too. The world kept dissolving, but it wasn’t that psychic fade of the other side. This was just a whirl of black because I couldn’t get any oxygen. I slumped forward, gasping, my whole body on fire with the need for air. I could hear the gasping, sucking noises as I struggled for breath.

  Emmett gripped my hair and tilted my head back. I was still gasping. Still sucking. Still spitting, a little, and some of that spit scattered along his face like shrapnel. My eyes were tearing up, and I had to blink furiously to keep him in my sight.

  Cold steel touched my throat again.

  “You’re dead, tweaker. They won’t wait for you to get your act together. They won’t wait while you meditate and hum and center yourself and get all zen with the universe. You close your eyes, you drift away, and they’ll crush your windpipe with a baseball bat, or they’ll put a bullet between your eyes, or hell, all they need to do is give you a little tap like I just did. Now try it—”

  I didn’t let him finish. I swept into his mind. The memory surged up, washed over me, and dragged at me like an undertow. For a moment, the sheer sexual lure of it caught me, the need to fuck that blond stud, to fuck him until those hollow eyes filled up with something real and bright and alive. Me; that’s what he was thinking about me.