The Mortal Sleep (Hollow Folk Book 4)

by Gregory Ashe

  “That’s my point. That.” I grabbed his arm again, and when he tried to twist free, I tightened my grip. “My mom.”

  “I told you about that already, and it fucked you up. I don’t want to go through it again. And I don’t want you yanking on my arm like you want to rip it off.”

  Crumbling the waxed paper into a ball, I popped it back onto the table, and the paper bag rustled as I dug around inside it. With my other hand, though, I gave Emmett another shake. “My mom. She’s like a hundred years old. Maybe older.”

  “She looks pretty good for a hundred.” But his eyes didn’t match the snark in his words; his eyes had darkened to that fallaway black that left me without any sense of up or down.

  “Somehow, they’re staying alive. My mom. The Lady. The ones who can awaken other people’s abilities. Maybe that’s part of their power. Or maybe it’s something they figured out—something to do with the chakras, something they’re just taking advantage of. But it’s not perfect. It’s not . . .” I groped for the right word.

  “It’s not free,” Emmett said in a low voice.

  “Yeah. Fucking yeah. It’s not free. The dust feast. That’s what Luke called all this—all this awakening shit. They’re eating us. That’s how they’re staying alive. They’re eating parts of us when they awaken us. That’s why some of the kids don’t come back, Em. That’s why some of them just disappear. Maybe she does it on purpose. Maybe she gets carried away. But she eats them.”

  His eyes dark and distant, Emmett pried my fingers from his arm and massaged the white-and-purple prints I had left. How bad do you want to know? The words my mom had spoken, the only answer she had given when he asked why she did what she did, froze the air in the room. “Vie, this is pretty fucked up, and we don’t have any real proof—”

  “I know. I know that’s what’s happening.”

  “—and it doesn’t change anything, does it? So she’s hungry. So she’s a vicious fucking cunt, pardon my language, in a way we hadn’t realized before. But it doesn’t change anything. We still have to deal with her.”

  But it did. I wasn’t sure why, but it did change something. It mattered. And I knew I couldn’t force it; I just had to wait and let the pieces fall into place.

  And then I heard the rest of what he’d said. We still have to deal with her. We. We have to deal with her.

  We.

  Then I saw the Ducati’s key on the table.

  “Fuck.” I dropped another ball of wax paper and massaged my temples.

  “Your head?” His fingers found my neck, worked deep into the tissue. “I’m surprised it’s not your gut after you plowed through four thousand calories.”

  “Jesus, it’s really hurting. Could you—could you run down the motel office? See if they have some aspirin or something?”

  His fingers worked a moment longer. His voice, when he spoke, was all sawdust and smoke and uneven edges. “I like this. I like that you trust me enough to tell me when you’re hurting. I like that you trust me enough to ask for help.”

  That put a hot speck of guilt in my belly, but I forced a smile and squeezed his wrist.

  “Stay put,” he said, shrugging on the leather jacket. “Actually, lie down with a cold cloth on your head, and I’ll be right back.”

  I smiled. I tried to look like I had a migraine cracking open the inside of my head. And as soon as the door shut behind him, I snatched the key and counted to twenty. I didn’t even have to get away with the deception; I didn’t care if Emmett saw me running away on his bike. All I cared about was that he was far enough off that I could get away before he could stop me. I counted another twenty. I yanked open the door.

  And I froze. Face to face with Emmett, who leaned in the doorway, arms across his chest, shaking his head.

  “Very disappointing, tweaker.”

  “Get out of my way.”

  “You could have asked.”

  “Get out of my way. Now.”

  “I would have said no, but you could have asked.”

  “I’m not playing with you, Emmett. I’m leaving, right now. Alone.”

  “Tweaker.” He shook his head again, and then he stretched, filling the doorway, his arms braced on the jambs. “You still don’t get it. You don’t call the shots. You never did.”

  “Get out of my way, right fucking now, before I—”

  “I’m going to do two things that will really, really piss you off, tweaker.” A wry smile pulled at his mouth. “Actually, I’ve already done one of them. The other one is going to have to wait until after this is all taken care of. The sooner you accept that I get to do whatever I want, and you’re always going to let me, the happier you’re going to be. Understand?”

  “Emmett—”

  “Understand, tweaker?” The smile was bigger now. The scarred half of his mouth trembled with suppressed amusement.

  “What did you do?”

  He jerked a thumb over his shoulder, at the parking lot. “I used my natural powers of charisma.”

  “For fuck’s sake.”

  “There’s this book. How to Make Friends and Influence People. You should read it sometime. There’s something about saying thank you—”

  “What did you do, Em?”

  “Keys.”

  I slapped them against his chest.

  With an exaggerated wince, Emmett pocketed the keys, and then he tilted his head toward the room where Becca and Jake had watched over Ginny for the night. “Come on, tweaker.”

  When I stepped out into the parking lot, I knew. Jake’s truck was still there. But so was Austin’s Charger. And so was the Impala—Jim’s Impala. And Sharrika Meehan’s Bug. And a boxy silver Lexus crossover that I recognized as belonging to Kaden’s mom. And Temple Mae’s beat-up Chevy.

  They were here. They were all here. I thought about running because how could I face them, how could I face the people who had given up so much for me when I’d brought them nothing but trouble? But I didn’t run. I couldn’t run; I didn’t have a car or a bike or anything but my own two feet. And my mouth pulled into a dry, aching smirk because Emmett wouldn’t let me run even if I tried to get away on foot. I’d run smack into one of those invisible barriers.

  The little motel room was hot with the damp, unpleasant warmth of too many bodies, but the crisp April air that swept in behind me smelled like snow and cut the worst of the temperature. They sat in a shitty attempt at a circle: Becca to my left, her face scrubbed free of the silver eyeshadow and lip gloss she normally wore, looking older—not old, but mature, like a woman instead of a girl, and so, so beautiful; then Kaden, hangdog, giving me a look like all he wanted was to make up and be best buddies again; then Jake, his flannel rumpled from a bad night’s sleep, his fingertips white where he gripped the dinner plate belt buckle at his waist, his eyes not meeting mine; then Temple Mae, who looked at me and only at me, and her eyes were both marked with starburst hemorrhages, and I’d never seen a girl who looked readier to kill; then Jim in a blue button-down and khakis, his hair like autumn, his smile and his eyes frank and warm; and then Sharrika who glanced at me twice before her eyes darted away, and her hands tugged at the Star Trek t-shirt she wore, smoothing it over her hips; and behind me, Emmett, who shut the door with a click, and then it really was too hot, his fingertips tenting between my shoulder blades, not even pushing, just a silent signal until I stepped forward.

  And Austin. Austin was on my right. And he had dark circles under his eyes, and his preppy hair was mussed, and while he hadn’t lost any muscle, his face looked thin, his jawline so sharp it cut the air. The friction burn on his neck looked worse today, and I could tell he wasn’t eating. He wasn’t sleeping. Again. He wasn’t sleeping again because of me. Because of what I’d drawn him into.

  “Hi,” he whispered in that raspy voice.

  I couldn’t even say it, but my lips moved, and a little smile quirked on his face. Or maybe he was about to cry. I couldn’t tell. Fuck me if I
could tell anything anymore.

  I’m going to do two things that will really, really piss you off. Those were Emmett’s words. But he was wrong. I wasn’t pissed off. I’d seen a documentary in history class. Something about the space race or the Cold War or Christ, maybe it had been about Ron Howard. I had no idea what it had been about. But right then, with all those faces turned toward me, I remembered that Apollo 13 had needed to reach a speed of seven miles per second to break free of Earth’s gravity. And I thought about how gravity was all about things pulling on each other. I thought about how my heart could never fly fast enough to break free of this.

  “I was doing some more thinking,” Emmett said, his voice brushing up the hairs on the back of my neck, and he was speaking to me, just to me, even though I’m sure everyone else heard him. “About this ability of yours.” And his mouth was close behind me now; his breath hot on my neck, cold on my ears, tickling sensitive skin. “About you, and about all those times it seemed like your ability was strongest, clearest, closest to you.” And then his words really were a whisper, so quiet they really were just for me. “About the lake. About the first time I felt you touch me, really touch me.”

  Then he squeezed between Becca and me, and his eyes swept around the circle, and on everyone’s face there was something I thought I should have recognized. It was brightest in Emmett’s, in Becca’s, in Austin’s—and, surprisingly, in Jake’s and Jim’s. It was a glitter in Temple Mae’s furious eyes. It was a gleam like light off an old shoe in Sharrika’s expression. It was even there in Kaden’s face.

  “Please don’t do this,” I said. My eyes stung, but I didn’t dare move, didn’t dare bring my shoulder up so I could scrub my face into my shirt, didn’t dare blink because it was happening, this was happening, and it was maybe the one thing in the world I couldn’t bear. “Please.”

  I thought I saw pity in Emmett’s eyes. But then they were that pitch black again, swallowing me up, leaving me without sense of flying or falling, and he said, “Your ability is strongest when you feel loved. When you’re connected to people you love. And people who love you.”

  The tears were running freely down my face now. I jerked as though someone had driven a pin into me, like some voodoo doll was being stabbed out in the universe, but no one had touched me. Becca was crying too, pressing her fingers under her eyes, her shoulders shaking.

  “That’s why we’re here, Vie.” Emmett looked at all of them again. “We love you.”

  I jerked again, so hard this time I almost tumbled over. It was like a sword going up at an angle, shearing through my gut, slicing off the bottoms of my lungs. I wanted to say please. I wanted to say no. But gravity—gravity speared me in place.

  Austin’s hand slid into mine. His touch was dry, calluses ridging his palms and fingers, and tentative, like he’d been taming horses his whole life and knew I was ready to spook. “You can’t go up against Urho alone. We’re going with you.”

  I shook my head.

  “Crack open that thick head, tweaker.” The back of Emmett’s hand brushed mine. “We’re all here. We all care about you. Tap into all that emotion. For once in your life, you don’t have to do it alone.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about. You don’t have any idea what you’re talking about, and you don’t know how dangerous this is, you don’t know—”

  He bent, and I smelled the leather jacket and the soap from our shower the night before, and his next words tickled my ear. “I remember what happened at the lake. Just try.”

  And then he took my hand, and he took Becca’s hand in the other, and Becca took Kaden’s and Kaden took Jake’s and Jake took Temple Mae’s, and on down the line until Sharrika’s dark fingers curled around Austin’s, and Austin squeezed my hand once, his blue-green eyes swimming up at me. He raised an eyebrow, and his lips contracted as though he might say something, and then he didn’t. His face relaxed. His hand squeezed mine once more. And it was that look I’d come to dread, that expression of absolute trust in me. And didn’t he know how fucking stupid that was by now?

  But no matter how much I wanted to deny it, that expression worked on me. It was genuine; that was the problem. Whatever else had happened, however badly I’d screwed up everything with Austin, he still trusted me. No. That was skirting the truth. He still loved me. It was blue-white in those ocean eyes, like a blowtorch burning underwater, so hot that water couldn’t put it out. How was I supposed to walk away from that? Gravity. So much goddamn gravity.

  I could feel what Emmett was describing: a braided cord of power running through the circle—no beginning, no end, because they loved me, but I also loved them. Austin, like a bell struck at dawn. Emmett, like booze on a bad night. Becca and Jim and Jake and Temple Mae. Even Sharrika, who had watched me with calm eyes in the shadows of Emmett’s house. Even Kaden, who had tried to steal my boyfriend, but who had gone into the house of death with me and lived. It thrummed—a bit like a live wire, yes, but more like the tingle of excitement that ran down my chest when Emmett touched me, and like the latent heat in my skin when I lay under the sun, picnicking with Austin; it was more than that, too. That corded power wasn’t one thing. It was a hundred things, some of them I’d never be able to name. And it was so much more than what I deserved.

  On the threshold of opening myself to that surge of energy, I thought about gravity one last time. The way things pulled on each other. The way it kept me in orbit. Trapped me. Held me down. It was now that I had to decide. Not about Emmett. Not even about Austin and the coals, still burning, of what I felt for him. I had to decide right now if I would accept this. If I would let their love be a part of me instead of just being a weight dragging me down. Even if I didn’t deserve it.

  It was something I saw on Austin’s face when I glanced at him. He wasn’t looking at me. He was looking past me, at Emmett, and maybe it was because we were touching, and maybe it was because it had always been so easy for me to slip into Austin’s thoughts, and maybe it was just because my brain was running on the same tracks, but I knew what he was thinking. I knew in a way that had very little to do with being psychic and a hell of a lot to do with still being in love, no matter how much I wanted not to be. He was looking at Emmett, and he was seeing the day-old clothes, he was seeing the glow in Emmett’s scarred and ruined face, he was seeing the bandages on the inside of Emmett’s arm and the way Emmett’s hand curled possessively around mine, and even if Austin didn’t know a hundred percent, even if he didn’t know the facts and the dates and times and the places, he knew enough. I watched the realization gut him and lay him open. I watched his face grow transparent with pain, and under the pain, fear and self-doubt and worry.

  Maybe it’s all of us, I thought in a flash. Maybe we all believe, deep down, that we don’t deserve love. Or—maybe not all of us, maybe not some lucky assholes—but most of us. Maybe most of us are just as uncertain, just as frightened, just as desperately hoping that we’re worth loving and that the person we love loves us back. Maybe only a fortunate few of us ever believe we deserve the love that comes our way.

  And even if I didn’t deserve that love, I wanted it. I wanted it like sunlight and oxygen and blood pumping in my veins. Austin’s eyes flicked to mine. I could dive into them over and over again. You can’t stop being in love, I thought with a shock like a heart attack. You can’t stop no matter how bad it hurts sometimes.

  I opened up and let the twining current rush into me.

  It was power like I’d never dreamed of. I was in their minds, and I was in my body, and I was on the other side all at the same time. Their thoughts were a river rushing past me. Their heartbeats pulsed behind my eyes. Their worries, their fears, their aches. Sharrika Meehan’s sore tooth. The slow heat of Jim’s attraction to me like a rug burn—and the way his eyes jinked up and left when I glanced at him was confirmation. And Emmett, something that Emmett was struggling to hide from me, like a rug pulled over a trap door and if I wanted, if I ev
en considered it, I could rip back the rug and see what he was hiding.

  All their secrets laid bare, all their dirtiest deeds, all their shame, all their hope, all their desires.

  Last year, when I had first begun exploring my abilities—with Emmett’s help, even back then—I had visualized a narrow passageway in my mind, and a door blocked by a jumble of rubbish. That had helped me to understand how I was connected to people. Now, I visualized something different: a bank vault. And I stowed these thoughts and dreams and secret selves inside the vault and spun the lock and sealed them away. Because I was an asshole, but I wasn’t so much of an asshole that I would strip the people who loved me of their privacy.

  “Well,” Emmett said, his hand popping free of mine, those fallaway eyes wrinkling at the corners. “That was a terrible idea.”

  “Did it work?” Austin said. Then he breathed out, pressing both hands over his mouth, and his eyes spun in a wild circle. “Of course it did,” he said between his fingers. “Jesus.”

  “You felt that?” I said.

  Jim still wouldn’t meet my eyes, but he helped Sharrika to her feet and said, “You went through my head like a subway car. I need an aspirin.” Under his breath, he muttered, “And a drink.”

  “A subway car.” Becca shook her head; she was still clinging to Emmett. “It felt like somebody shoved the Empire State Building through the back of my skull.”

  I grunted. “I haven’t exactly done that before.”

  “No joke,” Kaden said, screwing himself into his seat, his eyes ping-ponging off Austin.

  “It’s not like I’ve had practice.”

  “Trust me,” Jake said, chafing Temple Mae’s hand as though she might be suffering frostbite. “We know.”

  “Well, I’m still figuring out—”

  “Tweaker,” Emmett said, massaging one side of his head with his free hand. “Have you ever heard a brass band go through a wood chipper?”