Lies in the Dark

by Robert J. Crane

  Lockwood paled as he stared up into the sky after the shimmering lights.

  “Mill!” I called, questions about what had hit us momentarily forgotten. I whirled around and stuck my head inside one of the broken windows. “Mill, are you all right?”

  “Oh, I’m fine,” I heard in response, though his voice sounded muffled. “For now.”

  I sighed, then turned back to Lockwood. “I don’t—” I started, gazing around. The limo was trashed, engine smoking. “This is just—”

  Broken glass glittered in the street. Blood was now streaked up and down my arms like some kind of bizarre tattoo.

  “I’m …”

  Lockwood turned and walked back toward the front of the limo.

  “I don’t even understand,” I said. “Was this Draven? Did Draven hire miniature light drones to dive bomb us?” I picked my way over the glass back toward the limo, staring at it. Holes everywhere. “Or were they like … vampire homing bullets or something?” I ran my hand over the damaged paint, the dented metal.

  I looked at Lockwood. His face was slack, his bright green eyes staring at the sky. He looked sad. Or afraid.

  Or maybe a little bit of both.

  I felt a flash of fear. “Lockwood …? Lockwood, they almost got Mill. A little more sunlight, and your boss would have gone poof.”

  Nothing from him. He just stood there, staring, white as a passing cloud.

  “Okay, I’m a reasonable person,” I said, walking over to him. He wouldn’t look at me. “All those ideas are ridiculous, right? But what I want to know about the lights is … how were they so strong? Why did it feel like they had a mind of their own?” I stopped in front of him. “And why did they leave when you went after them?”

  Of course it hit me as I stood there, looking at his face. It wasn’t blank, wasn’t controlled, wasn’t calm, wasn’t …

  It wasn’t Lockwood.

  Not the usual Lockwood, anyway.

  Those lights weren’t here for Mill.

  Or for me.

  Draven hadn’t sent them.

  They were here for Lockwood … and the look on his face told me that whatever they’d come for … he knew exactly why.

  Chapter 3

  “Lockwood?” I asked.

  The hood of the car was smoking, the hiss penetrating the quiet calm of the surrounding neighborhood. A few birds called to each other in the trees, entirely unconcerned about our predicament. Or, apparently, the screaming nuclear bees that had been buzzing around moments before.

  He finally looked down at me, worry lines prominent on his face.

  “Lockwood,” I asked. “What’s going on?”

  He cleared this throat.

  “You and Master Mill need to leave,” he said. “Of course, I must remain here to deal with the police. I am sure that they have been called.”

  I stared blankly at him. He just completely ignored my question.

  “But—”

  “Master Mill needs to get out of the threat of the sun,” Lockwood said, a little more sternly. “Here, take my jacket. Ensure he is entirely covered before he gets out of the vehicle. But you must hurry.”

  Sirens had started to sing in the distance.

  His eyes were clear, the uncertainty, the blank staring, gone. “You don’t have much time.”

  With one more lingering glance over my shoulder, I ducked back into the limo for Mill.

  “Come on, we have to hurry,” I said as I stooped back inside. I winced as my hands found more pebbled glass. It stung. “The police are on their way.”

  “Fabulous,” Mill said. “Think they’ll give me one of those blankets they’re always giving people at emergency scenes?”

  “Not until you’ve already combusted after the ambulance attendants haul you out of here,” I said, and tossed Lockwood’s jacket to him. He wrapped his own around his head, buttoned his shirt all the way up, and then pulled Lockwood’s jacket on, shoving his hands inside.

  I shuddered. I knew that Mill didn’t need to breathe, but seeing his face completely enclosed in his jacket made me take deep breaths, reminding myself that I wasn’t constrained the same way. Even still, I felt a sympathetic wave of dizziness at the claustrophobic nature of his current predicament. “Ready?”

  “Let’s get this over with,” he said.

  I led him out of the limo, my hand underneath his arm and pulled him toward the sidewalk. Our shoes crunched on the glass as we walked away, and I tossed a look over my shoulder at Lockwood.

  He was just standing there, staring into the distance again. Wasn’t looking at us, either, he was just …

  Staring. Lost in thought. And the look on his face …

  He had something very serious on his mind.

  “What was that about?” I asked as I started to lead him up the street, away from the accident. I tried to walk quickly, but not so quickly that we looked guilty. Who was I kidding? Mill was wearing a suit as a ski mask; there was no way he looked like anything other than a prisoner heading to the gallows, about to be hanged.

  “I’m a vampire, blindfolded and being dragged along a sun-drenched Florida street at midday,” Mill said, voice muffled by the suit wrapping him. “All I know is that I’m seriously questioning my decision to skip sleep for this today, and not just because I was crabby before.”

  I found the shade of one tree, and paused as I looked around. Where in the world was I going to take him? We were in the middle of suburbia, a well to do neighborhood with nothing but nice houses and small fenced in backyards around. There were very few trees for shade, no alleyways to hide in.

  We were out in the open, and we were going to be seen.

  “Order me an Uber, will you?” he asked, his voice muffled. He shifted his body toward me, jutting his hip out.

  “What?” I asked, looking up at him.

  “Grab my phone. It’s in my pocket.”

  “Uh …” Until now, all we’d done was kiss a little, and I felt a little awkward sliding my hand into his pants pocket, but this wasn’t the time for being bashful.

  I pulled out the phone, sure that Mill could hear my heart thundering against my chest with his superior vampire hearing. “Got it.”

  I clicked it on and froze when I saw the time.

  3:25.

  I swore, loudly enough that everyone in every house down the street probably heard me.

  “What?” Mill jumped, head turning inside the jacket-hood. “Are they coming back for us?”

  “No, I’m ten minutes late,” I said, my hand knotting in my curls in frustration. “My mom is going to kill me. Literally kill me.”

  Mill let out a sigh of relief … or possibly exasperation. “Probably more like figuratively. Let’s deal with one issue at a time.”

  “Mill,” I said, clicking the button to bring his phone back to life after it had timed back to black screen, “I’m covered in cuts and blood again, and I’m ten minutes late. How am I going to explain this and keep her from either literally or figuratively killing me?”

  “Cassie—”

  “Why does this keep happening to—”

  “Cassie!”

  I gulped. “Right. Uber.”

  I opened the app and ordered a driver that was closest. Thankfully, there was one only a few miles away.

  “They should be here in five,” I said. I was going to be at least twenty minutes late.

  “Thank you,” he said.

  I looked up. The tree’s branches overhead were blocking most of the sunlight, so it was likely that we were safe for a few more minutes … as long as Mill didn’t let even a fraction of his skin show, and strong gusts of wind didn’t shake the branches and send more light down on us.

  Just down the road, I could see the limo, unmoving, steam billowing out from the hood. Lockwood had pried it open, and was staring over it.

  “I wonder what sort of story he is going to come up with for the cops?” I asked as I watched him try and clear the air in front of him as he peered at
the engine.

  “Lockwood is pretty resourceful,” Mill said. “He’ll come up with something. I don’t mean to keep harping on it, but I’m kinda burning here. How far away is that Uber?”

  “Just a few blocks,” I said.

  The sirens were growing louder, and I frowned.

  “What was all that about?” I asked again. “I’ve experienced some pretty strange stuff with all this vampire business but … nuclear bees. This is the most rational explanation I have for what happened back there.” I touched my curls again. “Oh, man … is my hair going to fall out if those really were nuclear bees?”

  Mill just sighed. “They were not nuclear bees. You’re not going to lose your hair.”

  “Whew. Because that would have been super awkward to explain. Way worse than the cuts. Maybe worse than burning down the house in New York, even—”

  “‘Nuclear bees.’” Mill just shook his head. “Those fae sure were angry, though, weren’t they?”

  I froze. “… What’s a fae?”

  “You know,” he said.

  “Uh, no,” I said, “I do not know. Hence my asking. And also, my worries about nuclear bees. What’s a fae? Is it radioactive?”

  “I doubt it,” Mill said. “Fae. Creatures of faerie.”

  I thought for a second, trying to free associate up an explanation. “What, you mean like pixies? Little tiny people with wings and green hair?”

  “Read up on it,” he said, shifting beneath his hood uncomfortably. Even if he didn’t need to breathe, I couldn’t imagine that it was very pleasant inside that stuffy jacket. The cloth was pretty heavy, and it was not cool outside.

  “Lemme get this straight,” I said. “In addition to vampires … there are actually faeries? This is a real thing?”

  “Uh, yeah,” Mill said. “Why is that so hard to believe?”

  “Next you’re going to tell me there’s werewolves and witches, too—”

  But Mill shushed me as the Uber pulled up along the sidewalk. I opened the back door and helped him slide into the back seat without cracking his head on the roof. The driver watched us with a baffled look out of the rearview mirror. I slammed the door behind me.

  “Your house first,” Mill said, muffled inside the jacket.

  I rolled my eyes. “We should get you home—”

  But Mill rattled off my address.

  I glared at his covered face.

  “You’re right around the corner,” he said as if he had seen my expression.

  The driver arched an eyebrow, shrugged, then pulled away from the sidewalk.

  “That’s a wicked accident back there,” he said as he turned onto the road where my house was. “Did you see what happened?”

  “Not really, no.” I crossed my arms over my chest.

  “So … are you guys like … famous or something?” the driver asked, staring at Mill in the rearview mirror again. “Trying to be all discreet?”

  “Just turn here,” I said, checking my phone. I was now officially seventeen minutes late getting home.

  There were two missed calls from Mom within the last five minutes. A voicemail accompanied each call. I already knew what they’d say.

  I looked down at my arms, where a few of the pricks from the lights were still bleeding.

  Lights? Fae? That was going to be hard to digest and harder still to explain. They were going to be a dead giveaway that something had happened to me. As though Mom needed evidence of my wrongdoing at this point. Showing up late was plenty enough for a jury-less guilty conviction.

  “You should get inside,” Mill said. “And make sure you get bandaged up.”

  Mill was touchy about the sight of my blood.

  “Okay.” I leaned over to try and kiss his face through the jacket, but he dodged away.

  “Fine,” I said, my cheeks burning with embarrassment and frustration.

  It was so not fine.

  I got out of the car and slammed the door, with a strong surge of hurt.

  The Uber driver pulled away from the curb and I watched as the car drove out of sight.

  What was that all about? I could understand wanting to be discreet in front of a stranger but … what had happened between me leaving school and the accident to turn him off to me so much?

  I winced as I touched one of the spots where that—I wasn’t ready to call it a faerie—thing had bitten me. It was tender and enflamed, even as it started to clot.

  I dug a bottle of water out of my backpack and poured it on my arms, the cool water stinging against the wounds.

  I was not going to cry thinking about Mill. I was not going to let whatever that was get to me. Maybe he was worried about Lockwood. Maybe he was worried about dealing with the insurance company. Maybe I had been complaining too much.

  Maybe he thought it was my fault.

  I scrubbed at the dried blood on my arm, pleased that at least some of it came off with the water. But the small scrapes and welts from the lights were still there.

  There was no hiding this. Not from the camera on the porch now, not from Mom in person whenever she showed up. Also … I was twenty minutes late, now.

  I tossed the empty water bottle back into my bag and walked up the sidewalk the rest of the way to my house. I checked my phone. Another missed call from Mom.

  I fell in the parking lot at school, skinned my knees.

  No, that was lame.

  We had to do some experiments during chemistry today. One kid next to me spilled their vial—true, Dillan had been an idiot and nearly burned me just yesterday—and it got on my arms. Maybe that would work.

  No, they knew I had a test today. No practical element, all paper work.

  The bus got delayed because of some freak accident with a limo just a few blocks from here. Like the school wouldn’t contact parents for something like that. Sigh.

  Who was I kidding? She and Dad wouldn’t believe me even if I told them that I had been attacked by faeries and had to try and keep a vampire from bursting into flames. Especially not for that, actually. Which was sad, since it was the truth. Now I had to come up with a lie for this, too.

  I braced myself as I opened the door from the garage.

  And there they were, both Mom and Dad, looking just as I expected.

  I was sure steam was going to start pouring out of Mom’s ears any second. Her face was so red she might as well have applied blush with a paint sprayer.

  Dad looked only marginally less furious, like he was more worried than angry—but still plenty angry. Either way …

  This was not good.

  “I’m sorry I’m late,” I said, falling back into old habits. Again. Lie on the fly, that was me. Apparently always, no matter how much I wished it weren’t the case. “The weirdest thing happened …”

  Of course, they didn’t believe me.

  Chapter 4

  Mom’s wrath was like the end of the freaking world. I thought I’d seen the worst of her after New York when vampires burned down the old house, but no—my deviation from the straight and narrow meant I wasn’t atoning properly or something—and she let loose on me the moment I’d finished spinning my lie.

  Dad wasn’t much better. He kept saying things like “I expected more from you,” and “How can we trust you when you can’t even follow simple rules?”

  I was certain by the end of it that I had forgotten what Mom’s normal tone of voice was. Encouragement? Support? What did those sound like? I forget.

  Not that I deserved anything other than a place to sleep and food to eat at that point in my life. (Their words, not mine.) I was pondering the local freeway underpass as a viable alternative, provided the yelling stopped.

  The sounds of their alternating fury and disappointment and the familiar feel of the hard, wooden bar stool where I sat while they scolded me was getting really old. I realized I’d started to avoid sitting there when I ate my breakfast in the mornings. Negative reinforcement, I guess.

  Once I’d been read the Riot Act suf
ficiently, I was sent to my room. No argument from me; my lies had failed, I didn’t really have anything else to offer, and they didn’t seem to want to press the issue of where I’d been or how my arms had gotten messed up. Probably thought I’d shot a ton of heroin, given how low their opinion of me was these days.

  Slamming the door once I was upstairs, I stared at the four walls around me. Even my room wasn’t a source of comfort anymore. I’d surrendered my cell phone during the haranguing, just like I did every day when I got home, though they usually weren’t here to witness it.

  The lack of electronic entertainment meant I’d managed to read through all of the books I had gotten for Christmas, and my attempt to start journaling was not doing anything to alleviate any of my stress. Rehashing all the ways in which my life was going terribly wrong did not bring any comfort.

  Imagine that.

  I sighed heavily as I sank onto my bed. Weeks of Mill and Lockwood picking me up and delivering perfectly on time, ruined now because of stupid fairy lights wrecking the car. How was this my fault? Sure, I could have just not spent time with my boyfriend, but …

  It was all so unfair. I’d wanted to reform my lying ways, really I had, but vampires—and now fae folk—had kinda ruined my life in Tampa, making it impossible to tell my parents the truth about what was going on.

  I sighed, so bored that I made my bed. I had taught myself how to do it like housekeeping at those fancy hotels. I figured if I was confined to such a small space, I might as well make it pretty.

  Honestly, I was grateful that Mom hadn’t—yet—discovered that I wasn’t actually riding the bus. With my track record and her bloodhound-like nose for my misdeeds, it was probably inevitable.

  I groaned and lay back on the comforter, smoothing it out again. Seemed like Mill and I were going to have to discuss how we were going to spend time together. I doubted we’d be able to sneak around in the afternoon for a while without provoking Mom’s wrath, at least until the heat was off.

  I wanted to serve my time, and then move on with my life. I would do it without complaint. Anything to get it over with.