The Space Between (The Book of Phoenix)

by Kristie Cook

  “Are you sure you’re okay?” Micah asked as we headed out the door to do laundry. “You look a little pale.”

  “I’m fine,” I said with a sigh. As fine as could be expected, anyway. I really wanted to curl up on the bedding and sleep. To escape the pain in my heart even more than the one in my head.

  “I’d do this myself, but I’m not leaving you alone,” he said. “Not after last night.”

  “I know. That’s fine.” I couldn’t argue with his overprotectiveness anymore. I kind of felt the same about him—I didn’t want to leave him alone in case he was attacked while solo—but wasn’t about to say so. Not exactly a boost to his macho Marine ego.

  When we hit the ground at the bottom of the stairs and rounded the building’s corner, we found Buck’s sedan in the parking area and his reedy frame closing the driver side door. Sammy, who had followed us down, growled lowly, but I gave him the silence sign. His ears remained perked and his eyes alert as we approached the real estate agent.

  “Did you ever tell him you hired me?” Micah asked, keeping his voice low enough so only I could hear him.

  “It’s not really any of his business, is it?”

  “Looks like he’s making it his business.”

  “Hey, there,” Buck said when he turned to see us approaching. He glanced at me, but Micah kept his interest. “Are you looking to buy the place?”

  Micah chuckled, though it sounded a little hollow. Did he plain not like Buck or was he getting the same weird vibes I was?

  “No, not me,” he said.

  “I hired Micah to do the work,” I said, and Buck finally looked at me as if I might matter, though he looked none too happy about my announcement. “He gave me the best offer.”

  Micah’s mouth twitched at this, hinting at a smile, but Buck’s turned down in a deeper frown.

  “I’m sorry,” the agent said, “I don’t really understand. Who are you?”

  I blinked at him. “Jacey. Jacey Burns, remember? I own this place.”

  Buck scratched his head. “Jacey, you say?”

  Micah and I exchanged a knowing glance, then I tried to remind Buck that he knew me. “My grandpa passed away and left this place to me, and you insisted I come down and see it, remember? Well, I’m fixing it up. You can take it off your books and not worry about it anymore. I’m not even sure if I’m going to sell it.”

  Buck scrutinized my face, his brow puckered. “You say you inherited it now?”

  I let out a breath of exasperation. “Yes.”

  “And you said your name is Jacey?”

  “Yes.”

  “Hmm . . . no, I don’t remember. I could have sworn . . .” He glanced at Micah, probably feeling the burn of his glare, then cleared his throat and looked back at me with a false, creepy smile. “I guess I have my properties mixed up. I thought it was this one the Baker couple had bought and stopped by to check on things. You’re not the Bakers?”

  Micah and I exchanged another look. Buck couldn’t have sold this place out from under me, could he? Surely I would have had to sign something.

  “Are you sure the Bakers bought this place?” I asked. “Maybe you should go check your records.”

  Confusion filled Buck’s eyes, mixed with something else. Suspicion? Then he narrowed them as he rubbed at his ear.

  “You’re right,” he said. “I probably do have everything mixed up.”

  He turned for his car and gave us one last befuddled glance before climbing in and pulling away.

  “What a dick,” Micah muttered.

  “I don’t feel good about this,” I said. “It’s too much like what happened with Grace Jones . . . and . . . and B-b—” My throat tightened around her name. I forced it out. “Bex.” I swallowed. “Like the Shadowman said—our existences are disappearing.”

  “Maybe not,” Micah hedged. “Buck’s old and a drunk. It wouldn’t be the first time he screwed up. Maybe when he gets to his office, he’ll realize he made a fool of himself.”

  “Since when did you become so optimistic?” I muttered. He didn’t answer.

  I sat in Micah’s truck while he started the laundry in the washing machines, and when he came back out to join me, I lay across the seat with my head in his lap. I drifted off for a while, strange images filling my head. My heart ached to dream of Bex, to make sure I never forgot her, but she’s not what my subconscious brought. Instead, I dreamt of a strange place with strange people—even I was strange.

  I wasn’t only me. I was us—Micah and me as one, like when we’d made love. One soul, one being. We shared thoughts and feelings and even a body, and although it sounded awkward, I felt as though we lived the most natural, most perfect existence. Like we were beyond human, above the selfish and greedy self-centered ways of this world. We were about us and them. There was no me.

  Micah woke me as he moved to leave, and I sat up to watch him enter the laundromat and move our clothes to the dryer. Although I saw him clearly through the windows and he watched me carefully while he worked, his physical absence left a cold spot next to me. The chill crept over my body and settled like a fog, and by the time Micah returned to the truck, my teeth chattered.

  “I don’t feel so well,” I said as he wrapped his arms around me and rubbed my back and arms.

  “You don’t look so well, either. You’re even paler than you were this morning.” He pulled me tighter against him. “I’ll get you home as soon as possible.”

  Micah did his best to take care of me, but I missed my Bex. Although she wasn’t normally the motherly type, she at least seemed to know exactly what I needed when I was sick or when Pops had died. Probably because we were alike in that way. We took care of each other through our colds and flus that were inevitable while living in the dorms, bringing each other soup, tissues, and cough medicine. Leaving the room so the sickie could sleep, but also knowing when to stay.

  Back at the apartment, I lay on the pallet of clean blankets and finally I dreamt of Bex. She was more alive than ever, laughing with her whole body at the awesome joke she’d played on everyone, but a part of me knew it hadn’t been a joke, that she wasn’t real. I tried to squash that part of me, to push it out of my dream, but she became louder and louder, and Bex’s face drifted away, replaced by Micah’s. We were in the mansion, and he was shaking me.

  “Sorry, babe, but you need to wake up,” he said. “Come on, Jace. Wake up. Now!”

  My subconscious jerked out of the mansion, and I awoke to Micah actually shaking me. Darkness filled the apartment, someone pounded on the door, practically breaking it down, and Sammy ran around like a mad-dog, barking.

  “We gotta get out of here,” Micah said. Whispered. Why?

  “Police!” a voice yelled from the other side. “Let us in. You have no right to be here. You are trespassing on private property.”

  My brows came together, and Micah nodded at the front window. “Buck’s out there, too. You were right. He must have found nothing about you or your ownership, so he brought the police to kick us out.”

  I bolted upright and a wave of nausea slammed over me.

  “Shit,” Micah said, his eyes tight with worry. “You’re in no condition to go anywhere.”

  Chapter 23

  “Get my backpack,” I told Micah, massaging my aching head as the police pounded on the door again. “That’s where I keep the important stuff. The papers from Pops should be in there.”

  “Open up now or we’re coming in,” the police yelled.

  “Right, but Jacey,” Micah held up my backpack, which appeared to be empty, “all of your documents—they’re all gone. There’s only a few sheets of blank paper in here.”

  My heart stuttered and my eyes widened. More pounding on the door jump-started the beat in my chest. The door shook in its jamb. They were
going to bust their way in and find us here with no proof I owned this place. With no proof I was even me. Where had my papers gone? My birth certificate, my Social Security card, all of my college paperwork . . . everything had been in that backpack. My existence truly had disappeared.

  “We have to get out of here,” Micah said.

  Of course we did. With no ID, no proof of anything, the police would take us in, probably turn us over to the courts or something. What would happen to us then? I didn’t want to find out.

  “How?” I asked.

  He tugged me to my feet, and I swayed as the room spun around me before settling into place. Micah had apparently already gathered some of our bags and grouped them around his feet. He picked them up and slung them over his shoulders, then took my hand and tugged me toward the closet. I staggered like a drunk after him.

  “Remember I told you I thought I found something?” He kneeled down on the closet floor and pried up a trapdoor that opened to the hidden space below.

  When the front door shook more violently, I didn’t hesitate to go through the trapdoor. As soon as I landed on my feet, I looked up to find Micah dropping Sammy through the hole. He landed in my arms, but I went down on my tailbone with the force, clamping my mouth shut against a shriek from the pain that shot up my back and across my hips. Tailbones hurt worse than elbows. Micah dropped bags around us, then pulled the door closed as he dropped to the floor. Barely in time. A loud crack of shattering wood came from the apartment above as the police busted through the door.

  Micah, Sammy, and I crouched in the corner of the hidden space, waiting silently. Footsteps above creaked the floorboards, and then more footsteps came from outside. My heart picked up speed again as someone moved close to the hole Micah had created in the building’s siding. A light shone beyond it and seeped through the cracks around the plywood Micah had propped into the hole he’d made, although the illumination didn’t quite reach us in the far corner. Still—shouldn’t the police have checked it out more thoroughly? They simply walked on, as though they found nothing suspicious at all about the bent siding or hole cut into the wall.

  As the immediate threat seemed to lessen and I relaxed a bit against Micah, the space’s play on my mind returned. Although I knew we sat in a dark corner, I felt the mansion all around us. As if I didn’t already feel sick enough, the disorientation made my head dizzy and my stomach churn.

  “We need to get out of here. We can’t stay,” Micah whispered.

  “The mansion,” I replied. “We have to go there. It’s the only place we’ll be safe.”

  I felt that truth as sure as I felt Micah’s strong arms around me.

  We waited for what felt like several hours but was probably only one or two before Micah crept outside to see if the police had left. He returned in less than a minute, moonlight following him in.

  “All but one are gone, and he’s across the street, watching,” he said. “Looks like they impounded my truck, but your Jeep’s still out there.”

  My heart sank. Ownership of our vehicles must have disappeared out of their system, too.

  “They’ll come back for it as soon as they check the tags with the Virginia DMV,” I said.

  Micah nodded. “We need to make a run for it now. Are you up to it?”

  “Do I have a choice?”

  He grimaced. “Not really.”

  We stayed low to the ground as we snuck out of our hiding space and along the rear of the building. Even Sammy walked in a crouch as if he understood. Micah and I angled our heads to peek around the corner. My Jeep stood in the parking area about twenty yards away, and beyond it and across the street sat a marked car under a street lamp. The cop, however, didn’t sit in his car on a stakeout, but spoke animatedly to a man at the bar’s door, his hand gesturing in our direction. He was probably questioning the employees to find out if any of them knew who Micah and I were. Thank goodness they didn’t—not for our sake, but for theirs. If we’d made any friends in this little town, they could have wound up dead.

  Micah held his hand out in front of me, and the streetlight glinted off of my keys. I pointed to the one for the Jeep, and he nodded. As soon as the officer turned his back to us, we ran for it. Adrenaline overcame my weakness and carried me across the overgrown weeds and grass to the Jeep. Sammy jumped in the back and Micah threw our bags back there, too, as I clamored into the passenger seat. Micah peeled out, and I looked over my shoulder—the cop shouted after us as he ran to his car.

  Micah sped down the road and barely slowed enough to avoid tipping the Jeep as he made the turn for the bridge to the mainland. Sirens wailed in the distance, but we had enough of a head start. When we crossed the bridge, my lungs released the breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding. I couldn’t believe we were running from the police. This wasn’t the same as bolting from a party when the cops showed up. We were probably considered honest-to-God fugitives, but it looked like we actually might make it.

  Until a huge, dark shadow flew at Micah’s window. A sound cracked through the night. Breaking glass. Micah jerked to the side, and the steering wheel spun in his hands, careening us off the road and down the embankment. Micah’s arm flew out, pressing me against the seat. The Jeep flipped once. Twice. Landed upside down on the edge of the water.

  “Are you okay?” Micah gasped as his hands already worked at his seatbelt.

  “I think so.” My head ached even more, and the seatbelt dug into my shoulder, but I otherwise seemed uninjured. I fumbled with the clasp until my belt freed me, and I fell to the roof. “Sammy?”

  My mind registered his barking outside of the vehicle. Oh, thank God. He’d already made it out, and he sounded okay, though jumpy. I wasn’t sure if the roll bar would have saved him. As I army-crawled my way out of the wreckage, though, he darted into an alleyway, still barking.

  “Sammy!” I called.

  “He’s probably scared,” Micah said from right next to me. He squatted over where I lay on the ground, not letting me up until he fully inspected me for injuries.

  “Sammy,” I yelled again when Micah finally released me, and I’d pushed myself to my feet.

  A dog’s cry sounded from the alley.

  “Shadowmen,” I whispered in horror.

  Micah moved faster than me, already sprinting for the alley. Sammy came out, though, limping toward us. Relief and exhaustion brought me to my knees, and Sammy came over and laid his head in my lap. Another deep cut jagged through his other shoulder—whether from the accident or the Shadowmen in the alley, I wasn’t sure.

  The wail of sirens grew louder.

  “We have to get out of here,” Micah said. “We’re out in the open.”

  He gathered our bags and half-carried me up the embankment and into the alley Sammy had come out of, my dog limping along at our side. A cold sweat broke out on my forehead—at least one Shadowman, the one who’d probably flown into the Jeep, had just been down this alley—but we had nowhere else to hide. The police must not have seen the Jeep upside-down by the water, because their cars flew right by, red and blue lights flashing across the buildings beyond the embankment.

  “Come on,” Micah said, his voice barely loud enough for me to hear.

  His body threw off a blanket of tension that locked my own muscles tight. I stumbled at his side, my weight too much for my legs to carry, as we made our way to a residential street. Micah pushed me into the first vehicle he found with an unlocked door—some kind of older model American sports car. I was too tired to care what kind. Too tired to care when he hot-wired the ignition and drove us out of there.

  “It’s not very far,” I mumbled, my head lolling against the passenger side window. “I feel it. Right up the road.”

  Micah rested his hand on my knee. “I’ll get us there.”

  “The mansion, right? You know where?”
>
  I dozed off before hearing his answer.

  “Damn.” Micah’s huff of exasperation brought me out of unconsciousness.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked, trying to peel my eyes open.

  His hand patted my thigh. “Nothing, babe. Go back to sleep. I’m going to take us around Tampa Bay to the other side.”

  My eyes finally cracked open—well, one did anyway—to see a huge body of water in front of us, the moonlight glancing off its rough surface as Micah hightailed it in reverse. Several black shapes flew over the water. More Shadowmen.

  The mansion pulled at my gut from the distance, but we couldn’t get there from here. Too many shadows for us to fight, especially when I couldn’t even lift my head from the seat. My eyes closed as I prayed—prayed for the first time since my parents died—that Micah would get us to safety. To the mansion.

  The next thing I knew, Micah was pulling me out of the car seat and into his arms.

  “Are we there? At the mansion?” I asked, my voice thick with grogginess and my eyes still closed as I lay my head against his shoulder, and he carried me away from the stolen car.

  “We can’t drive there,” Micah said. “I don’t think we’re going to make it there at all.”

  “We have to,” I mumbled with a tongue that felt like dead weight in my mouth. Although my whole body felt numb, useless, my heart spiked with panic. “It’s the only place . . .”

  “Shh. Don’t worry. You just need to rest right now. I’ll take care of things.”

  “But—”

  “Over here,” an unfamiliar voice called out, no more than a whisper, though it sounded miles away. “Get her in here.”

  I had no clue who she was or where she beckoned us or if she was even real because blackness overcame me.