The Girl In Between series: Books 1-4

by Laekan Zea Kemp

  “Oh, believe me,” he said, “this is no laughing matter. You’re proof of that.”

  “What happened to the other children?” I asked.

  The Rogues had spoken of the girl in the story as if she’d been the very first Dreamer but Oswald wasn’t telling his version that way.

  “Killed the lot of them, I suppose. The girl was older than the others, presumably one of the first ever created, and the tribe must have attributed her age to the destruction she was causing. After they killed her it probably seemed safer to destroy the children before they got any stronger. But like I said, the legend’s been lost for centuries. Who knows if some got away?”

  “What about the Gilded One?” I said. “Shouldn’t he have been protecting her or something?”

  Oswald cleared his throat, pointer fingers arrowed. “There’s a theory…”

  “What theory?”

  “That she killed him. She would have been the only one strong enough. It’s the most logical explanation.”

  I swallowed. “But there could be another one?”

  “Perhaps. Not likely, though. After the Chief decided to kill the girl, it was probably the Gilded One who was awarded the responsibility. But since we know the girl was tortured in innumerous ways, it suggests that the Gilded One failed, both to protect the girl and to destroy her.”

  “Wait a minute,” Adham said. “If the legend’s been lost, how do you know it so well?”

  Oswald smiled, not sensing the accusation. “I just so happen to specialize in the old and strange. It’s my life’s work.” He motioned around the room even though there was nothing to discover except a stack of empty pizza boxes and unfolded laundry. “Not to mention the fact that the Night Knights’ collective knowledge of history and ancient myths is rather extensive.”

  “Your username,” I said. “Is that some kind of club?”

  “It’s not a club,” he shot back. “It is a very top secret organization of which I am currently treasurer, two years running. Speaking of which…” He sat down in front of his computer, typing rapidly. “They’re going to need to hear of this immediately.”

  I shot out of my seat, slamming a hand over his keyboard. “No one is hearing about this, you got it?”

  He sat back, adjusting his glasses. “But I thought you needed my help.”

  I lifted my hand off the keys, a few of them melted. “I do. I just don’t want the entire world knowing I’m some kind of freak. Let’s just keep this between us for now, okay?”

  He nodded but I could tell I’d inspired some faint suspicion in him that hadn’t been there before.

  “So, um…how do I get rid of it?” I asked in an effort to keep him talking.

  “You can’t, I’m afraid.”

  “Bullshit. There’s got to be a way.”

  “Unfortunately there is no way out of this curse. It’s inherent, which means that it’s in your very DNA. There’s no changing that.” He turned back to his computer, attempting to type on the melted keyboard.

  “Curse?”

  “Well, I wouldn’t call what’s happened to you good, would you? You’ve been summoned for a reason.”

  “What do you mean summoned?” Adham said.

  “I mean summoned as in called to action, as in sent to fulfill unfinished business, as in sent here to save the world.”

  I crossed my arms. “You’re losing me.”

  “If you’re here then that means the Children of The Moon are here too. But whether that’s because they need your protection or because they need to be destroyed, we can’t be sure.”

  “Destroyed? I’m not destroying anyone.”

  “I’m afraid that when the time comes you won’t have a choice.”

  I leaned over Oswald until he looked up from the computer screen. I knew there was something he wasn’t telling us. “What else do you know?”

  The suspicion I’d ignited in him earlier was now a blaze. His pinkie finger moved half an inch, brushing a key on the keyboard.

  “What are you looking at?”

  “Just…old correspondence from someone who knows much more about this topic than I do.” His voice had changed and it made me anxious.

  “When we looked you up online,” Adham said, shifting my focus, “we found a comment you’d left on a recent news article. It was about a kidnapping in New York City.”

  Oswald stiffened, his hands slowly drawing away from the computer. I examined the screen, a small communicator window blinking in the bottom right hand corner.

  “Open that,” I said, all of the false fear gone from my voice.

  He pressed a key and it disappeared.

  I grabbed him by the shirt collar. “What the hell did you just do?”

  He struggled, reaching a hand out and pressing a hidden button beneath his desk. Something exploded from the ceiling, a spark like a light bulb going out. A small box shattered over Cole’s head, his body stunned by an electric current. Adham was over him in a second, skin turned to lava.

  Oswald’s face was just as red, shock paralyzing him as he realized there were two of us. “You lied.”

  “And you just tried to kill us.” I wrangled his hands in my fists, squeezing until he whimpered. “Now, Adham just mentioned the real reason we’re here. The kidnappings. What do you know about them?”

  His lips were pinned tight.

  Smoke trailed from my fingers and I danced a flame to the tip of his ear. “Don’t make me force it out of you.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Wrong answer.” I took his ear between my fingers and he screamed.

  The same feeling that had flooded me when Carlisle’s collar was gripped in my fist came rushing back. I led the flame to Oswald’s cheek, pressing down hard until the impression of my hand was charred against his skin.

  “Roman.” Adham was watching me, a horrified look on his face. “Just take his hard drive and let’s go.”

  “But we’re not done here.” I looked down at Oswald as he trembled. “This fucker knows something and he’s gonna tell us what it is.”

  “No.” Adham’s voice was firm. “Cole’s hurt. We’re leaving.”

  I tried to follow, to even just face them, but Oswald’s pulse was like a pendulum, the life behind his eyes swaying back and forth, begging me to make it black.

  “I’ll meet—”

  “No!” Adham pushed me back. “We’re leaving. You’re leaving.”

  Oswald’s pulse was faint in my ears, the electricity of it letting go of me.

  I took a deep breath, shaking. “I’m…” I stared past Adham, not wanting to meet his eyes, and that’s when I saw a blinking green light on the top of Oswald’s monitor. Next to it was a tiny lens poised right on my face.

  “Go,” Adham said, sensing me starting to boil again.

  When Oswald noticed the direction of my gaze he smiled. “You should do what your friend says and give yourself a head start before that video makes its way onto every news station in the country. I finally have my proof, my Holy Grail. You’re all the evidence I need for those thieves to reinstate my membership.”

  Adham spun. “You’re not going to show that video to anyone.”

  Oswald sighed, smug. “I’m afraid it’s too late for that.”

  Adham sent his fist through the glass of the monitor, sparks flying as he ripped out the wiring. But he never touched Oswald. His skin never changed one degree. As soon as Adham swiped the hard drive he forced me up the steps behind Cole, the three of us running all the way to the car. When I slumped inside that urge to break something was back, except the thing I wanted to break was me.

  “Shit, man, you were about to go all Scarface on his ass,” Cole said, getting into the backseat.

  I slammed my fist against the door.

  “You okay—?”

  “Jesus, Cole, could you just shut the fuck up?”

  When Adham got in the car I waited for him to say something about what I’d done, about w
hat I’d almost done. But he just handed me the hard drive and said, “Tell Felix he should be expecting a package.”

  When I went to dial Felix’s number I saw that I already had a missed call from him. I called back and after two beats he picked up.

  “Roman.” His voice was clipped and anxious.

  “What happened, Felix?”

  “I…” He choked. “Shit…”

  “Felix…”

  “I fucked up! I did…Roman…”

  “What are you talking about?” I sat up straight, feeling trapped by my seatbelt. “Where’s Bryn? Is she okay? What—?”

  “She’s fine.”

  Two words and I could breathe again. “Look, Felix, I need you to slow down and tell me what happened.”

  “It was Dani…I…it was my turn to watch Bryn’s room. I was just outside the door, waiting for the vending machine to free up so I could grab something to eat. That’s when I saw Dani coming out of the elevator with her mom.”

  “Dani was at the hospital?”

  “I didn’t understand it either,” he said. “I don’t know, I guess I was thinking…hoping that she’d had a change of heart. About everything. When I saw them go into Bryn’s room I stayed by the vending machine for a while, watching the doorway. It was open and I heard them talking.”

  “And then?” I said, waiting for whatever had Felix tearing at the seams.

  “And then…” He cleared his throat but it sounded more like a growl. “I walked away. I left them there and I went to go find Vogle. Dr. Sabine was always around and I hadn’t gotten a chance to tell him about that whack job you were going to meet in Roswell. He was in his office, alone, and we talked for a long time while I showed him those articles I’d found. When I got back to Bryn’s room...they were gone. All of them.”

  My pulse spiked. “What?”

  “The room was empty and so was Bryn’s bed. I raced back to find Vogle and on the way downstairs we spotted Ms. Reyes and Dani’s mom in the dining hall. They were throwing away their trash, getting ready to leave, but Dani wasn’t with them.”

  “Where was she? Where was Bryn?”

  He paused. “Vogle and I found them in the parking lot.”

  Chelsea.

  I grabbed the car door handle, ready to hurl myself into a run. “Are you saying what I think you’re saying? She was trying to fucking kidnap her?”

  “She doesn’t remember any of it, Roman, but—”

  “But she was. She was trying to bring them Bryn.”

  “It didn’t work. We found her in time. She’s okay.”

  “No, Felix. She’s not fucking okay!”

  “I’m sorry, Roman. I’m so sorry…” Felix paused, trying to catch his breath. “Dani...she was…” He lost it again. “Shit, does this mean it’s still inside her? The shadow somehow made her do it?”

  I rattled, ready to explode. “I should have seen it. How did I not fucking see it?” I punched the dashboard and Adham startled, swerving, but the harsh sound satisfied nothing. I needed to break something. I needed to do something. “Felix, you listen to me. You keep Bryn the hell away from Dani. You stay the hell away from her too.”

  “But how are we supposed to help her? Roman, we have to do something.”

  “We don’t have to do anything.”

  “Roman…?”

  “I do.”

  “Please d—”

  “And I will.”

  35

  Bryn

  Sam’s hair swirled around her face, the breeze stalled against her. I searched the trees for Sebastían, the earth for some imprint of his hands, anything. But even after almost drowning, his words had been so clear, the memory like the harsh prick of a needle.

  This one’s mine.

  Drowning. That had been his deepest fear, fitting for the flame that he was. Now it was so cold without him.

  “Did Sebastían wake up?” I knew Sam wouldn’t know the answer, but I had to ask, to acknowledge that he’d disappeared right before my eyes.

  Sam just frowned. “We have to go. Whatever you’re supposed to find…” she pointed, “it’s that way.” She took my hand and led me across the clearing, the grass brighter, and for the first time, not reaching for me.

  “Where are we going?” I asked.

  I remembered the dream where we’d found Stassi and then when Sam had led me to Roman after he’d been kidnapped by the Rogues. She’d told me that she only ever found things that were important.

  “I’m not sure,” she said, “but it’s this way.”

  A path sprung up through the trees, leading us down a chalked driveway. The trailer house my mom and I used to live in stood at the edge, my tiny plastic pinwheels spinning beneath the cinderblocks.

  Sam marched up the steps and I squeezed her hand. “Wait.”

  She furrowed her brow. “We have to go in there.”

  I nodded, not sure how I knew, but I did. Maybe because I ached to see it. Maybe because I had this horrifying suspicion that time was moving again and that if I wanted to make it out of here I’d have to start at the beginning. And this, this was the beginning. Of me. Of everything.

  It wasn’t empty like it had been in the dream-state, stripped bare just after our move. This time it was cramped and warm and lived in. The sunset streamed in through the window, dust twinkling over the couch.

  “What are—?”

  Sam held up a finger, ushering me to sit. We waited, for what I wasn’t sure, but the moment I heard the crunch of tires on gravel my stomach dropped. The door pushed open and I could see the liquor in my father’s cheeks. His footsteps made the walls quake and I realized that these weren’t just nightmares anymore, they were memories.

  His eyes glazed right over us as my mom barreled towards him. She pressed a finger to her lips, nodding down the hall to my bedroom. But I remembered this night and I knew I wasn’t sleeping.

  “Where’ve you been?” She took my father’s face in her hands, trying to hold him steady, to make him look at her.

  He did neither, pushing her off of him and falling into the wall.

  “Patrick, I know you weren’t at your brother’s. Where the hell have you been for the past week? You don’t call, you just disappear…” She wrenched the sleeve of his shirt. “Jesus, and then you come home with cuts and bruises. Who the hell are you always fighting with?”

  He was in a daze—annoyed, anxious, but not ready to explode.

  “Patrick, what the hell is wrong with you?”

  “Fuck, Elena, get off it, will you?”

  “You’re drunk. Your child is sleeping in the next room.” She shook him. “Or maybe you forgot that you had—”

  My mother lost her voice as she reeled from the sting, my father’s hand still raised. She brushed her cheek, trembling, and then my father was on his knees.

  “Christ, Elena, I’m sorry.” He reached for her but she pulled away. He buried his face in his hands. “Shit, I’m so sorry.”

  But I wasn’t watching him. I was watching me—small face peering out of my bedroom, a sob swollen in my throat. I felt it then too, sitting there on the sofa, as invisible as that five-year-old little girl.

  My father moaned and with each terrible sound my mom inched towards him. She knelt and he fell in her lap.

  “If I…if I could just…”

  “If you could what?” my mom breathed.

  He looked up at her, his voice barely a whisper. “Say it.”

  “Say what?” she pleaded.

  My father buried his fists in the floorboards, my mom gripping his shoulders, trying to make him stop. I knew the little girl was in the hallway now, crying, but I couldn’t bring myself to look at her. Instead I watched as my father shoved my mom into the wall, her head ringing against a photo of me on my first day of kindergarten. Then he marched back down the steps and out to his truck. A moment later my mom was back in her room and I knew I was back in mine, the sheets wet and soiled as I cried myself to sleep.

  I took Sa
m’s hand, about to drag us out of there when I saw headlights again. I heard an engine cutting off and noticed that the photo my mom had just broken was hanging straight, the glass still intact. The door pushed open and my father stumbled inside in the exact same haze he’d been in earlier.

  My mom rushed out of the room. “Where’ve you been?”

  And then the scene started all over again.

  I turned to Sam. “What’s happening?”

  She looked just as confused as I was. I thought of the vines, of Roman’s voice, of how every time I’d opened my eyes he’d hated me. And now I was stuck again in some ripple of time where my nightmares were tangible things.

  Malleable things.

  I took a deep breath, focusing all of my energy on my father, on his body lying limp on the floor. I stared at him, trying to flex his fingers, to bend his knees, to lift his face. He finally moved but all I could do was watch as he shoved my mom against the wall again before storming out.

  “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.”

  The door was thrown open again but this time I didn’t stay on the couch. This time I stood, bracing myself between my parents. I tried to push my father back, I tried to pull my mom away, but they couldn’t see me, they couldn’t feel me. My father fell to the ground and I tried to lift him up, my hands around his waist. My mom and I both clung to him and then we were both against the wall, my head ringing.

  Because I was invisible.

  I crawled out of the way, my back against the wall, but when I blinked the room was empty again, the night outside just as quiet. I nursed my head, reaching for the door. I didn’t want to be here for another second. But then I heard the rumble of my father’s truck, the front door thrown open just as I pulled myself out of the way.

  But I didn’t want to see it again. I couldn’t. Because it was awful and broken and it made me feel broken too. Because it lived inside me, this thing I never should have seen in the first place, this thing that…

  I stood, making my way to my childhood bedroom. I pushed open the door, my five-year-old self sitting up in bed, blankets tucked under her chin. Her gaze flicked to my shadow in the dark. She could see me.

  I knelt next to the bed. “Bryn?”