The Girl In Between series: Books 1-4

by Laekan Zea Kemp

  She dropped the blankets, but instead of asking me who I was, instead of saying anything at all, she reached for my face. She pinched my cheek, examining my dimples before tracing my left eyebrow. I examined her too—the fresh scab on her elbow where she’d fallen off her bike, the strands of blonde still twisting in her hair from birth, her green eyes glistening. I wasn’t sure if she knew who I was or what I was doing there but when I smiled so did she.

  “You’re brave,” I told her. “And everything is going to be okay.”

  She nodded, her innocence like a dull blade in my chest. All I wanted was to curl under the blankets with her, to shield her, and make her forget. But suddenly the quiet hit me, flooding the room until we were both swaddled in it. Bryn sank back under the blankets, the two of us staring at each other as we waited for the door to slam or for the sound of my father’s truck. It never came. The quiet remained, so deep that it tugged Bryn’s eyes closed and then she was sleeping.

  36

  Roman

  As soon as I got home, I threw all of my clean clothes into a duffel bag, whatever cash I had sprawled out on the bed. I counted every dollar and every cent before considering just stealing my dad’s car and heading straight to Austin.

  There was a crash downstairs and I hid everything beneath a blanket before following my dad’s groans to the garage. He chucked a bucket of scraps across the floor as the sight of it struck me right in the gut.

  “Who did this?” he growled.

  The word TRAITOR was scratched into the brand new exterior of the GTO he’d been restoring alone.

  “Roman.”

  “I…” I knew exactly who’d done it. And I knew exactly how I was going to make him pay for it. “I don’t know.”

  My dad stormed inside, probably to call the police. But I couldn’t stick around for them, especially after what Carlisle had said about the new investigation into the fire at the quarry.

  I ran outside, jerking to a stop as soon as the cold hit me. The ice flurries turned to smoke and when I looked down my skin was boiling. “Shit!” I swung at the air.

  Carlisle could fuck with me. I deserved it. But my dad? He didn’t deserve any of this.

  The ice covering the pavement parted like a wave, everything around me melting. Sweat painted my brow, steam chasing me all the way to Carlisle’s neighborhood. I knew with Cassie gone he’d probably be alone and I was still itching from almost burning Oswald’s face off, that need to hunt something down not ready to sleep just yet.

  When I reached his house, the window was stained blue, the television humming on the floor. I approached the glass, nothing on the screen but static as Carlisle sat on the couch, just staring at it. He looked dead and it only reminded me that he was. With the shadow inside him it was only a matter of time before it drained him completely.

  Carlisle tossed a hand, annoyed by whatever show he thought he was watching. He stood, scratching his scalp, mumbling something I couldn’t make out. He fell against the wall next to the television, his hands pressed to the glass of a mirror. But when he looked up the reflection was of someone else.

  Cassie.

  She was made of bone too, as frail and ghost-like as my mother and the Roman who’d followed me out of Parker’s party. She wasn’t real but the sight of her still sent a chill down my spine.

  Cassie smiled, reaching up to tousle the hair of Carlisle’s reflection. His head swung back and forth, his mumbling more adamant. She whispered something, her tone low and slithering, but he just kept shaking his head. No. It was the only word I could make out but it was the only word that mattered. Because whatever the shadow wanted from Carlisle, he didn’t want to do it.

  Cassie’s eyes changed and Carlisle shivered, his back arched as a deep red line cut across his skin. He twisted, another lash striking across his back, the shadow carving into him until he was on his hands and knees, begging her to stop.

  Seeing the way Carlisle looked at Cassie, it struck me that she was the reason he wanted revenge. It wasn’t because of the night at the quarry or because the shadow inside him wanted to destroy me—those things only made it easier—but because I’d slept with the girl he loved. I never thought he did, or even could, but the shadow knew. That’s why it was using her face to convince him to hurt me. Carlisle was human, still, and that’s what made him so dangerous.

  Carlisle struggled to lift his face, blood running black into his open hands. The sight stung just as fiercely as the cold and I realized I wasn’t on fire anymore. That I didn’t want to be. Because Carlisle was still human, and rotten or not, he was still fighting to hold onto that. Despite the shadow’s hold on him, he had a choice. What if we all did?

  Carlisle stood and I ducked, Cassie’s reflection still barely visible. She was smiling again, wonderful and wretched, Carlisle suddenly smiling back. He lifted his eyes and there was no bloodstained red or his signature blue but a pair of eclipsed moons burning black.

  I spent the entire night wrestling with every what if and worst-case scenario. I sat by the window, watching through the curtains for Carlisle or even a surprise appearance from the Rogues just when I needed them most. Or maybe my mother.

  She’d warned me that I couldn’t fight whatever was growing inside me. And it was growing. Every time I got angry it coiled around my insides a little tighter. Not shadow or fire but vines. There were thorns inside me, the same kind that had ripped Carlisle to shreds when he’d told Cassie no. And then he’d told her yes.

  I sat on the floor for a while, leaning back so I could see the moon, my cell phone balanced on my knee. When it started to ring it took me a few moments to register the sound, my vision blurry as I scrambled to answer the call. It was seven AM.

  “Hello?”

  “Roman, it’s Vogle.”

  “You. I called you.” I stood too fast and it made me dizzy. “Where have you been?”

  “At the hospital, keeping an eye on Bryn.”

  “Like you should have been doing before?”

  “Roman, please. Let’s not make this worse than it already is.” He sounded more tired than sorry.

  “No. You lost Eve and now you almost lost Bryn too. I never should have left her with you. I never should have left.”

  When Vogle finally spoke again his voice was cold. “Bryn’s mother is staying at the hospital and Felix is keeping a close eye on Dani. I believe he’s been sleeping in his car outside her house. She hasn’t left her room from what I’ve heard.” He let out a breath. “Bryn is safe. I’ll call you when I have more news.” And just like that he hung up.

  The doorbell rang and I heard my dad’s footsteps down the stairs. A voice I didn’t recognize said my name and I stepped onto the landing to see two police officers staring up at me, my exhaustion not enough to dull the shock. Because I knew exactly why they’d come and because I knew I had no choice but to follow them.

  The name on the desk said Detective Hall. He folded his hands, leaned forward and smiled. “Mr. Santillo, how are we doing today?”

  My dad refused to sit. “Not too good. My son’s been travelling and out of the country recently so I’m a little confused as to what this is all about.”

  “Yes, well, we’ll get right to it.” Detective Hall cleared his throat. “About a month ago we received an anonymous tip regarding the fire that was set at the quarry late last year. Someone claimed to have seen a blue Pontiac leaving the overlook that Friday at around three in the morning.”

  “What does this have to do with my son?”

  “They claimed the car was being driven by a Mr. Carlisle Reid and that the passenger in that car was Roman Santillo.”

  All of the air sucked out of the room, my ears popping like I was trapped underwater.

  “When we first investigated this fire,” Detective Hall said, “it was just a petty arson case. We were prepared to slap the perpetrator with a hefty fine and…” he waved a hand, “I don’t know, make them plant back the trees.” He looked right at me. “But duri
ng the community’s effort to re-plant the landscaping there were some…remains found at the site.”

  “Remains…”

  “I’m afraid so. They must have been carried off by the current, which is why we didn’t uncover them during our initial investigation. But when they finally surfaced we discovered char marks and traces of gasoline.”

  “So, now?”

  “So, now it’s no longer just a petty arson case.”

  I could see my lashes at the edge of my vision, everything fuzzy. A body? I sat there, spinning. No. No. No.

  “Roman?”

  I looked up at my dad and noticed that Detective Hall had left the room.

  “Tell me you didn’t do this.”

  My lips parted but I couldn’t tell him what he wanted to hear. I couldn’t tell him that I hadn’t done it. I couldn’t tell him anything.

  “Roman.” He lowered his voice. “Were you there that night?” I wondered if he thought re-wording the question would save me somehow. “Roman, answer me!”

  I mumbled into my hand. “Yes.”

  He knelt. “Did you start that fire?”

  I replayed every moment—following Carlisle into the trees, seeing the tarps, the flames spilling across the ground as he tossed them into the night.

  “No, but I watched him do it.”

  My dad stood, letting out a long breath. “Carlisle?”

  “Yes.”

  He ran a hand down his face. “Thank God.”

  “What?” I stood too. “But I was there.”

  “But you didn’t start the fire.”

  “I didn’t stop it.”

  “Hey.” He gripped my shoulder, scanning the hallway. “Lower your voice.”

  “What for? They’re just going to arrest me anyway.” A dry sob split me in half, but not just out of fear, out of relief—the relief of finally being caught, of finally getting what I deserved. I took my first deep breath since before Bryn’s coma and then I lost it again. Bryn…what was going to happen to Bryn if I went to prison?

  “No.” My dad squeezed me, hard, desperate. “They’re not. They’re not going to take you away.”

  My face found his chest. “I’m sorry.”

  I wondered when I would stop saying it, when I would stop fucking everything up. For my dad, for Bryn. I’d spent all of that time in Germany following the Rogues around, playing superhero. But it was guilt that had forced me to help them search for Stassi and it was guilt that had sent me searching for Dani after we’d lost her. After I’d lost her. And then I’d lost Bryn. Maybe forever.

  My dad clutched my arms. “We’re going to get through this.”

  There was a knock on the door, Detective Hall waiting on the other side.

  “Are they going to question me?” I asked.

  My dad blocked me from view. “Not today. Give me a few minutes to talk with them and then we’ll leave.”

  On our way out my dad asked Detective Hall if he could have a word in private and they both went back inside his office. I followed an officer into a small waiting area, the secretary’s phone ringing every thirty seconds. I stared up at a small television hanging in the corner and tried not to think about what was going on in that office.

  The news coverage showed a small crowd standing outside a hospital in Bogotá, Colombia. A man in a nice suit stepped in front of a microphone, arms wrapped around the plump woman next to him. She looked distraught and I read the captioning on the screen as it ticked along with the man’s mouth. His lips were slightly misshapen, rough scars stretching across his left cheek that looked like old burns. He talked about his son who was seventeen years old. His son who’d fallen into a coma six months ago. His son who’d miraculously woken up just this morning.

  There were other people standing behind the couple, all of them wearing t-shirts that said Sebastían or buttons with photos of him in his soccer uniform. He played for the local university and had been planning on trying out for the national team as soon as he turned eighteen in October.

  His mother finally composed herself, taking to the microphone next. With that subtle shift I noticed the girl standing right behind her, her face just as tear-stained, gold fingernail polish glittering against her cheek as she rubbed at her mascara. But the gold seemed to shimmer, and it was just a flash, just one bright flux beneath her skin, but it was enough for me to see that the glow was an internal one.

  I hadn’t realized I’d stood until the secretary waved a hand and asked me if I needed something. I shook my head, silent as I stared at the girl, at the tears on her face, at her strange hooded eyes. I waited for the light to change them, for a hint of flames behind her irises. But they were cold and deep. They were dark. They were empty.

  Another one.

  I pulled out my cell phone. Even though I hadn’t spoken to Felix since the night he’d called about Bryn, I knew he was working on breaking into Oswald’s hard drive and I figured the more pieces of the puzzle he had the better. I sent him a text and told him to turn on the news, hoping maybe he’d tell Vogle so I wouldn’t have to. In the last half hour I’d gone from enraged to scared shitless and I was starting to feel like a total prick for bringing up Eve.

  “Roman?” I turned and saw my dad. “We can go now.”

  Neither of us said a word until we got home. My dad nodded to the kitchen table and I sat, both thankful and dreadful that I’d be questioned by him in the safety of my own home instead of by Detective Hall in a police station.

  “They’ve delayed your questioning.”

  “Until when?”

  “The end of the week. They’re going to follow up on Carlisle and give us some time to…”

  “What?”

  “Come up with an alibi. Some kind of incriminating evidence that proves Carlisle acted alone.”

  “I can’t just tell them?”

  “They’ll want proof, otherwise it’s just your word against his.”

  “Did you tell them anything? That I was there?”

  “No, but I’m sure they suspect something.” He exhaled. “Roman…I need you to tell me everything. Don’t leave anything out.”

  I paused, not sure where to start. With the drive over after leaving one of Parker’s parties? With the drugs? With the people we found living in the quarry? Eventually I realized that it didn’t matter, so I just started talking, not stopping until the sun was down. I even told my dad about the way we used to mess with Jimmy and about what had happened between me and Cassie and about the fight at Parker’s party the other night. I told him everything and at the end all I wanted was for him to yell at me. I wanted him to yell and hit me and make me feel like the piece of shit I was.

  But he didn’t. My dad stood from his chair, put a hand on my shoulder and said, “I’ll take care of it, son.”

  And in that moment I felt so fucking small and something else I hadn’t let myself feel since I’d first woken up all those months ago—loved.

  37

  Bryn

  When we left the trailer house it was still dark, shadows racing past us like footsteps through the leaves. I trembled with each step, wondering which nightmare I’d face next. I watched the trees, afraid something might leap out at any moment. Sam seemed scared too, her hand, small and sweating in mine. But there was no ambush. There was no monster. We emerged from the forest at my grandparent’s farmhouse, familiar lights flickering in the windows, and I knew that whatever I was afraid of was just inside.

  The knob turned in my hand with a sharp click, baseboards groaning under my feet. The room was lit, the stove on, coffee brewing. It smelled like Christmas and it felt like home.

  The door slammed shut behind us, something beckoning me down the hall. But I knew things would unravel on their own if I’d just wait. We stood in the center of the room next to the old leather sofa—the place where my grandfather and I used to sit and read, the place where Roman and I used to sit and listen to my mom’s old records when he was still stuck in the dream-state and I was still
just hoping that he was real.

  When no one came down the hall and the house didn’t suddenly self-destruct, I wondered if the fear here was subtler, a whisper to my parents’ shouts. But then my chest squeezed and in a blink the house was filled with smoke.

  When I was in Germany I’d dreamed of flames at the farmhouse and I’d thought I was stuck in the nightmare that had plagued me so often right after my grandfather’s death. This nightmare. But the dream I’d had in Germany hadn’t been about the past, but something just as frightening, the future.

  I turned to where I knew he’d be, where he was every time I dreamed this dream of him. My grandfather sat on the couch, reading the newspaper, big sheets flat against his footstool. I moved against my thoughts, my body fighting to reenact every detail. I fell on my knees, pulling and shaking and trying to get him out of the house. I gripped his hands, his legs, trying to wake whatever parts of him weren’t just a dream. But he wouldn’t budge. He never did.

  “Grandpa, please, you have to come with me.” I tried to push down the urgency, to remind myself that it was just a dream. But I could feel my skin burning, the hair on my arms singed, my throat dry. “Please, you have to get up. We have to get out of here.”

  “Oh, Bryn.” He cupped my face in his hands. “You know I can’t.”

  I folded in two, remembering. His death. His funeral. My helplessness. My grief. I was drowning all over again. This was the part where I was supposed to wake up, his final words always stirring my consciousness.

  My lungs thrashed against my ribs as I sucked in ash. The air was gone and I knew that if I stayed I would be too. I squeezed my grandfather’s hand one more time and then Sam and I collapsed to our knees as we searched for the door. It had already fallen away, the heat cracking the frame as we crawled onto the porch. My fingers brushed the steps and then I tumbled down them, Sam and I coughing into the grass.

  I looked up and watched it burn. The farmhouse. My grandfather.