The Girl In Between series: Books 1-4

by Laekan Zea Kemp

  A pair of hands gripped my shoulders. “Aw, we love you too, buddy.” Felix dug a knuckle into my scalp until I turned and swatted at him.

  Cole laughed. “Thank God you showed up. I thought he was about to cry.”

  I straightened my shirt. “Yeah, right.”

  Cole’s smile straightened, serious. “Look, man, no hard feelings.”

  “Are you sure?” I looked from Cole to Adham, waiting for Adham to finally say something.

  He nodded. “We’re okay.”

  I wasn’t sure if that was true and I knew I’d need to talk to Adham. Alone. I could tell by the look on his face that he had questions—about me, about Cole. But first, Felix was anxious to fill me in on the Rogues he’d found while we were away. He had his laptop open on the dining room table, screen pointed in my direction.

  I moved to sit next to him. “How many?”

  “Seven.”

  “Not bad. Any that actually knew their Dreamer?”

  “Three.” Felix resized three of the browser windows until the photos of each Rogue were lined up side by side. All from social media accounts.

  “Any in the states?” I asked.

  “Just one.” Felix expanded the window to the far left. “Jason Steeger—twenty-seven years old, born and raised in Boston, Massachusetts.”

  Cole scanned his dating profile. “Loves the Red Sox, Thai food, girls with British accents, and long walks on the beach.” He smirked. “I hope this dude’s Dreamer is some kind of relative or else he’s going to have a lot of explaining to do.”

  “Who’s his Dreamer?” I asked.

  “Good news,” Felix said. “Markus.”

  Markus was one of the Dreamers the Rogues had rescued before reuniting with Bryn and me.

  “Jason’s his older brother,” Felix went on. “I made a fake profile and sent him a message with Markus’ landing time and gate number.”

  Adham crossed his arms. “Let’s hope checking his dating profile is still top on his priority list despite his brother being a missing person.”

  “Or maybe that’s the sob story he uses to get chicks in the first place,” Cole added.

  “He responded almost instantly,” Felix said. “He wanted to know who I was and how I knew his brother. He said he was going to report me to the police blah blah blah…”

  “What did you tell him?” I asked.

  “Nothing,” Felix said. “I didn’t really think it was in our best interest for me to share more. I figure the most we can do is tell them where to find their Dreamers and then the rest is up to them.”

  “You’re probably right.”

  “For now,” Adham said. “But if they shut down the airports, the Rogues might be the Dreamers’ only safe way out of here. Meaning we might have to give them our location eventually.”

  “Actually...we’re kind of already there. Everything Andre said about the airports getting bad is true and it’s not just happening here.” Felix nodded down the hall to where Kira, Dani, and Stassi were still watching over Bryn. “I tried for hours to get Kira on a flight. In the end, even if I had been able to manufacture her a boarding pass, it just seemed too dangerous.”

  “So…now her Rogue is coming here?” I asked.

  “Name’s Nathan,” Felix said. “Kid’s barely old enough to have his learner’s permit but it’s Kira’s only way out.”

  “Any others?” I asked.

  “Not yet,” Felix said. “I’ve still got my fingers crossed that the panic will die down.”

  “I wouldn’t count on it,” I said. “In the meantime, stick with finding the Rogues who have already met their Dreamers. We’ll deal with the possibility of reuniting them here when we absolutely have to.”

  “And the dead?” Felix asked.

  “What about the Rogues who haven’t met their Dreamers yet?” Adham added. “The Rogues who don’t even know that’s what they are.”

  “If someone would have sent me a cryptic email two years ago telling me that the answers to all of my questions would be at the JFK airport outside gate seven at 2PM on a Tuesday I would have ran there as fast as I could.” Cole crossed his arms. “They’ll bite, trust me.”

  I could tell by the look on Adham’s face that he didn’t believe it was the most ethical way of doing things but we didn’t have many other options. It was either sending them the most important piece of the puzzle and letting them build the rest themselves or using what little man-power we had to hunt down every newbie Rogue and lead them by the hand on some existential journey of self-discovery instead of helping Bryn find the rest of the Dreamers.

  I looked back at Adham. “It’s not a perfect plan but it’ll do for now.” I turned to Felix. “We deal with the dead last. Find their Rogues but that’s it. No contact.”

  Andre rapped his knuckles against the doorway. Behind him, Rafael and Vogle were shifting furniture out of the way and making a clear path from the staircase to the back door of the house.

  “Where’s everyone going?” I asked.

  Andre looked over his shoulder. “She’s ready.”

  Felix followed Dani outside, Stassi latching onto Cole again and leading him in the same direction. Adham pushed in the dining room chairs but when I stayed put so did he.

  I waited for him to lay into me, angry, betrayed. I waited for a long list of questions about Cole’s dreams and Adham’s feelings. About the future. Instead, Adham lowered his voice, forcing me to let go of what I’d done the same way he had, as he said, “What are you worried about?”

  Before he named the feeling it was just a static fog around my skin, flaring every time Andre or Rafael carried a body downstairs, every time I remembered Bryn’s grandmother’s funeral, every time I remembered my mother’s and the fact that I’d missed it.

  “I’m not a big fan of funerals,” I said.

  Adham was quiet, letting me work my way to the truth.

  “I keep seeing her.” My voice fell even lower than his had been. “My mother.”

  “It’s not her, Roman.”

  I met his eyes. “I’m not sure.”

  The shadows had used my mother as a puppet before, slipping on her skin in order to draw the darkness out of me. The first time I’d ever met Adham my mother’s ghost had been between us in the alley of Moretti’s, turning the concrete and fence posts to ice, my insides too. She’d told me that Bryn had seen the darkness inside me and she’d begged me to let it out.

  Instead, I’d driven a fist straight through her, letting the flames catch until the wind stole her ashes. But despite how terrifying that version of her had been, how close to real her hatred had felt, I’d known deep down in the core of me that it wasn’t really her. This time my gut was knotted with questions.

  Adham tilted his head. “Roman…”

  “She doesn’t look like a ghost this time, Adham. She doesn’t look like one of the shadows. She looks…scared. Like she’s trying to tell me something.”

  “Something…like what?”

  “I don’t know.”

  I leaned against the table, my head down. I thought back to the night Andre had shared the story of his father’s death. Everyone had thought he’d had some kind of psychological problems, the scribbling in his journals revealing that he’d been suffering from hallucinations for years. It hadn’t been until Andre started seeing the shadows too that he realized what his father had been. My mother had been haunted too. Hunted by a darkness that had become all too familiar to me before my car accident. I’d tried to kill myself to get away from it but she’d actually succeeded.

  “Do you remember when you told me that your mother was a Dreamer like Bryn?” Adham asked.

  I nodded.

  “Well, you’ve been dreaming for the past two days.”

  “So…?”

  “So, when people die they leave something behind. Some people call it energy. Some people call it spirits or even ghosts.”

  “You think I’ve been seeing my mother’s ghost?”

&n
bsp; He furrowed his brow. “I think you’ve been seeing her dreams.”

  My mother’s dreams were not a place I would have ever wanted to be. I remembered the sounds through the walls. The scratching. The sniffling. The sighing. My mother never had dreams. She had nightmares. Angry, anguished nightmares that had given me nightmares all my life too.

  Maybe there were pieces of her still trapped in them, pieces that remembered me, pieces that remembered her too—who she’d been before the shadows found her. Is that what she wanted me to do? To find her…or whatever pieces of her might be left?

  Bryn stood in the doorway. “We need the light.”

  The light. She couldn’t say me, that she needed me.

  The only two women I’d ever loved were dead. That’s what my nightmares had cost me. If I didn’t face them—mine, my mother’s, Bryn’s—how much more could I lose? I didn’t know if my mother had a message for me. I didn’t know if there was anything left of her to find. But if there was some part of her still trying to reach me…I wanted to reach back. Because maybe if I could somehow figure out a way to find my mother in all that darkness, I could figure out a way to find Bryn too.

  17

  Bryn

  We tread carefully into the night, the Rogues forming a flaming perimeter as Rafael led us into the woods behind the house. The trees widened until we were standing in a clearing.

  Cole watched the bodies as they were laid in the grass, probably grateful to still be standing in his. “Thank you…” he frowned, “for not staging some kind of surprise attack and taking the dreams without me knowing.”

  “I’m sorry we lied to you,” I said.

  He knelt next to me, examining Ian’s body up close. They had the same jawline, same eye color. “I keep thinking about the night Anso almost took me. This could have been me.”

  “But it’s not.”

  “I know. Thanks to Roman.” He hung his head. “Maybe that’s no accident.”

  Adham stood over Cole. “I don’t believe in accidents.”

  I stared down at Ian, retracing his life and remembering the birthdays, best friends, and college parties; the torturous sounds in Anso’s prison, Ian lying cold and numb inside one of the cells. If accidents were an impossibility what had Ian done to deserve this? What had I done…?

  Roman used to say the same thing about there being no such thing as coincidences. But maybe he was wrong. Maybe Adham was too. Maybe life was a series of accidents—some mistaken for miracles while others were mistaken for tragedies.

  At the end of all of this, when I was finally standing over my body, looking back on finding the Dreamers and everything we’d lost and gained and lost again, what would I see? When I finally climbed back into my body, laying myself to rest the same way I was about to lay the Dreamers, would I see death as another tragedy? Or a miracle?

  Kira led me to the center of the clearing, guiding my hands to the grass. Blades reached for me, flowers stretching up from the dirt and kissing my open palms.

  I could tell Kira was waiting to feel something too, just to see if she still could. She tried to smile but I could see the strain and I knew she was grieving just as much for herself as for the bodies we’d carried outside.

  I looked up, maneuvering the branches over our heads, leaves glinting like jade and flowers sprouting like lace umbrellas until the blood-stained moon was hidden. I didn’t want it to be the last thing the Dreamers saw. They’d been haunted long enough. Light flickered against the trunks of the trees as I woke the fireflies one at a time, replacing the night with morning.

  “Just listen,” Kira said.

  I gripped the grass, letting my fingertips sink into the soil.

  “Do you feel it reaching back?”

  The soil shifted, a strange warmth climbing to my forearms. I took a deep breath, imagining the earth splitting in two. A deep groan made the hairs on my arms stand on end, the ground quaking beneath me, soil slowly spilling towards the center until the clearing was a pair of open arms. Slowly, carefully, the sediment peeled back, deepening into a hole that turned my stomach.

  A grave.

  There was no ceremony. No last words. I brushed each pair of eyes closed and then I let the ground swallow them whole.

  I waited for relief like Celia had promised but it took everything in me not to fall in after them. I was tired. I was sorry. And none of that mattered. Because I still wasn’t finished.

  My body sensed the darkness moving before my ears registered the sound. I backed away from the grave, my senses on high alert. At first it was a faint rumble like something moving up the road. There were sharp clicks and low trills, my skin remembering before I did. I bristled, the buzz growing louder.

  “Where’s it coming from?” Andre asked.

  I walked in a slow circle, listening. “Head back to the house. Now.”

  When I’d touched Ian, I’d seen Celia’s house from above, silhouettes safe behind dimly lit windows. The vision had moved in a circle like a bird targeting its prey. And then it had just hovered, flitting from face to face, a magnifying glass on the people I loved. I’d watched them too, waiting, wondering why they were in Ian’s memories. Then I’d heard his voice, Anso’s words like thorns. He’d named them one by one—Dani, Felix, Celia, Roman…—revealing that I wasn’t the only one with a list.

  The fireflies shuddered to black; a giant shadow cast out over the yard. I waited for the crows to swoop down, talons raised. I waited for Anso to manifest in a storm. When I finally looked up the sky had teeth. Locusts.

  “Get down!” Roman yelled.

  The insects cut between us, scratching and clawing. Something sharp bit at the nape of my neck, locusts scaling every bit of bare skin. My hands were already slick with blood by the time I fell to my knees. I grasped at any thought, any means of control, but the buzz was so deafening it was all I could hear.

  Then another sound cut through. Dani. I peeled the locusts from my face, groaning and gritting my teeth. Dani shielded her eyes, writhing as Felix tried to cover her. Locusts clung to his back, trying to break the skin and burrow inside. He howled and I reached for him, flexing my fingers and imagining his spine was my wrist. I twisted it, tossing him onto his back, locusts crushed beneath his weight. He swiped at the air, locusts tugging on his lips, his eyelashes.

  Then he screamed.

  He shuddered, clawing at the pain as one of the locusts ripped through his eyelid. It dug deeper, drawing blood. Felix hooked a finger and chased it straight into the socket, his teeth bared, tears pouring down his face.

  I threw myself in his direction as locusts burrowed into my clothes, carving shallow wounds that drew tears. I screamed, their spindly claws trying to force their way past my lips. Felix let out another guttural sound, and I slammed my fists against the ground, igniting a crack that was the only thing louder than his screams. Light.

  Storm clouds raced over us, the sound of them parting the locusts like a curtain. They buzzed and circled us but then my gaze ripped a seam in the first rain cloud and the clearing was underwater.

  The storm was one explosion of light after another, the ground threatening to tear in two. But I didn’t have the energy to stop it. Another bolt of lightning struck; smoke rising from the ground. Beneath the sheets of grey I could see every Rogue on fire, lighting the way to the house. Lightning carved a trench near Dani’s feet and she crawled next to Felix, away from the smoking grass.

  I clawed through the mud, shivering and sick as I examined Felix’s face. He panted, paralyzed. Dani forced her mouth shut, shaking just as hard as I was as she tried not to cry. Roman held him up, speaking words I couldn’t quite make out. I felt dizzy, the sharp sting of the rain the only thing keeping my eyes open.

  “I…can’t…” Felix gritted his teeth, afraid to move. He let out a breath, shoulders heaving. “I can’t…my eye…Dani…” He choked, panicked.

  “You’re okay,” Roman said. “It’s gone.”

  I knew Roman meant the locusts
but as Felix reached up, grazing his nose, his lash line, I knew he could feel the emptiness. He choked into the grass; dry heaving.

  There was another crack of lightning, storm clouds swelling the longer I looked at Felix. Because I knew this would happen. I knew that if they stayed they’d only be putting themselves in danger. And for what?

  “For you.” Anso’s daughter sat in the mud, her hands drudging it up from the ground, painting it onto her skin. She traced a muddy finger down my face. Red. “It’s always because of you.” Her fingers sunk into the mud again before she pulled them out slow. She held out a hand, rain washing it clean and revealing something the color of bone. “A pearl. For you.” She thrust the eye towards me. “Maybe it will help you see the truth.”

  “Bryn…” I snapped back at Roman’s voice. “They’re gone. You can stop the storm.”

  Rafael and Vogle helped Felix to his feet, pulling him towards the door as Vogle tried to examine the damage. Dani clutched Celia, the rain turning her pink as tiny trails of blood washed from her arms and legs.

  Another lightning strike came down, tangled in one of the trees, rain smothering it until it was only smoke. The storm wasn’t just hanging over us. It was inside me, churning, raging. Because I’d done this. Dani…Felix…they were bloody and broken because of me.

  “Bryn!”

  The water rose, rain drowning the clearing. I tried to slow it down, to cast the storm in another direction but it only roared louder.

  “I can’t!” I called over the rain. “I—”

  “You can. Take my hand.”

  I latched onto Roman and the storm fell straight down, the rain collapsing in a splash as the clouds turned to fog and fell apart.

  It was so quiet.

  I waited for wind, for the patter of rain, some sign of the storm inside me.

  Silence.

  Adham held open the door, watching and waiting for us to come inside. I looked from the light of Celia’s living room to the moon over our heads. It looked back, a shade darker than it had been before the storm. In Alma’s vision when I finally faced Anso, the moon was black, the changing pigment like the sifting sand inside an hourglass.