The Girl In Between series: Books 1-4

by Laekan Zea Kemp

  As I watched Kascidee kneeling in front of her sister, smoothing her hair and saying goodbye, I realized that Bryn had never used those words. When she’d left me alone in Celia’s house she hadn’t said goodbye. Maybe it wasn’t…

  After we left Bailey with her and Kascidee’s older cousin we hotwired a car a few houses down, windows low and letting in the breeze as the sound of Billie Holliday drifted behind us.

  Shay crawled onto her knees in the backseat, instructing Kascidee to take a deep breath as she fit her arm back into place.

  “You did the right thing,” I said, trying to distract her from the pain. “You’ll see her soon. I promise.”

  “Soon…if the world hasn’t ended by then.” She winced, hissing against tears.

  I rested my chin against the back of the seat, suddenly heavy. “It won’t.”

  She looked away. “Do you always make promises you can’t keep?”

  I looked away too.

  “We have a plan,” Andre cut in.

  “And it involves hopping a ferry to France?” she asked.

  Collin clutched his seatbelt. “Do we really have to cross over water? Again? Last time it almost got us killed.”

  “Killed?” Kascidee snapped.

  Andre cast a stony glare at Collin through the rearview mirror. “He’s exaggerating.”

  “We have two more Dreamers to find before we get everyone back to their bodies,” I said. “Luckily, they’re only a couple hundred miles apart. We’re almost home free.”

  “Home…” Collin sighed, time starting to grate on him.

  “Free.” Kascidee’s voice was barely audible as she stared out the window at the mass of cars lining the highway.

  Some were turned over, some were smoking, and some were parked as the drivers’ fought with whether to keep heading south or turn back. Horns blared, Andre’s fist pounding the side of the car before he gestured something obscene to one of the other drivers. He pressed on the gas, weaving in and out of traffic until we were forced to a slow crawl, cars backed up and barely moving.

  “Everyone else is trying to get to the ferry too,” Kascidee said.

  I turned to Shay. “Anything in that black bag of yours that can get us out of this traffic jam?”

  “Not unless you want me to just blow them up.”

  I sunk back in my seat. “We’ll wait.”

  “Dead squirrel.” Shay gripped my headrest as she stared out the window.

  I looked too. “What?”

  “Dead squirrel under that red van.” She pointed. “That’s five points.”

  “Hold on a minute.” Andre leaned out the window as the car crept forward. “Knew it.” He slapped the side of the door. “Dead dog.”

  “Breed,” Shay said.

  “Small-breed.” Andre grunted, trying to get a closer look. “Boston Terrier.” He gripped his chin. “No. French Bulldog.”

  Shay leaned over the center console. “Judge.” She wrung my shoulder. “That’s you.”

  “Me…what? I don’t even know what the heck is going on.”

  She held up her fingers. “That’s ten points for spotting the dead dog plus an extra five points if Andre’s correctly identified the breed. The judge makes the final call so is it a French Bulldog or not? Sheesh, have you never played license plates?”

  “This is not license plates,” I said. “This is…morbid.”

  “Same concept.” Andre yanked me closer. “Now, take a look.”

  Half the dog’s face was gone and I gagged, throwing myself back against the seat. “French Bulldog.”

  Andre honked the horn a few times, pumping his free fist.

  Shay wrinkled her nose. “First one to twenty.”

  They continued their game for ten more miles, the endless row of taillights up ahead making it feel more like twenty. We rolled past six dead birds, three dead rabbits, two more dead dogs, a dead goat, and one dead…

  “Man.” Kascidee sat forward, pointing to a long shadow in the empty field to our left, strips of his clothes flapping as vultures picked at the mess.

  Everyone was quiet, Collin most of all as if he was holding his breath; afraid that the death might grow arms and drag him out of the car. He’d been drawn to it next to Calvin’s memorial but the man in that empty field hadn’t died peacefully in his sleep. He’d been ripped to shreds by a wildness that hadn’t existed before the moon appeared, and I could tell that even though Collin had accepted his death, that didn’t mean he wasn’t still afraid of it.

  “We’re almost halfway,” Andre said.

  I knew the quiet wouldn’t cut it and I clicked on the radio, sliding through station after station until the static gave way to a crisp guitar solo. It only took half a beat for everyone to start singing along to Journey’s Don’t Stop Believin’. Andre screeched out a high note, the rest of us trying to harmonize, Shay and Kascidee’s laughter making it sound even worse.

  We rolled forward a few feet, static shielding the sound again.

  “I bet I listened to that album a thousand times,” Collin said. “Sometimes Open Arms was the only thing that could get my daughter to sleep.”

  Nobody spoke. Dead men weren’t supposed to have daughters. Not because it was impossible but because it was unforgivable. Every mile, every step closer we were to returning Collin to his body, the farther away he was from the only piece of him that would go on living. Did the thought comfort him? Did it make him angry?

  “What’s her name?” Kascidee asked, no doubt thinking of her sister who was already impatiently awaiting her return. They would get a reunion.

  “Audrey,” Collin said. “My wife loved Audrey Hepburn movies.”

  His wife. I watched Collin with new eyes, wondering why he wasn’t fighting us, why he wasn’t trying to run. From the moment we’d found him he’d conceded. But if I had a family…if I had a wife and a daughter who were alone in this world that was falling apart I would break every bone in every body that stood in my way; breaking every bone in my own body if that’s what it took to make it back to them.

  “Audrey had Neuroblastoma,” Collin suddenly said. “They diagnosed it when she was three weeks old. She was so…sick. She had a hard time sleeping at night” he sighed, “…and it was only me.” He clenched his fists so hard his knuckles cracked. But the words kept coming as if he were reciting some kind of incantation, the memory of Audrey a relic he desperately needed to leave behind. “My wife died during childbirth. When I brought Audrey home I was terrified. I had no idea what I was doing. When she got sick I felt even more helpless. And because of the pain she was in…constantly…I couldn’t even hold her. I couldn’t rock her to sleep.” He paused, staring at the back of Andre’s seat as the memory ravaged him.

  Kascidee reached for his hand, squeezed. She was crying. So was Shay; Andre’s face red too. I sniffed, my throat aching.

  “All I could think was to play music, hoping it would soothe her, or at the very least, distract her. Sometimes it helped. It did.” He hung his head. “She passed away a week after her first birthday.”

  Andre choked, gripping the steering wheel as if he wanted to strangle it. I wanted to strangle something too, my fingertips burning.

  “I’m so sorry,” Shay said.

  A string of tears slipped into Collin’s lap and then he smiled. “I wonder what she’ll look like. I wonder if she’s grown.”

  “You’ll see her again…” Kascidee said, the words edged between absolute certainty and devastating doubt.

  “I’ve never been religious,” Collin said. “But I know she’s somewhere. I know there’s something…”

  “How?” Shay asked, just as desperate.

  Collin tilted his gaze, a brightness in his eyes that said he was still trying to make sense of things. “After her funeral I fell asleep for six weeks. For the first time I dreamed of my wife and she was alive in my memories, our baby cradled in her arms. I was confused but also struck with this joy I had never felt before. And I asked her if
she was with God. Not because I subscribed to the notion or because I believed in anything at all. But because I had to know they were okay. Somewhere, somehow.”

  Shay moved closer. “What did she say?”

  Collin stared at his reflection in the window. It smiled. “She didn’t say yes and she didn’t say no.” He looked at each of us; still so awestruck he almost couldn’t get the words out. “She said all the time.”

  In that moment I realized that Collin didn’t fear death. Maybe he worried about the how or even the when, but regardless of what took him, all that mattered was where. Home.

  I wasn’t sure if I believed in an afterlife but maybe that didn’t mean I couldn’t still hope for one. One where my mother wasn’t sick. One where I wasn’t broken or unforgivable.

  Even though I wanted to hope, for now it was safer to believe in just this life, to fight for it as if there was nothing else. Because hoping for a way out could be just as dangerous as not hoping at all. Collin’s hope of heaven had him willing to face his fate without a fight. I could see in Shay’s eyes that the thought tempted her too. But as I stared up at the stars, imagining where they might lead, I knew that we weren’t finished here. And more importantly, I didn’t want to be.

  41

  Cole

  I am so close that I can see my reflection in his saffron eyes. I smile and they brighten, the light inside him slowly rising like the sun. It’s the only part of him that reaches for me and I let it graze my skin, the heat making the hairs on my arms stand on end. I pretend it’s the brush of his fingers instead and I know he’s pretending the same.

  “Are you alright?” he asks.

  His brow is furrowed and all I want is to reach out and smooth the lines. To soften his worry. To tell him the truth.

  “No,” I say. “I’m not.”

  He moves a step closer. I move too, half an inch, so slight he doesn’t see it.

  “What can I do?” he asks, afraid of saying something that might set me off or send me in the other direction.

  He can’t see that I’m trapped; that all this time I’ve been trapped. That I want to be.

  “Cole?”

  “Adham…” The sound of my voice makes him burn red.

  He looks away. “Do you want me to leave?”

  I don’t know what to say. I know what I’m supposed to say. That I hate him. That I don’t need him. That I can’t stand him always being around. My lips part but nothing comes out. Then I realize they’re not reaching for words.

  Adham turns to go and I grab his arm. I think I’ve scared him, my grip too tight. But then he grips me back. We’ve got each other by the forearms, not sure how to stand or where to look. I want to look in his eyes so I do but it only lasts a second before I fall into him. His lips are warm, sparking where they graze mine. It’s messy and angry and I hang onto his neck. He hangs onto me too, shaking so hard that I can’t tell if he’s terrified or relieved.

  I’m both.

  I’m both terrified at how right it feels and at how wrong it’s supposed to feel in this body. At one point I’m terrified because I can’t even feel my body. There’s nothing holding me down except his light. Nothing human, nothing masculine. I am me and Adham is Adham and we lock in place like something ancient and true.

  Heat pulses from him in waves and my fingers scale beneath his shirt. He dims, his body made of muscle and moonlight. My hands climb up and then they slip. I look down and see the blood beneath his shirt. It blooms at the same time his skin turns pale and then my fingertips graze three sharp points. The heat is snuffed out in an instant and Adham staggers out of my grasp. The monster behind him rips out its claw, dragging pieces of him across the floor.

  I collapse, cowering. My stomach knots, vomit catching in my throat. But I’m too paralyzed to lurch forward. I’m too paralyzed to run or scream. The monster from my nightmares towers over me, so close I can smell Adham’s blood. So close I can see pieces of a stranger still stuck to its teeth.

  And I made it. I dreamed this thing and set it loose in the world. I hurt Adham. Over and over I hurt Adham.

  The monster peels apart its skin, bones snapping as it turns itself inside out. It shrinks until it is the shape of a man, nothing left of the monster but the blood. He is covered in it and then he reaches out a hand, smearing it across my cheeks and face until I’m covered in it too.

  “And now you’ve killed him.” My father looks from Adham to me. “But you just had to tempt fate, didn’t you?” He kneels until we’re eye to eye. “You just had to taste him. To give in to that sick thing inside you.”

  I shudder, straining against the sickness. I don’t want to be sick. I don’t.

  “You couldn’t help yourself. You wanted to feel him and now he’s dead.” My father knocks my chin, my teeth ringing. “Was it worth it?” He grabs my face and growls, “Did you get it out of your system?”

  I don’t answer. I can’t. Adham slumps, letting out one last breath.

  My father stands. “I can’t even look at you.” His sneer widens into a red seam, splitting him in two as the monster rips its way out again.

  Pain yanked me out of my dreams, my hands flying to my face as I was blinded by a bright light. The heat of its scream almost sent me to the wall, the monster thrashing against Adham’s flames. Behind him, Vogle had Yolotli in his arms, he and Celia rushing him to the back of the house. The monster sniffed, a knocking sound escaping its mouth as it tasted the air. It watched Yolotli like a bird of prey and I wondered if it could sense the secrets inside him—secrets that could be the key to Bryn defeating Anso.

  The monster lurched, Adham striking back like a wrecking ball. Rafael raced to his side, just as bright. But then the monster stretched, skin like a web as it doubled in size. And then it leapt, the dining room wall turned to dust, bricks tumbling from the front of the house.

  It saw the stone fortress and screamed, stomps igniting cracks in the dirt. I scrambled to my feet but Adham threw me back down.

  “Stay here,” he said.

  Adham, Rafael, and Vogle tried to circle it, their flames barely charring its skin. It was too big. It was too dangerous. Because of me…

  Because I’d made it that way.

  I tried to stand again but it was Dani who yanked me back this time.

  She held onto my shoulders. “Don’t.”

  The monster scaled the stone where Valentina had broken through, trying to ignite new cracks. There was a loud bang, but instead of the stone coming down, the monster did, a swirling vortex forcing it to the ground. A young woman stood on the precipice, one clap of her hands like a bolt of lightning. She fashioned one into a sword and then she hurled it straight through the monster’s chest.

  Dani shook her head, lips sputtering by my ear.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “It worked,” she said.

  “What worked?” I breathed. “Who the hell is that?”

  “Eleuia,” Dani sighed. “She’s here for Yolotli.”

  42

  Roman

  Shay and I left the others at the perimeter of the forest. The breeze between the trees cut me with a chill, sinister as we wandered deeper into black. Shay’s tracking device ticked like a manic bullfrog and we followed it blind, the glow of our skin barely manifesting.

  Shay tread carefully. “Must be enchanted.”

  “Or just evil,” I said.

  “Or both.”

  We walked for an hour or maybe three. Time felt elastic, stretching and shrinking until I started to wonder if the world had ended ages ago and we were trapped in some kind of purgatory. There was nothing living in these woods, even the trees thinning to leafless swords the farther we went.

  “We should be close,” I said, “shouldn’t we?”

  “But close to what…?” Shay muttered.

  Dead leaves danced at my feet, tangling around my ankles. I tried to stomp them still but they only climbed higher, the wind like chains. I gritted my teeth until the lea
ves turned to flames but then a gust of wind drove me back a few steps, putting out my light. Shay’s too. I scanned the trees, wondering how far I’d wandered.

  “Shay?” I searched for her silhouette in the dark, a trace of her glow between the swaying trees. “Shay…”

  Nothing.

  I ventured back in the direction we’d come; or the direction I thought we’d come. But I was racing in circles, chased by a predatory solitude that was hot on my heels. A dead root snagged my foot, my hands catching on the trunk of a tree. I hugged the bark, trying to catch my breath. I wasn’t sure what had taken Shay but I knew something had. I waited for that thing, the endless dark and howling wind making me forget for half a second that I was something strange too.

  I concentrated, trying to charge every cell. I held in the heat, shaking, letting myself rise to a boil. Then I unhinged a growl, my body a machine cracking on one circuit at a time. The forest flashed white and then I saw it. Loping. Snarling. The teeth were canine, the eyes like two hollow moons, but the rest was…red. Dripping.

  The light shuddered out, leaving behind nothing but the smell of rust. I shifted, sensing the space before reaching out my hands. Air. The forest was gone and I was inside the belly of something awful, nothing solid but the gravity used to hold me down.

  “Roman…”

  My knees buckled at the sound of her voice. I wasn’t sure if it was below me or above. A flame ignited from the tip of Shay’s finger, cautious, and then I saw the one we’d come for clutching his knees in the middle of the blackness. Quinn. At first I thought he was cowering from the flame but his eyes kept scanning the dark, chasing something I couldn’t see.

  Shay’s light disappeared, a subtle heat lingering as if someone had blown it out. I could hear Quinn’s teeth chattering.

  “Quinn?”

  Even his lungs stopped. “How do you know my name?”

  “I’m here to help you,” I said.