“Help!” I screamed.
Pounding footsteps came stampeding toward us, but I completely ignored them, focusing only on administering the Heimlich maneuver.
A hand grabbed my arms and shoved me away from Justin. Suddenly, I was falling, and my shoulder smacked into the couch, and my head collided with the armrest and bounced off. The room blurred and spun as I pushed up, my head throbbing.
A deep male voice muttered words I couldn’t quite hear, and as I rolled over and looked back, seeing Justin slumped against Henry, the Roberts’ butler. Justin’s chest rose and fell with steady breathing. The large beefy man lowered Justin onto the couch beside me.
“Are you injured? I pushed you hard.” Henry asked, his eyes cutting to mine. Everything about the man was intimating, his height and girth, the cold look in his gray eyes, the sheer lack of emotion on his face.
“He’s breathing,” I whispered as I held a hand over Justin’s face. His exhale caressed across my fingers. “Justin?” I said as I touched his shoulder.
The butler leaned in, looming over us. “He’ll be asleep for a full day.”
A commotion rose from the door, and I looked over just as Mr. and Mrs. Roberts rounded the pool and rushed in the house.
“We have a patrol car on their way,” the dispatcher said through my phone’s receiver.
“May I?” Henry swiped my phone off the couch without waiting for a response.
He pressed the screen and held it to his ear. “We’ve been able to remove the foreign object from his airway. We will no longer need a car,” the butler said.
“Wait; what? No!” I reached for my phone, but the butler had already hung up. “Justin is still unconscious. He should be going to a hospital.”
“He will be fine.” The butler turned away, not giving me back my phone.
“Justin wasn’t breathing,” I said, “He is now, but he’s still unconscious meaning he needs that ambulance.”
“Somebody tell me what is going on. Justin wasn’t breathing?” Mr. Roberts demanded from outside. Both Mr. and Mrs. Roberts stood pale and huffing, standing before the shattered window wall and looking in.
“My son,” Gina rushed in through the door. As she got close, she swiped her hand through the air. “Darling, move.”
I didn’t want to, but she was his mother, so I pushed to my feet. She immediately took my place on the couch and leaned in over Justin’s unconscious form. “He is breathing now, thank you, dear God.”
The butler crossed the space, stepped through the pebbled remains of the window, and stopped before Mr. Roberts. Leaning in, he whispered something, and Mr. Roberts eyes fixed on me.
He waved his hand through the air. “Come on out here, January. I’d like to talk to you.”
I didn’t want to leave Justin’s side, but these were his parents.
“Can I have my phone back?” I asked as I stepped out. “He needs to go to a hospital.”
“We’re going to buy you a new phone,” Mr. Roberts said as his hand came down on my shoulder. “Henry accidentally dropped yours into the pool.”
Henry immediately tossed my phone into the water behind him, and the small black phone sank out of sight. A wave of fear surged through me. What the hell?
“Now sweetheart,” Mr. Roberts leaned in, and my senses filled with malt liquor and cigar smoke. “Please, what happened with Justin?”
I shook my head, not sure what I could say. “We were just talking, and then he froze. His body was stiff, and he wasn’t breathing. He had a pulse. I didn’t think it was a stroke because his jaw was rigid. I couldn’t move him to give him CPR. It wasn’t anything else I could think of, so I thought the best possible move would be to clear anything in his airway. I smashed the window, called nine-one-one, and started doing back blows and stomach thrusts. Then, Henry came in.”
“Well, you did a good job.” Mr. Roberts’ arm went all the way around my back, and he started to pull me away from the pool house. “What exactly were you talking about when this happened? Were you talking about Blackburn?”
“No, about those men who came after me in the forest.”
“Ah.” Mr. Roberts nodded. “Well, Justin is going to be just fine. The trials are first thing tomorrow morning, and I’m assuming you want to get some sleep beforehand.”
I swallowed, and then made myself insist, “Justin needs to go to the hospital.”
Mr. Roberts turned entirely toward me. “Young lady, I swear on my dear mother’s grave that my son will be completely restored by this time tomorrow. Henry is moving him up to the house now and will immediately call for our personal physician who will bring medical equipment surpassing a hospital. If there is any complication whatsoever, I will send someone down to tell you immediately. But that’s not going to happen. Justin has these episodes sometimes, and we’re used to dealing with them. Now, I have a good feeling about your performance in the trials tomorrow. I might not be able to give you the scholarship, but I’m going to endorse you.”
He gestured out, and I saw that we had walked almost to my doorstep. My heart rate slowed a little when I realized that they weren’t worried about Justin because they knew what was going on. Justin was about to tell me something when he froze. Everyone from Blackburn continually repeated that they couldn’t give information, but I had assumed that they were honor-bound.
Did Justin tell me something he wasn’t supposed to? Is that what happened when you revealed one of Blackburn’s secrets? Mr. Roberts had said that I would need to take their secrets to the grave. If telling one of Blackburn’s secrets killed you, that statement took on a much darker meaning.
“Can I come to check on Justin before the trials tomorrow morning?” I asked.
“You should be focusing on the competition, young lady. Justin will be absolutely fine.” Mr. Roberts nodded. “I see great things for you, January.”
The man couldn’t leave a conversation without smothering on the patronage.
Mr. Roberts waited as I entered my apartment. Bailey charged me at the door and tried to wiggle past me, barking, snapping, and snarling.
“Whoa, girl.”
She almost knocked me over as she charged past, running down to the bottom of the staircase and growling. Between Justin’s terror in the pool house, him stopping breathing, and the interaction I just had with Mr. Roberts, my heart was beating a mile a minute. Bailey’s growling at the door did nothing to calm my nerves.
I wanted to call someone, but Henry had tossed my phone in the pool. A chill was creeping up my spine. Something felt very wrong here.
“Nana?” I called out, before realizing that she was out when I first arrived home, and I hadn’t seen headlights come down the access road.
Holding my breath, I switched the lights off. The glare of the artificial lights subsided from my vision, and the house appeared in deep blues and greens. After grabbing the sharpest knife in the kitchen, I snuck through the house, going from the living room to Nana’s and checked each space big enough to hide in for bluish-white figures lying in wait. I felt a little stupid in my paranoia, but Bailey continued to bark, and each discordant note sent a surge of fear into my heart.
Bailey never barked and growled this way.
As I crept my way through the hallway and into my bedroom, I froze in the doorway. A glowing white figure was right outside my window, their face peeking in at the edge. And, the window was open. I couldn’t see their features through the glow, but the face was big and the jaw square.
My whole body shook as I clutched the kitchen knife and crawled further into the room until I reached the bed. Part of me felt like that idiot girl in the horror movies you screamed at to not go into the basement. But, at the same time, the last time these creatures came for me, a dozen of them surrounded me. Fleeing out the front with Bailey wasn’t an option. Every other window and door was locked in my house, and they would have to break through tempered glass. Breaking tempered glass wasn’t easy. I knew to use porcelain from one o
f my mom’s exes who stole cars, but I doubted it was common knowledge. I needed to get this last window closed and locked, and if he stuck his hand in before I could, I needed to hack at the person’s fingers as they attempted to reach in for the lock. It was the only chance Bailey and I had.
I crawled across the floor on hands and knees and stopped at the wall. The glowing figure was within a foot of me, separated only by the partially open window. My heartbeat pounded in my ears as I reached up to the lock.
“I can hear you breathing, January,” the man at my window said in a deep voice. “Invite me in so we can talk.”
Very slowly, I fisted the handle of my knife at the ready for chopping.
“I figured out who and what you are. You have this one chance to survive. More of us are coming, hundreds more. I can shield you from them, but the sabs do not have the manpower to protect you. Invite me in. Do you remember me?”
Paws pounded on wood from within the house. Bailey’s massive body came hurtling into the room. She hopped onto my bed and growled and barked directly before the figure. My hand fisted around the window dial, and I wheeled it closed and slammed the lock shut.
I stilled as the figure moved into full view. Looking up, I saw just how massive they were. The creature stayed, their face inches from the window, just above me. It was as if he was taunting my dog.
With my knife fisted in one hand, I waited for him to make his move. A bead of sweat dripped down my neck. I didn’t want to give away my position, but I would be ready if they broke through.
The man backed away from my window slowly, climbing across the roof of the garage and slipping down over the side. The moment their glowing form disappeared, Bailey’s growls subsided, and I sat on the bed beside her, still clutching the knife.
Headlights glared across my window, followed by the crunch of tires on gravel.
“Fuck! Nana,” I swore as I sprinted down the stairs. Bailey was right by my side all the way down, but she stood there silently, leaning into my side at the door. I heard the creaking of car doors opening, and fighting against my terror, I threw open the front door, grabbed Bailey’s collar, sprinted out onto the porch, and yelled, “Run for the door, Nana! Now!”
Three heads turned to look at me, Lucas, Zack, and Nana, all of their brows creasing and eyes wide.
“Now!” I yelled, running out toward Nana while still holding onto Bailey’s collar.
Lucas slammed his truck door shut, and all three of them ran over and into the house. The moment they were inside, I locked the door and caught my breath. “Let’s get upstairs,” I managed through labored breaths. “That way, we have two solid-wood doors and deadbolts.”
“What is going on?” Nana demanded as we all filtered out onto the stairs.
“Someone was looking into my bedroom window,” I managed.
“Justin Roberts?” Zack scoffed as he leaned against my fridge.
“No.” I wheeled to face him. Hot tears splashed onto my cheeks, and I wiped them furiously. “Justin was trying to tell me something about the people who surrounded me in the forest. He was trying to warn me, and he grew rigid and stopped breathing —”
“What happened? Is he okay?” Zack straightened from the wall and rushed across the room. “What happened?” He demanded.
“Henry came down from the house and did something, and Justin is breathing again. Mr. Roberts practically shoved me back into my house, and then there was someone looking into my window. I didn’t get a good look at them, but I think it was the guy from the forest,” I said it all in a rush and needed to gasp in air to refill my lungs.
Zack wheeled around and rushed from the house. Lucas followed him down but reemerged a moment later, locking the door behind him.
Nana wrapped her arms around me, and the moment she held me, sobs ripped through my chest.
A warm hand covered mine. “Let me take that knife from you and put it back on the counter,” Lucas said. “You can probably release your dog, too.”
I hadn’t realized that I was still clutching Bailey’s collar with one hand and the kitchen knife with the other. I released both Bailey and the blade and wrapped my arms around my grandmother. “Can we leave? Can we go?”
“No.” Lucas stepped into my line of vision, shaking his head. “Listen to me, January. We are in the safest possible place. The only safer place is on that house up on the hill or Blackburn Academy. Zack is going up to the Roberts’ house, and pretty soon, you’ll have the authorities combing the grounds.”
“Justin was trying to warn me. He was panicking, and I kept pushing him for information. I didn’t believe him.” My voice broke on the words.
Lucas stepped forward and lifted his hands. “Zack will check on Justin too. Trust me. He doesn’t hate the guy as much as he wants all of us to believe. Zack and I will camp out here for the night on your couch or something and then take you to the trials in the morning.”
“Lucas, if you two are staying over to help us, then you’re sleeping on a bed. I will take the couch,” Nana said as she pulled away from me. She examined my face. “Are you okay, January?”
“Yeah. That guy scared me. I thought he was going to hurt Bailey, or I was going to have to hack his fingers off if he tried to break in.”
Nana nodded. “That’s my girl. You do what you have to do to survive. Always.”
The Baldwin brothers ended up sharing my bed, and I bunked with Nana. Well, I pretended I was going to and then headed out to the couch. After Justin’s collapse, even thinking about competing in the trials tomorrow seemed so inappropriate. But I needed to now more than ever. I needed to win, as impossible as everyone believed that would be for me. A group of people was after me, and no one could even explain to me who they were without risking death. I needed to learn the secrets that Blackburn guarded so fiercely that they would rather their students die than leak. I wasn’t going to flee the country with Justin. I wouldn’t leave my nana and mother. What if they became targets to get to me? I wasn’t going to allow Justin to abandon his life either.
Lucas said that this was the safest place for us, but I would never be safe while I was ignorant of what was after me. I didn’t even know what I was exactly. Justin said I wasn’t a vampire, but I couldn’t see how that was true. What else was there?
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Justin lay across his bed, fast asleep. Between sneaking through the Roberts Mansion, and crawling into Justin’s bedroom while he was dozing, I felt like a real creeper. But I needed to see for myself that he was okay before I left for the all-day trials.
Justin lay with his arm hugging his pillow. His eyes moved rapidly under his lids, and I hoped that he was having soothing dreams. I had a feeling that he wasn’t going to be so happy when he woke.
I already hated Blackburn Academy a bit for what they did to Justin yesterday. I was going to use that anger as fuel, and even if the odds were stacked against me, I was going to go for it.
I slipped out of his dark bedroom and into the lit hallway. No one noticed me as I moved down the halls in my socks and headed through the front door.
The sun had already popped up over the horizon, and the heat was rising. I took the pool house route down, only to see that the tempered glass wall on the pool house had already been replaced. There wasn’t so much as a pebble of glass on the ground.
When I peaked in, everything looked just as it had, except for the porcelain lamp that was conspicuously missing.
The terror of yesterday felt like a dream and, in the light of day, even the memory of it was slowly vanishing.
When I headed around to my house, I found Zack leaning against his truck and looking up at the Roberts Mansion. There was a look of vulnerability there, a raw pain that I instinctively knew I wasn’t supposed to see.
I slowed a few paces away, and Zack finally noticed me. His expression changed. A devil-may-care smile blossomed on his face. Zack crossed his arms over his chest and leaned back against his truck door. “Good mornin
g, Blondie. You up for a little wager? Trial day tradition.”
“Really?” I asked as I leaned in against him. “You do realize that I’m like stone-cold broke, right? After yesterday’s burger and milkshake, all of the money I have saved is allocated.”
“Okay,” he stretched out the word. “The Robertses are famed to have this goose that lays golden eggs. I’m just playing. How about if I win, you pour a beer on Justin Roberts’ head in front of a party full of people.”
“Oh, I’ll do that one for free. The only part of that I wouldn’t want to do is go to one of Justin’s parties.”
Zack peered down at me. “If you lose, you can tell him that he’s an asshole from me since he likes to pretend that he can’t hear me when I talk.”
“Zack, I’ll do that one for free, too.”
He leaned down and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “He really doesn’t deserve a person like you.”
“And how’s that?” I laughed. “I’m pretty sure everyone has decided that I’m the cause of the great Justin Roberts’ fall from grace.”
“You’re real. What he’s become — it’s all a big show.” Zack nodded up at the mansion on the hill. “He’s so full of shit that you can smell it from here. Two years ago, I could see him falling so hard for a girl like you, that he’d risk dying to protect you. I didn’t think he was that person anymore. I knew he was a phony, but meeting you just proves it.”
The metal door of the truck was starting to get too hot for my back, so I pushed away. “When I was in sixth grade, I got furious at my mom for a while. Well, I was kind of mad at everyone. Some well-meaning teacher called child services, and Mom started sobering up and going to groups all the time. My mother forced me to go to a teen group for the relatives of addicts, something I fucking hated. My mother was doing everything she could to put her life together so she wouldn’t lose me to the state. She even got this boyfriend who I saw as way out of her league. The guy was in recovery, and he had his shit together. I had my mom sober for an entire year, and all I remember is anger. Throughout my childhood, I’d formed this riptide of emotion. Everything I had ever felt I hid away because, what was the point, she wouldn’t even remember, and when I was allowed to feel those things, that riptide pulled me out to sea. My mom was so understanding for that year, self-deprecating and apologetic. When she went back to drinking, it was a relief. It was easier to have the riptide running under the surface. Even when my mom wasn’t really there, I always knew she felt bad for the damage she was doing but having her own up to it and want to move on as a family . . . I was out to sea.”
Midnight Secrets Page 19