Shit. I give a little laugh. Laken’s feisty side makes me love her that much more.
“Second”—Laken continues, backing Kres slowly toward the exit—“I’m the only one around here who truly cares that Casper is missing, and I knew her all of five minutes. I’m guessing the same is true for Flynn.”
“You make me want to vomit.” Kres spits hard in her face, and Laken recoils pushing her hand in her eye.
It takes all of my strength to pull myself up by the railing.
“You think you’re so innocent.” Kres mocks. “I heard you’re doing Coop on the side. You hear that, Wes?” Kres twists to look past her shoulder at me.
But I’m not interested in anything Kresley has to say. What I am interested in is the fact Laken is eying a cobalt vase that sits tall and heavy on the entry table.
She reaches over, and in one swift move hurls it at Kres.
Kres ducks like a ninja, and for once I’m thrilled to fucking pieces regarding her athletic abilities. That vase had felony assault written all over it.
The vase slams against the wall and shatters into a million blue shards just as the door opens to a rather surprised, and notably shaken, Jones.
Perfect.
I believe the last words I shared with him were, Laken is feeling much better now—followed up with, I’ve got everything under control.
There’s no way I’m letting him in on the fact she’s siphoning off Cooper Flanders’ neck. And there’s no way I’m telling him she singlehandedly slaughtered a Fem the size of a Mack truck while on the lookout for yet another one of her missing friends.
Nope.
Jones inspects the mess on the floor then shifts his focus to his niece.
I’m not going to have to lie and tell him that Laken is functioning at an optimal prime—not one memory out of place, not one emotional outburst.
I think he’s seen enough evidence for himself.
Jen calls housekeeping to clean what she deemed the “glass apocalypse” and ushered all the girls into the common room to watch a movie, so no one gets a sliver lodged in their foot.
Jones follows Laken and me into the kitchen, away from the anxious bevy of girls, while Jen tries to subdue the masses.
“What keeps happening at this damn school?” Jones hisses at me as if I were personally responsible. His shoulders expand wide as a gate as he pants from the trauma of seeing the place lit up like a crime scene.
“We think our friend, Flynn, is lost,” Laken offers.
His chest pumps dramatically. Jones wraps his arms around Laken and pulls her in, pecking the top of her head with a quiet kiss.
“Let’s hope that’s all it is.” His deep voice rumbles over her. “You didn’t go into those woods did you?”
Laken glances over at me. “Only a little. We tried to look for him. Then we came out and called the police.”
“Damn it, Wes,” he snaps. “How many times do I have to make it clear, you’re to make sure she doesn’t get anywhere near that damn forest.”
Laken goes rigid in his arms. She frees herself and pants as if she were about to have a breakdown.
“Did you make Wes my keeper?” She breathes the words out as if the idea were reprehensible. “Did you tell him to watch over me like I’m some three-year-old?”
“No.” He steps forward. “Laken, I only have your best interests at heart. I would never want you to get hurt. And your head—” His eyes widen as he takes in a gash I hadn’t noticed myself until now. “You have a cut just above your brow.” He turns to me, trying to mitigate his anger before it erupts all over the damn place.
“I’m fine.” Laken takes a step back. “My head doesn’t hurt at all. I just scraped it against a branch.” She touches her forehead and looks into the black glass of the oven to inspect the damage. “If you don’t mind, I’d really like a hot shower.” She tenderly hugs her uncle goodbye.
Odd. Last time Jones was here, she expressed how repulsed she was having him show affection when she could hardly remember him. And now here she is wrapping her arms around him voluntarily, touching her cheek to his chest.
Jones closes his eyes a moment as if he were savoring it.
“I don’t mind one bit. I’ll touch base with you tomorrow and see how you’re doing.” He gently picks up her chin with his index finger. “Remember, I’m just a phone call away. Nothing can keep me away from my children.”
Children? I guess it’s true in a way. He’s been there for Laken, Fletch, and Jen, more than their parents have.
“Got it.” She hikes up on the balls of her feet and kisses him on the cheek before breezing out of the room. Laken doesn’t bother with a wave or nod in my direction—just disappears from sight. Probably still ticked about the fact I almost escorted Flanders to the pearly gates myself.
I really fucked up good this time.
The whole room drains of its energy when Laken takes off.
“What do you have to say for yourself?” Jones does his best to zero his skyrocketing hostility on yours truly.
“She does what she wants. She didn’t get hurt. The cut must of come from a branch like she said.”
Jones knots up my T-shirt and drives me back toward the fridge. I wince as he knocks me against the stainless steel surface—with my body already on fire.
“I told you once before—watch her like she was your wife. You don’t let her out of your sight.” He bears his weight over me as his breathing grows erratic. “The only reason I brought her here was because I knew you would lay your life down if she were in danger—and you let her go after that thing?” He slams me against the metal so hard, my head vibrates like a cymbal.
“Shit,” I whisper as the walls blur around me.
“We had an arrangement. One more misstep and both you and your father are going to pay a visit to the Justice Alliance.” He drops me to the floor like a sack of shit on fire as he storms out the room. “You’re losing her, Wes. Do whatever it takes to win her back. You owe it to me, kid. You owe it to Laken. I rearranged the world so you could be together.”
What the heck is he talking about? I haven’t talked to my father in months. And why the hell is he threatening us with the Justice Alliance?
He’s fucking on something.
I find his words far more disturbing than the odd wrestling moves he chose to employ.
I rearranged the world so you could be together.
It echoes through my mind like a gunshot.
9
All Hallows Evil
Laken
Once I hit my old room, I’m more than a little thankful there’s no sign of Hattie Tobias. The results have me completely confused. And, God knows, I’ve no intention to speak to Jones or Wes again tonight. It took all of my non-acting skills to pretend to cozy up with my creepy uncle even if he does come off as a sweet paternal figure on occasion. Speaking of paternal, what was with that, my children crack? Either he’s gone off script or is experiencing an early bout of dementia—to be honest, I really don’t care.
A soft whimper vibrates through the air.
My hair stands on end, my skin enlivens with a shrill panic.
I brace myself, in the event the haunted Tobias circus is about to pop into town. I only have a few more days to find the rest of their demonic clan before their offer to get us into the tunnels is null and void.
I pluck the phone from my pocket and send a text to Coop.
R U OK? I’m so sorry I didn’t go with you! If Wes weren’t there, I would have fought my way into that ambulance.
He texts back. Already home. Just a few stitches. Marky says hello. She wishes you were here.
I wish I were there, too.
A sniffling sound emits from the closet.
Do mice sniffle? I seriously doubt Ephemeral has an infestation, or at least not a common blight of the vermin variety.
I make my way over, soft-footed, and pull back the door. The light pours in revealing Hattie the Human curled in a fetal positi
on bawling her hollow eyes out.
“Hey,” I say it sweetly, heading in and plucking her to her feet. I lead Hattie to her bed and offer a box of tissues.
Now that I know she’s only slightly mutated in nature, I’m far less afraid of her.
“What’s going on?” I rub my hand over her back and startle when I realize I can trace out every vertebra running up her spine.
“Flynn is gone.” Her large eyes spray out in a network of crimson veins. “I’m going to get in trouble.” Her lower lip trembles as if she were shivering. I hadn’t noticed how beautiful Hattie was until now with her full lips, her high cut cheeks with a natural rosy glow.
She brings her hands to her nose, and I can’t help but note her alarmingly frail limbs. I hadn’t noticed her thin frame before. She’s been bundled in layers of sweaters and coats since she’s arrived.
“Why would you get in trouble?” I want to add, and why are you so damn thin but let it go for now. Amber Garrett, my best friend back in Cider Plains was skinny as a rail, with no butt or boobs on the hormonal horizon. She could eat a box of donuts during every meal and have nothing to show for it. So I decide to take it in stride for now.
She swallows hard and shakes her head as if she’s said too much already.
A mean shudder races through me, and this time it’s all for Flynn.
“When was the last time you saw him?” I ask, carefully slipping my hand over the exposed flesh of her arm, playing it off as if I were still trying to comfort her.
She squints into me and slides a good foot away.
She knows—she’s a Celestra after all.
“He said he found them and that he would bring me roses.”
“Flynn found your family?” I’m not sure how much of this I believe. She’s still not the Hattie Tobias I thought she was.
She nods. “He kissed me.” Her fingers tremble over her lips as if reliving the memory.
Stupid, stupid Flynn. I knew I should have kept a sexual leash on him. Who knew he was into Fems? Or at least that’s what we believed she was at the time.
“Hattie…” I swallow hard. “I know who you are.” I say it as a fact.
“You do?” Her brows pitch.
I so caught her. She’s not even trying to deny it.
“Yes. I had your DNA tested. I know damn well you’re a full-blooded Celestra.” I want to know more—everything, but I leave that part out.
Her face loses its affect. All of the fear and worry dissipate, and she lets out an eerie looking grimace.
“Look.” She points to her ridiculous expression. “I’m practicing.” She lets out a congested laugh.
“Practicing what?” I reach for my phone in the event I need to bullet out of here.
“Smiling.” She dulls out again. “Flynn taught me all sorts of things. I can wrap my arms around you for a very long time, but Flynn said not to do that to other people. He asked me to save all my hugs for him.”
“Hattie?” I scoot back on the bed as a morbid realization sets in. Her skinny body, her flat personality—she does remind me of the Tobias sisters. In fact, she sort of reminds me of how they looked in captivity. “Where are you from? Where did you live before you came to Ephemeral?”
“In the tower.” She says it plain as water, as if she hadn’t just made a reference to some medieval form of captivity.
“Was the tower in Trinity County?” Somehow I think the process of elimination is necessary.
She gazes off with a lost expression—her eyes, blank as a doll.
“I don’t know,” she whispers. “I only knew homely rooms, food once a day. But in this world…” she shakes her head. “Everything imaginable is at your disposal.” It escapes her lips with breathless wonder. “And you have no pain.” She touches her chest just shy of her neck.
“Oh my, God.” I heave the words out as if I had just stumbled upon a map to the den of terror itself. “Do you know how to get back there? To the tower?”
“I won’t go. Please don’t let them take me.”
“Who are they?”
Her entire body seizes, her eyes widen as if she said too much already.
“I’m very tired, Laken.” She crawls under the covers and cocoons herself against the wall. “Please, turn off the light.”
“Sure,” it bleeds from me almost inaudible.
My heart beats erratic as my entire body breaks out in an ice cold sweat. I have a feeling whoever they are, is far more important than I think. After all, they went through the trouble of extracting a Celestra fresh from the tunnels and depositing her directly into my room.
But why in God’s name?
Why?
Whatever the answer is, I’m sure I won’t like it.
The morning of Halloween, Hattie and I stroll down to the dining hall together. I’ve taken her under my wing these past few days for many reasons but the first is to build a friendship, and it hasn’t been hard at all because she’s so darn sweet.
Jen is seated all by her lonesome, texting away as if her life depended on it, but I bypass her and head over to Carter and Fallon.
“If we went to a normal school”—Fallon takes a bite of her apple—“they’d let us wear whatever the hell we wanted today.”
“Ephemeral is anything but normal,” I say it low in the event someone gets slayed by a serious bout of school spirit and decides to rip me a new one. In fact, if you want to get technical, it’s all Halloween, all the time.” I blink a smile over at Hattie. We had a long talk about Halloween and how freaky it can, and undoubtedly will, be. She promised not to rat me out to her “elders” if I promised to show her a good time like Flynn was busy doing before he turned into a Spectator snack—God, I hope that’s not true.
“So”—I lean in—“what’s on tap for tonight? Freaky, slutty, or both?”
Carter sits up. “I’m going to be Cleopatra, and Fletch is going to be Marc Antony.” She leans in and laughs as though it were absurd.
It’s totally absurd considering the Fletch I know and love would rather jab his eye out with a kitchen knife than don any ridiculous costume—let alone a theme costume that might require a toga and sandals on his part.
“I’m a witch.” Fallon cuts me a dirty look like maybe she really is, so I don’t push her on the subject. I know for a fact she’s a “Treasure” which qualifies you as a Count by proxy, so all other spiritual misgivings are more or less unimportant to me at the moment.
“How about you guys?” Carter plucks at her long curls while trying to detangle a knot with her fingers.
“We’re going to be cheerleaders.” Hattie informs them. She’s got a bad habit of over annunciating her words, which I’m trying to break her of. It just doesn’t sound natural. Everything sounds forced as if she’s a robot, reading from a script.
“That’s lame.” Fallon nods casually as if it weren’t meant as a dig at all. “I mean Laken is a cheerleader, so it’s not that far a stretch.”
“They’re probably adding blood and shit,” Carter interjects with her gruesome defense. “You know, like a cheerleader who just got run over.” She nods into her grizzly line of thinking.
“No.” Hattie objects to Carter’s macabre rendition of our not so haunted couture. “We’re going to be pretty. I’m going to wear my hair in pigtails and wear red lipstick and everything. But I won’t wear a bra. I don’t like them. I don’t like underwear either.”
Crap. It’s spontaneous admissions like these that are going to land her a bed in the Flanders home for the undergarment challenged where I’m sure they have a “no bra, no underwear required” policy.
Fallon and Carter watch her in stunned silence before breaking out in a fit of hysterics.
“Did I say something funny?” Hattie asks, alarmed by their reaction.
Before I can answer, a dark presence—otherwise known as Kresley and Grayson appears. They choke us out with their thick scented perfumes, honey and spice and everything not nice. I swear they create their ow
n brand of mustard gas, simply by standing in the same room.
“What’s got everyone in stitches?” Kres juts her neck out like a chicken.
“We were just talking about tonight.” Carter dabs the tears from the corner of her eyes. “What we are and aren’t wearing.”
“Oh?” Kres leans in as if she were about to lacerate me and was debating where to start first. Her dark hair gleams as it swoops neatly down the side of her face. Her eyes percolate as if a storm were brewing in each one. “It looks like one of you is in costume already,” she purrs. “You’re a slut, right, Laken?”
“I thought she was the village idiot.” Grayson spears me with her impotent remark.
I find it ironic that both Kres and Grayson accused me of being the very things they are—morons.
“Or maybe she’s both?” Kres and Grayson break out in cackles, proud of their standard-issue insults. Although I’ll have to give them credit, their two combined brain cells did have the ability to flush out bargain-basement mockery—whereas my superior intellect, albeit slow, failed to report for duty in the comeback department. Per usual.
Nevertheless, they can go screw themselves and they might just have to because I successfully managed to highjack both their boyfriends.
Ha! That’s the comeback! I can totally feel the inter-synaptic high-fives taking place in my brain.
They scuttle off as both Fallon and Carter offer me a silent condolence.
“Why do you let them talk to you that way?” Hattie shoots them a look that spells out die bitches more than words could ever do.
“Don’t listen to them.” Carter jumps in. “Just because you’re into two guys doesn’t make you a slut, and we don’t even live in a village.”
My mouth gapes open and I just stare at her a moment. It’s becoming, more and more, obvious each day why Carter would be a perfect life-mate for Fletch.
“You’re right,” I say, glancing over at Kres as she shoots me the middle finger. “Although it doesn’t change the fact I wish they’d both disappear from the planet. I swear, it would be doing all of humanity a favor.”
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