How he could say such hurtful things to me?
I was so humiliated. I was ready to just walk home, but within seconds Dante was beside me, helping me into the passenger side of his truck. I barely noticed Scarlett get in behind me. I was just thankful when Dante pulled away and I couldn’t see Varick McKnight anymore.
“What happened?” Scarlett asked.
I couldn’t answer, so Dante spoke up.
“Mr. McKnight was fit to be tied. He kept going on about how Bristol was mean to Blasé, and that’s why he offed himself. He was out of line.”
Dante looked over at me and smiled.
“Don’t fret, sugar. He’ll get over himself and he’ll come apologize. You didn’t do nothin’ wrong.”
I tried to smile back, but I couldn’t. I kept replaying everything Varick had said. I was so upset at the time; I had forgotten that Dante was just a room away. How much had he heard?
He knew Varick blamed me for Blasé taking his own life. Had he also heard me confirm my own abilities? I kept saying that Jared had moved on, and talked about finding the body, and talked about seeing the dead . . .
Could today get any worse?
Dante gave me a hug after walking me to my door. I was really tempted to break down and cry again. I could feel it building within me.
I still missed Payne.
I said goodnight and went inside, easily staying clear of the family and sneaking upstairs.
Just as I was getting into bed, I looked over to say goodnight to Ricky.
“You know, Dante heard what Mr. McKnight said,” Eric said as he appeared.
“Maybe,” I said. “He didn’t ask me about it on the ride home.”
“He will,” Eric said. “He wouldn’t bring it up in front of his sister, but once you two are alone . . . ”
“Maybe we won’t be alone,” I suggested.
“Yeah, right. If I were you, I’d get it over with. Besides, that’s not even your biggest problem right now.”
“Eric, the guy knows I talk to ghosts and see the future. What if he asks me about that?” I didn’t want to talk about my visions of telling Dante that I love him.
Eric just seemed like he was trying to make a point.
“Bristol, I think he’s falling in love with you.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” I said. “That’s insane.”
“That’s exactly what’s happening,” Eric countered. “Listen, you better get some sleep. I have a feeling that you’re going to need it.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Like I’m going to be able to sleep tonight.”
But Eric was already gone, and I was just talking to myself.
- nine -
Crash Test Dummy
I woke up the next morning to Uncle Mark having a fit.
Aunt Breanne had called him last night after I’d gone to bed and told him what happened. He was ready to go storming over to Varick’s house and punch the man’s lights out. It took me ten minutes of pleading to convince him to let it go. Varick was just grieving over Blasé. He’d apologize soon enough.
Uncle Mark wasn’t too thrilled with me, either. Apparently, going straight to my room without telling him that Varick had verbally assaulted me was not okay. I could only imagine how upset my uncle would be if he also knew that Varick had blabbed my secret to Dante.
Which is why I never mentioned that part.
Just as Uncle Mark looked like he was going to ask me if there was anything else I needed to tell him, we heard Dante’s truck pull up in front of the house.
He beeped the horn, giving me my out.
I said goodbye and quickly ran outside. Dante was sitting behind the wheel, grinning. Scarlett was next to him in the front seat, texting someone.
I crawled into the back seat next to Maggie, who immediately started to talk about how excited she was about Scarlett’s party. How she hoped she could bring somebody. How she’d downloaded a bunch of old songs. How she hoped she had an outfit that was bright and sparkly enough to be worthy of the 80’s.
This from a girl who was wearing a bright blue shirt and neon pink yoga pants, which could probably glow in the dark, or be seen from outer space.
“I’m sure you’ll manage to throw something together, darling,” Dante said.
I pulled my bag in front of my face to hide my snicker.
As we got out, Dante touched my arm to signal me to hold back. I groaned inwardly, but stayed behind. As Scarlett and Maggie made their way inside, Dante leaned close to me so only I could hear him.
“Sugar, we need to talk.”
“Oh. Um, I did want to thank you again for sticking up for me yesterday. I don’t know what’s gotten into Mr. McKnight. I hope your sticking up for me didn’t cause a problem for your father.”
“Don’t you worry about that,” Dante said. “I think you know what I want to talk about, but I don’t mean now. We’ll talk after school. Don’t try and avoid me.”
I tried not to groan. I knew I had to talk to him. The question was, could I figure out a way out of this by the end of the school day?
I caught up with Scarlett and Maggie and headed into school. Just as I entered the main hallway, I stopped short.
Blasé was there. He looked full of anger and was still glaring in my direction. He was there for just a few moments before he faded away.
“What’s the matter?” Dante asked, leaning into my ear. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say you’d just seen a ghost.”
The tone in his voice told me even the best-spun story wasn’t going to save me.
I racked my brain all day. The best excuse I could come up with was that Varick was saying crazy things, and I just went along with him out of fear. Yeah, like that’s gonna work.
When the last bell rang, I groaned out loud. It must have been the first time in my life that I was upset to hear that sound. I wondered if there was any way of getting out of seeing Dante, but he appeared by my side within seconds and quickly steered me towards the door.
“My sister has plans,” he said. “Don’t ask me what they are. I have no idea, and I don’t want to know. Maggie has that math club thing. There’s still no sign of your non-boyfriend, so you got no excuses.”
We ended up by his truck, where he opened the door for me.
“What if I don’t want to talk about this?” I asked.
He grinned at me.
“Sugar, I’m not going to make you do anything you don’t want to do, but I will be buggin’ you like a fly on a pile of manure if you don’t talk.”
I had absolutely no idea how to respond to that particular simile, so I just got in. Soon we were driving out away from town. Dante took a turn off the main road and we ended up in the same place where Payne and I had once fought, until the ghost of his mother appeared to me. I hoped she wouldn’t show up again now because that would be real awkward.
The area was an open lot that was for sale. Crab grass was growing all over, except where the dirt was kicked up from cars using the area to do illegal U-turns.
Dante got out and came around to open my door.
We started to walk.
“So tell me, sugar,” Dante said. “What cock and bull story did you settle on? I misheard something? It’s complicated? Or, you were just humoring the old man?”
I stopped walking for the briefest of seconds.
“There it is,” Dante said, with a victorious grin. “So why don’t we just pretend that we wasted a few rounds on that load and take it from there.”
“Um,” I said.
Dante kept talking.
“Bristol, talk to me. Tell me what happened.”
I turned away from Dante and tried to figure out what to say. There was no way out of this. How is it I went so long without living person knowing my secret and now so many people knew? Was it even worth calling it a secret anymore?
I closed my eyes and prayed.
“Bristol,” Dante said
gently, “I won’t tell anyone.”
I wished one last time for an answer to magically appear before I opened my eyes, and saw Eric’s ghost pop up beside me.
“Bristol,” Eric said to me, a look of panic in his eyes. “You need to get out of here. Payne’s father is on his way, and this time he’s armed.”
I turned to Dante.
“We should go,” I said. “Now.”
“We’re not going anywhere until you tell me the truth.”
“Bristol,” Eric urged. “He’s almost here.”
Great, just great.
“Do you trust me?” I asked Dante.
“It’s not a matter of—”
“No,” I stopped him. “If I tell you the truth, will you believe what I say?”
Dante registered the change in my demeanor and nodded.
“Okay,” I said. “I can talk to ghosts and sometimes see the future. I have since I was a little girl. It’s been a secret for nearly all of my life until recently, and I wouldn’t be telling you or admitting it, except that there’s a ghost here with us now.”
“What?” Dante looked around. His eyes widened in panic. “Where?”
“Shut up and focus,” I snapped. “The ghost is a friend. He just told me that Balthazar McKnight is almost here, and he’s got a gun this time. We need to get out of here, right now!”
Dante looked stunned beyond belief and for a moment I thought he might faint. Or laugh. Or something.
Instead, he grabbed my hand and we ran to his car.
We were too late. Balthazar was pulling in behind Dante’s truck and climbing out with a shotgun. He pointed and shot, but all he hit was the gate of Dante’s truck.
Dante and I skidded to a halt, and then ran the other way into the trees.
“What now?” Dante asked.
“Run,” I said. “Where’s your cell?”
“Car,” he answered. “You?”
“Same,” I yelled.
There was another shot.
“Bristol,” Eric yelled. “This way.”
I pulled Dante towards Eric, who led us further into the woods.
“Why this way?” Dante asked.
“I have no idea,” I said. “Eric thinks it’s a good idea.”
“Eric?” Dante echoed. “The kid who took his own life?”
“You wanted to know—now run!”
As we ran, I heard something that chilled me to the bone: it was the rolling laughter of the Shadow Creatures. Was Balthazar here on their orders? Were they here just to enjoy the show? Whatever the reason, their arrival seemed to force Eric to fade out.
“We’re on our own,” I said.
“Why?” Dante asked as we took cover behind some trees. “What happened to your friend?”
“You don’t want to know,” I said.
For a minute, we tried to catch our breath. While we were stopped, Dante pointed to a path that looked as if it led to the highway.
“C’mon,” he said. “We can head that way and flag down a car.”
I hesitated. To get to the road, we’d have to go out into the open.
“We can’t stay here,” Dante urged. “We need to move.”
He was right. It wasn’t just Balthazar we were dealing with.
“Let’s go,” I said.
Dante took my hand, and together we ran as fast as we could. I felt myself knocking into branches and scraping by trees as we rushed through the shrubbery into the clearing. I felt a surge of relief when I saw the road. We doubled our speed.
Once we hit the street, we looked around for a passing car. The first one I saw was a beat up luxury car. One that looked familiar.
Balthazar must have circled back to his car, because he was now barreling towards us as fast as he could. We had no chance to run. We were seconds away from being hit.
A silver Lexus came rushing out around us, and cut him off. Balthazar had no time to turn. His beat up car crashed into the Lexus at top speed, straight into the driver’s side. The air bag exploded in Balthazar’s car, knocking him out.
It only took me a moment to realize who the other car belonged to.
The driver was bloodied and broken. It looked like his neck was snapped, as were probably several other bones in his body. Nobody could survive a crash like that.
Nobody except Payne McKnight.
Within moments, his bruises started to disappear, his cuts seemed to close and his neck snapped back into place. The entire process took less than two minutes and looked like it hurt like hell. Payne’s eyes popped opened. They quickly found me.
I was still holding Dante’s hand.
Oh, dear.
- ten -
My Non-Boyfriend’s Back
“How the hell is he alive?” Dante sputtered. His eyes were wide and unblinking.
Payne crawled over to the passenger side of the car. When the door wouldn’t open, he smashed what was left of the window and started to climb out through the opening.
“Don’t sound so disappointed,” Payne snarled.
I let go of Dante’s hand (finally) and ran over to help.
Bits of glass fell away off of Payne’s clothing. There were smears of blood on him, but every cut and bruise had already disappeared.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
“I’m fine,” Payne said.
“You shouldn’t be,” Dante said from behind me. “How are you not dead?”
Payne stifled a laugh, turning back to me and ignoring the question.
“I tried calling as soon as I got back to a phone, but you didn’t answer your cell. Aunt Breanne said I needed to see you, so I came looking, but then I heard you were out here. With him.”
“I didn’t get any calls,” I said. “I wasn’t avoiding you, I swear. And I only came with Dante because we needed to talk. A lot has happened.”
“You needed to talk?” Payne asked. “Out here?”
“It was important,” I said. “We needed privacy.”
Payne gave Dante another dirty look before he pulled out his cell phone and began to dial.
Next thing I knew, we were all in my uncle’s patrol car; he was driving us away from the accident scene, and back to Dante’s house.
The drive was very awkward. I was in the front with Uncle Mark, leaving Dante and Payne to share the back seat. I watched as they eyed each other and stayed as far away from each other as possible.
We dropped Dante off first, and when we pulled up to his house, I got out of the car so we could speak for a moment. Judging by his scowl, Payne wasn’t happy about that.
“We still need to have our little conversation, sugar,” Dante said.
“Yeah,” I said. “I figured. Come by my place tomorrow, okay?”
Dante sighed, but nodded.
“You won’t say anything,” I urged. “Please.”
“You mean about you talking to dead people?” Dante asked. “Or about your non-boyfriend healing from the dead?”
“Both,” I said.
Dante looked hurt. “You can trust me.”
When I got back into the patrol car, into the backseat with Payne, he didn’t seem to want to look at me either.
“I’m afraid to ask,” Uncle Mark said as he drove, “but is there any chance Dante didn’t see you get hurt?”
“None,” Payne said. “Couldn’t be helped.”
Uncle Mark nodded, understanding that Payne had just exposed his secret to Dante just to save me.
“Well, now Dante knows about both of us,” I said.
“What?” Payne asked. His eyes went wide in surprise, and then narrowed in anger. “You told him about you?”
“No,” I said. “I didn’t.”
Without warning, Uncle Mark pulled off the road, and into the parking lot of a small store.
“I need to use the restroom,” he said. He got out and went inside, leaving me alone with Payne.
“What happened
?” Payne said.
I took a deep breath and told him about the confrontation with Varick. As I did, I could feel anger burning within him. When I explained that Dante had stayed with me while Payne’s father was trying to kill me, I could feel guilt adding to the mix of emotions.
“I’m sorry,” Payne said. “I should have been here. I should have been able to protect you. I had to go take care of Hunter. I didn’t have a chance to do anything.”
I knew Payne blamed himself for not being able to save his mother and Jared. Payne takes the weight of the world on his shoulders. I knew there was also a part of him that blamed himself for Eric’s suicide.
“It wasn’t your fault,” I said. “But your grandfather—”
“I can’t believe he’d act that way,” Payne said again. “If he thinks I’m going to stay with him—”
“Where are you going to go?”
“I’ll stay with Aunt Breanne,” Payne said. “She’ll love it.”
I nodded. She would enjoy that. But she’d also hate that it meant Payne would become estranged from Varick.
Payne loved Varick, and Varick loved him. I didn’t want to come between them.
“It doesn’t make sense,” I said. “Why would your grandfather blame me so much? Just because of Blasé’s note?”
Payne shrugged.
“Something else is going on,” I said. “I know your secret.”
Payne looked at me as if I’d just sprouted a second head.
“So? You wouldn’t say anything.”
“Yeah, and you also know that I didn’t harass Blasé the way your grandfather thinks I did. I know your secret. I know Hunter’s and Archer’s. I know more about your family than you know about mine. If Varick really thought I was capable of harassing Blasé to the point of suicide, why wouldn’t he also think I’d go tell everyone about your abilities?”
Payne looked thoughtful.
“I know you wouldn’t. But I get what you’re saying. If this had happened a few months ago, I would say that Grandpa would have realized it, too. So what’s changed?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe he really is just grieving for Blasé. Maybe he feels guilty because he rode Blasé so hard in the end. But maybe it’s something else. Here’s another question. Why did your dad go after me all of a sudden?”
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