The Stranger Inside

by Melanie Marks

  Horror and gloom wrapped around me, held me captive, motionless. It clutched my body, covered my soul. It was so powerful. So horrific. Why try to fight it?

  Where was I?

  Why was I here?

  I was starting to forget. Forget everything. Simply giving in to the dark.

  But wait. I could hear something. Something over the howling and screaming and gnashing. I could hear someone calling to me. Calling from the other side. “Jodi! You’ve got to come back!”

  Jeremy.

  He sounded so desperate. It reminded me of his song—Little Jodi. Little Jodi comes to me through the smoke and rain. Yes, I had to go to Jeremy, through this smoke and rain.

  I clasped the necklace he had given me. To symbolize our undying love. Jeremy. He remembered what the necklace meant. He still loved me. He did. His eyes had told me that. They did. Over and over. No matter what his words had said. Words I wouldn’t allow myself to believe. But I could believe his eyes. And his eyes had said I love you.

  I clutched on tighter to the necklace. It seemed to hold some sort of magic for me. Let me feel a tiny glimpse of love and hope even in this overpowering darkness. I felt Jeremy’s love. Dad’s love. Let them wash through me.

  I listened to Jeremy’s song in my head and Jeremy calling in my ears, fought off the gripping hopelessness, the wails of despair, the bitter dark cold that was grabbing at me, clutching my ankles, trying to keep me from moving.

  Hanna was right. Evil draws to evil. But the thing was, darkness repels from goodness. And the necklace … it was full of goodness, full of love.

  I was surrounded with love, even in this evil darkness. I was. Dad’s love. Jeremy’s love. The band’s love. The crazy efforts they had gone to get me here—that was love.

  And the darkness seemed to be relenting. Little bits at a time. Because of love. I gasped, realizing I needed to get rid of all the negative I’d been harboring in my heart, let love envelope me. Frantically, I peeled off my rubber bands—my emotional crutch that kept my heart from being vulnerable and open to love. In my heart, the bands repelled love. They always had.

  I threw the rubber bands as far as I could—out into the darkness. They each made little chinks in the darkness, making it so I could see tiny, little rays of light from the other side. My heart jumped, feeling I might actually have a chance. Blindly, I raised my hands up toward the light and gasped with relief, warmth instantly rushing through my body. Jeremy grabbed my hand. Sawyer too. They pulled and pulled, pulling me out of the shadow, out of the darkness, into the light.

  “I couldn’t see you,” Jeremy said when I came out of the darkness. He pressed me to him, his heart beating wild. “You were gone.”

  “You guys, come on!” Sawyer herded us frantically into the clinic.

  There was more to be done. I had to get rid of Kenzie. I slammed the door behind us. The shadow couldn’t return. It had already been here.

  I doubled over, trying to catch my breath. Through the window I saw something. I furrowed my brow, wondering if I fainted. Must have. What I saw couldn’t be true. Definitely not real. Kyle Ryan from school—he was outside with the shadow! I watched with a chill as Kyle beckoned to the shadow, seeming to shout at it. He raised his arms high in the air and in a flash of light, poof! The shadow was gone.

  I blinked, my heart racing, but I didn’t get the chance to focus on what happened. Instantly, Kenzie was excited again, thrilled beyond containment that she was about to plow into a bundle of money.

  She kissed Jeremy, wild and quick, then ran, pranced, to the room with the curtain. Her excitement brimming, she whisked back the fabric.

  Then she screamed.

  “Noooo!”

  There wasn’t a pile of money on the bed.

  What we saw was her body, hooked to machines and an IV.

  But.

  Her body had a knife in the heart. Kenzie’s body was dead.

  CHAPTER 49

  No one could explain what happened. Who had plunged the knife into Kenzie’s heart? When Darcy had checked on her last, Kenzie had been fine. And Darcy was a nurse. She’d been at the clinic the whole time. I think she would have noticed a dead body if she saw one. Especially one with a knife plunged into its chest.

  We would have blamed the killing on Kenzie, but she was clueless to our haphazard plan.

  I was shaking and Darcy was worried about my vitals. She insisted I rest in one of the rooms in the finished part of clinic. She led me and the guys to the lit section of the building, explaining, “We’re almost fully operational. We’re only finishing up on the reception area.” The rest of the examining rooms were totally that—examining rooms. Totally set up with monitors and medical equipment and no tarps in sight. That’s how everyone was able to fool Kenzie into thinking she wasn’t in a hospital. She would have refused to visit her body, to risk being put back into her old self, but no way would she have ever figured her body could have been at a veterinary clinic.

  However, before the guys left me to rest, Jeremy pulled me aside. He played with a tendril of my hair. “You may be over me,” he said, leaning his forehead against mine. “But I’m not even close to being over you.”

  Then he left. Just walked away. Leaving me with an ache in my heart.

  The guys left so I could be alone to rest. But ugh! I wasn’t alone. I’d never be alone. Kenzie would be here with me forever. She was so smug about it too, knowing now we could never send her back, there was nowhere to send her. Kenzie’s body was no longer viable, of course, and Ethan was gone because Kenzie’s body was gone—or anyway that’s the way it seemed. Only … there was this nagging feeling at the back of my brain—like Ethan was gone for a different reason. That he otherwise could have still been around, searching for me. After all, Kenzie’s blood was in me, so it seemed Ethan could have still existed—through his ties to me. Only … he was gone. It was just a feeling I had, but it was strong. I was missing something.

  Anyway, Kenzie was set. Even if there was no money, she was getting what she wanted. She would get to be with Jeremy forever.

  “You know,” I said to Kenzie, “Jeremy doesn’t stay with a girl very long.”

  “He doesn’t stay with other girls,” Kenzie admitted. “But he’ll stay with you.”

  I rolled my eyes. “How can you be so sure?”

  “You’re so stupid,” she said. “Everyone knows he’s like, chained to you. Only you. That’s why Trista did what she did.”

  My heart stopped. I’d forgotten about Trista—that Zack said Micah had told her everything, and that we should call her, that she was in New York and would want to help. I’d totally forgotten. But hearing Kenzie mention Trista now made me jolt. “Trista?” I shot up to a sitting position. “What do you mean? What did she do?”

  “I’m sure she’ll explain any minute,” Kenzie said in a singsong voice. “Trista, come out!” She called loudly. “I know you’re here. No one else would have killed my body.”

  What? A shiver ran down my spine at Kenzie’s crazy words, but I didn’t really get to contemplate them, because right then, to my utter shock, Trista stepped into the room. She was here. In the clinic.

  She looked sheepish, like she was embarrassed Kenzie knew she had been hiding. But that seemed like a bizarre reaction. Why was she embarrassed? Why wasn’t she fuming mad? Kenzie had just accused her of murder. But that was only one of the many, many thousands of questions running through my brain.

  What was going on? What was Trista doing here? How did she know we would be here? I tilted my head at her in stunned confusion. She met my gaze with a hard glare.

  Whoa. What was that about? It was like a punch in the stomach.

  Kenzie laughed. “She’s here because she’s been watching my comatose body, obviously. Obviously she knew at some point your little band would try to reunite me with my former self.”

  “Wrong, Kenzie,” Trista said. “I wasn’t watching the body.” She shook her head with disgust, then seemed to be d
one talking to Kenzie. She went on, though. Only now she was apparently talking to me. “When we moved here and my aunt explained what happened to my cousin, Sophie Jones—that some guy hacked her up trying to find Kenzie—I figured the guy was Ethan—as Micah calls him—in some poor doofus’s body and that Kenzie finally took over some unsuspecting girl’s body to get away from him. But I didn’t know she got into your body. I just thought she picked some random person and ran.” She glared at Kenzie/me. “I was actually happy for her—that she got the transference to work. That’s what I consented to move here for—I wanted my aunt to teach me how to do the transference.”

  I stared at Trista, completely sick, choking on all the information she spewed. “Your aunt?”

  Sophie Jones was her cousin? She knew Kenzie? Was related to her?

  “Yes,” Kenzie said, as though I’d asked the question aloud. “Trista’s my cousin,” she verified. “We weren’t exactly close—my family was always poor and was looked down on by hers.” She narrowed my eyes at Trista. “Plus there was the geographical separation—my family always lived in New York, hers in Washington. But her family came to visit us for a month the summer before last. Trista worked on her dark powers with me. My mom taught Trista things she was aching to know—about spirit transference.”

  I furrowed my brow, not believing. Trista had dark powers too? Because she was part of the same family as Kenzie? None of it made sense. I didn’t want to hear from Kenzie. I didn’t trust her, and I didn’t want to hear her twisted lies. I wanted to hear from Trista. I needed her to explain what was going on right this minute. My chest was constricting so bad it hurt.

  I turned to Trista, tried to get her to look me in the eye. “If you knew about Kenzie—that she was your cousin—why didn’t you say anything?”

  Trista set her jaw, looking defiant, but it was Kenzie that went on.

  She curled my lips into a wicked smile. “Trista didn’t know. I never came out while she was around—and the band kept your secret—even from her. Until the end, when Micah thought she could help you.”

  My heart jolted. “Was she trying to help me? Is that why she knifed your body?”

  Kenzie scoffed. “Does it seem like she was trying to help you? No, she wasn’t. She wants your body. That’s why she wanted to learn about spirit transference when she came to visit us—she wanted to transfer to your body.”

  I tilted my head at Trista, squinting my eyes into little slits, feeling sick, so sick. She planned this? This whole nightmare was her idea? I couldn’t believe it. I must have fallen asleep on the clinic bed after all. I was dreaming, dreaming up all this crazy stuff. I had to be. No way was this real. It was too insane.

  Trista spoke up finally, sounding angry. “I didn’t even know about spirit transference until my family sent me to visit my ratty trailer-park cousin in New York”—she gestured at me with a sneer, and huffed—“Kenzie.” Then she sighed. “One night we like, bonded over how sucky our lives were. She told me about Ethan, how she was terrified of him and she needed to get away—she told me someday, when she was stronger she was going to switch bodies with someone—someone beautiful and rich.

  “I told her if I could switch bodies with anyone, I would switch with you. So, she said she would help me. We got all kinds of information on you—where you lived and that fancy dance school you went to and we had her mom teach us all she could about spirit transference. But you were gone for the summer—gone with your dad to a beach house in Maui—Maui!

  “So we practiced and practiced the spirit transference on a cat—waiting for you to come back. But it never worked. We never even came close. I went home in my body—and forgot about the plan.” She glared at Kenzie. “But apparently my cousin didn’t.”

  Before I could ask any of the thousands of questions running through my head—like why me? Why in the world would she plot to steal my body?—Kenzie started talking again. “I was pregnant—I got pregnant. I was desperate. I needed to get away from that creep you know as Ethan, and out of that gross, pregnant body—no way could I have that monster’s baby. But then I remembered Trista’s brilliant plan—you. Your body.”

  Kenzie had me lean back against the wall. I could feel her smile. “You know I was the one driving the car, right? When I had that “accident” you saved me from? Ethan was drunk and I drove around the same area, waiting until you and your dad were finally driving home from your fancy dance recital. When I finally saw you coming, I hit the gas hard and drove smack into that tree, head on, on purpose—but I smacked into it on the passenger side. I wanted Ethan to die right there, in the car. But your dad, ugh! He was somehow able to save him.”

  I shook my head, my brain swimming with questions and horror. She had planned the accident? That was crazy. It didn’t make sense, none at all. “But you got hurt too—really, really bad. I thought you died.”

  Kenzie laughed a little. “Yeah, I had to be kind of critical, close to dying. But see, I’d done research on you, beforehand—thanks to Trista clueing me into your awesome life. So I already knew your dad was a brilliant surgeon and that he would most likely have you tend to me—the less injured—while he worked on dying Ethan. All I needed was to be close to dying, but with a heartbeat. And I needed you to touch my blood. That’s all I needed. That’s how it works.” Then she added whimsically, “Or it could go the other way around, if you had been close to death, but that doesn’t always work. I couldn’t take that chance.”

  I looked back at Trista, feeling sick and angry. “You weren’t poor. You didn’t need money or to get away from an evil demon guy. You had a nice life. And Micah.” I rubbed my aching head, so frustrated I could barely talk. “So why me? Why my body?”

  She shrugged, like duh. “Jeremy.”

  It was like a punch in the stomach. I literally gasped. She put me through this hell over a stupid crush? “Jeremy?”

  Trista’s eyes were bitter as she spit out her venomous explanation. “He loves you. Only you. Girls can be nice, beautiful, smart, funny. It doesn’t matter. The minute you came into his life, it was like no one else had a chance. Even after you left. You, you, you. That’s all he wanted. Well, I want him. I’ve always wanted him.”

  I stared at her in shock, though I guess she’d told me that before. But then, she had gone on to say that she loved Micah. That that was real. But, apparently, that was all lies.

  I choked out the question anyway. “What about Micah?”

  “Micah is sweet,” Trista said. “I care about him, a lot. But Jeremy gave me to him. Handed me off. Like I was nothing, a used toy he didn’t care about. And Micah was okay with that. The only reason I even dated Micah was so I could be around Jeremy.”

  My brain was swimming. Jeremy had just set up Micah and Trista. He hadn’t given her away. But that obviously wasn’t how her twisted mind saw things.

  Trista went on. “I always loved Jeremy, loved him so much. But all he loved was you. So … I always wanted to be you. When I found out about spirit transference—that my family’s powers could do that—it seemed perfect. But then it didn’t work—well, Kenzie tried telling me that. While I was visiting her that summer she said it was hopeless.”

  Trista’s glare was for Kenzie again. “Still, though, that’s why I consented to move here, to New York. It was only so I could learn from my aunt how to transfer bodies—so I could transfer to yours. But then,” she gritted her teeth, “apparently Kenzie beat me to it.” She narrowed her eyes in disgust. “I didn’t know, though. Had no clue. I didn’t find out she transferred to your body until Micah called me, all worried for you. Wanting me to help you.”

  Trista gave a bitter laugh. “Kenzie was supposed to help me. But no, of course not. Of course not! She had her own plans. She decided she wanted your body. Fine.”

  Trista pulled out a gun from her bag. “You can both die.”

  What the …?

  She aimed her gun right at me and went on talking. “At least then you won’t be around, Jodi, torment
ing Jeremy. Then he can love someone else. Maybe me. Maybe I’ll be the one to comfort him, and he’ll see that I’m there for him. That I’ve always been there for him—and you weren’t. You couldn’t even decide between him or Sawyer. You’re pathetic. You don’t deserve him.”

  My hands instinctively went for my rubber bands around my wrists. But they weren’t there. They were gone. For a blink of an eye I felt confused.

  Oh yeah. It took me a frantic second to remember earlier today, what I’d done. What I’d learned. Evil draws to evil, but darkness repels from goodness. Instantly, I clasped my necklace. Instead of repelling love like the rubber bands, it drew it. I clasped the necklace tight in both of my hands, letting Dad’s love wash through me. Jeremy’s too.

  My thoughts reeled with awesome revelations. I was surrounded with love, even in this evil darkness. I was. Dad’s love. Jeremy’s love. Jeremy’s … love. He loved me. He did. He never stopped. He said that. And his eyes said it even when his words didn’t. And his actions always said it. Always.

  Yes, we were messed up, hurt by love, wounded. Badly. But we helped each other out, constantly. We were there for each other, supported each other. Always. That was love. Real love. What Trista felt for him wasn’t love—it was obsession.

  … I loved Jeremy.

  And he loved me.

  A surge of warmth charged through me, carrying energy and strength with it. No way was I going to let Trista’s distorted view of love destroy everything good in my life. No way would I let her win. I had what counted—love. Suddenly, I felt I could risk anything because I had love on my side.

  “Jeremy’s right behind you,” I said, turning my gaze just over Trista’s right shoulder. “He doesn’t look like he’s going to be loving you.”