by Wendy Laine
That’s exactly what had happened. Nobody else had ever mentioned it before. ‘Course, it wasn’t as if we had a lot of people in our house in the past. The picture hadn’t seemed that obvious to me, but maybe it was.
“You’re really good at reading people, aren’t you?”
He opened the door for me and then took my hand in his. “My mom says I’m intuitive. I‘d always assumed that meant too curious for my own good.”
“It might still mean that.”
Gris laughed. “It might at that.” He shot me a look. “You look more like your dad.”
I frowned. What did it mean when a boy said you looked more like a male relative? Probably nothing.
He squeezed my hand and pulled me after him across the yard.
It’d be so easy to accept this if I was a regular, everyday, average girl. A boy being interested. Him holding my hand. But I wasn’t a regular, everyday, average girl.
“Why are you here—at my house, Gris?” I held up our joined hands. “Why this? I told you I’m not falling for your charm.” I was, but he didn’t need to know that.
“I thought we were going to compare notes. We’re in an investigation together, after all.”
We‘d reached the wooden fence that separated our yard from the dirt road that led to all the houses around. A patchy neighborhood was at one end—toward the area that looked like the bat’s body if you’d seen a map online like I had. In the other direction, after our property, the road curved up. It meandered around through some fields and off on a few lone roads on its way toward where Gris was staying. Then, the road curved back toward Hidden Creek, the main part of town, and my school. We were on the outskirts of the town.
“So that’s all it is—an investigation? And you’re holding my hand, why? So I don’t get lost?”
I liked having my hand in Gris’s. It felt safe. Which was wrong! He was leaving. I was leaving. I waited for him to drop my hand since I’d called him on it.
He didn’t. “I like you, and I’m worried about you,” he said finally.
“What does that mean—that you like me? Like as an interesting curiosity?”
He smiled as he turned toward me. I’d felt comfortable staring at him while he was staring elsewhere. I looked down at his soft, worn T-shirt. It had a gargoyle on it. I traced the gargoyle with a finger. The stone image had a smirk on its face and its eyebrows were raised in a challenge. It was charming in the same way Gris was. Leave it to him to have a shirt with a cocky gargoyle on it.
Grabbing my hand, Gris pulled it to his mouth to press a kiss on it. His mouth felt good against my skin. Real good. The cut on his lip had healed, and his mouth was just lighter pink there. Mmm. His mouth was so soft and his hands were warm as they gripped mine. I should most certainly keep staring at his shirt.
“You’re interesting, but that’s not what it is. I’ve been homeschooled my whole life. Never attended public school or any school at all. I don’t know how to do things in the right order or say the right things, Piper.”
“There’s a right order?” I wasn’t even sure what we were talking about, but that seemed like a good place to start. Order was good. I liked order.
“There must be. I must be doing this all wrong if you didn’t have any idea I liked you.”
Gris couldn’t do things wrong if he tried. He could sweet-talk a snake out of its skin.
“Like…as a friend?” Did friends hold hands?
He tipped my chin up with our joined hands, and his mouth touched mine.
Oh…so…like that. His lips were soft on mine and maybe a smidge unsure, though that was hard to imagine on account of this being Gris.
A window opened, and my brother shouted, “Get a room!” before laughing his fool head off.
I winced as I pulled back, but Gris was grinning.
“But you know about me,” I pointed out.
His smile dissolved into a frown. “So?”
“No, I mean, you know about me. You know I’m not…right. You should be freaked out.”
He shifted around so his back was to my house, and then he kissed me again. It turns out, there’s privacy in kissing a tall boy. His lips were pulling kisses from mine, and I wanted to remember everything perfectly.
This time when he leaned back, he said, “You don’t freak me out, Piper.”
“You’re so normal, though, and I’m me.”
Gris shook his head, his charming smile once again stretching his lips. “I am so far from normal, Piper. I’m nearly the opposite of it. It’s just as well I was homeschooled because I never would’ve fit in. Trust me, I’m not normal, either.”
My heart dropped into my stomach.
“Whatever.” I pulled my hands out of his and faced the fence. It was just like a person with no flaws to act as if he knew what it was like. He was an outsider by choice, and he’d probably never tested out what people thought of him. Until you got laughed at and bullied for just being you, you couldn’t join the club.
Trust him?
That was a joke. He’d told me nothing, shared nothing. He’d charmed me into forgetting that. Here I was with all my secrets out in the open. He’d seen the cuts. He’d heard me counting in my sleep. Panic screamed in my head at that—loud and long. I clenched my hands together.
He knew too much. Far too much. I should go. I could politely excuse myself. Thanks, but no thanks. Not really the way I’d expected to end my first kiss experience, but if I wanted to avoid my first heartbreak experience—I needed to get on it.
Gris sighed and leaned up against the fence. “They’re called fiends, Piper, and I can see them.”
Chapter Eleven
Gris
If I told her about fiends, I could avoid telling her about me, and I had to act fast. She was yanking back emotionally at supersonic speeds. Piper was in a full-on retreat.
I cleared my throat. “They’re like poltergeists, I reckon. Only they’re not dead people. They’re like dead souls that never were alive.”
“Like demons?”
I shrugged. I’d seen signs around her house that Piper’s parents were religious. “If you’d like. I’ve never had a full accounting of one to know where they came from. They’re nasty creatures, though.”
“So, they might come from the devil?” She scrunched up her nose.
“I don’t know. They smell evil, in my opinion, but I don’t know much beyond that.”
“The sulfur?”
I nodded. “You don’t usually smell that until there are quite a few of them congregated. They cause and feed off nightmares and dark thoughts—generally at night as they live in the shadows and draw power from the dark. I can see them. I’ve been able to ever since I was a kid. My dad can, too.”
“That’s what is in my room at night? The monsters?”
“Yes.”
She squinted out into the distance and tilted her head. Piper’s thinking face was as sweet as they came. Despite us talking about something as gruesome as fiends, I kept thinking we should go back to kissing.
Her frown returned. “I don’t believe you.”
It’s not as if I could fault her skepticism. Not really. Just went to show how smart she was. People who grabbed on to superstitions quickly were easily manipulated. Piper wasn’t like that.
“Last night, did you sleep okay after I got rid of them?” I asked.
“How did you get rid of them? Machines or weapons or what?” It was amazing how she managed not to answer any questions, ever.
“I ripped out their hearts, and they dissolved.” No need to mention the talons or being able to control darkness.
“You did that last night?” The pucker between her eyebrows was distracting. I wanted to smooth it out with my fingers. Or my mouth. “That’s why you were in my room?”
“I was in your room because those sacks were drawing a ton of fiends there. Most left when I arrived, but two needed to be killed on account of them not leaving you alone.”
“So, th
ey’re like ghosts that you can see ‘cause you’ve got some weird powers? And you kill them by pulling out their hearts?”
“That’s about right.”
“Why’d my throat feel like it was on fire when I woke up?” she asked.
I was trying real hard to be honest with her, but this would require some skirting of the truth. “One of them dove inside you. It took me a while to get it out of you.” I’d spooked it into her, and I didn’t like to think of my hand in that.
Her breath caught. And for a moment, I was as worried as I’d been last night—it took that long for her to take another breath. Then, she exhaled and I let out my own huff. “I had a fiend inside of me?”
“Yes.”
“And they might be demons?”
“You weren’t acting possessed if that’s what you’re wondering. No pea soup puking or head-spinning.”
She scowled at me.
“You kept shivering—like you were trying to get it out of you.” That was a kind way of phrasing matters, but I didn’t want her picturing a horror show.
Dragging her lower lip between her teeth, she worried on it while she thought. Finally, she asked, “How’d you get it out of me?”
I shrugged as if it was nothing. “It’s just something I can do.” I looked away. Maybe if I wasn’t meeting her eyes, she’d stop prying.
She was quiet for another stretch. Her body froze so tightly and purposefully, it was amazing that, when I’d kissed her, after the initial surprise, she’d gotten all loose and soft. I’d cracked through the wall she kept around herself—for a moment, and I wanted to do it again.
“I knew they were there,” she said. “Not that I could see them or anything, but my room gets frigid cold at night, and I could feel them around me, creeping.”
“They’ve been there a while?” It was a question, but I was hoping she’d still answer it.
Piper wrapped her arms around her torso, squeezing like she was both emotionally and physically cold. I wanted to hug her, but she didn’t seem in the mood to be touched, not until we settled this other thing.
“Yeah. A while. It started with dreams. Then, I started sleepwalking—like I was trying to get away from them.” She gulped. “Sometimes I leave the house when I sleepwalk. I wake up here at the fence…or sometimes in my bed, but I’d have dirt on my feet. The night Trina disappeared, I was sleepwalking. My brother found me on account of me leaving the door wide open. It’s all gotten worse since then—the nightmares and sleepwalking.” A shiver ran across Piper’s skin. “I started using a nightlight again ‘cause it made those things in my room less intense. I wondered if I’d done something horrible, like the things I imagine in my head, and they were my penance.” She gave me a penetrating look.
“I’ve seen nuns bedeviled by fiends. It’s not that.”
“Nuns believe in penance and in guilt and in sin.”
“And in forgiveness and redemption.” She wasn’t letting go of this aspect to it.
She nodded, but I could see a hint of doubt lingering. “When they were still around after so long, I figured I was still paying. Maybe some things are never paid off.”
Maybe that was a reason why she cut, a way to pay off these imaginary debts and keep her personal inner demons under control.
“Are they just around me?” Another look that went clear to my heart. In her mind, she couldn’t draw the line between fiends being evil, but not solely attracted to evil.
“No, I swear, Piper. It’s not just you. It’s the whole town. All of Hidden Creek is downright infested with them. It’s why I’m here. I came to figure out why this town is so bedeviled by fiends and to clear them out, but they keep coming. And they’re not just focusing on people. There were a bunch in an abandoned mill also.”
“Harpers’ mill?”
“I guess. I don’t know all the weird names associated with these places: Jones‘ old field, The Smiths’ daughter’s ex-husband’s old shed. In my mind, it’s the nasty abandoned mill filled with monsters and too much pointy, rotten wood.”
She grinned. “It’s haunted. Well, that’s what everybody around here thinks. Maybe it’s less haunted now if you cleared it out.”
“I hope so, but I can’t figure out why they were there to begin with.” What was the motive in creating a haunted mill?
“Will those ghost things—fiends—be back tonight?” she whispered. “I mean, you took those sacks out.”
“I might’ve missed some, and you might be pulling a few in on your own.”
“Why?”
“Sadness and nightmares drag them in, and, as I said, it’s possible someone killed your dog to make you more of a target.”
“That’s why I’m pulling them in? My dog?”
Damn, she didn’t ease up. Piper never would walk the easy road or ask the simple questions. She was looking at me with this desperate vulnerability and this conversation felt like a minefield. I probably owed her the truth, softened and with qualifications. “Also, maybe you’re just more prone to the emotions that drag them in. Older people are, too. They’ve lived long enough to gather regrets and sadness.”
She looked like she was having some of those emotional thoughts right now. Finally, she nodded. “It’s on account of there being something wrong with me—with my head. There’s a darkness inside.” Her soft laugh was almost a sigh, and not happy in the least. “Maybe I deserve them.”
I thought of all the lines I’d seen on her shoulder. She’d been hiding this from everybody, even herself for a long time. If we couldn’t talk about this, how could she ever cope? I wanted Piper’s bedeviling to be over, and it wasn’t only the fiends doing it.
“You’re not dark, Piper. And you don’t deserve to have them bothering you or giving you nightmares. Maybe getting rid of the sacks won’t fix everything, but it might make it easier for you to control your thoughts and what you worry about.”
I listened to her breathing as I waited for her to come to a decision. Inhale. Exhale. My arms felt fidgety with the need to hold her.
Piper licked her lips. “It might make it easier to fix me.” She bit down hard on her lower lip. Her teeth turned it white before she released it, then it pinked before flushing red. It was hard to focus when she did stuff like that.
“There’s nothing that needs fixing. You’re just fine the way you are. Though it might be nice if you weren’t hurting yourself to pay for things you can’t control.”
Her eyes flicked up to mine, and I knew I was right. It was all there in her eyes.
“I’m a freak,” she whispered, meeting my gaze without flinching. She was such an odd mixture of fierce and fearful.
It was a challenge if I ever saw one, and I never back down from a challenge.
“Piper, I see ghosts wherever I go. I rip out their hearts and kill them. I’m a freak, too.”
A smile spread across her mouth. It was a sunrise on a perfect morning. She was beautiful.
She took a step closer. “You are, aren’t you?”
As far as I was concerned, that was basically giving me permission to kiss her again. I made for darn sure I blocked her family’s view with my body. This time, I wrapped my arms around her. This time, her arms snuck up around my neck and held me. This time, she definitely kissed me back.
…
My great-uncle had been in the house again. I could smell him. It must be from one of his arthritis creams that contained sulfur. I couldn’t imagine anything less than extreme pain driving a former Watcher to use products with sulfur in them. It pulled in fiends like catnip, and their brimstone bodies smelled enough like sulfur that it lingered around them. After a night killing a slew of fiends, the scent permeated my clothes enough I’ve wanted to burn them and be done with it.
I wandered around the house looking for loose latches, but there weren’t any. I wasn’t as worried about Critch getting in, but I didn’t want visits from Hank going any further than my front yard.
The fact of the matter was I co
uld see Hank killing Piper’s dog. I wasn’t sure if the grave robbing was connected, but I could see him doing that, too. He had the build for it. I could attribute all the violence to him—but not the set-up, the planning.
I flew to Piper’s. I‘d told her I would chase off any more fiends, and I might need to be in her room to make sure of that. After last night’s experience, Piper was going to be the least bedeviled person in the whole wide world.
A few fiends already lurked outside her house. I took care of them as silently as I could. As the hours passed and there were still lights on, I went back to my place and retrieved my laptop bag and a shirt before returning.
When the last light, aside from Piper’s, turned off, I pulled on the shirt and tapped on her window. She must’ve been waiting because she slid open the window soundlessly and gestured me inside.
“Why aren’t you wearing shoes?” She stared at my feet.
I never did. Not at night. I didn’t want to tell her why, of course, but I couldn’t think of a logical excuse. Not with her there in only boxer shorts and a tank top.
“I don’t generally wear shoes at night,” I whispered, setting my laptop on a beanbag in the corner.
“Are you gonna be comfortable? You could sit on my bed next to me.”
She’d followed me over to the corner. My eyes darted between her and the bed. That was a fairly bad idea that sounded good. We stood there, facing one another. The air between us heated up as it went on.
My gaze focused on her mouth.
She licked her lips.
Then, with an exhale, she hooked my neck and pulled my mouth down to hers. There was an inevitability about us that I didn’t want to fight. Nothing was as natural as enclosing her in my arms as her fingertips clenched into the skin at the nape of my neck. Kissing Piper was heaven on earth, and we weren’t even using tongues yet. I’d never enjoyed kissing this much, and I liked kissing.
When we came up for air, I let her go—though I didn’t want to. “I should definitely sit in the corner.”
“That’d be best,” she said breathlessly, nodding as she stepped back. Her eyes slid to the desk behind me. “Oh, I crossed Phil off my list.” She picked up a pen and drew a line through his name.