by Amie Gibbons
I yanked it open and ran out the door, looking around.
And slammed on the breaks.
The vamps stood a few feet from the raised edge, looking at something.
I inched to the side slowly.
Because I knew what I was gonna see.
AB stood on the edge, wild curls whipping in the wind.
One stumble, strong blast, or a hop away from crashing down on the concrete.
“AB?” I asked, holding my hands up and walking toward her and the guys.
“No,” she said, grinning wide and wild. “Ariana, don’t you get it? Don’t you see? We can change things.”
Oh no.
“I saw it, like a vision,” she said, voice high and breathy.
“Changing the past is only a problem if you go back to the future,” she said, voice picking up speed till she was goin’ faster than even I spoke most of the time. “I can do this spell and put my mind here and now, into my body in this time, basically taking her over. It can go back to this summer, before med school, and do it all over again.
Not sleep with Thomas. Not make that mistake. Not completely blow my first year of med school because I was so depressed. Not feel this way about him when he never gave a damn about me.”
I squinted and that deep ruby red light shimmered around her.
That force had gotten to her.
It made her think this was a good idea.
The hairs rose on the back of my neck as the thought hit me.
What if it’d worked its magic on me and that’s why I’d insisted we go back in time? It had been a crazy idea.
What if this is what that force wanted all along?
Cuz now it was in the past, it could wreak all kinds of havoc.
And it got us… no, it got me to do all the heavy lifting.
This was all on me.
“He never cared about me at all,” AB kept going, voice growing higher as her eyes went wide and wild behind her glasses. Obvious even from this distance. “And now I can fix it. I can make it so I never lose it to him and never care about him. Or, or, if he actually could care about me, we can take it slower, have a real chance. It’s perfect! It’s everything I’ve ever wished for.
“I can finally fix it. I have been begging the universe for seven years to give me a second chance, and you finally gave it to me.”
What did I do? What did I do!
“AB,” I said when she took a breath, “what spell exactly do you think you have to do to do this?”
She grinned even wider, lookin’ for all the world like an insane person.
“I just have to say a chant and jump.”
My breath caught in my throat and I gagged.
Jump?
“Kill off this body,” AB continued, “and that energy will power the spell and put me in my younger body.”
Oh dear.
How did I argue with that?
Wait, why weren’t the guys arguing?
I looked closer at them.
And they weren’t moving.
“AB, um, random question,” I said conversationally, clapping my hands together in front of me. “Why aren’t the guys moving?”
“Oh, she said they were frozen so they wouldn’t interfere.”
“She?” I asked, keeping my voice even.
“The voice I heard.” AB sounded practically high as her voice took on a dreamy lilt. “She said they would try to stop me. Try to hold me back. But there’s no holding me back. There’s no looking back. I can stop this. I can change the past.”
She threw her arms wide and stared at me.
“Good bye, Ar-”
“No!” I screamed, running forward.
She dropped her arms, creasing her forehead and tilting her head. “You don’t want me to have this? You don’t want me to have my second chance? Are you jealous because it’s still too late for you? Because you can go back an extra year and undo yours too. We both can have what we’ve always wanted.”
“You can’t,” I said. “AB, listen to me. The voice is lying to you. It’s some chaos thing. It’s responsible for all of this. The tulpa last week, the woman casting the spell to change the past with her daughter, us coming back in time. All of it. It followed us back. It wants us to do something stupid. Please, AB, don’t jump. Some part of you inside has to know it’s lying to you.”
“No, it’s not!” she snarled, voice low and sharp. “You are! I don’t know why, but you are. I can’t take this anymore! I can’t stand feeling this way. I need this!”
She took a step back and raised her hands, whispering something I couldn’t hear.
And tilted back off the building.
“No!” I screamed, reaching out and running forward, picturing stopping her with the force of my mind.
The world froze.
And I gasped as the weight jerked against my will.
And I pulled it up.
AB floated up past the lip of the building and over safe ground again, arms locked against her sides, legs dangling in midair.
I dropped her in front of me.
On the solid concrete.
She umphed as she hit the roof and fell to her knees, hands taking the brunt of the fall.
Oops.
She rocked back on her heels and stared at her palms, turning them so I could see the concrete rash and flecks of red where it’d bit enough to draw blood.
I flinched.
That was going to hurt.
But it was a hell of a lot better than the greeting she would’ve gotten ten stories below.
“You took away my shot,” she whispered, eyes searching wildly, like she was trying to find the answers she’d been looking for for seven years. “You’re supposed to be my friend and you took away my shot.”
She pushed to her feet.
“Ariana, that was my shot! You blew my big shot!”
Her eyes focused on mine.
“How could you!”
She launched herself at me and I threw my hands up, training taking over.
I launched her over my head and she landed in a clumsy roll as I whirled.
“AB, please,” I said. “You gotta listen to me. That voice was lying to you. It was trying to get you to commit suicide. Look inside yourself. Listen to your own inner voice. You know somewhere deep inside that I’m telling you the truth. I saved your life. Please.”
AB pulled something from her small crossbody purse.
A tiny push knife, maybe three inches long and almost as wide at the base.
She grasped it in her fist and held up her arm.
“I don’t need to jump to make this work,” she said, pressing the knife to her wrist.
Like I’d done with a razor eight years ago.
No.
I glanced back at the guys.
Why wasn’t I frozen?
What was this thing?
What did I do?
Why did I suddenly wish Mama was here?
Cuz she’d know what to say.
“Annabeth Williamson!” I snapped, planting my hands on my hips.
She jerked, pulling the knife from her skin.
“You put that away right now. You know this thing is lying to you. You just want to believe it so bad, you’re lookin’ past the warning signs. Listen to your inner voice. What is it saying?”
I crossed my arms and stared her down.
Could I use my telekinesis to yank the knife away?
I seemed to have practically no control over it, but it came out when someone was in danger.
She flinched, closing her eyes.
She didn’t lower the knife, but she didn’t put it back against her arm either.
“Come on, AB,” I said. “You can feel it, can’t you? Please. Don’t take my word for it. Look inside yourself.”
“You know that voice in your head that tells you when you're in a bad situation, that the guy flirting with you is a creep, or that you really shouldn't eat that iffy looking street meat?” she asked, voic
e small and weak.
I nodded quickly even though she couldn’t see me.
She sounded more like herself.
“That inner voice people say is usually right and you should listen to it?” she continued. “When you have OCD, you can't trust your inner voice.
“It's calibrated wrong. It tells you your seat has to be checked for spiders before you sit, that you have to say something three times before bed or you won't be safe while you sleep, or that you have to wash your hands seven times because the germs aren't gone until you do.
“You don't have an inner voice when you have OCD, you have a panic-stricken child telling you if you don't do, clean, or count that certain thing, then horrible things will happen. And you have to be the adult and tell the child no, until her screaming and threats quiet.
“And sometimes, sometimes, you don't know the child is in control until it's too late, and you have made things so much worse.”
She took a deep breath. “Ariana, when you have OCD, you can't trust yourself.”
She opened her eyes, staring at me.
“I literally have no clue what the right thing to do here is,” she said, talking fast, manic. “Maybe the right thing to do is nothing, but I have no way to know.”
“That's what your friends are for,” I said. “If you can't trust yourself, trust us.”
“I don't know if I can,” she said, so quiet I barely heard her. “If I can't trust myself, how am I supposed to trust anyone?”
Our eyes met, and I held out my hand, taking a step towards her.
“You can’t. You can’t trust anything until you trust yourself. So trust yourself. AB, you are brilliant. You did the math for this in minutes. And you did a ton of research on like no sleep and when you were upset. I would’ve fallen asleep, and you just powered through it. So trust yourself. What does your research say about all of this?
“Can you just go back in time and change things without consequences? Can you kill yourself and somehow implant your consciousness in the mind of your younger self? What would happen to the mind of the younger self? What would happen if that did work, cuz then you wouldn’t have been messed up and gone back in time in the first place, so you could create one of those time loop things, right? You know this stuff. I don’t. I’m asking you. Cuz you know it.”
She drew a long breath and lowered the knife, pulling the sheath out of her purse and sliding the knife in before putting it back.
“Ariana,” she asked, sounding crisp and scared but her again, “what’s going on?”
I explained what I’d seen in the astral plane and she licked her lips, nodding.
“So we came back in time because of this thing?” she asked.
I nodded.
She looked at the still frozen guys. “And it’s doing what now?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “And I’m not sure what to do about the guys. Why are they frozen? Why aren’t I? I got nothin’.
“I think I know how you feel with your OCD. I don’t know what to do right now and I’m scared to do anything, cuz I don’t know if it’s that force thing manipulating me or not.”
“Welcome to my world.” She offered a shaky smile. “Thank you for saving me. I…” She glanced at the edge of the wall. “I think I have a new thing to be traumatized over now.”
“You’re okay though,” I said. “And we… we will figure this out. I don’t know how, but hey.”
She looked at the guys and walked over to Carvi.
And pushed him with a grunt.
Carvi stumbled forward and caught himself. “What the fuck!”
AB squinted her eyes and smirked.
And something picked Carvi and Quil up and sent them over the edge.
“No!” I screamed, running forward.
And slammed into air so hard it might as well have been a wall.
I screamed, bouncing back and hitting the concrete hard, the wind rushing outta me.
I lay there gasping as AB lifted her hands.
A smirk making her face ugly and hard.
“I had her there for a moment,” AB said.
But it wasn’t her voice. It was too deep, too rich.
And held the hint of some accent.
“What are you?” I gasped, pushing myself up to sitting.
“Carvi, you guys okay?” I thought as loud as I could.
No answer.
A ten-story fall couldn’t kill vampires, right?
What did I do here?
AB was taken or somethin’ by the bad guy, and the vamps were outta commission.
“What do I do? Tell me what to do.”
It was like everything slowed.
I couldn’t think. I needed time to think!
The world slowed with me.
AB’s hands moved up, slow as snails in winter. The gentle breeze that’d been keeping the night cool stopped brushing my hair back, barely tickling it.
I pushed to my feet.
“What is happening?” I whispered.
This had happened before. Last week, when Grant was dying. I just figured it was my brain interpreting things funny from shock.
This wasn’t shock.
This had to be magic.
But what kind?
And was I doin’ it?
“What am I?” I whispered, turning and running for the edge of the roof.
Carvi and Quil had both landed on their heads based on how they were lying, all twisty, with their heads at funny angles.
That wouldn’t kill them. They’d be piles of goo and dust if it had.
But they weren’t moving either.
Not even slowly.
I turned back around.
AB’s arms were still raising inch by inch.
Who knew how long this slow-mo would last?
I needed to do something.
But what?
“Too bad Karma didn’t come back with us,” I said.
And slapped my forehead.
“Holy crap on a cracker!”
I pulled the coin I’d tucked into my bra in what felt like forever ago and flipped it in the air.
“Karma, I summon you!” I screamed.
The coin spun through the air and crashed to the ground with thumps too loud for the tiny thing.
And the world began again.
AB whirled around, eyes flying wide.
“How did you do that!” she screamed.
I grinned. “Would ya believe I have no idea? Who are you? What do you want?”
She grinned back, and it didn’t reach her eyes.
“I am the spirit that was trapped in the in-between,” she said. “I am in the heart of every human. I am hope twisted to destruction. I am lust disguised as love. Pride as good deeds. I am not a who, little girl. I’m not the infector.”
She paused, licking her lips.
“I’m the disease.”
Our eyes met and my heart sank.
Cuz I believed her.
And had no clue what all this meant.
“One crack is all I need to get in,” she said. “Bi-polar, OCD, low self-esteem, PTSD, grief, abandonment issues, a phobia, a broken heart. You name it, I can use it. You're all so weak.”
Like an infection getting into a cut.
Maybe that’s what she was. A magical infection?
“A whisper here, a push there,” she continued. “A little subliminal messaging, and you humans do whatever I want.”
Her eyes glowed green as she took off AB’s glasses and tossed them behind her.
“Do you have any idea how easy it is to lead the lost?” she asked.
“Huh?” I said stupidly.
She snorted.
And raised her hands.
I put mine up as she started speaking in some language I couldn’t begin to guess.
What could this thing do?
Karma appeared behind AB, wearing a cute little white and black sundress and fabulous red high heels.
“Where did you get my coin?” Ka
rma demanded, propping her hands on her non-existent hips.
AB, or the thing possessing her rather, yelped and turned.
Karma’s eyes flew wide as she looked at AB.
Then at me.
“Hi. Ariana. From the future,” I said fast as I could. “You asked for our help with a spiral. That thing pushed a mom to start it, tricked me into coming back to find out who it was so it could come with us. Possessed my friend. Help!”
Karma’s mouth fell open.
“Why didn’t it go with the woman who started the spiral then?” Karma asked.
Wow, she picked that up fast.
“Ask her!” I pointed at the still chanting AB.
Karma squinted at me.
“Are you-”
Karma cut off with a squeal, doubling over.
“Stop it!” I screamed, launching myself forward so fast I surprised myself, and tackling AB to the ground.
We fell in a heap and I scrambled up off her, pulling my gun.
“That won’t hurt me, and we both know you won’t shoot your friend,” the thing said.
“Then why aren’t you getting up?” I asked, staring her in the eyes.
First rule of guns?
Never ever point them at someone you’re not ready and willing to kill.
A shiver ran up my back as I held my hands steady and let the thing see the resolve in my eyes.
I’d decided the moment I pulled my gun I’d shoot AB if I had to.
And it’d obviously do something to this thing, even if it wouldn’t kill it.
“Karma, you okay?” I asked.
“No,” she said, shaking her head out of the corner of my eye. “It’s trying to hop into me.”
“Any idea what it is?”
“Something old. Older than anything I know of. And it’s reproducing.”
My mouth fell open. “I’m sorry, what?”
“It’s using your friend to reproduce. Her energy. Her lifeforce. That’s why it doesn’t want her dead. It’s started the process and can’t be interrupted without losing what resources it’s already put into the babies.”
AB shot Karma a dirty look.
“Good thing I have a contingency plan,” she hissed, grinning at me.
No, at something behind me.
I whirled, arm sweeping up on instinct, slamming into the arm that had been swinging a baton at my head.
I screamed and dropped my gun as the impact shot through my arm, and for a second, I thought I’d broken it.