Coercion

by Tamara Hart Heiner

  I swallowed hard. “Oh, that was Meredith. We didn’t come together. But we both knew Trey from school. She knew I was going to visit him and decided to also.”

  “So she must’ve gone in to see him after you.”

  I could practically see the gears turning inside his head, putting this new piece of information together and casting the net of suspicion over Meredith. “Yeah, I think so,” I said, gulping.

  “Wait a minute. Her name rings a bell. Isn’t she the one that wrote the poem that caused all this trouble?”

  Criminy. Criminy, Criminy. “Yeah. But it wasn’t her fault, remember?” I was breaking a sweat. I couldn’t text her while I was on my phone, but there was no telling what he was doing while he was on his. I ran up the landing to Beth’s bedroom, pushing past her as she watched me from the doorway.

  “What are you doing?” she asked as I rummaged through the things on her dresser.

  I pointed to the phone in my hand and pointed to her and snapped my fingers. She just stared at me.

  “That’s what you said,” Lieutenant Bailey said. “And I believed you. But she’s the one who disappeared with you in Maryland.”

  I mouthed at Beth, “Now!” and jammed my finger into the back of my phone. Suddenly she got it. She pulled her own phone, covered in beautiful rhinestones, out of her back pocket. How could she stand to sit on that thing?

  I took the phone from her, punching in Meredith’s number while I answered Lieutenant Bailey. “No, I trust her. She’s one of my best friends.” Then I focused on Beth’s phone and typed, Get Trey out of town now.

  “You’ve made it very clear there are forces at work that I don’t understand. But I’m going to get to the bottom of this, with or without your help. I’ll be in touch.”

  The line disconnected, and I shoved my flip phone into my pocket. Using Beth’s phone, I called Meredith.

  “Jayne, is that you?” she said as soon as she answered.

  “You’ve got to go,” I said without preamble. “The police tracked an image on the security camera to you. They’re probably on their way to your house right now!” I could feel Beth’s eyes on me, drinking in every detail. “Get out of there!”

  “I’m not there, Jayne. We’re at Stephen’s house.”

  I’d forgotten we made that plan. I relaxed slightly, picturing them on Stephen’s couch and chatting with his aunt. Which would be weird, since Stephen was one of the people who had disappeared. “What are you doing?”

  “Sitting in the driveway.”

  Even weirder.

  But Meredith wasn’t done talking. “You’re the one who needs to get out, Jayne. The police will probably be at your house soon.”

  I shook my head. “Lieutenant Bailey didn’t say that.”

  “You think he would warn you?”

  Good point. This was going so much deeper than I wanted it to. “Drive out to Southampton Township and find a gas station. Text me the location and then get out and start walking. Turn your phone off and don’t turn it on. Leave it behind if it’s a temptation. I’ll pick you up.”

  The car engine revved as she spoke. “And we’re supposed to, what, walk until you show up? How long will you be?”

  I looked at my sister. “I’m right behind you.”

  Beth spoke the moment I handed the phone back. “What is it? Where are we going?”

  “Meredith and I busted Trey out and the police are on our tail. We’ve got to go before we’re all arrested and lose any chance of defeating Samantha.”

  “And what do we tell Mom?” Beth whispered.

  “Tell me what?”

  My body stiffened at the sound of my mother’s voice. She’d been hanging around our rooms like a shadow lately, and I’d forgotten about her. I turned around, totally unsure of how to get out of this one.

  “Beth and I are going for a quick drive. I need to get something, and I want her opinion.”

  Could I be any more nonspecific? Mom’s eyes narrowed.

  “It’s getting late. I don’t want you girls going anywhere.”

  Late? It wasn’t even seven. “We won’t be long,” I lied.

  Mom shook her head. “I don’t think so. Whatever it is you need, I can get it in the morning.”

  “I need Beth,” I said, digging my heels in. “You’re not letting her ride to school with me anymore, so I only have the evenings to be with her.”

  My mom hesitated, and I could see her wanting to allow us our sisterly bonding time. Then she brightened. “Why don’t I come with you?”

  So not what I was going for. I looked to Beth for help.

  “Jayne’s on a mission to save the world,” Beth said. “If you don’t let us go, all those people who went missing are going to die.”

  I gawked at Beth, not sure if I should agree with her or try to laugh it off.

  “Not to mention, Jayne got in trouble with the police,” Beth added. “If we don’t leave now, she’s going to be arrested and the world as we know it will come to an end.”

  “What?” Mom gasped out. She looked a little faint, and I reached out a hand to steady her arm.

  “Beth’s just being silly,” I said with a nervous laugh. “Just joking around. It’s this role-playing thing we do.”

  Beth gave an aggravated sigh. “No, it’s not, Mom, but we were afraid the truth would be too much for you, so we’ve been hiding it. Jayne and I are both goddesses.”

  Now I knew my mom would think we were crazy.

  “Okay, Beth, let’s try to keep this little game just between me and you, okay?” I said, doing my best to sound patronizing rather than scared.

  But my mom looked terrified. Her eyes darted from me to my sister and then landed on me. “Does she really believe what she’s saying?” she asked, her voice high and nervous.

  Now I felt guilty. I remembered my parents’ reactions when I told them about my visions when I was younger. It hadn’t gone well, and knowing they didn’t believe me, knowing they were concerned for my sanity when they put me in various therapies and under medications, put a huge wedge of betrayal between us. Could I do that to Beth?

  “Jayne!” Beth cried, tears welling in her eyes.

  My mom’s phone rang before I got the chance to respond. Distracted, her gaze still on me, Mom pressed the green button and held the phone up to her ear. “Hello?”

  I could almost make out the words coming through the speaker, but not quite. Just tiny little micro noises. But my mom’s face tensed, and her eyes refocused.

  “Yes, Jayne’s here with me. No, she hasn’t gone anywhere. No, not that I know of.” Now her eyes locked on mine, something like steely determination in them. I gulped.

  “Absolutely, Officer. She’s not going anywhere.”

  I sighed and closed my eyes. Great. Just great.

  She hung up the phone and slid it into her front pocket. “I’m afraid I need answers from you, Jayne, and I need the truth. That was the police. For some reason, they think you might’ve been involved with helping a mental patient escape his hospital today. They wanted me to make sure you don’t go anywhere. What’s going on?”

  I looked again at Beth, but she glared at me, her eyes red. Well, to heck with it. The cat was out of the bag anyway.

  “Beth told you the truth,” I said, concentrating hard to maintain eye contact with my mother. “We’re on a special mission to free the missing people. But if we don’t leave now, the police will detain us and we’ll be stuck here. If that happens, all those people will die.”

  Mom’s face flushed, and her eyes narrowed. “This isn’t a joke, Jayne!” she snapped. “What’s going on?”

  We were out of time. Either I convinced her now, or Beth and I walked out of the house in deliberate disobedience. I stepped forward and put my hands on her shoulders.

  “Do you remember the visions I used to get about people dying?”

  Fear flickered in her eyes, that same fear I’d seen years ago when she thought her child was losing her mind. “Ye
s. But that was a long time ago, just nightmares, and the medicine made them stop.”

  I tightened my grip, trying to impart my sincerity. “No, Mom. The medicine did nothing. I pretended like they stopped so everyone would leave me alone. I still have them. But now I know why.”

  Her lips parted, and the word escaped as if she couldn’t help herself. “Why?”

  “Because when I see a death, sometimes I have the power to stop it. That’s why—” I hesitated, then plunged onward, exposing all in the hope she would let us go. “That’s why we vanished with everyone else. We weren’t hypnotized; we were trying to save them. We failed.”

  She shook her head, pity and compassion swirling in her eyes. “Oh, Jayne, honey. It’s not something you can fix! You’re just a child—”

  I cut her off. “Mom. I’m not having delusions of grandeur. It’s my job. My mission. And Aaron—” Her eyes had wandered away from mine, toward Beth, but now they tracked back to me. “They took Aaron, Mom. And I’ll do anything to get him back. Which means I have to go now.”

  “I don’t understand—” she began.

  “You don’t have to,” I interrupted. “What you have to do is trust me. You never have. I’m taking a chance telling you the truth now.”

  I held her eyes, and finally I saw a flicker of shame in her gaze. I softened my voice. “When this is all over, if you want to know every morbid detail, I’ll tell you everything. But right now you have to let me and Beth go, or we can’t save them. We’ll walk out of here without your permission if that’s what we have to do.” I removed my hands from her shoulders. “Beth, let’s go.”

  We stepped past Mom, Beth casting uncertain glances over her shoulder until we exited the landing. Then she faced forward, and we took the stairs two at a time as we ran for the door.

  “Beth! Jayne!” My mom appeared at the landing, clutching the railing.

  I stopped with my hand on the doorknob. “We won’t stay,” I warned.

  She exhaled. “Be careful. Will you call me?”

  I flashed her a smile. “Soon as we can. Oh, Mom. In the top drawer of my dresser is a file folder. A green one. Take it. If the police search my room, I don’t want them to find it. You can read it. But keep it in your room.”

  She nodded. “I love you both.”

  “Same,” I said, and I pushed the door open, leading the way to my car.

  The file listed every vision I’d ever had and the outcome. If the green file folder didn’t convince her, nothing would.

  *~*

  I watched all of the cars behind me as we drove out of town, my heart in my throat. Any moment I expected to see the flashing red and blue lights of a police car, and then I didn’t know how we would get out of this. But nobody appeared.

  Beth didn’t say much, though I was certain she had plenty of questions about our activity. More specifically, she was probably dying to know what happened with Trey and Meredith. But I still wasn’t quite sure how I felt about her revealing the truth to Mom, and I think she knew that, so she kept quiet.

  I spotted Meredith’s car about half a mile from the gas station, pulled over to the side of the road like she’d stopped to pick blackberries. She and Trey couldn’t be much farther.

  I found them nearly two miles later and parked in front of them. A moment later, the back doors of my car opened and the they popped inside.

  “Wow, you guys were really booking it,” I said. “Made it nearly two miles.”

  “Wasn’t much else to do,” Meredith said.

  “I was just trying to keep ahead of her incessant chatter,” Trey said, grabbing the handle above the door and settling behind Beth. “Does she ever stop?”

  Meredith crossed her arms over her chest, a gesture I saw from the rear view mirror. “I get talkative when I’m nervous.”

  She was always talkative, but I decided it wasn’t time to point that out. “Any cops?”

  She shook her head and readjusted her glasses as they tried to fly off. “No. That doesn’t mean they’re not on their way.”

  “No kidding.” I put my foot to the gas and took off down the country road. “They’ll be looking for me also. Once the police figure out I left town, they’ll be all over me.”

  “And your car,” Meredith added.

  Beth shifted slightly in her seat. “Can’t you get them off our back? Don’t you have a connection at the police department?”

  I made a hissing sound with my tongue and pressed my finger into the steering wheel. “Burned it.”

  “To the ground,” Meredith said.

  I shot her a glare in the mirror. “You’re not helping.”

  “Just saying it like it is.”

  “So what do we do about the car?” Beth asked.

  Trey cleared his throat and leaned forward, catching my eye. “How much do you remember, Jayne?”

  “I don’t remember anything.”

  “Nothing?” He raised one amber eyebrow over his light eyes. “Then how are you able to manipulate people?”

  “What are you talking about?” I focused on the road. “Meredith is the one who can manipulate people.”

  “Oh, so all of the security guards at the hospital just randomly decided to lean up against the wall?” Meredith said.

  I sputtered. “I don’t really know what happened there.”

  “You haven’t had any memories? Seen yourself in other places? Doing other things?” He said each word emphatically, and I felt his eyes boring holes into the side of my head.

  The meadow. The ash. “I haven’t been controlling anyone. I don’t remember anything.”

  “Then we’ll still run into problems,” Trey said, settling back. “If Jayne could remember, we could easily fend off any authorities. But she can’t.”

  The accusation hung heavy in the car, as if all of this had somehow become my fault.

  “We still have Meredith,” I said defensively. “She can recite a limerick and everyone jumps to do her bidding.”

  “They become mindless clowns. Their lives aren’t altered, just their actions.”

  I furrowed my brow. “And there’s something I’m supposed to be able to do about that?”

  “Yes. As soon as you start remembering.”

  “Hey, it’s not as if I have any say in the matter!” I said.

  “Sure it is. You’re not letting go of yourself.”

  “Let go of myself? That’s not really an option!”

  “What are you afraid of? That you won’t be you anymore?”

  Instantly memories of the anger and condescending attitude I’d felt in the hospital washed over me. “Yes, that’s exactly what I’m afraid of!”

  “You can’t be in opposition to yourself!” Trey said, raising his voice. “You’re only making it worse!”

  “I’m not sure what we’re solving here,” Meredith said, interrupting us. “Jayne doesn’t know what she’s supposed to do, we don’t know what it will affect, and we still have to figure out what to do with this car.”

  Trey gave a sigh and rolled his eyes. “You girls are way over-thinking things. Meredith pulled out some cash from the ATM at the gas station. We’ll just take an Uber or taxi from here on out.”

  Either he watched way too many spy movies, or this wasn’t the first time he’d had to do this. “Take an Uber to where? I don’t have any idea where we’re going.”

  “To Wooded Acres, Delaware.”

  “Where?” I raised an eyebrow. “Why the heck are we going there?”

  “To see my grandfather.” A smile pulled at Trey’s lips, crinkling the corners of his eyes. “He trained me. Maybe he can help me get my powers back. And then we can train you.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  We drove my car south for another two and a half hours. All of our phones were off, but I couldn’t help thinking of what was going on back home. How had my mom handled the police? Had she looked at the green folder?

  “Meredith, do you think your dad and brother are okay?” I asked her,
chewing on the nail of my pinky.

  Meredith gave a short laugh. “Not to worry. I wrote my dad a little forgetful poem so that every time he thinks of me, he knows I told him I was going somewhere but he can’t remember where. He won’t worry.”

  Beth swiveled in her seat. “For the love of witches. You cast a spell on him!”

  Meredith’s cheeks flushed pink, but she looked rather pleased. “I’m getting kind of good at it.”

  I tensed as we drove past a cop car. I wasn’t speeding, but still he rolled slowly out of a side street. My heart raced, and I gripped the steering wheel tighter. He wasn’t really following me, was he?

  We continued down a two-lane highway for a stretch, me not daring to go a single mile over the speed limit, him on my bumper. Silence descended over the car as the others noticed him. I couldn’t think what would happen if he pulled me over, if he’d recognized my car.

  We came to a dotted yellow line, and suddenly he put on speed and passed me, zipping into the other lane to cut back in front of me and take off down the empty highway at least twenty miles an hour faster than I was going.

  I let out an unsteady breath, finally relinquishing my death grip on the steering wheel.

  “It’s time to ditch this car,” Trey said. “Find a town.”

  “Right,” I said. “Like I know where one is? Usually I print a map before I leave the house!”

  Beth giggled. “She doesn’t even have a smart phone.”

  Ouch. Just because I had a car payment and she didn’t. “And a lot of good yours does us right now!” I said, smacking her forehead. “We can’t turn on our phones. One of you use your weird powers and figure out where we are on the map.”

  “I don’t think any of us have that power,” Meredith said, a little timidly.

  “I was being sarcastic,” I grumbled.

  Trey appeared nonplussed by my tirade. “All of these highways go through cities. We’ll find one.”

  As irritating as it was, Trey was right. Twenty minutes later, the speed limit slowed from sixty-five to forty-five to twenty-five as we drove through a sleepy little town.

  Trey directed me to park at a grocery store. I did.

  “Now what? With no phone, how are we supposed to get an Uber?”