Chapter 25. Reed
Reed
“Now what?” Tessa asks.
“Do it again?” I shrug, checking the phone. I hate seeing time slip away unnecessarily.
“How about you start back on Elm, I’ll start here, and we’ll meet in the middle? We can cover ground quicker that way.”
“Okay.” I cup her cheek in my hand, and she leans into my touch.
“Be careful out there,” she says, pressing a kiss to my palm. Before I can breathe a word, she’s gone, leaving a vacuum behind her.
I wander past the drugstore and the Starbucks, dodging people on the sidewalk.
Eventually I get to the residential section, and the traffic thins out except for the occasional dog walker or UPS delivery truck.
There’s a curve ahead in the road, a summer breeze rustling the leaves of the ancient oaks lining the block.
I swear I hear my name on the wind, a light caress.
For a moment it reminds me of the whispers of the smoke people, but when I hear it again, louder this time, I recognize Tessa’s voice. She sounds like she’s in trouble.
I race ahead to the corner and find both Tessa and Carl on the sidewalk about halfway down the block, shaking and doubled over. In a heartbeat, I cast myself beside her.
She reaches for me. “He pulled up to get something from his house and I barreled through him, twice. I did what we practiced. I told him I was here for revenge and asked how he’d like to die.” Tessa grabs my arm, still unable to stand up fully. “I think he heard me, Reed. It’s working.”
“Who is this?” Carl’s eyes are wild as he scans the surroundings. “Stay the hell away from me.” He stumbles toward his car, restarts the engine, and begins to pull out of the driveway.
“Do something!” Tessa urges.
Without thinking, I project myself further down the street, right in Carl’s line of sight if he could see me.
Since he can’t, that gives me the upper hand.
I’ve never tried to intercept someone moving so fast before, but I brace myself as his car heads my way, lining myself up with the driver’s side.
There’s a rush of wind and sound, it comes on fast, but I allow the vehicle to pass through me—even as every impulse inside me screams to jump out of the way.
I stay rooted in place, a tree against raging floodwaters.
Before I know it, Carl and I are occupying the same space.
I halt the flow and sink right into his body.
I hold there, using all my strength, riding along with him, inside his head, as he speeds down the road.
This is my chance. I flood his mind with flash after flash of his crime: picking berries in the greenhouse, curling up outside the kitchen once he realized what he’d done, running away as we drew our last dying gasps.
We see you, Carl, I say in my most threatening voice.
We know what you did … because we’re watching you.
If you lay one finger on Tilly, or anyone else, we will haunt you until your dying day.
Then I’m out, on the street on my hands and knees, gasping for air.
Every fiber in me is repulsed from being inside him.
It’s as if my body, wracked by convulsions, is trying to leach a poisonous toxin.
It took all my strength to hang on that long, to shove my memories into him instead of the reverse.
I lift my head to find his car’s slowed down. He’s swerved into the other lane but hasn’t stopped. He’s getting away, getting closer to Tilly with every passing second.
Tessa tries the same trick I did, projecting herself ahead of the car to intercept Carl as he drives. The onslaught. That’s what we’re calling it. Go big or go home. It’s a risk to spend so many of our remaining days at once, but we need to scare him so thoroughly that he backs off for good.
In the distance Tessa falls, writhing and groaning. Her efforts helped, though, because Carl’s completely lost control of the vehicle. He careens off the road and crashes into one of the oak trees. Smoke spirals up from the hood of his car.
I project myself forward, appearing beside Tessa.
Carl stumbles out of his car, limping toward a branch on the ground. He brandishes it like a weapon, swinging it wildly. “Stay away from me. Keep out of my head.” He pivots, yelling in all directions.
I surprise him, stepping in from the side.
Boo, Carl. We’re not staying away until you stay away from our greenhouse.
Stay away from Tilly. If you touch her, if you so much as look at her again, we’ll gut you.
It’s all I can manage before I collapse back on the ground.
These attempts are getting harder. I’m losing strength.
But then Tessa, relentless, charges through him again. Carl cries out in agony over whatever she’s saying to him. Though it’s not long before she’s down on the asphalt gasping for breath.
Carl staggers backward, crashing against his car, his eyes panicked, darting in every direction.
Tessa crawls my way. “Did you see?”
“See what?” I shiver.
“His plans. He’s going to burn down her house tonight … with Tilly and her parents inside. He has gasoline in his basement.” A sob flies from her lips.
“What?” I start scrambling, pushing myself off the ground to go after him again, but it’s no use—my body is spent.
Carl wanders into the middle of the street.
“Is that all you’ve got?” he roars. “I know who this is. You two nerds can’t scare me.
Your greenhouse? Is that where you’re hanging out these days?
I have news for you: I bought gasoline to use on Tilly’s place, but I think I’ll use it on that old mansion first.” He stumbles off toward his home.
Tessa’s face is tense with worry. “He’s completely delusional.”
Shit. “I screwed up.” I was so focused on frightening him I forgot to protect us. “He saw my memories of the van der Born place, he knows it’s our home base, that we can’t leave for long.” Oh God. What have I done?
“What happens if he burns the mansion down? What happens to our door?” Tessa staggers back, her voice growing increasingly frantic.
I can’t be responsible for trapping Tessa here for eternity, left to wander the fields lost and forgotten, forever blaming me for holding her back, for blowing our plans. She’d hate me all over again.
“We have to stop him,” I say as Tessa offers me a hand up.
At the end of the block, Carl stumbles up the driveway to a pale-yellow two-story home, one of those places with rocks out front instead of a lawn.
Lacy pink curtains flutter in the windows, their color sun-bleached from years of neglect, while boxes of fake flowers hang half-forgotten from the kitchen sill.
Nothing about the place says “college student psycho killer.” “This is where he lives?”
“It’s his childhood home,” Tessa informs me. “I saw in his mind. He inherited it a couple years ago. I know where he’s headed, too. He keeps the gasoline in some canisters downstairs.”
Tessa and I arrive as Carl is fishing the key from his back pocket. He claimed he’s not scared of us, but his hands are shaking so badly he can barely turn the lock.
Carl shoves his shoulder against the doorframe and tumbles inside. “I know you’re there. You’re not invited in.” He scrambles forward, careening down the hall.
“Does he think we’re vampires?” Tessa mumbles.
He left the front door open in his panic, not that it would deter us. We step over the threshold, unafraid, watching as he makes his way toward the kitchen.
“We’re gonna have ourselves a fun bonfire tonight,” he howls, a wolf baying at the moon, as he flings the basement door open.
My thoughts are all-consuming: protect Tilly and her family, save the van der Born estate, save our door. I already lost Tessa her life by grabbing Carl’s poisoned drink; I can’t take away her chance at the afterlife, too.
I don’t calculate my move. I’m high on adrenaline, shaky and determined, as I charge Carl from behind—anything to keep him away from that gasoline.
The room pulses and vibrates as I slide into his mind.
You sick psycho. You think you’re safe here?
I won’t let you alone for a minute. You’ll be haunted for eternity.
I will peel your mind back layer by layer until there’s nothing left, until they haul you off broken and crying to a padded room.
I flood Carl with terrorizing images of him curled up and alone, rocking back and forth in an asylum as his mind fractures. You. Cannot. Escape. Me.
Carl buckles over, hands pressed to his ears. “Fucking leave me alone!”
Then I’m coughing and gasping on the floor by Tessa’s feet, face pinched tight as my body spasms. Carl, half retching, trips over himself and tumbles forward.
It all happens in slow motion: Carl’s body somersaults down the wooden steps, face up, feet up, over and over, a circus act gone horribly wrong.
I gasp in horror at the loud crack that reverberates off the walls when his head collides with the cement floor.
“Oh my God,” Tessa whispers, fear twisting her features.
Carl’s eyes are fixed on the ceiling, staring blankly. Blood begins to pool under his skull, soaking his crimson hair.
“I—I was trying to scare him,” I choke out. “It was an accident. I never …” I trail off, trying to absorb the horror of the moment, of what this makes me. “I didn’t mean …”
Tessa slowly helps me to my feet, and we take the stairs together.
We’re no killers. Please just let him be roughed up.
But as we reach the cold basement floor and Carl’s motionless body, we see it. Glowing and pulsing, sandwiched between the boiler and an old metal shelf stacked with ancient paint cans—Carl’s door.