CHAPTER ONE #3
The man tried to pull me down the hall, tried to soothe me with more words that swallowed me with their emptiness.
I fought him and draped myself over my mother’s remains.
As if that would change anything. As if it would bring her back.
And then I was screaming again, clawing at the man’s arm as he picked me up.
I kicked my legs out uselessly while he carried me out, filling my ears with his lies.
I wasn’t okay. Nothing would ever be okay again.
“Fortuna. Come back. Come back to me.” Hands cupped my cheeks.
I blinked up at Collith, dimly aware that I was gripping his wrists. There was a slight tremble in my fingers. Lately, I’d been slipping into the past so often it felt harder and harder to come back. “Get me out of here,” I whispered.
His response was to wrap an arm around my shoulders and tuck me firmly against his side.
His scent assailed my senses, and for just an instant, it blocked out everything else.
I let myself close my eyes. The carnage was replaced by darkness, and Collith, and the solidness of his body against mine.
And his voice, the soft sound of it filling that terrible stillness: “I’ve got you, sweetheart. ”
We left the room together, and I was breathing through my mouth now, trying to avoid the smell of death.
The sound was small and ragged. Hearing it, Collith’s grip tightened.
Part of me wanted to close my eyes and press harder against him …
but another part of me resisted. That had been happening a lot these days, I thought as Collith led us out.
Every time we got closer, or it felt like I’d started to depend on him, I kept the smallest distance between us.
When we neared the entrance, I pulled away and raised my gaze, fixing it on the open door just a few yards away. The night sky beckoned like an old friend.
This time, I didn’t look around. There were still a couple people here, and their low voices followed me and Collith outside.
At the first crime scene, I’d halted on the threshold, my heart lurching with alarm as something else occurred to me.
“Wait,” I’d said, turning back. “The blood. Police officers will see it, and they’ll take pictures—”
“Glamours linger after death,” Collith had replied, his tone reassuring. “And by the time it fades, any evidence or witnesses are taken care of.”
“Dracula?” I’d guessed. Collith nodded.
Tonight, I left without hesitation. The police lights flashed in our faces again.
Even though no one could see us, they felt like a spotlight on my pain.
I put my head down and hurried toward our rental car.
Collith opened the passenger door and watched me lower myself into the seat before he circled the hood and went to the driver’s side.
Once he was inside, pulling the door shut, I turned my face and looked out the window.
There was nothing to see besides my own face reflected in the black glass.
I’d lost weight, I thought faintly. Collith drove to the end of the block and turned, taking us away from that house of horrors.
Within a minute, we were surrounded by farmland.
I kept staring at myself, and my own haunted reflection was a reminder of everything that had happened to make me look like this.
There were so many cracks inside me now that I was on the verge of shattering. That happened a lot these days, too—getting to this point, this pain.
But every time I was at the edge, someone intervened.
At Bea’s, when I opened my locker in search of eye drops and discovered a cupcake waiting for me, Ariel’s subtle scent wafting out.
At home, when I emerged from my room, red-eyed, and drew up short at the sight of Damon, Danny, and Matthew, all of them dressed for a hike, looking in my direction with expectant smiles.
Some days, I’d get a timely text from Adam or Gil, inviting me to come train at the shop.
Then there was Emma, leaving freshly baked cookies on the counter or asking how my sessions were going with Consuelo.
Without fail, my Shadow Court pulled me back again and again. Even those who weren’t technically part of it.
At the same moment I had the thought, I sensed Collith’s arm move.
His fingers interlaced with mine, and then he lifted my hand, his lips pressing a brief, gentle kiss against the back of it.
I watched him silently. Despite the cold that spread over my skin from that kiss, I felt warmer, a small spot of heat buried somewhere deep inside me.
I waited for Collith to say something, but he just turned his head, concentrating on the road again.
Light from the screens in front of us cast a pale tint over his skin, and there was that stubborn lock of hair over his brow, I noted distantly.
The one that always had my fingers itching to reach up and brush it back.
But I couldn’t even if I wanted to, because Collith hadn’t let go of my hand. And I hadn’t pulled away.
As I continued to study Collith’s profile, the memory of his voice came back to me from those last minutes in the house. It had been my port in a storm of guilt and self-loathing. I’ve got you.
The warmth began to spread, threatening to thaw the icy wall I’d built. Finally tearing my gaze from Collith, I met the eyes of the woman in the window again. Streetlights and darkness rushed past, and she stared back at me with a look in her eyes that I knew all too well.
Fear.
No matter how hard I fought it, no matter how many times I tried to pretend it wasn’t there, I felt it in my ragged breath, in my tight chest, as if there was a shadow behind my heart. Whispering to me with every hard, unsteady beat.
I was afraid. Not just that we would be too late again, and we’d be finding the remains of another family instead of saving them. Not just that I might let down Finn, and my parents, and everyone else that my twisted creation had slaughtered.
I was afraid I couldn’t do it. Afraid that when the time came, and I was facing the creature Oliver had become—the one he’d always been, I corrected silently, a truth I would’ve seen sooner if I hadn’t been so weak, so stubbornly blind—something would make me hesitate.
The memory of that quiet, freckled boy. A shred of nostalgia or misplaced affection that might still live deep inside me, no matter how many times I reminded myself that the boy I loved didn’t exist. He had just been another repressed memory. A monster.
In the cruelest of ironies, I’d been taking Oliver’s advice a lot lately.
A long time ago, back in the days of the dreamscape while we were still us, he’d told me, Picture the worst possible outcome.
Be cruel to yourself. Spare no pain. Do this again, and again, and again.
Until one day, you’ll find yourself immune to it, and the fear will no longer control you.
So on nights like this, and most other nights, too, I pictured it.
The exact moment when the light would leave Oliver’s eyes, and the holy blade I planned to put in his gut was covered in blood.
His blood. Maybe mine along with it, but that part didn’t matter.
I imagined it a hundred times, and then a hundred more, trying to prepare. To harden.
My stomach clenched with resolve, and I lifted my gaze. When the time came, I promised again, I would be ready.
But the woman in the window didn’t believe me.