“The invisible one?”
“Yes, the invisible one.” Hope rips through me like a flare. I pause, taking her in with her wild tangle of hair, her slightly sunburned skin, freckled from hours logged at the beach. We had a heat wave one January, an unseasonable roast. I remember that year. Dad drove us to the ocean every night to watch the colorful sunsets. God’s art, he called it. He was right. I saw those bold, red, L.A. night skies behind my lids for years after he died. I clung to those fiery spectacles, those memories of the four of us huddled together in the sand as if they were the last bits of my father I would ever have. Savored them, drank them down like a divine elixir. Until, of course, I figured out how to go back and visit him.
“I don’t know who it is,” she pants, struggling to keep up with me. “Logan says it’s not important for me to know. He says it just helps us get places, like a car.”
I give a wry smile. Sounds like Logan’s analogy.
I wonder if sleeping Skyla knows she in fact was the transportation station, not the supervising spirit. The only thing the supervising spirit was capable of was launching them into the abysmal future with the apparent inability to bring us back—very not funny Logan.
“How are we going to get out of here?” Her face grows haggard with worry.
“You are going to wake up,” I pick up my pace and speed out into the elongated corridors of the Transfer. “And I’m going to find Ezrina.”
***
Sleeping Skyla bobs along, continues to pepper me with annoying questions about the future, all of which I artfully avoid as I bolt down the expansive corridors of the Transfer, shouting, Ezrina and Marshall, in turn, like some demented vocal exercise.
“Who are these people? Will they save Logan?”
“One of them killed Logan,” I want to add, and the other will almost kill you, but don’t.
A rush of adrenaline surges through me just thinking of how violently Logan and Gage were mowed down, by of all things, the Mustang. And what about Gage? I stop abruptly, clamp my hand over my mouth paralyzed by the thought of poor sweet Gage lying in a casket.
A murky figure materializes down the hall. I recognize that permanent mischievous grin, those cuttingly handsome features that could rescue him from almost any situation, this, of course, being the exception.
“There’s the devil,” I say, racing towards Marshall. I know for a fact he said recompense was due to Logan, that the one who pierced his side with the spirit sword was due for a severe method of payback. Of course he’s capable of killing Logan. He had me kill Kate by decapitating her with my ski. Conveniently, of course, everything looks like a freaking accident—an unfortunate act, seemingly doled out by someone else.
Just as I’m about to knock into him full force, an errant thought floats through my mind as I envision another possibility—Chloe driving the Mustang, white gloves cradling the steering wheel, escaping on her knees into the forest like the coward she is.
I don’t let the bout of insanity interfere with the pressing need to strangle Marshall. Even if Chloe did run them over, Marshall had his hand in it. I’d bet my life on the fact he orchestrated the entire event—applauded as it all went down.
I give a forceful shove into his chest and send him flying back a good ten feet, staggering to regain his balance.
“Do you see this?” He addresses the old me from over my shoulder. “You, my Love, will pursue me with a desolate passion that can only be satisfied with a kiss from these lips.” He strides over and caresses her cheek.
Her face ignites in a silent plea for him to extend his touch—rife with disappointment when he releases.
“Don’t you have school tomorrow?” I ask her, annoyed. “Do me a favor, wake up and take a deep lungful of that L.A. smog. You don’t belong here.” I give her a hard look hoping she’ll evaporate back into her dreams.
“Skyla,” Marshall reprimands. “There is a guest in our midst, and yet you treat her with such disrespect.” He shakes his head, mockingly.
“You did this!” I push him hard. “You killed Logan!” It comes out childish, intermingled with tears.
“Do refrain from battery. I disdain being assaulted as much as I do having a minor organ slivered with a blade.”
“So you’re threatening me now?” I stab him in the chest with my finger. “I don’t need you, Marshall. You are nothing but a murderer, a lowlife who kills people and laughs over their grave because you are incapable of giving a damn!”
“Watch your language,” he seethes. “I am not in the mood,” he gives a sharp look. “Ask the question burgeoning on your tongue. Let’s move this conversation into the past along with the Pretty Oliver and his desire to procure you for himself.”
A startled laugh rattles through my chest. “Why? So you can threaten me? So you can tell me you’ll bring Logan back under one circumstance? Let me guess, the magic porthole to that resurrection miracle lies directly in my pants.” I turn to the bewildered version of myself. “That’s right, memorize his face. He steals your freedom,” I roar. “He pins you against the wall and laughs when you need him most.”
“Skyla,” Marshall’s voice spikes with shock.
“It’s true,” I yell into him. “I hate you for using me to kill Kate, and I hate you for killing Logan!”
“And Jock Strap? Dare you inquire about his fate?”
“Gage,” I breathe his name in less than a whisper.
“What if I told you I’ve done away with them both? Spared you the trouble of having to choose, whittled down your options to one.”
“As in the one standing before me?” A fire brews in me. He killed Logan, and he killed Gage. Holy freaking shit. Marshall is a madman. I’ve been duped and now they’re both dead.
I close my eyes as the building sways beneath my feet. The world gyrates in time with my pulsating anger.
I hawk back a generous reserve of phlegm and cover Marshall’s face with the bubbling brew.
He recoils, lets out a series of gurgling groans as he wipes himself clean with the back of his arm.
“Enough,” he barks. “You have sealed your fate, Ms. Messenger. Mark my words, you will rue this day, lament it in tears. You will come to me on your knees sobbing, begging for forgiveness. But I will tell you now and I will tell you then, you are on your own, Skyla. What becomes of this mess is upon your shoulders.” He spins on his heels and strides down the hall at a decent clip. He lets out a powerful roar before disappearing into a ball of fire.
A spear of terror barrels through me. I have a feeling I’ve just opened a Pandora’s box of nightmares and I’m about to witness every vile thing fly into my life.
All unholy hell is about to unleash, and I’m sure Marshall will be quite surprised to see that I’m going to do my best to lob it all in his direction.
Although, I have the very distinct feeling it’ll come back to me twice as hard.
It always does.
Chapter 3
Appeal
“You really pissed him off good.” This younger, simpler version of myself bounces on her feet like it’s a good thing.
“Yeah, well, I don’t need you reminding me.” I blow out a breath. “Ezrina?”
“Who’s this Ezrina chick?” she asks, examining a fistful of her long spiral curls for split ends.
“She hacks off your arm in a couple of years. She’s not that bad, though,” I shrug before unleashing another powerhouse blood curdling cry that rattles the Transfer like a skeleton.
“You scared the crap out of me!” The old me seizes in panic and begins to evaporate.
“No, wait, don’t leave!” I try grabbing a hold of her, but my fingers flex right through. I don’t care if she is annoying. I’d rather be here with my annoying self than suffer through the Transfer alone. Besides, it’s not like she was going to remember any of this psychotic dream in the morning.
She evaporates completely, leaving a wall of crushing silence in her wake.
I wish it were a
dream, but I know better. This disaster is concretely embedded in my life and the departed life of my dear friend Logan—I can’t even stomach the thought of Gage not being here.
A wild shag of flaming hair appears before me so close I can smell the scent of something burning, a foul odor layered just beneath the smoke.
“Ezrina!” I grip her by the shoulders. A jolt sizzles through me, alive and vibrant, like the shock from an electric fence. It knocks me backwards a good couple feet, and I hold myself from the horror of her touch. Good grief, not only did the Justice Alliance disfigure her beauty, they turned her into a livewire, literally. And all because of the love she had for her people. At least that’s Nevermore’s version. My mother, the judge, might have a very different tale to tell.
“Ezrina, you have to help me. Logan, he’s in the tube—I need him back. I…I love him.” Maybe if I paint us as star-crossed lovers, maybe then she’ll sympathize and give him back to me, untouched, unharmed by Marshall and his assault with a deadly weapon. Besides, I do love Logan. Here, in this cavernous den of insanity, it seems safe to confess that to myself.
Her lips pull into a line, comely as a blood let. Her eyes light up like fire.
“I need him,” I pant. I can see she’s beginning to cave, considering if only for a moment to do this very unlikely deed for me. “I’ll do anything to have him back. I’ll work for you. I’ll hack through dozens of bodies, prep a thousand corpses for those watery graves,” then an idea comes. “I’ll reunite you with Nev.”
Her entire person flickers with hope before she sags into her hellbent fury and growls into me.
She stalks off down the hall in the direction of the body farm without so much as a response.
“I beg of you,” I get down on my knees and waddle forward in an effort to keep pace. “I’ll sacrifice anything. Name your price. I swear I’ll do it. I have to have him. I can’t live without Logan.” I mean every word as it wails from my lungs.
“Anything,” she purrs, pausing just shy of the colossal room housing a bevy of Count corpses. “Live in my body, carry out my punishment,” it speeds out of her an unearthly echo like she’s rehearsed it, dreamed it a thousand times.
Crap. That is so not what I meant by anything.
When I teased Gage a few weeks back about falling in love with Ezrina, never in a million years did I even remotely think it would be a possibility.
“You are fallacy’s child,” she turns on her heels, disappearing into the blue room.
I jump to my feet and rush to her side. I’ve already given Marshall the big F.U. I can’t lose Ezrina.
The air is warm, unnaturally thick. It’s downright tropical in here with its sky blue reflection. It reminds me of Gage and the beautiful way I feel when he looks at me with those eyes kissed by God.
“Don’t placate me with stale promises, Skyla,” she gravels. “You can never give me the freedom I truly desire.”
“Freedom?” It rattles out of me. “I’ll give you freedom, I swear it.”
“Swear?” She picks up a clipboard and looks it over with a mild amusement on my part.
“My mother—she can do this. She’s on the Justice Alliance and the Decision Council and who the hell knows what other committees she’s affiliated with,” I spasm into her. “I’m going to win the faction war, and I’ll preside over the councils. I’ll veto every lousy decision while it’s still a gleam in their uninformed eyes. And, believe me when I say, I’m going to right all of the fucking wrongs.” My father’s memory flashes through me like a hot, searing wind.
She studies me with great intensity before getting back to the frazzled hieroglyphics scrawled out on the chart in front of her.
“You have no power,” she says it low, just above a whisper. “Desire without authority is futile.”
“You can’t just leave him in there to rot,” I slap my hand over the clipboard. I will destroy every psychotic effort she’s undertaken in the name of science if she doesn’t comply.
“It’s entirely up to the Counts. He’s one of their own, of which you are not.”
“No, they won’t rescue him. Please, I need him now, today, whatever the hell day that is. I beg of you, Ezrina,” I collapse at her feet. “Do this for me. I will give you what you desire. I promise.” It departs from me desolate as a last desperate plea.
“A promise means an entirely different thing to those of us who are no longer human.”
“I am so aware,” I nod feverishly. “It’s a covenant,” I’m quick to relay Marshall’s words. “I’ll be entering into a covenant with you. Name your price.” A lone tear jerks down the side of my face.
Her bloodshot eyes look up at the oppressive expanse of the ceiling. Ezrina has been trapped in the Transfer for hundreds of years. I know what she’s about to ask, she’d be insane not to.
“Your mother,” she gives a long blink as though just uttering those words disturbed her. “Arrange another hearing,” she spears me with her disdain. “I want Heathcliff present.”
“Heathcliff? Is he the guy with the eye patch?” Oh, wait, that was Rothello. Um, one of Marshall’s lookalikes? “Oh!” It comes to me. “Nevermore?” I take in a breath. “Heathcliff,” I touch my lips when I say it. “He’ll be there.” I nod. “You’ll get your meeting with Nev—Heathcliff by your side.”
“Supreme,” she wrings her hands together as though this were a maniacal maneuver on her behalf. She speeds me over to the tank that holds beautiful Logan’s body. It takes my breath away just being near him.
“It’s going to be OK,” I say it directly to him as though he could hear. “And, Ezrina?” I stand back and watch as she twists a nozzle at the base of the tube and the liquid begins to mysteriously drain.
“Speak.” She doesn’t look up while waiting for the fluid to fully dissipate.
“If, by the off chance, I can’t get my mother to agree to another trial,” I start.
“We swap bodies,” she says it matter of fact, tips the glass tube on its side and slips Logan out onto a gurney before wheeling him towards the next room.
“I never agreed to that,” I pant, keeping pace.
“Then your lover doesn’t live, does he, Skyla?” She stops midflight, pins me with all of her evil, awaiting my approval.
My lover. I bathe in the words as though they were true, as though they could be and I wanted them to be in every single way.
I cut her a look, cold as a corpse in the mortuary.
“He lives, Ezrina. I’ll move heaven and earth to get you that trial.”
Her lips curl into an unnatural smile. She gazes down at Logan, his skin tinted grayish blue, his lips black with death.
“The honor is yours,” she instructs.
“Kiss him?” This is fast becoming a warped fairytale.
“Breathe, Skyla. Give breath to the one you love.”
I graze his face with my fingertips, cold and slippery, lips like rubber.
“Logan.” I lean over, place my mouth gently over his, pinch off his nose and dive in with a lungful of all my love.
I’ve just made a deal with Ezrina, and I have no idea if I can keep it. But all that matters is that I have Logan back. He’ll be with me again if only for a while.
I give another hard push into his lungs before I’m enraptured with his touch and give way to a desperate kiss.
I need him to win the faction war—hell, I need Logan for far more personal reasons. I hope he appreciates his newfound lease on life. The price may have cost me everything.
I think I may have just sold my soul to Ezrina.
I’m pretty sure I did—but I’m damn sure Logan was worth it.
Chapter 4
Time After Time
Ezrina instructs me to race out of the Transfer towards the cliff adjacent to the haunted mansion that Marshall held me in during my quasi capture last month. Her instructions sounded perfectly sane and acceptable when she spouted them off while wheeling Logan into the chop shop. Run at top speed i
nto the base of the cliff—she insisted that was the portal back into my world. Funny thing is, my world is a pretty broad definition of where I might land. Technically I could end up in China or the Netherlands. Two completely different and wonderful places, I’m sure, but miles away from where I belong. And, hello? What the hell kind of lunacy is it to run into a granite wall? Since when does charging into a solid surface ever sound like a good idea?
The dark shingled roof of the mansion glints under a pale limestone moon as I pick up speed. A cluster of freaky looking dead people in eighteen-century attire roam the streets with their eerie cackles, their strange buzzing speech. I try to ignore the fact they’ve amassed along the roadside as I parade my insanity. Instead, I center my focus on the ever-expanding cliff, and accelerate.
It draws near with its dark wingspan, wide as the ocean.
Crap!
This is so going to hurt really, really bad if it doesn’t work.
A wild thought darts through me—what if this is all some ingenious way to kill me? What if Ezrina’s resurrection efforts include yours truly, and she jumps into my broken bag of bones as her take-two entrance into the world?
God—I’m going to knock myself out and wake up as Ezrina. Or worse—never wake up again.
“Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit!” It bumps out of me. It’s coming. The wall of granite swoops in like a buzzard in flight. It’s going to take me down, initiate me into the afterlife, and forever I’ll be forced to tell people I died by way of self-inflicted stupidity.
I let out a ferocious scream as I barrel towards destiny—connect with the God-breathed rock—and push right through it. An intense vibration—that tuning fork feeling comes over me, envelops me like a mist. My muscles struggle to move, my legs retard in their effort to run. It’s futile, like trying to move underwater, slow and lethargic.
A burst of light emerges. I fly forward with the charge of gravity laying over me, heavy as lead, and do a faceplant into a nest of pea gravel.