I thought they’d close their eyes, but instead, Sabine leaned closer to him, like she was trying to see through his pupils and out the back of his head. For several seconds, they stayed just like that. Nash blinked several times, but the mara’s gaze was unwavering.
However, her hand was not. By the time she finally blinked and he closed his eyes, her hand was shaking against his. She pulled her fingers from his and wiped her palm on her pants, like their shared sweat was contaminated by the fear of whatever she’d read inside him.
“What did you see?” he asked, and this time he was the steady one.
“Kaylee…” she whispered, and I nearly pulled my hand from Tod’s in surprise.
Nash was afraid of me?
“You’re scared of losing her.” Sabine dropped her gaze, like it hurt too much to look at him. “You’re terrified of it. You dream about it, because that’s what he told you would happen. That demon. He said you’d lose her. That you weren’t good enough for her now. That you don’t deserve her. And you believe it. Your worst fear is that you’re not good enough for Kaylee. And that she knows it.”
My lips opened, and the breath I hadn’t known I was holding slipped silently into the room.
I glanced at Tod, and he nodded. That’s what he’d wanted me to see. Or at least something like that. Yet he didn’t look happy.
“That doesn’t make it any easier, you know,” Sabine said. She scooted away from him, but seemed unwilling to get off the bed. “Knowing that.”
“No. I’m guessing that makes it harder. But it’s the truth, and the truth isn’t always easy.”
Sabine rolled her eyes. “What are you now, the Zen master? Did Kaylee tell you that?”
“Not in so many words. But you can usually tell what she’s thinking just by watching her.”
No, you can’t! I frowned and felt my cheeks color, and suddenly I was extraglad they couldn’t see us.
“Yeah, that whole subliminal ‘go away and die’ message comes through loud and clear.” Sabine glanced around the room, and her gaze seemed to linger in the corner where we stood. I knew she couldn’t see us, but her eyes creeped me out, anyway.
I’d seen enough. They were just talking now, and she obviously wasn’t going to charm him out of his clothes. Or out of me. At least for the night.
Let’s go, I mouthed silently to Tod, and that time he nodded. He closed his eyes, and I took that as my signal to do the same.
After another stomach-pitching second of existing nowhere, I felt ground beneath my feet and cold air on my cheeks. I opened my eyes to find us in front of Nash’s house again, and as soon as I was sure I wasn’t going to fall over from disorientation, I let go of Tod’s hand. And immediately missed the warmth.
“Well, that was…interesting.” I shoved my hands in my pockets, and Tod glanced at me in surprise, like I’d ripped the words off his own tongue. Then he smiled.
“Yeah, it…”
“I mean, how weird that they spent most of the time talking about me. I guess that should make me feel better, huh?”
His brow furrowed like he wasn’t following my logic, and he glanced over his shoulder at the house, as if that would clear it up. “Oh. Yeah.” Then he smiled and said, “I have a feeling they do that a lot. So…does it make you feel better?”
“Yes, and no.” I started walking toward the street, and Tod matched my stride.
“Why no?”
I hesitated. “Because seeing her like that—with him—makes it a little harder to believe she’s a murderer.” Not impossible. But definitely harder.
Tod shrugged. “So maybe she’s not.”
I frowned up at him. “She has to be. Who else could it be?” He opened his mouth, but I spoke over him. “And don’t say it might not be anyone, because there’s no way three of our teachers in two days just happened to die in their sleep, the same week Sabine moves to town.”
“I agree. But that doesn’t mean she’s doing it.”
“Then who is?”
“I don’t know. But it could be anyone. Or anything. Don’t you think it’s at least possible that you’re fixating on Sabine because she’s fixated on Nash?”
I stopped on the sidewalk, almost halfway between Nash’s house and mine. He was right. I wasn’t ready to dismiss Sabine as a suspect, but as long as I was playing cop, I might as well think like a cop, and a good cop would never rule out all other possibilities because of a personal vendetta against one suspect.
“Help me,” I said, peering up at him against the glow of a streetlight.
“What?” Tod frowned.
“Help me. You know way more about Netherworld stuff than I do, and there’s no way a human is doing this. If you really think Sabine’s innocent, help me rule her out and come up with some other theories. We can’t just let this go on. You said yourself that Wells, Bennigan, and Wesner weren’t scheduled to die.”
“Kaylee, I have to be at work in less than an hour.”
I started walking again, and he had to jog to catch up. “When’s your first reaping?”
Tod sighed. “Not till two. But I should really at least look like I’d like to keep my job.”
“Come on, reaper! There’s ice cream—we’ll make a night of it.”
Tod’s brows rose and his eyes sparkled in the streetlight. He glanced at my hand, hanging at my side between us, then finally nodded. “You know I can’t say no to ice cream.”
“Or pizza, or pancakes, or Chick-fil-A…”
“Shut up before I change my mind.”
13
WHEN WE GOT BACK to my house, I checked to make sure my dad was asleep, then dug a half gallon of mint chocolate chip from the freezer. Tod, Alec, and I ate straight from the container while they helped me make a list of every non-human creature who could possibly kill a person in his sleep.
They seemed to agree that the killer was most likely some kind of psychic parasite. But while Tod insisted that, technically, any parasitic species could feed from a sleeping victim—so we could be dealing with an incubus or succubus, a scado, which feeds from anger, or a neid, which feeds from jealousy— Alec insisted that a mara was the most likely suspect, because Nightmares could only feed from sleeping victims. The reaper scowled a lot at Alec’s conclusion, but couldn’t argue.
When Tod had to leave for work, I retreated to my room with my laptop and a slice of leftover pizza, hoping that without me there to grill him on creepy-crawly trivia, Alec might actually get some sleep.
Between bites of pizza and gulps from a cold can of soda, I searched the internet for anything to do with Sabine Campbell. But none of the Sabine Campbells I found online were anywhere near the right age. She didn’t maintain a profile on any networking sites I could think of—at least, not under her real name—nor did I get any hits on her from school websites. Which meant she wasn’t active in sports or clubs, nor was she on the honor roll at her last school.
No surprise there.
And evidently juvenile criminal records aren’t searchable, because I couldn’t find a single word about her illustrious criminal past.
Then, finally, around two-thirty in the morning, I tripped over a stroke of brilliance. I searched for Nash’s old school. The one where he’d met Sabine.
Her name didn’t come up in any of the hits, but when I added the word arrested to the search, I struck gold.
Two years ago, about three months after Nash started at Eastlake as a sophomore, a fifteen-year-old female sophomore was arrested at his old school for assaulting a teacher. Two months after that, a fifteen-year-old female sophomore was removed from school property for possession of alcohol. The news stories—both from the same online paper—didn’t say whether or not the two girls were the same person, but I had no doubt that they were. However, after that, all the trouble at Nash’s old school seemed to have been caused by boys.
The logical conclusion? Sabine was either expelled or she moved.
But where did she go between Nash’s last s
chool and Eastlake? I knew I’d heard the name of her most recent school— Sabine had told Emma during their first conversation in junior English.
Valley something. Or something Valley. Valleyview? No. Oak Valley? No, but that was closer. It was something to do with nature.
And just like that, I remembered: Valley Cove. Sabine transferred to Eastlake from Valley Cove High School. I remembered Em saying that Sabine had joked that the town sported neither a valley nor any obvious cove.
After a little more searching, I came up with a single, year-old article in the tiny Valley Cove local newspaper—miraculously online—about a female junior who was suspended for vandalizing school property. She was caught in the act of spray painting “lewd images and crude language” on the side of the school building in the middle of the night.
Yup. Sounds like Sabine.
By the time I closed my laptop at three in the morning and snuck into the bathroom to brush my teeth, I was thoroughly convinced that Sabine was an unrepentant criminal. But I had absolutely no evidence that her crimes had ever included murder.
I SIT UP IN BED and unease crawls beneath my skin like an army of tiny spiders. I blink sleep from my eyes and my room comes into focus, dark, but for the glow from a security light outside my window. Something is wrong, but I can’t tell what. Not yet. But my scalp feels prickled—my hair wanting to stand on end.
I smell it first, even before I hear it, and the spiders beneath my flesh writhe frantically. I know that smell. Once, a squirrel got trapped in the old trash can we rake leaves into, and when Dad found it, it smelled like this. Like rot. Like warm death.
My heart thumps painfully and I hold my breath. I don’t want to smell that putrid stench, but I want to taste it even less, so I clamp my jaw shut.
Next comes the sound—a broken cadence of footsteps, punctuated by a horrible sliding sound. The steps are soft, but they get louder. Coming closer. My pulse races and I scoot back against the headboard, putting a few more worthless inches between me and whatever is step-sliding its way toward my room.
I should run. But I can’t move. I’m frozen, morbid curiosity and paralyzing dread warring inside me while my door creaks slowly open.
My door shouldn’t creak. It never has before. But it creaks now, and a gray hand pushes the doorknob.
I’m breathing too fast. I want to scream. Screaming has never failed me, but now my voice is as still as the rest of me. Waiting. Terrified.
Sweat drips down my spine. I feel it bead on my forehead and in the crooks of my arms. That gray hand leads to a wrist, which leads to an arm, which then leads to a shoulder, and before I know it, she’s there. In my doorway. Staring at me through dead, milky eyes.
I can’t breathe fast enough, and each breath smells like her. Like decay. Like things that should be rotting peacefully in the ground, not dripping thick, foul fluids on my carpet.
But the worst part is that though she should be blind, I know she sees me. Though her cracked, colorless lips shouldn’t be able to move, they open. And though her throat has already rotted through, raw tendons peeking at me through the holes in her flesh, her voice still works, and I still recognize it.
I can never forget it, though I haven’t heard it since I was three years old. Since the night she died. Since the night I died, and she took my place.
This walking, rotting, stinking corpse is my mother.
“I want it back,” she says, and at first her voice is a whisper. She hasn’t used it in thirteen years. “You squandered it, and I want it back.”
“Mom?” I don’t realize my own voice is back until I hear myself speak. Oh, how I’ve always wanted the chance to speak to her, just one more time. But not like this. This is wrong, so fundamentally perverse that I can’t believe this is happening. Yet I can’t deny it, either. Not with her stench in the air, polluting my lungs. Not with her hands reaching, reaching…
“You’ve wasted it. You’re not living, you’re just dying very slowly.” Each word is an obvious effort, but she keeps going. “Give it back to me.” She step-hobbles closer, and some part of me understands that her legs don’t work right anymore. But the miracle, really, is that they work at all. She should be nothing but bones after thirteen years in the grave.
My skin crawls, and fear is the battery keeping my heart beating. I want to run, and I’m sure now that I can, physically. But I can’t run from her. She’s dead, and smelly, and oddly squishy, but she’s my mother.
“Mom?” I say it again, waiting for it to sink in. Waiting for her to remember me, like I remember her. But her cloudy eyes show no warmth. No love. They are empty, and her voice is hard.
“You whine. You don’t listen. You refuse to really live. You don’t take risks, you don’t make gains, and you’re never going to grow up.”
Terror and revulsion burn within me now, roasting me alive from the inside. Her words bruise like blows. Denial is the only reason I’m still conscious. I hate what she is, because I know it should be me. But I love her, because she’s my mother. She gave me life. Twice.
“Mom?” It’s a question this time, because my mother never spoke to me like this. My mom was kind and gentle, encouraging. I don’t remember much, but I remember that.
“That would be fine, if you had at least one redeeming quality.” She takes an awkward step forward, and I cringe, tears forming in my eyes. “One extraordinary trait, to prove you were worth my sacrifice.” Another step, and I blink. Tears scald my cheeks, but still she comes. Still she speaks, shredding my soul with every hateful word. “Beauty. Brains. Talent. But you have none of that. You’re mediocrity personified. You don’t shine like I did.”
Another step, and she’s at the foot of the bed now. She leans forward, both hands on my blanket. Her fingers split like sausage casings beneath the pressure of her weight. Fluid oozes to stain the purple material, and I suck air in so fast I’m choking on it.
“I was the light in your father’s life, shining to show him the way. But you don’t shine. He gave you away because he couldn’t stand to be with you. Because he knows what I know. What you know. That you’re not worth it, Kaylee. You’re not worth my life, and I want it back.”
“Mom, no.” Tears slide silently down my face, and I swipe at them. She crawls onto the bed. Her knees smear the stains her fingers left, and the stench is unbearable now.
Up close, I can see the details. Her skin is damp and gray and flaccid. Her eyelashes and eyebrows are long gone. Clumps of her hair are missing, but that’s a mercy, because what’s left is thin, brittle, and tangled, caked with dirt and stiff with dried bodily fluids.
“I just need your breath. That’s all it takes….” she whispers. Her dress has holes, but I recognize it. She was buried in it. It used to be blue, the same shade as her eyes, but now it’s faded, and stained, and almost as rotten as she is.
“Mom, you don’t mean it.” I’m scooting to the side now, finally in motion, but in my heart, I know it will do no good. If she can find me here, she can find me anywhere. I haven’t lived up to her gift, and now she wants it back.
And she will get it. We both know that.
“You let my life rot, along with my body. If you ever loved me, give me back what I gave so foolishly….”
I pull my knees up to my chest and push myself away from her. The corner of my nightstand pokes into my back. She reaches for my leg. Her fingers squish against my kneecap. More skin splits. Viscous liquid runs over my leg, and the smell is overwhelming.
My stomach revolts. Vomit rises in my throat. Tears blur my vision. Terror squeezes my heart with fists of iron.
Finally I scream, but it’s too late. It is much, much too late.
14
THAT TIME, I DIDN’T sit up in bed. I pulled the covers over my head like a child, half convinced I was still dreaming. That if I peeked into the room, she would be there waiting for me, that half-rotted perversion of my mother, demanding her life back before I could squander the rest of it.
&n
bsp; I stayed like that until I got dizzy from breathing my own used oxygen, and when nothing crawled toward me, when the air never putrefied in my nostrils, I finally pushed back the covers and sat up.
My room looked normal. The door was still closed, but unlocked in spite of paranoid warnings from both Nash and Tod. My comforter was spotless, my knee still clean.
My mother had never stood in this room. She hadn’t stood anywhere in more than thirteen years, and deep down I knew that even if she could come see me, she would never demand my life for the privilege.
My mother didn’t want me dead. But I was afraid I’d wasted her gift. And Sabine obviously knew that.
With that realization came the blazing fury I needed to thaw my icy fear. But there would be no more sleep for me that night. Sabine had done her job very, very well.
“ANOTHER BAD DREAM?” Alec asked, as I tiptoed past the couch on my way to the kitchen. “That’s the second one this week.”
Third, but who’s counting?
“Don’t you ever sleep?” I demanded, without slowing.
He tossed back the blanket and sat up. “I was gonna ask you the same thing.”
“I slept,” I insisted, heading straight for the coffeepot. “Now I’m done. Just getting an early start.”
The couch springs creaked behind me. “It’s four-thirty in the morning.”
I knew that, with every exhausted bone in my body. “Thus the word early.”
“You couldn’t have slept more than two hours.”
The kitchen floor was cold on my bare feet, and I wished I’d remembered my slippers. “What are you now, a math major?” Or my dad?
“You’re doing one hell of a Sophie impersonation this morning.” Alec had only met my cousin once, and that was more than enough. “What’s wrong?”
After staring at the remnants of the previous day’s coffee, I decided making a fresh pot would be too much trouble and opted for a soda from the fridge instead. I popped the tab as I sank into my dad’s chair across from the couch, where Alec now sat watching me in nothing but the gym shorts he slept in.