Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things (Dead Things Series Book 1) (4 page)

She clung to him, knowing if she let go this peculiar energy would overwhelm her. She breathed him in, letting him anchor her as it kept building and burning, growing until it thrust from her with the force of a sledgehammer. He groaned like he’d received the physical blow, he may have fallen had she not been holding him to her. Finally, the world seemed to right itself. Her blood ceased to boil and the vibrations stopped. When her mind quieted, she became very aware of what she was doing.

She let go, shoving him back. Despite his size, he stumbled, blinking hard. They stared at each other, his confusion mirroring her own.

“What are you?” she whispered. “What are you doing to me?”

He rushed her, shoving her against the concrete hard enough to knock her teeth together, “What did I do to you? What game are you playing? What are you? What was that? What did you do?”

She whimpered, feet scrambling for purchase as she realized he’d lifted her from the ground. Her heart thundered in her chest. He was fit but not big enough to haul her off her feet like that. She shoved at him uselessly, “Put me down.”

Her descent was abrupt, her heart lodging in her throat. His eyes narrowed, his hands tangling in her messy hair, tilting her head to the side. “Come on, Luv, you can tell me. I’m sure it’s eating at you, keeping this secret.”

He was insane. She opened her mouth to say so but her brain short-circuited as his nose traced along the column of her throat. “I promise, things will be so much easier if you just tell me,” he purred, his lips pressing the words into her skin. She moved closer to him. In her defense, she’d never been this close to a boy before; especially not one who looked like he did.

“We can do this one of two ways,” he inhaled her scent, pressing his mouth to the shell of her ear as he said, “I promise one is infinitely more pleasurable than the other.”

Ew. Oh, God. What was she doing? What was he doing? Seducing her for information? Threatening her? It really bothered her that she didn’t know the difference.

She needed to get it together. Her breath hitched in her chest. This was not how she saw herself dying. She’d had a plan. She’d written it down obituary style for a morbid ninth grade English assignment. She was supposed to die of obscenely old age in her enormous but tastefully decorated plantation home surrounded by her beautiful and ungrateful grandchildren.

He huffed out a laugh and she realized she’d said all that aloud. She was too scared to be embarrassed. Instead, she slapped at his hands ineffectively.

He stepped away so abruptly she staggered, pacing before her, “You’re seriously not going to tell me? You’re only hurting yourself on this one.”

“I don’t know what you are talking about,” she told him. “You’re crazy.”

He sighed heavily, his tone shifting as if speaking to a rather stupid child, “I’ll figure it out eventually.” He told her, pointing at her, “You don’t smell like a witch. You certainly aren’t a shifter.” Then he was back before her, gripping her chin, turning her head side to side, like he was examining livestock, “But you most definitely aren’t human.” Tiny hairs rose along her skin at his touch, “You’re trying my patience. What the hell are you?”

She pushed away from him, head throbbing with his words. “Stop with the grabby hands.”

She needed to think. He was clearly unhinged. She had very few options. She could run but she doubted she could outrun him. Her gaze raked across broad shoulders and a flat stomach, he looked like he did a lot of cardio. She could scream but there wasn’t anybody to hear her. Instead, she did what she always did when she was nervous…she babbled.

She’d watched a million documentaries on serial killers and the mentally ill. She could figure this out. Netflix was her friend. She wracked her brain, if he was a killer she had to make him see her as a person, tell him about her life, say her name a lot, make him believe people cared if she died, even if it was a lie.

But what if he was schizophrenic? He thought she wasn’t human. What was she supposed to do? Orient him to reality? Play along with his fantasy? She should have paid more attention.

“What’s your name?” she heard herself say, voice breathless.

He arched his brow, tsking softly, expression bored. “I’m asking the questions here.”

“Just tell me your name,” she demanded, panic creeping back in.

“Mace,” the answer tumbled from his lips unbidden. He looked mystified, like his own mouth had betrayed him. He absently rubbed a spot on his chest.

“Mace,” she repeated, with a nod. Okay, it was a start. “So um, here’s the thing, Mace. I’m only seventeen and I don’t want to die.”

He gave her a look and a ‘fair enough’ shrug and gestured for her to continue, clearly amused by this turn of events.

She frowned, but soldiered on, “You can’t be much older than me so let’s just think about this for a minute, okay?” She raked a hand through her damp hair, “I’m not really sure why you want to kill me but my life has pretty much sucked up until now. Like so much suckage. I can’t even explain the level of suck, but I feel like, statistically speaking, that’s gotta change. I’m not trying to sound like a motivational poster but it’s supposed to get better. I’d very much like to have a pulse when it does.”

He narrowed his eyes at her, brow furrowed. He stepped forward.

“Stop,” she held up her hand, palm out, “Just listen.”

He stopped, looking at his feet then at her again.

“I’m a nice girl,” she told him, before frowning, “but maybe you don’t care about that. I mean, if you’re, like, a murderous psychopath, you probably aren’t super interested in my feelings, but what about yourself?” She reasoned, gesturing spastically to all of his…self, “You seem like the kind of guy who thinks a lot of himself.”

He cocked an eyebrow but said nothing. She was in turbo babble mode now, “If you kill me your life is over. You will definitely go to jail. I mean, look at me.” She gestured to her face, “I look like an ad for facial cleanser and girls who eat yogurt. Juries eat that stuff up. You’d probably get the chair.”

He looked a little dazed. “You make a passionate yet confusing plea, Luv.”

Her heart sank as he took a tentative step towards her, then another. He grinned as he advanced.

“Come on. I’m sure you don’t want to go to prison.” She whined, “You are way too pretty for prison. You’d make a lot of the wrong kind of friends in prison.” Stop saying prison, Ember, she begged herself. “Do you want those kind of friends? Of course, you don’t. We could be friends?” she finished lamely, face flushing with shame. Maybe he should just kill her. It would be less embarrassing.

He blinked at her, cheek twitching, “Aw, are you asking me to be your friend? One might question your judgment.”

Her hands fell to her hips, swaying on her feet. “Wow, not to put too fine a point on it, but I’ve only seen you twice and both times you were here,” she gestured to their surroundings. “You hang out in cemeteries because you have so many friends? Is this were your book club meets?”

“I can see why you have no friends,” he told her drolly.

She squinted as something glinted in the air above his head.

“I-” was all he managed before the object made contact with his head, sounding like a hammer hitting an overripe melon. He hit his knees with a groan, whatever he was going to say dying on his lips.

She looked at his crumpled form, unreasonably disappointed.

She’d really wanted to know what he was going to say.

6

EMBER

S
he stared, not even surprised anymore. Behind Mace’s prone body stood a boy and girl about her age. The girl still held the shovel, holding it like a ballplayer choking up on a bat. The two were eerily similar in looks, tall, tan, dark hair, almond shaped eyes and long, lean muscle. They had to share DNA.

The boy hugged himself, bouncing on his heels, staring at his companion in exasperation. He had to be freezing with just his jeans and thin long sleeved shirt. Truthfully, she didn’t know how they weren’t both freezing. She wore denim shorts, a striped crop top and a long sleeved flannel shirt with combat boots. Ember supposed the beanie cap slouched on her head and the flannel might provide some protection from the cold but not much.

“
That
was your plan?” the boy asked.

The girl heaved a sigh, pulling a small packet from her back pocket. “That was step one.” She poured the powder into her hand and knelt next to Mace. She slapped his face and he groaned, getting his legs underneath him. “Ah, ah,” she chided, kicking his legs out from under him, “none of that. Don’t want you standing; just breathing.”

She blew the powder into his face, smiling in satisfaction as he coughed once and passed out. “That was step two.”

The boy fixed the girl with a withering look. His bitch face was strong.

“What?” she snapped, “We don’t have all night? I couldn’t watch anymore of…whatever that was.” She tapped her wrist, “We gotta go.”

He turned his attention to Ember then, wincing as if he was used to having to apologize for his companion. He took a deep breath, steeling himself, “Listen, this is going to sound crazy, but you have to come with us if you want to live.”

Ember blinked at him stupidly. She had no idea what to do with that.

The girl dropped her face into her hands. “
That
was
your
plan? Come with us if you want to live? We drove four hours so you could hit her with a line from Terminator?” She looked pained as she whispered, “This is why nobody takes us seriously.”

Ember shook her head. They looked so normal. Well, they looked like hipsters but not your run of the mill straitjacket needing crazies. Maybe this really was all some sort of fever dream. Her stomach started to feel slippery. Maybe she’d passed out at the funeral and slipped into a coma. Maybe she was dead and this was hell.

The guy rubbed his hand across the back of his neck, gesturing with his head to Mace, “I’m ever so sorry if I offended your delicate sensibilities, next time I’ll just hit her over the head with a shovel.”

They ignored Ember’s indignant, “Hey.”

“Honestly, I would have respected you more,” the girl told him.

“Can we get on with this or would you like to lecture me some more?”

Yep, they were crazy. She looked around searching for anything that would make sense. Maybe she was on candid camera. Maybe this was some sort of weird live role-playing game. That was a thing. She’d seen it on the internet. This was New Orleans; maybe she’d stumbled into an elaborate dinner theatre production.

She stared at the boy on the ground with renewed interest. It would explain his bizarre look. Was he faking being unconscious? Was this all part of the game; was there another girl out there waiting to be fake attacked. Mistaken identity made a lot more sense than her being a supernatural creature. It had the added bonus of making her crush on a killer a tiny bit less pathetic and sad.

She used the toe of her shoe to gently shove at Mace’s shoulder, content to ignore the two so she could look her fill. He really was pretty with his eyelashes fanning shadows over his cheeks. She sighed. She finally meets a boy willing to have a conversation with her-albeit a strange one-and a bunch of crazies ambush them. She felt she’d been making progress. They continued their argument, oblivious to her.

“I wouldn’t need to lecture you if you would stop lacing every single conversation with stupid pop culture references that nobody gets but you nerdy comic-con dweebs.”

Cute-movie-guy looked personally offended, “How dare you. Terminator is a classic. James Cameron is a-”

The girl threw up her hand, palm out, “One word, bro, Titanic-”

She could try to just slip away but they were blocking her exit, “Um, guys-”

“Titanic?” the guy interrupted, “That movie was epic. Let’s talk about how the last movie you liked featured vampires who sparkled like bloodsucking pixie strippers. Sparkly vampires? When was the last time you saw a vampire glittering like a disco ball, hell when was the last time you saw one who didn’t explode in sunlight?”

Ember sighed, staring at Mace forlornly. It was a testament to how screwed up her life was that she just wanted him to wake up and sniff her threateningly. He still wasn’t moving. She glanced surreptitiously at the two before again toeing at him, this time nudging his chin with her foot. She cringed as his head flopped like a ragdoll.

Was he dead? She felt sick. What if he was a serial killer? She glanced at the two. What if
they
were serial killers? Did mass murderers hang out bantering after killing people? Probably in Quentin Tarantino films.

“Hey,” she shouted, startling herself as her voice echoed in the silence.

They both turned to her at exactly the same time, fixing her with identical expressions.

Creepy.

“Uh, not that I’m not grateful for the…rescue, I guess, but,” she pointed at Mace, “is he dead? And, if so, does that make me an accessory to murder?”

Movie guy sighed, raking his hands through his hair, “Despite my sister’s best efforts, he’ll live. It’s apparently not his time to go…but it was almost yours.”

Ember’s face contorted, and the girl whacked him on the arm, “You should really look up the word tact, bro.”

The girl stepped forward, smiling like it physically hurt her, “My name is Tristin and this is my brother, Kai. Do you remember us?”

She didn’t. “Um…”

“We’re your cousins,” the girl-Tristin-said.

Ember frowned at them. The three of them couldn’t have looked more different, where she was pale they were dark, her orange hair wild and crazy next to their gorgeous dark locks. Her wide eyes looked nothing like the tip tilt eyes of the two before her. There had to be some mistake. “I don’t have any cousins.”

The two exchanged looks before Kai said, “Listen, I know this sounds crazy but I swear we’re telling the truth. It’s been a long time. Maybe you’ve just forgotten about us. It’s been twelve years.”

Even if what they were saying were true, she wouldn’t remember them. She’d spent years in a therapist’s office trying to remember her past but she didn’t think there was a way to explain dissociative amnesia in a sound bite. “I don’t-”

Tristin cut her off, “Our last name is Lonergan, like yours.”

Her heart sank. It really was a case of mistaken identity. “My last name is Denning. My name is Ember Denning.”

The two exchanged a confused look for a full minute and Ember had the uneasy feeling they were having a conversation she couldn’t hear. Kai gestured emphatically at Tristin in a sort of go-ahead motion and the girl pulled out her cell phone. With the push of a button, her flashlight blazed, blinding them all. When her vision cleared, Tristin held her cell phone to her face and waved her forward, “Come here, look,” the girl’s pupils contracted in the light, revealing the same brilliant violet eyes that Ember looked at in the mirror every day.

“But my name is Ember Denning,” she repeated.

“No,” Kai smiled at her like she was a simpleton, the second time she’d gotten that look in one day, “Your name is November Lonergan. We’re your cousins. That thing was going to kill you and you need to come with us.”

She was getting a migraine. There was no way she was going anywhere these people just because they shared the same eye color. This was completely nuts.

“You guys are all crazy.”

From his spot on the ground, Mace’s hand flinched spastically and he groaned.

“What did you hit him with,” Kai asked.

She shrugged, “Hellebore. Quinn gave me some stuff just in case we ran into any baddies that were immune to everyday violence.”

Mace was making another valiant effort to rise from the ground. Secretly, she was rooting for him.

Kai leaned into his sister, his whisper carrying, “It’s getting late. Isa is going to kill us. We can’t leave her here.”

Tristin eyed her up and down. “Can’t we?” she asked, “Because right now we can still walk, Kai. It’s her choice.”

Kai tugged his sister aside but she could still make out their conversation. “Seriously? We already talked about this. She’s family, Trist.”

Tristin’s gaze fell to the ground before she said, “Once we do this, we can’t go back. Everything changes. This is a really bad idea, you get that, right?”

Ember wanted to believe they were just two lunatics but something about them nagged at her like a hazy picture she just couldn’t get into focus.

Kai shoved his sleeve up, “I don’t think we have a choice. Look,”

Tristin looked at his wrist, eyes widening. She paled beneath her tan skin. She eyed Mace, “Screw it.” She held out her hand, resigned, “Come with us if you want to live.”

Kai sighed, “Yeah, what she said.”

She could run. She could go back to the funeral home. Then what? A year in foster care? She just wanted to go home. Except she didn’t have a home anymore. All she had was a skull splitting headache, a fever and absolutely nowhere else to go.

“No-”she started.

Tristin clenched her teeth, “Get in the car or I swear to whatever deity you believe in, I will knock you out and drag you there.”

Kai’s mouth fell open. “Wow. What was it you were saying about tact, Trist?”

“I’m done being nice,” Tristin told him, “This is the stupidest thing we’ve ever done, forgive me if I’m not in the mood to humor anybody.”

“When were you being nice?” Kai asked.

Tristin ignored her brother, looking at Ember, “Well, what’s it gonna be?”

Ember rolled her eyes, “Well, when you put it that way…why not?”