Echo Into Darkness: Book 2 in The Echo Saga (Teen Paranormal Romance) (10 page)

Chapter 11

The morning light streaming into the kitchen split my head in two. Kimber had been yelling at me for a solid hour. Most of her tirade came in the form of questions: Where did you get the alcohol? What were you thinking? Do you expect us to trust you after this?

I wasn't able to keep up with the questions, but that didn't slow her down any.

My head throbbed. I was sure an angry troll was trying to scratch its way out through my eye sockets. My mouth tasted like boiled vomit. I would have done anything to make her lower her voice.

"And for that, you are grounded." Kimber axed me with a look she reserved for the most serious of grievances—a bad bikini wax or poor restaurant service.

"You can't ground me. You don't have the authority," I said.

She held up her cell phone for me to read. On it, a text from my dad:

Don't argue with your stepmother. Hand over your car keys until further notice.

"Fine." I dropped my keys on the counter. "I'm going back to bed."

"Think again, girlfriend. Grab your school bag and be back down here in five minutes."

I didn't have enough saliva in my mouth to protest.

Kimber drove me to school. Thankfully, she was too disappointed in me to keep lecturing.

I used the silence to try to process the night's events. For a few seconds, I thought Becca and I were going to die. The people in the SUV had been looking for someone specific. Chances were, paranoia was skewing my view of things, but showing up at The Asylum could have backfired. What if I was now on their radar?

I looked for Jaxon as soon as I got to school, but he must have made it to his first class without my help. Later, I found him outside Chemistry, talking to a couple of girls. Self-assurance anchored his pose and boredom tinted his expression. He had been at Lincoln for just a couple of days, but he'd had no trouble fitting in. His indifference seemed to attract girls like flies at a picnic.

A twinge of jealousy hit my gut, and I was left wondering if I was the only one who was still thinking about the kiss at The Asylum. In fact, I couldn't get it out of my head.
Get over it,
I told myself,
you've had better with Connor.

I met Jaxon at our chemistry table.

"You look like you caught the plague," he said.

"You look like you were trying to catch a bunch of freshmen." Ungh. That came out way cattier than I intended.

"Who says I have to try?"

"You are unbearable sometimes." I rested my forehead on the lab table. The coolness combated my headache.

"I was just kidding. You've obviously got a hangover, so I'll be nice to you today."

"It's more than that. On the way home last night, somebody rammed Becca's car." I gave him the details of our frightening trip.

"Oh man, are you okay?" He pressed my fingers into his palm.

I nodded. "Becca went to the hospital, though. I'm still waiting to hear how she is." I straightened and fastened onto his aura, reading, testing, searching. I must have had suspicion written all over me because he shifted uncomfortably.

"What?" he asked.

"Is there anything you left out about last night?

"How about you give me a clue what you're insinuating." His forehead creased.

"You drew me close to the Mutila, said I was safe to go home, and then we got rammed," I said.

"You think I had something to do with it?" He let go of my hand.

"You never talked to anyone about me?"

His aura was rock solid. "It sounds like you're accusing me of conspiring against you."

I shrugged. "I had to ask. Nobody witnessed the hit-and-run. Nobody knows why anyone would have done that to Becca's car."

Frustration gathered in a knot between my shoulder blades. The last thing I remembered was Becca coming to and me getting out of the car. Everything after was a blank. My memory of events beforehand had been distorted by alcohol.

Mr. Wickner started class. Jaxon shook his head and angled his body away from me.

During the lecture, my phone vibrated. I discreetly checked my messages and found a text from Becca. She had stayed at the hospital overnight but was fine. Her parents were letting her stay home for the day, and had Kimber killed me yet?

Grounded 4 the rest of my life
, I texted back.
Call U after school.

At lunch, I made myself eat a sandwich and guzzle as much water as I could without hurling. My stomach settled and my head cleared. Also, a fresh perspective was dawning.

It first sparked when Mr. King started lecturing about scientific experiments during our physics lab. He talked about how it was important to keep a clear head when you tested a theory, otherwise you could steer yourself towards a false truth: if you examined a question through a biased lens, expecting to see something in particular, that's what happened—you saw what you wanted to find, instead of seeing what was really there.

By the time I finished lunch, I saw how Mr. King's lecture applied to last night's accident. I'd been stringing coincidences together, trying to give them meaning. Because I'd been scared, I had assumed that the SUV chasing us had belonged to the faction. I had no real reason to believe this was true.

After lunch, I went to get books for my afternoon classes. When I opened my locker, a square of red paper tumbled out and landed at my feet. I read the message scrawled in heavy black pen:

Stop looking for the Mutila. They almost found you last night. Sorry about your friend.

p.s. Don't jump. There's hope for you yet.

Cold rippled down my legs, taking Mr. King's lecture about coincidence with it. Only a handful of people knew that Becca was in the hospital, and most of them were family. My old theory rode back up my legs on a crest of ice, rising higher and higher until it found purchase in my chest. The kids from The Asylum must have figured out who I was. They identified our car and followed us after we left. That was why the guy had said
it's not her
after we crashed.

My books nearly slipped to the floor. I gathered them and pulled myself together. I was now officially in the middle of a cat and mouse game with the Mutila. I had to identify them before they found me.

I stuffed the slip of paper in my front pocket. There was only one person who would have left the note. One person who knew about the Mutila and would be looking out for my well-being. The girl on the bridge. If she knew how to find my locker, she must go to my school.

I surfed for her the rest of the day.
You're here, I know you are.
I swear I caught a flicker of her tragic presence outside the gymnasium, but it collided with the mass of other kids and was gone.

I decided against telling Jaxon about the note. I wanted to pursue this one on my own.

After school, Kimber met me at the curb. I settled in the passenger seat, tipped my head back, and closed my eyes. The boost I'd gotten from eating lunch had worn off. The hangover was worse than ever.

"Don't get too comfortable," she said. "I promised Mrs. Crane we'd visit Mr. Crane today. We're stopping at the hospital on the way home."

"Kimber—" I groaned.

"Don't even think about trying to talk your way out of it. If you want to party like there's no tomorrow, you suffer the consequences."

"I feel like I'm going to die," I protested.

Just a few days ago, I'd planned to talk to Mr. Crane. Now I didn't see the point. I had Jaxon and my note-writing ally.

"I'll wait in the car," I said when we parked in the hospital lot.

Kimber rousted me out. "You'll do no such thing. The Cranes have been good to us. The least you can do is come in and say hello."

*******

Mrs. Crane was in the hospital waiting area, taking a call on her cell phone. She held her hand over the mouthpiece when we got close.

"Thank you for coming." She and Kimber exchanged pecks on the cheek. "The nurse is giving Don a sedative."

"Can I go in?" I asked.

Kimber angled a brow at my sudden interest. On the elevator ride to his floor, an idea had sprung to life in my addled brain.

"He's got another visitor, but go ahead. I need to talk to Kimber a moment," Mrs. Crane said.

My principal, Mr. Lauer, came out as I went in. The wrinkles on his forehead steepled in surprise. "What brings you here…" His mouth tightened while he tried to remember my name.

"Echo Bennett," I said. "Mr. Crane's a friend of the family. How do you know him?"

Mr. Lauer fumbled with the zipper on his jacket. "Yes. Friend of the family as well." The zipper was off-kilter and snagged the fabric. He gave up and pulled the collar around his neck. "Have a good night," he said and hurried down the hall.

The nurse was adjusting the plasma bag next to Mr. Crane's bed when I walked in. "You just missed him," she said. "The medication puts him under pretty quickly."

Her patient's chest swelled and shrank in relaxed, drug-induced breaths. The machine monitoring his heart rate showed a slow, even cadence. "Go ahead and say hello, but keep it short. He needs his rest."

My eyes stung from the rubbing alcohol and ammonia vapor hanging in the air. Machines hummed quietly next to the bed. The nurse left us, and I studied the man who had frightened me not so long ago.

Mr. Crane had been in the hospital for two months and was healing slowly. A bandage covered his forehead. He was so pale, it was hard to tell where the gauze ended and his skin started. Tubes poked out of his nose and arms, adding to his frail appearance. It was hard to believe I'd ever been afraid of him.

His hand lay outside the blanket, thick blue veins riding below the skin. I tucked a sheet over it and sat in the chair next to him.

My fingers folded and twisted the cuff of my jacket at what I was about to try. I plastered a weak smile on my face, but my heart raced off the charts.

"I know about the Mutila," I said softly. "I know what they do and that they're here in Portland. Do you know anything about them?" I needed him to answer, but at the same time I hoped he was too out of it to hear me. I wasn't sure what I would do if he answered yes. Running out of the room screaming was high on the list of possibilities.

Mr. Crane breathed in a steady rhythm.

I tried again. "I'm looking for some Mutila kids. A red-haired girl and a skinny boy. Another boy who is muscular. I think they've been following me."

I looked for any sign that he had heard my request. Whatever the nurse gave him seemed to have knocked him into la-la land. I asked again, this time holding still to see if the answer came through his energy field.

"Do you know those kids?"

The machines purred. The plasma bag dripped. Mr. Crane breathed noisily through his mouth, but I got nothing from him that indicated a yes or no. Though weak, his aura piped out the same, steady determination that I'd come to recognize.

Watching him lay helpless beneath the mass of tubes, I felt my own strength begin to bloom. In the space of two seconds my mind zigzagged from the subtle threats he once delivered, to the way he had tried to strong-arm me into acting as his research guinea pig, and back to the hospital room.

After my accident, I'd been forced to keep quiet around him, and had to make a special effort to hide who I was. This didn't bother me so much with other people; no one else suspected that I was different. Mr. Crane knew I was hiding a secret, and I think it drove him a little crazy. So he kept prodding until I was forced to avoid him. Well, here I was, with the very news he'd wanted to hear, all those words that I'd kept under lock and key bubbling in my throat.

I let them spill over.

"I bet you're one of them," I said. "And guess what? I'm the one you want. I’m telekinetic. I can levitate. I have gifts you'd never believe unless you saw for yourself."

His eyelids fluttered. A thrill charged me. It felt good to announce who I was. No apologies. No explanations. No consequences.

"Yeah, I'm definitely the one you're looking for, but I'll die before I let the Mutila have me."

Mr. Crane's head lolled to the side. His eyes snapped open and he aimed his cloudy gaze at me.

Chapter 12

The machine monitoring Mr. Crane's heart rate blipped and settled. His lids closed. I launched out of my chair, and out of the room.

Mr. Crane's wife met me in the corridor. "Did you have a nice visit?" If she noticed my sick pallor, she didn't say anything.

"He was…asleep," I said, working hard to keep my voice steady. "Can I ask you something? Will he even remember that I came today, or that I talked to him?"

"Sorry dear, but no. He's on a heavy dose of painkillers." She patted my shoulder and went to her husband.

My body sagged with relief.

Kimber and I got home after dark. After a chapter of Trigonometry, I was dying to go to bed. I changed into my pajamas and saw a lamp glowing in Becca's window across the street. I let out a long sigh. She needed to know what I had found out about last night.