Echo Into Darkness: Book 2 in The Echo Saga (Teen Paranormal Romance) (16 page)

I had no reason to follow her. There was nothing about the structure that piqued my curiosity. I still didn't understand what would have sent Jaxon down this trail.

Foreboding prickled my neck, and before I could dismiss it as unease about Jaxon, heaviness weighed over me. I rested my hand on the damp stone banister for support.

"Becca? Hey, I'm not feeling too well." A sickness seemed to gather in the air, syrupy and dense, and then like a clap of thunder, it slammed into me full force.

"Oh my God. Becca! Becca!"

Remnants of other peoples' auras flung themselves at me. The air around Witch's Castle seemed drenched with the vestiges of human pain and suffering. Auras scratched, clawed, and pleaded for my attention.

"No, no, no. Get away. Get off!" I struck at the air as though I could physically shove them away. My throat began to close. A pain stabbed my chest. "What's happening! Get away from me!"

As if prompted by a higher force, the answer rolled through my bones. These weren't auras of the living. They were pieces of souls from people who had died here. Their bodies were long gone, but their agony somehow remained, attaching to the building, to the gnarled trees and rain-soaked moss.

Desperate to tell their stories, the battered souls attacked my body, communicating their last earthly moments: Strangulation. Stabbing. Gunshot.

I ran back up the trail. The invading forces thinned by the time I reached the pavement. They didn't follow me beyond the edge of the woods.

Becca caught up, out of breath from running. "Why did you leave? I was going to show you the little room that's under the house. That's super haunted."

I took in deep drags of air, and probably looked white as snow. I had never felt dead people before. If this experience was the norm, I hoped I never felt it again, thank-you-very-much.

"You saw something, didn't you?" she asked.

"This isn't a safe place. I don't want you coming here anymore," I told her. I rubbed my arms, trying to get the goose bumps to go down.

"You're freaking me out."

I took a deep breath and explained what I'd felt.

"The legends are true? Awesome." Becca said.

"It's the exact opposite of awesome. Those people didn't die fifty years ago. I think it happened recently."

"Like when?"

I wiped the rain off my face. "Last year? Last month? Yesterday? Who knows? I want to get out of here."

We were on our way back to school when she asked, "Does that happen every time you go to a cemetery? Getting blindsided by dead people?"

I didn't answer for a while. I was coming to terms with the news that I had another odd talent. I'd walked past cemeteries in the past months and hadn't felt a thing. There was something about Witch's Castle that allowed pain to cling to it, allowed it to act as an afterlife harbor for the lost, the tormented.

"It's never happened before," I answered, still trying to shake the auras' despair.

We got back to school with barely enough time for me to change out of my muddy jeans and into my gym sweatpants, and get to the curb outside school. While I waited for Kimber to pick me up, I texted Jaxon, telling him we needed to talk ASAP.

He texted back saying he had too much homework. Then he asked what I usually wore to bed.

Downhill skis and a prom dress,
I responded. He didn't reply back. So what if I wasn't in a flirtatious mood? Getting bombarded by a bunch of dead people had sucked the life out of my desire.

A dark BMW with tinted windows rolled to the curb. Little hairs on my neck stood straight up as the side window slowly lowered.

"Looking for a ride?" my dad said from behind the wheel of a rental car.

I jumped into the front seat and threw my arms around him. "Why didn't you tell me you were coming home?"

"I surprised Kimber, too. It's our anniversary tomorrow," he reminded me.

"I bet she loved that. Way to score the big points, Dad."

"I'm also thrilled to see you," he said, giving me another squeeze. "It's been too long."

"Almost a whole month."

Our conversation turned to general life topics. I filled him in on all the local gossip, save for the bits about violent souls and kidnapping factions.

"Kimber told me about the license plate number you turned into the police. They got back to Becca's dad today."

My heart thumped. "Yeah? And?" This was what I'd been waiting for. Luma and Roth could be tied to the hit-and-run and to the vandalism at The Asylum. They'd end up in jail, and I could breathe easy, for a while at least.

"Are you certain you read the plate right?" my dad asked. "The police say there is no vehicle that matches the information you gave them."

"That's not possible," I said. "Do they know to look for a black SUV?"

"They do, honey. Don't feel bad. I'm proud of you for following through and trying to help Becca. Not a lot of people take the time or are brave enough to turn someone in."

I shook my head, frustrated. The night had been dark and rainy and I'd been wound up from the near miss at the Smoothie Shack. Still, I
saw
WEOWNU in my mind, as clearly as I had that night.

"I know I got it right," I insisted.

He patted my hand, his quiet way of letting me know there was nothing else he could do.

We were almost home when he said, "I have a favor to ask. Don Crane is getting out of the hospital this week."

"Oh. Good. Good for him." I'd been so busy with Jaxon that I hadn't thought much about my hospital visit. Every time I did, I felt a mix of regret and disbelief at my hair-brained confession, even if Mr. Crane didn't register a word of it.

"His family is throwing a welcome home party, and I was hoping you'd go with Kimber."

My heart fell. "You won't be here?"

"A firm in Bangkok wants to break their contract with us. I need to fly there and find out what's going on."

I let out a groan. "You're always leaving."

"If I could stay longer, I would."

I took the opportunity to milk his guilt. It was my God-given right as a teenager, after all. "I haven't seen you for more than a weekend at a time since we moved to Portland."

"I know, honey…"

"I'm supremely disappointed. It's just me and Kimber and Tito, hanging around the house by ourselves." I let out an exaggerated sigh to push his guilt buttons.

"Is this going somewhere?"

"How about lifting my imprisonment? It's hard to coordinate rides with Kimber and I
promise
I have learned my lesson."

My dad nodded. "Fine. You are no longer grounded…"

"Yes!"

"…but you don't get your keys back."

"Whaaaat? That's the same as being grounded."

"Except I'm letting you leave the house to be with your friends. That's the deal. Take it or leave it."

"This sucks," I whined. His brows shot up. "But I'll take it!" I said.

*******

The next morning, I was leaving the girl's bathroom when Raquelle shoulder-slammed me, sending my books to the floor. Before I could react, McKyla sprung from a pack of kids with her camera phone aimed at me.

"Aha!" McKyla yelled. "Do it! I dare you." She snapped a series of photos. Of me. Doing nothing.

Raquelle slapped the phone from McKyla's hand. "You're supposed to wait until she uses her witch power! You are such an idiot."

"But you said …" McKyla's face heated.

"Shut up. Just shut up." Queen Bee's lips were chapped and her forehead was breaking out. She looked so unstable, I expected her eyes to spin and steam to fly out of her ears.

I picked up my books. She was going to have to be a lot more patient and sneaky if she expected to capture me zapping anyone on camera.

"Try…and fail," I sang to Raquelle. "Desperation is
not
a good look on you, sweetie."

She dug her fingers into McKyla's arm and dragged her down the hall.

I cut down the sophomore corridors that led to the gymnasium. Jaxon hadn't been outside his earlier class and I thought I remembered him finishing P.E. now. If I didn't find him in the next five minutes, I thought my head might explode.

None of the clues and tips from our search were adding up—not his trip to Witch's Castle or Keenan Feller or the fake license on the SUV. I was frustrated and out of answers and felt the heat of impending disaster closing in. I was betting Jaxon could put things in perspective, and to do that he needed to explain how he knew a man like Keenan.

Jaxon came out of the guy's locker room with a towel over his shoulder and mussed-up hair. The veins on his forearms popped. My heart thudded. He was cute, disarming. Different from the smart aleck who usually got my pulse chirping.

He stepped in and kissed me on the cheek. He smelled faintly of sweat, and he radiated…
faction
? My pulse screeched to a halt.

"I broke my bench-press record," he said. "One ninety. Not bad considering I never lifted until I moved here. Uh-oh. Now what did I do?"

I eased back. "You feel like Mutila," I whispered.

"You're just picking up my overriding manliness."

"I can tell if you're lying." Or at least I used to be able to. My skill seemed off lately.

He blotted dampness from his hairline with the towel. "Take it easy. You're right, you're picking up faction. I found the red-haired girl from The Asylum. I'm taking her out tonight."

Chapter 19

"
What
?" My shriek echoed off the corridor walls. "Are you out of your mind?"

"Chill, all right?"

"Ch—did you say—"

"Yes. Chill. Out." Jaxon put his hands on my shoulders. I shrugged them off. "I was driving by the Smoothie Shack and saw her stalking around, trying to get inside even though it was closed. I told her I saw her skateboarding and thought she was good, blah, blah, blah. Told her I thought her tattoos were hot and asked her to dinner."

"
Why?
"

"There's only one reason she'd go back to the Shack—she's looking for another link to you. All this lame detective work is getting us nowhere. If we want answers, we should go straight to the source."

Heat bubbled in my chest. "You can't go. She saw you kiss me and will use you to get to me."

"If the topic even comes up, I'll tell her I met you at the skatepark and never saw you after that."

"And you think she'll believe you?" I asked, incredulous. I collapsed against a locker. What was he thinking?

"Opportunities like this don't drop in your lap. I'm putting my life on the line, here. For you. A thank you wouldn't be out of order."

I flashed back to the night I stopped by The Asylum. "Look what she did to Tugg."

"That's not going to happen." One side of Jaxon's mouth curved into a smirk.

"How can you be sure?"

"She's into me."

My veins cooled. "You actually like this girl."

"I think ink on a girl is hot, that's all. Are you jealous?"

"No," I stuttered. Of course I was. And confused, but all I said was, "It's a bad idea."

Jaxon wrapped his arms around my waist and rubbed my back. "I'll be able to ask questions that we'd never be able to unless we got close to them. I can find out who's behind the group. That was the plan all along, wasn't it?"

I exhaled into his chest. His forearms were smooth and hard against my back. I was in a precarious state, afraid and yet unable to do anything about it, curled against the one person who was at once helping me and drawing out my anxiety. I couldn't stop him from going on the date. I'd pushed him to be creative and this was what he'd come up with, but sitting across a table from Luma felt like flashing your jugular at a cheetah.

"Where are you taking her?" I asked.

His aura flickered at my odd question. "She wants to go to Ciao Italia."

I pressed my hands against his chest to create distance between us. "I hear it's lovely."

"Come on, this is the best thing that could happen to us."

I forced a tight smile and nodded.

The bell rang and Jaxon was sucked into the mass of students before I realized I hadn't asked him about Keenan. It would have to wait. One crisis at a time.

Minutes later, I was in class and Becca was laughing. At me.

"First you hate Jaxon, then you're all 'he's the perfect disposable guy,' and now you want to spy on him?"

"I'm not jealous." I studied my cuticles.

"Sure you're not. I didn't get a good look at this chick at The Asylum. What does she look like?"

"Hot with tattoos."

"So he's into tats. You could get a few and hide them in mysterious places. I hear Raquelle does that, pastes a temporary tattoo where the sun doesn't shine and then bets her date that he can't find it."