Echo Into Darkness: Book 2 in The Echo Saga (Teen Paranormal Romance) (6 page)

"You can do homework between customers," he said, and he took off to watch a Mortal Kombat battle in The Cave.

I didn't have any customers so I found a corner table and pulled out last year's yearbook. If I'd been asked to sit with a police sketch artist, my description of the girl would have been embarrassingly thin: hair that might have been short and brown but I couldn't be certain because it was under a hat. Big eyes (of course, she was ten shades past freaked out), ashen skin (another sign of being terror-stricken), and no unique, memorable features.

At first, I took my time on each page, looking closely at every photo, trying to match it with what little I remembered. By the time I paged through the sophomore class, I was skimming faces. By junior year, all the pictures blended together in a wash of color.

At the counter, someone banged on the service bell hard enough to suggest we should evacuate the building.

"Hellooo. Anybody here?" The voice of the she-devil broke my concentration.

"Yeah?" I slid to my place behind the cash register, my eyes slitty, ruffled by the idea that I was forced to be cordial to the one person who least deserved it.

Raquelle's eyes glided over me. "Oh, it's you," she said, my appearance obviously pushing her day into the unbearable zone. Her eyes were rimmed with red like she'd been crying. Raquelle never cried, not even when her dog died, so right away I assumed the worst.

Her dad, Mr. Crane, had been in the hospital for weeks. Nobody was sure what happened, but Connor and I shared the same theory, that Solomon, the man who had attacked me, had attacked Mr. Crane, too. He'd been injured badly and by the grief on Raquelle's face, his health had taken a bad turn.

Her eyes gave me a judgmental pass, like she wasn't sure her smoothie order would be in capable hands.

"Something happened to my dad," she said unexpectedly.

I glanced to my left, then right.

"Yeah, I'm talking to you. Don't act all surprised," she said. "That's why I'm such a hot mess." She air-circled her face with a finger. "I've been up at the hospital."

If she'd had anyone else to dump her drama on, no doubt she would have ignored me. "What happened?" I asked.

"Somebody got into my dad's room last night and tied off his oxygen tube," she said. "Like, put a knot in it."

My eyes bugged. If her dad was using a machine to breathe, tying off the oxygen tube was as good as trying to end his life.

"Is he okay?"

She nodded. "The machine's alarm went off. A nurse ran in and fixed it."

An alarm was going off in my head, too. First, a faction girl tried to end her life. Then, someone tried to end Mr. Crane's. Connor was convinced Mr. Crane was in the faction, and I wondered if there was a connection.

"Do you know who did it?" I asked with more eagerness than I intended.

Raquelle scowled. "Some psycho, obviously." She scanned the handwritten menu hanging above my head. "It's been a long day and I'm hungry. I want a Mango Tango smoothie, extra protein powder. And make sure you use low-fat fruit."

There was no point in rolling my eyes. "Fruit doesn't have any fat in it."

"Then why does my fruit yogurt always say it's low fat? Huh? Just make sure you grab the right mangoes. I've been stuck eating hospital food all week and my jeans are digging into me." She tugged at her waistband. The denim left a red line where it cut into her hip.

A better person might have explained that it was the dairy, not the fruit, that was low fat. But hey, I'm no angel.

I reached deep into the cooler. "Oh, lookee here. All the fat free mangoes are hiding in the back." I dumped a scoopful into the blender along with the other ingredients and frappéed the lot into submission.

I slid the plastic cup and a straw across the counter. She gave me an inquisitive once-over. "You weren't really going to jump off the bridge today, were you? That would have been pathetic."

"Nope. Just checking out the view."

"Uh-huh. You're obviously dying for attention. Why don't you join the Debate Team or something?"

I worked up a friendly smile. We were actually having a reasonably civil conversation. No snide remarks, no passive aggressive threats. This was the perfect time to pump her for information.

"Who would possibly want to mess with your dad's oxygen? I thought everyone liked him," I said in my most helpful tone and swiped a towel over the spotless display case.

She shrugged. "The hospital swears it wasn't anyone on their staff, but who else would be there after visiting hours?"

"Has he had any, I dunno, strange people visit him?"

"Why do you care?"

"Just trying to help."

She eyed me suspiciously. "Just ring me up so I can get out of here." She fished out her credit card.

"Four-fifty," I said, punching cash register buttons to initiate the transaction. The digital screen gave me an empty stare. I tried another series of buttons. No luck. "Shoot. I'll be right back."

I hurried to The Cave entrance and squinted into the dark, looking for my manager. Slowly, sluggishly, an agonizing presence slithered into my aura. Tarry energy stabbed the back of my throat. Faction energy.

I immediately felt hot and sick. I sidestepped out of the arcade and behind the counter.

"I don't have all night," Raquelle whined. Then, "Why do you look all pasty?"

"Um…" I stuttered. With one eye on The Cave entrance, I tried the register again. It rang up the purchase. She swiped her credit card. My mind raced. Should I leave the building? Hide out in back until everyone left?

"What's with you, lately? You used to be almost kind of cool, before I had to dump you from the Partychicks."

"Shut up, Raquelle," I hissed. I needed her to be quiet. I had to think what to do next.

"Excuse me?" Her voice hit a high C. Nobody told Queen Bee to shut up.

"I said…"

A group of kids strolled out of the arcade and into the shop. They laughed and chattered. All except one. A small, hooded figure in the middle of the group peered over her shoulder and held my gaze.

I quit breathing. The large eyes and fair skin. She looked like the girl from the bridge. As they left the building, I skirted the counter and went after them. The door wouldn't budge. I shook it, and the deadbolt rattled. The door had been locked from the inside. Not by me, so how?

I flipped the bolt and ran outside. The winter air bit through the thin fabric of my work shirt. My breath came out in cold, white puffs as I searched up and down the sidewalk. The kids were gone. Behind me, the girl's pain rolled out of the store like a receding tide.

I went back in, my chest tight from the bitter cold and the close encounter. While I willed my racing heart to slow down, I caught movement on the handwritten menu board hanging above the counter. Below the Mango Tango smoothie listing, a blue whiteboard pen floated in the air, scrawling out a message:

Jump before it's too late.

Chapter 7

My limbs filled with ice.

Raquelle was so busy watching my near meltdown, she missed the voodoo happening right over her head.

"God, you are such a freak," she said.

My whole body shook. "If you find out what happened to your dad, will you let me know?"

She sniffed. "Why don't you stick to worrying about your own parents? Oh, that's right, your dad is never around and Kimber isn't your real mom. No wonder you were hanging over the West Vista bridge."

I spun on her. "Enough with the suicide jokes. It's sickening."

"Jumper," she said.

My manager came in from The Cave, and that may have been the single thing that prevented me from strangling my very first customer. "How's everything going out here?" he asked.

"Excellent," I said, pasting on a smile.

"Hoppity, jumping wonderful," Raquelle answered, and pushed through the exit with one hip.

Joe saw I had the counter covered and went back into the arcade. Quaking, I set the stepstool beneath the menu and erased the words in blue.

*******

On the drive home from the Smoothie Shack, I slumped behind the wheel, trembling uncontrollably. It wasn't the message on the menu board, or Raquelle's heartless taunting that had gotten to me. Something else, unfamiliar and haunting, settled in my bones, darkening the core of who I was. I could not put my finger on it.

I got to the top of the hill on the highway leading home and glided down the other side, picking up speed and passing cars until I was wheel-to-wheel with a semi in the next lane.

The road beyond my headlights contracted to a dark point. That was my future, too. A narrowing tunnel with no bright light at the end.

The truck next to me barreled down the hill, its trailer bobbing and weaving over the dashed yellow line between us. Its blinker signaled it was about to move into my lane. I suddenly hoped I was sitting in the driver's blind spot.

That's when I realized something in me had snapped.

Before the incident at the bridge, when the girl took my hand and tried to coax me onto the railing, I had never, ever considered ending my life. It was unthinkable. In the past months, I had lived through, and survived, heartbreaking loss. Much of it had been unbearable, and at times I'd hated my life, but I always came through it okay.

Then, the anonymous girl in the blue nylon coat shook my life twice. Since that first night, a cruel thought had been forming, so quietly, so innocently, that the seed it planted went unnoticed. It was wrong and I wanted it to go away, but I was struck at how firmly it had already taken root.

Maybe you really are better off dead. If you stay in this lane, the semi will take away all your problems.

I gave my head a hard shake to loosen and discard the dangerous ideas rattling inside. If I were to believe the girl, I was going to collide with a perilous, deadly world, one I was not prepared to face. Despite my gifts, I felt powerless, like the blood and air were being vacuumed out of me. Like the end was hurtling toward me at breakneck speed, and with it, a great deal of pain.

I could change that, right now, if I stayed here in the semi's blind spot.

It would be over so fast

The trailer teetered. My headlights glinted off its chrome hubcaps.

What if…what if…

The semi eased into my lane.

My cell phone chose that moment to ring, its trill sounding ten decibels louder than normal, jarring me back to myself. I hit the brakes, and the truck sped away, its tires kicking gravel onto my windshield. I took the next exit and pulled to the shoulder.

I dropped my head onto the steering wheel and inhaled deeply. That had been close. Too close.

The phone rang again, and I was floored when my head cleared enough to recognize the ring tone: Peter, Paul and Mary's “Leaving on a Jet Plane.” It was my dad.

"Hey Dad," I answered.

"Honey, are you all right?"

I exhaled a jerky breath. "I'm fine. What's up?"

"I'm watching the sun come up over Paris and got the urge to call my favorite daughter."

His voice hinted at laughter. Working to keep mine steady, I fell in step with his joke.

"So, you have more than one daughter now? Geez, any other big reveals you want to share?" My dad traveled internationally for his business, Bennett Global Imports. He spent more time in hotels than at home. It was good to hear his voice, and we fell into our easy banter.

After my dad hung up, relief tingled from my crown to my toes that the phone had rung when it did. Funny how fate can throw you a life preserver when you least expect, and most need, one.

I realized, then, that I needed every lifeline I could get. That included Jaxon's offer, even if it came with a snarky attitude.

As soon as I got home, I went to the guest room. Kimber was pulling the sheets off the bed.

"Where's Jaxon?" I asked.

"He came by and said he didn't need to stay here another night."

I guessed he'd found his foster brother after all these years. "Did he leave a phone number?" I asked.

"No, but you'll see him in school tomorrow, remember?"

"Oh, yeah, right," I said, filling in the holes in his story.

Jaxon wasn't at school the next day, or the day after. He didn't come by my house, either, which got me wondering if he'd changed his mind and decided to go back to West Region. I wouldn't have blamed. Life in my time was no party, not compared to the paranormal haven he'd come from.

But if he did go, I was silently pissed at him for not taking me with him. Not that I should have been surprised. A snake was a snake, and if you expected it to dance instead of slither, that was your own darn fault.

I was left to track down my enemy on my own.

*******

At midnight, I woke up to Tito whining. He growled, his furry brow wrinkled in doggie concern. His ears twitched. This was how he acted when he heard a noise outside the house. I did not like this at all.

"What's up, boy?"