Fragile Darkness (12 page)

On some disconnected level I was aware of Grace moving, of Grace coming to stand beside me, of her reaching for my hand. But I didn't feel anything, couldn't feel anything, couldn't do anything but stare at Will as he thrust out his arm as if handing me something.

“Take it,”
he breathed, sobbed.

Not thinking about what I was doing, I lifted my hand to do as he asked.

“LaSalle,”
Will narrated, quoting my mind as easily as he'd narrated the Book of Revelation.

But before I could say anything, a shadow slipped, and Dylan appeared, crouched on the branch below Will. With a hand to the trunk he twisted back to me, and though darkness stole detail, I knew he, too, realized something was beyond wrong.

He, too, was remembering.

“M-my head,” Will moaned. Through the shadows he pressed his hands to the sides of his face. “Everything's so fuzzy,” he muttered. “What's happening?”

Dylan started climbing again, faster.

“So beautiful,”
Will murmured. “Just … like … you.”

Everything inside me locked up. Those were the last words Chase had said to me as he'd hovered between two worlds: me in the hospital room, and my mother beyond the stars.

Without warning Will lunged, twisting around, bracing for an attack. “No, stay away!”

I saw it in slow motion, saw him sway, his arms flail out. “No!”

Kendall grabbed him, steadying him as she used the trunk to steady herself.

The wind whipped Spanish moss into a frenzied dance. I squinted up at Will and Kendall, but saw only two shadows clinging to each other. And I knew. I knew for a second there, when Will had started to fall, Kendall's entire life had flashed before her.

But then the flash was mine again, a quick flicker of darkness arcing over a ribbon of white.

“Something's really wrong!” Kendall cried, and then it was the tree that I saw again, her crouched frantically beside Will. “His heart's racing and he's sweating like crazy, but his skin's like
ice.
”

So was mine.

“Will.” I scrambled for the right thing to say, but wasn't sure that was even possible. What did you say to someone who'd just narrated your memories?

“He's terrified,” Grace whispered. “Confused.”

So was I. “I promise I'm not going to hurt you,” I tried. “I only want to talk.”

“No,” he muttered. “You need to go. You don't belong here.”

“Why not?” I asked, but before he could answer Dylan vaulted past Kendall, grabbing the branch above him for balance.

Will jerked back, edging closer to the thinner end of the branch.

Dylan swung back to Kendall. “Can you get down by yourself?”

She looked beyond him, toward her boyfriend.
“Please, Will.”
Her voice broke on the words. “You need help. That's why I called your dad Friday. This is all because of the accident.”

Accident?

“You're not well yet. But you will be, I
promise.
You have to let us help you.”

He twisted without warning, dropping to swing to the branch below.

Kendall screamed. “Will, no!”

Dylan dropped down after him.

Will lunged back to the trunk, scrambling animal-like from branch to branch. I could see him coming, knew Dylan would never catch him in time. Instinctively I raced forward, grabbing Will's hand as he dropped down beside me.

The quick, violent rush of energy threw me backward.

He swung around, his eyes finding mine. They were dark, like a cornered animal, and I was the hunter.

“It's okay,” I whispered. My heart pounded in my ears. “I'm not going to hurt you. I just want to talk.”

Slowly, mechanically, he lifted his hand, bringing his fingers to the soft strip of leather wrapped around my wrist. His eyes, gentler now, glistening, met mine.
“You didn't take it off.”

And for that second, the world stopped. He looked at me with a quiet desperation, the beanie pulled lower making his eyes look bigger, the way they pleaded, begged.

“Everything's okay,” I tried to assure him. “You don't need to be scared.”

His head snapped up, alert, listening. “They're here,” he muttered.

“Who?”

He jerked back, watching me a long, frozen second before twisting and vanishing into the shadows.

I took off after him.

“Trinity, wait!”

The warning in Dylan's voice registered, but I wasn't about to stop. Something had just happened. Something huge and bizarre and completely unexpected. Something that changed everything.

No one had ever looked at me like that, like they recognized me, like they knew me on a thousand different levels, but were terrified.

Except Dylan.

And
terror
wasn't the right word.

But none of that mattered then. “Will!” I shouted, tearing at the vines and moss. “Come back!” Knobby roots jutted up all over the place, tripping me. “Let me help!”

Nearby something splashed.

I spun toward the play of moonlight along the ripples of a wide creek. Not too far away, through the shroud of trees, an old stone bridge arced from one side to the other.

“Trinity!” Dylan shouted, closer. The rough edges of his voice scraped in too many raw places.
“Answer me!”

I rushed into the reeds along the side of the creek. “Over here!”

He caught me before I could take a second step.

I fought him, twisting around. “You can't let him get away! Did you hear what he said? I need to talk to him.”

Dark hair fell against Dylan's eyes, but couldn't hide the glint of silver. It was the same way he'd looked when Grace's grandmother had spoken about dreams and destiny.

“I know,” was all he said, and then he was running toward the creek.

Maybe I should have stayed there and waited, but I didn't know how to do that. All I could think about was the way Will had looked at me, and what he'd said, words he should not have known, the way he'd touched the bracelet. I had no idea what that meant, but I knew it meant something.

And I knew it was huge.

“Trinity?” Grace called as I scrambled down the steep, muddy slope. “Where are you?”

“By the creek!” I waded in, searching the reeds.

Stillness slipped from all directions, a stillness at odds with the frenetic rush inside me. It was like barging into a tranquil painting, with the moonlight on the water and the serene stone bridge, the way the undergrowth looked like sleeping shadows. Nothing stirred. Nothing moved.

“Dylan?” He had to be somewhere.

Behind me, something snapped.

I spun around. “Dylan? Will?”

Kendall broke through the shadows, Grace a step behind her.

“Where are they?” Kendall cried, holding her sides.
“Where's Will?”

“I don't know!”

She darted past me to the rocks tumbling down into the water. “Will, please!” she called, wading in. “Answer me!”

Not sure what else to do, I hurried in after her.

“He could barely stand, much less swim,” she said, trudging deeper. “If he went into the water…”

I caught her by the arm. “If he's still here, Dylan'll find him,” I promised, but the second I spoke I saw him running along the other side of the moonlit ripples, alone.

“He's gone,” Kendall whispered.

After crossing the stone bridge, Dylan vanished among a cluster of trees before emerging in front of us. His hair was wet, his T-shirt and jeans clinging to his body. “He got away.”

Kendall turned, hugging her arms tightly around her middle. Holding herself like that, as if holding everything together, she stared at the maze of sprawling trees and network of paths, the roads leading off to soccer fields and a dog park, a small amusement park. If someone didn't want to be found, there were about ten thousand places to hide.

“I've never seen him like that,” she said into the push of the wind. Slowly, she turned back to me. “What happened back there? You had that look on your face, like Friday night, was I right? Did you get a reading from him?”

The wind kept blowing, sending hair slapping against my face. “Yes,” I whispered. Darkness lurked around Will, shadows like Madam Isobel talked about. Their residue rippled through me even now, a faint, unsettling current humming beneath the surface.

“But it was like an X-ray,” I said. Black against white. Stark. Unsettling. “I couldn't make it out.”

“He was terrified,” she whispered.
“Of you.”

I didn't need to look at Dylan to feel the burn of his eyes. “There's a lot of that going around,” I muttered.

“It was all so different at the party,” Kendall said. “At first he was just
Will,
like he used to be. We walked through the woods and he told me how sorry he was for how strange he's been acting.” Smiling, she looked down at a simple silver ring on her right hand. “He said things were going to get better and we danced in the moonlight.”

And then it was me lifting my arms and wrapping them around my body, holding on tight.

“That's when I texted you. But you didn't come, and we went back inside, and he got all edgy again, saying I had to go, to get out of there. That I shouldn't be there.” She looked off again, in the direction he vanished. “And all that bad stuff happened. He got in his car and Grace and I got in mine, but he didn't go home. So we followed him and ended up here, and that's when he freaked.”

Grace shot me a quick look.

Kendall's eyes filled. “The doctors said this could happen.”

“Doctors?” I asked, remembering what she'd said to him before. “You said something about an accident?”

She nodded. “Earlier this year,” she said. “After that is when he changed. The doctors warned us he might seem like a different person for awhile, that his behaviors might change, the things he likes. That as the brain finds new pathways his whole reality could shift.”

I glanced at Dylan, he glanced at me.

“And maybe that's what's happening,” Kendall kept on, before I could ask the growing list of questions firing through me. “But I think he's stepped into something dangerous, like drugs. I could smell beer on him.” Her eyes filled. “Do you think that's what you're picking up?”

“Maybe,” I said. There was definitely bad stuff going on at the party.

“Like calls to like,” Grace whispered oddly. She stood on the other side of Dylan, looking off toward the trees. But I knew that's not what she was seeing.

“He's broadcasting,” she said. “Broadcasting loud, like when you see a bunch of cars run into each other and catch fire, and you call nine-one-one, screaming.” Hair blowing, she turned to me. “Like you broadcast to me,” she said. “The dream I had, the woods you were in tonight.” Here eyes were all dark and glowing, the psychic's eyes, seeing what only she saw. “But not everyone can hear.”

I stood without moving, even as Dylan stepped closer. Vaguely I was aware of him shoving the damp hair from his eyes, leaving it to fall against both sides of his forehead.

“This accident,” he said into the thickening silence. “How badly was Will hurt?”

Kendall twisted toward him, her face suddenly ashen, her eyes like an unseeing doll. “He died.”

 

TWELVE

No.

That was my first reaction. Kendall was being dramatic, exaggerating, letting the dark current of fear carry her away.

Then I looked at her, really, really looked at her.

Fear and grief and trauma, they left a mark on people, like a weight on the soul or a scar on their heart. Sometimes it could be hidden, glossed over with a smile or perfect makeup or through a flurry of activity, a coat of paint. But then the stillness would come, that moment when pretenses fell away and you thought no one was looking and your guard lowered, your smile cracked. That's when the residue leaked through, when the shadow fell like an icy veil separating you from the world around you, the world that went on, didn't hurt, wasn't changed.

I saw it all in that one brief second before Kendall shuttered it away, exactly like I sometimes saw when I walked into the shop and found my aunt standing near a display as if she had no idea who or where she was.

“He flipped his four-wheeler,” Kendall whispered. “He was thrown about twenty-five feet.”

Wordlessly, I lifted my hands to my mouth.

“He hit his head on a tree.” Memories drenched her eyes, dark and painful, like a movie that would never end. “They called it a traumatic brain injury, some kind of hemorrhage that wouldn't stop.”

My own memories started to play, merge.

“We … we were all there at the hospital.”

Running, falling, the sharp blast of pain. The sudden wash of white. Machines beeping.

“He coded in the ER,” Kendall whispered.

Grace stepped closer, silently reaching for Kendall's hand, and I saw it, the quick transferred flood of pain that lashed through her.

“They … they got him back and put him in a medically induced coma until the swelling went down.”

Everything slowed, the wind, my heart. Mechanically I stared down at the bracelet, the words burned into the leather:
HONEST, IMPULSIVE, STRONG. FEARLESS.

“Because you're you,”
Chase had said, explaining why he made it.
“And no one else is.”

The memory hurt in ways I'd never anticipated that night, despite the shadows already slipping closer, and my inability to keep Dylan from my dreams.

Blinking, I saw Dylan lift a hand to Kendall's shoulder, touching her with the same steadiness as he'd touched me earlier. But something was different. Warmth glimmered in his eyes, warmth like stars of the purest silver.