The Second Sign (17 page)

“Did he hurt you?” Jake’s voice was forced, tight.
The muscles on his cheeks tightened, his eyes were
impenetrable.

“Not really. Max got there in time. He knocked his
lights out and took me home.” She didn’t mention that the fight
lasted two days and ended off the sandy cliffs in India that
sparked lightening and heavy rain.

“Max?”

“Yeah.” She laughed. “He was only sixteen, but he’s
quite a man.”

“And how did Max know?” He cocked his brow, and
Gabby so wanted to kiss him again.

It had been when she and Max were still connected on
a deeper level. Now, she wasn’t so sure. “I don’t know. He just got
there in time.” She plopped down on her bed, wiping her thick hair
out of her eyes and pulling it in a tail. Jake watched her every
move. She could sense him staring at her, as if he could see right
through her. She wasn’t afraid of him, just curious of the
intensity of his interest.

“And I made you go there.” Jake stood up and sat
next to her on the bed.

“You didn’t know, and I wasn’t going to spill it.
Besides, he swears he didn’t put anything in my drink. I believe
him now. I don’t know what happened, but I don’t think he was much
in control either.” She couldn’t believe she defended him. Why was
she defending Pat?

Jake caught it and pulled back.

“Are you...into him?” Jake asked.

“No.” Panic rose inside of her and she took Jake’s
hand in hers. “I just believe that he didn’t spike the drink.”

He took in her face as if embedding it to memory
before standing up and letting out a long breath. Something passed
over his face, a compelling sorrow she couldn't put her finger
on.

“Jake, why are you here? With me. Honest. No BS.”
Subtlety wasn’t her thing.

He sat down on the chair across from the bed and
leaned forward, digging his elbows into his knees and resting his
forehead on his hands, looking at his feet. “I don’t know what’s
going on,” he whispered. But Gabby could still hear him perfectly.
“I saw her jump.”

He looked up and met her gaze. His skin turned into
a hazy, marbled gray, and in a wink he returned to his normal tan
shade. Gabby blinked. Was it a trick of the light? Her
imagination?

“I saw her jump, Gabby.” He stood up and Gabby
matched him.

“Who?”

“Your friend, Martina Gary. She walked to the jump
point. It was like she was waiting for me. She said something,
handed me a piece of paper, and jumped.”

Gabby covered her mouth and shook her head. “No. I
don’t understand. Why would she jump? She’d never—”

“Gabby, her family was found murdered in their
house. Lt. Miller told us when I went to report it.”

Gabby felt numb. All the feelings in her toes and
fingers vanished. “No. This can’t be happening.”

“Gabby...”

“She was found in The Narrows which means her body
would’ve had to travel the Atlantic Coast to get there if she’d
jumped from where you jumped.” Gabby shook her head. “Impossible.”
Unless Gabby had been meant to run into Marty. Unless Naite had
planned this.

Gabby looked at the clock on her stand. Twenty-four
hours would expire at midnight. It was just past two now, and Gabby
still had no clue what it all meant.

Jake went to her, taking her by the shoulder. “She
gave me a note before she jumped.”

He handed Gabby the crumpled piece of paper.
Scrawled on it in bold script were the words...
she is the Second
Sign
and a cursive
N
. Naite.

“Do you know what it means? Who’s it from?”

“Jake, I saw Marty that night after I left you at
Pat’s. I didn’t...” Gabby ignored his question. She had to explain
that she had nothing to do with this. It wasn’t her fault. But
Naite’s face had turned to Marty. Naite had told her the same
thing. And Marty was dead. She hung her head and closed her
eyes.

Jake wrapped his arms around her shoulders and
pulled her into him. She leaned her head on his shoulder. He felt
so good. But what if Naite wasn’t finished?

“No. I don’t know what it means or who it’s from.” A
half-lie Gabby could live with. “What could it mean?” Gabby asked,
lifting her head. She couldn’t think with him so close.

“Maybe we should ask around. Someone may know
something. ”

Gabby shook her head. “No. This has to stay between
us. No one can know.”
Max would kill her.

Jake turned from her. “Jenna knows about Marty. But
she’s cool.”

“I know,” Gabby responded.

“So what now?” Jake asked.

Gabby shrugged. “Let’s Google it. See what we
find.”

Gabby, totally embarrassed when they both went
downstairs, avoided looking at Max who remained tight-lipped and
refused to look at her. Adler whistled and smiled at Jenna who
managed to take up most of Max’s attention, surprisingly since
Gabby had never seen him so wound up in front of a girl.

“We’re going out,” Gabby announced.

“Where?” Max asked even before she finished.

“Out riding, if that’s okay.”

“They'll be fine,” Jenna chimed in. “Jake is a very
safe driver.” She smiled while narrowing her gaze at him.

Max looked to Adler, who shrugged. “Have fun,” Adler
added.

“Be back before midnight,” Max warned. There was a
hard edge to his voice. It was only still early afternoon.

“Okay,” she responded.

They walked to his house where he hopped on his
bike. “What are you doing? Don’t you have a computer?”

He shook his head. “This is vacation, remember? No
computers allowed.”

Gabby rolled her eyes and straddled the bike,
wrapping her arms around his waist. This time when he took her hand
in his and pressed it against his rock hard stomach, she didn’t
even flinch.

The library was occupied by two elderly folks.
Summer being in high gear, teens occupied their time doing more
exciting things. Gabby could only imagine what that might be and
she smirked.

“What are you smiling about?” Jake asked. They were
holding hands. Gabby never held hands, ever. The shadows seemed to
fade in and out, giving her reprieve. She found herself getting
used to touching Jake and liking it. A lot. It almost made her feel
normal.

“Only old folks here,” she whispered.

“So maybe we should check out the younger scene?” he
whispered back, leaning close to her, feeling his breath on the
hollow of her neck, sending chills through her.

“Nah, you’ll probably change your mind in helping
me.” She still waited for him to say
see ya don’t wanna be
ya
, and scamp back over to Alexi and the hard-core partygoers.
They would be more fun than investigating a dead girl’s message.
Gabby tensed. The dead girl had been her friend. She lowered her
gaze until she felt Jake’s hand squeeze hers.

“We’re in this together, okay?”

Could he read her mind?
She nodded. Words
wouldn’t come out.

They sat behind one of the computers and Jake began
their search. Jake seemed more versed in researching stuff. Gabby
had few skills and technology wasn’t her thing. Actually, anything
that had to do with numbers and letters wasn’t her thing. She’d had
to admit, she didn’t exactly know what her
thing
was just
yet.

Her leg throbbed and she gravitated away from the
glances of the old folks.

“I'm going to look around,” she whispered to Jake
who nodded. She still didn’t understand Jake’s take in all this.
Why did God send him to her? It wasn’t an easy thought. Gabby only
believed because her brother was an angel. You couldn’t refute
that
logic. She also had seen demons like the one who
visited her, though always in human form. Never in their true
form.

And then there was Pat. She had hoped he would’ve
stayed gone after Max exiled him from the town. She wondered if Max
knew Pat was back. It wasn’t like he was hiding. It also made her
wonder of the limitations of Max's power. Maybe he wasn't the all-
knowing being she made him out to be. Maybe he took orders just
like everyone else.

A shadow crossed her vision, and she followed it to
the end of the hall where a thick dusty bookcase held large reamed
books—bibles. The light above flickered, and the buzzing overhead
grew louder. She rounded the corner and met the cold gaze of a
woman with every inch of her exposed flesh covered in symbols and
ancient runes. The black ink against her pale flesh looked obscene.
A thick, purple stripe ran the length of her hair covering the left
side of her face. The woman's violet eyes stared back at her.

Gabby staggered back. A mirror. Every inch of her
exposed flesh swarmed with the markings. They slithered their way
up her neck, covered her face, her hands. She could feel them
coiling around her chest and legs, moving in tune to her racing
heart.

She couldn’t breathe.

Naite appeared behind her, gazing over her shoulder
into the mirror with a broad smile plastered on her face, only this
time she wore Heather’s face. Through the milky transparent hollow
of her eyes, Gabby saw Sarah. Sarah was next.

The world faded into swirls of gray and purple.
Gabby stood in the center of a vortex plunged into the core of the
earth where the legions waited for her. An ancient, malevolent
creature. Evil. In a flash of light, that world receded and her
world rushed to meet her. The dainty shelves, the smell of leather,
the buzzing lights, and the bibles. Hundreds of bibles lined the
bookshelves, thick volumes with different colored spines, all
religions...all faiths.

Gabby found her strength and ran back into the
common area, her eyes frantically searching for Jake. No one sat
behind the computer, or the librarian's desk. The old people were
gone. A shadow crossed her vision, and she pulled back the way she
came, hitting a brick wall.

Jake reached out to her before she fell and held her
until she kept her balance, dropping the pages in his hands. The
room swam into focus, the librarian back at her desk, the old folks
looking up from their magazines and newspapers. Looking at her.

“Hey, are you all right?”

She shook her head, her mouth a tight line, grateful
when Jake pulled her out of the library, almost dragging her.

She made it just in time to spew both breakfast and
lunch and cake...on his boots.

The Witch

An unpleasant stench wafted from the frail, decrepit
woman’s body. He wondered to what end this one served in the grand
scale of things. He learned not to question orders and, as a
soldier, he followed them to a tee. Yet, he found himself more a
slave than a soldier, and he often wondered what the difference was
between the two.

A soldier executed orders without question, as did a
slave. A soldier never received information about the grand scale
of things, neither did a slave. A soldier often ended up with the
receiving end of shit. A slave could argue the same. A soldier was
an efficient killer, but so was a slave when stripped of his
morality. Both soldier and slave were a force to be reckoned with
when they had nothing to lose and found death a release of all pain
and regret. Soldier and slave were kin. As Naite’s slave, he did
what he was told. There were far worse things than death waiting
for him.

The old woman lost all the money she’d schemed from
Gabby during an excursion to the casino, a lure she could not
resist. She’d snickered on her way back to town. Her shoulders
slumped forward, dragging all her belongings in two gym bags. Her
thoughts permeated through the light breeze. She didn’t want to
return to the slum with her slut niece who deserved everything she
got. Well, no more. She would send that girl packing the moment she
returned and she’d find Gabby again. The freak with her freak
sight.

She huffed all the way toward the campgrounds until
she noticed a glint of light, and her destination changed. She
stomped deeper into the wooded area, where she came into the
vicinity of the Crossroads, a two-story shack of a place long
abandoned and forgotten, except for the kids who used it as a place
for sex and drugs. The old woman would’ve given anything to burn
it, especially with Sarah inside. A wicked grin fitted her
face.

He waited for the witch to approach him.

She recognized him instantly. “What do you want,”
she growled.

“I have a proposition for you,” he said softly, his
voice a melody above her evil stream of consciousness.

“And what is that?” she snapped, lifting a brow.

He would definitely have fun with this one. She was
evil to the core. He wondered if she had demon blood in her. “Why
don’t you come inside and find out.” He stood up and strolled
inside, knowing that she would follow. Influence was never hard
with the wicked.

Heather nailed planks on all the windows save one,
nailed all the doors shut save one, the exertion forcing her
arthritic limbs to tremble. She mashed her fingers twice and didn’t
even flinch. Sweat slid down her brow, her lips curled into a snarl
revealing crooked, yellow teeth. Her hands bled with oozing
blisters. She dropped the hammer and hacksaw on the floor with a
thump inside the final prepared room. She stepped back, admiring
her handiwork. This was going to be good, she thought.

She retreated into the shadows of the foyer closet
and waited. Her mind wrapped around the rewards promised. She felt
no pain, no sleep, and no hunger. Her body shriveled, her lips
cracked, oozing blood from her sliced flesh. She waited. Waited. An
hour. A day. She would wait for eternity if need be. She would
satisfy her thirst.

Then she heard them. Four distinct voices seeping
through the rotten wood. They laughed and sprayed senseless words
she could not understand. Then she heard
her
...Sarah, clear
and distinct moving into the small kitchenette. Heather slid her
hand to the shotgun, pulled her hatchet and secured the handle to
her belt, and inched out of the closet. Her bones stiff, she
gritted her teeth. The pain lessened as she continued to move, to
fulfill her purpose to receive the treasures promised.