The Stranger Inside (31 page)

As I listened, it was almost like I was there, like I was watching in a dream—a scene. There was Dad, in the living room. He was frantic. He wanted to rush to the hospital, reunite the evil Ethan-spirit dwelling in him back with Ethan’s body.

“I’ll get you out of here!” Dad yelled to Ethan.

But Ethan didn’t want to go back—his body was mangled in the hospital, hooked to machines. He grabbed an axe—the one he used to kill Sophie. “I’ll maim you old man,” Ethan said. “Just enough to get us to an ambulance. They’ll try to stop your bleeding, touch our blood—my blood—and I’ll grab someone else’s body. After that, I’m going after your daughter.”

Ethan hacked Dad’s leg with the axe, maniacally laughing at the pain—apparently not feeling it, though he was sharing Dad’s body. Ethan hacked again as Dad crawled to his doctor’s kit. With his own blood Dad wrote on the wall, “Jodi Go Hospital.” Then Dad plunged his doctor’s scalpel into his own heart.

No more Ethan. No more Dad.

The audio ended there, but now I knew. Knew everything. Dad didn’t kill Sophie, Ethan did—wielding Dad’s body. And Dad had bludgeoned his own heart to protect me. And he wanted me to go to the hospital. He wanted me to reunite Kenzie’s spirit with her body. Be free of her and Ethan forever.

When we all finally piled into Jeremy’s car, I felt shaky and sick, but hopeful for once too, knowing Dad’s plan. I leaned against the front passenger’s seat window, texting Sawyer as I didn’t feel up to talking.
All we have to do is go to New York, to the hospital where my dad worked—that’s where Kenzie’s body is.

“But I’m not going to go.” The words were in my head. But they weren’t mine. They were Kenzie’s. She was talking to me in my head, as though she could read my mind. “
We’re
not going to go. I like it here,” she said. “I’m going to stay.”

CHAPTER 34

Despite being totally freaked from the encounter at the cemetery, the guys were hungry. They were always hungry.

“How can you eat after that?” Jeremy groaned as he drove, heading home from the cemetery. “I feel like I’m going to puke.” He flicked me a look and his voice softened. “How are you doing, Jodi?”

His voice was full of concern, his eyes too. But it was his first words to say directly to me in days. So, it did abnormal things to my heart. “I’m okay. We can eat if they want.”

“You sure?”

I nodded.

So, Jeremy pulled into The Pancake House parking lot and we all filed out of his car and into the restaurant, cramming into a booth.

The waitress took our order as the guys talked over each other, amazed and spooked at what we had heard and seen. They rehashed the blood, the gore, talking as though it had been a movie, making theories as if they hadn’t quite got the plot.

Sawyer seemed to think everything was settled. “If you go to the hospital—to Kenzie’s body, she has to go back. That’s what your dad was saying.”

“Well, yeah, that’s what he thought,” I agreed, wishing it were that easy. If only! “But Hanna said Kenzie has to go willingly. How can I get her to go willingly?” My stomach shriveled. “She doesn’t want to go.”

With shaking hands, I glanced down at Hanna’s note, reading it again. She had left it on the windshield of Jeremy’s car. We found it when we were finally “undazed” enough to leave the cemetery.

The note said, “What I don’t understand is why Ethan’s spirit is still around. Your father stabbed his heart, ending his and Ethan’s life on earth. Yet, somehow, Ethan is still linked to earth. I think it has to do with Kenzie. But I don’t understand. The heart was severed. He should be gone.”

I bit my lip. If Hanna didn’t understand it, I sure didn’t. All I wanted to do was crawl under my covers and never come out. Ethan was a scary, crazy guy—a demon. And he had shadows after me. Shadows that could actually get me—make me
gone
.

I shuddered, feeling sick. But even as I worried about puking, my mind whirred trying to scheme up ways I could get Kenzie to willingly go to New York and into the hospital where her body was.

When the guys were almost done eating, Lindsey stumbled to our table, looking at Sawyer with desperation in her eyes. I swear, desperation. Why would she look at Sawyer like that? It made me feel alarmed, scared.

“I need a jump,” she said. “For my car. I was supposed to meet someone across the street. But he didn’t show and I … I just want to go home.”

I jerked my head up at her, obviously still slightly dazed. “You were going to meet at The Read Palm?”

Lindsey flicked me a withering look.

Jeremy bit back a grin. “I think she means the
other
side of the dry-cleaners.” He raised his eyebrows, his lips twitching. “The hotel.”

“Oh.” I slumped back in my seat, saying nothing else.

“You going to meet Brody?” Sawyer asked, maybe looking out for her since the other night Brody got sort of violent, thinking Lindsey was cheating on him. Also, she looked ready to cry.

But Lindsey rolled her eyes. “No, not Brody. But another loser. Look,” she went on quickly, “can you give my car a jump? Please?”

She was looking right at Sawyer—only Sawyer—like the rest of us weren’t even here. He gave me a sidelong look. “Sure,” he said hesitantly. “We’ll
all
give you a jump.”

While Sawyer was paying the bill, I went to throw water on my face—for the third time tonight, trying to wash away the scene from earlier today. Get it out of my head. But the memory—it would haunt me forever.

“I’ll meet you guys across the street,” I said, heading for the bathroom.

Only moments later, Lindsey came in, using the sink next to me to get the car grease off her hands.

“I don’t know what was up with Mrs. Daniels the other morning,” I said to her, just to, you know, make conversation, since she seemed so shook up.

But Lindsey flashed me a pained look, then totally changed the subject. I mean,
totally
changed it. “I think Sawyer’s hot,” she said bluntly, giving me an evil stare, like
I’m going after your guy, wench.

After she let those words sink in, she went on all haughty-like. “I don’t think you’re fair to him. I see the way you look at Jeremy—he tried telling me some lame story, how you two were working on a play that night at The Game Shop.” She rolled her eyes. “Whatever. You should let Sawyer go.”

She said this sort of challenging-like. But hey, I’d basically just seen my dad get whacked by a demon—watched him carve out his own heart. She was nothing.

 “You should mind your own business,” I said, turning to leave.

Only just then, Eve came out of the bathroom stall, looking smug. “Oh Lindsey, Lindsey, Lindsey,” she said. “You don’t know Jodi. She has to have every guy she lays her eyes on. It’s a sickness, like nymphomania. She has what I call skank-syndrome.”

Perfect. Drama in the bathroom. Way to top off a cemetery gore fest.

“Whatever.”

I left the bathroom, and The Pancake House. But then, so did Lindsey, as we were going to the same place—you know, across the street to the hotel. We stomped towards it in silence.

When we got around back to the parking lot, the guys already had Jeremy’s car juicing up Lindsey’s.

“Oh … got a message,” Lindsey said, and I could actually read her phone from where I stood. It said, “Meet me at Dover’s Ridge. 10:00. Alone.”

Lindsey frowned. “The message says come alone. But will you come with me?” She gazed up at Sawyer, pleadingly.

Sawyer looked slightly amused, but perplexed. “What do you need me for?”

“I just want you with me,” she said, then added, “I really do have information for you. Really. If you come, I’ll give it to you. I promise.”

Sawyer gave me another sidelong look, like,
what should I do?
And I shrugged, ‘cause I wasn’t going to tell him.

 “No I can’t,” he said. “We’re kind of busy. We have some weird stuff going on right now.”

It seemed like Lindsey was going to protest. I was pretty sure she was, but I couldn’t really concentrate. Not on her words, not on anything.

The world started spinning, tilting. I stumbled back, feeling woozy and dizzy, my sight turning black. I was losing it. Fast. I knew Kenzie was coming. I tried to hold, stay. Frantically, I snapped at my rubber bands. Snap, snap, snap. But she was coming.…

CHAPTER 35

I woke in Jeremy’s arms. He was staring at me, the morning sun from the window lighting up his sensual brown eyes. For a moment, I simply stared back, sleepily content. Warm and cozy. Feeling ahhhh.

For a moment.

Then awareness started to seep in. At least enough to realize we were in bed—my bed. I shot up, my heart going ballistic.

“Don’t worry.” Jeremy closed his eyes, leaning his head against the pillow. “We didn’t do anything.”

My heart was spazzing out of control. “Wh—why are you here?”

“You didn’t want to be alone—Kenzie didn’t. She was pretty upset last night.”

My stomach dropped. “Why? What happened?”

He looked at me intently a moment, his eyes troubled, then he looked away. “Nothing. No big deal.” But the nervous tremor in his voice had every nerve inside me standing on end. He slumped out of my bed, putting on his jacket. “I better go.”

He was acting pained. There was something he wasn’t telling me—something bad. It made my stomach knot.

“Jeremy?”

He turned back to me, watching me a moment. He bit his lip, giving me a sad smile. “I’ll see ya, Jodi.” Then he was gone, closing the door behind him.

Something was wrong. So wrong.

I jumped out of bed and haphazardly dressed, then jog-walked to Sawyer’s. Jeremy’s car was parked out front when I got there. He must have come directly from my house.

My stomach lurched. What was going on? I wiped my sweaty palms on my jeans, then entered Sawyer’s house without knocking. Jeremy and Sawyer were at the kitchen table in the midst of a tense conversation, talking in grim, hushed tones. When I came in they stopped abruptly, quickly straightening as though I’d caught them doing something—something they didn’t want me to know about.

My stomach twisted, my eyes darting from Jeremy to Sawyer.

Jeremy laid his head on the table, looking sick, but Riley flashed me a weak smile. “Hey Jodi.”

“Hey.” I tried to sound as though everything was “normal,” though I could see it wasn’t. Something horrible had happened. Something so horrible, they didn’t want to tell me. I swallowed. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing.” Sawyer eyed me with concern. “You okay?”

“I don’t know. Should I not be? What’s going on?”

Sawyer and Jeremy looked at each other.

“I’m going to go crash for a while,” Jeremy said, getting up. He put his warm hand on my shoulder as he passed. Just held it there. It would have been comforting under normal circumstances—Jeremy touching me in support. It would have filled me with warmth—but now it made me uneasy.

Still, despite my alarm, I should have let Jeremy go. I knew that. Since Thanksgiving he’d been distant. Watchful, but … from a distance. As though he had made a decision—apparently, not an easy one—but he had made it. He was letting me go. He’d chosen Kenzie.

I should have let him simply give me his hand of comfort and let him go. But I didn’t. I grabbed on to it, frightened. “What’s going on Jeremy?” My voice was shrill. “Just tell me, please.”

He stared at me a second, then back at Sawyer. “Jodi,” he paused. “I don’t even know. I’m not sure. I guess you should talk to … your boyfriend.”

I snatched my hand away.

Jeremy stared into my eyes, only for a second, then back at Sawyer. “I’m gonna …” He gestured toward the living room.

Feeling as though I’d been slugged in the stomach, I watched Jeremy leave the kitchen—leave me—then I fell into the nearest chair at the table. “Okay,” I held my head in my hands. “What’s going on?”

Sawyer bit his lip. “What do you remember about last night?”

“Last night?” I shook my head. “Nothing, I was Kenzie.”

“Yeah,” Sawyer bit his lip again. “Kenzie—she’s kind of out of control.”

I waited for him to go on—elaborate. Explain. Why didn’t he just spit it out?

When he stayed silent, I stared up at him, then noticed the deep, bloody gouges on his neck and gasped. “Sawyer!” I pulled his shirt collar down to get a better look. “What happened?”

He freed my hands of his shirt, looking weary. “Kenzie did it. Last night.”

That was a seriously deep wound. I felt sort of sick. “She scratched you? Why?”

Sawyer set his jaw. He shook his head. “I wouldn’t let her drink.”

I winced. I was the one that asked him to “baby sit” Kenzie, keep her out of trouble, away from Jeremy. “I’m sorry.”

“No, it’s okay.” He gave me a strained smile, changing the subject. “Do you want pancakes? I’ll make some pancakes.”

I shook my head, feeling sick. “So, that’s what was going on? What you and Jeremy were talking about? You and Kenzie got in a fight?”

“Yeah. Pretty much. Only … Kenzie fought with the whole band.” Sawyer rubbed his eyes, seeming worn out.

I bit my lip, close to tears. Kenzie was a menace. I already knew that. But it seemed Sawyer was getting fed up with her. The whole band was. Zack especially. I remembered what he said on Thanksgiving. He wanted her gone.

I leaned my head on the table, figuring that’s what the guys had been talking about this morning. “So, what are you going to do?”

“Get rid of Kenzie.”

He had the same goal as me—and now he sounded as determined as me.

“How?”

Sawyer ran his hands through his hair. “I’m not sure. But she has to go.”

The way he said that made me glance up at him. It was as though he and the band had made a decision. They didn’t want Kenzie around anymore.

Duh.

But … unfortunately, at the moment getting rid of Kenzie meant getting rid of me. We couldn’t be separated—yet.

“Can I use your computer?” I asked. I needed to look up the New York City hospital—do a little research. Actually get a plan. While I was at it, I decided to look up cemeteries and evil spirits too.