My pulse quickened as I looked at him across the dull light. The cool air felt thick against my skin, and as we picked up speed, the wind worked its way through my hair.
"I live to the south," I said when we reached the main road, and he turned the proper way. Josh's headlamps swung in behind us, and I settled myself in the seat, wishing Seth had offered me his coat. But he hadn't said a word or looked at me since I'd gotten in the car. Earlier, he'd been all sly confidence. Now it was… anticipation? And though I didn't know why, a slow feeling of alarm took root.
As if sensing it, Seth turned, driving the black road without looking. "Too late," he said softly, and I felt my face blank. "Easy. I told them it would be easy when you were young and stupid. Almost not worth the effort. Certainly not any enjoyment."
My mouth went dry. "Excuse me?"
Seth glanced at the road and back at me. The car started to go faster, and I gripped the door handle, pressing away from him. "Nothing personal, Madison. You're a name on a list. Or should I say, a soul to be culled. An important name, but a name nonetheless. They said it couldn't be done, and now, you'll be my admission to a higher court, you and your little life that will now not happen."
What the hell? "Josh," I said, turning to the lights going distant as Seth picked up speed. "He's following. My dad knows where I am."
Seth smiled, and I shivered at the moonlight glinting on his teeth. Everything else was lost in hazy moon shadow and the shriek of the wind. "Like that will make a difference?"
Oh my God. I was deep in it. My gut tightened. "Stop the car," I said forcefully, one hand on the door, the other holding my whipping hair out of my eyes. "Stop the car and let me out. You can't do this. People know where I am! Stop the car!"
"Stop the car?" he said, smirking. "I'll stop the car."
Seth shifted his leg, stomping on the brake and turning the wheel. I screamed, grabbing anything. The world spun. My breath left me in a shriek as the odd feeling of too much noise mixed with the cessation of jostling. We had left the road. Gravity pulled from the wrong way. Panic struck when I realized the car was flipping over.
Shit. I was in a convertible.
I ducked, hands clasped over the back of my neck, praying. A hard thump shook me and everything went black. My breath was crushed from me by the force of the hit. I think I was upside down. Then I was yanked another way. The sky brightened to gray, and I sucked in the air when the car flipped once more as it rolled down the embankment.
Again, the sky went black and the top of the car hit the ground. "No!" I shrieked, helpless, then groaned when the car slammed to a stop, upright. I was flung against the seat belt, agony stabbing through my back as I was thrown forward.
It was quiet. Breathing hurt. Oh God, I hurt all over, and I stared at the shattered windshield as I panted. The new edges of the window glinted dully in the moonlight, and I followed the broken line down the dash to find Seth gone. My insides hurt. I didn't see blood, but I think I broke something inside. I was alive?
"Madison!" came distant over my rasping breath. "Madison!"
It was Josh, and I forced my eyes up to the twin balls of light at the top of the embankment. A shadowy figure was sliding down. Josh.
I took a breath to call to him, groaning when someone took my head and turned me away.
"Seth?" I whispered. He looked untouched, standing outside the ruined car at my door in his costume of black pirate silk. The moon caught his eyes and pendant, giving them both a gray sheen.
"Still alive," he said flatly, and tears started to slip from me. I couldn't move, but everything was a massive ache so I didn't think I was paralyzed. Damn it, this was a sucky birthday. Dad was going to kill me.
"I hurt," I said, my voice small, then thought, What a stupid thing to say.
"I don't have time for this," Seth said, clearly bothered.
My eyes widened, but I didn't move when he pulled from the folds of his costume a short blade. I tried to cry out, but my breath left me when he pulled his arm back as if to strike me. Moonlight glinted on the blade, red with someone else's blood. Fantabulous. He's a psycho. I left the prom with a knife-wielding psycho. Can I pick 'em, or what?
"No!" I shrieked, managing to get my arms up, but the blade was a whisper of ice passing through me, leaving me unhurt. I stared at my middle, not believing I was uncut. My dress wasn't torn and blood wasn't flowing, but I knew that blade had gone through me. It had gone through me and the car both.
Not understanding, I gaped up at Seth, now standing with the blade at rest and watching me. "What…" I tried to say when I realized nothing hurt anymore. But my voice was utterly absent. He arched his eyebrows in a show of scorn. My expression left me when I felt the first brush of utter nothing, both new and familiar, like a memory long lost.
The terrifying absence of everything crept through me, stilling each thought it rolled over. Soft and muzzy, a blanket of nothing started at the edges of my world and moved inward, taking first the moon, then the night, then my body, and finally the car. Josh's cries were swallowed up in a low hush of a thrum, leaving only Seth's silver eyes.
And then Seth turned and walked away.
"Madison!" I heard faintly, followed by the briefest touch on my cheek. Then even that melted and there was nothing.
Chapter Two
The mist of nothing slipped slowly from me in a painful series of prickles and the sound of two people arguing. I felt sick, not from my entire back tingling so painfully I could hardly stand to breathe, but from the feeling of helpless fear that the hushed, back-and-forth voices pulled from my past. I could almost smell the moldy fluff of my stuffed rabbit as I had curled into a ball and listened to the two people who were my entire world frighten me beyond belief. That they had both told me it hadn't been my fault hadn't lessened my grief at all. Grief I had to hold inside until it became a part of me. Pain that adhered to my bones. To cry in my mother's arms would say I loved her more. To cry into my dad's shoulder would say I loved him best. It was a crappy way to grow up.
But this… this wasn't my parents arguing. It sounded like two kids.
I took a breath to find it came easier. The last of the haze started to fade with the tingles, and my lungs moved, aching as if someone were sitting on them. Realizing my eyes were shut, I opened them to find a blurry black just before my nose. There was a heavy, plasticky smell.
"She was sixteen when she got in that car. It's your fault," a young but masculine voice said hotly, oddly muffled. I was getting the distinct impression that the argument had been going on for some time, but I only remembered snatches of it amid uneasy thoughts of nothing.
"You are not going to put this on me," a girl said, her voice just as hushed and determined. "She was seventeen when he flipped her coin. This is your screwup, not mine. God save you, she was right in front of you! How could you miss it?"
"I missed it because she wasn't seventeen!" he shot back. "She was sixteen when he picked her up. How was I supposed to know he was after her? How come you weren't there? You slipped up big time."
The girl gasped in affront. I was cold. Taking a deeper breath, I felt a surge of strength. Fewer tingles, more aches. It was stuffy, my breath coming back warm to me. It wasn't dark; I was in something.
"You little piss-ant!" the girl snapped. "Don't tell me I slipped up. She died at seventeen. That's why I wasn't there. I was never notified."
"But I don't do sixteen," he said, his voice going nasty. "I thought he was flipping the boy."
I suddenly realized the black blur throwing back my breath was a sheet of plastic. My hands came up, and my nails pushed through it in a stab of fear. Almost panicking, I sat up.