I tried to make conversation just to fill some of the void. “I texted you a couple nights ago.”
“Really?” She sounded genuinely surprised. “I must not have gotten them. You know the reception at Hay Creek can be spotty, too.”
She overcompensated. I caught the fake enthusiasm in her voice. She’d never been good at pretending. And when she did, it was obvious. Like now. But to be sure, I had to test it.
“Dillan kissed me,” I said.
“Oh, that’s nice,” she replied without any excitement.
Penny ignoring a scoop? Impossible. I twisted around to face her and noticed the empty expression. It was like looking at a house with no one home. The girl sitting beside me looked like Penny and sounded like Penny, but I knew my best friend better than anybody. The girl driving hadn’t been Penny for God knew how long.
“We’re not supposed to be here,” I blurted out when she parked the car in front of Greenwood’s entrance. I hadn’t noticed we were heading for the cemetery until we were already there. I was too focused on Penny.
“There’s nothing to worry about,” she assured me in a gentle voice. “I have something to show you. Trust me.” She got out of the car and shrugged on a jacket.
My hand shook when I unbuckled the seatbelt. I stepped out of the car, fought the urge to run, and zipped up my own jacket. No matter what happened, I wouldn’t leave her, normal or not.
“Here, take my hand.” She reached out and just smiled at me. There was no warmth behind those lips. I took her hand and wanted to drag her out of there. “You’ll like what I have to show you.”
A light mist clung to the grass. Frogs croaked and crickets chirped. Sounds that should have reassured me, but they didn’t. The clammy touch of Penny’s hand sent chills up my arm and down my body. The sun had set and the light turned into a dark haze, causing everything around us to look gray. No breeze disturbed the pines and the tombstones looked uneven and unclean. The atmosphere felt like we’d walked into a distorted black and white picture.
“You scared?” she whispered.
I gripped her hand as if letting go meant losing her forever and asked back, “Aren’t you?”
“Scaredy cat. I’m here.”
“No, you’re not,” I said under my breath.
We passed the large, graying angel that marked Kyle’s parents’ grave. Acid rose up my throat from the anxiety twisting my stomach. The inside of my mouth tasted bitter. The nippy air around us seemed to whisper one word: Run. The voice in my head certainly said so.
Penny led me toward the mausoleum section.
No one really visited the older graves from the Civil War days. Everyone in town and the surrounding ranches and farms mostly came for the graves by the gate. The tombs belonged to the rich ranch owners from half a century ago or more. Today, all the mausoleums were musty, dusty, and locked up.
A lamp hung at the entrance of one crypt near the edge of the invisible divide between the hundred-year-old graves at the back and the younger plots by the entrance—a yellow beacon in the creeping darkness. It illuminated a large concrete box with lion statues on each side and a heavy copper door tarnished green with age. The crypt stood like an open-jawed beast ready to swallow anyone who crossed its path.
The copper door creaked, and as Penny pulled me nearer, a thin figure stepped out. The need to back away overwhelmed me. I tugged against her hand, but she kept moving forward, like something was calling to her.
I recognized the shaggy hair of the thin figure. The lamplight made the rich, wood brown seem sickly. No more glasses, opening up a face that had smiled at me when I’d come into the store that afternoon. The claws of fear clamped down on my lungs. I suddenly couldn’t breathe. A part of me denied immediately what I was seeing. But another part of me erased my initial surprise. Recognition punched me in the gut so hard that I almost doubled over.
“Hello, Selena,” the man said.
All the points added up in my head. The unease I felt at the store. The attack in the storeroom. If Kyle hadn’t picked me up for Greenwood or if Dillan hadn’t been waiting for me, he would have taken me already. I should have listened to the voice in my head when it told me I’d regret working at the bookstore. Quickly, I realized every time I didn’t listen to the voice, I got into a shitload of trouble. Like right now.
“Selena, you remember Ormand.” Penny’s voice didn’t sound like her own.
I glanced at her blank face, and then at Ormand’s weirdly cheerful expression. “It’s you. You’re controlling her,” I said. “Why couldn’t you just grab me at the bookstore earlier? Why use Penny to do your dirty work?” With each question, I got angrier and angrier.
Ormand’s thin frame, practically skeletal in the lamplight, bowed. “And what fun would that be?” he hissed. His flat, beady eyes stared at me from inside hollow sockets.
“I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that it was you all along,” I challenged, holding on to Penny like an anchor, masking my fear with fake courage as best I could.
His tsk sounded like ball-bearings colliding. “It pissed me off at first. Being sent here, to this god-awful place, to watch over you. Me, a Maestro, puppeteer of the living and the dead, sent to babysit. So imagine my surprise when this pretty puppet—” he pointed at Penny, “—told me you were a Seer. Everything started to make sense. So I decided to have some fun. Did you like what I did to that boyfriend of yours?”
My blood boiled at the mention of Bowen. “You sick son of a bitch! Who sent you?”
“It doesn’t matter,” he boomed like a thunderclap. The ground vibrated beneath our feet. “I’ve changed my mind. I’m keeping you all for myself. So come, let’s leave this boring place. I’ve had my fun.” He hooked his boney fingers at me.
I felt the power behind his last phrase. The double timbre of his voice drew me in. A haze slowly overrode my ability to think. My brain stopped working properly. Every step brought me closer to the edge of something I knew I needed to fight against.
Ormand reached out for me. A winner’s smile contorted his face into a perverted imitation of the kindness he once showed me. His illusion of being alive vanished. He resembled a corpse then, pale and cold, calm and flat. His flesh smelled like sour tomatoes. I wanted to gag, but my mouth wouldn’t move. My feet kept bringing me closer and closer.
When I stood just beyond his greedy grasp, something yanked me back by the scruff of my jacket. With a quick flick, I tumbled onto a rug of soft fur. Sebastian bounded away, taking me with him. Ormand hissed like a thousand disturbed rattlesnakes. I looked over my shoulder. He pulled Penny to him using an unseen force and put a hand with sharp nails against her neck. Thin trails of blood flowed to her jacket’s collar.
“If you want her back alive, give yourself to me!” he yelled after me.
Chapter Forty-One
Dillan
No Longer the One
The next time Dillan opened his eyes, he sat in that dark room again.
“Oh, shit,” he said and it echoed. When had he fallen asleep?
He struggled to get out of the chair, but like the last time, an invisible force kept him pinned down. The last thing he needed was to stab himself just to wake up. He was too far from Rainer for healing. Gritting his teeth, he pulled up as hard as he could. The band of panic squeezing his lungs didn’t help. He tried again. A slight budge happened on his third attempt, but the force still pulled him back down. The chair didn’t even wobble.
You’ll only hurt yourself more if you keep struggling.
He flicked his gaze to every corner of the darkness, searching for the source of the singsong voice. He didn’t care that he breathed hard and sweat soaked his shirt from the effort to get away. Now wasn’t the time to be stuck in a dream. So he braced himself again for another pull up. A pulse in his temple ticked and the muscles on his neck strained. He felt the same budge, but when he slumped back, it was harder this time. Apparently, the more force he put into gaining freedom the more whatever was holding him down rebelled.