Brighter, a supernatural thriller (29 page)

Heather squinted at the words. This book was a little weird. She thought that it was a gift from someone, because it was a little too far on the Wicca side for her tastes. She thought it even had spells in it. Heather snickered. Spells. Then she thought about the fact monsters who killed people and took their appearance were chasing her, and she felt a little bad for snickering over spells. Maybe spells would work. She certainly wasn't going to rule anything out at this point.

Ramona was still laboring to explain the situation to Olivia. Heather had expected Olivia to react with laughter or outright disbelief, but Olivia seemed to be buying it thus far. That was weird.

"So," Olivia was saying, "what do you think the library is, then? How do you think it's connected to them?"

Ramona and Heather both shrugged. "We don't know," said Ramona. "But it obviously freaked them out, so it means something."

"I can't believe you're taking this so well," said Heather. "I thought you'd be calling the authorities to take us crazy people away."

Olivia shrugged. "I guess it just sounds pretty compelling to me. You guys are obviously in some kind of danger. So, you really have absolutely no idea how the library is linked to Blair and the others?"

"No," said Ramona.

"That's good," said Olivia.

"Why is it good?" asked Ramona.

"Oh," said Olivia, "I guess it's not. For you. Really."

"So who is it good for?" asked Heather.

"Uh..." Olivia looked embarrassed, as if she realized she'd just slipped up. "Oh, what the fuck. Like you aren't gonna figure it out anyway. It's good for us."

"Us?" said Heather.

Ramona sighed heavily. She exchanged a look with Heather.

"Yeah," said Olivia, "because we don't really want you to figure that out. That could be really dangerous for us."

Ramona shook her head. "I told you to be careful, Olivia, but you wouldn't listen. Damn it."

"They got you too," said Heather. She stood up. Ramona followed suit.

Olivia stood up. "Now you girls don't think you're going anywhere do you? Because you're just going to sit tight until the rest of them show up. I called them to tell them you were coming here." She crossed to her front door. "To get out, you'll have to go through me." She smiled brightly.

Chapter Eighteen

Ramona bit her lip. This sucked. It had been her idea to come to Olivia's house in the first place. Now they were stuck here, with Olivia, who was now one of the monsters. What the fuck were they going to do? This was such a mess. She and Heather were in danger. If she'd just never gone to the library that day and looked up that information on the internet, the monsters wouldn't even feel threatened. She wondered if Olivia would blind them with light like Mason had if they tried to rush her. She turned to Heather, who was glowering at Olivia.

"We are not sticking around here and waiting to die," said Heather. "How stupid do you think we are?"

"You have to stay," said Olivia. "If you leave, Blair is gonna bitch me out like crazy. That chick is a royal bitch. I was right about that. I mean, Olivia was right about that."

"Oh fuck if we care that Blair's gonna yell at you," fumed Heather. She shook her head and then ran full force at Olivia, raising the huge book she'd gotten from her car over her head. She slammed the book onto Olivia's head with such force that Ramona heard a resounding crack. And Olivia crumpled to the ground, unconscious.

"Nice," said Ramona.

"She pissed me off," said Heather. "Let's go."

Once more, the girls tore out of a house and into their cars. They backed out of the driveway and sped down the road. Ramona led the way, with Heather following. Damn it. Now where were they going to go? They were close to Elston, but Ramona didn't head back into town. Instead she turned onto a back road that she used to drive down for fry rides. The road was windy and had no yellow or white lines on it, but Ramona and Heather were both familiar enough with it that they could drive around the curves at fifty miles an hour. Ramona drove and thought.

Her cell phone rang. It was Mason. She picked up.

"Where are you?" he asked.

"I'm not telling you that," she said. "How do I know I can trust you?"

"Ramona, I just saved your life and put myself in danger. Trust me."

"Well, we were at Olivia's house—"

"No," Mason cut her off forcefully. "Don't go to Olivia's."

"Yeah, we figured that out. So we left there, and we're just driving around."

"God, I can't believe the two of you went back to Heather's house. What were you thinking? I thought you were going to leave town."

"I'm trying, for God's sake! But I have to get a job first. Jesus!"

"Listen, just go back to your apartment."

"Am I safe there? They know where I live."

"Lock the door," said Mason.

"Can they break it down? I mean, what was that thing you did with your hand? Can they all do stuff like that?"

"No, they can't. I can. Blair can. It's not important. Light won't break down your damned door anyway. Just go home."

"And then what?"

"And stay there until I come to see you."

"Well, where are you?"

"I'm at home. I took off right after you guys did. I think Blair's pretty pissed with me right now."

"Then why don't we just come to your house?"

"No, no, no. Don't come here. Blair's going to come here. She's going to be mad. You shouldn't be here. Just go back to your apartment, lock the door, don't go anywhere, and don't let anyone in but me."

"Mason, why are you helping me?"

"I'll explain. I'll explain everything."

"So explain."

"Not now."

"Why not?"

"I just... I just need to know that you're safe at home and then I can deal with whatever it was I just did." He paused. "God. What have you done to me?"

"Me? I didn't do anything. I'm grateful that you just saved my life, don't get me wrong, but I never asked you to do it. I didn't make you—"

"No," he said. "No, you didn't make me do anything. But I can't for the life of me understand why I care about you so much. I've never cared like this before. It's you...humans. You get stuck in my head; you infiltrated my mind. I think the way you do now. I'm weak."

Ramona didn't know what to say to that. "Uh..." she trailed off. "So I should go home?"

"Yes. Go home."

"Okay, that's what I'll do, then. Um, are you okay?"

"No," said Mason. "Not really. Maybe never again." He hung up.

Ramona dialed Heather and told her to head back to her apartment.

"I don't think we should do that," said Heather. "Mason is one of them. Maybe it's a trap."

"I don't think so. I think we can trust him," said Ramona.

"I don't."

"He said he was going to come over and he was going to explain everything," said Ramona. "He said they can't get through a locked door."

"He could be lying."

"He could be, but he did just save us."

"Yeah, but he killed Rick. He helped anyway."

"I know. But where else are we going to go?"

Heather didn't have any ideas. So they turned around and headed back to Elston. Once back at Ramona's apartment, they debated whether they could bring up Heather's stuff, but decided it was probably a bad idea. Mason had told Ramona they needed to get inside, get the door locked, and hunker down. But Heather insisted on bringing as many of her books as they could carry. They brought up the books and locked themselves in the apartment.

Ramona found she had a lot of restless energy, which she tried to distill by pacing in her apartment. Unfortunately, what with the air mattress on the floor, there wasn't a lot of space to pace in. Heather said Ramona's constant walking was making her nervous. She was sitting on Ramona's couch, looking through books and trying to tell Ramona about the things that she was finding out. Ramona tried to concentrate on what Heather was saying, but it was too hard.

Finally, unable to handle pacing anymore, Ramona decided to cook something. She clattered around the kitchen while Heather talked, but she was barely hearing anything Heather said. She paid attention to the thing Heather had read about body snatching and auxiliary power enough to ask what angelica was.

"It's an herb," Heather said. "In medieval times, people thought it was magical."

Great. They were going to fight off the monsters with magical herbs? Wonderful. At least it was appropriately named, considering this whole sordid business had started with Ramona seeing the ghost of Angelica.

"Well," Heather was saying, "the ritual really is simple enough. If we could just figure out where they were getting their power, we could do it."

"Listen," Ramona said as she chopped up carrots. She didn't even know what it was she was cooking, but it was going to contain carrots. "That book is talking about people needing a lot of power to do that. These things aren't even people. Maybe they don't need auxiliary power or whatever."

"Maybe not," said Heather, "but it's all we have to go on."

Ramona got out a skillet and dropped a pat of butter in it to melt.

"What are you making?" asked Heather.

Ramona considered, looking at the ingredients she'd amassed on the counter. "Stir fry," she said. "With rice noodles, because we don't have any rice."

"That sounds good," said Heather. "I should make a lot," said Ramona, "because Mason's coming over. Do you think he'll want to eat some?"

"Do they eat?" asked Heather. "Have we ever seen one of them eating?"

"Well..." said Ramona, "we've seen them drink alcohol."

"That's true," said Heather. "Do we have any soy sauce?"

They didn't. They had fish sauce, though. "It'll be like Thai stir fry," said Ramona.

"Ramona," said Heather.

"Yeah?"

"How did we get into this mess?"

"I don't know. I saw Angelica? I told you about it? I think it's my fault."

"No way," said Heather. "It's nobody's fault. But one thing's for sure. You and I are going to be friends until we are very old ladies. There is no way I am letting them kill us."

Ramona nodded, chopping up onions. "Hell, yeah."

* * *

As soon as he hung up the phone with Ramona, Mason heard a car pull up to his trailer. He went to the door, expecting to see Blair with a posse of people. He figured they'd be here to do something very unpleasant to him, probably physical violence. He might not be able to die, not really, but they could hurt him. They could put him in a lot of pain. But it was just Blair, by herself. He hadn't expected that.

And as he opened the door to her, he realized she was crying. Her eyes were red, her nose puffy. He opened his arms to her, and she went into them. They went inside, his screen door clattering closed behind them. He stood that way for quite a while, Blair sobbing into his chest, his arms wrapped tight around her. This was familiar. This was the way it had always been before. Him and Blair. Different bodies. Different names. But it had always been the two of them. Until...

He guessed it was normal for any couple to get bored with each other, especially when they'd been dating for thousands of years. But this experiment they'd tried, with the two of them apart for a while, well, it hadn't worked out the way either of them had really imagined it would. He hadn't expected that once he wasn't seeing Blair, she would become so petty and cruel. She hadn't imagined that he would become so...human. Hell. Something had changed. After so long, with everything staying the same, something had changed. Mason didn't know what it was. And part of him still felt guilty over the fact that he had betrayed Blair and all of his own kind. But the guilt wasn't enough to stop him from going down the path he'd gone down. So he pulled away from Blair. Slowly. Carefully. He stroked her cheek, wiped away the tears that were streaming down it. But he stepped back.

Blair sniffled. "When did you start hating me?" she asked, her voice still full of tears.

"I don't hate you," he said. Then he thought about it. Maybe he did hate her.

"You don't love me anymore."

That wasn't true. "In some ways, I'll always love you," he said.

"What ways?" she asked, her voice bitter.

Mason didn't know. He looked down at his feet. "Do you want to sit down?" he asked, gesturing to his couch.

They sat down. Blair seemed to compose herself a little. Mason handed her a box of tissues. She mopped up her face. "I got your shirt wet," she muttered. "I'm sorry."

God. Sometimes, she seemed so vulnerable. Maybe Blair had internalized more humanity than she thought she had. Maybe they were all a little tainted at this point. They'd been playing their parts so well for so long they didn't really know how to be anything other than human. "It's okay," said Mason. "My shirt will be fine."

She tried a smile.

"I don't like seeing you so upset," Mason said. That was true, at least. He wasn't sorry that he'd done what he'd done, and he wasn't sorry for what he was going to do, but he didn't like seeing Blair cry.

"Why did you do it?" asked Blair.

"I don't want anything to happen to her."

"God! What is it with her? Why do you care about her?"

"I don't know," said Mason. "I just do."

"She's human. She's not even one of us."

"Well, that was the deal, wasn't it? We were taking a break, and we weren't supposed to be with anyone else except for humans. You're the one who broke that promise when you had Owen recruited."

"You were obsessed with Ramona. What was I supposed to do?"

Mason shrugged. "It doesn't really matter."

"I guess it doesn't," said Blair. She took a deep breath. "I still love you, even if you don't love me."

She had a funny way of showing it, Mason thought, ordering him around like he was a lackey.

"And we used to make decisions together, but since you don't want to have anything to do with us anymore, that leaves me to decide what to do. And if it were anyone else, you know what we'd do to him. So, even though I care about you, I can't let my feelings get in the way of your punishment. Because I can't tolerate the kind of behavior you just exhibited."