Ember X (26 page)

“You know what?” I duck under his arm, but he tightens his grip on my hip and tugs me back to him, slamming me against the door. “I don’t even know why I came over here. It must have been a crazy impulse.”

“Because you wanted to see if I killed her,” he says, pulling me against him. He wets his lips with his tongue and starts to lean like he’s going to kiss me.

Shaking my head, I pry his fingers off me and this time he releases me. I storm across the street, but halt when he says, “That’s what you think. That I’m a killer, but you’re wrong and I can prove it.”

I glance over my shoulder. “I’m calling your bluff.”

He waves for me to follow him as he walks backward across the lawn. “Come with me and I’ll prove it to you.” He enters his house and leaves the front door wide open. Seconds later, a light turns on inside.

I make my way to the edge of the front path. “Does he really think I’m going to go in there?” I mutter to myself. Then again, it seems I can’t die, so what does it matter.

Like a shadow, he transpires in the doorway with the light of the house shining behind. “Are you coming in or are you going to just stand out there in the dark and stare at the house?”

I shake my head, stopping at the bottom of the front porch. “Whatever you want to show me, you can show me outside.”

He sighs and slinks back into the house. Minutes later, a blonde girl pokes her head out.

“Ember, would you please just get your creepy ass in here,” Mackenzie says with a trace of pleading in her tone. “Before someone figures out I’m here.”

I peer over my shoulder at the houses lining the street as I come to the mind-blowing conclusion that I’m probably losing my mind, like certain poets of the past. Or like a Grim Angel.

I jog up the stairs, past Mackenzie and through the entryway. Cameron shuts the door and we go into a living room that has deep red walls and a brick fireplace. The mantle is ornamented with plastic plants and photos. Above it is a mirror trimmed with a gold frame and the air smells like cinnamon and apples from the candles burning on the shelf in the corner.

“This isn’t how I pictured your house,” I remark, sitting down on a sitting chair. Cameron and Mackenzie sit down on the sofa across from me. Mackenzie wearing an oversized flannel shirt and a pair of boxers and I wonder if they’re Cameron’s clothes. And she has leather bands on her wrists and neck, like she’s suddenly decided to try a semi-gothic look.

“The cops think I killed you,” I tell her. “They brought me down to the station a couple of nights ago for questioning.”

“Wow, Killer Girl speaks,” she says snidely. “You were so quiet at school I thought you were a mute.”

Cameron lays a hand on her bare knee. “Easy, remember she knows you’re here now, so play nice.”

She crosses her arms and huff exasperatedly, “Yeah, but only because you made me let her in. Personally, I don’t give a crap if she thinks you’re lying or not.” Cameron tilts his head at her and she recoils. “I’m sorry. And I’m sorry too, Ember. Look, it’s just that… Well, I was having problems at home. And things were just
really
bad and I was telling this to Cameron at the lake and he suggested I disappear for a while and take a break.”

“You know everyone is looking for you, right?” I press the severity. “There are flyers all over the town with your face posted on them. This is really messed up.”

“Messed up?” She laughs, and then tears start to fall from her eyes. “No, messed up is growing up in a house like I did.”

“A lot of people have bad home lives,” I say unsympathetically. “It doesn’t mean we run away.”

“Oh yeah, what’s so messed up in your life?” Tears stream down her sun-kissed cheeks as she scratches under the leather band on her neck. “Did your dad use you to close job deals with old perverted men? I just wanted to get the hell away from it for one moment, just breathe. Haven’t you ever wanted to just breathe?”

“Every single day of my existence,” I whisper.

Cameron catches my eye and raises his eyebrows accusingly.

“So you just hid her somewhere and then scattered feathers all over the shore and painted it up with an
X
and an hourglass?” I ask him, ignoring his accusing gaze.

Cameron’s eyebrows knit together as he drapes his arm behind Mackenzie. “I hid her, but I didn’t do the feathers and weird paint thing. Why would we do that?”

“To make her disappearance look like the rest of them,” I say.

“As good of an idea as that is, we didn’t do that,” he responds.

“But that’s what the detective said.” I fall back in the couch with my forehead creased. “Why would she do that?”

“To mess with your head probably, see if you would let something slip.” Mackenzie shrugs and rearranges the bands on her wrists. “It’s kind of their M.O.” When Cameron and I gape at her, she adds, “What? I watch a lot of
Law and Order
, okay?”

I tap my foot on the floor, bubbling with anxious energy. “They think I killed you… and they think I killed Laden.”

“No, they don’t. They just don’t have any other leads.” Cameron’s eyes travel down my body. “Although, if they saw you now, they’d probably lock you up.”

I wrap my arms around myself. “I had an accident.”

He points over his shoulder. “Is that why there was an ambulance at your house?”

I focus the interest back on Mackenzie. “What am I supposed to do? Just pretend I never saw anything and let them keep investigating me?”

“Would you?” she asks, hopeful, overlapping her hands in front of her, pleading. “That would be really great, at least, until I can figure out somewhere else to live.”

I rub my exhausted eyes. “I don’t mean to sound rude, but can’t you just tell someone what’s going on?”

She laughs, but it’s forced. “You don’t think I’ve tried? But my mom always sides with my dad, saying I’m doing it to draw attention to myself. And my dad is a big funder of the Hollows Grove Police Department.”

“Is he paying them off?” I ask, astonished, and she gives a subtle nod. I consider the dilemma for a moment, but there isn’t much to consider. “Fine, I’ll keep my mouth shut, but please try to figure something else out, before they actually arrest me.”

“Thank you, Ember,” she says gratefully and lowers her hands to her lap. “And I’m sorry, you know, for treating you so badly in school.” She gets up and wraps her arms around me.

My eyes widen as I prepare myself, but her death never announces itself.

She retreats for the doorway, telling Cameron, “I’m going to go lay down, Cam. I’m really tired.”

She disappears out the doorway and I turn to Cameron.

“So it still doesn’t explain how the cops found out where my car was,” I say.

“That’s a question I can’t answer for you.” He rests his arms on his legs and interlocks his fingers. “The only thing I can say is that there has to be someone else who knew where your car was.”

Asher. And perhaps the person who was tailgating me that night.

“Did someone save you?” he wonders with accusation in his eyes. “Or did you swim out of the car on your own?”

“I have excellent panic reaction skills.” I get to my feet. “I should get home. It’s late.”

He walks me to the door, but pushes it closed when I start to open it. “Can I show you something first, before you go?” His nice guy act is back, like when we first met and had that briefly decent moment in his Jeep.

Sighing, I go upstairs with him into his room. There’s a large bed in the middle of the room, a tall dresser in the corner, and a door that extends to a small patio with a camping chair on it. The walls are black and bare except for a white accent wall with lines and lines of poetry scribbled on it.

“Are they your words?” I ask, amazed, and he nods. I walk up to the wall and read the poem that centers them all. “
In separate fields of black feathers, the birds fly. Four wings, two hearts, but only one soul. They connect in the middle, but are separated by a thin line of ash. It’s what brings them together, yet rips their feathers apart. They can never truly be together as light and dark. Unless one makes the ultimate sacrifice, blows out their candle, and joins the other in the dark
.”

Cameron watches me with interest. “So what do you think it means?”

“They could never be together,” I say, running my fingers along the words. “Unless one died? But why? What makes the other one fly in the land of the dead?”

“That’s something you’ll have to figure out on your own.” He chips a flake of blood off my shirt. “You should know that a poet doesn’t like to explain the meaning behind his words.”

I bite at my fingernail. “Yeah, I understand that completely. But you should know that, as a poet, I have a desire to understand words.”

“You know,” he steps closer, “we never got to go to that poetry slam.”

“That wasn’t my fault,” I remind him, stepping back.

“You’re the one that ran away.” He places a hand on my wrist and tenderly traces it up to my shoulder. “I was trying to make you jealous.”

“Cameron,” I say with caution, looking at the wall. “You didn’t happen to see a black car with really tinted windows up at the lake, did you?”

His fingers discover my collarbone and he traces circles over my skin. “No, why? Did something happen with this car?”

A soundless sensation numbs my mind and I feel myself falling to him as his hand travels downward toward my chest. But Asher’s face enters my mind and I shake my head and sigh through his touch. “I should get going. “

His fingers drift down the front of my body as I turn to leave and he hitches the bottom of my shirt. “You can stay here, if you want. You can sleep in my bed.” He raises his hand innocently. “I promise not to touch you, unless you ask.”

“Is that the same thing you told Mackenzie?” I ask with an arc of my brow.

“Mackenzie and I are just friends.” He grins, intentionally grazing his knuckles across my stomach. “But I like that you care.”

I waver back and forth between him and the door.

“Come on, Ember,” he coaxes in that voice that’s hard to resist as he yanks on my shirt and pulls me closer.

I let him reel me to him, briefly wondering what it would be like for him to thrust inside me. Would it feel the same as with Asher? Or would he be different?

“Please stay with me.” He nearly begs.

I force willpower to my legs and back away for the door. “I’m sorry, Cameron, but I think you’re a little too much for me.”

“That’s what all the girls say,” he jokes, but there is a vast sea of pain in his eyes as he releases my shirt. “Hold on. I’ll walk you to the door.”

When I was thirteen, my mom locked me in the attic for an entire day because she believed I killed several of her house plants. It really wasn’t that big of a deal, only she didn’t let me have anything to drink or eat and there were no bathroom breaks permitted. I walked out of the situation without being too traumatized.

The only thing that bothered me was her belief that I killed the plants on purpose. At the time, it seemed ridiculous; the idea a person could dry out houseplants in less than five minutes. Now I wonder if perhaps I did do it and if my mom has always known there was something different about me.

I wake up on the couch, with my legs flopped over the back and my head hanging upside down. It’s late in the afternoon, the sky tinted a pale pink. Children are laughing outside and someone is throttling a motorcycle.

I lie motionless, with a splitting headache, trying to fall back asleep, not ready to face the day, or find out what Ian’s been doing in his studio all night. I heard someone sneak in late last night, but I didn’t care enough to go see who. There were muffled voices on the stairway and then footsteps headed into the attic.

Without changing position, I reach for the remote on the coffee table, but the front door swings open and someone comes whisking into the house.

Their high heels click against the floor. “What the hell happened?” Raven asks with her hands on her hips. “Why was there an ambulance here yesterday?”

She looks strange upside down, dressed up as an Angel with white-feather wings and a silvery-satin dress. Her pink hair is curled and wound with white ribbon to form a halo on the top of her head.

I sit up and rub my eyes. “Because my mom flipped out and tried to slit her wrists.” The words tumble out.

“Ember…” Her arms fall to her side. She doesn’t have a clue how to react to my honesty. “What can I do to help?”

I drag my ass off the sofa and her glitter-framed eyes widen at the blood all over my shirt. “You can let me go to sleep for a really, really long time,” I say. “That’s all I want to do is sleep.”

She gasps, pressing her hand to her heart. “Why the hell is there dried blood all over you?”

“Because my mom stabbed me with a pair of scissors,” I confess with a yawn.

She pries open the gap in my shirt where the scissors had violently entered. “Em, that’s not funny.”

“I’m not trying to be funny,” I tell her. “She stabbed me with the scissors and then I almost killed her by sucking the life out of her to heal myself.”