Mind Games: An Urban Fantasy Novel (The Lillim Callina Chronicles Book 6) (15 page)

The world snapped back into focus as I watched the cars roar down the road past me. Had I really abandoned them? No, the girl had called for help, but what if she wasn’t real? What if she was imaginary? What if no one had come to help them because I’d imagined the whole thing? I looked down at myself, still covered in blood and scratches. What if they were still hurt and no one even knew about it?

A scream tore from my lips as I took off running toward where I thought they might be, but I’d scarcely made it down the block when a car skidded to a halt next to me on the road in a shriek of squealing tires. The smell of burned rubber filled my nostrils as I stared at it, trying to remember where I’d seen it before.

“Lillim?” Charlie called. His voice was at a fever pitch as he leapt out of his still running BMW. “Are you okay?”

“Yes, but my parents—”

“Are worried sick about you.” He grasped my hands in his own and pulled me toward his car. “I’ve been helping them look for you. Let me take you to them.”

Tears filled my eyes as I let him push me into his car. My parents were okay. Thank God. I swallowed and looked at my hands then back at the bridge. The little girl wasn’t there anymore, but her words still echoed in my head.

“You just need to kill yourself.”

“No,” I said, and Charlie glanced at me as he fastened his seat belt.

“No, what?” he asked, pulling out his cell phone and punching some buttons.

“No, nothing,” I replied as he put the phone to his ear.

“I found her,” he told the phone. “I’m going to bring her now.” There was more noise from the phone, and he nodded like they could see him through it. He glanced at me and smiled weakly. “Your mom wants to talk to you.”

“Okay,” I said, taking the phone from him and putting it to my ear. “Mom?”

“Lillim, I’m so glad you’re okay! We were worried sick about you.” My mom’s voice was filled with relief as I cradled the phone to my ear and allowed the icy fear that had gripped my heart to slowly recede. She was okay. Thank God. “Are you okay?”

“I’m okay, I just got confused,” I said, not sure whether I wanted to tell her about the little girl or not. Part of me wanted to spill it to her, to let her comfort me, but something told me to keep it to myself. I wasn’t sure whether that was the smart or dumb part of me.

“Thank God,” she breathed into the phone. “Where have you been?”

“I got confused after the car accident. I tried to get help. Are you okay?” I asked, hoping she was.

“Lillim, what are you talking about?” her voice filled with confusion. “There was no car accident. You just walked outside after dinner and disappeared.”

Could that really be possible? Could I really have imagined the whole thing, especially given all the medication I’d been on? It seemed unlikely, but how could I argue with her?

Chapter 18

“How did you find me?” I asked Charlie as we pulled onto the street where I lived. I still hadn’t quite come to grips with the non-car accident. The idea that I’d just wandered off and imagined the whole thing seemed so implausible I could barely wrap my mind around it.

“Chastity gave me a call.” He shrugged. “I thought you might have gone looking for Thes so I asked her to let me know if you turned up. Turns out I was right.” He said the words like it was the first place anyone would look for me, but that seemed insane. Why would I have gone looking for Thes?

He pulled up in front of my house and shut the car off before turning in his seat and gripping both of my hands. He felt so warm and comforting I could scarcely think past the touch of his skin as he pulled me close to his body and hugged me tight. “What happened to him isn’t your fault, Lillim. It was his choice.”

“I don’t…” I shook my head and succeeded only in burying my face into his chest. He smelled like lemon candy. “I don’t remember what happened.”

“Thes is dead,” he said, pulling away and staring into my eyes. “He jumped off that bridge.” He swallowed hard. “The one you were standing at. It’s why I went there after Chastity called me.” He squeezed my hands tighter. “You weren’t thinking of jumping, were you? Of chasing after, Thes?”

“No,” I whispered, but it sounded like a lie even to me. What he said shook me. Thes had died by jumping off that bridge? Was that why the girl had told me to jump? To follow after him? No, that was crazy… unless she wasn’t real. What if she was all made up and trying to get me to kill myself because I felt guilty? Only I didn’t feel guilty, not really. It wasn’t because I was a bad person or anything like that. It was more that I didn’t remember Thes very much at all.

“I don’t remember Thes very well.” I swallowed and leaned back against the door, resting the back of my head against the cool glass. “I feel like I should, but I don’t.”

Charlie nodded once. “Thes was the captain of our high school football team. We were all at one of his parties when the two of you went off together. We found you both in the morning. You were covered in his blood, and he was lying at the bottom of that ravine, head split open from the fall. His sister, Chastity, thought you murdered him, but the police investigation ruled it a suicide.” Charlie took a deep breath. “You don’t remember, huh?”

I shook my head even as tears welled around my eyes. I felt like I could almost remember it, could imagine it happening. The only problem was, I knew it wasn’t a real memory. My mind was just trying to fill in the blanks with Charlie’s story, trying to make it seem like it happened.

“I’m not surprised.” He turned his eyes toward the ceiling of his car and stared at the darkened lights above. “That was about the time you, um…”

“Went crazy?” I offered, my voice barely a squeak.

“Yeah…” he said, swinging his eyes to me and squeezing my hand. “Let’s get you inside.” His face broke into a grin as he reached for his door. “You seem like you could use a shower.” He waved one hand in front of his nose. “And not just because you’re covered in mud.”

I watched him get out but made no move to follow along. I looked down at my arms and realized I wasn’t covered in blood anymore. Had that all been in my head? Had I really imagined the entire car accident? But that seemed crazy. Unless, I was crazy.

Charlie opened my door, reached across my body, and unbuckled me. He stood back, offering me his arm like some sort of prince in a movie. “May I have this dance?” he asked jokingly even though his eyes were serious beyond measure.

“Okay,” I mumbled, reaching out and taking his arm. He led me across the lawn, not fast or slow, but at just the right pace. Not that it mattered. My mom swung open the door while we were still ten feet away. The look in her face made me stop in my tracks, one foot partially raised in the air.

I’d seen people worried before, but not like this. The look on her face froze me to my core and filled my veins with ice water. As she stared at me, eyes bursting with relief, I suddenly felt like the worst person alive for putting her through what I had. She crossed the distance between us in a second, wrapping her arms around me, despite me being covered in mud and grime.

“I was
so
worried!” she cried into my shoulder, squeezing me so tightly I had to, you know, breathe. After what felt like an eternity, she loosened her hold enough to allow me to take a couple shallow breaths. “Thank you for finding my baby, Charlie!”

“Don’t mention it, Mrs. Callina,” he said, grinning at her like an idiot. “I had a feeling she might be at the old bridge.”

“The one,” was all she got out before Charlie nodded. She grabbed me by the shoulders and shook me. Not hard but enough to get my attention. “Were you thinking of jumping?”

“No,” I said, wishing I could tell her about the ketchup-haired girl and what she’d told me. I wanted to tell my mom about how I’d said no. I’d said no even though the girl had insisted. Only I didn’t dare because I’d just gotten out of the mental hospital, and while I was sure I was going back, such an admission would likely send me hurtling back there even faster. “I just spoke with Chastity, but she didn’t tell me anything.”

My mother stared at me for long enough to have counted the time in eons. Then she swept me into her arms and squeezed me tightly. “Please don’t do anything like that again, Lillim. I can’t lose you forever. I just can’t. You just came back to me.”

Embarrassment welled up inside me as I stood there, covered in muck and getting hugged by my mother in front of Charlie. “I’d like to go inside now,” I whispered, my cheeks flushing hot enough to fry an egg. Intellectually, I knew I shouldn’t be embarrassed about getting hugged by my mom, but I was anyway. The other stuff, like being horribly smelly and dirty, was just the cherry on top.

My mom nodded, releasing me and gesturing for me to walk in front of her. “Thanks for everything, Charlie,” she told him, throwing a strange glance at him. “If there’s anything I can do to thank you, please don’t hesitate to ask. You’ve been such a help with everything.” The words seemed normal, but something about the way she said them struck me as odd.

I was about to ask her about it when my mother shoved me through the doorway and closed the door, locking it. She spun back around before I could move and stared at me, her brown eyes enraged.

“Go get cleaned up,” she said, voice hard enough to shatter glass.

“What’s wrong?” I asked even though I knew better than to speak to her when she had that gleam in her eye. Still, there was a huge chasm between knowing and doing.

“Really? What do you think is wrong, Lillim? Every time you are by yourself, you wander off and do crazy things.” She gestured at me. “You’re covered in mud. What’d you do, spend the night in a sewer talking to ghosts?”

“I didn’t mean to…” I trailed off and stared at my mud-covered shoes like they were the most interesting things in the world.

“That’s the problem exactly. You never mean to do anything and yet, somehow, you keep doing things.” She huffed out an annoyed breath and gripped my shoulder. “I don’t feel like you’re trying hard enough to get better. You won’t get better unless you want to get better. You do want to get better?”

I nodded meekly and stared at my shoes, wishing I could say something to defend myself, but I couldn’t. She was right after all. I’d spent the last however long with one foot in this world and the other in the world of the Dioscuri. Sooner or later, one had to win out. The only problem, I didn’t want the wrong one to win. I couldn’t let the wrong one win. Still, in this moment, I was almost willing to believe this world was the real one. If it was, my mom was alive, even if she was pissed at me for running away.

“Go take a shower and get changed. Your father will be back soon. He’s driving back from across town after looking for you for half the night.” My mother spun on her heel and strode toward the kitchen, each step jerky and jagged with barely restrained rage. “I’ll make you a snack while you wash off. I don’t know if you’re hungry, but you need to take your pills. You need to do that with food.” She left the, “so you’re going to eat if I have to shove it down your damned throat,” part of her statement unsaid.

I nodded even though she wasn’t looking at me and trudged toward my room. I grabbed a pair of blue pajamas with sparkly ponies on them out of the closet and made my way into the bathroom. I put the clothing on the seat of the toilet before turning and locking the door. I turned the water on, not really paying much attention to the temperature as I stripped off my mud-covered clothing and tossed it in a pile in the corner.

My skin was still covered in gooseflesh despite the steam rising from the shower stall, and as I was reaching out to test the water, I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror above the sink. I looked freaking horrible. My hair was all stringy and clumped together with twigs and mud. My eyes were sunken deep into my skull, and I had grime smeared all over my face. My rail thin arms and legs stuck out of my body, all gangly and shrunken. Where were all the muscles I’d had? Were they atrophied from spending so much time in the hospital? I swallowed. Maybe I’d never been muscular at all. Maybe I was always this thin and emaciated. Maybe my body was all in my head?

No, that was impossible. If I’d made up the way I looked, I’d have traded some of those muscles to enhance my chest. The thought struck me as funny and giggles poured from my lips, crackling through the air like flashes of lightning.

I sank to the ground and sat there, arms wrapped around my legs as I stared up at 3D pictures of seagulls made from old knickknacks found on the beach. The pictures were attached to the seafoam green wall in front of me. I wasn’t sure why my mom had liked them so much, but I figured it had to do with the bathroom’s beach theme. I gazed at the birds in the picture for a moment longer, wishing I were a bird that could just fly away. Life would be so much easier then.

Still, I wasn’t a bird despite how appealing the idea seemed in the here and now. I slowly hauled myself to my feet and climbed into the shower, somewhat surprised the temperature was very nearly at Goldilocks. Not too hot and not too cold. It was weird because I’d just turned the knobs at random, but maybe I’d done it so many times muscle memory had taken over?

The shower pounded at my flesh, but even as my skin turned pink from the deluge, a chill I couldn’t quite explain made me shiver. I tried to ignore my chattering teeth and ducked my head under the spray. I ran my fingers through my hair, trying to brush away the sticks and leaves as the brown water around my feet swirled around the drain.

It took longer than I’d expected to get clean, but when I finally emerged from the blisteringly hot water that somehow failed to warm me up, my skin was raw and redder than a boiled lobster. I leaned against the sink, my hands gripping the cool porcelain and stared at my fog-masked self. I reached out, wiping away the steam so I could make sure I didn’t have any more birds’ nests hidden in my hair and my breath caught in my throat.

The lavender-haired girl in the mirror stared back at me. I blinked, rubbing my eyes, but the color remained. I reached up, touching it and was surprised to find it still there, the soft delicate strands wrapped around my fingers. I stared at my hair in disbelief.