Mind Games: An Urban Fantasy Novel (The Lillim Callina Chronicles Book 6) (5 page)

Still, something about the scene reminded me of how Connor had swooped in and picked me up on my first day. This sort of felt like someone was just copying the event, but that was crazy right? But this scene felt so unreal.

I stopped in my tracks and craned my head back toward the campus, looking from face to face, but as I did so, I realized I couldn’t quite recognize anyone which was no surprise really. I took a hesitant step closer and looked at the nearest couple. One was a dark-skinned boy about six feet tall with close cropped hair wearing a white t-shirt. He seemed vaguely familiar, although I was pretty sure I hadn’t seen him before. The petite Asian girl sitting next to him also seemed familiar, and as I reached out trying to place her face, a lump settled in my throat. Was she the girl from the cyclops attack? The one Connor had taken to see the nurse? No, she couldn’t be, could she?

“Lillim, we need to get to class,” Charlie said beside me, stepping closer so his body was nearly pressed against mine. It was a little disconcerting to find him so close, but as I tried to step away and create space, his arm snaked around my waist.

“Um, I don’t think we’re
this
close,” I murmured, but he didn’t seem to hear me as he looked past me toward the couple and shook his head.

“You definitely don’t want to get involved with those two. Nothing but drama.” His voice was strangely hard and angry below the surface. It was weird because he seemed angry with them although I wasn’t sure why.

“Is that so?” I asked, trying to squirm out of his grip, but try as I might, I couldn’t get my body to work right. That didn’t make sense. Why did it seem like I could never quite make sense of things when Charlie was around?

“Yeah,” he replied, pulling us through the painted orange steel doors and into the main building. “But don’t worry, I’ll help you navigate things.”

“My hero,” I muttered, rolling my eyes.

“Hey, I’m all about truth, justice, and like six other American values,” he said, poking himself in the chest with his thumb. The joke struck me as odd, reminding me of something Connor had said in that fictional high school experience, only the memory of that felt more real than this.

I looked around at the poster covered walls but couldn’t clearly focus on any of them. I reached up with my free hand and rubbed my eyes as Charlie pulled me along. When I opened them again, the posters snapped into focus, all colorful paint on butcher’s paper declaring this event or that event.

Charlie followed my gaze and smirked. “You know, I don’t have a date,” he replied, gesturing at the poster for the Sadie Hawkins dance. Only I had no idea what that was. “I’d be delighted.”

“Delighted for what?” I asked, turning to look at him.

“To go with you to the dance tomorrow.” He smiled wide enough to actually cause a shiver to run down my spine and not a good way. It was too predatory, too eager. For him to want me that much was wrong, least of which was because we barely knew each other,
and
real or not, I’d just been released from a mental hospital. I was nowhere even close to being good dating material.

“What the hell are you talking about?” I squeaked, wishing I could pull myself out of his arms, but somehow he’d cinched tighter around me like a Chinese finger trap.

“The Sadie Hawkins dance tomorrow. You want to go right?” he asked in that way that wasn’t really a question which was unfortunate because I didn’t want to go. I mean, I was cute and all, but wanting to bring a supposedly crazy person as your date was, well, insane. It made exactly zero sense, given everything I knew about high school. No, it was more likely I’d wind up being doused in pig’s blood. Then again, if that happened, I might regain my magic. Still, something about Charlie sort of creeped me out although I didn’t know why.

I opened my mouth to tell him that but no sound came out. My eyes went wide with fright as I tried to reach up to touch my face.

“Lillim, what’s the answer to the question on the board?” my teacher asked, gesturing at some kind of nonsensical math equation on his whiteboard with his laser pointer.

I blinked. “What?” I looked around in disbelief. I would swear to everything that was holy I’d just been in the hallway talking to Charlie. Now I was in class? How? Where had the time gone? I tried to think back, to remember what had happened.

“Anytime you’re ready to join us, Miss Callina,” the teacher huffed. He had bright red hair that was parted down the side and a white dress shirt that was untucked from his jeans. He looked vaguely like professor Matthers from Calculus in that other reality but at the same time not. Like a cheap carbon copy where the details didn’t matter
that
much.

“Um, sorry, could you repeat the question?” I asked, trying to read the words on the board and failing. It just looked like a bunch of strange squiggles. I rubbed my eyes.

“If a train leaves Tulare at seventy miles per hour and another train leaves Osaka at 42.3 kilometers per second, at what point will they both reach Shanghai?” he asked, tapping one dress shoe on the white tile floor in annoyance.

“Um, never? Those three places are separated by huge bodies of water,” I murmured but as soon as I said the words, the teacher huffed in annoyance.

“No, Lillim.” He shook his head. “I honestly don’t see how you’re going to pass if you don’t try harder. I’m not just going to give you some kind of special pass.” He left the “for being insane” part of his statement unsaid, but it still hung in the air between us for a moment.

He turned and pointed at a blond boy with ice blue eyes. “Ian, what’s the answer?”

“Forty two,” Ian said with a smirk. “That’s the answer to everything.”

“Indeed,” the professor replied with a shake of his head. “I’m glad someone was paying attention.”

Chapter 6

The entire day passed in an incomprehensible blur until I was standing in front of the school with my head spinning like a top. I couldn’t quite explain it, but it sort of felt like I’d pop into a scene, but as soon as I gained even a modicum of comprehension about where it was, I’d drop into a new one. Then I’d scramble to orient myself to the strange reality befalling me. Over and over. All day long.

There’d been a point when I’d tried to swallow a handful of pills to stop it, but that only seemed to make things worse. I glanced at the garbage can to my left and gripped the pill bottle I’d been popping capsules from like a PEZ dispenser. With one unceremonious flick of the wrist, I tossed the remaining ones into the trash. It wasn’t like they were working anyway, and paranoid or not, I was starting to think they made things worse. Then again, that’s what a crazy person would think.

“Goddammit!” I growled to myself as I padded forward onto the green lawn in front of the school and looked up at the sunlight filtering through the canopy of trees high overhead. “I feel like everything I do is a catch 22.”

“Yeah, I felt that way too after I read the book the first time,” Charlie said in his insufferably sweet voice. I shivered, summoning every ounce of will inside me to turn and stare at him.

Sure enough, he had Joseph Heller’s classic war novel tucked under his arm. The letters stared at me as he thrust it into his green book bag and smiled, showing way too many teeth for it to be truly healthy. I hadn’t remembered learning about the book, but the moment I saw it, a flash of memory flitted through my mind at breakneck speed.

I slowly opened my own backpack and stared at the book tucked inside, well-ruffled and with little neon sticky notes jutting from it like a brightly-colored hedgehog. The thought stuck in my mind. I’d had a hedgehog in that other life. He’d been killed by the Blue Prince who had taken over my boyfriend Caleb as a host. Only Caleb was a pyromaniac locked away at Mercer & Mercer more often than not.

“So, you ready to go to the game?” Charlie asked, still smiling in a way that made me want to see if I could break his teeth with my fist. I knew I wouldn’t actually do that. Probably. Then again, I wasn’t sure what it was about him that made me feel so damned hostile. If anything, he’d been nothing but nice to me.

“What game?” I asked cautiously. It went without saying I had no idea what he was talking about.

“The baseball game,” he said, raising his eyebrow at me. “Remember, we called your mom at lunch and she said you could go?”

“No,” I almost said, but instead, I smiled sweetly at him because I didn’t want to seem like a crazy person even though everything felt insane. How could I not remember that? And worse, why would I agree? I couldn’t even remember ever having seen a baseball game, let alone wanting to watch one.

“Yeah, I remember,” I said instead.

Charlie let out a sigh of relief as he came too close to me and wrapped himself around me. “I’m glad,” he said and began dragging me forward toward the direction of the baseball diamond, which was good because I had no idea where it was. Then again, I didn’t really want to go there with or without him. So there was that.

“Who are we playing?” I asked just to make conversation. This could be fun I guess.

“The Sparkle Bees,” Charlie replied, glancing at me. “Don’t worry. They may sound tough, but they’re the worst team in the league so we have a real shot at beating them.”

I resisted the urge to laugh but failed. “The Sparkle Bees sound tough?”

“Yeah, you wouldn’t believe the trouble the school went to just to find a name everyone was happy with.” Charlie smirked at me and something inside my chest eased just a touch. Maybe this wasn’t so bad. Maybe I was just over stressing. Maybe. “Every time they came up with a mascot, some student rights group would protest.” He shivered at the memory.

“What’s our mascot called?” I asked with a grin. “The Bubble Puppies?”

Charlie said something I didn’t quite catch even though I watched his lips move. I blinked. “What?”

“I said, would you like something to drink?” he replied, gesturing at the little concession stand off to the left of the bleachers.

I barely resisted the urge to scream as I followed his finger toward a snack bar and realized I’d somehow lost track of time again. This whole losing time thing was starting to piss me off. I glanced at the scoreboard and fumed. It was halftime, and while I was pretty sure baseball didn’t have a halftime, I wasn’t confident enough to actually ask about it. For all I knew, there was some kind of break at the seventh inning.

“Okay,” I replied. “That would be nice.” He nodded as I dropped my gaze to my hands clasped in my lap. I wiggled my fingers nervously as he got up and made his way down the stairs and toward the snack bar.

“Psst,” a voice behind me said. It was so familiar sounding, goosebumps rose on my flesh. It was funny because I felt like I ought to know the voice, but the spot in my brain where I would have stored the information about it was a blank, empty void.

I slowly turned my head and met the gaze of a man with pale white skin and a shaved head sitting two rows behind me. He was wearing a red dress shirt with a fat, loosened black tie dangling around his throat which seemed odd given our current location. He peered at me over the rim of his newspaper.

“We don’t have a lot of time,” he said, with a quick furtive glance toward the snack bar. “But you’re not crazy, Lillim. You’re trapped.”

“What are you talking about,” but as I said the words, I felt a hand on my shoulder and without thinking, I turned toward it.

“I got your drink,” Charlie said, standing there with a ginormous lemonade in his hand like he had materialized behind me.

“Thanks,” I replied, reaching out to take it as I tossed one last glance over my shoulder. The guy in the red shirt was gone. Damn. I
was
going crazy. I started to move, to get up and go toward the spot where he’d been sitting so I could investigate further. Maybe his chair would be warm with residual body heat or something to prove he was actually there. Besides, it sort of seemed like he had told me something that could unlock everything. If that was true, I had to try, right?

“Woo!” someone screamed at the top of his lungs, the sound exploding from the speakers above my head and shattering my concentration in an instant.

I stared down at the spot, confusion filling me. I was halfway onto my feet, but why? What had I been trying to do?

“Is everything okay?” Charlie asked, and as I turned to assure him it was, I realized we were standing on the porch of my house.

“Yeah,” I said, shaking my head in disbelief. “I just feel out of it. I think I need to go to bed.”

“Sorry,” Charlie said, wrapping me in his arms and pulling me into a hug. It was strangely comforting although I didn’t know why since I didn’t actually like him touching me. I wasn’t sure why he thought we were so close. We must have had one hell of a dinner.

“S’okay. It was a long day,” I replied, pulling myself away and backing toward my door.

“Well, I’ll see you tomorrow,” Charlie said, smiling at me with his same snakelike grin, his incisors glinting in the light of my porch.

“Yeah, okay,” I said, my heart pounding inexplicably as the urge to get away from him filled me. I reached back, gripping the knob with my hand and turning it. The door behind me opened, and I flung myself inside, slamming it between us and leaving him standing there, still smiling, on the front step.

I put my back against the door and looked around. Something about the house felt safe although I didn’t know why. Now that I was in my home, the sense of unease melted away, leaving me to stare at the table in the living room with the pictures I’d drawn in grade school lacquered into the top. In the one closest to me, the purple-haired girl stood tall, one hand outstretched toward the darkness, light shining from her palm as she stood over a tiny flame-haired girl.

I trudged closer, not sure how fast I trusted myself to go. It felt like any moment, I’d just slip off the world. Hell, I might blink and find myself in Idaho. Without realizing it, I’d knelt down next to the table and trailed my hand over the picture. It was drawn in thick, waxy crayon, and while the faces were little more than circles with dots and lines within them, the people seemed familiar.