Strange in Skin (31 page)

“Thanks for the little chat,” I snapped, hurrying out of the living room.
“Not so fast.”

Someone from the shadows near the front door took a few steps my way making me back slowly
into the living room again. As he came into the light, I glared at the face in front of me.
“You need to know everything about your precious Emry,” Buck said, his boots clanking on the
wooden floor as he entered the room and came into full sight in the glow of the lamps.
“I can’t believe this!” I exclaimed. “What are you doing here?” I looked at my father. He stared
right back at me.

“Emry Logan isn’t who you think he is,” Buck continued, “and you’re not the first one he’s fooled.”
He pulled an envelope out from underneath his arm. “I’m not allowed to be showing this to you.” He
pulled out a stack of papers from within the envelope and handed them to me. “But I will, because
despite what you think of me, I actually care what happens to you, Anna.”

“Right,” I said sarcastically, realizing immediately that this was Emry’s file from the prison as I
recognized his mug shot on the first page, so beautiful even in such a grim photo. My heart throbbed in
an instant ache as I saw him staring back at me on the page.

“I don’t know what he’s told you,” Buck continued, ignoring my remark, “but I doubt he’s told you
about his past. This is proof. He’s been arrested several times for theft. Has he told you that?”

My eyes skimmed the pages fast as the words entered my mind. Emry, robbery, pleading guilty,
combined with other words that didn’t make much sense to me. I lowered my eyebrows. Emry could
never be a thief.

“That’s not even the half of it. Did you know he’s been married before?”
“Yeah, I did,” I whispered, my eyes still scanning page after page of information.

“Well, don’t think he didn’t lie to her, too. He abandoned that poor girl after barely being married
to her. He drained her bank account and left her in loads of debt with a little girl of her own to take
care of,” Buck said.

“And he’s a murderer. Wes Campbell isn’t the only one he’s killed,” my father stated.

I lowered the papers and stared up at all of them. All of their eyes were on my face, assessing my
reaction to the facts that they were trying to explain to me now, facts backed up by a police record
with Emry’s name and face plastered all over it from various ages beginning as a young teen.

“Who else?” I whispered, afraid of what they were about to tell me, afraid that Emry was going to
slip away from me suddenly. It was as if I could almost feel myself releasing my grasp on him.
Carlin finished her cigarette and then exited the room to dispose of the butt.

 

“When he was a teenager, he was accused of another’s boy’s death, another so-called friend of
his,” Buck said.

“But what happened with that?” I felt a few of the papers fall from my fingertips as they spread out
on the floor, but I barely noticed. I was too focused on the information Buck was feeding me now,
things I didn’t know, that Emry had never bothered to tell me.

“He got out of it,” Buck continued. “It helped that he was under eighteen, too. He gets these top of
the line lawyers. It baffles us how he does it. He has the same one defending him now that defended
him against that.”

“He got out of it,” my father added. “Only to be able to do it a second time. But this time, he won’t
get away with it.”

 

“He’s not a good person,” my mother said softly. “He’s a monster.”

 

“Do you really want to end up like anyone else that’s been close to him? Dead or just end up used
and alone again like his ex-wife? I thought you were smarter than that.” Buck clenched his jaw
together as he examined my reaction again.

What was my reaction? Horror? Complete shock? All of the above? I felt devastated unlike the pain
I had felt before. I was confused now in a different way. My mind was spinning and buzzing with all
kinds of thoughts and voices. My mother was hurrying to gather up the papers that were still falling
from my released grasp on the floor. My eyes darted from my father to Buck and then over to Carlin
who just leaned against the wall staring elsewhere other than toward me.

Could this be true? Was Emry Logan not who I thought he was? Was there the possibility that I was
so infatuated by his sudden interest in a person like me that I was blinded from seeing him for who he
really was, the monster they were all telling me he was?
No
, I scolded myself. He had taken me to
Evadere. He had shown me his secret and this remarkable new world that no one else knew existed.
None of the other stuff mattered. Or did it?

“He’s just using you,” Buck continued. “You’re just someone to make him feel better about himself,
to get under our skin even more because you’re the daughter of Pastor John James, because you’re my
friend.”

“I hardly consider us friends, Buck,” I snapped. “Seems like that blew up a while ago.”
He narrowed his eyes at me, obviously disturbed and angry by my remark.
“Show some respect,” my father yelled out. “The man is here as a favor to you.”
“Really? Or is it a favor to
you
?” I yelled back. “Or perhaps it’s a favor to Mrs. Anderson?”

His face twisted as I’d hit a nerve. I couldn’t deal with this any longer with all of them in front of
me, staring at me, watching my every move. I had to get away from them to think. My mind was
spinning as I felt a gush of dizziness come over me.

“I’m sure his ex-wife thought he was some sort of a saint, too,” Buck blurted out. “Maybe you
should go have a little chat with her and let her tell you about who Emry Logan really is.”

Emry couldn’t have committed such crimes. He was an honest man, a beautiful being, and this
world wasn’t good enough for him. Surely they had planted all of this against me, one thing after
another. Maybe they had been onto him for years now trying to get him locked up. He wasn’t a bad
person. He wasn’t. These were the bad people standing in front of me trying to get me away from
Seneca, away from Emry, to go with Carlin, of all people. They were making good attempts at
trapping me emotionally now by playing these little mind games on me. This is how they worked. I
should know this by now. They had never been on my side, always against me. They had been
scheming, and they wanted me out of Seneca no matter what it took. Mrs. Anderson wanted me out of
her way so she could get rid of Emry once and for all. I was a problem. I had to be dealt with. Carlin
should take me away. She was well-educated on culture. The entire thing made me sick as my
stomach now churned with the heavy weight I felt pressing down upon my shoulders, trying to force
me to my knees.

I knew what my heart felt. It ached for Emry. He loved me, and I loved him. We belonged together.
I shouldn’t listen to any of this. My eyes moved to the police record that my mother now handed Buck,
and I watched as he stuffed it back into the envelope. It had said he had pleaded guilty to all of the
accusations of theft. Why would he do something like that if he was innocent?

I closed my eyes. My head spun, and I felt the vomit starting to rise in my throat. My eyes looked at
all their faces. They were staring back. Or were they? Their eyes became a blur as I suddenly felt
very lightheaded and hot all over. Tiny white specks flashed before me, intruding on my line of
vision.

“Anna?” I thought I heard my mother cry out. “Anna? Are you all right?”

Emry Logan wasn’t a murderer. Emry Logan was a beautiful creature of the supernatural world.
Emry Logan was all mine. They couldn’t have him. They couldn’t make me abandon him now, not
when he needed me the most, even if it meant staying in the same town with him, just so he knew I
was with him.

I took a step forward, the sudden heat that radiated through my veins, through my entire body and
the white dots flashing in front of my pupils getting the best of me as I collapsed onto the hard,
wooden floor.

Chapter 16

I was back to my old self, the boring, routine-oriented, Anna James. Over the next few months, I
had become accustomed to everything that had made up my life before Emry had stepped into the
picture and confused me, made me someone I was never meant to be. I had come to accept the fact that
him and I would never be together again. Our relationship had been doomed from the very beginning.
I had no idea why I had been so adamant about pursuing it. I had been naive and foolish. I had
allowed him to get into my head and mess me up. Perhaps the mystery surrounding who he was, the
magic of it all mystified me. I would never forget Emry Logan or Evadere, but I had to think of it all
as if it were merely a dream. It was the only way to move forward. Besides, it really did feel like a
dream anyway, so that made it slightly easier.

I slowly started spending time with my parents again. I scolded myself for having been so mean to
them about the whole adoption ordeal. The holidays helped to remind me that no matter who had
given birth to me, whoever they were weren’t able to take care of me or didn’t want a child, and so
why should I even waste an ounce of time thinking about where they were, who they were, what their
reasons had been. I had made it this long without knowing any different. John and Helene James were
the ones who had given me a home and plenty of love to grow up with. They never told me to get my
own place or pay rent. They simply loved me for me, and had totally forgiven me despite my having
treated them so badly. All had been forgotten.

Carlin had spent only a few more days with us after our last little family meeting we had had the
day I blacked out in the living room. Buck had caught me before I could fall and injure myself. They
had taken me to the local emergency room, and the doctors there, after a thorough evaluation of my
heart and brain, determined dehydration and fatigue combined with emotional disturbance had caused
my little spell. The entire time I was there, I felt it utterly ironic how they had to rule out my heart and
brain first. They would have been the first things I would have thought to be disastrous, but no. I was
healthy and had regained my strength in a few days after allowing my mother to nurse me back to
health again.

There hadn’t been any sort of effort made to make amends with my aunt. She had just packed up her
things suddenly one day and headed down the stairs, her suitcase in hand, her stilettos on her feet.
“Do you know anything about this?” she asked me, holding up a torn and dirty, little dress.

I was sure my flushing red cheeks had given my guilt instantly away. Oh, how I remembered that
dress and how I looked in it, everyone staring in the prison. It was a shame I had ruined it beyond
repair.

“Anna, do you?” my mother demanded after I had kept silent.

Carlin still held it up in the air almost as if rubbing it in my face. I couldn’t blame her for being
angry about it. It had to have been expensive.
“Sorry,” I mumbled.

“Sorry?” She raised her eyebrows and gave me that annoyed look she seemed to always get when
talking to me. “That’s all you have to say?”

 

“You did that?” my mother asked, as if horrified that I could be capable of such a thing.

I shrugged. “Yeah. I used it to get into the prison.”
“This was part of your little disguise?”

I pressed my lips together. I did feel somewhat genuinely apologetic now. That had been the best
day of my life. Emry had kissed me in that dress. I immediately shook the memory from my mind.
“Yeah.”

“You took this out of my closet and then put it back looking like this?” Carlin was now shaking the
dress clumped up tightly in her hand at me.
“I said sorry.” I hated having to repeat myself, especially to her.

She eyeballed me for a few more moments before tossing the dress my way. It landed on the floor
in front of my feet.

 

“Do me a favor and throw that in the garbage for me,” she said in a calmer voice as if her despair
over her dress had just been a show.

 

“Anna, you should pay your aunt for that. What are you doing, Carlin?” my mother asked her,
turning her attention to the zipped suitcase she had been carrying.

 

She stopped at the closet behind the front door and pulled out a thick, fur coat and tossed it around
her shoulders. “I think my time here is done.”

As if she had done her duty and was off, like some sort of soldier She was such a phony. Her
intentions of making amends with my mother didn’t seem to have brought them any closer. Perhaps the
two of them were incapable of being anywhere near close like sisters should be. It made me a little
sad. Though I couldn’t stand the mere sight of my aunt, they were biologically true sisters, and here
they were, almost strangers, yet they had been under the same roof all this time. It just didn’t make
sense to me that Carlin couldn’t forgive my mother or whatever it was that was preventing her from
being truly nice for more than an hour at a time. Maybe she was just a moody, selfish person who
couldn’t get over herself. I was sure that no one would be able to guess they were related if the fact
hadn’t been stated aloud. Carlin was nothing like her sister, and so here she was, running away again.
Maybe my words of telling her I hated her had struck a nerve and gotten to her somehow. The more I
thought about that, the more I doubted it. I was sure Carlin had felt the same exact way about me. She
had always hated me, and so we had that mutual feeling in common at least.

“Please stay,” my mother begged her. She could kill people with her kindness.

Carlin smirked as if she didn’t believe her sister really wanted her there anyway. “You’re all
better. It’s been fun and all, but I don’t think I can take Seneca for one second longer.”
My mother sighed and opened her arms to hug her sister, realizing that nothing she said could keep
her here. Maybe deep down she wanted her gone as much as I did. The thought of her leaving
overjoyed me.

“Thank you so much for all your help during these difficult times.” She hugged her tight as I saw
Carlin glare at me over her sister’s shoulder during the embrace.