The Reaping of Norah Bentley (32 page)

“What is he doing?” I demanded, trying—unsuccessfully—to jerk my way out of Eli’s grasp.

Eli didn’t answer, except to push me back behind him again and walk toward Luke’s side himself. The sight of Eli made Sam hesitate for a fraction of a second, but his smile reappeared as quickly as it came.

“Yes?” he asked. His eyes were on Eli, but his finger was still pointed at Luke, who had gone very still.

“Stop it,” Eli said in a low, dangerous voice.

Sam laughed. “And why would I do that? This is the most fun I’ve had all night.” He punctuated the end of his sentence with a jab of his finger that caused Luke to convulse violently against the ground.

I started to run to him again, but a fierce look from Eli stopped me mid-step. My foot hit the ground, the step shooting numbness all the way up my leg. I knew it wasn’t safe, but I kept inching forward anyway, was desperately fighting the urge to run and throw myself in front of Luke.

“This is wrong,” Eli said. “You know it is.” I could only assume he was still talking to Sam. I couldn’t look away from Luke.

“You’re not the only one who can break the rules,” Sam said.

“There’s no need for this.”

Luke took a sudden gasp of air, and his body relaxed; I turned to see Eli’s hand crushed over Sam’s, bending it back, breaking whatever hold he had on Luke’s body. But Sam was still smiling.

I made it to Luke’s side, then; fell to my knees and pulled him into my lap. There was a thin layer of cold sweat gleaming off his face and neck, turning the curls of his hair a shade darker and plastering them to his forehead. He smiled faintly up at me as I pressed a palm to his cold, pale cheek.

I was still angry. But the anger was a vague presence in me now, one I couldn’t focus on anyone or anything in particular—and definitely not on Luke. Right then, I couldn’t be mad at him for anything he’d done, couldn’t worry about all the things between us that I didn’t understand. This was my best friend we were talking about. I didn’t
care
what he’d done; all I cared about, all I could do was ask, in a weak voice,

“Are you okay?”

It took him a long time to gather the strength to speak. “You know, I’ve felt better,” he finally said. “But also worse. Definitely felt worse.”

I took his hand in mine and squeezed it. It was all I needed for the moment, the only reassurance we had time for; I turned back to Eli and Sam then, absently helping Luke as he fought his way up into a sitting position.

“I’m here now,” Eli was saying. “Forget about them. Forget about her. I’m not going anywhere—as long as you let her go first, you can do anything you want to me.”

My breath caught in my throat, and I started to get up. But Luke was still halfway on top of me, and he didn’t move.

“Hang on a second,” Luke whispered, his voice still weak and strangely hollow sounding.

“You understand that I am a little—how shall I say?—
hesitant
to take your word for anything?” Sam said. All of the humor—sadistic and otherwise—was gone from his voice now. “What with all the rule-breaking and all, I’m beginning to think I should just get rid of
all
of you, to be on the safe side. There would be hell to pay for it, of course. But I’m beginning to think it might be worth it—a sort of clean sweep, if you will. I’m already here, after all. Might as well make the most of it.”

“That wasn’t the deal,” Eli said. “You said in the beginning—”

“Well that was the beginning, wasn’t it? And
this—
this is the end. The time for deals is long gone now. It left with my patience.”

Luke started slowly to his feet, pulling me up with him. Eli heard us moving behind him and turned around. His eyes fell on me for a second, but they revealed nothing of what he might have been thinking before they quickly focused on Luke. “Take her and get out of here,” he said. “Now.”

Luke shuffled uncomfortably, and I took a step away from him, shaking my head. I wasn’t going anywhere.

“And where is she going to go?” Sam asked. “You know there’s nowhere I can’t find her, if I want to.” There was no denying the difference in his voice now; it had the glint, the excited edge of a predator’s. .

Luke’s hand was still on my arm. His grip tightened while he searched the park, maybe seriously considering doing what Eli had said. I did the same, more out of automatic reaction, copying Luke as he stared towards the wooden fencing that outlined the park’s exit.

It took a few seconds of staring for it to actually register: there were people there. That’s what Luke was staring at. A crowd of joggers, it looked like, paused at the entrance sign and stretching, talking amongst themselves, rubbing their hands against the cold. And every now and then, looking over here at us.

Had they seen Luke when he was on the ground? Was that why they were looking our way now? Why two of them had actually taken several steps our direction?

Suddenly, I had an idea.

“Luke.” I jerked him close to me again, and continued in a rushed whisper: “Luke, you need to fall to the ground again.”

“What?”

“You’re an actor, right?”

“I mean I—”

“So start acting sick again. Like, really sick.”

He was looking at me like I’d gone crazy. Maybe I had. Maybe I was crazy to think there was a chance we could get away now. But I had to try, so I fixed Luke with the most serious stare I could manage, kept glaring until there was nothing for him to do except nod slowly and do what I said.

He placed a hand on my shoulder, like he was trying to steady himself against me. Then his other hand, and I acted like I was having a hard time holding him up; I glanced at the joggers, then back to Luke, who had a look of sudden realization on his face.

“Getting the nosey small-town southerners involved?” he guessed.

“It’s what they want, anyway.” I flashed him a sheepish smile. “You see how hard they’re staring?”

He nodded again, more confidently this time, and then collapsed abruptly—and completely convincingly— to his knees, and then to the ground. He was crumpled up in almost the exact position he’d been lying in earlier; it was such a perfect recreation that it almost made me sick to look at it, and it made it easy to turn and yell at the crowd already advancing on us in a completely believable panic:

“Hey! Hey, we need help over here! Somebody call an ambulance!”

There were almost a dozen of them, and all of them ran toward us, except for a tall lady who stopped in a square of silvery moonlight and pulled out her cellphone. Probably dialing 911. Good. Some paramedics wouldn’t hurt—the more people the better.

I turned quickly to Sam.

“Just how many rules are you willing to break?” I asked, my voice surprisingly steady under his glare. “How many people are you willing to have witness your murders? …Talk about risking exposure.”

“Aren’t we clever?” Sam said. He started to take a step toward me, but stopped as someone said my name.

“Norah? Norah, is that you?”

I turned and came face to face with Mr. Fisher, one of our neighbors. His border collie was tethered to his side by a brown leather leash and it was whining, turning in circles and bobbing its head back and forth between Eli and Sam.

“What’s going on?” Mr. Fisher asked. Another man I didn’t recognize dropped to down to Luke’s side and started to check for vital signs. I watched Luke’s still body, holding my breath and saying a silent prayer that he’d actually be able to pull this off.

“I…I don’t know,” I stammered, forcing myself not to look at Luke. “He said he was feeling dizzy, and then he just collapsed.”

“He tried to get up,” Eli said, walking to my side and putting his arm around me. “And he looked okay for a minute, but then…”

“All we were doing was standing around talking. It was weird.” I was close to crying, now. It was mostly an act. But part of it was because Sam had moved terrifyingly close to me, and now his lips were just inches from my ear. He laughed; a quiet, sinister sound for me and me alone, although Mr. Fisher’s dog growled at the sound, and Eli pulled me closer to his side. No one else acted like they’d heard him though, nobody so much as blinked when Sam leaned even closer to me and whispered,

“You can’t escape me so easily.”

I bit back a whimper and stepped closer to Luke. “I think he needs to go to the hospital,” I said. The hospital. Where there would be lots of people, lots of bright lights.

“I don’t know,” said the man by Luke’s side. He was holding Luke’s wrist, feeling for a pulse. “His pulse seems normal. Breathing’s steady, maybe we should just let him rest and see if—”

“I don’t mind a chase,” Sam whispered behind me. “You’re just making this more entertaining for me.”

“He needs to go to the hospital!” Everyone jumped, including Luke, who quickly covered by rolling over on his side and letting out a painful groan.

“Is she okay?” Mr. Fisher asked Eli, giving me a wary look.

“…She’s fine.”

“No, I’m not! Look at him! Something is seriously wrong, and you should have seen him a few minutes ago, you should have…should have…” Eli wrapped both his arms around me, pretended to comfort me.

The tall lady who’d stayed behind to use her cell phone stepped over to me then, placed a comforting hand against my shoulder. Her fingers were warm, and she smelled like stale cigarette smoke with a desperate top-layer of lilac-scented perfume. Her arm almost brushed against Sam’s as she pulled it back and she shivered, an uneasy attempt at a comforting smile spreading across her face.

“An ambulance is on the way,” she said. “I already called them.”

I managed to choke out a “thank you” through my half-fake hyperventilating.

“We should get him to the street,” Mr. Fisher suggested. He gestured toward Luke, but he was still watching me.

“Maybe you should go with him?” the tall lady suggested to me. “You could probably use something for your nerves. What’s your parents’ phone number? I can give them a call if you like, tell them to meet you there.”

“No!”

She gave me a funny look.

“I mean because they won’t answer,” I lied quickly. I was getting really good at that, which made me squirm a little under the lady’s kind eyes. “They’re out of town. I’m staying with some friends, and I…”

“I’ll call them when we get to the hospital,” Eli assured the lady. “Let them know what’s going on.”

She still didn’t look completely convinced, but thankfully she dropped the conversation there. She rejoined the rest of the crowd who stood watching, then followed the men who lifted Luke off the cold ground and carried him out of the park.

I was too numb to get my legs to move fast enough to keep up with the crowd, so I didn’t resist when Eli lifted me into his arms and carried me after them. It made my distress look more convincing, anyway; if I kept this up, I might be able to get this whole crowd to escort us to the hospital.

It felt wrong to trick them like this, to make them worry. But I couldn’t feel too bad about it—because Sam was still moving silently alongside us, like a phantom shadowing our every step. It wasn’t until Eli weaved his way into the middle of the crowd that he was forced to drift away from us, to stop and let the crowd pass through him.

I didn’t like the certainty of his smile as he watched us go, so I focused on Eli’s face instead, on the worry swirling in his eyes and the perfectly even line of his lips.

“You’re getting very good at evading death,” he mumbled, glancing down at me.

“Don’t jinx me,” I said, tilting my head against him.

I didn’t look up again until we stopped, and stood there a few minutes until the wail of a siren filled the air. Eli sat me on my feet then, and the first thing I did—even surrounded by the safety all these people and the streetlights and flashing ambulance lights—was look for Sam. Only when I didn’t see him did I let myself take a deep breath.

“He’s gone,” I said.

“He won’t have gone far,” Eli said.

I tried not to let his blunt voice drown the little bit of hope floundering in my chest.

“But he won’t follow us to the hospital, right? Not where there’ll be so many people?”

“I don’t think so,” he said. But he still looked concerned.

“What’s wrong? I thought—” He silenced me with an arm around my waist, pulling me away from the crowd. We’d taken a few steps back into the park before he brought us both to a stop, turned to me, and in a quiet voice he said,

“You’re going with Luke.”

“Yeah…we both are. I can probably talk the EMT guys into letting us both ride in the back of the ambulance, one of them looks familiar. I think he went to our High School, think his name is Zach or something. He would probably—”

“I’m not going with you.”

“…What?”

He sighed, reached out and pressed a hand against my cheek. His skin was so cold I couldn’t help but jerk away at his touch.

I wished I could’ve just kept still. Because now he was nodding, looking at me like I’d just confirmed his worst fear. He kept his hand lifted between us, and even in the low light I could see how pale—almost transparent— it was.