“I know, Kali.” Her blue eyes were shadowed, her mouth set into a firm line. “Trust me, I know.”
Somehow, it was easy to believe that she knew the stakes, maybe even better than I did. “We shouldn’t be talking here,” I told her. “Someone might see us, and let’s just say that the people who ran Bethany’s car off the road might have reason to be looking for me.”
Like the fact that I was still in possession of their “specimen.”
And the fact that my body had disappeared from the side of the road.
The fact that I wasn’t dead …
On the off chance that Skylar was psychic, I stopped that line of thinking in its tracks and started talking, careful to keep the details to a bare minimum. I needed to tell Skylar enough to convince her this was dangerous, but not so much that I’d put her in more danger. Hitting a few key points, I ended with, “Whatever’s going on, Bethany’s dad is involved. She mentioned something about her dad keeping some of his equipment at home. He might have records here, too….”
I trailed off.
All I needed was a name. Once we knew who Bethany’s father was working for, Skylar could go Nancy Drew them to her heart’s content.
Know thy enemy.
Drain them dry.
“Kali?” Skylar’s voice broke into my thoughts, and I realized that I’d been staring—at her throat.
“Yeah?”
“You didn’t get rid of the chupacabra, did you?”
I didn’t answer. Instead, I turned back to the wall. “I need to get inside.”
Skylar nodded. “Go ahead. I’ll work on Plan B.”
More terrifying words had never been spoken, but before I could convince Skylar that there would be no Plan B, she was already off and running, and I was left with two choices: follow her or scale the wall.
I scaled the wall.
The mortar cracked under the force of my fingernails, and I flashed back to the feel of thick, leathery flesh giving way under my razor-sharp nails.
They’re out there. They’re waiting. They’re yours.
Find them. Find them now.
It was only nine thirty in the morning, and already, I wanted to hunt so badly I could taste it on the tip of my tongue, bittersweet.
Dropping to the ground and landing in a crouch, I couldn’t help turning my inner ear to the world around me. There was something close. Something old.
Something deadly.
Ignoring the hum of the preternatural at the edge of my senses, I made my way to the side of Bethany’s house. The windows were closed. A camera stared down at me from overhead. I dodged its view and considered my options.
“For what it’s worth, I’m going in the front door.”
This time, Skylar didn’t appear right next to me. Instead, she yelled the words across the lawn, from the gargantuan front porch.
How had she gotten past the gate?
“I had the guard buzz me in,” Skylar called. “He’s really very nice.”
Even from a distance, I could tell that the expression on Skylar’s face was anything but innocent. She wanted in—not just the house, but the situation. If the woman in heels was keeping track of the Davises’ visitors, Skylar had just thrown herself onto her radar, and from the way she was standing there, I got the feeling that it was intentional, that she would keep doing it, again and again, until her life was on the line as much as mine.
Until she’d destroyed every reason I had for wanting to keep her out.
As I watched, horrified, Skylar stepped forward and rang the doorbell. I pressed my back against the side of the house, slipping as far into the shadows as I could. The front door opened, and Skylar grinned.
“Hey, Bethany,” she said, her voice carrying. “What’s up?”
15
Bethany looked like a shadow of her former self. She was wearing a light yellow sundress, faded and out of season. Her pale skin was marred by bruises, and her left arm was in a sling.
Red hair hung in a limp ponytail to one side, and even from a distance, I could see a sluggish quality to the way she moved, the way she blinked.
Had they drugged her?
Without even meaning to, I stepped out from the shadows. I began moving toward the duo on the front porch, but before I’d fully crossed the lawn, Bethany marked my presence. She stared at me, like she was trying to see through some kind of fog.
She shook.
Her mouth moved, but I couldn’t make out the words until I got closer.
“You’re dead.”
I stepped up onto the porch, careful to keep my back to the surveillance.
“I saw you. I saw you die. You’re dead.”
The first time she said it, Bethany’s voice was monotone, but by the second time—and the third—she was starting to sound more like her old self.
She was starting to sound pissed.
“I saw you. You went through the windshield. You broke your neck. There was blood—so much blood, and your legs …”
“Maybe you saw wrong,” Skylar suggested.
“I know what I saw. Kali’s dead, and I’m crazy. They drugged me up, and now I’m crazy. They were afraid I’d tell someone. They knew my dad couldn’t keep me here forever, so they made me crazy.”
“You’re not crazy,” I said calmly. “You must have just gotten things mixed up in the wreck. I was bleeding, but they were mostly surface cuts. When I woke up, you were gone. I was worried, so I came here.”
“I think I’d know if you weren’t dead,” Bethany snapped. “And, no offense, but I’m pretty sure I’m more qualified to tell if I’m crazy than you are.”
I couldn’t tell if Bethany was on the verge of hysterics or reading me the riot act. Skylar must have been leaning toward the “hysterical” interpretation, because she wound up and smacked her, right across the face.
Bethany blinked. “Did you just hit me?” she asked, disbelief coloring her every feature.
Skylar raised both hands, palms outward. “I come in peace!”
“You do not come in peace. You hit me.”
“I hit in peace!”
Sensing that this could devolve into an all-out brawl very quickly, I took matters into my own hands—literally. I stepped forward and put my right palm on Bethany’s shoulder.
“I told you I’d be okay, and I’m okay,” I said softly.
I could see the wheels turning in Bethany’s head, see her wanting to believe me.
“Are you okay?” I asked her.
Bethany shrugged off my touch. “I’m fine.”
“No you’re not,” Skylar piped up. “Somebody drugged you, and your dad is keeping you locked up in your own home. That’s not fine.”
“What is she even doing here?” Bethany directed the question at me, and I took that as evidence that she was at the very least less sure that I was a hallucination than she’d been a moment before.
Skylar didn’t wait for me to answer Bethany’s question—she jumped right in herself. “Someone’s watching you, Bethany. They’re after Kali. And I can’t shake the idea that this is bigger, that there’s something else, someone else….” Skylar frowned. “Bad people are doing bad things. Good people are doing bad things, too. I’m supposed to be here. I’m supposed to help.”
Skylar blinked, and her eyes stayed closed for a fraction of a second longer than they should have. “This is.”
She sounded … sad. Stubborn, determined, and sad.
“This is what?” I asked, wondering how many times I’d worn that same expression on my face and what exactly had put it on hers.
“It,” Skylar said simply. “This is it.”
Bethany snorted. “Because that really clears things up.”
Skylar smiled, but the expression only took on half her face. “Give it a few days,” she said, “and it will.”
I had no idea what she was talking about, but for better or worse, at the moment, I had bigger fish to fry.
I’d come here as step one in a plan to track down Bethany, but it looked like I wasn’t going to need steps two through four. Instead, I needed to find out what Bethany knew, what she remembered.