Caela—Saturday, 4 a.m. GMT
“He’s going to kill her.” I stared up at everyone’s blank faces. “Jacob. Is going to kill Lacey. Tonight. We have to stop him.”
“What are you talking about, Caela? There’s no way you could possibly know that.” Spencer looked at the back of my head. How hard did she hit her head?
“There’s no way you could possibly know that.” I pushed myself to a standing position. “I can, and I do.”
Jessica’s eyebrows shot up, and the twist of her mouth suggested she wished she hadn’t invited the crazy person to her party. “Don’t be ridiculous. Nothing is going to happen. I mean, we all know that—”
“You all know what?” I pointed at her but made sure to include everyone in my glare. “You all know that he hurts her, and you’ve done nothing about it. You keep silent about it, deciding there’s nothing you can do or that maybe it is not as bad as you think. But it is that bad, and if we don’t do something, tonight she’s going to die.”
Everyone shifted uneasily on their feet.
She might be right, but…
Something like that could never happen to us.
What are we supposed to do about it anyway?
Emily crossed her arms. “What do you know, anyway? You don’t even know her.”
I snorted. “I know her better than you think.” I looked around the room for someone to listen to me, and my eyes fell on Brody. “Please. You have to help me.”
He took a step back. “I don’t know…”
“Exactly. You don’t know.” I took a step toward him. “And so I ask you whether you’re willing to risk it. What will you do tomorrow if she’s dead and you didn’t listen?”
“And how embarrassing will it be if we show up there and nothing is happening?” asked the boy in the Yankees cap.
I made a frustrated noise and turned toward the source of the comment. “You know better. You’ve all seen the bruises, and you saw how angry he was when he left. Are you willing to risk your friend’s life to avoid a little embarrassment?”
Spencer tugged on my arm until I faced him. “Caela, you don’t know how you sound.”
Tears formed in my eyes. “I do know how I sound.” And I did, because I had been here at least a dozen times before, trying to convince townsfolk that they needed to act. And it always went the same way. How could I forget that? How could I have thought that this time would somehow be different? “I know. I know you don’t believe me. You think you can’t believe me and you can only believe what you’ve seen in front of you. I wish I had time to explain everything to you, to tell you in a way that would make even you believe it.” And you’ll probably come after me with pitchforks to burn my house down, because seeing the future is only one small step away from causing it.
But Spencer wasn’t at the witch-burning phase yet. He was at the “this girl I thought I liked turned out to be crazy” phase. Which I guess was understandable. He couldn’t even believe in fantasies in movies. How could he believe that the girl in front of him could see inside people enough to tell the future, even if I had the time to explain?
“Fine.” I pulled away from him and stood up, moving through the house to the front door. Two sets of footsteps, one heavy, one with light clicking heels, followed me, but I didn’t turn around until a hand grabbed my arm.
“What are you doing, Caela?” Spencer asked. I had given him too little credit. He wasn’t quite ready to dismiss me as crazy. He was still hoping that I could come up with a logical explanation for all this.
If he was willing to try, I owed the same to him. I glanced to the side and noticed that Haley had also followed me. I guessed I could say this in front of her. “I have this power. I’ve always had it, as long as I can remember. I can see inside people, know who they are, what they think, and how they feel.”
“You’re telling me you think you’re psychic?”
“Not exactly. I mean, I guess you could call it that, but it’s not as though I can see the future…” I trailed off, realizing that was exactly what I was claiming to be able to do. “The mechanics aren’t important. What is important is that Jacob has so much rage in him tonight, enough that it won’t burn out until someone is dead, and maybe not even then.”
“Do you expect me to believe this?” He didn’t want to think me insane, but he couldn’t accept a supernatural explanation.
I let out a hysterical laugh. I thought about trying to prove it to him now, by telling him his thoughts, but anyone would have been able to guess his thoughts at that moment. Besides, even if I pulled out something unique, he would have accused me of being good at reading facial expressions. “Not really. Not now at least. I’ll let you run tests on me later, if you want, so I can prove to you that I’m telling the truth. Or you can think I’m a crazy charlatan. You can think whatever you want. All I care about right now is saving Lacey.”
“And how do you propose to do that?” He crossed his arms. “Do you magically know where she lives too?”
“No. I would ask one of you to take me, but I don’t have that kind of time. I guess… I guess I’ll have to go from house to house until I find her.”
Spencer grabbed my arms and shook me. “Are you insane? You can’t randomly go up to every house in town.”
“I don’t expect it to work. But I have to at least try to do something, and if knocking on every door in Coventry is the only way to do that, so be it. It gives Lacey a chance of surviving the night, and if she is dead come the morning, my conscience will be clear.” That last part was a lie, of course. I had never quite mastered the art of not feeling guilty for not saving people, even when I had no power over the outcome. “Can you say the same?”
“I think you should listen to her.” Haley took a hesitant step forward and laid a hand on Spencer’s arm.
His mouth dropped open, and he swung his head around to look at her.
“I know. I think it sounds crazy, too. But she… she knows things. Things that other people couldn’t know. There was this woman at the bar the other day... And a man at the mall today. She saved this guy’s life, Spencer. I think we need to trust her.”
Spencer glowered at Haley for a moment and then dropped his eyes to his brown boat shoes. “Fine, I’ll take you.” He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a set of keys. “But only so you don’t go waking up every person in town.”
I didn’t tell him that I had planned to “listen” at people’s heads outside doors, not actually go knocking on all of them. I didn’t want him to change his mind, and he wouldn’t have listened anyway.
The silence on the car ride over was broken only by Spencer’s constant thoughts that I was almost certainly bonkers and Haley’s prayers that I wasn’t. I braced my hands against the soft leather seats and prayed we got there soon enough.
Within ten minutes of our departure, Spencer pulled his SUV up to a white house with black shutters that was even bigger than the one I had rented. I raced past the wrought iron gates up to the front door, trying to hear or feel anything from inside that would indicate if I had gotten there in time. I pounded on the locked door so hard my hand hurt and held my finger down on the doorbell, but I didn’t expect anything to happen.
Crap, how am I going to get inside?
I ran my fingers through my hair and hit a metal barrette. Aha! Perfect.
I was dismantling the spring-loaded clasp when Spencer and Haley caught up to me on the porch.
“What are you doing?” Spencer leaned in to see as I pried a strip of metal away from the clasp.
“Picking the lock.” I fit the metal into the keyhole.
Spencer yanked my arm away. “Are you insane? That’s breaking and entering!”
“I have probable cause.” I wrenched my hand back.
Wow, she’s strong. “Psychic visions are not probable cause!” he said, but he didn’t try to stop me again. The tumblers clicked into place, and the cylinder turned. I rose to open the door, and he grabbed my arm again. “They have an alarm.”
“Good. Then we won’t have to call 911 because the police will come anyway.”
He kept his hold on my arm. “What if you’re wrong?”
“I’m not wrong.”
He let out an exasperated breath, and Haley took a step forward. “Caela, think about this. We’re going to get arrested.”
“It won’t be the worst thing that has ever happened to me.” I looked at them—at his innocent, privileged mind and her even more jaded but in some ways equally naïve one—and realized that getting arrested would probably be the worst thing that ever happened to either of them. “Fine. You can go now. Both of you. Go home. Disavow all knowledge of this. I won’t—”
A crash erupted from somewhere inside the house. Spencer’s hand found mine on the doorknob, and we turned it and pushed the door in together. We burst through the door, and the siren of the alarm began to wail.
Jacob’s rage was like a beacon. I made my way to the stairs, Spencer and Haley on my heels, and as I went, Lacey’s terror raced through my brain, stronger than anything I’d felt from her before. Apparently her impending death was enough to shake her out of the stupor in which she had spent the last several months of her life.
We dashed down the hallway, and Spencer pushed past me. He now had Jacob’s shouts and Lacey’s cries to direct him to the proper room. But this time I grabbed his arm to pull him back.
“Go downstairs. Call the police.”
Spencer gaped at me. “Are you insane? You go call the police.”
I shook my head. “No way. He’s still ready to kill someone, and I don’t want it to be you.” I held up my hand to stop his response. “He can’t kill me. Go.”
Before he could protest, I darted past him and opened the door to a bedroom that seemed small and simple, given the opulence of the rest of the house. Jacob’s head whipped around to look at me. The pink clothes overflowing the red and black Brighton suitcase in the corner suggested that this was Lacey’s room. She crouched in the corner, a large bruise forming under her eye. She clutched her right arm to her chest. Jacob held a gun pointed at her, ready to fire.
He swung the gun in my direction. “Who are you? What are you doing here?”
“Please help me.” Tears streamed down Lacey’s face. Oh, thank God, thank God, thank God.
“Shut up, you stupid bitch!” Jacob slammed the butt of the gun down toward Lacey’s face. She must have told, he thought, and then his thoughts degraded from words into mindless rage.
I darted between them, so that the brunt of the hit fell on my shoulder instead of Lacey’s head. I looked up and found the gun once again pointed at me.
I took a deep breath and turned enough that Lacey knew I addressed her. “Get out of here. Spencer and Haley should be downstairs calling the cops. Go find them.”
I worried that Jacob would shoot Lacey in the back as she crept out of the room, but he focused on me. “Do you seriously think the police are going to do anything? Do you know who I am?”
I put my hands up in a defensive position. “I honestly don’t care about any of that. I just wanted to get Lacey away from you.”
He waved the gun, and I couldn’t help but follow the motion with my eyes. “What did that bitch say to you? I told her not to say anything. She’s going to pay for this!”
I looked past the muzzle to meet his deep brown eyes. “She didn’t say anything. She didn’t have to say anything. Everyone already knows what you are.”
“And what am I?”
Don’t back up, I thought. Show no fear. You have to stall him until the cops get here. I found, though, that I didn’t have any fear to show. All my worries of this week, about Spencer, Haley, Lacey, and situations I couldn’t control, melted away from my mind. The vagaries of human lives, people’s feelings, those mattered to me. Jacob was just a bully. He could do nothing to me, and I wasn’t scared of him.
“You’re rotten inside.” My voice came out cold as a winter wind. “You try to control other people, Lacey and a dozen others before her. You hurt them because you want to make them less than what you know you are inside, but all it does is bring the rot ever closer to the core of you.”
“You’d better watch your mouth, bitch!” His voice shook, and his eyes shifted back and forth.
I took a step forward, and he backed up until his legs were pressed against the bed. “Or what? You’re going to hurt me? You can’t. I’m not like the other girls. You can’t tell me I’m worthless and make me believe it. There is nothing you can do to me that hasn’t been done a million times over.” Eh, slight exaggeration. I’d prefer this not be the night I test Spencer’s theory regarding gunshot wounds to the brain. “You think the gun gives you power, but it gives you nothing. You’re a coward who hides behind weapons and other people’s pain because you can’t face your own pathetic soul. So go ahead. Shoot me, if it will make you feel that much better about yourself. Oh, and let me know when you think you’ve committed enough crimes that the police can’t ignore, no matter how much you cry to Daddy.”
He waved the gun closer to my head. “You think I won’t do it?”
I leaned forward, closer still toward the barrel of the gun. “Oh, no, I think you will. I also know that even if you’re the only one who walks away from this, you still won’t win. Because you can’t change what you are.”
I honestly didn’t think I could prevent him shooting me. I have talked people down from a lot of ledges, but not psychotic partner abusers with projectile weapons. But he looked hesitant and started to lower the gun.
I turned my head toward the window, and the approaching sirens. That distraction was all it took to break whatever kind of stalemate Jacob and I had reached. With a yell, he pushed me back against the wall, and as I fell, he fired the gun.
The bullet pierced my gut. Wow, I thought. That hurts a lot. So much worse than stoning. But not as bad as being crushed by stones.
Jacob yelled something indecipherable. My hand shook, and my teeth chattered. Shock. Not unexpected when one takes a bullet to the gut. For some reason that struck me as funny, and I giggled.
Focus. You need to focus. But I could no longer remember what I was supposed to be focusing on. More people in the room now, more yelling. Something about a gun, I thought. That’s right. I was shot.
A man moved closer to me. He spoke to me, asking if I was all right.
But I wasn’t all right. I needed to ask about something. Lacey.
“Is Lacey all right?”
I couldn’t understand the answer, but the voice sounded reassuring, so I took that as I sign that I could let go now. I closed my eyes and let the darkness take me.