Lara watched as the doctors lifted Tim’s body onto the stretcher. They struggled and groaned because Tim was so heavy, and they didn’t bother trying to hide it.
There was no dignity in death.
Marc stood next to her, holding her hand. She couldn’t stop thinking about how tightly Tim had held her hand only a little while ago. She’d been his lifeline. And now he was dead.
The police were standing with the man who had been driving the car, glaring at him like he was a criminal. Lara remembered how that felt. The cops who had come to her car accident had spared her no pity, even though she’d been hysterical about losing her parents. When they looked at her, they had seen a murderer. She couldn’t blame the cops in Virginia—she’d felt very much like murderer, and she didn’t know how she would have reacted if they’d treated her any differently. But the man who had hit Tim didn’t deserve to be held in such contempt. This accident hadn’t been his fault at all.
“The guy came out of nowhere,” the driver was saying. “He just stepped in front of my car and froze.”
“How fast were you going?” one cop asked.
“Uh…Twenty-five miles an hour, maybe?”
The police officers exchanged a skeptical glance. “If you were really going that slow, then why did you have to brake so hard?” one of them asked, pointing to the tire marks leading up to the back of the man’s car.
“I told you,” the driver said tiredly, “he came out of nowhere.”
“He was halfway to the other side of the road when he was hit,” the second cop said snidely. “If he stepped out in front of you so suddenly, how did he magically make it into the middle of the road by the time you slammed into him?”
“Okay, look. There…there was a glare or something, all right? I got distracted. I couldn’t see. But I was going under the speed limit, I swear! It was just…just an accident.”
A glare. Right. Lara knew that the driver had seen Kabran standing by the side of the road, his body flickering rapidly in the sunlight. The sight had paralyzed Tim in the middle of the street and it had diverted the driver’s attention long enough to cause the accident. Kabran had tried to kill her aunt, and now he had succeeded in killing her uncle.
All for her. All because of her.
Lara stared at Tim’s body, being zipped up in a black bag. The morgue was only in the next wing, but the doctors still followed through with the formalities. They would wheel him down and then they would perform an autopsy, even though the cause of his death was blatantly obvious. Then they would sew him back up and he would be sent to a mortuary.
Another death. Another funeral. All for her. All because of her.
Marc gave her arm a small shake and, startled, she tore her eyes away from the black bag. “What?” she asked.
“The officer asked you a question,” he said softly.
“Oh. I’m sorry,” she stammered to the cop. “What did you say?”
“I asked you what you saw during the accident,” he said with annoyance.
She glanced at the driver of the car, who was now sitting on the curb, his head in his hands. He just didn’t deserve to be held responsible for this. In her mind, Kabran had killed Tim. The driver had only been his weapon.
But she wondered why Kabran would have chosen such an unpredictable method. Tim could have stepped back. The driver could’ve just as easily not seen the ghost’s stunt show, and he could have braked sooner. Regardless, there was no way to be sure that Tim would have died in a low-speed accident in a hospital parking lot. All of this meant something, but Lara just didn’t know what.
She looked back at the cop steadily. “Marc and I were over on the grass there. We saw—my uncle,” she stuttered, unable to say his name. “He was walking down the sidewalk, towards us. He didn’t look before he crossed the street…he just walked out in front of the car.”
The cop raised an eyebrow at her, “Is that so?” he asked skeptically.
“His wife—my aunt—was badly hurt this morning. He wasn’t himself,” she tried to explain.
“And what did you see?” the cop asked Marc.
“Pretty much exactly what Lara saw,” he replied easily, without glancing at her. His talent for lying was definitely useful on occasion. He appeared so honest and forthright that it was impossible for the police officer not to trust him.
“Okay,” the cop said, nodding. He started to step away, but then looked back at Lara. “Oh yeah. Sorry for your loss.”
Damn it, she wanted to punch him, but she made herself shake it off. She turned to Marc and gave him a sly smile. “You know, you should really go to Vegas some time. You could win a fortune at poker.”
He laughed. “Maybe after I turn twenty-one.” Then he looked at the ambulance that held Tim’s body. “I can’t believe he’s dead,” he said in a dull voice. “This just doesn’t feel real.”
Lara swallowed the painful lump that was sticking in her throat. “I know.”
“Is this how you felt when…”
“No,” she answered, her voice barely audible. She remembered how she’d screamed when her parents’ bodies had been taken away. Blood had been dripping down her face from a gash on her forehead—a sanguine parody of the tears that she’d refused to let herself shed. That night, the police officer had had to hold her back because she’d kept trying to run to the ambulance. Even after it had driven away, she’d tried to run after it. “That felt too real.”
“This isn’t your fault,” Marc said. “You do know that, right?”
It hurt that he had to ask. It hurt that she had to lie. But she really didn’t want to get into it again. She was tired of the same old argument, and he had to be tired of it too. “Yeah.”
“Okay,” he said warily. Lara had the feeling that he knew she was lying, but he was going to let it go. For now, at least. “We have to tell Paige.”
“I don’t even know if she’s awake yet. God.” She pictured her aunt’s face when the anesthesia finally wore off, when she woke up and wondered why her husband wasn’t by her bedside. And then another picture flashed before her eyes—Tim’s jubilant smile when he got off the Ring of Fire last night—was that really just last night? Lara’s stomach turned and her knees buckled as the horror of the last few hours suddenly overwhelmed her.
Marc caught her as she fell, and gently eased her to the ground. “Put your head down,” he instructed as he pulled her knees up. “Just breathe.”
“I can’t do this,” she gasped.
“Yes, you can.”
She lifted her head, grimacing at him. “What do I say? What the hell do I say?”
“Tell her what you told the police.”
“I can’t. It makes it sound like it was Tim’s fault. And it wasn’t.” Her voice fell to a hiss. “It wasn’t.”
“Do you want to tell her about Kabran?” Marc asked quietly.
“God, no.”
“She might believe you. She might already know that she was pushed down the stairs even though there was no one there.”
“Maybe,” Lara murmured noncommittally. “Or she might not remember it at all.”
Marc was silent for a moment. “It’s up to you,” he finally said. “Paige is your aunt. Tim is—was—your uncle. And Kabran is…well, he’s yours too. But whatever you want to say, I’ll back you up.”
It wasn’t exactly what she’d wanted to hear. She didn’t want this to be her decision. She didn’t want any of this to be happening. But it was. And she couldn’t back away from it now. She couldn’t lie down and fall into a self-induced catatonia, as she’d done after her parents’ deaths. The lives of people she loved were at stake, and she was responsible for too many deaths as it was.
Lara stood up and headed back towards the main entrance of the hospital. The walk was somehow too long and too short at the same time. A woman at the information desk gave her Paige’s room number, and then she and Marc took the elevator up to the Intensive Care Unit.
“Do you want me to come in with you?” he asked when they reached her aunt’s door.
“No,” she replied, shaking her head. Doing this alone felt like a kind of penance. Whether Marc believed it or not, she had played a part in Tim’s death. If she’d just done what Kabran had asked the night before, her uncle would still be alive. She couldn’t have known what the ghost would do in retaliation, but if she could find the strength to stand up to him, then she could damn well find the strength to suffer the consequences.
“I’ll be right out here,” Marc said, “if you need me.”
“Thanks.”
The hospital room was small, but Lara was just grateful that her aunt didn’t have a roommate. The very last thing she needed at that moment was an audience.
Paige was lying on the bed, her face still ashen, but her breathing was steady. One of her arms was in a cast and there were some dark purple bruises on her forehead. For a moment, Lara thought that her aunt was sleeping and the tension inside of her loosened, but then Paige’s eyes fluttered open.
There was no way to avoid this. It had to be done now.
“Hey, sweetie,” her aunt said in a soft whisper.
Lara pulled a chair next to Paige’s bed and sat down. Then she felt awkward because the bed was so high and the chair was too low, so she stood up again. “Hi. How’re you feeling?”
Paige made a sound that would have been a laugh if it hadn’t gotten caught in her throat. “Like I fell three stories,” she replied.
“Do you remember what happened?” Lara couldn’t help asking her. She had to know if her aunt had gotten a glimpse of Kabran. Maybe that would help her decide what to say next.
“Not really. I remember walking down the hall, on my way downstairs to start the coffee machine, and then…I don’t know. Something startled me, I think. It’s all really fuzzy.” She tried to laugh again. “I told Tim that the railing on that staircase was too low.”
Lara frowned as something in the back of her mind nagged at her. But she didn’t have time to think about it, because in the next moment, Paige asked her the question she had been dreading. “Where is Tim?”
Oh god, oh god, oh god. How the hell do I do this, how the hell can I possibly do this? No, I am strong enough. Marc believes it and I believe it and I can do this. But how? Someone please tell me how…
“There was an accident in the parking lot,” Lara said in a rush. And then once the first words were out, the rest seemed to come more easily. “Marc and I were outside, and Tim came to get us. But he was hit by a car as he crossed the street.”
Paige’s complexion paled even further. “Is he okay?” she gasped. Then she pressed her lips together in a silent prayer.
“No. He died.”
“That’s not…” she whispered as her eyes filled with tears. “That’s not possible.”
“I’m sorry,” Lara mouthed, wincing.
“You’re wrong, you’re wrong. You have to be wrong.”
“I wish I were. I saw it happen.”
Paige covered her face with her hand as she started to cry. “First my sister and now…” She broke off, sobbing silently.
Lara was startled. Over the past few weeks, she had been so absorbed in her own pain and guilt over her parents’ deaths that she’d forgotten that other people had been hurting as well. God, she’d been so selfish, so callous. “I’m sorry,” she said again. “Please, I’m so sorry.”
Her aunt reached out for her with her good arm and Lara sank into her embrace. And as they cried together, she almost felt forgiven.
But then it had changed somehow. When he caught her trying to escape, he would beat her so fiercely that he would weep over his own cruelty afterwards, his perfect face contorted with shame and sorrow. She would sit next to him then, her blood glistening like liquid rubies in the firelight, and she would lay her hand on his shoulder. And he would turn to her—every time—and ask, "Do you love me, angel?"
And she would say, "No."
But he knew.
He let her play the part of the strong one—the one who couldn't cry, couldn't elicit any tenderness. The one possessed by raw passion that occluded all emotion. But he knew the truth. He knew how weak she truly was.
She had tried to run from him, but she’d always known that he would find her. And it was her shame that she never fought him when he did. She needed him to hit her, if only so she’d know that she was really there. He was her reference point, her mirror, her beacon, her religion. She hated him, but she needed him, and he tore her apart. He fed on who she was—her heart, her soul, her energy—until there was nothing left to her.
Bound by blood because he had saved her life...
…love you always, love you madly...
To hell with it.
Her moment had come. She was going to run again, but this time he wouldn't be able to stop her. For the first time in her life, she would be strong. She would live the part she had always played, and die. When her blood ran, she would be free, and he would finally understand what he had done to her. He would know that he had underestimated her strength and her will, and he had overestimated his own.
She pointed the knife at her stomach. And as before, she didn't brace herself. She breathed even when the blade was inside her and her blood came oozing out. She imagined the pain and the hate rushed out with it.
Let me be exorcized, let me be free…
Lifting her head, she saw that Paige was still sleeping. The doctor had come in earlier to give her a strong sedative to help her rest. Lara wasn’t sure how long it would last, but she wished that it would be forever, because there would be so much pain for Paige to face when she woke. But then, sleep hadn’t done Lara any favors, and neither had any of the other escape tactics she had conjured over the last few weeks. Reality would always lie in wait for you. There was nothing to do but face it, charge through it, and hope that you come out of it in one piece on the other side. It was a leap of faith, as Marc had said.
She pressed her cool hand against her cheek. Her face was hot from crying, and her eyes were raw from scrubbing at her tears. The room was utterly silent except for the humming of the machines that were monitoring Paige. Lara wasn’t sure what had woken her until she shifted in her chair, trying to stretch out her crooked spine.
Kabran was in the room. He was standing just a few feet away, staring at her.
Lara had expected the ghost to be smug the next time she saw him, gloating over his kill. But Kabran was solemn as he watched her. It felt like he was studying her, searching for some answer in her eyes that she didn’t have.
She should have lunged at him. She wanted to, but she felt too drained. Too hollow. “Aren’t you happy?” she asked him softly.
He looked away. “It was your choice.”
He believed that, she realized. He truly did. “It was yours, too.”
“Oh, that’s where you’re wrong, angel. I’ve never had a choice where you’re concerned.”
The quiet sadness in his voice moved her, even though she knew better. “Why not?”
“You are my life.”
Lara almost laughed at that. “But you’re not even alive.”
“Merely a figure of speech. I told you, I exist for you.”
“But why?” she asked in exasperation. “I’m just a person. I’m nothing. Why are you wasting your existence on me?”
His dark eyes met hers again. “I love you always, I love you madly,” he whispered.
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s everything you need to know.”
Lara got up from her chair and stormed up to the ghost. She needed her anger now, because she felt too vulnerable without it. Even after all that had happened, she was too easily seduced when he was this soft, this despondent. “You’re not wanted,” she told him heatedly. “I don’t want you. So just let me go and move on.”
His expression hardened as he switched gears along with her. “You say that, but you don’t mean it.”
“The hell I don’t.”
“Don’t you remember what the long hours of the night were like without me? Do you really think you can face that again?”
Lara narrowed her eyes. “You stayed away from me that night on purpose, didn’t you?”
He smiled. “The pain nearly destroyed you, angel. And now you have another death on your conscience. How will you make it through tonight if I’m not there?”
“I suppose that I’ll survive like every other person in mourning survives.”
“It’ll devour you from the inside out.”
“Maybe it’s devouring you,” she snapped.
Something flickered in his eyes. “I’ll do whatever it takes to have you, Lara.” He laughed bitterly. “You think you’re so much better than me, don’t you? You always have.”
“I’m not the person that you once knew, Kabran. You might want me to be her, but I’m not. I had a life before you and I’ll have one once you’re gone.”
But the ghost didn’t seem to hear her. “You think you’re above me. Beyond me.” He took a step forward, closing the distance between them. “I’ll show you who you really are, angel.”
Kabran’s hands clasped her face and held her still as he brought his mouth down over hers. His tongue pried her lips open as he reached for the collar of her shirt. He ripped it open, sending the buttons flying.
Lara placed her hands on his chest, trying to shove him away from her, but he was immovable. She screamed into his mouth as he pushed her onto the floor. Her back was pressed against the cold tile as reached for the button of her jeans.
And then she fought him. She didn’t scream again or cry. With every ounce of strength she possessed, she tore at him as hard as he was tearing at her. But he was stronger than she could ever be. His dark eyes were empty as he pinned her wrists over her head, and she knew that he was nothing more than an animal then. Savagely, he threw himself on her, using her hair to twist her face to his. He kissed her with teeth and tongue scraping, and when Lara bit down, it only seemed to heighten his madness.
It was all so familiar, from the blood in her mouth to the blood on his hands—it was always been rape with them. She could almost imagine that Kabran’s body was not so cold now, but as hot as it had been when he was alive, when blood raged through his veins. Every touch and scratch burned her. So raw, this act, and it had usually been she who had initiated it in the past. There was something rising up inside of her—desire, maybe. Lust. Whatever it was, it intensified with his every kiss, every bite. Her heart was pounding, adrenaline spinning through her head. There was no way to fight this. She was starting to succumb to it when she looked up.
Marc stood over Kabran’s shoulder. “Get the hell off of her!” He tried to grab the ghost, but his hands grasped nothing but air.
Kabran spared the blond boy no attention as he ripped open the zipper of her jeans. And for a moment, she stopped fighting him. She just watched Marc’s fists passing through the ghost’s body and she watched Kabran’s nails scrape her skin as he started to pull her jeans off her hips.
How could he be tangible and intangible at the same time?
The ghost froze, realizing that she’d quit his game. He looked down at her with that strange expression on his face again, his chest heaving with phantom breath. It was the same look he’d given her outside the hospital, after he’d accidentally hit her. But Lara recognized it now from her dream—from her first life with Kabran. As he wept by the firelight, she would lay her bloodstained hand on his shoulder. And then he would turn to her with that exact expression, and ask, “Do you love me, angel?”
Shame. Regret. Fear. Sorrow. Desperation. It was all there, in that look. But he’d hit her so many times already. Why was he racked with remorse now?
His eyes widened for an instant, as he understood what she was seeing, and then they went blank. It was as if she had been standing in the entryway to his soul, and then he’d slammed the door in her face.
As Lara opened her mouth to speak, Kabran vanished. Whatever she’d been going to say was lost.
The world suddenly felt stark and white. She was cold without his weight on top of her. Shivering, she turned on her side. “God…”
Marc crouched down next to her, but thankfully he didn’t touch her. Lara was so badly shaken that she didn’t know what she would have done if he’d tried. She didn’t trust herself any more. “Are you all right?” he asked.
Pulling the pieces of her shirt together, she murmured, “I don’t know.” There were no more words to explain it. She had almost lost herself. She’d been half a second away from becoming the animal that Kabran wanted. If Marc hadn’t come in the room at that moment, she would have.
“I shouldn’t have left you alone for so long. I just didn’t want to bother you and Paige.”
Lara bolted upright. During the fight with Kabran, she had completely forgotten that her aunt was even in the room. Looking up at the bed, she saw that Paige was still asleep—thank god for those sedatives.
She turned back to Marc. “You can’t protect me,” she said softly. “You couldn’t even touch him.”
He flinched. She had hurt him with those words, and she hadn’t meant to. “I tried.”
“I know that,” Lara swore. She’d seen his hands go straight through Kabran, even as the ghost had been touching her. “It wasn’t your fault…”
He rolled his eyes. “Story of my life. Person I care about is being hurt and there’s nothing that I can do about it.
Lara barely heard him. The thought that had been nagging at her, hovering just out of her reach, suddenly struck her full force. “He can’t touch anything but me,” she gasped.
Marc looked at her, confused. “What?”
“That’s why you couldn’t pull him off of me,” Lara said. “That’s why his fist went right through you before and he ended up hitting me.”
“Are you sure?”
"Yes," she said with conviction. "Oh god, that’s why he had to pull the flickering trick outside, to distract Tim and the driver of the car! I couldn’t figure out why he would go through something so elaborate to kill Tim, but it was because he had no choice. He couldn’t kill him on his own.”
“What about Paige?” Marc asked her. “He pushed her down the stairs.”
“No, I don’t think he did. When she was awake before, she said that she thought something startled her. I don’t know what sort of stunt he used on her, but it was obviously enough to scare her. Maybe she backed up and hit the railing of the staircase—remember how low that is? If she’d had enough momentum, she could have easily fallen back over it.”
Marc still looked skeptical. “I don’t know about ‘easily’. She could have caught her balance. She could have done a dozen different things, other than fall.”
“But that’s my point. He wouldn’t have done something that chancy if he’d had a better option. He just…saw an opportunity and took advantage of it. Just like he did with Tim.”
“So, you think that unless we give him an opportunity—”
“—he can’t hurt any of you,” she finished for him. “So I think Paige is safe for now. What could he possibly do to her when she’s just lying in a hospital bed?”
“He’s probably thinking the same thing,” Marc said grimly.
Lara wanted to shake him. It wasn’t like him to sound so pessimistic—that was her thing. “Come on,” she said. “At least we’ve figured out that he has a limitation.”
“But…wait, didn’t you say that he handed you a knife last night? He was able to touch that.”
She faltered. Kabran had given her a knife to use, and she’d sliced her thumb open on it. But he’d pulled it out of thin air, and it had disappeared as soon as he had attacked her. It couldn’t have been real. “I think the knife was a part of him,” she said slowly.
“Part of him,” Marc repeated.
“Just like his clothes, you know? But I could touch it because I can touch him.”
“You’re not making any sense, Lara.”
“He said once that I am his anchor, that I make him real. If he’s real to me and the knife was a part of his…physical form, then it was real to me too.”
“So…he could stab you any time he wants?”
She shrugged. “I guess so.”
“Then why doesn’t he? If he wants you so badly, why doesn’t he just kill you already?”
Lara shook her head as a chill passed through her. She wasn’t sure she wanted to know the answer to that question.
Part 11
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