Lara was sitting on the window seat, her fingers nervously gripping its edge. The light pouring in from the window behind her was deep and golden—afternoon light. It proved that only a few hours had passed since she’d heard Paige’s scream, even though it felt more like a few days.
The thought of her aunt made her stomach clench. She was sure that Kabran couldn’t touch Paige, but she was afraid that he would still be able to find a way to hurt her now that Lara wasn’t there to stop him. More than that, she felt guilty about leaving her aunt’s side. But she and Marc needed to talk and to plan, and they couldn’t do that at the hospital. At least Marc’s mother had offered to stay with Paige so that he could take Lara home. It was a small comfort to know that if Paige woke up, she wouldn’t be alone.
“The basics,” she repeated. “We know that he’s a ghost. The spirit of someone who was once alive.”
“And he knows what he is. He’s not one of those ghosts who think that they’re still living—”
“Like The Sixth Sense.”
Marc smiled at her. “Right. He knows exactly what he is. And he’s not trapped between worlds against his will. You said something about you being his anchor?”
She nodded. “That’s what he told me, at least.”
“So we know that he is consciously staying here, for a specific purpose.”
“For me,” Lara said.
“Because he wants you to kill yourself,” Marc agreed. “But why? Once you die, your soul will move on again, right? He’ll have to find you and seduce you all over again. Why not just…haunt you or something for the rest of your life?”
“I don’t know,” she replied, shaking her head. “He just said that by doing it, we could be together. That life and death meant nothing to us.”
“Maybe…maybe it’s like with serial killers—it’s not just about killing, there’s something in the way they kill that’s significant.”
But Kabran wasn’t a serial killer. Lara had seen sadness and pain in his eyes when he left himself unguarded. He didn’t lack human emotion. And he knew empathy—it was what had drawn him to her in the first place. Whatever he’d done to her, it was never about power or torture. It was about her. Them. She knew that instinctively, even though she couldn’t put it into words.
“…back to the beginning,” Marc was saying now. Lara blinked and realized that she had completely zoned out. “You said that you’ve had dreams about him. Flashbacks?”
She nodded slowly. It wasn’t until he raised his eyebrows at her that she understood; he wanted the details, but was afraid to push her for them. He didn’t want her shutting down on him again.
His concern was valid, but Lara was beyond that now. The life she’d led with Kabran…it meant nothing to her any more. It no longer made her feel special or strong when she thought about it. She only felt sad for the person she’d been. And embarrassed. But things had gone too far with Kabran for her to care about her ego now. “I don’t really remember why,” she said in a clear voice, “but I know that I felt hopeless. Sick inside. So I tried to kill myself. He said that he saw me do it and he fell in love with me right then. He saved my life.”
Marc avoided her eyes. “And you?” he asked softly. “Did you love him?”
“No. He and I…we were addicted to each other. We were all either of us had.” She paused, sorting through the fragments of memories that had come to her the night she and Kabran had spent kissing. The pieces were so vivid and jagged that focusing on them made her head ache. In the end, what she knew was that there had been passion without tenderness, desire without respect, and so much hurt. “We laughed. We fought. We fucked. We hated. We needed. That’s about it.”
“And then what?” he asked her as he stared at a spot on her bedroom wall.
“And then...I ran somewhere he couldn’t follow. Or so I thought. Turns out he loved me too much to let me go.”
“Goddamn it,” Marc snapped, finally looking at her again. He clenched his fists. “That’s not love.”
He was angry. In spite of his relaxed pose, she could see the rigidity of his body and the quickness of his breath. It warmed her that he cared enough to be angry on her behalf. She got up off the window seat and sat down next to him on the bed. “I know that.”
Marc relaxed a little as he sat up and turned towards her. “Do you? Really?”
“I think so. Now.”
“But why not before? Just because of him?”
That was the easy out, but Lara couldn’t take it. If she’d been an inherently strong or content person, Kabran wouldn’t have been able to prey on her, not even after the accident. The truth was that there was darkness within her soul. Even before her parents died she’d been a pessimist—a realist. Hope and faith had never come easily to her. But even then, she thought that she might have been all right if she’d had a stable home, a solid example of a healthy relationship.
“I don’t know that I’d ever seen real love before,” she said. “I mean, it’s on TV and in movies, but…my parents were unhappy for a really long time. Years. Maybe as far back as I can remember. They were always fighting behind closed doors, in the car, at the dinner table. Yelling, and hissing, and making sarcastic comments. And I was used to it, I guess. Honestly, I thought that everyone did that.
“I guess some people think that when their parents get divorced, at least the fighting will stop. But I didn’t want it to stop. If they were fighting, then they still cared enough about each other to fight. They could still hurt each other, and as long as they could do that, then they still loved each other.”
“It wasn’t like that for me when my parents fought,” Marc said. But the tone of his voice wasn’t argumentative or patronizing. He wasn’t judging her now, he was simply sharing. “There was too much anger in my father’s eyes. Too much fear in my mother’s face. Even when he wasn’t hitting her, things were…high-strung, I guess. We were always on edge, waiting for the next explosion. Even my dad.”
“Have you talked to him since…”
His expression hardened. “A few times. He calls sometimes when he knows that my mother won’t be home.” He shrugged tiredly. “We’re polite to each other. He lives down by Lancaster with his new wife.” Marc smiled at her ironically. “He swears that he’s changed.”
“You don’t believe it?”
“Actually, I hope that it isn’t true. The thought of him moving on, being happy with his new wife after all the hell he put my mother and me through…”
He had visibly tensed again. When Lara looked down at his hand, she could see that his fingers were curled into a tight fist and his knuckles were turning white. She reached for him and he let her turn his fist over, spreading his fingers open. As she trailed her fingertips over his palm, she heard his breath catch.
Then his green eyes were locked on hers. And it felt like it had when he touched her bare leg that morning he’d cleaned her cuts. Only this time when she saw the desire in his gaze, she didn’t shy away. The space between them crackled with energy. Very slowly, he leaned into her, bending his head until she could feel his breath against her lips.
But the kiss never came.
“Are you with me this time?” he murmured playfully, his mouth less than an inch from hers.
Lara laughed, remembering how she’d frozen when he kissed her at the fair. “Last time wasn’t my fault. You surprised me.”
“Okay.” He leaned in slightly. “Well, I’m giving you fair warning now.”
“And here I thought you were just trying to drive me crazy.”
She was too close to him to see his smile, but the sparkle in his eyes gave him away. “That, too.”
When his lips finally touched hers, Lara was still taken by surprise. She’d never known that a kiss could feel like this. His mouth was warm and soft, and she melted against him. Her arms slipped around his neck, drawing him closer. Her head was swimming, but somehow she was still grounded. Lines of fire ran through her, and yet she didn’t burn. Desire swept over her, but didn’t consume. And even as Marc’s light poured into her, illuminating some of the darkness that had festered inside of her for so long, she never lost herself. She was soaring, but she was still safe.
This was such a radically different sensation than being with Kabran that it was impossible to think of it as the same gesture. And yet, the connection she felt was just as strong, and she knew that Marc could feel it too, that he had always felt it.
After a while, he pulled away, resting his forehead against hers as they caught their breath. Lara still clung to him for support, her hands gripping his broad shoulders as she listened to her heartbeat slow. She felt dazed and more than a little peculiar. She was flying and she was calm. Impossibly strong and deliciously weak. God, she’d had it all wrong before now. How could she have gotten it so very wrong? This was peace, this was life, this was lo—
“This is touching, truly,” a clipped voice said. Lara whipped around to see Kabran standing by the window. There was a smirk on his face, but rage shone in his dark eyes. “I’ve got goose bumps.”
She stood up, putting herself in front of Marc protectively. A dozen biting retorts came to mind, ones that would hurt and humiliate him, but Lara said none of them. She wasn’t sure where she stood with Kabran now. The last time she’d seen him, there had been so much shame and regret in his eyes. It was as if she’d gotten a glimpse of his soul and had found something unexpected. Something fragile and infinitely precious. It reminded her of what Tim had told her—that Paige had been able to see the person that he was supposed to be shining inside of the person that he’d been. And it reminded her of what Marc had said—that she could be better than she was, if she only tried.
Lara had always thought that she knew Kabran—everything he was and everything that he could be. And of course he thought the same of her. But because of Marc, she knew now that Kabran was wrong about her; she could be more than what she’d always been. And she was beginning to wonder if that was true of Kabran as well.
But as he stood before her now, whatever Lara had seen in him was masked behind a cold smile and a threatening laugh. “Interesting. Your parents are dead, your uncle was just killed this morning, your aunt is in the hospital, and here you are, making out with your new golden boy. How selfish are you?”
Lara steeled herself against his words. He was lying—twisting the truth around to suit his purposes. She was here with Marc to figure out how to get rid of Kabran, to save him and Paige. She’d done nothing wrong. Nothing.
When she didn’t rise to him, his lip curled in a sneer for a scant second, but then his perfect smile reappeared. “And you know what else I find interesting? The dignity with which your uncle died. No crying or sniveling. Not like your mother at all.”
For a moment, Lara couldn’t breathe. It felt like Kabran’s sharp words had punctured her lungs. Her mother’s blood-spattered face flashed before her eyes and she could almost hear her voice, begging Lara to save her. Her stomach twisted and she tasted bile in the back of her throat.
Marc stood up behind her and placed his hand on her back, between her shoulder blades, and it jolted her back into the present. The nausea faded as quickly as it had come. She leaned into him slightly, absorbing his strength, and forced herself to take a deep breath. Then she focused on the ghost again and smiled. “Got anything else?”
This time Kabran’s sneer didn’t fade.
Lara pressed her advantage. “Come on,” she challenged him. “Let me have it. Tell me that it’s all my fault that my parents are dead. Tell me how excruciating it was for them and how they died hating me. Tell me that the car broke every bone in Tim’s body. Tell me that he never wanted me in this house, and now he’s dead because of me. Tell me that Paige will die next and watching that will be like watching my mother die all over again.” She took another stride towards him. Her voice rang throughout the bedroom. “Come on! Tell me how Marc could do so much better than me. Tell me that I’m a depraved slut and you’re the only one who could ever love me. You’d better think of something good because I know that words are the only weapon you have right now. You tried to break me down at the hospital and you couldn’t. And you know damn well that you can’t lay a finger on Marc. So give it to me, Kabran. Don’t disappoint me now.”
“You’re forgetting one thing, angel,” the ghost said coldly. “I may not be able to touch him, but I can touch you. So I’d say that leaves me with one more weapon.”
With frightening speed, Kabran darted forward and shoved her. Lara stumbled backwards into Marc. He tried to catch her, but the ghost had pushed her so hard that her momentum knocked Marc down as well.
She landed half on top of him, with her torso on his legs. Before she could find her equilibrium, Kabran grabbed her braid. She screamed as he used her hair to slide her body further up on top of Marc. The blond boy tried to squirm out from underneath her, but a massive weight suddenly materialized on top of Lara’s back, pressing her down on him. Kabran was using her body to hold Marc in place.
The ghost’s icy hands closed over her wrists. She had placed her hands on either side of Marc’s head to brace herself, but now Kabran was dragging them toward the blond boy’s neck. She fought, trying to get up off of Marc, but the weight on her back was too heavy. She dug her fingernails into the floorboard, but they bent and broke as Kabran forced her hands down to Marc’s throat.
“No!” Lara cried as panic seized her. “No! Stop!”
She twisted her hands around, trying to break through the weakest part of Kabran’s grip—where his thumb and fingers met as they encircled her wrists. For one glorious moment, she thought she’d gotten free, but he had only readjusted his hold on her. His fingers crushed hers as he wrapped them around Marc’s neck.
“Oh God! No, no, no, no!” She turned her head to see Kabran’s face beside hers. “Let me go. Please don’t do this.”
Her pleas were useless. The ghost tightened his grip on her, forcing her to tighten her grip around Marc. She thrashed, her braid whipping through the air around her.
When Marc’s face started to turn red, his hands came up and he tried to claw her fingers away from him. His nails cut into her skin and Lara realized that he was fighting now out of sheer instinct. He didn’t care if he hurt her. He didn’t care about anything beyond surviving. And as his eyes rolled back in his head, he swung his fist at her face. The punch connected with her temple and Lara saw stars. Before she had time to recover, he punched her face again, right under her eye, and her vision went dark.
Falling.
Down.
Nowhere to land. There was nothing here. Just a silken veil of softness and hush.
Peace.
A low rumbling started, nothing more than a faint vibration. But it triggered a subtle tremor in the darkness, and what had been flat, now found shape.
A pinpoint of white pricked the veil. Bleeding outward, it mixed with the blackness, and color was born.
Pink.
The color flowed like a wave. Expanding, and then contracting. The vibration was suddenly thunderous. The world trembled and quaked. And she was slowly being drawn up through the veil.
Pain.
There was a burning somewhere inside of her. As the pink became more vivid against the darkness, and the rumbling grew louder, the burning spread through her. Her body woke. Her hearing cleared. Her eyes focused.
Kabran.
He was poised above her. His pink satin lips were parted as he cried out. He was holding her and his sobs were shaking them both.
“I’m so sorry. Come back to me, angel. I love you…”
She had wanted this. She had wanted him to hurt. To regret. She had wanted to tear him apart as violently as he had torn her. But as he cried now, her heart broke for him.
For them.
“Why? Why did you do this? Don’t leave me…”
Breath passed over her lips as she tried to whisper his name. But she made no sound and the effort exhausted her. The darkness was pulling her down again, promising peace and silence. For an instant, she fought it. She tried to stay above the surface, but the darkness sucked her under like a riptide.
I’m sorry, Kabran. Please forgive me…
And there was nothing.
She sat up slowly and waited for the room to stop spinning. Foolishly and selfishly, she listened for some small sound that would tell her Marc was still in the house. But she heard none.
He was gone and he wasn’t coming back. Kabran may not have taken his life, but she knew that something inside of Marc must have died when he hit her.
The sun had set while she’d been unconscious. The ghost was still with her, staring out the window. Waiting. Lara could only see his profile, but his mouth was grim and his posture was wilted. He seemed as tired and weary as she felt. This fight had left them both drained.
It always had.
She wondered what she’d been like in all of her other lives. When Kabran found her, had she been more easily seduced? He’d said that she always came to him willingly in the end, and she wondered now if she had even tried to fight. She couldn’t have been this fucked up in all of her other lives, could she? She couldn’t have always been lost in despair. She had a predisposition for it, true, but surely she’d lived a few lives that hadn’t been marred by some tragedy that he could use to his advantage. What would his ammunition have been then? If Lara’s parents hadn’t died, would she have been this vulnerable to him?
She would never know. That was the terrible truth, and there was no way around it. There was no point in dwelling on the “what-ifs”. Time only moved in one direction, as Marc had once said. Lara couldn’t go back to save her parents or Tim. She could only do what was necessary to protect the people she still had left.
“You win,” she said softly.
Kabran turned toward her. In the moonlight, the sharp angles of his face cast his eyes and the hollows of his cheeks in shadow. “I win,” he repeated in a dull voice.
Lara looked at him steadily. “You win, all right? It’s only been one day, and I’m already tired of this. I know it’s only a matter of time before you find a way to kill Paige and Marc, and I don’t want them to die. So I’ll do what you want me to do.”
She thought that he would have smiled and purred at her, but he still seemed somber, like he had when she’d woken up in Paige’s hospital room. “I don’t want a martyr, angel,” the ghost said softly.
“How did you think this was going to end?” she asked. The question could have been rhetorical and sarcastic, but it wasn’t. It felt like their battle had been put on hold for this moment, at least. “Did you think that I would die loving you, after all you’ve done to me?”
Lara found her answer in his silence. “So Marc was right,” she said thoughtfully. “It’s about more than me dying. You aren’t trying to scare me into yielding to you by killing the people I love. You’re doing it because you want me in despair. That’s the only time you have any power over me. You need me to need you.”
“I need you to love me,” he replied. “I need you to love me as much as I love you.”
But Lara knew that she never had, not even in their first life together. Maybe on some level, Kabran knew that as well, but he just couldn’t accept it. Maybe by following her from life to life, getting her to make the ultimate sacrifice to be with him, he was desperately trying to disprove what he knew in his heart to be true.
“I want this to end,” she whispered passionately. Lara stood up and went over to him. She looked deeply into his eyes. “I’m tired of my life, Kabran. I’m tired of hurting. I know you can make it go away, so let’s just end this now.”
Lara held out her hand. She didn’t want him to think about this for too long. If he did, he might decide that she hadn’t suffered enough, that she didn’t need him enough. He might decide that she was lying. And Lara just wanted to get this over with.
After a moment of hesitation, Kabran flicked his wrist and the knife appeared in his hand. She took it from him, curling her blood-stained fingers around the handle. Then she took a small step away from him as stared at the reflection of her eyes on the blade.
It seemed so real. She knew that it was only real to her and to Kabran because it was made from the same matter and energy that he was made from. But it would feel just as sharp and cold inside of her now as one of the knives from the kitchen downstairs.
Lara couldn’t say that she wasn’t tempted. Marc had helped her change, but her self-destructive nature was deeply rooted. She had to force herself to remember Marc, and to remember what she thought she saw in Kabran’s soul. She forced herself to remember her dream.
Confident in her resolve, she looked up at the ghost. “I asked you once if you knew why I killed myself in our first life together. Do you remember?”
Kabran narrowed his eyes warily. “Yes. And I told you that I don’t know.”
“Well, I do know now, and I want to tell you.”
“Angel—” he started.
“I did it to hurt you,” Lara said. Her voice was suddenly clear and sharp. It had shed the weary warmth, exposing its sharp edges. Realization dawned in Kabran’s eyes. “I did it to be free of you. I did it because every second that I was with you, I lost a little more of myself. You made me into someone that I hated.”
Pain contorted Kabran’s perfect face into something ugly. She could see the shame and regret breaking through, even as he struggled desperately to control it. He could lash out at her at any second, but Lara still pressed on. She couldn’t afford to be afraid of him, otherwise she might lose her nerve.
“I heard you cry for me. When I was dying, I heard you tell me that you were sorry. I heard you begging me to stay with you. And you know what I realized?”
“Stop!” he shouted at her. His chest was heaving, but he still didn’t attack her. Instead, he actually stepped back. She was making him give way before her, breaking through his walls the way that Marc had broken through hers.
“I was sorry. I never loved you, Kabran. But I was—am—sorry for everything that I did to you. Because I know that I’m not innocent in all that happened with us. I know that I hurt you, over and over and over. I know that whatever sickness you brought out in me, I did the same to you.”
“Don’t!” he hissed at her with tears in his eyes.
But Lara wouldn’t back down. She closed the distance between them, laying her hand on his cold cheek. “There’s goodness in you. I can see it right now, fighting to break through. You don’t want to hurt me. You have to shut down a part of you to do it. And it’s tearing you apart. Don’t you see? You can be better, if find the strength. It’s hard and it hurts like hell, but I think it’s worth it.”
The ghost’s shoulders shook with silent sobs. He reached for her, sliding his fingers into her hair. “But I love you, Lara. I love you always...”
“You don’t,” she insisted. “I’m just a distraction. An excuse. And you can’t go on like this—chasing after me instead of facing yourself. Because I’m not going to let you stand in the way of my life any more. And I’m not going to stand in your way any more either.”
She heard Kabran’s quick intake of breath as his lips parted with a silent question.
“I’m not going to kill myself for you,” Lara told him. “Not now or ever again. I’m setting us both free.”
Then in a single, smooth motion, Lara lifted the knife and plunged it into the ghost’s chest. His fingers trailed out of her hair as he fell to his knees on the floor.
“Lara...” he gasped.
“I’m sorry, Kabran,” she said pleadingly. “I know you’re sorry, too. It’s time to let it all go.”
He looked up into her eyes and something like understanding passed between them. And Lara realized that, although she’d never loved him, she’d never truly hated him either. She just hoped that they could both be something better without each other.
Light dripped like blood from the knife wound, seeping into his black clothing. And wherever the light touched, he became translucent. At first there were only thin streams trailing across his chest, but it slowly spread outwards until she could see the wall through his abdomen. Then his arms and legs. Then his face. He faded and paled, melting into the fabric of the universe.
Lara stared at the spot where Kabran had been until spots danced in front of her eyes. And when she was sure that she was finally, utterly alone, she crumbled. Collapsing on the floor, she cried and she smiled, laughed and sobbed. She felt overwhelmed and overcome, and for the first time in her entire existence, wonderfully unafraid.
Part 12
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