Absolution Read online

  “Yes, it is,” I said, keeping my gaze on Luke, fully aware that he would wonder what I was talking about.

  “Is what?” he asked.

  “It’s true that I love you.” I took his hand, stepped back and swung it in the air between us then let go.

  “His heart isn’t fully convinced,” Albert’s voice snuck into my ear. So close, a knot formed in my throat. Still, I didn’t give him the satisfaction of looking at him. He moved into my line of vision, inches away.

  “Nice try, but you can’t read thoughts like Matthias can.”

  “I never said I could,” Luke said.

  “I—I know. I wasn’t—um—forget it. What brought this on, anyway?” I gestured to the pipe lying on the floor.

  Luke shifted feet, shrugged. “Just stuff.”

  “Krissy?”

  Luke’s mop of blond hair swished when he shook his head. “Nah.”

  “The funeral?”

  “Yeah. It’s hard, you know? Sometimes I wonder why I can see Matthias. I mean, you… you’re… special that way. But what am I?”

  “Nothing. Absolutely nothing,” Albert slid close to Luke’s ear. My heart pattered.

  “Somewhere inside you believe in yourself.” I stepped closer. A fight between belief and disbelief thrashed over his young gaze. “Count it as a gift and don’t try to figure it out. Just hold on to it.”

  “Oh, by all means analyze,” Albert hissed in Luke’s ear. I ground my teeth to keep from spouting off at him. Control, control, control.

  “I don’t feel…” Luke hemmed. “Worthy of something so…”

  “And you aren’t.” Albert zigzagged behind Luke. “You’re nothing.

  Absolutely no—”

  “You are worthy.” I grabbed hold of Luke’s sleeves in my clenched fists.

  “Close your eyes.”

  “Z—”

  “Do it.” I tugged. His dark blond lashes fluttered against his cheeks.

  “Picture Matthias.” Albert’s movements behind Luke started to slow but I didn’t take my eyes from Luke’s face. “The light he carries with him. See it.

  Picture it. Feel it.”

  Gradually, Luke’s troubled countenance began to lighten. Albert, watching keenly, slowed to a stop. Still, I ignored the curiosity nibbling at me to look at him and stick my tongue out. The tension drawing Luke’s face taut released like a sail free in the wind.

  “Do you feel it?” I asked.

  Luke nodded slightly. “Yeah. It’s amazing, isn’t it? He’s amazing.”

  “He’s perfect.”

  Albert’s laugh filled the air. “He’s far from perfect. He’s deceiving you, Zoe.” He floated to my right, hanging close like an annoying gnat. “Just like he deceived other women in his life.”

  My heart pinched. I bit my lips to keep from snapping back.

  “Ask him.” He leaned close. “Ask him about the women he savored while he was mortal.”

  My fists clenched. “You sold him out to pay a debt! Your own son!

  You’re pond scum. A freaking leech.”

  Albert cocked his head. What? He’s pretending like he didn’t condemn his own son to death? The air around Albert drew tight. He fixed himself directly behind Luke and stared into my eyes. My heart faltered, I was sure it would stop. The screams of the souls tied in the noose around his neck seeped into the air. Their stretched whiteness writhing in torment nearly stole my fixed gaze from Luke’s, but I remained focused.

  “Z?” Luke’s voice was quiet. He glanced left and right.

  “It’s not you,” I said to him. “I’ll explain later. Don’t freak about it, okay?”

  “Um. If you say so.” Luke dug into his front pocket and pulled out the weed. His arm extended, and he took my clenched fist. My hand relaxed, and he squeezed the bag into my palm.

  “Get rid of it for me.”

  I closed my fingers around the crispy mix and nodded, relief filling my soul. I glared at Albert, whose face remained dark with displeasure.

  “Is Matthias here?” Luke asked with another glance around.

  “No.”

  “Didn’t think you’d talk to him like that.” Luke crossed to his bed and crumpled onto the bedspread. “I’m wasted.”

  The sweet peace of sleep called to me. I wanted this day to be over.

  Wanted to be done with Albert forever. But Albert stood unmoved, so alert and irate I didn’t dare leave Luke’s bedroom.

  I locked my knees, held the weed tight in my fist and refused to budge.

  Silence crept into the room. Time crawled on. I wasn’t sure how many minutes went by, but soon Luke’s deep snore filled the air. Good, he’s asleep. Safe.

  Albert circled me, his pace the slow drip of thick, diseased mucus. His piercing gaze punctured my heart with fear.

  “The beauty of being immortal,” he began, “is you never need rest. You can tease and tempt and taunt as long as you want to.”

  “You’re not immortal, retard,” I snarled. “Matthias is immortal. You only think you’re immortal.”

  Albert threw his head back in a hearty laugh and continued to circle me. “Is that what Matthias told you? That boy was always a good storyteller.”

  “You’re the one who bought the story,” I whispered between teeth. “You think you have a body, but you don’t. You’re nothing but a psycho-ghost-leech living off old memories and feelings because you screwed up.”

  “I like getting under your skin.”

  “You’re not under anything,” I spat, “except the delusion that you have something you don’t.”

  “I’ve no delusions, Zoe, darling.”

  His circling made me dizzy, so I turned in tandem with him, every now and then checking Luke’s sleeping form. “So, you like being owned, is that it?”

  I snickered, livid momentum building in my blood, forging my weary muscles to alertness like beaten soldiers called back to the battlefield.

  “You’re mistaken.”

  “No, you’re mistaken. Matthias isn’t taking orders from someone who won’t deliver on his promises. He’s smarter than that. Must have gotten those genes from his mother.”

  Albert stopped. His eyes narrowed just enough to signal fury. A fury I would have missed if I’d blinked. Around us, the air shimmied. My heart flipped in my chest. Is he going to kill me now?

  Matthias?

  Nothing more happened.

  Good, I nailed him. I wanted to slap him. Beat him over the head with a baseball bat. Hang him by that ridiculous tie from the ceiling.

  What the?! I couldn’t believe how carried away my thoughts were. I had to stop the anger, or I’d be no better than Albert.

  “Give yourself to me now and this will end.”

  I shook my head. If I wanted to be rid of him, I had to keep my heart pure. Then, he’d have to leave, wouldn’t he? Wasn’t that why he’d left my parent’s bedroom earlier? The heavy tiredness settling again into my body, dragging me south, shouted I’d better do something fast, or I was going to knock off right there.

  I collapsed to the floor, leaned my back against Luke’s bed and sighed.

  “Leave.” Matthias had used the word and it had worked to dismiss Albert.

  Maybe I could, too.

  Albert towered over me, studying me. His face was impossible to read, and, I was too tired to try. Would he wrap that noose around my neck and drag me to hell with him? Matthias wasn’t here, so I figured the answer was no.

  Then what was happening?

  I looked up at Albert, my eyes growing heavier with each weary blink.

  He remained alert, his eyes fastened with mine.

  “Leave,” I slurred, sleep clawing through me. I thought of Matthias, picturing his serene face, feeling his calming spirit weave through me. In my weary state, the comfort so completely overcame me that I closed my eyes for a moment—just one—to rest, and when I opened them again, Albert was gone.

  Chapter Five

  ____________________


  Someone tapped my shoulder in that annoying way that made me want to scream at them to stop. I didn’t want to move. I was comfortable. Sort of.

  My neck hurt. And my back. I was lying on a fluffy blanket, thank you. I needed more sleep.

  “Z?”

  My eyes opened. Luke’s cocoa Berber carpeting was in my mouth. I lay on my side, neck tweaked, legs twisted like a pretzel. I sat up.

  “You slept in my room?” he asked, amused. He had boxers on—ones with fried eggs and ham—and his hair stuck up like an old dried floor mop.

  He let out a yawn.

  “I guess I did,” I groaned, glanced around. No Albert, thankfully. I stretched, bringing out a myriad of pops from joints and limbs. “Man. What time is it?”

  “We need to head in a half hour.” He twisted his back and it cracked.

  “You’d better jam.”

  I jumped to my feet and scrambled to the bathroom. I didn’t have time to shower, so I ripped off my flannel pjs and cami, sniffed my armpits—no stink, yay—sprayed ten squirts of perfume, then yanked on a fresh pair of underwear, new bra, lavender long-sleeved tee, jeans and threw my hair into a sloppy ponytail.

  My reflection in the bathroom mirror made me cringe: thrown together, and that was being kind. I scrubbed away smeared makeup and quickly reapplied some concealer, blush and bailed on any eye makeup. Too time intensive.

  The light on my phone blinked incessantly alerting me that I had messages. None from Weston. I tried not to let that bug me, but it did. One from Chase.

  u ever hear from krissy? i didn’t

  My fingers raced over the keyboard: yeah tons to tell u

  I grabbed my backpack and grimaced thinking about the studying I hadn’t done—with Brady’s funeral and the chilling events that had followed me into the wee hours of this morning I’d hardly had time to catch two hours of sleep much less study. Oh well. I skipped downstairs and out the door to Luke’s idling car.

  Luke eyed me. “That’s a record for you.” He backed the car onto the street, and the little automobile shuddered in the frosty air. A white sun tried to pierce through clouds over head, but it wasn’t getting the job done and a layer of ice coated every surface, sparkling like sheets of cellophane and diamonds.

  “What a night.” I tipped the passenger-side mirror down, peering at my tired green eyes. Should have brought mascara with me.

  “Yeah.”

  Was Luke sorry I’d encouraged him to not relapse? “I’m proud of you, bud.”

  “Where’d you put the stuff?”

  “Like I’d tell you.” I snickered. But his face remained stoic as he stared out the front window at the street. “I know it’s hard.”

  He scrubbed his jaw.

  A subject change was in order. “Thanks again for picking up Krissy. I didn’t know you two had a class together.”

  “We do?” he asked.

  “That’s what she said.”

  “Huh. She’s pretty nice. I don’t know.”

  “She is.”

  “What do you think is going to happen to her?” he asked.

  “Nothing legally. But that doesn’t change how bad she feels about all of it. It’s obvious she’s scared.”

  “It was an accident,” a tinge of protest was in his tone. “I can’t see her getting reamed for something that wasn’t really her fault.”

  She was already getting reamed—by her father. Even though I still didn’t know details, I couldn’t dismiss the worst possible scenarios from flashing in my head. My stomach churned envisioning her dad with his swarm of evil. Brady’s death might not have been her fault, but Krissy had admitted to me—graveside no less—that she’d egged him into hanging longer.

  Luke reached over and turned up the heater. “It takes a while for it to work,” he said.

  “I know. Thanks.”

  At school, Luke pulled the Samurai into a slit of a parking spot. Other students screeched into the lot alongside us. Luke and I got out and joined the throngs trudging up the drag toward the buildings.

  I caught glances, and wondered if people were looking at me because Brady’s death was still fresh on everyone’s mind.

  Inside, signs had been posted: GRIEF COUNSELORS AVAILABLE

  IN THE OFFICE. The tone quieted as students passed the signs. Would Britt be here? Or would she be at home, hung over?

  Luke and I parted ways and went to class. During second period, my gaze searched reflexively for Britt. She sat at her desk, black spirit perched in eerie stillness on her shoulders, its back arched.

  Britt glared at me.

  I crossed to my desk. Out the corner of my eye, her head, and the head of the creepy crawler on her back, turned in sync with my movement.

  I sat. My gaze swept my fellow students, but their dipped heads, distracted faces or otherwise bored expressions left me unsure that anyone but me sensed the parasite. Mr. Bringhurst’s voice droned on. I couldn’t tune into his lecture, not with Britt and that thing’s attention locked on me.

  Don’t let it get to you.

  Britt’s eyes were latched on mine in a heavy, primal dark stare that, if I allowed it, would scare me. Threaten me. Cause me to shrink. But I’d been in the presence of worse. I wasn’t a wimp.

  A thousand memories of Britt and me flashed through my head: parties, sleepovers, drives with blasting music, hours shopping together, even more hours opening our hearts to each other.

  My heart softened to putty. I wished things were different between us, that we could be friends regardless of what had happened between her and Weston.

  For all I knew, Weston would have nothing more to do with me, anyway. After the weird turn of events at the funeral, Weston had told me he needed some space to think.

  I can’t compete with an angel. His words trickled into my thoughts and I closed my eyes for a second, recalling his voice. A pang of longing echoed through me. I missed him. The humanness of him. The mortal comfort and companionship he provided. His dark chocolate eyes. The way he made me feel wanted. Needed.

  I opened my eyes. Britt hadn’t moved. The black spirit crouched on her back hadn’t either, its sinewy, slickness shimmering, then turning matte, like the ocean surface shifting beneath the force of wind. Its blank, black eyes never blinked, just stared.

  She and I had hung together like conjoined twins for so long, I attributed the look of dull emptiness on her face to the stark realization that she finally understood how alone she was.

  Britt crossed her arms over her desk and buried her head. The creature on her back remained fixed, as if it didn’t care that she was miserable, that she’d moved. And I was certain it didn’t care. The vibe of evil oozing out into the air from the direction of where Britt sat was like the scent of death—uniquely pungent, strong and morbid in its determined demise.

  Death had its grip on Britt’s soul. That was the bottom line. Evil is death. The thought that my former best friend was dying inside and she probably didn’t know it, at least not that she was capable of admitting at this point in her life, sickened me for her.

  What could I do?

  I texted her.

  im sorry about everything i wouldn’t hurt u, u know that I feigned interest in the lecture, faked taking a few notes but glanced at Britt. She sat up, dug into her hoodie pocket and pulled out her cell phone.

  She read the text and her nails tapped out a reply.

  My cell vibrated.

  but u did hurt me and i can never forgive u 4 taking wes

  come on, britt, we’re better than this

  The filmy surface on the creature shimmered, then shifted to matte, then shimmered, the motion building in speed.

  screw u, zoe Britt jerked her messy hair of head my direction, sending me a worn-out glare.

  I slapped my phone shut.

  The black spirit on her back stood on its legs mouth opening and closing around onyx fangs. Britt burst to her feet, her crazed glare on me. “I hate you! You can’t have what you want so you ta
ke it from other people.”

  “Miss Walker, what is going on?” our teacher demanded.

  The class rustled. Stared. Britt remained standing, breath heaving in and out. She pointed a finger at me, her skin blanching red from her neck up to her forehead. Her mouth opened, and two black spirits oozed out, joining the female resident on her back. Together, they whirled around Britt’s head, torso and legs, their mouths gnashing, talon limbs stimulating. “You’ll pay for this!”