Enthralled: Paranormal Diversions (Wicked Lovely 5.50)

But time was running out, and behind him the far-off drone of sirens wailed, setting an eerie mood for what he was about to do.

He glanced up, to make certain he was still alone, and, closing his eyes, curled his hand around the ring, lifting it to his heart and clutching it there.

Electrical impulses caused him to convulse, like tremors coursing along every muscle fiber in his body. His eyes opened, rolling back in his head as the images began flashing inside his mind.

Flash. Sophie and Jacob, hiding in the shed. Cowering. Trying not to cry.

Flash. Their father splintering the door to get to them. The gun in his hand.

Flash. Sophie—the same way her mother had done—standing bravely between her little brother and her father.

Flash. Jacob running away, searching for cover beneath the canopy of the trees.

Then: the gunshot.

Rafe’s body jerked, as the sound from the borrowed memory exploded within him. He tried to loosen his fingers, to pry them apart, away from the ring, but it was too late, the images had come too fast, and he’d already seen them.

The siren screamed, louder now, almost upon him. He was suddenly grateful for an overprotective aunt like Jenny. And grateful that he’d already called Sara. He’d known, of course, that she would trace the call, and he’d expected her to send backup. It was what she did.

He knew, too, that when the police arrived, they would arrest him; they would have to when they witnessed the gruesome scene inside the house. He was the only one here, after all, and they had to blame someone.

Rafe would let them, staying silent, explaining nothing.

It wouldn’t be until Sara got there that things would get straightened out, that he’d tell her everything, about his dreams and what he saw in them. She was the only one who would understand.

Rafe clutched the ring, the images still assaulting him.

And he would tell Sara exactly where she could find Sophie’s father: hiding out at a cheap motel just off the interstate, less than twenty miles from this very spot.

But even without Rafe to tell them where the bodies were, the local police would have already found Sophie. And Jacob.

They’d never stood a chance against their father.

He tried to keep the images from flashing, again and again, but they kept coming, faster and faster now.

Flash. Sophie hiding the necklace in her hand, squeezing it and rubbing the steel furiously with her thumb, her eyes wide as she faced her father.

Flash. Sophie turning to run, stumbling. Trying to get away as her father raised his gun. Coldly. Unemotionally.

Flash. Sophie, her body going stiff. The necklace falling from her hands as she reached up to touch the wound that had opened up on her chest, where the bullet had ripped right through her. The disbelief on her face as she stared down at the blood glistening on her fingertips.

Flash. Sophie falling forward. Her eyes glazed and empty.

Rafe dropped to his knees as he heard car doors slamming and saw the flash of lights split the dark sky behind him. He hadn’t cried when his mother died or when Sophie had left, and he couldn’t seem to do it now either. But something in him was forever changed, he knew. Something in him had died along with the both of them.

He felt cold and bare. Exposed and abandoned.

He uncurled his fingers and looked down at the steel ring in his hand, not sure why he wanted to keep it. He half thought he should just chuck it into the woods and forget it—forget her—forever.

Instead, he slipped the chain around his neck. And as he heard the voices shouting, screaming at him to get down on the ground, he tucked it inside his shirt, against the hollow space where his heart should be.

Leaving

by Ally Condie

efore my father left for good, he put the small glass sphere down on the table in the three-room apartment where we lived. The sphere rolled a little and I had to catch it before it fell. “It’s a globe,” he told me, not exactly meeting my eyes. He looked at me, in my direction, but his gaze stopped somewhere just short of mine. “A full globe,” he added.

He meant unlike the Globe we live in, which is a curved half sphere above the earth. The Globe protects us and encases us, our apartment buildings, our grid of transports. Our cities. There are other shapes—Cubes, Pyramids—that enclose other people and other places. “We live in half a world,” my father said sometimes. He said it then, before he left.