Enthralled: Paranormal Diversions (Wicked Lovely 5.50)

“It’s not,” Kissy said simply. “Nobody’s going to find the body. Nobody’s ever going to know.”

That didn’t exactly seem what I would call likely, but Kissy sounded so certain that I couldn’t help wondering what she knew that I didn’t, what the instinct inside of her was whispering that I couldn’t hear.

“Fine,” I said. “We’ll both go in.”

“Fine,” Kissy replied, and she snapped her mouth shut and didn’t say another word until the two of us were inside.

The girl behind the counter wasn’t nearly so easily charmed as her counterpart at the McDonald’s that morning, and she just gave Kissy and me a once-over before a bored, glassy look settled over her eyes.

“Hi, Molly,” Kissy said, lifting the girl’s name from the trainee tag on her shirt. “We need to prepay, thirty dollars on pump two.”

Molly was not impressed with Kissy’s personable nature— or her ensemble. “It’s your money,” she said, like the two of us were stupid for spending it on something as mundane as fuel. “Anything else?”

“A couple of thirty-two-ounce drinks,” I said, since Kissy tended to take other people’s boredom as a personal challenge. “And that’s all.”

Molly rang us up and tapped her fingernails impatiently on the counter as Kissy dug around her pockets for two twenty-dollar bills. She shoved the money across the counter, and Molly moved to take it, but aborted the action halfway through and instead caught Kissy by the wrist, her fake nails digging into my sister’s skin.

Oh no. Not again.

I took an instinctive step backward, but Kissy wasn’t perturbed. I looked to Molly’s eyes, but they were still an everyday brown, a few shades lighter than mine. Molly tilted her head to the side, and Kissy did the same. Then Molly spoke—or at least, her lips moved and words came out, which wasn’t exactly the same thing.

“They’re close.” The voice that spoke those words was androgynous and toneless, vibrating with so much power, it almost hurt to hear it. “Very close, and this time, there’s more than one.”

The bland expression on Molly’s face never changed, but the words coming out of her mouth were everywhere—inside my head and out of it—until I couldn’t think or hear or even remember anything else.

“You need to trust us, Jessica Carlton. Trust your sister.” Even though Molly was holding Kissy’s arm, she was looking straight at me, and her words came out like an order. “It starts with you, Jess. Run.”

Molly dropped Kissy’s arm, and if she had any recollection of the words she’d just said, she did a real good job hiding it under a healthy amount of disdain. “What’re you staring at?” she asked me.

Trust your sister. The words echoed in my head. Run.

“We have to go,” Kissy said. “Now.”

She turned and started walking toward the back exit. My heart beating viciously against the inside of my rib cage, I turned to follow, but not before glancing back over my shoulder at the pumps. A single second stretched itself out into eternity, and then the glass on the store’s windows exploded inward, and our grandfather’s truck burst—red and blue and orange and yellow—into flames.

One second we were in the store, and the next we were out back, and all I could think was, They’re close, and this time, there’s more than one. Kissy’s hand latched on to my shoulder, and she dragged me behind her, running faster than she should have been able to run.

“We have to go to San Antonio.”

I normally didn’t have much of a temper, but these were extenuating circumstances. Someone had already tried to kill me once today, Kissy had snapped a boy’s neck, gas station attendants were dishing out prophecies, and now, someone had blown up our grandpa’s truck.

“What’s so bloody important about San Antonio?” I asked, taking solace in the British curse word, which was a lot more satisfying than anything my Oklahoma upbringing had to offer.

“I don’t know,” Kissy replied, her voice breaking. “I don’t know, but we have to get there, we have to, and now we don’t have a truck.” She dropped my arm, and her entire body stiffened, her eyes rolling back in her head.

Not a seizure, I thought. Not now.

Behind us, the door to the filling station slammed open, and men and women of all shapes and sizes began pouring out. I shouldn’t have been able to see their eyes from this distance, but there was no mistaking the darkness, the light.

“We’re going,” I said, holding my sister as tight as I could and hoping the words penetrated her trance. “We’re going to San Antonio. C’mon, Kissy. You’re okay. You can do this.”

With great effort, she straightened, and the two of us began stumbling toward the road—toward San Antonio, because the ’pulse wouldn’t let Kissy turn around.

Please, God, I thought. Please don’t let this be happening. Please don’t let this be how everything ends.

We made it to the road, maybe twenty yards ahead of our pursuers. A car slammed its brakes and swerved to avoid hitting us. To my surprise, the owner recovered quickly, leaned over, and threw open the passenger side door.

“Going to San Antonio?” he asked.