Scott and I are sitting in the back seat. Neither of us are in car seats anymore. We’re big enough to just use the seat belt.
When I turn to him, he’s watching me. I wonder if he knows why they’re fighting. What’s gotten into them this last year. They used to be so close and so happy. We all used to be happy.
Don’t they know what they’re doing to us? He must see the tears I’m trying to hide because he reaches out a hand to squeeze mine, my ever-protective big brother. But when he does, the rock I’m holding, the one he gave me a few weeks ago, slips from my hand and drops to the floor.
It’s heart-shaped and smooth in a spot almost like someone had rubbed it away there. I’ve carried it with me ever since Scott gave it to me. Whenever their arguing gets too loud or I get scared, I tuck my hand into my pocket and worry that stone.
A train sounds its horn in the distance. My dad slows the car as we get to the intersection. He mutters a curse because the storm has knocked out the electricity, so the traffic lights aren’t working.
Scott reaches to undo his seat belt. He’s just going to grab the stone.
But I know what comes next. I know. And I’m going to see it again if I don’t stop him.
If I hadn’t dropped that rock, would he still be alive? Would he be here with me?
“Scott, no,” I try to say, but I can’t move my lips. I can’t make my tongue work. I can’t even move. My body too heavy. Dead weight.
Smiling, he puts his finger to his lips because he knows how much trouble he’ll get into if Mom catches him out of his seat belt.
I’m shaking my head. We’re closer to the tracks now. I hear the train, and I want to scream for my dad to slow down, but my mom is already yelling at him, she’s so angry with him.
He doesn’t listen because he’s too busy being angry back.
Scott is on the floor. Maybe he’ll put his seat belt on before it’s too late and this dream will end differently. Maybe I won’t hear the screeching of tires or my mother’s scream or the smashing of steel on steel. Maybe I won’t feel the shards of glass turned into sharp, deadly daggers slicing my chest open, cutting out a piece of my heart.
“No!”
My eyelids fly open. The sweat that covers my skin chills me as I listen to the sound of the rain outside and squint to see my surroundings. It’s too dark in here. Too cold. It doesn’t feel like my room. Doesn’t smell like it.
My head weighs a ton as roll onto my side, and when I do, I see a shape. A man’s shape. Through the fog of my mind, I know it’s him. Damian Di Santo. He’s sitting in the chair across from the bed watching me, wolf eyes intent on me.
A dream within a dream.
I’m trapped twice over.
I need to get up and get out of here, but I can’t move, and my eyes are closing again. I shiver with cold, but then he’s by my side, towering over me. He pulls the blankets up to my neck like he did when I was little. His eyes are just as unreadable as back then. The furrow between his eyebrows the only marker of emotion. The room fades to black and the sound of the rain grows more and more distant as I drift off again.* * *I squint against the bright, glaring light coming in from an unfamiliar window. Turning my head away proves to be more painful than I expect, and I groan.
“Warned you about that headache.”
My eyelids shoot open, and I bolt upright, stilling instantly, squeezing my eyes shut again as I process the pain of the sudden movement.
The events of the night before come flooding back. The school library, Barbara’s flowers, then getting home to find him there. Damian and his men.
That contract.
What my uncle told me.
Liam helping me to run away.
The train. Him stopping it. Coming on board.
Him stabbing me with that needle.
It’s real. All of it is real.
I touch a hand to my neck where he stuck me with the needle. It feels bruised and tender. I open my eyes. The room slows its spinning and comes into focus.
Stone walls, furnishings that belong in a house about a hundred years ago, the modern touches like the giant window and in the distance, gray and green and dreary beyond it.
I turn to focus on him.
Damian Di Santo.
Di Santo. It means saint. He’s no saint, though. He’s a demon.
“What are you doing?” I ask when I see him flipping through my passport that Liam had put in the pouch.