Verum (The Nocte Trilogy 2)

I picture his face and he laughs.

“You’re such a goof, Cal,” he tells me, his pale blue eyes twinkling. “You were always the better half. You don’t need me.”

“That’s dumb,” I reply instantly. “I’ll always need you. I’m probably going to never stop talking to you, ok?”

He rolls his eyes and stands in the moonlight. “Fine. But there’s going to come a time when I stop answering. Because eventually, you have to let me go, Cal. For your own good.”

“Don’t tell me what my own good is,” I scowl, but he laughs, because that’s what Finn does. He laughs and he makes every situation better.

“Stay with me,” I urge him. “I feel so alone.”

He nods and he sits on the bed with me, and he watches me while I settle down to sleep. He hums, a song without words, a song that’s familiar, but I can’t place the name.

“Sleep,” he tells me. “I’m right here.”

So I do. I sleep while the memory of my dead brother watches over me, because that’s the only way I feel safe.

But even then, my dreams plague me.

“One for one for one.”

The whispers seem to come from the corners, from the shadows, from the halls. “One for one, Calla. One for me, one for me.”

It cackles and hisses and I run around the corners, into the dark.

As I escape, I realize something and skid to a halt.

I left Finn behind.

They have him now.

No.

No.

I have to go back. I turn, but I can’t move. My feet are enmeshed with the ground.

I hear him screaming and I force myself to move, but I’m suddenly stopped by Dare.

He grabs my arms and restrains me, his arms like steel bands, not letting me go.

“You can’t help him now,” he tells me somberly, his black eyes glistening. “I’m sorry.”

My screams wake me up and Finn is still sitting on the side of my bed.

“Are you ok?” My brother’s voice is anxious, and the moonlight shines onto his face. “You’re just having a dream. Wake up, it’s ok.”

I nod and grab his hand and he grins.

“Was it the bogeyman?”

I try to smile back, but the feeling of terror and loss is still too great.

I nod instead. “Yeah. The bogeyman.”

It’s a private joke, because Finn and I have always said that there’s no bogeyman in the entire world that we’re scared of since we sleep in a funeral home.

But my dream…. It preyed on the thing that does scare me, the thing that has always scared me the most.