Absolution (3 page)

His words sent fear rumbling through my soul. He was wrong, he had to be. Matthias said evil couldn’t stay in the presence of an innocent, like Abria. And I had Matthias. Where was he?

“Looking for Matthias?” he asked.

My heart thrashed inside my chest. Albert couldn’t read my thoughts, could he? “I can get rid of you myself, loser.” Anger pulsed in my blood stream.

I crossed to him, body shaking, fury rising like a tornado inside of me.

I stared down at him, at the wretched noose tie. The twisted pale remnants of souls locked in a hellish prison—on display for the world to witness was utterly humiliating. But the faint screeching and howling that trickled into the air from their bondage sent me into a comfortless round of shudders. “Get out.”

Albert rose from the couch to tower over me. His angled face turned rock hard, his eyes leveled me. I shrunk. I realized my anger and frustration were products of his influence. I had to resist the overwhelming urge to leap on him and tear his head off.

I can do this, I can do this, I can do this.
I closed my eyes for a second, searching for calm, remembering Matthias’ words: evil can’t have a place inside unless it’s invited. Albert may have come into the house with my parents’

argument, but I was kicking him out. Right. Now.

“You can’t dismiss me, you’re too weak.” Albert’s voice slithered into my head. My eyes snapped open. His face was inches from mine.

“I’m not weak.” I tried to tamp out the anger smoldering inside of me.

Why was it so hard? I’d always had a short wick, and standing this close to a flame wasn’t helping.

I stepped back, hoping distance would help. I didn’t even see Albert move. With my next breath, he was chest-to-chest with me, his submerging evil so dense my knees knocked. I thought I was going to crumble to the floor and lie helpless at his feet.

“You see?” Albert whispered.

“Zoe?” Dad. I hadn’t heard the office doors open, hadn’t sensed him in the living room but here he was. His brows creased. “What’s going on?”

Albert never took his eyes off me, an eerie, stripped-naked feeling I couldn’t be rid of.

“Someone’s here.” Dad’s tone was irritated, and he tipped his head in the direction of the front door.

I glanced through the front room windows. Two headlights beamed at the house from the driveway. Luke’s car remained dark and parked at the curb.

I didn’t see Krissy’s silhouette inside. Where was she? I hoped she hadn’t split.

The doorbell rang, followed by an angry pound. Albert’s grin spread wide.

Dad crossed to the front door and swung it open. Krissy’s dad filled the frame. Covering his body, a pack of wild black spirits crawled and writhed in their usual silent but frightening frenzy of malevolence.

Chapter Three

____________________

“I’m looking for my daughter, Krissy.” He peered past Dad, saw me and his eyes slit. Six black spirits leapt from his torso to his shoulders and jumped in a horrific dance.

“I’m Joe.” Dad stuck out his hand but Krissy’s Dad ignored the gesture.

“Peter. Is she here?”

“Do you know where she is?” Dad asked me.

Krissy’s father glared past Dad, scanning the house. Dad stiffened.“If Zoe says she’s not here, she’s not.”

“We’ve looked everywhere for her,” Peter barked, spitting a black spirit out of his mouth. The creature joined the revelers on the top of his head.

“Amateurs,” Albert whispered in my ear. Goosebumps rippled my skin.

Albert nodded in the direction of the wicked spirits. He lifted his hands in the air and suddenly, the beings infesting Krissy’s dad came to a halt, their soulless eyes shifting to Albert.

What’s he going to do?
I had the fleeting hope Albert would dismiss the hideous creatures, but he wasn’t Matthias. He encouraged trouble, not disseminated it.

Albert glided toward the door. Peter’s chest rose and fell beneath his shirt and long, black coat. His face pinked. As Albert drew closer, the wild spirits became crazed, their mouths opened in silent screams, their wiry shapes jumped and skittered, translucent eyes hollowing.

Albert lifted his right hand and sliced the air. The pack swirled upward in a whirling black effluence that shot out the front door and into the dark night.

A shudder raked my skin. Albert sent a dazzling grin at me over his shoulder and then slid into Peter. He stepped over the threshold, his ferocious glare locked on Dad. “I want my daughter.”

Dad stepped forward, shoulders erect. “Hold on—”

“She’s here, dammit!” Peter’s arms shot out. I gasped. He tried to grab Dad’s forearms, but Dad’s fists fastened to the man’s shirt and he shoved him against the sidelight.

My heart raced. Krissy’s dad let out a muscle-ripping growl, his eyes blackening with hate. Albert’s ghosted image lifted in and out of the enraged man, Albert himself caught up in the attack. Peter’s arms reached, flailed, but could not adhere to Dad’s flesh and bone. My hand covered my mouth, stifling a scream.

With surprising ease and total control, Dad held Peter against the sidelight.

Upstairs, Mom appeared, staring with wide eyes from the balcony.

“I think you should go,” Dad said between clenched teeth. He released the man and his hands slowly dropped to his sides.

Krissy’s dad panted. “If I find that your daughter has lied, you’ll both answer to me,” he boomed.

“Is that a threat?” Dad’s voice rose. His hands fisted.

I joined him, and touched his stiff arm. “Dad, he’s not worth it.”
I’m
talking to you, Albert.
What did it matter? Albert couldn’t hear my thoughts.

“I’ve got half the Pleasant Grove police force out searching for her!

You’d better not be lying to me.”

“Don’t come to my home and threaten my family,” Dad snapped, stepping closer to Krissy’s dad.

My hand tightened around his arm. “Don’t. He’s dangerous.”

“You damned well better believe I’m dangerous,” Peter seethed. “If it wasn’t for you and your partying friends, she’d be at home. Now, I’ve got social services breathing down my neck!”

“I had nothing to do with Krissy’s party,” I shouted. “I tried to talk her out of it!” What was I doing, arguing with this whack-case?

I pulled Dad’s sleeve, but he resisted. “Go. Now,” he said, reaching for the door. He started to close it, but Peter slapped a palm against the wood with a thunk.

“If you see her, you tell her to call me immediately.”

Dad slammed the door. “For a minute I thought there would be blood.”

“What in the world?” Mom’s voice was breathless coming between her fingers poised over her mouth.

“The weirdo,” I muttered, glad he and Albert were gone.

Dad dragged his fingers down his face, leaving white stripes over taut skin. “What a day.”

“Yeah.” Between the funeral, Krissy, her dad and Albert, my body and brain overflowed with stimulation. I needed sleep, and the urgency sunk into my being with the weight of lead.

Dad glanced upstairs. His tight features softened when he saw Mom.

Then his green eyes met mine. “Have you seen Krissy tonight?”

I swallowed a lump, nodded.

“You must have a good reason for not mentioning that to her father.”

“Yeah. She came here upset, said she couldn’t go home. Something’s up but she won’t say what it is.”

“Where is she?” Dad glanced around.

“Not sure. She left right before her dad came.”

“Well,” Dad sighed. “At least we weren’t lying to the man then. We didn’t know where she was. If you do see or hear from her though, Zoe, tell her to call her dad. Let’s avoid any complications. That guy is dangerous.”

He started upstairs, wearily taking them one sluggish step at a time.

Abria, dressed in my old
Friends
t- shirt raced from her bedroom to Mom and Dad’s bedroom with Luke chasing after her. Mom met Dad on the landing. Mom stopped, so did he, and their eyes spoke a silent message that brought another wave of fear through my chest. Would they argue again?

Abria giggled from inside their bedroom. Luke’s frustrated tone followed,

“Time for bed, Abria.”

I went out the front door with my soul weary, closing it behind me, and jogged to Luke’s car. A soft glow of light radiated from the backseat—the illumination surrounding Krissy’s guardian. Krissy lay in the passenger seat, the chair reclined. She jumped when she saw me. I opened the door and got in. I wanted to say something to him. My eyes connected with his and he gave me an acknowledging nod. I barely nodded back, so as to not draw Krissy’s attention to the fact that I was communicating with someone she couldn’t see.

“My dad’s gonna kill me,” she stuttered out a plume of white breath in the chilled air.

I held out my hand for the keys and she plopped them into my palm.

“Why is he so mad?” I turned the engine. “Is it still about the party? I mean, I understand. But he has to believe that Brady made his own choice that night.”

Krissy shifted her gaze out the window, the blue light of the moon casting cobalt ice over her frightened face. I cranked the knob on the heater to high and cold air blew, throwing my body into a fit of shudders.

I pulled the car onto the street and headed toward Krissy’s. She remained silent. I glanced through the rearview mirror at her guardian. “It’s going to be okay,” I told her. “You’re not alone—”

“Right.”

“I’m serious. You have me and Luke and Chase.”

Tears slid down her cheeks, glistening tracks in the moonlight.

“I’m in serious trouble, Zoe.” Her voice was tattered.

“Everything will work out, you’ll see.” I hated it when Mom and Dad told me that, and here I was saying the same thing. But I honestly believed everything would now. I understood that our human efforts were not solitary in this life.

“The thing is,” she sniffed, faced me. “I’m not sorry I had the party.

I wanted to do it. And it was cool, you know? It’s just that I shouldn’t have dared Brady.”

“Even if you dared Brady, he didn’t have to take you up on it. And he and Britt brought the alcohol. They gave you the weed.”

“Which I didn’t have to take,” she said.

“You’re right. We all make mistakes.” I glanced at her guardian in the mirror, our eyes meeting. His kind smile soothed me. “And we all learn from them. Just don’t get all hopeless on me, okay?” Was he here because she was going to try to hurt herself again?

“Thanks,” she whispered. Our eyes met, then I focused on the road again.
How can I comfort her? How can I make her see that we all make dumb
choices but nothing is unfixable?

“You sure there isn’t something I can do?” I asked.

She shook her head.

“Call me any time. I mean it.”

“That’s what Luke said,” she sniffed. “He’s a nice guy, isn’t he?”

I nodded. “I’m glad he found you tonight.” With a father as seemingly controlling as hers, was she aware of the inherent dangers of hitchhiking?

“Yeah.”

I drove onto her street and she sat up, her hands wringing in her lap.

White fear turned her face stony.

The street was quiet. When we neared her round house, I didn’t see any police cars as I expected. One light shown through a white, pull-down shade upstairs.

“You’d better let me off here. I don’t want him to see your car.”

“Luke’s car is not exactly anonymous,” I joked, hoping to see her smile.

Her wide-eyed gaze was too focused on her home to notice my jesting tone.

I stopped six houses down from hers and she opened the door with a shaky hand. She got out, and her guardian was already behind her, his ivory light softly ebbing comfort into the night air around them.

He smiled at me, nodded. “Thank you.”

Had I done enough? My soul reached out to her in such a way I nearly leapt from the car to walk alongside her. “You sure you want to do this?” I asked. Krissy peered at me, her brows drawn in a hard line across her forehead.

“There are places you can go, Krissy. Safe houses. If you want, I can help you—”

“No.” She shook her head. “That’ll make things worse. I’ve got to go.

Bye, Zoe.” She shut the door and headed in the direction of the round, wood house.

I remained in the idling Samurai. Whatever Krissy faced, I took some relief from the fact that her guardian was by her side. I could also make an anonymous call to Child Services. Better to be safe than sorry, Mom always said. I watched Krissy walk in a bubble of light, her guardian by her side.

Once I shut the front door of home, I rested my back against the smooth wood and let out a sigh.
Peace, at last
. My bones felt leaden beneath weary muscle and flesh. I couldn’t wait to hit the mattress. I’d only been gone fifteen minutes at most, and the lights still burned on the main floor. A scattered few shone upstairs.

Mom and Dad’s voices jagged out from beneath their closed bedroom door. My heart picked up speed. The foreboding I thought had gone with Krissy’s dad was back.

I looked left into the darkness of the living room. Empty. Right—into Dad’s office. Empty. Heart hammering, I crept through the arched hall that lead to the family room and kitchen. Nothing. The idea that Albert had taken residency in my home terrified me. But then, Matthias had warned me that life would be difficult. That Albert would be relentless in his pursuit of my soul.

I headed upstairs, passing Luke’s bedroom. His door was open and I peered in, found him standing just inside, staring out into the dark hall in the direction of the master bedroom.

“How long have they been arguing?” I whispered.

He joined me in the doorway. “Since you left. I hate this.”

And because Mom and Dad rarely fought, their arguments brought everyone in the house to a standstill—everyone except Abria of course. Light gleamed beneath her bedroom door and I heard her prattling inside.

“Did something happen to start it?” I asked Luke.

He shrugged. “I put Abria to bed and the two of them were in there going at it. I heard some stuff, but, you know… I didn’t stay and listen.”