Death Before Daylight (30 page)

“He’s a tough kid.”

She agreed. “And if Jess’ parents can go
through it, then my son can.”

My chest sank. Noah wasn’t the only human
affected by my life or Jessica’s existence. The entirety of
Hayworth had succumbed to the danger, even if they were oblivious
to it.

“I’d like to meet them one day,” Mindy
continued. “I bet Jess’ parents are as sweet as she is.”

“We broke up—”

“Please,” she interrupted. “I know better
than that.”

I couldn’t fight a smile, but the smile did
fight me. It felt wrong to be grinning in such a time over such a
topic. “I’m sure you’ll get to meet them,” I finally agreed.

“I’ll have to make lasagna.” Her face glowed
as she dreamt of the day we could be together. “I’m known for that
meal, you know.” She winked. “I think it’s why your father married
me.”

Before I could respond, the door burst open.
“I’m home.” Noah’s shout traveled over us as he ran up the
stairs.

“I’m making lemon cakes,” Mindy announced as
she stood up. “I should check on them.”

“Why?” Noah asked as he stopped at the top of
the stairs and saw me. “It’s not your birthday.”

A chuckle escaped me. “That’s a good
thing.”

Noah’s face twisted. “You’re weird,” he said,
but he walked to the table. He dropped his bag on the furthest
chair, and just like his mother, he sat in a chair right next to
me.

I stared at him. His face hadn’t changed
much, but he had gotten a haircut. Even then, his short hair was a
mess.

“You got a haircut,” I said.

He rolled his eyes. “Where have you
been?”

Dishes clattered together in the kitchen, and
Mindy apologized. She had dropped something, and I imagined it was
from Noah’s question. It was perfectly natural, but in the
situation, it felt uncomfortable.

“School,” I spoke up anyway.

Noah’s brow furrowed like he didn’t believe
me. “I thought you might have been with Jess.”

My face went hot. “We aren’t together,” I
reminded him.

“Yeah. Yeah.” He stood up from the table.
“I’m going to my room.”

“Good to see you,” I called after him as he
started walking away.

Right when I thought he would disappear into
his room, he spun around. “Good to see you, too.” And then, he was
gone.

Mindy leaned on the counter. “He’s had an
attitude recently.”

“The spell will wear off.”

She smiled. “It’s not the spell,” she said
and reclipped her hair. “He’s almost a teenager now.”

I stared at the hallway like my stepbrother
was standing there. “Yeah,” I breathed. “I guess he is.” Noah,
somewhere along the way, had a birthday. He was eleven. I had
completely forgotten the date.

Before I could speak again, a chill ran over
my skin, and nausea consumed my insides. My heart slammed into my
chest, but it didn’t beat. It froze.

I fell over, and the ground spun as I hit the
floor. Pain seethed down my spine, but the pain in my chest was
worse. Much worse. Everything burned. Everything squeezed. I
couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t move.

“Eric!” Mindy’s scream shattered through the
fog. I clung to the noise to prevent myself from losing
consciousness.

My vision was blurry, but I could see her red
hair through my misty vision. “Eric—”

I was going to die.

The darkness was creeping over the sides of
my vision, and my chest was caving in. The only thing I could feel
was the cold, and it was a cold I had only felt once before. In the
Light realm, I had died, but this time, I wasn’t there. I was in
the human world, and nothing was here to bring me back.

Right when I thought the darkness would win,
everything brightened. The world buzzed, and my mind spun, and the
ringlets around Mindy’s face solidified. Her face was pale.

“Eric.”

I wheezed, but my heart raced, beating
against my ribs as if it had been shocked into living again. I
coughed as air rushed down my esophagus. I was alive.

“What’s going on?” Noah. He was walking
toward us.

“It’s fine,” Mindy called over her shoulder,
but she never took her eyes off of me. She placed the back of her
hand on my forehead. “Do you need me to call an ambulance?”

“No. No.” That was the last thing we needed.
“I’m okay.”

I laid my head against the ground as it
thundered with blood returning. I hadn’t been wrong. My life had
almost left me.

“Is Eric okay?” Noah peered over his mother’s
shoulder.

“I’m all right,” I promised again and shoved
my arms under me. I took a breath before pushing myself up. “I just
got dizzy,” I said, even though my thoughts were consuming me.

My ring kept me alive in the Light realm, but
I hadn’t considered that it kept me alive in the human world, too.
Jessica. She must have taken hers off.

“I have to go,” I said, but when I stood up,
I fell into my seat. My strength wasn’t returning as quickly as I
wanted it to.

“Just sit for a minute,” Mindy said. As she
rushed into the kitchen, she told Noah to watch me. He sat down,
but not as close as he had sat before.

“Are you—”

I shushed him. I didn’t want to, but I had to
concentrate. I unlocked the block I placed on Jonathon’s telepathic
thread to my mind.
“Pierce—”

My mind burned before I could even finish my
sentence. I didn’t have the strength. I had one last resort. I
yanked my phone out of my pocket and dialed his number. It rang and
rang and rang again, and then it clicked.

“Jonathon,” I spoke before he could. “Where’s
Jessica?”

He was silent for a millisecond too long.
“Eric?”

“It’s me,” I ranted. “Where is she? Is she
okay?” If her date had taken a bad turn, I needed to know.

“She’s fine.”

“Where is she?” I growled through my
pain.

“I—um—Crystal is driving her right now.” I
could hear his car’s engine in the background. He was following
them. “She’s fine. They both are.”

I didn’t care about Crystal. “Are you sure
Jessica is okay?”

“Positive,” he answered, but his voice moved
into his next sentence without a breath. “Why are you calling? Are
you all right?”

“I’m fine,” I said right before I hung up. I
dropped my phone on the table, and all the muscles in my hands
tingled. I had to draw in a breath to prevent them from shaking,
but the pause allowed me to see what was in front of me.

Noah and Mindy were staring.

“I have to go,” I said as I stood up. My legs
didn’t fall beneath me this time. I would be okay in minutes, and I
had to meet Jessica back at the shelter. I had to see her for
myself.

“But Mom made cake—” Noah started, but Mindy
interrupted.

“Go,” she said. “Do what you need to do.”

I nodded. “I’ll come back for cake soon,” I
said, but as I started to walk away, Mindy cut me off for a hug.
She wrapped her arms around me almost as quickly as she stepped
away.

“I can always cook more,” she said. “Stay
safe.”

“I will,” I promised before I raced down the
stairs toward the darkness that had almost taken me minutes
before.

39

Crystal drove me to my house, but I never
went inside. I waited on the front porch until she left. I had to
tell Jonathon what she told me in the car, and every second that
passed seemed too long to bear. It only took two minutes for
Jonathon to appear. I jumped in the passenger side, but he didn’t
take off like I expected him to.

“Is everything okay?” his voice rushed in the
same way I wanted his car to do.

“I don’t know,” I admitted before I corrected
myself. “No. Something is wrong.”

Jonathon reached up to put his car in park,
but I grabbed his hand. “Not here,” I said. “We need to go to the
shelter.”

He blinked, but obeyed. When he rotated his
wheel, the front tires squeaked, and the small car lurched as he
stepped on the gas. “I don’t drive a lot.”

“Doesn’t matter,” I said, collecting my
thoughts. “The jewelry. It—” I couldn’t fathom what I was thinking.
“We need to make sure Eric is okay.”

Jonathon gripped the wheel, but he didn’t
increase his speed. “He’s fine.”

“But—”

“He called me, Jess.”

My heart was beating faster than normal, and
my hand curled into a fist. My ring was back on my finger. It no
longer burned, but it did glow. The sapphire was bright, and I
wasn’t imagining it.

“Does that happen a lot?” Jonathon asked.

“You can see it?”

He nodded, even though he had kept his eyes
on the road. It was that bright. “Why is it back on your hand?”

“I took it off,” I admitted. “Robb—” I
thought I would lose my breath. “He took it off, and I felt it. I
felt Eric leave, and—”

Jonathon’s breath was sharp as he pulled his
car over.

“What are you doing?” I nearly screeched.

He put his car in park and switched off his
headlights. “You need to calm down,” he said it like his father
did—as a trainer instead of a guard. “Acting on emotions won’t get
us anywhere. It’s dangerous.”

I only stared back.

“Take a breath.”

His voice was the only thing I heard, so I
obeyed, and every racing part of me simmered down. Every part of me
but my heart. It thundered.

“Feel better?” he asked.

“A little.”

“You and Eric both,” he chuckled. “You’re
both so hot-tempered.”

“It’s kind of a tense situation,” I started,
but Jonathon shushed me.

“Just breathe.”

I did.

“Eric called me,” he spoke while I calmed
down. “He’s fine. He sounded fine. He was just worried about you
because you went out on a date. That’s it. Okay?”

He waited for a response, but I kept my mouth
shut. I was sure my nerves would heighten again.

“Did you get a chance to test him?”

I shook my head because I knew he was talking
about Zac. “He walked away.”

“And you left when he came back,” he
finished. “I thought something might have happened.” His tone
dropped, and it was only then that I noticed the sweat on the side
of his face. He had been worried about me, too.

“Something happened,” I confessed. “I took
off the ring.”

Jonathon’s eyes shot down to my hand. “You
said Robb did.”

My nod almost hurt my neck. “He wanted to be
alone with me,” I explained. “He told me that Zac and Crystal
wanted to be alone, but Crystal told me it was the other way around
in the car.” I told him everything that happened—how Crystal had
rushed us to the car, how she thought Robb was acting strange, how
he had asked them if he could have a minute with me. She had cursed
at herself in the car when I told her about the ring, and an
apology had escaped her before she drove off. She was in a
hurry.

“I think the ring kept Eric alive in the
Light realm,” I said without telling Jonathon the other part. It
had kept me alive, too. When I had tried to kill myself, I hadn’t
died. If there was any explanation, it existed in a tiny piece of
metal a mother had left behind. “Darthon can’t kill him, and that’s
why.” I even told Jonathon about what I learned in the realm, how I
had accused Darthon of being unable to kill Eric and how he had
confirmed it. “Eric can’t die.”

Jonathon didn’t move, but his face paled.
“But you took it off.”

“Only for a minute,” I promised, but I
grabbed Jonathon’s arm like I needed to hear more from him. “Are
you sure he is okay?”

Jonathon pulled away from me so he could
start the car. “He said he was all right before he hung up on me,”
he confessed. My blood ran cold. “We should check on him.”

He took off without waiting for my
confirmation. The shelter was only ten minutes away, but it was
long enough for me to ask the one question I could manage, “Do you
think—”

“That Robb could be Darthon?” Jonathon knew
what I was thinking. “Definitely.”

My palms were sweating, but I brought them up
to my pounding forehead. “Oh, God.” Robb had been so close. All
along. Both of them had been. But I hadn’t considered Robb as much
as I had thought about Zac. Even though Robb had hit me at the bar,
Zac was the only one who remembered it—that we knew of—and Zac had
threatened Eric from the beginning. Zac had also left prom when I
had. Robb had stayed behind with Linda, so it made sense for Zac to
be able to be Darthon that night. Zac also didn’t seem to care
about his parents, but Robb hadn’t mentioned his in depth. Still,
Linda was around both of them. So was Crystal. Either of them could
be Fudicia. Either of the boys could be Darthon. And both Zac and
Robb had used force against me at some point. Even then, it was
Robb who had taken my ring. He was also the one trying to get
closer to me. And yet, at the beginning of our friendship, he had
encouraged me to get closer to Eric. None of it made sense.

“I don’t know anymore,” I said before I
cursed.

“Calm down,” Jonathon reminded me.

“I didn’t even get a chance to test them,” I
admitted, knowing my plan failed. I was sure I could use my powers
to feel his. If I had the chance to touch him, I was positive I
would feel it if I concentrated, but I had lost all concentration.
When I had the opportunity to touch Robb, I was too busy trying to
get my ring back. I had lost my chance. “I didn’t get a chance to
test him,” I repeated.

“Maybe he was testing you.”

I couldn’t breathe.

“Relax,” Jonathon kept repeating the same
phrase like it could change our circumstances. “You figured out
something, right?” His voice raced as fast as his car took the last
corner. “That’s enough. That got us a step further, so stop
questioning it.”

I stared at Jonathon. The scrawny boy who was
so built as a shade seemed more powerful than he ever had before.
His squinted eyes were focused, and he wasn’t even using his shade
vision. Even though he was telling me to concentrate, he couldn’t
either. What we had learned was deadly. The problem rested in the
fact that Darthon could’ve learned it, too.