Ephemeral (The Countenance) (55 page)

I glance over as the moon washes him a faint shade of blue. He looks guilty, as if Hattie hit the misuse of superpowers right on the head. Not that I care. Flynn could rain destruction on every football team in the country. Who could really blame him for implementing those devices? It’s not like steroids are involved. To him speed and strength are natural. Speaking of which, where the hell are mine?

“And you, precious Cooper.” She comes over and cradles his cheek in her hand. It looks sexual, her face enflamed with passion. Hattie’s features are flawless, not one sign of decay, no hollow eyes, no missing teeth. She holds a breathless beauty, sharp as a tack. “You are our brother in every way. Siding with a Count to pry your way into her heart? Why bother with filth when there are perfectly beautiful celestial beings roaming free on the planet?”

Cooper clenches his jaw. It’s taking all of his self-control not to explode. “I don’t know what’s going on or what your intentions are, but we need to get back immediately. You didn’t have a right to take us,” he says it stern, telling them off in the nicest way possible. Although, judging by the fire brewing in Hattie’s eyes, that little reprimand is equivalent to a nineteen fifties bitch-slap.

“You may
ne
ver speak to me that way.” Her voice renders a cruel edge that ensures he’s crossed a line. “I am your elder, and I am far from finished.” Her words fly like razors. “Let me lay out my intentions for you. Laken—you’re to access the deepest part of their network. Your contribution will be paltry at best.”

“I’m one step ahead of you,” I say. Weird having the same agenda as a dead girl—two dead girls. And I hardly consider my contribution paltry, more like sacrificial because, in the end, it might cost me Wes.

God forbid it cost me Wes.  

“Paltry is correct.” She steps in front of me. “You love Wesley. Your affection is forever with him.” Her lips twist in a bow. “But your affection has been divided, and your heart belongs to Cooper.” She narrows her dark eyes over him—licks her lips with a wash of lust. “Don’t trust her Cooper, she turns on you. I’ve seen this.”

I shake my head. “That’s impossible. I would never turn on you, Coop. I swear.” I tighten my grip on him and pull in close until I’m hiding behind him like a coward.

“Your families…” She glances down, overcome by great sorrow. “They reside in the tunnels.”

“My mom.” Cooper takes a breath.

“Casper?” Flynn takes a step forward as if he were about to shake her down.

Hattie rakes me with her coal black eyes until it feels like my skin is about to blister. “All of them.”

“What do you mean all of them?” I step out from behind Coop. If Flynn won’t shake her down, I will.

“Surmise what you will.” She bounces over to her sister as if she never dispensed the morbid news.

“How do we get to them?” Flynn demands.

“In time,” she sings. “You see—it seems my family is locked away someplace entirely different. We have a younger sister, a brother, and a father.” Her gaze drifts into the forest, forlorn and hopeless before that evil spark returns to her eye.

Family? They’ve got to be in their sixties or seventies at least. For all we know they could be dead.

“They live.” She looks right at me affirming the fact she’s prying into my cerebral musings. “They’ve stagnated. My brother forever seventeen, my father fifty-three.”

“And your sister?” I ask.

“Nine.” It speeds out of her. “Like yours.”

She knows everything. They’re everywhere.

“You’re the ones who took the pictures.” The words heave out of me.

“No, Laken.” Her lips curl as she exchanges a secret look with her sister. “Free my family.” A plume of fog escapes her lips with the demand. “We’ll lead you to yours.”

“Where are they? How do we free them?” Cooper wants to run but doesn’t know which direction or how long the race is.

“They’re Spectators,” she snaps. There’s a challenge in her eyes, and I can only imagine what that means. 

“We can’t help you.” Cooper looks to me.
There’s no way.

“Then we can’t help you.” The Tobias sisters disappear in a clap of thunder.

The ground shifts. We land back in the full-grown forest with smoke rising around us, the wail of fire trucks perforating the night.

Coop reaches over and takes up both my hands. “We need to get my mom and Casper back.”

“They’ve got us by the balls. They know we need them,” Flynn says, coughing through the fumes. “I’ll see what I can find out about the tunnels.”

“You think my family’s down there?” There’s a newfound panic in me over where exactly Lacey and my mother might be.

“That’s what it sounds like.” Coop looks suspicious, like maybe he doesn’t believe them.

I wish I didn’t.

“We need to find a way to help those witches,” I whisper.

Cooper squeezes my hand.
Or maybe we just need them to think we’re helping.

55

Swallow the Impossible

Nefarious dark clouds swirl in the night. They blossom overhead, cantankerous and foul. I pull out the shapes they invoke, the skull, the barren tree—the casket.

Cooper leads Flynn and me to the back of Melville House. We sit under the eaves and watch the sky light up in shattered jags of lightning.

“Coop?” I push into him, settling my shoulder into his chest. “If the Tobias sisters were Celestra, why would their family have been resurrected? I thought the Counts were greedy with their God-like abilities.”

“The Counts are greedy.” He takes up my hand right there in front of Flynn. “That’s why they experimented on the Celestra prisoners, first.”

“And some of them were young like their sister.” I shake my head. “They killed them, just to bring them back to see if it would work.”

“Why so many?” Flynn interjects. “Why not five, twenty, even? Rumor has it there are fucking thousands.”

“Because it worked for a while.” Cooper lets out a sigh and a long pull of fog streams from his lips. “Once the general Count population got wind, they wanted their dead relatives brought back before the body was cold. You needed a fresh death to work with—my dad thinks the resurrection went to the highest bidder.”

I shake my head at the thought. “How the hell did everything go so wrong?”

“Took years for the decomposition to hit the fan.”

“Dude.” Flynn is dazed by the idea. “There is no effing way we’re going to reconstitute some sixty-year-old Spectators. It’s not happening.”

“There is a way.” Coop pulls his cheek up on one side. “Ezrina.”

“Ez-who?” Flynn chokes it out.

“She’s this witch—a troll, I don’t really know what she is. She’s like the keeper of the underworld,” he says it plain.

“Really?” I ask.

“She’s intensely insane.” Coop nods. “She’s the one who cooked up the formula for conversion to begin with. After the second generation resurrections took, she was never able to rectify those bodies she already converted. First generation got the shaft. Every now and again they escape to find a better way for themselves on their own. If the Tobias family is still down there, hoping for a conversion, maybe I can convince her to use them as guinea pigs—see if takes.”

“And if it doesn’t?” I’m almost afraid to ask.

“Our families get the shaft,” Flynn huffs at the idea.

“We find them on our own.” There’s a renewed fight in me.

“I like where you’re going.” Cooper pulls me in with his eyes and holds me in their sanctuary. “But I have a feeling we’re going to need the Tobias sisters. The last place we’ll find the Celestra tunnels will be on earth.”

His words slither up my back like a snake. The world is wide enough on its own, and now there are questionable spaces, alternate dimensions where they might dwell that we could never reach.

The sky lights up in lavender tendrils as a ferocious roar unleashes overhead.  

“Tell them we’ll work with them.” Flynn nods into the idea.

“They want Laken,” Coop says.

“Even better.” Flynn gives a lazy grin.

“Thanks.” I groan.

“You’re a girl,” Flynn gravels it out as if I were the last meal on earth and he wanted a bite. “You can decode their estrogen readings better than we can.”

“They’re dead, Flynn.” I turn to Coop. “Why would they want my help?” I wash over Cooper with a gentle gaze. His features shine a dull silver under the cast of light streaming from Melville.

“They want a Count to be responsible for the fallout.”

“Nice,” I muse. “So when the Celestra blood bank closes up shop, the Counts will know whose head to put on the chopping block.” And, probably quite literally.

“Exactly.” Cooper gives a heartfelt nod. “No faction dispute, just homegrown treason at its finest. I’m betting the Tobias sisters want Celestra hands clean.”

“I don’t get it.” It comes out a whimper. “I’m the least of the Counts. I’m for sure not a diehard. The last thing I want to do is align myself with the bastards.” All I wanted to do was prove that I wasn’t from here, that I had a life somewhere else—that Wes and Fletch did, too.

A lone tear threatens to fall, and I blink it back before it has a chance to cloud the world with its liquid sorrow.

“You’re possibly the only Count alive that wants out of the organization.” Coop gives a sly smile. “Who better to stab them in the heart than one of their own?” A fracture of light sizzles through the sky, and he examines me under the electrical display. “Besides, I think you owe the Tobias sisters in a big way.”

“I do?”

“They confirmed everything we knew.” Cooper wraps an arm around my waist and pulls me in. He dusts my forehead with his lips. “You’re lucid.”

“
Laken?
” Wesley’s voice explodes in the night like a siren.

“I’d better go,” I say, shaking the soot off the back of my dress. 

“I wouldn’t tell Wes,” Flynn suggests, surprising me. From Coop I’d expect it.

“He won’t work with us. He’s too indoctrinated,” Cooper adds. “Good night, Laken.” He wraps his arms around me for a very long time before pulling away and taking me in. “You look so beautiful,” he whispers it low but even then Flynn can hear him. “I just want you to know I’ll never forget how gorgeous you look tonight.”

Wes belts out my name—his voice draws in on us just below Melville House and my head explodes with pain. At least now I know why I’m getting the headaches—the windshield, the resurrection—it’s all real.

Cooper glances off in the distance and swivels his hands over my back. “If you need anything at all. Just say the word, and I’ll be there.”

“I know.” I pull him in for one last hug before taking off into the blank canvas of night.

I follow Wesley’s desperate cries until I spot his heavily shadowed frame on the outskirts of the knoll just below Austen House.  

“Wes?” I shout. My Wes—Celestra-blood-thirsty Wes.

I hate this. Everything about this is wrong.

“Laken!” He charges in my direction, wraps his arms around my waist, happy to have found me.

God, I love you
, he seals the invisible sentiment with a kiss that falls in line with eternity. If you could pull a kiss out for miles, this would be the one.

“I fell in the forest,” I pant, looking up into his face. “Funny thing is I saw myself in that tree house again.” I smooth out my expression. “Things started coming back to me.”

“Laken.” An arid rose blooms from his lips. The amethyst sky illuminates in a seizure from above. His teeth flash a brilliant pearl and light up the night resplendent. “Knew it. You’re going to be all right.” He takes in my scent at the neck, dots my face with a spastic spray of kisses. “What the hell happened out there tonight?”

“Jen—she knocked into Jax—there must have been a ricochet effect.” I spit out the lies faster than I can process them. “Did we avert an Austen House massacre? No one’s dead, right?” I’d feel horrible if someone died in the mêlée.

“No one’s dead. You were the last accounted for.” Wes gives a strained look out into the forest. “We’d better get you home. Jen’s hysterical.”