Читать книгу Run to You Part Six: Sixth Sense - Clara Kensie - Страница 7

Chapter Thirty-Eight

“How dare you.”

Those were the words Deirdre used to greet me when Tristan and I returned to the Connellys’ house as the sun rose the next morning. She stood in the foyer, hair a mess of copper, arms crossed, lips curved down.

“I gave you one rule to follow, Tessa. One. Stay in Lilybrook,” she said. “And what did you do, the first chance you had? You left Lilybrook.”

So this was it. I’d disregarded Deirdre’s premonition. Disobeyed her orders. I’d left town, and in doing so, I had almost gotten her son killed. Dennis and Tristan had already risked their lives for me, and now Tristan had to do it again. Tristan and I had finally reconciled, but Deirdre was going to tell me to leave, to get out and never come back, just like my mother had done.

“How dare you make me worry like that?” She grabbed both Tristan and me in a hug so tight I could barely breathe. “I was frantic.”

“I—” I mumbled into her chest. “You’re not kicking me out?”

“Kick you out?” she said, still holding me tight. “Tessa, no. I’m upset that you deceived us, but I understand how desperate you are to find your siblings. But honey, you cannot leave Lilybrook again. We can’t risk my dream happening.”

“Mom, it did happen,” Tristan chuckled. “Your dream came true.”

“What? How?” She released us, then put her hands on my shoulders and looked me up and down. “Kellan told us a crazy woman tried to attack you with a knife. He didn’t say anything about a little house with silver walls.”

As Tristan and I gave Deirdre a slightly sanitized version of yesterday’s events, Dennis and Ember came downstairs. They listened breathlessly, Deirdre and Ember with their hands over their mouths in shock the whole time. “That lady had a vision of your nightmare and attacked you?” Ember asked, her face white.

Miserably, I nodded, and Dennis frowned.

When we got to the part about Lady Elke barging through the shed’s door, Ember squeezed Lyric so tight that he hissed and bolted away, and Deirdre grabbed me again, crushing me to her chest.

When we finished, Dennis rubbed his chin. “So the shed was the little house,” he concluded. “The tools on the wall were the silver.”

“The tools were the silver?” Deirdre furrowed her brow. “Well, I’m just relieved it’s over. Now we need to get you to stop having that nightmare, Tessa. It’s a lot more serious than I thought.”

I nodded. There was nothing I wanted more than to stop having my nightmare. Except for finding Jillian and Logan and bringing them back here, safe. And now that I no longer had to worry about Deirdre’s dream of little houses with silver walls, I was free to leave Lilybrook to get them.

* * *

That afternoon, I held tight to Tristan’s hand as I rang the doorbell to Aaron Jacobs’ house. In my other hand, I held a bouquet of balloons in all different colors, each of them printed with Get Well Soon.

The healers who had flown out to Ringgold, Colorado, to treat Aaron after his plunge off the cliff had worked fast, stealthily healing him enough to transport him back to Lilybrook within a few days. Now he was back home with his parents and a rotating crew of APR healers and physicians on hand to treat him.

Mrs. Jacobs answered the door. When she saw me, a little wrinkle formed between her eyebrows. That was the only wrinkly thing about her. Her chin-length hair was polished and glossy, and her slacks and blouse were perfectly pressed. I resisted the urge to smooth my hair.

“Mrs. Jacobs,” I said, gathering my courage. “We came to see Aaron. And to talk to you. Please.”

She regarded us for a moment, then let us in. Everything in her house was immaculate. White and cream with straight lines and right angles. Not a speck of dust. It smelled like Lysol. My mother would love it here.

“I heard about your little escapade to North Dakota,” Mrs. Jacobs said. “That was a very reckless thing to do, Tessa.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said. “I know. I’m sorry.”

“I’m sure you’re grateful that John Kellan was able to rescue you.”

Tristan stiffened beside me, and I squeezed his hand to calm him. This was not a good time for him to get hotheaded about Kellan. “Yes, ma’am. We’re very grateful.”

But my humility wasn’t good enough for her, because she continued, her expression hard and immobile as granite. “The Carson family has brought a lot of trouble and heartache to this town.”

At her words, the Nightmare Eyes appeared and burned down on me from above. “Yes, we have,” I said. “What I did was wrong. And my parents...there’s no excuse for what they did. But my brother and sister didn’t mean to hurt Aaron. It was self-defense.”

The wrinkle between her brows deepened by a millimeter. “I am well aware of the situation. I saw the video. I read the reports. I talked to Aaron.”

“Does that mean you’ll repeal Kellan’s shoot to-kill-order?” Tristan asked.

She paused for a moment, then spoke directly to me. “Your parents killed two of our investigators, Tessa. If they’d been allowed to use deadly force at that time, they’d be alive today, and so would all of the innocent people your parents killed while your family was on the run for eight years.” Her face remained motionless, except for a tiny, defiant lift of her chin. “I stand by my decision. John Kellan is allowed to use deadly force if the situation calls for it.”

She was motionless, but I was crumbling. “Mrs. Jacobs, Kellan will use deadly force whether the situation calls for it or not. He doesn’t care about them. All he cares about is vengeance.”

Another miniscule movement: her eyebrow raised.

I thought I’d convinced her, that my plea had softened her granite resolve, but her eyebrow lowered back into place and she said, “This discussion is over, Tessa.”

Tristan put his arm around me. I knew it would be useless to appeal to her, he said silently. She said the same thing to my dad. We’ll just have to find another way.

Mrs. Jacobs glanced up at the balloons we’d brought. “It’s almost time for Aaron’s meds. If you’d still like to see him, you have to do it now. Come with me.”

My heart sinking, we followed her to Aaron’s bedroom, which was dominated by several computers, stacks of video games, and a large flat-screen TV. The overhead lights of his bedroom were turned off, but sunlight streamed through the slats in the blinds, revealing a swollen white figure on the bed. A cotton sheet covered him up to his chest, which was wrapped in bandages, as were both arms. His face was turned away, toward the window. Only his eyes and lips were left uncovered.

He looks even worse than I thought he would, I flashed to Tristan. He’s just a pile of white bandages.

He’s still a thousand times better than if he didn’t have psionic healers working on him.

“You have two minutes,” Mrs. Jacobs said, then left.

“Hi, Aaron.” The cheer in my voice was forced. “Welcome back.” I tied the balloons to the handle on his nightstand drawer. Aaron didn’t acknowledge me or the balloons. He didn’t move.

Underneath all of Aaron’s bandages were lacerations and burns. The healers were able to heal his lacerations, but most of his burns were so bad that he would always be scarred.

Above me, the Nightmare Eyes burned through my blood. But no matter how much I burned, it was nothing compared to the burns that Aaron was suffering. No matter how much I hated the scars my mother had carved into my belly, they were nothing compared to the burn scars Aaron would have on over sixty percent of his body.

My brother and sister had done this to him.

But so had I.

I had given him that final clue to Ringgold, Colorado. And I had encouraged his crush on Jillian, used it to motivate him to find her.

A lump formed in my throat and I had to give up the cheerful act. “Aaron?” I choked. “Aaron, I am so, so sorry.”

No reply. The only thing that moved were his eyelashes, down, then up.

“Jillian and Logan, they didn’t know you were trying to help them,” I said. “If they knew, they never would have...” I couldn’t finish the sentence.

No reply. Just another blink as he looked out the window.

“When—if,” I corrected myself, because I was losing faith that there would be a when, “If I find Jillian, I’ll tell her how smart you are. How talented. I’ll bring her to meet you and—”

Aaron flinched, then exhaled, muttering something. Five syllables.

“What was that?” I asked.

“You...” he inhaled. “Are...” he stopped, recovered, then dragged in another breath. “Killers’ ...Spawn.”

A vise clamped around my heart as Tristan went rigid. “Hey, man. That’s not fair.”

“Aaron, please.” My heart shred into tiny pieces. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

Slowly, Aaron turned his head to face me, and I was one hundred percent certain that his eyes had turned Nightmare black.

But they weren’t. They were still brown.

Aaron wasn’t feeding upon my nightmare, on my shame and grief and despair.

Aaron hated me on his own accord. And for some reason, that was even worse.

* * *

Back in the Connellys’ guest room, I sat on the bed with Tristan’s laptop on my knees. Mac lay at my feet, thumping his tail occasionally, and Marmalade was perched in her spot on top of the bookcase. The only good thing that had happened today was finding out that the APR’s board of directors had put Nathan on probation for blocking Tristan’s premonitions, and he would be fired if he bothered me, or Tristan, ever again. But my blood still burned from Aaron’s rebuke as I clicked on another website. “Here’s a used car dealership in Warrenville,” I said, and called out its phone number to Tristan.

He dialed, then paced the room with his phone to his ear.

Before Lady Elke had fed upon my nightmare and gone crazy, she’d told us that Jillian and Logan were driving in a new car. “He doesn’t like this new car,” she’d said. “It’s too small. The RV had more space.”

So, sometime soon after their visit to Lady Elke, my siblings had gotten rid of their RV and purchased a new car. It was a tiny lead. We didn’t know what kind of car, or what color, or if they’d bought it at a dealership or through a private sale. But our appeal to Beverly Jacobs had failed, so that tiny lead was our only hope of finding Jillian and Logan before Kellan did. Now Tristan and I were contacting car dealerships in North Dakota one by one, asking if they recalled two teenagers buying a car with cash.

There was a soft knock on my door frame. Deirdre, her copper hair falling over a sweatshirt painted with little upside-down handprints. In childish writing it read, Best Teacher Hands Down!

“Tessa, can I talk to you?” she asked. “Alone?”

I shot Tristan a message—what’s this about?—but he just shrugged. He gathered his notes and laptop, and kissed me before departing to his room. Mac padded after him, and Marmalade jumped onto the bed and mewed.

Deirdre sat next to me, and I tried not to stiffen when she tucked a lock of hair behind my ear. But she must have noticed, because she sighed and pulled away. “When you got back from North Dakota this morning, you asked if I was going to kick you out. Do you really think I would do that?”

“I did for a second,” I admitted.

She took my chin in her hand and made me look at her. “You will always have a home here, Tessa. Always.”

“But—”

“When you find Jillian and Logan, they will have a home here too.”

“But our parents—”

“Your parents tried to kill Dennis. They wanted to kill Tristan. They hurt a lot of people.”

I pulled away, hung my head, but she grabbed my chin again. “Your parents did those things,” she said. “Not you.”

Logically, I knew that. I understood that. But they were my parents. Their blood pumped through my veins with every beat of my heart. Shame and grief, hurt and despair built up inside me, growing bigger and bigger, heavier and heavier, until it burst out of me with a sob. “I’m just so...ashamed.” The word ripped itself from my throat.

“That shame is what’s causing your nightmare,” Deirdre said. “A nightmare so strong that some crazy psychic with a knife fed upon it.”

“But what can I do?” I cried. “How do I get rid of it? I can’t change who my parents are. I can’t change what they did. I can’t change the past.”

Deirdre sighed. “Oh, Tessa. Sometimes I think the person your parents hurt the most, was you.”

I lost it then. Sobs tore from my throat, one after another, and I couldn’t see past my tears. I covered my face with my hands and cried, and through my sobs, I told her everything. She already knew it, but I told her anyway. How every word from my parents’ mouths had been a lie. How my entire childhood had been a lie. How they’d allowed my brother and sister and I to live in constant fear. How my mother had flown me into the wall. How she’d sliced me open. How the scars on my stomach were nothing compared to the scars on my soul. How, just as I was ready to accept my mother back into my life, she’d rejected me when I told her I was living with Tristan. And most of all, how on that last night in Twelve Lakes, my parents had instructed Jillian and Logan to run away instead of telling them the truth, costing me the only two people in the world who could possibly understand how it felt to be so betrayed by the people we had trusted the most.

Deirdre didn’t tell me to stop crying. She didn’t ask questions. She just listened.

I continued to cry, and with each sob, each tear, I felt lighter, and my blood became cooler. When I finally stopped, exhausted, she wiped my tears. “You can’t change the past,” she said, “but you can let go of it. And Tessa, you can change who your parents are.”

That was enough to make me sob one last time.

I lay down, and slowly, put my head on her plump lap. She rested her hand on my head for a moment, then ran her fingers through my hair.

My parents committed those crimes, not me. They’d hurt me just as much as they’d hurt everyone else. Maybe even more. Deirdre understood that. So did Tristan. And Dennis, and Ember.

I’d lost so much, but I had gained something too. A new family. I’d started with Tristan, and then I added Dennis and Deirdre and Ember. Once I found Jillian and Logan, my new family would be complete.

I fell asleep with my head on Deirdre’s lap as she stroked my hair. And when the Nightmare Eyes made their appearance in my dreams that night, they weren’t quite as black.