Rachel Vincent - Before I Wake

At the end of the aisle, Luca turned to the right—away from Tina’s car. He stepped slowly, hesitantly toward Jayson’s trunk, his eyes narrowed in concentration, and I could feel my own brow wrinkle in confusion. “It’s in there. Dead. Not rotting yet, so it’s very recent.”

“What? No,” I said, frustrated by the fact that logic and the truth didn’t seem to line up. “Why would someone put a body in Jayson’s car? He doesn’t know anything about any of this.”

“No, but his trunk obviously made a convenient delivery system.” Tod peered over the roof, and I followed his gaze to the shore, where Em and Jayson were two indistinct forms near the edge of the water, enjoying their normal day, and their normal lives, with no idea how much macabre horror had hitched a ride in Jayson’s normal car. “He’s not looking. I’m going to pop the trunk.”

Tod disappeared, and an instant later he reappeared in Jayson’s driver’s seat.

My hands shook and my mind raced. Who was in the trunk? It had to be someone I knew. Someone close to me. The pattern was escalating—Avari had said that himself. A stranger. A classmate. A friend.

This time it was a relative. It had to be. Except that all of my relatives were alive and accounted for.

Except for Uncle Brendon.

“No…”

My uncle had cared for me like a father when my own father hadn’t been able to deal with my mother’s death. Uncle Brendon had been there on every first day of school and every trip to the doctor. He’d turned on the bathroom light when I was scared of the dark and thrown away the steamed broccoli I hated, when Aunt Val wasn’t looking.

But whatever he’d been to me, he was more to Sophie. He was all she had left. And no matter what she’d said and done to me in the past, she didn’t deserve this.

Tod leaned forward in the driver’s seat and something popped inside the car. The trunk lid rose a couple of inches, but I only stared at it. I couldn’t look. I didn’t want to see.

“Kaylee?” Luca said, but I shook my head.

“I need a minute.” How was I going to tell my dad that his brother was gone? How was I going to tell Sophie that her father was dead? And that it was my fault?

“Kay?” Tod appeared at my side and his arm wrapped around me from behind.

“I can’t do it. It’s Uncle Brendon. Am I a total coward if I don’t look?”

He squeezed me, then let me go and lifted the trunk. I turned my head. I didn’t want to see my uncle dead, and I especially didn’t want to see him dead in the trunk of Emma’s boyfriend’s car.

Luca made a sound, deep in his throat, and for a second, I thought he’d choked on horror. I’d come close myself, several times. “What the hell?” the necromancer said. “I don’t understand.”

“Kaylee,” Tod said, and something in his voice set off alarms in my head. He seemed to be calling me forward and warning me back at the same time. “It’s not your uncle.”

Chill bumps sprouted all over my arms, and finally I looked, because I had no other choice. But at first, I couldn’t process what I was seeing.

Tod was right; it wasn’t my uncle. This man was younger, thinner, with unruly brown hair and…

My hands clenched around the edge of the trunk and I looked up at Tod, my eyes wide. He nodded in response to the question I couldn’t voice. “He said he brought you a gift.”

Yes, that’s exactly what Jayson had said. Except it couldn’t really have been Jayson speaking, because Jayson was dead in the trunk of his own car.

“So, who’s that with Emma?” Luca asked, and I glanced up in horror, searching the shoreline for her and for not-Jayson. I had to squint to see them clearly. They were a quarter of the way around the lake, standing in the sand. Em’s shoes dangled from the fingers of one hand. And she was kissing…him. She was kissing not-Jayson.

My best friend was kissing the demon wearing her boyfriend’s stolen soul.

“That son of a bitch played us.” And now he had Emma within his grasp. Literally.

Tod saw my intent before it could possibly have surfaced in my eyes. “Kaylee, wait!”

But I couldn’t wait. I couldn’t let him have her.

Frantic with rage and impatience, I turned and stomped toward the picnic table, where my dagger lay, still smeared with blood. “Kaylee.” Tod followed me. “We need a plan.”

“I have one: kill him, before he lays another hand on Emma.”

“That’s not a plan, it’s a goal. Plans have steps, and forethought, and—”

I grabbed the dagger, but Tod stood his ground, blocking me in between the table and the grill. “Step one. Kill him. Step two. Repeat as necessary.” I turned to Nash and Luca. “Will you guys go get Sophie?” When they nodded, I turned back to Tod. “You comin’?”

Then I blinked out, without waiting for his reply. An instant later, I stood on the sand behind the Jayson-thing. Over his shoulder, Em saw my knife and gasped.

Jayson turned and laughed out loud. “I wondered how long that would take.”

“About this long.” I swung the knife at him, but he turned at the same time, with Emma in his grip. Em screamed. I tried to abort my swing, but the dagger sliced through the side of her blouse as he swung her around like a human shield. The blade scored her skin in an arc, just above her right hip.

She screamed again, and I gasped, almost frozen by my own horror and regret. “Em, I’m so sorry!”

“Ow, shit! What the hell, Kaylee?” Em slapped one hand over the wound, but Jayson nearly pulled her off balance when he dragged her backward, away from me.

“Let her go,” I said, trying to divide my focus between his face and the blood seeping between her fingers.

“Kaylee, put the knife down,” the Jayson-thing said. His voice was full of trepidation and fear, but his expression didn’t match. His grin was creepy and irrepressible, but Emma couldn’t see that with him at her back. He leaned down to speak directly into her ear. “I always heard she was crazy, but I didn’t think she was violent. ”

And that’s when I understood the game—the hellion was still playing his role.

“Kaylee?” Emma’s face was white with pain, and her hands were red and slick with her own blood. She was breathing too hard. Too fast.

“I’m so sorry, Em. I was aiming for him.” My focus shifted to his eyes, sparkling with new pleasure over her head. “Let her go. This isn’t about her.”

“What is she talking about?” Jayson’s voice asked, practically shaking with fake fear, while his eyes shined in malicious pleasure. “And why is she armed?” He pulled her farther away from me, pretending to protect her, when he was really shielding himself.

“What’s going on?” Em demanded, and the strength in her voice gave me hope. Surely if the wound was very bad, she’d weaken quickly. Right?

“Don’t mean to scare you, Em,” Tod said, appearing on the left edge of my peripheral vision. “But there’s a better than average chance you may be dating a demon.”

She glanced at him, then back to me. “What the hell is he talking about?”

“That’s not Jayson. Jayson’s dead in his own trunk.”

“What does that mean?” the Jayson-thing said. “They’re crazy, Em. How could I be standing here right now, if I were dead?”

Tod made an exasperated sound. “Oh, let me count the ways… .”

“Emma, listen to me, please.” I stepped forward, but he dragged her back again. “Jayson is dead. He’s in the trunk of his own car, in the parking lot. The thing holding you is Avari, and he’s not protecting you from me, he’s using you as a human shield.”

“No…” Em flinched and pressed her hand harder against her wound. But she’d seen and survived too much to let fear and disbelief—or even pain—blind her to the dangerous truth. That was one of the things I liked best about her. “Jayson’s dead?”