Kami Garcia - Unbreakable

I didn’t know how to explain it, but I wasn’t ready to leave. Part of my mom would always be in this house, at least my memories of her. Breaking up chocolate bars in the kitchen to make her extreme brownies. Watching her paint my bedroom walls violet to match my favorite stuffed animal. Those were things that I couldn’t pack in boxes.

“My aunt is selling the house. It’ll probably be the last time I get to sleep in my room.”

Elle shook her head, but I knew she was going to give in. “I’ll stay at Jen’s and tell my mom you’re with me.” She walked over to my dresser and picked up the photo of the two of us with our blue tongues, the edges bending beneath the pressure of her fingers. “Don’t forget this one.”

“You keep it.” My voice cracked.

Her eyes welled, and she threw her arms around me. “I’m gonna miss you so much.”

“We still have two more days.” Two days seemed like forever. I would’ve killed for two more hours with my mom.

After Elle left, I peeled the yellowed tape off the edges of Berens’ The Great Escape . I tossed the poster in the trash, wishing I could escape from the cardboard boxes and the bare walls and a life that didn’t feel anything like the one I remembered.

I drifted in and out of sleep, fragments of dreams cutting through my consciousness. My mom’s body lying motionless on the bed. Her empty eyes staring at me. A bitter cold wrapping itself around me like a wet blanket. The sensation of something bearing down on my chest.

I struggled to sit up, but the weight was too heavy.

It felt like someone was holding a pillow over my face. I reached out blindly, trying to push it away. But there was no pillow. Just the air I couldn’t breathe and the weight I couldn’t move.

Blinking hard, I searched for something familiar to pull me out of the dream. There was nothing except a blurry silhouette looming above me.

No. On top of me.

Two eyes glittered in the darkness.

A strangled scream caught in my throat as the pressure bearing down on my chest intensified, and the room began to fade.…

Sounds brought me back—a crash, banging on the stairs, voices. The hall lights flickered, and I finally saw what was hiding behind those luminous eyes.

Elvis—crouched on my chest, mouth open and eyes locked on mine.

I inhaled sharply, but there was still no air. Elvis’ ears flattened against his head, and his jaw pulled back like a snake about to strike.

The bedroom door banged against the wall, and someone shouted, “Take the shot!”

Elvis whipped around toward the voice, and a rush of air burned through my lungs. A guy stood in the doorway with something black in his hand.

Who—

He raised his arm.

Was that a gun?

A shot rang out, and the weight lifted. I sat up, gasping and choking on the air my body so desperately needed. A sticky mist rained down over everything, stinging my eyes, and I squeezed them shut.

When I opened them again, I was too stunned to make a sound.

At the foot of my bed, a girl floated in the air above Elvis’ body. Pale and gaunt, her face marred with bruises and cuts, her blond hair hanging in tangled curls.

Bare feet dangled beneath her white nightgown.

It was the girl from the graveyard. Her bloodshot eyes found mine, frozen in a moment of pure terror. The girl’s neck was marked with two purple bruises, perfect imprints of the hands that must have killed her.

A second shot hit the strangled girl’s body, and she exploded. Millions of tiny particles fluttered in the air like dust before vanishing completely.

Hands touched my shoulders. “Are you okay?”

Our faces were only inches apart—a guy about my age, wearing a black nylon flight jacket.

I scrambled backward. “Who are you?”

“My name is Lukas Lockhart, and that’s my brother, Jared.” He looked over at a guy standing by the door in a green army jacket with the name LOCKHART on a patch sewn above the pocket. A pale scar cut across the skin above his eyebrow.

They were both tall and broad-shouldered, with the same messy brown hair and blue eyes.

Identical twins.

The one in the army jacket walked over to Elvis’ body, a gun wrapped in silver duct tape still in his hand.

The gun that killed my cat.

My stomach lurched, and I bolted off the bed.

“Wait!” one of them shouted, his footsteps practically on top of mine.

The staircase at the end of the hall was too far and he was too close. I’d never make it. But the bathroom was only a few feet away.

I slammed the door behind me and locked it.

The knob rattled a second later. “It’s Lukas. We just want to help.”

I couldn’t think straight. Something that looked like a dead girl had just exploded in my bedroom, and now I was alone in the house with two guys I didn’t know. They had definitely saved my life.…

But one of them has a gun.

“You killed my cat.”

“It’s not dead. It took off out the window.” His voice sounded soothing and gentle, which only made me more anxious. “Those were liquid-salt rounds.”

I gasped, remembering the sticky mist in my bedroom. “So he’s okay?”

“Your cat’s probably freaked out,” he said. “But he was alive the last time I saw him.”

Tears of relief ran down my cheeks. “What was that thing inside him?”

Thinking about the girl’s tormented expression and the dark bruises around her neck made my skin crawl. Something horrible must have happened to her—whatever she was.

There was a long pause, followed by whispering on the other side of the door.

“She was a vengeance spirit,” Lukas said. “They manifest when a person suffers a violent or traumatic death.”

I thought about the night in the cemetery and the walk home, when I’d tried to convince myself that I hadn’t seen a girl floating in the graveyard. “A spirit? You mean, like a ghost?”

“Yeah. A really pissed off one.” Another voice passed through the door. It was harder, like the kindness had been hammered out of it. Lukas’ brother—what was his name? Jared.

“I think I’ve seen it before—the ghost.”

“When?” Jared sounded worried.

“A month ago, in the cemetery a few blocks from here.” More whispering. “What did it want with me?”

They were silent for a moment before Lukas answered, “She was using the cat to steal your breath. Vengeance spirits are angry or confused about their deaths, so they attack the living.”

The image of Elvis crouched on my mom’s chest flashed through my mind, and a wave of nausea racked my body. She didn’t die of a heart attack.

I barely made it to the toilet before my stomach lurched.

Someone knocked softly. “You okay?”

My mom was dead, and according to two strangers, an angry spirit had killed her—the same one that had just tried to kill me.

“How did the spirit get inside my cat?” It sounded ridiculous. But I could still feel the unbearable pressure on my chest.

“Most likely by grave jumping. An animal walks over a fresh grave and the spirit hitches a ride.” It was Jared, the one with the gun.

I pictured Elvis walking over the girl’s grave and her ghostly hand shooting up from the ground and grabbing his furry leg. They couldn’t be serious. “Sounds like a crazy superstition.”

“That superstition almost killed you,” Jared said.

I pressed the heels of my hands against my eyes. “Well, I’m fine now. You can go.”

“It’s not safe, Kennedy. You should come with us.”

Regardless of what happened in my room, two guys had broken into my house and they were standing in the hallway, armed. I glanced at the window. The last streaks of darkness were fading from the sky, but the sidewalks remained empty.