Captivate Me (Book One: The Captivated Series) (11 page)

“Open your eyes and focus on that
ruler on my desk,” she continued. “Imagine that it’s the one thing
that stands between your loved one and their death.”

I squinted hard in
concentration, imagining it was a knife. I could use the knife
against Levi’s attacker.
Pick up,
I commanded.

“They’re close to dying,” she
hastened. “Do it, Kat!”

I grunted, a vein swelling in my
forehead, my neck straining. This didn’t feel right. I wanted to
use my fingers.

“You can do it, Kat,” a girl said from
the front of the room.

I imagined the web
shooting straight from my mind and around the ruler, the
knife.
Move, dammit!
My entire body shook, and I was sweating. I hardly ever
sweated. Why wouldn’t the friggin’ thing move already?!

“Imagine that they’re dying now. On
their last breath.”

Shit!
My teeth were grinding now. I fought harder. The damn web
didn’t feel like it was gripping tight enough. Why?! My poor Levi.
If this had been real life, he’d be a dead man!

I tried to force the web tighter, and
the ruler vibrated.

“Yes!” she cheered. “That’s
it.”

The ruler hovered.

Relief flooded me, but I
held my intense focus, my hands gripping my plaid skirt so tight
that my knuckles glowed white. I wanted to use them so bad. The
ruler would already be across the room by now. Or sticking out of
the wall. Maybe I really
did
love him. Maybe this was proving
something.

An unwelcome voice wafted through the
air, bouncing off the walls. Principal Hughes. “Attention, students
and faculty,” his weary voice announced, and I dropped the ruler.
With a mixture of anger and intrigue, I glared at the intercom. I
had almost been there! Two times now he’d interrupted my moment.
Realizing he was probably about to announce they’d found Mr.
Plunkett, my eyes shifted to Ronnie, hopeful. Maybe he was safe and
sound.

“Report back to your rooms
immediately. Stay there until further notice, and lock your
doors.”

* * *

Two people were missing now. Mr.
Plunkett and Jillian Loche – a name I hadn’t recognized when
Principal Hughes had announced it. According to a classmate, she
was a freshman. As we filed along to our dorm wings, our hearts
heavier and fears magnified to insufferable, I took notice of
police officers shuffling along as they scrutinized every nook and
cranny and spoke to random teachers. This made everything even more
real, but I felt safer.

My first thought when they
announced that Jillian was missing was to make a bee-line for my
room and call my parents, but we were also ordered not to call
home. The school would be making the calls. I guess they didn’t
want a bunch of freaked-out kids calling their parents and
freaking
them
out
with second hand information. But they
should
have been freaked out. We all
should have been. I guess mass hysteria wouldn’t have helped the
situation, though, and the cops were here at least.

* * *

Excruciating. That was the only word I
could use to describe how being holed up in our tiny room for an
entire day and worrying about Nurse Plunkett and Jillian felt.
Teachers had delivered our lunches and dinners to our rooms, and we
weren’t to leave unless we called and cleared it with Principal
Hughes himself. Occasionally we’d hear the clacking of heels
against the tile in the hallway – faculty or policeman on patrol.
The school began to feel like a jail to me, except they weren’t
protecting the public from us, but rather us from whoever was
wishing us harm. I should have felt grateful that they were taking
such care for our safety, but I was itching to leave, for fresh air
and open space. Claustrophobic. Excruciating and
claustrophobic.

I knew Levi was probably feeling the
same way and was dying to come check on me, but I also knew it was
too risky. I was sure he knew that too and that was why I hadn’t
heard from him. If our landlines could have dialed each other’s
rooms, we’d have already spoken by now. Multiple times.

While Anna snored with her headphones
in, I paced by the window like a caged lion wishing to be freed. My
lungs were constricting from the stagnant air in this room - this
small room that was closing in on me with every passing minute. I
paused, staring out into the woods – the cool, spacious
woods.

I then thought of
him
. If my admirer had
visited last night, he hadn’t left a flower. I had talked myself
out of being disappointed all day, for mine and Levi’s sakes. I
hadn’t dreamt of him last night, either. Did that mean something?
Part of me wished it did, but part of me wished it didn’t. A
bigger
part of me wished
it didn’t.

I stepped closer to the window and
sighed, wishing to be free and inside the woods… with him. With
that feeling he gave me. At this excruciating, claustrophobic
moment, nothing in the world sounded better.

I gnawed on my lip with my eyes
closed, an idiotic idea brewing inside me. No way. I would be the
biggest moron in the world if I tried to escape to the woods
tonight. With people being abducted and police everywhere, it was
too risky.

I glanced at my tennis
shoes by the closet and back to the window. Which would win? My
insatiable desire to feel free and feel
him
, or my reasoning. And Levi -
venturing into the woods would be a step in the opposite direction
of where I was trying to take our relationship.

Shit. Shit, shit, shit. This should
have been an obvious, easy decision.

And then I felt it – that pull. That
pull I couldn’t deny. The itch in my heart longing to be scratched;
as if a piece inside of me belonged there in the woods.

I went for my shoes.

* * *

With my hoodie pulled over
my head and my tennis shoes tied tight on my feet, I scurried
through the hallways close to the walls like a rat finding its way
out. When I heard the staccato of footsteps, I’d flatten against
the wall or hide behind a piece of furniture until they were gone.
When I finally made it outside, I wasn’t in the clear yet. More
police patrolled outside. But I didn’t care; I had a goal and
intended to accomplish it. And the air… I sucked in a lungful of
the clean, moist air.
Heaven.

As a policeman with a flashlight
disappeared around the corner, I made a run for it with my own
flashlight tucked inside my back pocket. Almost there! Would he be
there again? Would he reveal himself to me? The idea propelled me
faster.

I crashed through the tree line and
paused to pull my flashlight from my pocket, my lungs heaving from
my short sprint and the excitement of what or who I might find
tonight. My thumb rested on the button to click it on, and I caught
the sight of more lights ahead. Flashlights?

I froze.
Dammit.
Were the police
looking for Nurse Plunkett and Jillian in the woods? I was a fool
to think I could get away with this.

Crouching into a ball against a tree,
I decided to wait it out and see where the lights were headed –
away or toward me, but they didn’t seem to be moving anywhere. And
the lights… flickered. Definitely not flashlights. Lanterns?
Torches? Who used those anymore? This was the twenty-first
century.

After what felt like forever, I
decided to straighten again, that weird yet comfortable pull
begging me to go farther in and toward the lights. Speaking of
idiotic…

But I listened. I trusted this feeling
I was slowly but begrudgingly growing to accept.

In a surreal daze, I put
one foot in front of the other. The lights were giving off enough
of a glow to keep me from stumbling over logs or exposed tree
roots. Deeper and deeper I went, into the woods and closer to the
lights. They were in a clearing.
The
clearing. The clearing I’d been
in two nights ago… with him.

My pulse pounded in my
ears now, my ragged breaths puffing into the cool air in white
clouds. I stopped at the threshold of the clearing, my eyes raking
all around. Lanterns dangled on poles at its edges, washing the
open space and the flowery bushes in a delicate, dancing light.
Dead center, a fire burned bright with log benches surrounding it.
That definitely hadn’t been here the other night. Had
he
made it?
Please be here
, I
prayed.
And show yourself to me. I want to
see you.

No sooner did the words
flit through my mind when a gentle breeze flicked a loose strand of
hair across my face. Figures appeared, and my body
stiffened.
Oh, God.
I was too frantic to count them all, but it looked close to
ten, maybe more. And they had just
appeared
. Out of nowhere! I covered
my mouth to keep from screaming, my knees buckling and flashlight
falling to the ground with a thud.

A woman in the front of the group
stepped toward me, a white dove on her shoulder. She was beautiful.
Mesmerizing. Her straight blonde hair met the small of her back,
and she wore a floor-length black velvet dress with long sleeves,
dark against her milky skin. Her eyes shone violet, a pleading, but
relieved look behind them. She held out her hands as if to say,
“Don’t run, it’s okay.”

My eyes then moved to a
tall, lean silhouette on her left. A
familiar
silhouette – black shirt
and all. My heart gained speed.
Oh,
God.
The boy from the woods. The boy from
my dreams. My knees weakened more as I drank in his beauty –
chestnut hair cropped close on the sides and longer on top. Just as
he appeared in my dream, only better: this boy was
real
. His face –
gorgeous, ethereal like a majestic angel or god. Flawless, but
strong and chiseled. His blue eyes bored right through me, right
into my soul, but his expression confused me. He looked worried,
watchful.

“Kat,” the woman said, her
voice like music, but I barely listened to what she said after
that. Nothing else in the woods, the
world
, existed but the two of us –
me and the boy of my dreams, who couldn’t look away from me
either.

“Kat,” another voice said.

Wait… I recognize that
voice.

My eyes tore away from my dream boy
and settled onto the voice’s owner. The Jamaican nurse with dreads.
The ground shifted beneath me, and my vision closed in. I was
passing out. “Are you all right?” he asked.

That was the last thing I
remembered.

CHAPTER SEVEN

___________________

Half-breed

Hushed, anxious voices were the first
things to register as I lifted from the darkness.

“Think she’s okay?”

“She’s fine. Give her a minute,” a
woman’s voice answered. She sounded southern, her vowels drawing
out with a lovely timbre, almost melodic. Soothing.

“Did you mean for her to see us,
Iris?”

“How could she see us?”

“Everyone settle down, now. She’s
waking,” the woman with the melodic voice said. She must have been
Iris.

The second thing to register was the
cold air that had turned the tip of my nose to ice. I was still
outside. My eyelids fluttered open to the night sky twinkling with
stars. Around me were concerned faces to match the voices, all of
them looking down at me, studying me. A figure crouched at my side
– Iris. Her bird was eyeing me just as feverishly as the others. I
focused on Iris’ face, her purple eyes. So lovely. I was then aware
she was holding my hand, stroking it sweetly. “My dear,” she
breathed in relief. “You passed out.”

Mortification colored my
cheeks.
Great.
How embarrassing.

Another figure crouched at my other
side. The nurse, his finger resting on the pulse at my wrist, his
eyes sweeping over me. “You’re okay, Kat,” he assured me. “Take it
easy.”

Gently pulling my hands
from their grips, I attempted to prop up on my elbows. My head
spun, and I rested my hand on my forehead with a groan. Fast as
lightning, someone knelt by Iris’ side. My heart skipped a
beat.
Him.
The
look on his face was a mixture of awe and agony. Over
me?

I halfway wondered if I was dreaming
again. This felt so real, but all of this couldn’t be real, could
it?

“Let’s give her some space,” Iris
said, standing, and extended a hand down to me.

Backing up a few steps, everyone
obeyed.

I tentatively slid my hand into hers.
“There you go, darlin’,” she soothed, pulling me to my feet. Her
arm wrapped around my waist for support, and she guided me to a log
beside the fire.

My dream boy fought his way in front
of my audience to watch as she helped me sit. My eyes snapped to
him again like a magnet; they didn’t seem to want to rest on
anything else. I didn’t even know what half of these other people
looked like yet. Surely this was another dream. I couldn’t be so
lucky as to actually be with him here in the flesh. Why wasn’t he
invisible like before?