Evanescent (14 page)

Wes walks me back to Austen House under a landscape
of clever winking stars. I complained of feeling dizzy, and he
chalked it up to fatigue since it’s well past one in the
morning.

I watch from the large bay window in the
common room as Wes makes the slow trek back up hill. The shadows
swallow him whole as he plods in the direction of Henderson Hall.
Wes dissolves in the night as if he never existed. That’s how this
nightmare feels—the Wesley I grew up with, the one I loved with
every cell in my body has been swallowed by the dark shadows,
dissolved completely.

The fireplace dims as my dorm sisters stream
their way upstairs.

Outside, a glimmer of light catches my
attention from the wall of necrotic evergreens that flatten out
over the horizon. I lean into the frozen glass to inspect it.

A breath gets caught in my throat.

Holy shit—I recognize that tall, lanky boy
and the girl attached to his side. It’s Flynn and fake Hattie.

I bet she’s going to lure him into the woods
and hack his head off for sport before feeding him to the
Spectators. Flynn is about to become a delicacy, and he doesn’t
even know it.

I pluck my phone from my bra and send a
quick text to Coop.

Change of plans. Up for a hot date in Sleepy
Hollow?

He texts back a few seconds later.
Let’s
not and say we did. If you’re in the mood to be chased, I can make
other arrangements.

A private smile curves my lips at the
thought of Coop chasing me around the furniture. Of course I’d let
him catch me—tackle me.

Typical Coop—everything I say is somehow
attached to his balls.

I glance up and catch Flynn disappearing
deep into the velvet reserve of the forest, the long arm of the
demon who’s leading the way, still mercilessly attached to his
side.

I’m going without you
. Take that,
Coop. I’m not some damsel in distress that needs to be saved. Or at
least I’d better not be.

The air outside slices over my bare thighs
as I bolt from Austen House, still in my cheer uniform.

I run all the way past the ridge and catch a
glimpse of the two of them as they make their way into the first
layer of the thicket.

“Flynn!” I scream, but the wind cups its
hand over my mouth and buffers him from my warning.

“
Laken
,” a familiar voice booms from
behind.

I’d know that voice anywhere—Coop.

I’m relieved to see Cooper as he jogs up
beside me. He wraps an arm around my waist as if it belonged there,
and a part of me believes it does.

“Let’s get out of here.” He darts a quick
glance behind me.

“No.” I pull him along. “We can’t stop.” We
dive deeper into the thicket. A narrow seam of moonlight dots a
path through the maze of tree trunks. “I’m glad it’s you.” My voice
quivers as we speed past branch after branch. “I might have aborted
the entire mission if it were Wes—and then Flynn would be in
knee-deep with the Fen-emy.”

“What are you talking about?” He interlaces
our fingers and gives me a tug, reluctant to keep up with my
fervent pace.

“I’m talking about Flynn, alone in this
forest with Hattie the lying Fem.”

Cooper slows to a crawl before we get any
deeper into the haunted woods.

“I’m not losing sleep to save Masterson’s
ass.” He tries to catch his breath.

“Then maybe you’ll lose sleep to save mine,”
I say, jogging out a few more feet in a rather stupid show of
bravado.

I glance back to see if Coop is falling for
it, and he is.

“Laken.” He picks up my hand and reels me
in.

Coop washes over me with that magnetizing
stare. Those hypnotic grey lenses of his are having their way with
me, I can tell. Heat rises from our bodies. I can feel the fire of
this special brand of lust we share percolating into something out
of control, something I might never want to stop.

“Who the hell cares if Flynn gets eaten
alive by an entire coven of Spectators?” His heated breath rakes
against my cheek, and a choking sound emits from my throat. “It’s
bound to happen eventually.”

For a moment I’m not sure if he’s talking
about Flynn’s untimely demise or the two of us exploding from this
powder keg of wanting.

“Flynn’s a smart boy.” Not really, but it
was say that or kiss Coop.

He gives my hand a squeeze, and his cheek
cinches up the side.

Crap.

Everything in me relaxes as I give a little
laugh.

Coop and I have no secrets, and I like it
this way.

It’s magic like this with Coop. He takes the
evil, the wickedness of these woods and transforms them into
something good.
That’s the best part about you, Coop
.
You’re always protecting, always looking out for me no matter
what. And you wash away all the fear in the process
.

He pulls me in and looks lovingly into my
eyes before the smile dissipates from his face. “You didn’t hear
me.”

“No, I guess not. I heard your voice, but
the words sounded like murmurs.” It sounded like a waterfall of
erotic moans, and now I’m dying to know what he said.

He gives a sly grin. “Were you able to hear
me at the game tonight?”

“Barely. It’s cutting out—although, I heard
plenty from Wesley. Toward the end of the night it just sort of
fizzled.”

“Anything happen that you think I should
know about?” His features glow a pale shade of silver under the
anemic stream of moonlight. “Stuff that had to do with
Celestra…”

Coop lets the words hang in the air as if
they were a mere suggestion, as if I could tell him anything I
wanted about my time with Wes.

“He talked about these mysterious woods,” I
whisper. “Some strange place where he’d like to take me. He
confessed to having a secret, and I think he’s ready to share that
final step with me.”

“Tenebrous Woods,” Coop whispers it low,
under his breath. “It’s what the Counts call the Celestra tunnels.
I’ve heard of it. Thought it was a myth up until I met you.” He
brings my hand to his lips and presses in a scorching kiss. A part
of me burns for his lips to land in other places,
every
place.

Coop glances up, the whites of his eyes
shining like glints of a broken mirror.

“He’s says he’s going to take me there.” I’m
quick to lead us back to the topic at hand. Although, somehow
mentioning Wes right now feels like a pox has landed over a special
moment.

“Do you know when?” Coop shakes his head and
drinks me in as if there were a different conversation going on
entirely.

“I’m guessing soon.” I hold his stare for a
moment before dusting the ground with my gaze. “I sweetened the pot
for him.”

“Got it.” He’s says it low, filled with
disappointment. “Is that what you want? Wait—don’t answer. It’s
none of my business.”

“I sort of feel like it is your business.” I
look up at him. “I’ll be honest, I don’t know what I want. As much
as I tell him it’s the only way to pull me back into his world—I
wonder if it’s the only way to bring him back to mine. Maybe if he
loved me deeply, intimately, he would wake up and realize who he
really is.”

“The one that you love.”

I tighten my grip over Coop’s hand as if we
were about to drift apart in an angry sea. I can feel his heart
getting crushed under the weight of Cider Plains, and I hate
it.

“I’m sorry,” I rasp. “I never set out to
hurt you. I swear it.”

“I know.” He steps in until we’re just a
breath away. I feel faint, dizzy being this close to him, wanting
him in a way that I thought was reserved exclusively for Wesley. He
touches his cheek to mine, and my soul, my body swims with an
erotic elation.

Off in the distance, the murmur of voices
catapult into the night.

“Let’s do this,” he whispers. Coop leads us
out in the direction of the voices until we come up on Flynn and
that thing parading around as Hattie. Another girl pops up
alongside them, deformed and bedraggled, and I gasp.

“Shit!” I bury my face into Coop’s chest at
the sight of the decomposing girl. I steal a quick glance before
slowly taking her in. She’s a bona fide, partially resurrected,
once-upon-a-person about our age with clothes shredded to pieces
from the natural wear and tear that only several decades could
bring. Her dark hair is splayed out like cotton candy, and she
looks as if mud baths were a part of her normal routine.

My natural inclination is to take Flynn and
Coop by the hand and run the hell out of this demented den of the
ungrateful dead, or kill both Hattie and her little monster before
they kill us.

“She’s here’s to help.” Flynn holds out a
hand in the event Coop is motivated to beat me to the
slaughter.

“Which one?” I say it sharp, my voice
resonating boldly through the woods. “Because neither of them is
human.”

Flynn shakes his head. “This one.” He slaps
his arm over the Spectator’s shoulder, and her collarbone spears
out as a jagged white shard. “
Dude
.” Flynn backs up heavy
with remorse. “So sorry.”

“How’s it going to help us?” Coop asks, not
giving the Spectator any gender-related dignity. I suppose
compartmentalizing them is necessary since he’s been assigned to
slaughter the malfunctioned scientific ventures. The Counts are
morons for trying to immortalize themselves to begin with. Although
if they hadn’t, Wes wouldn’t be here and neither would I.

“She’s going to help us locate Hattie’s
family,” Flynn says, glancing back at the decomposing being like
he’s truly smitten. “She’s got the low-down on the who’s who of
Spectator society—says she can locate the right people for the
right price.”

“And what price might that be?” I’m almost
positive US currency holds as little value in the Spectator
underground as it does in the real world.

Flynn cuts a glance from me to Coop, the
whites of his eyes reflecting like beacons. “She wants a cure.
She’s agreed to undergo any experiment necessary to make her normal
again.”

“How old was she when they did this to her?”
I walk around her in a slow circle, mostly inspecting her for
weaponry.

“Sev-un-teen,” she grunts, barely
discernable. “Ma name is
Pearl
.”

Cooper

Pearl.

I blow a stiff breath from my lungs as I
scrutinize the walking corpse with her hair waving in the breeze
like threads unraveling from a sweater. She seems harmless enough
with her large bruised eyes, her lips split in three places. Her
fingers have reduced to bone, making her look older than the
seventeen years she proposed.

A horrible sadness grips me as I inspect
what the Counts are capable of. Pearl is a walking example of why
the Countenance needs to be stopped. This could easily be me one
day,
Marky
. And now they want the Spectators eliminated for
simply being an inconvenience. All that the Spectators want is
their lives back. The Celestra involved were never allowed to
choose whether or not they wanted to be resurrected. They were
simply murdered and brought back to life like some D minus science
experiment.

“Do you belong to Countenance?” I ask point
blank. I’m not sure if it’ll matter to Ezrina, the troll-like
creature who works for the Counts, but in the end I’d like to know
whom I’m dealing with.

“Celestra.” She glances down as if it were a
defeat to mention it.

“Even better.” Laken wraps her arm around my
waist from behind, using me as a shield in the event the creatures
in our presence decide to go ape shit.

“I like the idea of saving a Celestra rather
than a Count,” she says. The words vibrate over my spine like an
erotic Morse code. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” She
whispers hot in my ear.

“We’ll take her to the Transfer tonight.” I
give a slight nod. “Flynn, why don’t you take Hattie back to
Austen, and we’ll meet up with you guys in the morning. Good work,
man.” I add that last part with sincerity and hit him with a
knuckle bump.

If Ezrina has the ability to restore Pearl
to her former glory then it might spare me of having to eradicate
an entire race, not to mention, it would free the Tobias
family.

Coop
, Laken presses into me, still
peering from over my shoulder.
I may have tried to kill our fake
friend Hattie earlier by way of cooking utensils.

It takes everything in me to hold back the
laugh brewing in my chest.

“Apologize,” I cough it out. The last thing
we want is for the Fem to know we’re onto her.

Laken steps out from behind just as they
head back toward the dorms.

“Hattie, Flynn?” Her voice sounds fragile,
still apprehensive as to what it might mean.

Hattie steps forward. She drops Flynn’s hand
as if getting ready for a street fight.

“I’m sorry about freaking out in the kitchen
earlier.” Laken clears her throat. “I thought maybe you were trying
to take advantage of Flynn. He’s a good friend of mine, and I don’t
want to see him get hurt. Take it easy on him, would you?”

Flynn balks at the idea. He damn well knows
she’s a Fem because I told him so myself. It’s this kind of dicey
behavior that highlights the fact he never should have been dragged
into this to begin with. I think it’s heroic he’s trying to find
his sister, but he’s more of a liability at this point. I could get
Casper out of the tunnels without his help.

“You don’t have to worry about me hurting
anybody, Laken,” Hattie growls. The words drill through the air
more like a threat than an assurance. “I’m here to help, and once
you see that, maybe you’ll trust me just a little bit more. I want
my family back as much as you do.”

Flynn takes up her hand, and they speed from
the vicinity as if the entire forest were about to go up in
flames.