Falling into Forever (22 page)

“Yeah, I am,” she agreed sarcastically. “Do you think I could borrow it sometime?”

“Better than that. I have a spare at home that you may wear.”

“Will it make me invisible?”

“No, only cloaks can make you invisible, and mine is on back order.” He raised his fist defiantly to the air, saying, “Thanks to you, Harry Potter! Seriously though, Miss Peyton, do not make fun of the cape.”

“I'll stop making fun of you when you answer my question.”

“You'll at laugh me, I suspect, if I tell you.”

“Possibly, but it's better than crying at this point.”

“Fine, then, Miss Peyton. The truth is I was pursuing the possible trail of a . . .” He hesitated to finish.

“Go on!” Alexandra encouraged him, exasperated. “There's not much you could say that would shock me right now.”

“Okay, I was trailing a demon,” Callahan said.

Alexandra interrupted. “A demon? As in an evil spirit?”

“Precisely,” he noted, nodding his head. “They take many forms and go by many names; but I assure you, their power is real. This one is quite dangerous, because it is as determined as it is evil.”

“Is this the spirit that you said is stalking me?” asked Alexandra, her grin fading.

“I'm not sure,” he replied earnestly. “But there is no reason for you to be frightened.”

I wasn't, until you told me that!
She chewed on what was left of her right thumbnail.

“Pardon me, Callahan,” Alexandra said, rallying her senses. “But you sound like you've fallen off the crazy train.”

“I'm sure I do,” he laughed. “But you must believe me, Miss Peyton. Have I not already shown you that reality is more than what you can see through that windshield at this moment? You will see,” he assured her. “And you will assuredly believe me.”

“What if I don't want to see?” Alexandra quipped.

“It's too late for that, Miss Peyton. I have reason to believe you are the cause of this whole mess. I knew it from the first moment I saw you. Mr. Frost was quite right about you.”

“What?” she broke in.

“There is an aura that hovers around you. My trained eye can detect it rather keenly. I am not sure why you're being hunted, but I am quite certain that you are.”

“Are you playing a game with me?” she demanded to know.

“No,” he assured her. “It's a fact that you are being pursued by a demon.” He rolled down his window. “You have something that he wants; though what it is, I cannot say.” Callahan sniffed the air and pulled his head back inside the window.

“You're the expert, Callahan,” she conceded with some sarcasm. “Is there anything else that I might need to know about crazy town before we arrive? I assume we're almost there by now.”

“Miss Peyton,” he said, gazing at her face. “I stumbled across a most interesting and unexpected development this evening. Something else is out here,” he declared, turning to scan out the passenger window. “Something I've never encountered before. I believe it may have something to do with your necklace.”

Alexandra felt his eyes trying to gauge her expression; but her eyes remained steady on the road, her mind bemused by his words. “Do I still keep going straight?” she asked after a silent moment. “We're getting close to the Collinsworth campus, I think; but I'm not sure in the dark.” She brought the car to a stop.

“Go forward until this road ends,” he directed. “I live near campus, on a street behind the old cemetery.”

“If you are looking for ghosts, or spirits, or whatever,” she queried, “then why did you wander tonight so far away from home? Don't ghosts haunt graveyards?”

“I'm not hunting mere spirits anymore, Miss Peyton,” he whispered somberly. Their eyes locked in the dim street light.

A pair of bright headlights came up from behind the Jeep, illuminating their faces. A car horn blared for Alexandra to move.

“How rude,” Callahan declared. His eyes checked the passenger's side rearview mirror. “American drivers can be so impatient.”

“Calm down,” she said. “It's my fault. I did stop right in the middle of the road.”

Taking her foot off the brake, Alexandra tapped lightly on the accelerator. But the Jeep only sputtered forward a few inches, the engine hesitating and then dying. Panic gripped her, and she turned the key again in the ignition. A wave of relief washed over her when the engine turned over and stammered back to life. Behind them, the car horn blared again as she tapped the gas pedal. That is when the old hunk of metal coughed and died beneath her.

“Why doesn't he just drive around us?” Callahan fussed as the car horn assaulted them once more. “That's it. His poor manners deserve an etiquette lesson,” decided Callahan, opening the passenger door.

“No!” Alexandra shouted behind him. “Come back, Callahan.” But it was too late; he was already walking away. Shutting her eyes, she covered her face with her hands. She hoped that when she opened her eyes back up, that it had all been a dream. But when she opened her eyes, she saw flashing blue lights illuminating Callahan's tall form. He was raising his cape to shield his eyes from the piercing beam. “Put your hands on the hood,” said a booming voice from a speaker in the patrol car.

Alexandra's heart raced.

“Get out of the car and put your hands on the hood,” commanded the police officer, stepping from his patrol car to the street.

Dutifully, Alexandra opened her door and stepped to the asphalt gingerly, as if at any moment her legs might give way beneath the weight of her body. She glanced at Callahan, his arms spread wide across the hood of her car, and she mimicked his stance. “You look like you've done this before,” she surmised.

“Once or twice at most,” he answered, winking at her. “Don't worry, Miss Peyton. I'll handle it.”

“That's what I am afraid of, Callahan,” she confessed, her eyes glued to the Jeep's hood.

The door of the patrol car opened and a tall, muscular police officer, his blond hair shaved short to his scalp, stepped out of his patrol car and approached her bumper. He ran his flashlight across her face and over Callahan's draped body.

“What is this all about, young man?” Callahan asked, raising his hands from the hood and stepping toward the officer.

“Get down,” the officer yelled, shining his flashlight directly into Callahan's eyes.

Obeying the officer, Callahan once more spread his arms across the hood.

“We got a call about some suspicious activity by a Jeep that matches the description of this one,” the officer answered, trailing his flashlight across the vehicle.

“The couple on the porch,” Alexandra mumbled quietly as she glanced back down the street.

“Are you guys out partying tonight, or do you two always dress like this?” he asked, approaching Alexandra. “Let me see your driver's license, young lady.”

“It's in my book bag in the back,” Alexandra told him, nodding her chin in the direction of the windshield, careful not to lift her hands from the Jeep.

“It's okay. You can get it,” the officer said.

She walked toward the open driver's door and leaned in to reach her book bag behind the driver's seat. In her skirt pocket, the unexpected ringing of her cell phone startled her. “Taylor,” she read the name aloud.

Ignoring the call, she shoved the phone into her book bag and searched through her wallet for her driver's license. Leaning vulnerably into the floorboard of her Jeep, Alexandra winced as the officer's flashlight flickered across her scratched knees and then back again to the bruise on the side of her face.

“Here it is,” Alexandra announced, yanking her driver's license from her wallet.

The officer reached out for the plastic card in her hand. As his fingertips grazed Alexandra's outstretched palm, a surge of heat ran through her arm. Flashing through her head was a vision of a pretty teenaged girl with long, brown hair, reclining half-clothed and lifeless in a pile of leaves.

“I think I'm going to be sick,” Alexandra said and dropped to her knees.

“Miss Peyton,” shouted Callahan behind her.

“Hold still, cowboy,” demanded the officer. “Stay where you are and keep your hands where I can see them.” Bending down, the officer put his hand on her back to steady her, as Alexandra swayed back and forth, fighting to keep from passing out. “Are you all right?” he asked in her ear. “If there is something going on that you need to tell me about, say it now so that I can help you.”

“I'll be fine,” she told him, clutching her stomach. “I was just driving slowly to make sure I found the right street. Then my car died.”

“How much have you had to drink tonight?” he asked, quickly surveying the front seat of the Jeep.

She shook her head. “Nothing.”

“Where did you get those?” he asked, pointing to the blue bruises on her face and legs. “Did he do this to you?”

“No,” she said and forced herself to her feet. “He didn't do anything. I fell when a dog chased me. That's all, I swear.”

Through the open door of her Jeep, Alexandra heard her phone ring again. Startled, she jumped backward. As her feet hit the ground, her heel slipped, and her backside landed hard against the pavement. “See?” she offered, looking up at the officer. “I'm really clumsy.”

The officer provided his hand to help her off the ground. But she hesitated to accept, her head still reeling from the foggy vision of the dead teen.

“What's wrong?” he asked.

Sucking in a deep breath, she grabbed his hand and shut her eyes tightly to brace herself for whatever she might see. With their hands entwined, a flash of heat surged down her arm and shot through her body.

She was suddenly aware that she was standing during the very late afternoon on a densely wooded path, strewn with fallen red, orange, and brown leaves. Watching from behind the young police officer's eyes, Alexandra saw that ahead of her lay a teenaged girl on the ground, her body partially covered in autumn leaves. Eyes forever closed to world around her, she looked as if she could have been asleep. Her porcelain skin bore no traces of makeup except for smudges of pink lip gloss around her silent lips. A soft breeze blew the dry leaves around her chest and bare legs.

A blue blazer with a prep-school emblem lay by the body, folded neatly, as if she would soon wake up and put it back on after her nap. As Alexandra stared down at the peaceful face, a man stepped up beside the girl's lifeless body. She knew this man might be the coroner, because he knelt to feel for a pulse in the girl's neck and shook his head.

With the sun setting behind her back, she stepped toward the folded blazer and turned her flashlight's beam upon the crest sewn into the fabric.

“Alexandra!” a voice called to her through the darkness.

She ignored the call to come back. Instead, she struggled to read the letters on the crest:
Whitfield
. She knew that name. It was the all-girl's academy. She had declined a place there when Collinsworth had offered her a full scholarship.

“Alexandra,” the voice demanded again. She felt a nudge on her shoulder.

The vision dissolved as uncontrollably as it had begun, leaving her body shivering with fear.

“Here you go, Alexandra,” said a voice in the darkness. A grip tightened around the top of her arm.

Her eyes fluttered open, and the police officer braced Alexandra from collapsing to the ground.

“Thank you,” he said, handing back her driver's license.

Who was she?
Alexandra wondered, the image of the girl still sharp in her mind.

Shoving the license in her skirt pocket, Alexandra forced a smile. But she could not shake away the stark vision of the dead girl. She swooned, her trembling legs giving way beneath her. Her body landed on the jagged, concrete street curb.

“I'll call for an ambulance,” the officer said, kneeling beside her and lifting her head gently off the ground.

“Is she hurt?” Callahan asked.

“I've got it, Dracula,” the officer told him. “Stand back.”

“No,” Alexandra protested quietly, rolling her head back and forth. “I'm okay.”

“You should listen to the officer,” insisted Callahan, crouching beside her.

“I'm fine,” she said, pushing the officer away. Alexandra forced herself to stand up on her wobbly legs. She brushed away what had clung to her skirt from the fall: dead leaves and a candy-bar wrapper. The officer retreated to his patrol car.

“Please don't call anyone,” Alexandra wearily entreated.

“Dispatch, come in,” the officer called on his car radio. “Officer Scott. Ten fifty-one; assist motorist owner Alexandra Peyton. We need a tow truck northbound on Edgeland Street, just north of the intersection with Dale Road. That's a Jeep, tag AWB forty-five sixty. Copy.”

A sharp voice repeated through the speaker, “Copy ten fifty-one, assist motorist. A tow truck is on its way to just north of Edgeland and Dale.”

Behind her eyes burned the image of the girl on the wooded path.
Who was she? When had it happened?

The officer approached from his patrol car.

Callahan was now hovering at her side with his hand on her shoulder. He bent to whisper into her ear. “What did you see?”

“Well, a dead girl,” Alexandra said flatly. “She looked about my age. I saw her
so clearly.
I understand now what you meant when you said that you see more than you want to know.”

Callahan wrapped an arm around her shoulders. “My dear, this is only the beginning.”

Lucky me
, she grimaced.

The young officer approached, and she made note of the name sewn above the pocket on his uniform.

“M. Scott,” she read aloud.

“Yes ma'am, that's me,” he said, amused.

“What does the M stand for, officer?” Alexandra pried.