Page 5

“Dude…are you serious?”

He and Remy burst out laughing.

I shrug my shoulders, composing myself when I realize he is joking, and no one is paying any attention to us.

I grimace at him. “Dude, shut it.”

Remy walks up beside me, adjusting the collar of his leather jacket and presses a cup of beer into my hand. “Tommy, man, you’re being all jittery. No one knows anything, so don’t act so weird.”

I chug the beer and clench the cup. I am acting weird, but oddly, it has nothing to do with the fact that I just burned down Smith Hall. I act cool as a couple of girls walk by and smile.

Bax grins, clearly unaffected by the depths of his handy work today. “Later, dudes,” he mumbles and chases after them.

I cut a look at Remy. “Yeah. Okay, you’re right, man.” Everyone is more concerned about shot-gunning beer and trying to out chug each other than the blaze that just happened. Not one person lays eyes on me. But still, I can hear the whispers of the mask sightings.

Remy’s stone eyes narrow in on me. Like Talia, he knows me too well, and he’s not buying it. “What’s wrong, man? Sick of Talia already? She’s just getting started with you,” he chuckles.

I make sure Bax is not in ear shot, and I shoot a glance over at Talia, who’s still sitting in the car, waiting for me to come back. “I saw her again.”

Remy tilts his head, but he doesn’t ask who. He doesn’t need to.

I lose him for a moment, his memories of her taking over. He loved her just as much as I did—maybe even more.

“Where?”

“In Smith Hall, right before I burned it.”

He’s quiet…contemplating before his lips twitch. “Do you not see the irony in that?”

My jaw clicks. I don’t find it funny, although he doesn’t, either. “I know what I saw. I know who I saw. Never said I could explain it.”

His eyes are haunted as he brings his beer to his lips, briefly glancing over at Lucy, who is chatting with a few others from school. Their eyes meet for a moment before she squeezes her brows together and frowns.

He turns away from her, squaring his body. She crosses her arms around herself as she always does when he dismisses her. It would suck loving someone who could never love you back.

He says in his low, deep voice. “She’s gone, Tommy. You didn’t see her in class today, or at FreshMart last month, or on Main Street. You saw her body, man—we both did. You know where she is right now.”

Her body is rotting in the well behind the Sheffield house where we left her. Her soul is probably fighting to get out, getting chased around by the batshit crazy hillbilly who lived there before her.

His eyes follow mine as he glances at my car. “My sister’s waiting for you,” he says and takes another swig. “You remember, the girl who’s still alive and needs us.” He’s right. As strong as Talia is, she’s vulnerable, too. He walks over to Lucy and puts his arm around her, and I head back to the car, slink into the front seat, and finally face her.

She’s staring right at me, her eyes burning into my soul. “You hesitated.”

Shit. She noticed…

I grab a smoke from the pack sitting on my dash, light it up, and take a drag before passing it to Talia. I rarely smoke, but everyone else seems to, and right now, I need to calm the hell down.

She takes it and pulls it to her lips, turning her head from me to glare out the window. The window is down, and a fresh breeze flows through the car. “You can’t be distracted, Tommy. I need you.”

I lean my arm over the back of her seat and play with a lock of her dark hair. “I know.” She glances over at me, a circle of smoke curling up from her fingers, and she flicks the ash through the window. I arch my eyes and pout at her. “I’m sorry, baby. I did it in the end, though. Just like you asked me to.”

I lit the match.

How do I explain to her the true reason I hesitated? That I saw a ghost?

Her angular, delicate features soften, and she shifts closer to me and smiles. Sometimes I forget that she’s a vicious killer. Sometimes, like right now, she’s just Talia—the tiny spitfire of a girl I’ve had a crush on my entire life.

Her hand finds my knee, causing my dick to twinge. “You did good, Tommy. You did really good. Did you see the fear radiating out of their eyes? It was beautiful.”