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Home sounds damn good.
Then a voice says very close to my ear, “Merc, you all right?”
Not really, I want to say, but my face is numb, and my knees are folding, and that ax keeps flashing in my memory like a warning sign. This isn’t good.
Images keep tumbling in front of my eyes, from the dreams, from my life. Destiny, St. Louis, my family, Ross sneering from the street side, blood and the stream flowing, its choppy surface shining like golden shards as I fall.
Fall where?
Bile rises in my throat.
“Goddammit, boy, come on.” Given how much I hate letting Matt see any sign of weakness in me, I shouldn’t feel so grateful when he puts an arm around my shoulders, all but holding me up, and hauling me toward his pickup. “Never seen you like this before. Is he sick?”
“Could be the aftereffects of the pills,” I hear Octavia’s voice from behind.
Worried. She sounds worried.
“He’s had times like this,” Gigi is saying from somewhere to my left. “Since he was a kid. I think it happens when his memories come back.”
Why are they talking as if I’m not there? I feel insubstantial, weightless like a ghost, and yet too heavy to move.
“Cos,” I breathe. Where is she? “Cos?”
“Right here.” She wraps herself on my other side, grounding me. She makes me feel real. “How do you feel? You went all white there for a moment. Was it something you remembered?”
I clutch her closer, feeling ch
illed to the bone. “Not sure.”
The water splashing around me.
The bogeyman chasing me.
The ax.
I let Matt haul me along to his pickup, then shove me inside the back seat, shivering so hard I can hardly talk. Thank fuck for that, as I dunno what to say.
Everyone piles up inside and Matt turns on the heater.
“Where’s Ross?”
“He was here two minutes ago.”
Fuck. I look out the window. Why would he leave?
And why would he stay, huh? We just went at each other in the river, and then all but told him someone killed his mom and buried her in the woods, then walked away and let him deal with it.
Why this wave of apprehension, as if he’s in danger?
“Merc.” Cos is snuggled against my side, under my arm, dark eyes turned up to meet mine. “Do you remember what happened after?”
“After what?” I ask to buy time, though I know what she’s gonna say. She’s pieced it together, with the scraps me and my sisters have told her. Cos is smart, as well as sexy.
“After you saw the man drag the body into the trees.”
Yeah, that’s the question of the day. I told Ross I ran away, but where? Gigi didn’t find me until almost dawn. Where did I go that night, and what happened?
Chapter Twenty-Eight
