AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I plunged the stake into Glowy Eyes’s heart with every bit of strength I possessed.
He looked down at his chest, his brows pulling into a confused frown. “Fuck.”
And then he was gone, collapsing into nothing but black smoke.
“What was that?” I gasped, dropping to my knees and looking down at the girl, who was now sprawled on her back.
She was inhumanly beautiful with long waves of black hair spread like a halo around her. My hands fluttered helplessly over her as I tried to figure out what to do.
She reached for my hand and I held on. Something warm and soft pressed against my palm. “This belongs… to Carter.” Every word sounded like it took a monumental effort for her to get out. “I couldn’t… find him. I’m sorry.”
And then, without warning, she was gone, leaving behind nothing but a shower of glittering dust. It was as if neither of them had ever existed. The only evidence that I hadn’t imagined the whole thing was the stake still clutched in my fist and the leather bracelet the girl had placed in my other hand.
I sat back, staring at the spot where the girl had been. This was probably the point when I was supposed to commit myself to a mental institution. Because people don’t bleed gold. They don’t brush off bullet wounds like they’re as inconsequential as mosquito bites. And they definitely do not dissolve into smoke or dust.
Two
Sierra
It was probablystupid to take the stake with me, but I needed the reassurance that the girl and man had really existed. I needed to know I wasn’t going crazy. And if there was any chance Glowy Eyes was coming back, I wanted a weapon that would do more than my gun had.
I couldn’t exactly call the police and say that I’d watched two people disappear into nothing before my eyes. Since there was no evidence and no video cameras in the church parking lot, there was no way anyone was going to believe me.
So I left even though it felt wrong. I ran the rest of the way home and buried the stake in the bottom of my dresser under a pile of clothes.
I went to the grocery store, started my laundry, made dinner, and pretended nothing had happened.
While I waited for the food to cook, I attempted to read some more, but not even smut could keep my mind from wandering back to Glowy Eyes and the girl with the golden blood.
After staring at the same page for fifteen minutes without reading a word, I gave up and reached for my phone.
“Hello?” Mom answered on the second ring.
I closed my eyes, savoring the sound of my mother’s voice. “Hi, Mom.”
“Hey, Sierra. What’s up?”
“Nothing exciting,” I said, even though it didn’t feel like the truth at all. “I just wanted to talk. I miss you.”
“You can always come over, you know. You don’t need a formal invitation.”
“I know.” I always thought I’d be at my mother’s every day after I moved out, but the reality was that days and weeks tended to bleed together without me visiting. I saw Mom and both my siblings nearly every week at church and talked to Mom most days on the phone. But it wasn’t the same.
“How have you been?” she asked.
“Okay. Merida’s been trying to convince me to take the breakfast shift during the week. It would be nice to get the weekends off, but I’d have to get up at like four in the morning.”
“Oh, that sounds like your dream job,” Mom said with heavy sarcasm. As the woman who’d had to drag me out of bed every morning for most of my life, she knew what she was talking about.
“Yeah.” I relaxed into the couch. “But Merida said she’ll pay me more per hour. Now that classes have started for so many people, she’s having a hard time filling the morning weekday shifts.”
“That’s understandable. Speaking of classes starting, how’s Kylie doing?”
“She’s doing well. She’s still going to school, so that’s good. Though she keeps saying she doesn’t want to stop working at the café even after she graduates. Oh, and she met a guy at this bonfire we went to last weekend. She’s babysitting with him on Saturday.”
“Babysitting?”
“That’s what I thought too. Who asks a girl to babysit with them as a first date?”
