Wiccan, A Witchy Young Adult Paranormal Romance (20 page)

Though my wounded arm pinched a little
when I hit it on the gear shift, I went willingly into his arms,
reveling in the feel of his warmth and strength surrounding
me.

“
I’m so glad you’re
alright,” he muttered into my hair.

“
Why wouldn’t I
be?”

He leaned back, his eyes boring into
mine. “We found another body,” he confessed. He closed his eyes as
if he was picturing it. “She looked so much like you. Her hair…and
her skin…she—”

When he looked up, his eyes scanned my
face and I guess he saw no surprise there. As I’d thought back to
the dream, even I had noticed a slight resemblance to me (coloring
and curly hair). But, judging by his reaction, he obviously saw
something much more than just a resemblance.

“
You knew.” It wasn’t a
question.

I had to look away from the accusation
in his eyes. “Yes, I knew.”

“
When did you have the
dream?”

“
Last night.”

“
Why didn’t you call
me?”

“
I started to, but I hung up
after the first ring. You must not have heard it.”

“
But why? Why didn’t you
tell me? You knew I’d want to know, that I
need
to know.”

“
I thought it would be
better this way. For both of us.”

His eyebrows drew down over his eyes in
a deep frown. “This is not some kind of a game, Mercy.”

That irritated me. “I know
it’s not a game.” I pushed at his chest angrily. “If anybody
in the world
knows it’s
not a game, trust me, it’s me!”

“
But you withheld this
information because of a personal issue that you have with me.
Apparently you do think it’s a game.” Angry sparks flew from his
hazel eyes.

“
Look,” I said, my finger
rising from out of nowhere to jab at him. “I know how hard and how
risky it is for you to keep protecting me. And I know how much
damage this could do to my loved ones if they found out. She was
already dead. There was nothing that I could do to help her. Do you
think I didn’t spend the entire night dwelling on this, worrying
over it, wondering if I’d done the right thing? Debating on whether
to go ahead and call you. Yes, our discussion yesterday played a
tiny, tiny part, but other things,
other
people
are what swayed me. Don’t you
dare—”

Grayson interrupted me
before I
really, really
got going. “You’re bleeding,” he said, pointing to
my arm. I looked down and saw that a trickle of blood was oozing
from between a couple of my stitches.

“
Here,” he said, leaning
across me and opening his glove compartment. He brought out a
napkin and dabbed at my wound. When it was no longer oozing, he
continued. “I’m sorry, Mercy. You’re absolutely right. I don’t know
how it feels to…have what you have and I didn’t give you the
benefit of the doubt,” he admitted, remorse plainly visible in his
eyes. “But, look, now I know. The cat’s out of the bag. And I found
out the ‘legitimate’ way, so you can tell me all that you know
without it ever having to be mentioned to anyone.”

And I did. I went over everything in
perfect detail. He made a few notes, but didn’t say much. I had to
ask.

“
So what did you guys
find?”

The fact that he didn’t hesitate wasn’t
lost on me. “The girl’s name is Kayla Turner. She’s a bartender at
Reno’s. One of her friends saw her leaving with a guy last night
after her shift. Said he was probably late forties, curly brown
hair, older but attractive. She said the guy gave her the creeps
and she couldn’t figure out why Kayla left with him.”

“
How did you find out where
she was?”

“
Her friend followed her and
thought she saw some strange shadows moving in front of the
windows. She tried to call Turner a few times, but got no answer.
After a while, she got scared and called the police.”

I was suddenly excited. “So did you
catch him?”

Grayson ran a hand through his hair,
leaving strands of hair sticking up like black spikes along his
part. After he’d done it, he ran his palm over it to smooth the
wayward pieces back down. I got the feeling he did that a lot. “No.
We got a color and possible make and model of the car, but the
plates were stolen. Her description of the guy was…well, it wasn’t
the best I’ve ever gotten, let’s put it that way. Hundreds of guys
probably fit that description.”

“
Well, it’s something,” I
said, a little disappointed. “It’s more than I’ve been able to give
you.”

Suddenly, I felt near tears. I picked
at my fingernails and blinked rapidly to keep the moisture from
pooling in my eyes.

Grayson tipped my face up toward his
with a finger beneath my chin. “We wouldn’t have known about the
first two if it weren’t for you. And I would never have known where
Lisa Bauer was killed if it wasn’t for you. Don’t beat yourself
up,” he scolded gently.

I felt my chin tremble and needed a
change of subject desperately. “So, did they find any evidence on
the body?”

“
No. He picks places that he
knows are loaded with a huge mix of DNA. If he leaves any trace of
himself behind, it’s well hidden. We haven’t found any common DNA
between the three rooms.”

I asked a question that I almost
dreaded hearing the answer to, but some little part of me still
hoped for good news, news that would put an end to my nightmares.
“How many more do you think he’ll kill?”

“
It’s hard to say. He seems
to be cycling up. His crimes are becoming more violent, but—” He
stopped, a look of confusion crossing his face as he stared
absently past me out into the park.

“
But what?”

“
I don’t know how he’s
hurting these girls. You know the last one had all that brain
damage that we couldn’t attribute to
anything.
Well, this one had multiple
broken ribs, massive internal bleeding and torn muscles and
ligaments in her jaw. But there wasn’t a mark on her. No evidence
that she was thrown, kicked or abused by any kind of a weapon. It’s
like…I don’t know how…”

As he trailed off, a loud buzz began to
sound in my ears and I saw the dashboard of the car tilt as my head
swam. The park in my peripheral vision became cloudy like a fuzzy
gray fog was closing in around it. I rushed to bend over and put my
head between my knees before I passed out.

I could hear Grayson calling my name,
asking me what was wrong and if I was alright, but his voice
sounded like he was standing at the end of a tunnel far, far away.
I felt his hand on my back, resting lightly, hesitantly even,
between my shoulder blades, like he wasn’t quite sure what to
do.

As my head began to clear, I thought
about his words. Even now, I could feel the pleasure coursing
through my veins at the remembered high of killing that
girl.

Ohmigod, ohmigod,
ohmigod,
I chanted over and over
again.

“
Mercy, what is it?” I heard
Grayson ask, his voice clear and low now.

Slowly I sat up and the tears I’d been
so desperately holding back filled my eyes and ran unchecked down
my cheeks.

“
There’s something wrong
with me. I can feel it. It’s eating away at me and I- I—” My voice
broke on a sob.

“
What? What is
it?”

I felt hysteria tightening its grip on
me. My grasp on reality and on whatever good things were left
inside me was slipping. “I can feel it when he kills her, when he
does those awful things to these girls. I can feel it and-,” I
sobbed loudly. “And it feels so good.”

Grayson didn’t move and he didn’t say a
word. I couldn’t look at him. I didn’t want to see the disgust on
his face.

I hadn’t planned to tell him
any of this and I knew that I should stop right now, before I made
things worse. But it just kept coming out. Somewhere in the back of
my mind, I knew that this would probably push Grayson away from me
forever, but I couldn’t seem to stop myself. Maybe he needed to
stay away from me. Maybe I was dangerous to be involved with. Maybe
I was
becoming
something dangerous, some
one
dangerous.

“
I feel like he’s sucking
away every good thing in my life,
in
me,
and replacing it with something dark
and evil. And I’m carrying it with me all the time. Like that dog.
I think I did the same thing to that dog.”

When I finally brought myself to look
at Grayson, his expression was full of apprehension. “What do you
mean?” he asked carefully.

“
The Animal Control Officer
said that the dog that attacked me had broken ribs and internal
bleeding and a torn jaw. Just like that girl. Only it happened days
ago. It’s like-,” I sobbed again. “It’s like we’re linked
somehow.”

Grayson’s face had closed completely
off. I didn’t know exactly what that meant, but I knew it wasn’t
good.

“
And I think the messages
he’s leaving are for me. I think
I’m
MH.”

A flicker of comprehension lit his eyes
before they shut down again. When Grayson didn’t want to give
anything away, his face was completely blank. I’d seen it a couple
of times before. Before, when we were strangers.

Then something occurred to me that
hadn’t until just that moment. “I wonder if that’s who’s been
following me. I wonder if that’s how he knew about the dog,” I said
almost to myself.

“
Someone’s been following
you?”

When I looked at Grayson
this time, his expression showed a fear and an anger that he
couldn’t conceal. Somewhere, in a small corner at the very back of
my heart, a small bud of hope and pleasure bloomed. Maybe this
wouldn’t push him away after all. Maybe we could survive all this.
If
I
could survive
it, that is.

“
Well, I’ve never seen
anyone, other than Jake that is, but I—”

“
Jake? Jake
Wheeler?”

“
Yeah.”

“
He’s been following
you?”

“
I don’t know if he was
following me, but he came to my window Saturday night.”

“
He came to
your window?”

“
Yes, but he
didn’t—”

“
How much of a relationship
did you have with this guy?” Anger was very much evident on
Grayson’s face now.

“
We didn’t have any kind of
relationship. I told you he walked me to class a couple of times
and I ran into him at a party. That’s it.”

“
But you’ve seen him since
he was released.”

“
Well, yeah, but he’s never
been to my house before. I told you I saw him on the way to school
that one other time.”

“
What did he want when he
came to your window?”

“
He was asking me
out.”

Grayson asked very quietly, his eyes
narrowed on me ever so slightly. “And what did you say?”

My mouth dropped open the tiniest bit.
I couldn’t believe he was even asking me this. “I said ‘no’, of
course.”

Grayson’s features relaxed, but only
marginally. “But you said you blew him off last time and he still
came by your house?”

“
Yeah, I know. Crazy,
right?”

“
Do you want me to have a
talk with him?”

I wanted to smile, but I doubted
Grayson would appreciate it. “No. I think I made myself pretty
clear this time.”

Grayson chewed on that for a minute
before returning to the subject of someone following me. “So you
didn’t actually see anybody following you then?”

“
No, but- I don’t know. I
just felt…something. It feels like- like- I don’t know. It’s hard
to describe. I just feels like someone is following me, like
they’re watching me.”

“
Well, if you are the ‘MH’
and what you say about the dog is true then—”

“
What do you mean if what I
say about the dog is true? Why would I lie about it? What kind of
sick-o would make something like that up?” I probably didn’t want
him to answer that.

“
That’s not what I meant. It
just came out wrong.”

“
The thing I can’t figure
out is why me? How does he even know me?”

Grayson reached into his pocket and
pulled out a Fireball. He unwrapped it and popped it into his
mouth. The smell of cinnamon filled the air and I inhaled deeply,
somehow comforted by it. “That’s an excellent question,” he said
absently. “But one I don’t have the answer for.”

CHAPTER TWELVE

I sat in class on Wednesday
reliving the disappointing end to my meeting with Grayson. He’d
pretty much grilled me, shut me out then politely dropped me off at
my house. At least he’d had the good grace to look a little
bothered as he’d said goodbye. And, to acknowledge his progress, at
least he’d
said
goodbye. Unfortunately, that could be a bad thing, especially
since he wasn’t in the habit of saying it. Maybe he’d said it
because he really meant goodbye.