Shadow Hills (39 page)

For an instant, Tripp froze, staring at Zach, stunned. Then he staggered to his feet and slowly began to stumble back toward the hospital. Tears rolled freely down my cheek as I crawled over to Zach, trailing my blood all the way. It couldn’t end like this. If Zach died, I had given my life for nothing. I pulled him into my lap, cradling his head. He was still breathing. I looked around. Tripp was limping through the graveyard, clutching his briefcase like a prize.
How could the cops not be here yet?
It seemed like it had been hours, when in reality it probably hadn’t been much more than a few minutes. As my tears fell onto Zach’s face, mingling with the blood, I remembered the vision I had had at Rebekah Sampson’s grave—the dagger slicing my hand, the blood on the graveyard dirt, myself transformed and shouting out an incantation. I had known then that it was a vision of me at another time.

I placed my injured hand on my hip. I could feel the mark burning with power, healing the pain in my wrist instantly. A wave of knowledge hit me with the force of a solid object—the time in my vision was now. I had to do this; I wasn’t sure I would be alive much longer. Tripp was almost out of the graveyard.

I pushed myself up to my feet, using a strength that was beyond adrenaline. It didn’t even feel as if it were coming from
inside me. I was pulling the energy up from the earth, from the ground that my blood had just fed. I let my head fall back, and the words flew from my throat. The voice rising out of me didn’t sound like my own. It was ancient and deep, timeless and dark.

“Phasmata repite ex sepulchris vestris, capite virum!”

Figures formed over their graves, whisper thin at first, like smoke. Melding together into grayish-white shadows of their former selves. And at the head of the group was the woman from my dreams, the one who had been leading me to this destiny. Her form was sharper, clearer than the rest. It shone with an unearthly blue light.

The other spirits looked to her, and with one motion from her hand, they descended upon Tripp. His face contorted with his screams, but I couldn’t hear them over the howling wind swirling around the cemetery. The wind lifted the dirt from the ground, forming a circular barrier; we were in the eye of the tornado. The phantoms were holding Tripp, pinning him down. Their hands and arms stuck through his body and into the ground like metal tent pegs. I saw actual scratches appear on his face, small pools of blood rising from where the spirits had impaled him.

Rebekah glided over to me, her shimmering mirage just inches away. She placed a weightless hand over the split in my side. I could feel her force mending everything in me. Like invisible stitches, she pulled the gap closed. Soon all that was left was a nasty scratch and some dried blood.

“What about Zach?” Another tear escaped me, falling softly down onto his face.

He will be fine
. Though she didn’t speak, Rebekah’s voice resounded through my head. Below me, still lying on the blood-soaked ground, Zach was slowly coming to, blinking groggily. Finally, the lights of the police cars were visible coming up the drive to the hospital.

“It’s okay now,” I told Rebekah. She held up her hands, and slowly the other figures backed away from the half-dead body of Trent’s father.

“How are you controlling them?”

I’m not. You are
. Rebekah smoothed back my blonde hair, so much like her own. Her touch was a feather-light breeze.

“Phe?” Zach was staring up at me in confusion. “I thought you were …” His eyes shone wetly.

“So did I.” I turned back to Rebekah, hoping maybe Zach had seen her, too, but she was gone. They all were.

I glanced over at Tripp, shivering and shaking on the ground. There were blood splatters on his clothes, but the wounds had closed up. The scratches on his face and hands were healing. His eyes, however, were staring blankly into space. He obviously wasn’t getting up anytime soon.

“Phe—what happened?” Zach looked to Tripp, then back to me again.

“I don’t know …” I breathed. I dropped down beside him. “I remembered this stuff I said in Latin during my vision at the graveyard.” I shook my head. “The words just came out of me,
and these spirits started appearing … they listened to me; they stopped Tripp. And Rebekah—she laid her hand on my side and healed me. I don’t know how, but she did.”

“It doesn’t matter.” Zach groaned as he pulled himself up to sitting. “The only thing that matters is that you’re okay.” And he kissed me like he had thought he was never going to be able to do it again.

Movement at the hospital caught my attention, and Zach and I broke apart to see what was going on. The helicopter was leaving. Leaving Tripp behind. The police cars’ red and blue lights washed over it with alternating flashes of color as it ascended into the sky.

As the cops parked in the lot, an ambulance pulled away from the hospital and drove over the curb and onto the grass, rolling to a stop right in front of us. One paramedic pulled out a stretcher and helped Zach and me onto it. The other grabbed his bag full of medical supplies and ran over to Tripp. By the time the police made it to where we were, the black helicopter was long gone.

The paramedic examined us and declared me “fit as a fiddle.” And while I wouldn’t have put it quite that way, my wrist barely hurt anymore, and there was absolutely no pain in my stomach. I wasn’t even dizzy from the blood loss. But there also wasn’t any way to explain my spontaneous regeneration, so I kept quiet about my earlier knife wound, pretending that the blood on my clothes must have come from Zach’s head.

After he finished checking me over, the paramedic cleaned Zach’s head wound, which turned out to be only a shallow slice half an inch long. “Nothing too serious,” he assured Zach. “Scalp wounds always bleed profusely. You might want to come down to the hospital and get it stitched up, though.”

From the look on Zach’s face, I figured that wasn’t too likely. After the paramedic wrapped up Zach’s left knee and ankle with Ace bandages, he left to join the other paramedic working on Tripp, but not before warning us to stay where we were.

Noticing that we were now available, the police chief came over to question Zach and me. Chief Bradbury listened intently to our whole story, conveniently overlooking how we had come to find Tripp’s ring and interrupting only twice to ask for clarification. When we were done, Bradbury placed Tripp’s ring in a small bag to be taken to the Shadow Hills Police Department’s forensics lab for DNA testing. After giving us strict instructions not to leave yet, he headed toward the deputy, who was reading a now-conscious Tripp his rights.

“Hey!” Grant Redford was running up to us. “Are you two okay?” He wrapped his arms around Zach in a tight hug.

“Yeah, Dad, we’re fine,” Zach assured him. “The paramedic gave us the green light.”

“Thank God.” Grant sighed and let Zach go, taking a step back. “Listen, I’m going to go talk with Chief Bradbury real quick. Don’t move, okay?”

“We’re already on top of it.” Zach smiled.

I laid my head on his shoulder and looked out across the
campus below. In the nearby teachers’ cottages, I could see that some lights were on. No doubt they had been disturbed by the sirens. But farther out, the dorms were still dark. Now that things were calming down, I felt drained, like I was recovering from the flu. I let out a little sigh as Zach smoothed my hair back and lightly kissed my temple.

I couldn’t wait for this to be over so I could go back to Devenish and Kresky Hall. Back home.

A deputy was coming toward us, leading a handcuffed Tripp over to the parking lot full of police cars. Tripp stared at me, the hate in his eyes burning my skin like lye. My stomach recoiled inside my body, making me feel as if I might throw up.

“If you think you got the bad guy, you’re wrong,” Tripp hissed as he approached me. “You just made things worse for yourself. Not a good time to show your hand. Not at all.”

“Come on. Move it.” The deputy pushed Tripp forward and past us, but he couldn’t keep Tripp from turning around to flash me a smile. A smile that froze me to the very core.

“Don’t pay attention to him.” Zach took hold of my chin and turned it so I was gazing into his soft blue-green eyes. “He’s completely crazed right now. Nothing he’s saying means anything.”

I nodded silently and glanced over at Chief Bradbury, who was embroiled in an intense conversation with Zach’s dad. I wanted to get out of there. I wanted it to be over. After a few minutes, Grant shook Bradbury’s hand and came back to where we waited.

“Looks like you’re done, at least for now,” he informed us.
“They’re going to put some extra security on you kids for a while, but besides that, things should be relatively normal.”

It seemed almost anticlimactic.

“But what about Brody?” Apparently, Zach didn’t feel this was sufficient either. “What are they going to do with him now?”

I laced my fingers through Zach’s. His concern and fierce loyalty made him even more incredible. I’d always had that kind of support from Athena, and I had felt its absence when she was gone. But now there was at least one person who understood and accepted all the strange and varied facets of me, even if I never told another living soul about my newfound powers.

“That was one of the things the Council discussed tonight. They’re going to put Brody with a family where he’ll be safe.” Mr. Redford placed a calming hand on his son’s shoulder.

“Great, more guardians. That’ll really help him with his trust issues.”

“Actually, I think it will. He’s with your mother and Corinne over at the Council office right now, finalizing his future living arrangements.” Grant smiled. “He’ll be moving in with us immediately.”

“What? Really? He is?” Zach sputtered.

“I hope you don’t mind.” Grant laughed.

“Of course not.” Zach grinned, but in the next moment his smile fell away. “Does that mean Mrs. Carr—”

“She’s resigning from her teaching job at Devenish, but as for the legal stuff, I’m not sure if they’re bringing charges against her. She owned up to the affair with Tripp.” Grant
rubbed the back of his neck the same way Zach did whenever he was embarrassed. “But she still claims that she knew nothing about her husband’s murder.”

“Maybe she didn’t.” Zach shook his head. “I still can’t believe Tripp would do that. Murder his friend. Betray us.”

Grant massaged his temples.

“Look, I’m not saying your uncle had the right to do what he did, because there are no excuses for his actions.” He took a deep breath. “But, that being said, he did it for your grandfather. He always thought I gave up on Dad too easily. Now the Council is going to sentence Tripp to have a procedure …” Zach’s dad stared down at his feet. “They’ll both be like that, stuck in Oakhaven. Tripp will be locked up the rest of his life.” Grant’s expression was pained. It wasn’t identical to my situation, but his sibling was being taken away from him, too, and I knew what that felt like.

I shifted uncomfortably. It was weird watching such an intimate exchange, but I didn’t want to make things more awkward by getting up and leaving.

“Tripp told me that he was going to try an experimental treatment on Dad. I said I didn’t want any part of it and just let it go at that.” Grant shook his head. “I was the oldest. Tripp was my responsibility. I knew something was wrong when he sent Trent to warn me away, but I thought he was using an untested drug or classified research information. I should have made sure. If I had been there for him, maybe he wouldn’t have been so easily swayed by the offer the Banished made
him.” For the first time I could see the resemblance between Corinne and Grant. The intense, sometimes misguided, family obligation.

“Dad, come on, you know that’s not true. Tripp may be younger, but he’s an adult. He’s the only one responsible for his actions.” Zach paused. “And you know Granddad would never have wanted to get better by hurting other people.”

“Yeah.” Grant nodded slowly, like he didn’t quite believe it. “Listen, I thought maybe tomorrow you could take the morning off from school, and we could go visit your grandfather—while he’s still doing better.” Mr. Redford’s voice was hollow, and I realized he had lost more than a sibling tonight. He had lost the last shred of hope for his father.

“Is he going to start … reversing?” I could feel Zach’s energy pulling into him like a tide. There was coldness against my thigh where a minute ago his own had warmed it. I pressed my palm tighter into his.

“Hopefully not too quickly, but yeah, eventually he will go back to the way he was before.”
And then he will get worse
. The unspoken words hung in the air in front of Grant, as palpable as if they had been written there. “Why don’t you walk Phe back to her dorm, and then you can meet me at the car.”

Zach wrapped his arm protectively around my shoulders, and we made our way back to the campus. We were both quiet as we walked. I was exhausted, but still somehow electrified. Not in the way I was when I touched Zach; this was coming from inside myself. I had controlled a primal force tonight. I had awakened
the dead, jolting them with words like jumper cables. Words that I wasn’t even sure of their meaning.

Whatever they meant, those words had changed everything. My life was never going to be the same after what had happened here tonight. As much as I wanted to try to go back to being normal—whatever that was—I knew it was impossible.

It wasn’t even about the things that had gone on—Mr. Carr’s death, the book from Sarah, the ritual. It was me—who I was fundamentally at my core. I had a power. A power I could feel strumming through my nerves and muscles and skin. A power as real as that possessed by any of the Brevis Vitas, though mine probably wasn’t as scientifically explainable. Hell, I didn’t know if it was explainable at all.

I felt more strongly than ever that I was supposed to be at Devenish. My sister had been called, and I had fulfilled her last wish by coming here. Now I belonged to Shadow Hills. I was needed here. I didn’t know what for, but for the first time since Athena’s death, I felt focused, like I had a purpose. There was a reason I was still alive.