Page 121 of The Guardian's Curse

What’s wrong? Call me

They hadn’t spoken since the epic shouting match months ago. Within seconds of sending the text, her phone rang. “Ollie, I’m in trouble,” Danielle said, breathless and quiet. “I need you to come get me.”

A tsunami of terror washed over her. Olivia gripped the edge of her desk for balance as she said, “Dani, what’s going on? Should I call the police?”

“No!” she blurted. “No police. I’ll get in trouble.”

Her stomach plunged through the floor as she felt the admonition bubbling up on her tongue. What did you do now? She held it back and said, “Okay, where are you? I’m leaving work right now.”

“I’m at my apartment,” she said. “The new one. 211 Delmore Avenue, Unit G3.”

“OK, are you hurt? Did you take something?”

“Just come get me, please,” she pleaded. “I have to go.”

“No, stay on the—”

The call ended with four eerily final beeps. Her stomach twirled itself in a knot around her esophagus as she fumbled at her purse. She kicked off her heels and traded them for the slip-on sneakers she’d worn into the building. The world was far away as she ran down the hall. Somewhere in the distance, she heard the night receptionist speaking, but she couldn’t have been speaking English.

It took her three attempts to start her car before she realized she was trying to use her house key. “Breathe,” she told herself, taking a moment to ground herself like her therapist Cara had taught her. “Five things I can see,” she murmured. Streetlight. Fairy lights on the gazebo. Manicured nails. A half-empty water bottle. Her phone, which had delivered the terrifying omen. “Shit.”

She owned a gun, but it was stored safely at home. Did she risk going home for it? It would take another hour if she went home, and anything could happen to Danielle in that time.

Her stomach lurched as she pulled onto the road, headed for the interstate. Bracing herself for the death race of Atlanta traffic, she took a deep breath and slammed the gas to merge onto I-85.

The smart choice would be to call the cops. But if Danielle was up to something illegal, she’d get in more trouble, and she’d hate Olivia even more than she already did. As far as she knew, Dani’s painkiller of choice was booze, which had gotten her into plenty of trouble while still being legal. Olivia had bailed her twin out several times, both figuratively and literally, and had made a few late-night trips to pick her up from a bad situation.

But there had been radio silence from Danielle for nearly six months, ever since the screaming match that ended with Danielle telling her to get out and never come back. Olivia had just been trying to help, but Dani hadn’t seen it that way. And if Olivia was being honest with herself, she’d pushed too hard. She’d tried to apologize, tried to reach out, but Dani had cut her off entirely.

If Dani was reaching out, it had to be bad. And maybe this was the only way to finally make things right and get her sister back.

* * *

Danielle’s new apartment was in a surprisingly nice community. Olivia hadn’t even realized that her sister had moved until she worked up the courage a few months ago to take her a birthday gift. After pacing in the parking lot for ten minutes, she’d marched up to the door and knocked, only to find a very confused older woman who brought her a stack of mail for the previous tenant. Despite her nagging fears of prosecution for mail fraud, she still had that stack of mail addressed to Danielle at home. It was the tiniest connection, but it was all she had right now.

“Unit G3,” she murmured, carefully following the signage around the neatly landscaped complex. Her heart pounded in anticipation. Whatever she found at Dani’s doorstep, they’d deal with it together. Maybe she could prove that she was worth having around, and they could close this awful, aching gap between them.

All she’d ever tried to do was help Danielle. With a deadbeat mom who ran through abusive boyfriends like she’d bought them in bulk at the world’s shittiest Costco, they’d had to stick together. And when Mom was with Mike Mason, dirtbag extraordinaire, they’d realized they couldn’t depend on anyone else to protect them. They’d survived some bad years together, but it wasn’t until they were adults that Olivia learned how much worse Danielle had it during Mike’s reign of terror. Mom was still a mother in name only, listed as Jackie in her phone contacts. But it was some small comfort that Mike had gone to prison, pissed off the wrong guy, and got shanked with a whittled-down toothbrush. She’d never wished anyone dead, but she had celebrated the news of his death with a bottle of champagne and a slice of cheesecake.

His death hadn’t fixed anything. The damage he did to both of them, particularly Danielle, was just a part of his shitty legacy. And they were still feeling the echoes of it, in bad boyfriends and quiet self-destruction.

Building F blurred past, and she honed in on Building G. It was at the back of the complex, near an access road that connected to the back of a shopping center with a huge grocery store. She parked in one of the marked visitor spots and stared up at the building.

“Whatever I find, we’ll figure it out,” she said. Her chest tightened, and she was bombarded with the image of her sister, pale and cold and foaming at the mouth, a needle in her arm. Her face beaten and bloody. Gunshot wounds. A dozen terrible ends that Olivia hadn’t prevented. “Whatever it is, we’ll figure it out,” she repeated. “She’s going to be okay. She’s going to be okay.”

Olivia gripped her keys tightly, letting the sharp blade protrude between her fingers. As she bounded up the stairs, she wished she’d gone home for the gun. The third floor was quiet and still, but she wasn’t sure if that was a good sign.

She hurried around the corner to G3 and lingered at the door. Quiet voices spoke inside. She tested the handle. Locked. “Danielle?” she asked as she knocked. “Dani, it’s me. Come let me in.”

Adrenaline spiked through her system as the latch opened. Her sister opened the door. Though she was upright, she looked awful. Her smile was almost manic, her lips a garish red against her too-pale skin. Despite the smile, her eyes were wide with terror. “You came,” she murmured.

“Dani, what’s wrong? Are you on something?” she asked. At the center of a nasty purple bruise on her neck were twin trickles of blood from a pair of puncture wounds. Olivia reached for her hand and said, “Come on. Let’s get out of here, okay? Let’s go somewhere and talk.”

A broad-shouldered man loomed behind her. He shoved Dani to the side, then held out his big hand. “You must be Olivia.”

Her throat went dry. The man’s eyes were blood red. Not smoked-weed-all-night bloodshot, but movie-quality contacts red. Her throat went dry as she stared up at him and said, “I just came to get Danielle.”

“Ah, but now that you’re here, the party can start,” he said. In a blur, he grabbed her wrist and pulled her inside. She tried to pull away, but his grip was like steel. The door slammed behind her.

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