Page 67 of Feed Your Fiends

We’re just going down the country lane on a sleepy Sunday afternoon when the sun’s weakening and so is the traffic. Once we exit off the highway, we may pass ten cars. Twelve tops. The likelihood of them crashing into us is ten, maybe twelve.

But not zero, a voice hisses.

I swipe the back of my neck to shoo the voice away and grip it, squeezing it rhythmically in hopes that I’ll return to reality.

Stay in the present.

I’m in the garage. At the penthouse. Parked.

Everything is fine.

But then a ripple in the dash captures my attention. It warps, crumbling like all those letters I’d balled in my palm. My mother’s letters.My mother.

The dashboard caves in toward my chest, and as I turn my head, she turns hers, and her face, her beautiful face, is suddenly covered in a layer of glass and blood that splatters me upon impact.

Hrssh... Hrssh...The death rattle in her chest grows fainter until I can’t hear it at all.

I scramble from the car, falling onto the rough concrete of the garage, before crawling toward the black, reinforced SUV parked beside the coupe. It’s far bigger. Maybe I could breathe inside of it.

Breathe. Breathe, because you still can.

Inhale.

Exhale.

I’m at the penthouse. I’m not leaving the dance studio.

I blink at the ugly fluorescent lights and watch supernova-coloured amoebas burst before my vision when I stare for too long. They still dance even when I squeeze my eyes shut, but now their backdrop is sheer darkness.

Don’t go into the darkness.

We drove two nights ago,the voice drawls.

That was to get Elle.

But we drove.

For Elle.

We’re going to the Parrish estate for Elle, too.

Because she wants answers as much as we do because she’s thinking along the same lines, that maybe we share a brother. I already told her it wouldn’t matter, but something tells me she wants more answers than that. She’s purposely dancing around Jarett’s reappearance. Why? Why isn’t she questioning me about our fathers? She already knows they’re involved in this convoluted web somehow. If she’s holding off on confronting me about Jarett and Bart, it’s for a good reason. But what?

With clammy fingers, I open the SUV’s door and drag myself inside. The roof isn’t brushing the tips of my hair. My knees aren’t practically in my ribs, like when I drove Aria’s tiny sports car. If the door crumbled, I’d still have room to escape…

I? Me?

I’m not driving alone. What about her?

My beautiful Elle’s still beside me. Her eyes shine like my mother’s favourite emeralds, which are still littered beside the fireplace. But then she smiles, and her teeth shatter as her left eye splits open as I’m slammed into the windscreen. Millions of glass fragments shower me, exploding every nerve fibre with agonising pain.

Mother.I can’t call to her because my mouth is overflowing with blood, my lungs seizing.

“Gant?”

A voice is crying out to me.

A voice never cries out.

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