Page 87 of Riot Reunion
I raise my jaw, staring at him with what little courage I have left inside me, and I say, “Yes. I’m scared of you.” Saying it gives me strength; owning my fear releases me from it in a way. Even though I’m still petrified, I find I can breathe a little deeper, the paralysis that gripped my body when he pushed me back against the car easing a little.
Fitz nods, licking his lips over and over. “Good,” he coos. “You should be scared. I’m going to kill you.”
31
WREN
My mother’sbeen dead for more than half my life. I used to pray to her when I was little, hoping she’d hear me somehow and visit me in my dreams. Sometimes, she would. I’d remember the outline of her face when I woke up. A gentle, warm touch. The melody of a song, the words all faded and gone. It felt as though she’d heard my prayers and answered them, coming to bring me comfort while I slept. My father had told me that only an idiot would believe a fantasy like that, and only the weak needed the comfort of their mothers.
I’d stopped praying for her to come to me in my dreams after that. And, as if she was giving me what I wanted all over again, my mother never came to me in my sleep again.
I pray to her now, burning down the mountain in Pax’s Charger, because she’s the only thing I can believe in. I know she loved me. I still remember. She’d have done anything,givenanything to keep me safe. If there is an afterlife, and she has any sway there whatsoever, I know she’ll hear my pleas and make sure that Elodie is safe.
“Faster,” Pax urges from the back seat. “Please, for fuck’s sake, go faster.”
I helped him run with Presley through the forest. She lies in his arms now, her head cradled against his chest. It looks like she’s sleeping. Her lips are blue, though, her skin waxy. No sign of life whatsoever. Pax holds his breath, constantly checking for her pulse. He felt it once back at the gazebo, but I don’t know if he’s felt it since.
“I’ll kill us all if I push it any harder,” I say through gritted teeth.
Pax makes a choking sound. He wants to scream at me and force me to do his bidding, his fear urging him to make threats until he gets what he wants, but the roads are almost washed out at this point, and he knows I’m right.
I feel as though I should be able to sense if Elodie is okay. We’re so close, so in alignment, that it seems wrong that I can’t reach out to her with my senses and know where she is and that she’s okay. But we’re not superhuman. Nomagicbinds us together. Just love. And love is capable of many things, but not this.
We burn past Riot House, hurtling down the mountain. Eventually, the switchback road spits us out in town, and Mountain Lakes sprawls out in front of us. I find myself checking every car that we pass to see if Elodie is behind the wheel, but none of the drivers are her. Pax launches out of the car the moment I pull up in front of the emergency room entrance, and I get out, too, running around the vehicle to help him lift Presley out of the backseat. The girl is a lead weight in my arms as I assist in getting her inside the building.
“HELP! We need help over here!” Pax hollers.
And help comes. It arrives in the form of a sea of nurses, and a short doctor with small, black-framed glasses. He asks Pax a litany of questions, few of which Pax knows definitive answers to.
No, she isn’t allergic to anything.
No, she’s not on any medication.
Yes, she’s pregnant.
No, he doesn’t know whether she’s had a blood draw.
He follows after the gaggle of nurses as they wheel Presley through some double doors, vanishing from view.
I proceed to ask every single member of staff I come across if they’ve seen a girl called Elodie. Growing more and more frustrated by the second, I scream at them when they don’t give me the answers I want to hear.
Elodie hasn’t been to the hospital.
“You’re sure?” I ask the male nurse behind the reception desk for the fifteenth time. “She’s this tall. Dark brown hair. Here, look. Look at my phone. You’re surethisgirl hasn’t been in here, asking for an ambulance?”
“I’m sure. She hasn’t been in here. I think I’d remember someone racing in here, asking for an ambulance. Look, I’m sorry, dude. I can tell that you guys have had a shitty night, but I’m gonna have to ask you to calm down. There are other people in here waiting to be seen, and—”
Fuck this guy.
I bolt out of the hospital, my heart a lump of shredded meat clogged in the back of my throat. Carrie thought Elodie was coming to find us up at the school, but we would have seen her if shehadgone there. I’d forced myself to believe that. When we rushed Presley down to the car, that had been confirmed when we found Dash’s rental was gone. She definitely drove away from that gate, and there’s only one way to go from there: down. So where the fuckisshe?
I go outside, sucking down the cold air, trying to calm myself enough to cobble a coherent thought together. The rain has stopped at last, the clouds breaking, the storm having thrashed itself out.
Where the fuck is Elodie?
There’s every chance she went back to the gazebo.
Dash and Carrie are waiting there for the cops to show up, so Dash can take them up to show them the body we found.
