Glimpse (30 page)

For a second, I thought my heart would break. It had all been for nothing. I’d survived just to die again.

‘Be calm, Elizabeth.’

I looked up at him. His hair was ruffled. His face was soft, a total mismatch with the twist of terror and blank hatred in my last memory of him.

‘You shot me,’ I said.

Scott’s grip relaxed at that and I snatched my arm free. I made a grab for the alarm button by my bed, but he was too quick for me. He caught my hand clumsily, and for the first time I registered the plaster cast on his arm. He folded my fingers in his own so I couldn’t press the button.

‘All is well,’ he said, his voice weirdly soft. He leaned down over me, his face alive with emotion. I watched him like he was a hissing snake.

‘Elizabeth . . . Bess . . . it’s me!’

Scott lifted his un-bandaged hand to touch my face. I flinched and he let his hand drop.

‘Look at me. Look at me, properly.’ He leaned over me, the movement sending a familiar scent towards me.

Something earthy, like the night.

I stared at him. There were flecks of green in his blue eyes.

‘I stopped Scott. I pursued him into the road and a vehicle hit him. His soul came out of his body. Meg was there – she told me how to take his place.’

I was seeing Scott, but hearing Zachary.

‘Crowley and Scott exhumed my remains. That’s why I had to leave you on Sunday night. I was so disorientated, I was almost out of my mind. I raced to follow them, until I realized it must be a trap. I managed to return to the inn because you had a part of me that they didn’t – in more ways than you know. I arrived just in time to see you . . . to see you injured.’ His voice filled with emotion. ‘It was then that I realized who you are. I saw you again.’

His hand caressed mine. Hope radiated inside me, molten and nuclear and too, too hot.

But still, I shook my head. ‘You shot me.’

His eyes widened. ‘Bess, Meg explained this. Ann tricked you into taking another body, and that’s how you left me the first time. That’s why we didn’t recognize each other when you returned. Though I did recognize you – I knew I loved you, I felt our connection, I simply couldn’t tell you. I believed you were . . . a different Elizabeth. I believed you were someone else. I felt so guilty.’

I closed my eyes, scrunching them tight. I wanted to erase the whole world. I wanted to open my eyes again, and see only Zachary.

But I didn’t. It was impossible. When I opened my eyes, he was still Scott.

I reached up and touched his cheek, despite the ache that splintered through my side at the movement. His skin was soft, but his face was the wrong shape under my palm. ‘Prove it then,’ I said.

He fixed me to the bed with his gaze, steady and calm, the way Zachary used to. ‘We spent every day, every night, together, for lifetimes. When you came to the inn, I thought you were Bess, that very first night; I recognized something in you, but you didn’t know me. Mere nights ago, I kissed your hand and told you I wanted you in my future . . .’ He trailed off.

Silent tears rolled down my cheeks. My heart expanded with so much hope and fear and joy, I thought it was going to kill me. ‘It’s really you?’ I whispered.

He nodded, and though his lips were the wrong shape, his smile was bright as the moon.

With all my strength I pulled him towards me. He sank over me, his cast across my stomach, his face burying in my curls. I twined my fingers into his too-short hair. He was Zachary, and I would never, ever let him go.

‘Is this it? Is this really happening? Can we be together now, for good?’

Zachary pulled back till I could see his face. His expression was solemn but radiant, like he was lit inside by candles. ‘Ann’s gone. Meg told me she was tired of working with Ann, that she came to the inn that morning to stop Ann’s plans. She was devastated she was too late to stop you being hurt. She helped me locate Ann’s bones at the inn and we took them all back to the cemetery. Ann can’t come near us.’

‘And Scott’s really gone?’

He nodded, but not happily.

My breathing hitched around a sob, absurd though it was. ‘He wasn’t bad,’ I whispered. ‘It was Ann and Crowley. They corrupted him. He tried to warn me, but I rejected and rejected him . . .’ I bit my lip to stop myself from crying.

Zachary stroked my hair. ‘He put a bullet in you. That was still his choice.’

He glanced at the door, then climbed up onto the edge of the bed next to me. He wrapped his uninjured arm around me, taking care to avoid my bandages, and kissed my lips, so gently. I closed my eyes, blocking out the sight of Scott’s face, and just let myself feel his love. It swelled in every part of me, filling the seven-year hole inside me.

I didn’t know if I was Bess, or a girl from a poem, or Liz, but I knew I was me. And that was more than I’d had before. It was all I needed.

I reached for my locket, and was surprised to find its familiar heart-shape at my neck. Dad must have put it on me. I stroked its surface, with a bittersweet smile. I knew now why Liz’s mother hated me. I knew now why I felt no connection to her. But it was all right. Liz’s mother loved Liz – and, it turned out, that wasn’t quite who I was.

A finger pressed to mine, over the locket. ‘Your mother loved you.’ Zachary’s voice was soft. ‘Do you remember that?’

I nodded. And smiled. Because I did.

The bang of the door reached me through the warm cloud in my head. Zachary scrambled off the bed, awkward with his cast. ‘Sir,’ he said.

I shifted my head to watch Dad as he walked towards us, polystyrene cup in hand and an embarrassed look on his face. ‘I don’t know why you’ve started calling me that, Scott,’ he said, ‘but you’ve really got to stop.’

Dad smiled at me, a little too brightly. He drew his chair discreetly back from the bed and slotted himself into it. He kept his eyes averted from Zachary and me, as he peeled the lid from his cup. Instant coffee aroma competed with the scent of the woods in the small room.

‘I always thought there was something between you two,’ he said into his cup. ‘Lifts to school, hanging around outside your window.’

I gave him a sharp look.

‘Don’t think I didn’t notice,’ he said, sipping his coffee. ‘You pretended to hate each other, but I knew.’ He grinned at his drink, but I knew the grin was for me and Zachary.

Zachary’s fingers smoothed my hair, stroking each of my curls to the ends as though there was no one in the room but him and me. Dad coughed and shuffled back out of the room, muttering something about sandwiches.

I closed my eyes, letting my imagination fill. The Zachary I knew – all strength and moonlit beauty – loving the girl I’d just learnt I could be.

Who was that girl? Bess? Liz? Or Elizabeth – a fusion of the two?

It didn’t really matter. I saw ghosts, I had nightmares, I worried my dad, but I had friends and a boy who loved me. I’d wanted a future, and now I had the prospect of one so bright, it was blinding.

I opened my eyes and watched the love play on Zachary’s face. I had my highwayman. And, for the first time in my life, I knew who I was.