Second Verse (26 page)

“Stop it.” Mom swats him and scoots down to the floor. “Don’t talk like that. You know Lange’s always been sensitive about blood.”

I ignore them, trying to work it out in my head.

“Wasn’t there a suicide note with a confession?” I barely croak the words out of my dry throat. God, I’ve been so wrong about everything.

“It isn’t so hard to forge a suicide note,” Dad says.

Against the waistband of my pants, Vaughn’s fingers move, brushing my belt loop.

He’s awake. Play it cool. He wants them to think he’s still out of it
.

“Then again,” Dad says. “He was a smart boy. Much smarter than Ginny, anyway. That damn theory he came up with, based on the locations of the bodies. Well, that’s what led them to us, eventually. You guys were already gone, but it didn’t matter. The cops were on the right track because of him.”

Mom’s eyes narrow when she shakes her head, resting her hand on Dad’s tattooed arm. “I bet we had a lot left in us, don’t you?”

He grins at her, his teeth like broken gravestones. “But we can still make up for it now, you know. Lost time and all that.”

She gives him a look of total adoration. Their words roll around in my head like balls on a pool table.

Wait.

My face must show the recognition. “Ahhh,” Mom says, wagging a finger at me. “Now you finally see, huh?”

Sweeney. Sweeneys. Sweeney murders. It’s them. Hank led to their capture. They killed themselves.

Knocked down by the information, I fall back on the dirt floor. Vaughn’s fingers touch mine again, stronger this time. Nearly grasping. He’s definitely awake.

“Thanks to him,” she nods to Vaughn. “We had to end our lives before we were done. Hank was so concerned about figuring things out and solving our crimes, all the while planning the perfect, successful life for him and his Ginny. It was pretty sickening. Greedy. Hank had to have it all. Both of you did. Greedy, materialistic, self-serving people.”

Dad nods, but when he opens his mouth, Mom keeps talking. She’s on a roll now.

“It’s not a normal way to be, Lange. Caring only about your own ambitions. It’s creates a dirty, tainted spirit, not giving back to the world.” She’s staring into space again, totally dazed.

Does she even hear herself? Does she honestly believe
she’s
giving back to the world?

“And this time, we figured we’d bring you two together again, one last time. Turns out not much had changed, only this time it was both of you playing detective, determined to be smarter and better than those around you. All while your precious love grew.” She sticks a finger in her mouth as if to gag herself, the mean and distant look flashing in her eyes again.

Dad nods. “We went back and forth for years about you two meeting up, and with the house sitting here empty, we figured why not? Meant to be, I guess. Not that you were easy to find in the first place. Tracking souls is not the easiest thing in the world. But we waited it out. It’s doubtful your real parents ever knew what a pure, long-standing soul they rebirthed.”

My real parents?

“You don’t still think you’re actually ours, do you?” Mom says. “Look at your face. Oh no, Lange. There were hundreds of
missing children the year you were born. You were merely one more unsolved case.

This is not happening. They’re insane. I need to buy time, while I figure out what to do. “How?” I ask. “How do you find souls when they come back?”

“Ah, come on, the best of the best don’t kill and tell now,” Dad says. “But you don’t go from life to life killing unless you pick up some tricks along the way. It’s in our bones. It’s who we are.” He winks.

“You could tell her
something
. It’s not like she’ll be around much longer to tell anyone.”

The room tenses again, the walls shifting in my vision. The cut on my head throbs.

“Very true,” Dad says, weighing his words. “Well, do you really think your precious Sharon is the only person who’s tapped into people like us?”

His question and his condescending tone stop me from speaking. How do they know about Sharon? Did they hurt her too?

“Put it this way, while Sharon has been wasting time developing photos, there are others, more advanced than her, who have been cataloging lives, following them through generations. Rebirth genealogy type stuff. DNA. It’s a real science. With
big
plans for the future.” He grins.

I shake my head slowly, pretending to be ignorant. He’s talking about Obitus. We’re in way over our heads.

“They keep impeccable records, especially of those most interesting to them. Some of us, like me and Cheryl here, have been helping them through the ages.” He squeezes her hand. “We helped rid the world of people who didn’t deserve to live. The greedy, the selfish. Those unwilling to live by the right set of rules. I’ve never been so proud as when we recovered those memories.”

“Recovered memories of past lives? I thought that was impossible?”

He shrugs. “Not on their own, of course. But there’s all kinds of hypnosis to pull out where your soul has lived and what it’s done. Like I said, there are experts out there doing big things, Lange. Huge things! These are exciting times for us. And getting bigger and better. I miss that last life though. We had a real purpose. Before
he
came along.” He sneers in Vaughn’s direction.

Mom looks at me as if she’s explaining the way to bake a cake, not trace souls across lifetimes. “A bit of research from our friends, and they tracked you both down.”

“But why? Why bring Vaughn and me together again? What can you possibly get from us?”

“What else?” Dad says. “Revenge.”

But the way her eyes cut behind him, I know there’s something else, something even worse that they aren’t saying. Her gaze rests on a metal suitcase behind him and my heart plummets. There
is
something else going on. What is it?

“So why wait?” I stammer. “Why now? I’ve been with you my whole life.”

They exchange a glance and a small smile pulls the corner of dad’s lips up. “The truth? We have plans for you. Tonight is only the beginning.”

Plans?

“Revenge aside,” he says. “There’s something much bigger going on here. Much more important to your fate. To the fate of many souls.” He drags the suitcase toward him, clicking it open. He nods to Mom and together, they push it against the wall. Inside is a machine, all gears and antennas and wires and shiny metal surfaces.

Oh. My. God.

Sharon’s worst fears were right. It’s exactly what she was talking about. The research about forcing souls a certain way after
death. That has to be it. I was their experiment. They kept me around simply to mess with my life
and
my soul’s destiny. I’m old enough now. That’s why she’s kept me alive all these years. They’ve been grooming me, getting my soul ready. I’m nothing but a lab rat to the Obitus research.

Vaughn’s fingers brush mine again. I have to buy more time.

“Well, why didn’t you just kill us when we first got together? Why try to throw us off the trail so many times?”

“It wouldn’t have been the same unless you were absolutely falling for each other,” Mom says. “Plus it was fun to watch you scramble around playing detective to try and figure it out.”

Trying hard to control the urge to lash out, I look at Dad. “It’s true,” he says. “But she wanted to go ahead and get it over with last week. She was chickening out on making it count.”

Anger flares in her eyes. “Oh come on! That isn’t fair. It’s not that I didn’t want to make it count, it’s just that—” she looks down, a small frown forming on her lips. Could it be … regret? Does she have any qualms about all of this?

He waves a hand, pulling a cloth pouch from the bottom step toward him. “Please, Cheryl. You wanted to do it in her sleep. Where’s the fun in
that?
And with him not even there to witness it?”

The urge to scream boils in me. I inch closer to Vaughn.

Dad looks at me again. “I was afraid for a while there. Thought she’d lost her touch. Or started to actually care about you.”

She scoffs, but her lip trembles. She puffs out her chest as if to prove her conviction. “Please. I’ve always liked torturing her. It was my idea to pretend to kill you off all those years ago, if you remember.”

He frowns. “True. But it made sense. I was busy. Being with you guys was dragging me down.”

“Yeah, before he left for good, he’d come visit for a few days and go and kill someone and we’d have to up and move again. And again. It got annoying.” Mom’s eyes twinkle with the memory as if she’s remembering cozy Thanksgiving dinners. “Daddy’s in town!” Her voice pitches. “Someone gets stabbed, let’s move!”

I swallow bile. All those moves. Multiple murders. No wonder reading about the Sweeny murders felt so familiar. I’d been living alongside something way too similar, in the next life.

“Dying was the cleanest exit I could make. And adding a good dose of Daddy issues did make it interesting.”

“Added bonus,” Mom agrees. “Dragging you to Dr. Ramirez and watching you cry and go on and on? It
was
amusing.”

My heart hurts with the memories. Has everything she’s done been a lie?

“What about your photo sessions? In the attic and all that? How is that related?”

“That’s a whole other story that is none of your business,” she says. “Let’s just say we were doing some research for some friends. Returning a favor, so to speak.” Like a witch’s cackle, her laugh breaks into the space, making me flinch. Dad gives her a knowing wink.

Friends? It has to be Obitus. The photographs were research for them. Payback for them finding us.

I steal a glance at the machine in the corner. What exactly is going to happen to us?

Dad unfolds the cloth. Inside, silver glints. I close my eyes.

“Not quite as many as we had with your last family, but they’ll do.”

At the sound of metal, I open my eyes and watch him rub the blades of two long knives against each other. He grins at me, offering Mom the one with a thick, bowed handle.

I focus on the blades, the way they glitter in the dim flashlight beams.

Mom—I can’t help but still think of them as Mom and Dad—crawls over to me. Her makeup is smudged, and she looks at me with raccoon eyes I don’t recognize, because somewhere deep inside, the light has gone out. It isn’t her anymore, just that weird gaze like she’s on some kind of mission. Which, judging by the way she keeps looking at the machine in the corner, I guess she is. She drags the tip of the knife slowly up my arm, slitting my sleeve. When she rests the tip against my throat, I swallow against it.

And then there’s pain. Sharp pain like a needle, but deeper. More angry. A slice against my neck, just above my collarbone. She pulls back immediately, but I feel the blood surface on my skin. It runs down my chest, soaking my shirt against my skin. She rests the knife on her chin, the bloody tip against her lips.

Behind her, Dad kneels on the floor, knives spread on a blanket like a street vendor selling belts. A flashlight next to him shines up toward the ceiling, throwing weird shadows across his face.

I don’t see how I can overpower them.

Closing my eyes, I breathe through my nose. Dust. Sweat. The remnants of Ginny’s perfume.

Behind me, Vaughn shifts again, gripping my fingers as he groans and settles, pretending he’s still out of it.

Mom takes my other hand in hers, her fingers long and thin, dry like I’ve always known them. She pulls me forward, until our faces are only inches apart, her eyes somehow flooded simultaneously with sorrow and violence.

“You’re so sweet, believing, just like last time, in the power of true love.” She runs the tip of the knife against the inside of my wrist, applying enough pressure to draw blood, but not enough to end it.

Not yet.

I search her face frantically, racking my brain for a solution. Behind her, Dad hums an old fashioned lullaby as he sharpens knives with a sharpener I’ve seen in our kitchen. Every one of my nerve endings protest at the sound of metal on metal.

“Don’t,” I whisper, hating the pleading tone in my voice but seeing no other option.

She flinches, regret briefly settling on her features again. Dad clears his throat. When she looks up at him, he nods toward me. With a deep breath, she drags the blade across my palm, gently tracing the lines there as if with a feather.

I whimper.

“You know, I loved giving you Ginny’s old things,” she says. “The candlesticks, perfume bottles, hair combs,” she pauses to rip the comb from my hair. It clatters to the ground, taking a chunk of my hair with it. She watches it for a second with a crazed expression, as if the comb itself is alive. “Each object sparked something in you. Not enough to reveal the truth, but enough to drive you a bit crazy.”

She cuts deeper against my palm, drawing more blood. “Ah, the lifeline.” Her eyes flash. “Did your meddling psychic friend say anything about that?”

Wincing at the fresh sting in my hand, I grit my teeth and refuse to answer. There’s no way I can win against them. Even if one of them drops their guard, there will still be the other to take down. Plus, I’m getting lightheaded. I watch the blood drip from my hand to the dusty floor, the gashes burning like fire on my skin.

Behind me, I can sense Vaughn is fully awake, the even way he breathes I know is fake. I can only hope he has a plan and knows exactly when to strike.

Dad has put down the sharpener. He works with a gray cloth, shining the blades of each knife, giving every one a disturbing amount of attention.

Come on, Vaughn
.

As if on cue, he shifts further down the wall.

“Hmmm,” Dad says, looking at Vaughn’s slumped form. “He’s supposed to be awake for this.”

“Why not wait then?” Mom drops my hand and scoots back the few feet to where Dad still kneels over his knife collection. I hold my fingers up, squinting at the blood she’s smeared across my palm. I wiggle them, watching the pattern of red as it changes, morphing into different shapes like an inkblot test.

Dad shakes his head. “From the looks of her, she’ll pass out soon. You’ve always been a little over exuberant with drawing early blood.”