Taken at Dusk (27 page)

Somebody must have said something funny a few tables over because laughter filled the large room. The smell of burgers mingled with the faint smell of singed wood. Thanks to Burnett, the physical reminders of the big fight were all gone, but the memory still lingered. Everyone at the camp seemed extra cheery tonight, no doubt celebrating Holiday’s return. If the camp leader doubted how appreciated she was, the number of squeals, accompanied by “You’re back!” and unexpected hugs (even from a few vamps and weres, which were not common) should have done her ego good.

For a moment, Kylie worried it might make Burnett feel like a second fiddle. But more than once Kylie caught the vampire watching the emotional greetings with so much pride in his eyes that it was like watching a romance movie. Kylie could almost hear the sappy music playing in the background. She wished she had a camera so she could show Holiday how Burnett looked at her when she wasn’t aware.

The door to the dining room swished open. Derek and Ellie walked in side by side, though they weren’t holding hands. Derek immediately started moving his gaze around the room, and Kylie knew he’d been looking for her when his gaze landed on hers. She couldn’t help but wonder what he’d wanted to talk to Holiday about. Was it her again? And why? Shouldn’t he be giving Ellie his attention?

He nodded slightly. She nodded back and forced herself to eat another bite of her hamburger. It tasted like dead meat. Which it was, but the thought made it even more unappetizing.

When the lump of food took two swallows to get down her throat, she pushed her plate aside. She was so done.

Staring at her glass of tea, she wiped away a trail of condensation and searched for a plausible excuse to escape from the dining hall. Escape before she had to watch Derek and Ellie whispering back and forth and sharing fries or something—not that she cared, of course. At least that’s what she told herself. And she would continue to tell herself that until it was true. It would happen, too. How could it not when she enjoyed Lucas’s company so much? Enjoyed his kisses. Enjoyed being the girl he would actually wink at with dozens of people around to witness.

Kylie’s phone rang, giving her the excuse she needed to skip out. Not even checking to see who it was, she leaned over and whispered to Della that she had to take the call. Della, who’d been interested only in the rare meat on her bun and had already wolfed that down, grabbed her real meal—a tall glass of B positive blood—and followed her out.

Kylie hadn’t cleared the dining room door when she looked to see the name on her phone. Oh, crappers! It was Sara, her friend from home.

Sara, whose previous call and texts Kylie hadn’t answered.

For a damn good reason, too. Kylie knew Sara wanted to talk about her suspicion that Kylie had done something to make her cancer jump ship.

Problem was, Sara’s suspicion was right on target.

A targeted subject that Kylie had neglected to discuss with Holiday.

So what had compelled Kylie to answer this call without checking her caller ID first?

Oh yeah, so she’d have a reason to escape from the dining hall. Putting the phone to her ear, she hit the answer button.

“Hey, Sara,” Kylie said, and decided to wing it. Not that it was altogether a good idea. She’d never been a good winger.

“Hi,” Sara said.

“What’s up?” Kylie asked.

“I’ll tell you what’s up. I’ve just managed to baffle every cancer specialist in Texas. I still have to finish my chemo, and do one bout of radiation, but they did tons of CT scans and there’s not one tumor in this body! Can you believe it? I’m not gonna die, Kylie!”

There was so much excitement, bounciness, and pure hope in Sara’s voice that Kylie’s breath caught in her throat and tears filled her eyes. It reminded Kylie of the old Sara. Not the sex-crazed, alcohol-loving party girl who’d replaced her, but the one Kylie had been best friends with since elementary school.

And until this second, Kylie hadn’t realized how much she’d missed the old Sara, either. “That’s friggin’ fabulous, girl!”

“Like you didn’t know already,” she said.

Think. Think. Think.
“I don’t know what you mean,” Kylie said, deciding to play ignorant. What was the saying? Ignorance is bliss? She could really use a little bliss right now.

Della looked at Kylie and rolled her eyes. Kylie frowned, not so much because Della was listening in—she would have told Della about it anyway—but because Della then mouthed the word
liar
.

“Right,” Sara said. “But that’s not important. We can talk about that Sunday.” She let a long pause linger on the phone, as if it were supposed to mean something. “Come on. Don’t you wanna know why we can talk about it on Sunday?” Sara finally asked.

“Because you’re not going to church and are going to call me?” Kylie answered, throwing out the first thing that came to her mind, but her gut knotted with a strange suspicion. But a suspicion of what? How bad could it be?

“Because I’m coming to see you on Sunday,” Sara said, sounding really happy about it, too.

Okay, having Sara visit Shadow Falls could be phenomenally bad. But maybe that wasn’t even what she meant. “Uh, I’m not at home, Sara. I’m at camp,” Kylie said. “Remember?”
Please let it be that simple.

“Of course I remember, silly! I’m coming up there with your mom. I just got off the phone with her.”

Kylie’s heart, poised to make the leap, did a nosedive right into her stomach. The thought of Sara coming to Shadow Falls sent a wave of shock to her brain.

Sara was from Kylie’s old life.

Everything at Shadow Falls was part of her new life.

Old life and new life didn’t go together. They were like peanut butter and hot dogs. The two were fine separately, but they should never meet.

Never.

Ever.

“Uh, Sara. You … you…” She swallowed hard. “You can’t just visit Shadow Falls. I mean, you have to … have to get permission from the camp leaders, and they are very funny about—”

“Duh, your mom told me that. So I took the bull by the horns and called and spoke with a Mr. Burnett James about twenty minutes ago. He said it would be fine for me to ride up with your mom. I can’t wait to see you, Kylie. And I can’t wait to meet all those hot guys you told me about. We’re going to have such fun. Oh, and what was the name of that really bitchy girl you told me about? DeAnn, no, wait, it was Della. We can tag team her ass.”

Della’s eyes widened.
Bitchy,
she mouthed.

Kylie’s hand wrapped around the phone and started to shake. “Ugh. I never said she was bitchy, I said she was blunt.”

“Same thing,” Sara said. “And the other one with the weird hair? Tell me, are they the ones who taught you how to heal people?”

“I’m sorry.” Kylie’s heart started to jump beats. “I have to go. Someone just … someone just called me.” She punched Della in the arm.

“Hey, Kylie!” Della yelled out, and grinned as if she enjoyed playing a part in the shenanigans. Or not. “Oh, you’re on the phone. We can talk later. I wouldn’t want to be a bitch or anything,” she said in her snarkiest voice.

“I’ll call you later,” Kylie told Sara. “Yeah … later. Sorry.” She started to hang up and then said, “But I’m happy about you being okay, Sara. Really happy.”

Kylie snapped her phone closed and then looked at Della. Della, who seemed to be immensely enjoying Kylie’s discomfort. Della, who looked part pissed off and part amused.

“So,” Della said. “We finally get to meet Miss Sara, huh? Your oldest and best friend, who has always sounded like a self-centered bitch, if you ask me. You totally upgraded when you came here. Personally, I’d have let her die. But on second thought…” Della flashed her fangs. “Hmm, what type of blood does she have? Think I could talk her into donating a pint or two, maybe more? Tag team my ass!”

“Kill me,” Kylie said, and brushed her hair back to expose her neck vein. “Just kill me now and get it over with!”

*   *   *

“So we get to meet Sara. Cool,” Miranda said later that night as they sat around the kitchen table.

“Not cool,” Kylie said, seriously unhappy about it, and gave a demanding Socks a scratch behind his ear.

“Why not cool?” Miranda asked.

“She doesn’t want us to meet her,” Della said. “We might find out what the real Kylie Galen is like.”

Kylie scowled at Della, and yeah, she could pull off a pretty mean scowl, thanks to living with Della. “It’s not that at all. If anything, you guys know the real me. It’s just … over-the-top weird to have her coming here.”

“Why?” Miranda asked. “We’ve met your mom.”

“And your philandering dad,” Della added.

“That’s different,” Kylie said, and frowned at the philandering comment. Though she didn’t know why she was offended, because it was true.

“How’s it different?” Miranda asked. Before Kylie could answer, Miranda added, “Hey, I hope you two get a chance to meet Todd on Friday night. Will you guys wait with me in the parking lot when he comes to pick me up?”

Both Della and Kylie frowned, but they nodded.

“It’s different for you,” Kylie said to Miranda, still stuck on Sara coming to visit on Parents Day. “You’ve known you were supernatural all your life. You don’t have a presupernatural life.” Socks, still on the tabletop, jumped down to the floor with a catlike elegance. “It’s like I was a different person back then. And yeah, you met my parents, but it’s almost as if they don’t count—not the way your friends count.”

“I’m sorry, but I don’t understand,” Miranda said.

“I do,” said Della. And she said it as though she hated to admit it. “Kylie’s right. It’s different when you had a different life. I tried to imagine how it would be for you guys to meet Lee, or one of my old girlfriends. It would be freaky.” She met Kylie’s eyes. “I’m sorry I gave you a hard time about this.”

“Wow,” Miranda said. “You’d better be careful, Della. In the last few days, I think you’ve used up your vampire quota of apologies for the next ten years.”

“Kiss my apologetic ass!” Della snapped.

*   *   *

Later that night, Kylie woke up to the mist forming around her. She didn’t know where she was, but for some reason she wasn’t afraid. Her gaze stayed on the soft, moist mist. She looked at the trees; the leaves, even in the dark, were a perfect shade of verdant green. Beautiful sprays of moonlight spilled through limbs that seemed to reach up into the heavens with pride. Perfect. Fairy-tale perfect. Even the sounds of the forest at night were like a symphony. She heard the water, like a babbling brook, a peaceful, beautiful sound playing in the background.

She immediately thought of Derek and that crazy thing he did when he was really close to her. How he made everything look like a fairy-tale picture, one meant to capture your imagination—one meant to fill you with awe, like the pages of a children’s book.

“Hey…” His voice pulled her away from the few stars she saw twinkling above the trees.

He sat beside her on a large rock. Not so close that she would have felt awkward, but near enough that the moonlight allowed her to see him. Then she realized this wasn’t just any rock; it was their rock. The spot he’d taken her to after she’d first arrived at Shadow Falls.

She’d done it again.

She’d brought him here through the dreamscape, and that was so wrong.

“I’m sorry,” she blurted out. “I didn’t mean to do this.” She closed her eyes and concentrated on moving back, away from the dream. She concentrated really hard, waited for the floating-flying sensation, but it didn’t happen. At least she didn’t think it did.

She opened her eyes just a crack. Enough to see if she’d moved. Nope, she was still sitting on the rock. Derek was still looking at her. Why couldn’t she fly away from the dream? She jerked her eyes open all the way.

“I’m sorry,” she said again. “I didn’t mean to do this. Just a minute and you can go right back to sleep.”

She slammed her eyes shut again and tried really, really hard to concentrate.
Back. Go back to sleep. Now!

“Kylie?” His voice tickled her ears as she tried to fix what she’d done. “Kylie.”

She tried to ignore him and concentrate.

“Kylie, you’re not doing this. I am. I’m the one dreamscaping.”

Kylie jerked open her eyes and her vision filled with him sitting there, looking so real. She recalled how the dreamscape had felt different when Red had come into her dreams. She hadn’t been able to fly away, she’d had to wake herself up. So that’s what she needed to do. Just wake herself up. She didn’t do it.

“You can dreamscape?”

He nodded. “Yeah.”

The first thing she did was make sure she had clothes on. Hey … she knew her own tendencies with dreams, and from what she’d heard, boys were even worse.

She had on her pink nightshirt. Nothing sexy or showy. Good thing. A fluttering of relief waved through her that he didn’t intend for this to be that kind of dream. Then she couldn’t help but wonder if it was because he didn’t feel that way about her anymore. He had Ellie.

“Why didn’t you tell me you could dreamscape?” she asked, not wanting to think too much about him and Ellie.

He hesitated. “I sort of figured out how to turn it off before I ever got to Shadow Falls. I was constantly trying to visit my dad to communicate with him, even when I didn’t want to have anything more to do with him.”

Kylie knew all about unwanted dreamscapes. Then she remembered Derek’s pain at dealing with his dad, the man who had abandoned him when he was really young. “Do you communicate with him now?” she asked, remembering he’d said he was going to look for his dad when he’d left Shadow Falls. When he’d come back with Ellie, she hadn’t thought about Derek’s problems, only about feeling betrayed by him. A touch of shame filtered into her chest at her selfishness.

“Not really. But I now know how to work the dreamscape, so I…”

“You what?” Kylie asked.

“Started using it again. But that’s not important. Look, the other night when you came to me in the dream.”

“I’m sorry about that,” she said. “I’m just now learning how to control them. But as soon as I realized what I had done, that I had gone to your bedroom, I left.”