The Gifting (30 page)

I step forward. “Get away from him.”

The man with the scar cocks his head. “But he invited us here.”

My attention darts from him to the other. I’m not sure which one is the bigger threat.

“Your brother has been seeking us out ever since the séance in Jude.” He moves the tip of his finger over Pete’s skin, carving a symbol that looks very much like Wren’s disappearing tattoo. The same symbol on that seventeen-year-old gunman from a dream I had months ago. It finally clicks that the two symbols are the same, and now this man with the scar is marking my brother with it. “He’s been very intrigued. Very curious. If people aren’t careful, that kind of curiosity leads to us.”

“What are you talking about?”

“He didn’t even notice what was happening. We have the upper hand that way. You see, people have a hard time fighting against something they don’t believe. Their denial makes our job easier. Your brother didn’t honestly think he was involving himself in anything dangerous until it was too late. Our only roadblock was you. At least until you started taking medicine.”

Fear builds in my lungs.

“Once you were no longer aware of our presence, getting to him was a piece of cake.” He finishes the symbol and drops Pete’s arm. “I think he’s ready.”

“What are you going to do?”

“We’re going to give him his wish. He’s going to be ours.”

“No!” I lurch forward, but the movement is clumsy.

“You made your choice, Little Rabbit. Just as Pete made his. I’m afraid it’s too late.”

No. It’s not too late. It can’t be too late. I try to move, to stop the white-eyed man from pulling the cords away from Pete. But my legs are so sluggish and my frustration swells and with it comes memories. They ping, bright and vivid, in my mind. Dad tossing Pete into the air. Pete and I picking up starfish off the beach and throwing them back into the water. Pete and I building tents in the basement. Pete’s little-boy hand squeezing mine in the dark, as if I had the power to protect him from the things that go bump in the night. That little boy lies in bed, unconscious, his vitals plummeting.

A surge of love—white and hot and intense—sears through my medically-induced stupor. I lunge at the man with the scar and his eyes widen with shock. With all my strength and training, I sweep his legs out from under him and take him to the ground. Ice-cold fingers grab my elbow. I twist my arm up and spin around and with all the force I can muster, I shove my palm toward the skeletal face before me, connecting with his nose, shoving the cartilage up and in. He collapses onto the ground.

There is a quick movement behind me, like something swinging for my head. I duck and cover, prepared for the blow, but waves of light shove Scar Face back. It’s Luka. Light shoots from his palms, his face a mask of determination and concentration and powerful beauty. The light hurtles Scar Face toward the wall, only instead of slamming into it, he sinks through the solid mass as if he’s nothing but smoke and vapor.

Doctors swarm into the room—a whole team of them. They shock my brother’s heart while the mark on his wrist fades away and the shrill ring of the telephone startles me awake. Luka sits beside me in the bed, our breath rising and falling in unison. Darkness surrounds us, but even so, I can see the wideness of his eyes.

The phone lets out another shrill ring.

Through the walls, my Mom mumbles a groggy hello, followed by a pause, some unintelligible mumbling, then footsteps in the hallway. Luka hides in my closet. I hurry to the door, unlock it, fling it open, and come face-to-face with my mother, who is smiling. Beaming. Tears streaking her cheeks. She wraps her arms around my neck and squeezes so tightly I can feel her trembling. “He’s going to be okay, Tess. Pete’s going to be okay. That was your father. Your brother woke up.” She releases me from her vice-like hug. “I’m going there. Right now. I have to see him. Do you want to come?”

Every inch of my body melts with sweet relief. My baby brother is going to be okay. He’s going to make it. “You go. I’ll come in the morning.”

She hugs me again, then hurries down the steps. Luka doesn’t come out of his hiding place until the front door slams shut. I flip on my light and hurry out into the hall, into Pete’s bedroom, my legs weak. As if fighting in my dream has zapped my strength.

Luka follows, and from the look of his face, he’s feeling weak too. “What’s going on?”

I shake my head and dig under Pete’s bed, pulling out books about the occult and dark magic, Tarot cards, and a Ouija Board. All of it needs to go.

“How did you bring me with you like that?”

“I don’t know.”

“Is that what used to happen in your dreams—before the medicine? Did you always fight like that?”

I nod, transferring the pile from my arms to Luka’s. I open Pete’s laptop and pull up his search history. What I find is incredibly disturbing. I delete it with one click of the mouse and push away from his desk. “My brother’s okay, but we have to make sure he stays that way. We have to get rid of all this stuff.”

We carry it down into the living room and throw it into the fireplace. Luka douses it with lighter fluid, lights a match and tosses it in, then turns to me. “I did it again. That man came at you and I—I stopped him.”

A shiver takes hold of my jaw. What would have happened if Luka wouldn’t have been there to protect me?

“You brought me with you into that dream,” he says.

“I know.”

“How?”

“I have no idea, but I’m glad it happened.”

The fire flickers and bursts and there’s an awful screeching, so loud I clamp my hands over my ears and Luka steps back. “Whoa,” he says.

The screeching stops and the fire goes dark in the grate.

He stares at me with bright, almost wild eyes. “I have no idea what’s going on, but I don’t think you should go back on that medicine.”

I want to plug my ears. I don’t want to hear what Luka is implying. As much as I know he is right, my life was miserable before the medicine. A hair away from unbearable. “I didn’t ask for this.”

He steps closer.

“I just want to be normal. That’s all I’ve ever wanted.”

“Tess.”

“You don’t get it. All those people in the pile up? That boy in the drive-by shooting? If what you’re saying is true, then those deaths are my fault.” Never mind the weeks spent not dreaming at all. Never mind the weeks I spent on medicine while the world grew darker.

“No, they aren’t.”

“Yes, they are.”

“Listen, Tess. The past is the past. It’s done. It’s over. It only has power if you let it keep you from making the right choice in the present.” He dips his chin, pulling me in with his eyes. There’s calmness there. Strength. And fire too. “I didn’t get it before. I didn’t understand. But after what I saw tonight. The way you fought? You can’t run away from that.”

Luka is right. I don’t want him to be. But he is. No matter what happened before, I can’t let people die. Taking a deep, rattling breath, I walk up the stairs, pour my medicine into the toilet, and flush it away.

“What now?” Luka asks.

“Now we need to go to Eugene. I need to speak with my grandmother.”

Shady Wood

M
y car is totaled. Luka’s dad confiscated his keys. Both of which makes getting to Eugene trickier than planned. Thankfully, it’s the middle of the night and his parents are asleep. So while he sneaks into his home with plans to snag his car keys and some other important items that might help us break into one of the highest-security mental institutions in the country, I make a beeline for my dad’s office, searching for anything that might prove useful.

First place I look? Bottom drawer of his desk. With trembling fingers, I remove a jewelry box squished all the way in the back and find the small key tucked inside the lid. Looking over my shoulder, half expecting the police to barge in with guns and handcuffs, I hurry over to the polished armoire standing innocently in the corner of the room, slide back one of the panels to a hidden safe, and jam the key inside the lock. I open the lid to the jackpot—Dad’s work iPad with important passwords. I slip it into my backpack, along with his work identification card, and my attention lands on a couple of tasers. I really hope we won’t have to use them, but better safe than sorry. I slide them in beside the iPad, shut the safe and the panel, return the key to its hiding place, and leave his office exactly as it was.

In the kitchen, I scrawl a hurried note, assuring my parents that I’m okay. That I needed to get away with Luka for a breather and will be back soon. It sounds so lame. Why would I abandon my parents when my brother is in the hospital? Surely they will see right through it. They will know I’m up to something, but what other choice is there? I leave my cell phone next to the note on the counter because I don’t have the energy to see their names flashing on the screen every other minute.

Zipping my coat, I double-check that all the lights are off and pray Luka accomplishes his goal, because without a car we are screwed. I pace the foyer until an idling car purrs softly from my driveway. I fling open the door and race out on silent feet. I climb inside and buckle my seat belt, panting as if I just ran a mile while he reverses with his headlights off. We don’t say a word until we’re past the gates of our neighborhood.

“This is all I could find,” he says, holding up his father’s ID card. I have to imagine as the owner of a mental facility—albeit private—the card will come in handy.

“That’s plenty.” I show him my father’s iPad, the identification card, and the tasers. He raises his eyebrows at the tasers, then turns onto the main road and flips on his headlights.

I lean back into the seat. “This is crazy. We don’t even know what the facility is called.”

“Google it.”

I power up the iPad. Finding the name isn’t difficult. The place is called Shady Wood. We enter the address into Luka’s GPS and stop at a gas station on the outskirts of town. We each get a coffee, even though neither of us need the caffeine, and spend the five-hour drive shooting questions at each other like popcorn, trying to piece together the puzzle that’s become our lives. The dreams. Why they came back after I stopped taking the medicine. Why the medicine made them stop in the first place. How Luka fits into the picture. How Summer found out about my grandma and what she meant when she said I wouldn’t believe her if she told me. Once we’ve exhausted our sparse list of half-baked theories, we turn to more pressing matters. Like how we’re going to reach my grandmother. Each plan we devise sounds more reckless and foolish than the one before. There’s no way we’re getting in without an incredible amount of luck.

Thankfully, we have some on our side. Because of my dad, I have a lot of useful information conveniently tucked inside my head. For once, I’m grateful for his position and my lack of popularity. Up until Thornsdale, I spent plenty of Saturdays shadowing him on the job, learning the ins and outs of security systems. Plus, we have identification cards that might get us in a few back doors. At first, we considered walking up to the front desk and asking to see Elaine Eckhart, but quickly tossed the idea aside. Not only would our request arouse suspicion, we trust that Dr. Roth was telling the truth when he said she isn’t allowed visitors.

With all the plotting and theorizing, the drive goes surprisingly fast and before we know it, the sun is up and Luka’s phone has rung three times, each call from his parents. I don’t let myself think about how livid my father will be when we return, or how much worry I’m putting my mother through. My brain is already waterlogged with worry and what-ifs. It doesn’t need anything else to process.

Once we reach the outskirts of Eugene, we pull into a gas station to rinse our faces, use the bathroom, and buy breakfast—a couple bottles of water and a cinnamon roll to split. Luka eats most of the roll while I break into my dad’s work site using a password I’ve known for a couple years. I type Shady Wood into the system. The place is a mental rehabilitation center, which is a socially acceptable way of saying insane asylum. Even so, their tagline promises rehabilitation and healing so patients can rejoin society as healthy contributors. We learn that there is a gate to get through up front and several security doors on the east and west wing, only accessible with key cards. We fine-tune our plans, then drive the rest of the way in silence. Luka turns off onto an obscure road that winds through the woods. The facility is so well-hidden I wonder if the people of Eugene even know it exists.

Luka parks behind a thicket of trees and turns off the car. We lean against our seats and stare at one another, the silence bloated with every single one of our unspoken words. Truancy. Trespassing. Identity theft. Breaking and entering. And who knows what else. The amount of trouble we will get into if we’re caught is overwhelming, but neither of us can go there. So we take deep breaths and Luka squeezes my hand. “You ready?”

“I think so.”

We step outside and walk toward the iron gate. I can’t decide if their purpose is to keep people out or keep patients in. It’s a Saturday morning and the place is deserted. You’d think there would be visitors, but there’s not a person in sight. Apparently, my grandmother is the norm, not the exception.

Luka removes his father’s identification card from around his neck and steps up to the scanner. “Here goes nothing.”

I hold my breath as he slides the card in front of the red beam. The scanner emits a series of different pitched beeps and then a female, robotic voice announces, “Voice activation required.”

Already prepared, Luka holds his cell phone up to the speaker and his father’s voice plays into the system. “Luka, call me now.”

“Identity accepted. Thank you.”

There’s a loud clanging sound and like magic, the iron gates slowly begin to open.

We look at each other, shocked. I’m not sure either of us expected to get past the gates. Luka grabs my hand and we hurry across the grounds, eager to escape the wide-open space and whatever surveillance cameras are surely scanning the area. He pulls us away from the front doors, heading for the west wing, and I don’t think I let out my breath until we have our bodies pressed against the outside wall. We slink forward and stop in front of the exit. My attention darts from one direction to another as Luka holds his dad’s ID card up to the red scanner. Only this time, nothing happens. No beeps. No voice. I’m quite certain only hospital staff can enter these doors.