Verum (The Nocte Trilogy, #2)(55)

I strip off my shirt and shorts, and wade into the water.

It’s not as cold as it was before, It doesn’t take my breath away.

I slip under,

Allowing the water to cover my face, to cover my head, and my hair billows toward the surface. I stay under as long as I can, until my lungs are hot and heavy, then I kick to the surface. Pushing onto my back, I stare at the sky as I float.

I’m buoyant,

I’m a boat.

But then she’s in front of me again.

Olivia.

Her hair is on fire and her eyes are wild.

“Help him!” she screeches.

I look to where she’s pointing, but there’s only a car, a smashed silver mess.

“You did this,” she croons, rocking back and forth, sinking onto her heels. Her sheer nightgown drags in the water.

All of a sudden, the car catches fire, even though it’s half submerged. It flares like a flash in a pan, and then the rest of it is underwater, extinguished.

A shadow flashes by.

The boy in the hood.

What does he want?

Then I yank myself out of the water, And I’m back at Whitley.

I’m in the bathtub, the water spilling over the sides.

Dare has a washcloth in his hand, running it over my arms. I still his hand with my own, my voice wild.

“What happened? God, just tell me. I can’t take this anymore, Dare.”

He stares at me sadly, and the front of his shirt is wet.

His expression reminds me of his little boy face, the haunted one, the sad one. The one he had because my uncle beat him, and because his own mother let him.

“You’re almost there, Calla-Lily. You’re almost there.”

His words are careful and slow, and I hesitate, because I’m afraid that there might just kill me.





Chapter 29





Days pass and they turn into nights, and all of them pass in Dare’s arms. He holds me, croons to me, loves me.

And

Then

One

Day,

When the sky is blue and for once it isn’t raining, We take a trip to town.

Dare drives and we put the windows down, and the wind blows through our hair on the road.

I buy him a t-shirt because he doesn’t own one.

Black, with orange letters.

Irony is Lost on You.

“But it’s not,” he chuckles when I hand it to him. “Life is ironic. It’s not lost on me.”

But he puts it on, right over his button-up and he looks ridiculous. He doesn’t seem to mind, and he holds my hand in the daylight.

“Let’s drive to the ocean.”

“Ok.” Because I miss it. Because even though Oregon is rainy and gray, I loved living next to the water.

As we walk to the car, I’m distracted by a street vendor, a tiny old man with blue eyes and a friendly grin. He has jewelry laid out on a cart, and something catches my eye.

A silver ring, gleaming in the light.

“All of my things are antiques,” he tells me proudly. I pick up the ring.

“That’s a size twelve. It was the wedding ring of an aristocrat,” he explains. “I buffed the scratches out, but that ring is loved. His wife swore to me it protected him, on more than one occasion.”

“Protected him from what?” I ask curiously. The old man smiles.

“From everything.”

I buy it on the spot, and offer it to Dare.

“Everyone can use protection,” I tell him, half-joking, half not. He rolls his eyes but slides it on to his middle finger.

“Then I shall be protected,” he announces. “I’ll consider it an early Valentine’s Day gift.

“Valentine’s is months away,” I point out. He smiles.

“I know.”

I feel an overwhelming sense of déjà vu, as though I know what is going to happen next… as though all of this already happened. Didn’t it?

I don’t know.

I don’t know anything at all.

It’s the strangest, most frustrating feeling in the world. I try to ignore it.

We pile into the car, and Dare’s hand is on my leg, his fingers curled around my thigh. He’s warm, and I absorb it, and I lay my head back on the seat, warming up in the sun.

I wake up to the sound of the waves.

“You fell asleep,” Dare says, and he’s watching me sleep. “I thought you needed to rest.”

The sun has gone down a bit, and the breeze is chilly, so while we walk on the shore, Dare wraps his arm around my shoulders, hugging me into his side.

“I feel like home here,” I confide, as I watch the gray water break on the sand.

“Then we should’ve come here sooner,” he says, and his fingers are light on my skin.

The dying light glimmers on the water and for a minute, it looks like flame.

And that minute, that one minute,

Is

All

It

Takes.

Things crash into me, one after the other.

Everything is on fire.

Through the flames, I see Dare.

He’s shouting,

He’s afraid.

“I…” my voice is aghast and I see it in my head. Everything.

I see everything.

I see what happened, but I can’t tell the memories from the visions.