Beautiful Creatures(12)

Her hand was outstretched. I closed my eyes for the impact, but it never came.

The Beater jerked to a stop, not more than three feet away. The headlights made a pale circle of light in the rain, reflecting off one of those cheap plastic rain ponchos you can buy for three dollars at the drugstore. It was a girl. Slowly, she pulled the hood off her head, letting the rain run down her face.

Green eyes, black hair.

Lena Duchannes.

I couldn’t breathe. I knew she had green eyes; I’d seen them before. But tonight they looked different— different from any eyes I had ever seen. They were huge and unnaturally green, an electric green, like the lightning from the storm. Standing in the rain like that, she almost didn’t look human.

I stumbled out of the Beater into the rain, leaving the engine running and the door open. Neither one of us said a word, standing in the middle of Route 9 in the kind of downpour you only saw during a hurricane or a nor’easter. Adrenaline was pumping through my veins and my muscles were tense, as if my body was still waiting for the crash.

Lena’s hair whipped in the wind around her, dripping with rain. I took a step toward her, and it hit me.

Wet lemons. Wet rosemary. All at once, the dream started coming back to me, like waves crashing over my head. Only this time, when she slipped through my fingers—I could see her face.

Green eyes and black hair. I remembered. It was her. She was standing right in front of me.

I had to know for sure. I grabbed her wrist. There they were: the tiny moon-shaped scratches, right where my fingers had reached for her wrist in the dream. When I touched her, electricity ran through my body. Lightning struck the tree not ten feet from where we were standing, splitting the trunk neatly in half. It began to smolder.

“Are you crazy? Or just a terrible driver?” She backed away from me, her green eyes flashing—with anger? With something.

“It’s you.”

“What were you trying to do, kill me?”

“You’re real.” The words felt strange in my mouth, like it was full of cotton.

“A real corpse, almost. Thanks to you.”

“I’m not crazy. I thought I was, but I’m not. It’s you. You’re standing right in front of me.”

“Not for long.” She turned her back on me and started up the road. This wasn’t going the way I had imagined it.

I ran to catch up with her. “You’re the one who just appeared out of nowhere and ran out into the middle of the highway.”

She waved her arm dramatically like she was waving away more than just the idea. For the first time, I saw the long black car in the shadows. The hearse, with its hood up. “Hello? I was looking for someone to help me, genius. My uncle’s car died. You could have just driven by. You didn’t have to try to run me down.”

“It was you in the dreams. And the song. The weird song on my iPod.”

She whirled around. “What dreams? What song? Are you drunk, or is this some kind of joke?”

“I know it’s you. You have the marks on your wrist.”

She turned her hand over and looked down, confused. “These? I have a dog. Get over it.”

But I knew I wasn’t wrong. I could see the face from my dream so clearly now. Was it possible she didn’t know?

She pulled up her hood and began the long walk to Ravenwood in the pouring rain. I caught up with her. “Here’s a hint. Next time, don’t get out of your car in the middle of the road during a storm. Call 911.”

She didn’t stop walking. “I wasn’t about to call the police. I’m not even supposed to be driving. I only have a learner’s permit. Anyway, my cell is dead.” Clearly she wasn’t from around here. The only way you’d get pulled over in this town was if you were driving on the wrong side of the road.

The storm was picking up. I had to shout over the howl of the rain. “Just let me give you a ride home.

You shouldn’t be out here.”

“No thanks. I’ll wait for the next guy who almost runs me down.”

“There isn’t gonna be another guy. It could be hours before anyone else comes by.”

She started walking again. “No problem. I’ll walk.”

I couldn’t let her wander around alone in the pouring rain. My mom had raised me better than that. “I can’t let you walk home in this weather.” As if on cue, thunder rolled over our heads. Her hood blew off. “I’ll drive like my grandma. I’ll drive like your grandma.”

“You wouldn’t say that if you knew my gramma.” The wind was picking up. Now she was shouting, too.

“Come on.”

“What?”

“The car. Get in. With me.”

She looked at me, and for a second I wasn’t sure if she was going to give in. “I guess it’s safer than walking. With you on the road, anyway.”

The Beater was drenched. Link would lose it when he saw it. The storm sounded different once we were in the car, both louder and quieter. I could hear the rain pounding the roof, but it was nearly drowned out by the sound of my heart beating and my teeth chattering. I pushed the car into drive. I was so aware of Lena sitting next to me, just inches away in the passenger seat. I snuck a look.

Even though she was a pain, she was beautiful. Her green eyes were enormous. I couldn’t figure out why they looked so different tonight. She had the longest eyelashes I had ever seen, and her skin was pale, made even paler by the contrast of her wild black hair. She had a tiny, light brown birthmark on her cheekbone just below her left eye, shaped sort of like a crescent moon. She didn’t look like anybody at Jackson. She didn’t look like anybody I’d ever seen.