Some Quiet Place (Some Quiet Place #1)(58)

And that isn’t all I remember. An image, like a blink or a flash, appears and vanishes. Burning eyes and a planted stance. That same tilted head. He was in the hallway at school. I remember now. He’d been staring at me with the same eyes he has now. Hungry eyes.

It’s as I’m putting these pieces together that the man asks me, so casually, “Are you her?”

The words slam into me over and over again. Are you her? Are you her? A scrawled sentence on a lined piece of paper. There’s a teasing lilt in the man’s voice; he’s mocking me. He wants me to know that the note was his.

“What do you want?” I ask, watching his every move warily.

“You know,” he says as if I haven’t spoken, “you’re really a fascinating creature. You never responded to all the games we played. No one has done that before.”

Creature. Not girl. He thinks I’m from the other plane. “You’ve made a mistake,” I say, backing away. “I’m just a human. I’m normal.”

He smiles again, advancing. “Oh, so wrong. You’re far from human. We have a history, young lady. I’ve been looking for you for a long, long time. You had me fooled. You and that Emotion.”

Even more comes together, suddenly, in my head. It’s so obvious that I wonder why I didn’t figure it out the instant I laid eyes on him.

There are some things humans shouldn’t know. Even a human like you.

He’s here, he’s here! Run before he gets you, gets you!

This man—no, not man, something else entirely—is what has all the Emotions and Elements running. He got me, I think faintly. But he shouldn’t be after me. I’m not one of them. “What do you want?” I ask again, backing away, down the hill.

As an answer, his bottomless eyes flare to red. “Where is she?” he purrs.

No. No, it isn’t possible. But the truth is staring me right in the face. Nausea grips my stomach. You killed me. Where is she? You did this. You ruined us. I trip on my own heel and fall to the ground. My fingers burrow into the grass, into the soil, as if I’m on a ride that won’t stop spinning. All the sleepless nights, the haunting dreams that felt so real … it was him. Never the boy, reaching out to me, begging me to know his story. No ghosts, as I’d secretly believed, no revelations of the past. Just the ugliness of this creature using and twisting my own mind against me.

“What are you?” I say, past the ragged air struggling in and out of my lungs. He approaches and leans over me, bringing that weird scent with him, and it’s in that instant that I realize what that underlying smell is.

Old blood.

“Don’t you know yet?” he breathes in my ear. When I don’t—can’t—answer, he whispers, his lips moving against my skin, “I’m Nightmare.”

I stare up at him, frozen. He’s silent now, waiting for me to speak. He’s a hole of quiet and malicious intent, and I have no idea what he’s capable of. This is most dangerous of all.

The questions don’t matter. I scramble to my feet and run again.

He lets me go. “I saw you save the boy when he was about to get hit by that truck!” Nightmare calls. He hasn’t moved. “There’s no way any normal human could have gotten to him so—”

The Element halts midsentence. Breathing violently, I glance over my shoulder and stumble. Fear stands between me and death. I can only see his back, his white hair curling on his neck. Nightmare doesn’t say a word. He’s looking at Fear with that pleased, ravenous expression.

“Go!” Fear shouts to me. Crouched, his body tensed, he doesn’t take his eyes off Nightmare. “Don’t look back, Elizabeth! Keep going!” he orders.

I obey without any more indecision, and the wind rushes past my ears. But at the sound of Fear crying out, I falter. I can’t just leave him. I spin to help …

But I’m too late. Fear is crumpled on the ground, blood gushing between his fingers, from his middle. He struggles to stand up again, but the Element laughs and knees him in the face. Fear hits the ground. Nightmare stands over him, holding a long, wicked-looking knife. It’s red all the way down to the hilt. Dripping.

Nightmare looks up, sees that I’m staring at his knife. He smiles. “Didn’t he tell you to keep running?” he calls to me as if we’re comrades, waving the scarlet blade back and forth. “We aren’t indestructible to each other, you know.”

I’m frozen again. Fear rolls his head back, his cheek scraping on the cement, and he sees that I’ve stopped. “Go,” he chokes, his eyes wilder than I’ve ever seen them.

Instinct takes over, and I find myself running once more. Behind me, I hear Nightmare make a sound of amusement deep in his throat before he’s flying through the air again. He gives me a hard shove as he lands. I fall forward and throw my palms out to try to soften the blow. The skin on my hands shrieks at me as it tears, and then my face hits the hard ground. Black dots dance before my eyes, and I’m dizzy, so dizzy. Nightmare’s shoes appear in my line of vision, and a moment later his voice sounds in my ear.

“It was ironic,” he whispers. He brushes my hair back like a father would his child. “Those mewling humans chained you up and left you there, a fruit ripe for the plucking. Not to mention you brought a friend. Two birds with one stone. This is my lucky day. By the way,” he adds, “the battery is behind the front left tire of your truck. I dare you to try and get it.”