Sebastian paced Chloe’s basement for what felt like the hundredth time.
“I promise it is not as bad as you think, Peter,” he said, rubbing his forehead with his thumb and middle finger. Were it anyone else, he would’ve sent them to voicemail. But Peter had been his friend for over a decade and was in the middle of a genuine crisis.
“I’ve called all her friends, but she’s completely vanished,” Peter said. There was a thread of hysteria in his usual calm voice. “Was it something I did? Do you think she figured out that I know she’s seeing someone?”
You’d think someone died, the way he’s going on.
He waited for Peter to stop babbling before answering. “Janet is probably just blowing off steam, trying to make you jealous.”
“But what if she really is in trouble?”
He sighed. There was no point in telling Peter that if Janet hadn’t taken any of her things with her, the odds were she would be back. Even if he convinced an officer at the station to put out a missing person’s notice, nothing was going to be done until the morning. Half the streets in town were blocked by downed trees. The storm had been predicted to blow past them but at the last minute had changed course and hammered the small town.
“Keep trying her phone,” Sebastian said instead. “If you don’t get an answer by tomorrow, I’ll come help look for her. But honestly, Peter, this is classic Janet. Remember last time? You got into a huge panic, and then she showed up like nothing was wrong.”
After that incident, he’d stopped trying to talk his friend into leaving Janet. As much as he loved to complain about her, Peter was utterly devoted to his wayward wife. It would take a truly heinous act—or a special woman—to keep him from chasing Janet to the ends of the earth.
“You’re probably right,” Peter said. “I swear, this is the last straw. I won’t forgive her so easily if this really is a game.”
That’s exactly what you said last time.
He expected Peter to launch into a lengthy diatribe about Janet’s failings and was prepared to cut him off when there was a shuffling upstairs. He muted his microphone, then looked up at the ceiling.
“Elena? Is that you?”
Another sound, like the squealing of furniture moving across the floor.
What is she doing up there, redecorating?
“Maybe I could just pop by the station,” Peter said. “If something has happened to her, I’ll never forgive myself.”
Sebastian lowered his phone when he heard a scuffling, then a rhythmic pounding, like children jumping around. His chest tightened with worry. He unmuted his microphone and held it to his head. “I’m sorry, I have to go. I’ll call you later.”
He hung up before Peter could say anything else. Then he crept up the stairs to better hear what was going on. There was more thumping and scratching like someone was running their nails along the floor.
He flung the door open at the same time as thunder rumbled outside, and the lights flickered off. In the darkness, two figures struggled. One was Elena, the other a man in dark clothing. The man had pinned Elena’s arms to her sides with one arm and with the other was shoving something into her mouth.
“Hey!” The words flew out of his mouth before he could claw them back.
The attacker spun around. He wore a balaclava that obscured his entire face except for small slits for his eyes and mouth.
Elena gave one last spasm, then went slack. The man slumped under the weight of her body, then released her. Her head hit the ground with a sick crunch.
The adrenaline coursing through Sebastian’s body urged him to lash out, but he held back with an iron will. A second later, the attacker stepped away from Elena and pulled out a knife.
“Don’t do this,” Sebastian said, walking sideways so the man was forced to step away from Elena’s prone body. He had to get to her, undo whatever her attacker had done. Blood spurted away from her head, following the grain of the wood on the floor. She was so still and slumped in an unnatural position.
Let her be okay. Please, God, I couldn’t stand it if anything happened to her.
The man lunged, swiping his knife in an arc and narrowly missing Sebastian’s face and cutting a slit in his shirt instead.
“What do you want?” Sebastian edged closer to Elena. “Money? My wallet is in the car outside.” He pulled his keys from his pocket and threw them on the floor. “Take the car, too. But leave us alone.”
The man took a step forward, raised his knife, then froze. He blinked several times, shook his head, then stumbled backward and ran out the front door. When it slammed shut, Sebastian fell to his knees and crawled over to Elena. He clasped her shoulders. She made a soft noise but didn’t wake.
Not dead, at least.
But for how long?
****
Sebastian sped through another red light, fearing at any moment he would hear the wail of a police siren. In the back seat, Elena lay limp and broken like a discarded doll.
A silver hatchback cut him off, forcing him to slam on the brake. From the back seat, there was a low moan.
“Hang in there.” He honked the horn. The hatchback braked, a finger coming up from the driver’s side.
He tightened his hands on the wheel and swerved around the car. How much time had passed since he’d left the house? He wasn’t sure. The clock on the dash wasn’t working, and he couldn’t risk pulling out his phone. Even if he did, he had no point of reference for when the drive had started. He felt as taut as a bow.
Elena moaned again and then lapsed into a coughing fit.
He glanced into the rear-view mirror to see her reaching out a hand and pointing to his head.
“What is it?” he darted his gaze between her hand and the road. “What’s wrong?”
“S-sn-snake,” she gurgled. “Tree. Shade. Shoulders.”
She’s losing it.
He clenched the wheel. She was drifting in and out of consciousness and not making sense.
A traffic light ahead flashed yellow, and Sebastian hit the gas, making his wheels squeal. Even the damn lights were against him. He screamed through the intersection.
In the back seat, Elena slid around the seats with every movement like a rag doll.
“Stay with me!”
He wasn’t sure why it was so important for her to remain alert, but his gut told him if she fell asleep, she might never wake up again.
“Wake up!”
Her eyes fluttered open, then lowered again when he stopped talking.
If that’s what it takes to keep you awake, I’ll keep talking.
“You remember what Chloe was like, how she always took in strays?” Silence. With adrenaline rushing through his veins, each second passed like minutes.
A soft reply, “Jelly.”
“Yes!” He sagged with relief. “The crow. I remember him. Do you remember how Chloe taught them? She had a way with animals. People kept telling her birds were untrainable.” He paused, waiting for a response, fearing none would come.
I can’t live without you. Please, God, don’t die.
“T-teach anything w-with a brain.”
He let out a heavy breath. “Yes, she always said that. She loved showing them off. Jump, play dead, fetch. She mastered them all. I think sometimes she spent more time with her animals than she did with us.” He sailed past a stop sign, narrowly missing a sedan that swerved out of the way and wailed its horn. His entire body was a knot of tension.
“I saw Jelly,” she whispered. Her words were growing softer. She was delirious. But there were only a few more blocks to go. They would make it.
They had to make it.
“I couldn’t stand the way she lavished attention on them,” Sebastian continued. “Those birds could do anything. She loved them more than she loved us.” He couldn’t stop the words pouring out of his mouth. “Remember how she used to get them to hide things for her?”
A whispered response, drowned out by the squeak of skin sliding against leather.
Sebastian ground his back teeth together.
The red lights of St. Augustine’s Teaching Hospital appeared before him like the gates of heaven.
He remembered a town meeting years ago. Piled into the high school gymnasium, the only venue large enough to hold everyone, voting on a proposal to open a new hospital in Stillwood. He voted against it, insisting the local developers had bribed the town council to put forth the motion.
A significant number of wealthy business owners lived in Stillwood, seeking refuge from their hectic city lives. “Why should we send them into the city for their medical needs,” the council argued. “When we can keep that money in the community?”
From the backseat, Elena groaned.
He reached back and squeezed her arm. Her skin was icy. “We’re here. Hold on.”
He pulled into the emergency entrance, took the keys out of the ignition, and jumped out of the car, waving at an older woman in scrubs who was smoking a cigarette around the corner from the ambulance loading dock.
He waved his arms. “I need help over here!”
The woman flicked her cigarette and jogged over to the car. He recognized her as the server from the diner, except her eyes were pools of black, and her teeth gleamed in the faint light. Then he blinked, and it wasn’t a woman at all but a man wearing a name tag that read Ian Valencia.
“What’s wrong?” Ian said.
Sebastian shook his head. “I need help. She hit her head.”
Ian leaned into the car and looked at Elena. “She doesn’t look good. I’ll call for a stretcher.”
Sebastian shoved him away, seeing something he hadn’t noticed before. Blood was trickling out Elena’s ear and dripping onto the seat.
A hot rush of fear hit him in the chest. Against Ian’s protests, Sebastian gathered Elena into his arms and rushed into the emergency department. A sharp pain pierced his shoulder, and looked down to see Elena staring at him with wide, fearful eyes. She’d dug her nails into his arm.
“Don’t let them possess me while I’m out,” she said.
Startled by the intensity in her gaze, he nodded.
“Promise me!”
“I promise.”
Her eyes flickered closed on a sigh.
A woman, he assumed she was a doctor from her white robe, took over, barking commands. “We don’t have time for the usual intake,” the doctor said. “Just give me the basics. Name? Age?”
“Elena Cain. Thirty-one.”
“Any medical issues?”
He shifted, realizing how little he knew about her. “I don’t know. Her mother didn’t believe in traditional medicine.”
“I see. Okay, just tell me what happened leading up to the event.”
He explained what he’d seen, anxiety growing with each passing minute. He finished, and the doctor led him to the waiting room. “Wait here. We’ll call you when you can see her.”
The hospital staff left, and Sebastian fell into a chair. The energy that had sustained him throughout the drive drained away. Like a recording, the scene repeated in his head. Elena crumpled on the floor. Cut. Lifting her up, shaking her limp frame. Cut. Out the door, placing her unresponsive body in the back seat. Repeat.
He tried to banish the image of Elena from his mind. Each time he thought he’d succeeded, she returned, eyes blazing with accusation, face contorted with rage.
You should have saved me, she said. You should have saved us both.
He buried his face in his hands until the sounds around him faded away.
****
“You can see her now.”
The sound of paper shuffling. “Mr. Castillo?”
Sebastian jerked awake at the touch of a hand on his shoulder. A woman stood in front of him, wearing turquoise scrubs. Her hair was pulled back into a high ponytail, and she held a clipboard. Behind her, doctors rushed to and from the nurses’ station, the stethoscopes around their necks bouncing.
Sebastian rubbed the grit from his eyes. “Sorry, what did you say?”
The woman seized his wrist. “Wash your hands before you do that.” She stepped back. “Your wife is awake. Come with me.”
“She’s not my—” Sebastian started, but the nurse was already walking away.
I guess it’s fine if they think we’re married.
They walked through a set of double-hinged doors that clanked open and closed, then down a long hall. His hands shook as they passed rooms full of patients hooked up to machines until, at last, they stopped.
“She’s in here,” the woman said. She placed her clipboard in a plastic container on the wall. “Visiting hours end at six.” Then she spun on her heel and marched back down the hall, her ponytail bobbing with each step.
Sebastian stared at the closed door, his heart pounding in his ears. He sanitized his hands using the dispenser near the bathroom, then took a long drink of water from the fountain a few feet away.
It’s just a hospital. People come and go all the time. It’s fine.
He pushed the door open.
For a fleeting moment, the space held the echo of a different hospital room. A pale boy lay there, connected by a plethora of tubes to a wall of gently whirring machines. The boy’s eyes shot open, and he removed the mask from his face with a shaking hand.
“Where were you?” Edward asked. “I waited for you. Why didn’t you come?”
Reality swam into focus. It was Elena, not Edward. It was the present, and he’d made it in time. She would not die alone, abandoned by someone she trusted. He shook off the chains of his past and sat by the bed.
The sight of her pained him. Her inky hair was fanned around the small pillow, and her face was relaxed in slumber. She looked innocent. Fragile. He could not believe he was applying those words to Elena Cain. She’d always been so strong.
He remembered the day Chloe had dared her to climb the old maple tree in their backyard. The look of disgust on Elena’s face made them both laugh. She marched them outside and scrambled up the tree like a monkey, then hooted and hollered at them from the uppermost branches while swinging upside down by her knees. Then Elena’s mother spotted them from her kitchen window and screamed. Chloe and Sebastian laughed until they were blue in the face. They’d all gotten grounded for that charade.
How long would it be before his memory of Chloe faded? Before he forgot the sound of her voice?
“I miss it,” he said out loud. “How the three of us were back then. Before life tore us apart.”
He blamed himself for her departure. After Edward died, he lost all concept of self. The only thing that mattered was bringing his brother’s killer to justice. By the time he came out of that fugue, it was too late.
He took one of her thin hands and recoiled. She was as cold as death.
He rummaged around the room until he found a blanket in a plastic container in the closet. Gently, so as not to wake her, he tucked her limbs beneath the blanket and folded the ends under her body. She looked like an ancient Egyptian corpse being prepared for burial, but at least she’d be warm.
He thumped down into the nearest chair and gently scooted it closer, remembering the man he’d fought. Had it been the killer? If so, what had he been doing in Chloe’s house—looking for the hard drive?
Or maybe he was after Elena.
He stilled. Had she seen something when she’d arrived at the house? Was that why the killer had come after her?
“Bast,” Elena whispered.
He crowded closer. “I’m here.”
Her head rocked back and forth, eyes moving beneath her eyelids. He smoothed her hair out of her face. “Shh, it’s okay. I won’t leave.”
She settled, and as Sebastian looked down on her smiling face, affection bubbled up and consumed him. Despite everything they had been through and how painful it had to be for her with reminders of her past everywhere, she had stayed with him He brushed his lips against her cheek, breathed in the gentle scent of minty shampoo that clung to her hair, and whispered the words that burned in his heart.
“I love you.”