If I Die

12

“She’s going to die?” My voice was barely a whisper, and I couldn’t stop staring at Farrah, who still flipped pages in her book as if we weren’t even there. She’d tuned us out as soon as we started talking to Lydia—evidently we were now “unreal” by association. “Are you sure?” I asked, and Lydia nodded.

Tod glanced at Farrah. “Why do they keep her here, if she’s so sick?”

“They don’t,” Lydia said. “They take her over to Memorial when she gets too weak, but all the doctors can do is feed her. The tests all come back negative. They have no idea what’s wrong with her. But some of the older nurses say she’s just lost the will to live. They’re kind of right.”

“Because she doesn’t believe she is living,” I said, and Lydia nodded. “But it’s more than that. It’s the baby,” I insisted, flashes of Danica’s miscarriage connecting the two girls in my mind. “Farrah would have lost her baby early, just like Danica did, if not for you. How far along is she now?”

“The nurses say she’s twenty-eight weeks. Why?” Lydia asked, her focus shifting between me and Tod. “What’s wrong with the baby? And who’s Danica?”

“She’s a senior at my school. I think her baby and Farrah’s baby had the same father.” And I was really starting to wish I’d printed the faculty picture of “Mr. Allan.”

Wait a minute… I turned to Tod, acutely aware that we’d now been holding hands for at least twenty minutes. “Does your phone get internet?” Mine didn’t.

He nodded, already digging it from his pocket with his free hand. “I splurged—I don’t have many bills.” He handed it over, and it took me a minute to find the site I wanted, typing with only my left thumb.

“Farrah,” I said, when I’d found the faculty images on the Crestwood website. She didn’t even look up, so I tugged Tod closer so I could kneel by her bed again. “Farrah, is this your baby’s father?” I zoomed in on Allan’s face and held the phone in front of her book. Farrah tried to shove my hand out of her way, but I just pushed back. “Look at him! Is this him?” I demanded, and finally she looked.

And her brown eyes watered. “David,” she whispered, and my short thrill of triumph was swallowed by anger on her behalf.

“It’s him.” I stood, already turning back to Tod, but Farrah grabbed my hand, holding the phone firmly in front of her face.

“Who is he?” Lydia asked, while I stood hunched over, so Farrah could get another look.

“I don’t know his real name.” I dropped onto my knees again to get more comfortable. “But he’s an incubus in heat. He taught at Farrah’s school just long enough to get her pregnant, and now he’s at my school. And since Danica just miscarried his demon seed, I’m pretty sure he’s set his sights on my best friend. But I’m not sure why, since Farrah’s pregnancy seems to be progressing in spite of…everything.”

“Insurance,” Tod said, kneeling next to me. “Most human women can’t carry an incubus baby to term, so he’s increasing his chances of a successful harvest by planting as many seeds as he can.”

My rage knew no limits. “And with each one, he’s damaging a teenage girl, or abandoning his own newborn daughter, or both at once, with no guarantee that he’s even spawning a son.”

“My baby’s a boy,” Farrah insisted, still staring at Tod’s phone, and my arm was starting to cramp from holding it out. “Not a real boy, though.”

What, was she carrying Pinocchio?

“Did the doctor tell you that?” I asked, gently pulling the phone from her grip. I stood and handed Tod’s cell back to him, and her gaze followed it until it disappeared into his pocket. But then she went back to her book, dismissing us as “unreal” once again.

“She’s right,” Tod said. “She wouldn’t be in here if she was carrying a girl. Girls are born human, from normal pregnancies. Boys are incubi, and if the pregnancy doesn’t kill the baby, it usually kills the mother slowly, both body and mind.” He shrugged when I just stared at him. “I thought you knew that.”

“I didn’t.” And I was starting to think that ignorance was at least somewhere in the neighborhood of bliss because the more I knew, the angrier I got.

“Me, neither,” Lydia said, and after a long, awkward moment of silence, I looked up at Tod.

“Well, I guess I have what I came for,” I mumbled, trying to swallow the sick feeling I got every time I looked at Farrah, knowing what was going to happen to both her and her baby.

“Wait, you’re leaving?” Lydia stood, eyes wide in panic. “Take me with you,” she insisted, when I stared at her in surprise. “Or at least get me out of here.”

I glanced at Tod, but he only shrugged. “Your call.”

Why was it my call? “Lydia, I can’t. What about your parents?”

“They put me in here. Please, Kaylee.” She stood, eyeing me desperately. “I’m a syphon. Do you know what that means?”

I shook my head, fairly certain she wasn’t offering to steal gas for my car in exchange for orchestrating her escape from a mental institution. ’Cause that would be…crazy.

“I take things from other people. Anything. My body has an innate need to maintain balance between what I’m feeling and what’s being experienced around me, and when there’s an imbalance, I get the urge to take some of whatever there’s too much of, to even things out. I’ve spent my whole life fighting that need for balance to keep from poisoning myself with other people’s problems, and this is where it landed me.” She spread her arms to take in all of Lakeside.

I could certainly sympathize.

“I took your pain, and I’ve been taking some of Farrah’s illness,” she continued, as sympathy for her swelled inside me. “I can syphon some things on purpose, to help, like I did with you, but I don’t always have a choice. When there’s too much, resisting it is like trying to swim with your hands tied. I can’t do it.” She grabbed my free hand and held on tight, like I could somehow pull her above that brutal tide. “Farrah’s going to die, and if I’m still here when that happens, she’ll drag me down with her.”

“It wouldn’t matter if we got you out,” I said, heartbroken that she and I might be facing parallel ends. “If it’s your time to go, you’ll go, no matter where you are.”

“Maybe not,” Tod interrupted, and I turned to him in confusion while Lydia’s eyes shined with hope. “And not for her, either,” he added, glancing at Farrah. “An incubus pregnancy is…well, it’s a sort of supernatural intervention, like Doug dying from a frost overdose. It trumps the natural order of things. Same thing for Lydia, if she becomes collateral damage. This probably isn’t when or how they’re supposed to die. Either of them.”

Ohh. I glanced at Lydia in growing horror. “So, leaving her here is like murder?” I asked, and Tod shrugged.

“You’re not pulling the trigger. But you’re not taking the gun away, either.”

“Please, Kaylee,” Lydia begged. “Get me out of here. I did it for you. You owe me.”

She was right, and I was rapidly running out of time in which to repay my debts. “Will you do it?” I asked Tod, and he nodded. “I can’t take you both at once, though, so I’ll have to come back for her.”

“No, take her first,” I insisted. “I have a couple more questions for Farrah, and I still want to check on Scott. I’ll wait here for you.”

“You sure?” Tod knew how much I hated Lakeside, and that the thought of getting caught there terrified me.

“Yeah. Just make sure you come back for me.”

“Nothing could keep me from it,” he said, and I believed him.

I let go of his hand, and mine suddenly felt cold. And empty. And when he reached for Lydia, I had a sudden mad urge to slap her hand away and reclaim his for myself, in spite of what I owed Lydia, and my genuine need to help her.

“You ready?” Tod said, and she nodded, taking his hand.

“What are you gonna do?” I asked, trying not to see where they touched each other, or wonder what it meant that I cared. “You can’t go home, can you?”

She shook her head. “They’d just send me back. But I’ll be fine. It can hardly get worse than dying in here, right?” she said, glancing around the space she shared with another mental patient in a secure facility. I knew how she felt, but I also knew that starving—or being attacked—on the street wouldn’t be any better.

I glanced around the room until I found a pencil on her desk, then pulled the twenty-dollar bill from my pocket. “This is all I have,” I said, scribbling my number on a scrap of paper from my pocket. I wrapped the money around it and handed it to her. “Call me if there’s anything I can do to help. I gotta warn you, though, this offer expires on Thursday.”

She frowned in confusion, but took the twenty and my number and shoved them in her pocket. “Thanks.”

I nodded, and Tod met my gaze. “Be right back.” Then they both disappeared, and sudden panic nearly overwhelmed me. Anyone who walked in would see me. I could be arrested, or even mistaken for a resident by some eager new staff member. Neither of those catastrophes would last once Tod came back for me, but that knowledge did nothing to calm me.

So I focused on Farrah, who didn’t seem to know Tod and Lydia were gone.

I sank onto the end of her bed, facing her. “Farrah?” She didn’t look up. “I’m real, remember? You can talk to me.”

She shook her head without looking up. “Real people don’t talk to Lydia. She can’t hear them, ’cause she’s not real.”

“You’re not real either, right?” I said, hating myself a little for stepping into her psychosis. “But you hear real people. It’s the same for Lydia.”

Farrah seemed to think about that for a minute, her hand frozen in the act of turning a page. Then she looked up and met my gaze. “Oh. Yeah.”

“Since I’m real, just like David, do you think you could tell me a little more about him?” I held my breath, sure she wouldn’t fall for that one. But then…

“He’s beautiful,” she said, her gaze losing focus, as if she could see him in her mind.

“Yes, he is.” Blanket policy when talking to the insane victim of incubus procreation: agree with everything she says. “But I was hoping for a little more than that. Do you know if any of your friends know him? Like you know him? Are any of them having babies, too?”

“Erica tried,” Farrah said. “But she got sick, and her baby died. It must have been real.”

“How awful,” I said, as she flipped more pages. “Anyone else?”

“Tiffany. But I haven’t seen her in a long time. She’s not real. But her baby is. It’s a girl.”

“How do you know it’s a girl?” I asked, as chills broke out on my arms. I hoped Tod would be back soon.

“David told me. He was sad.”

“Do you know where David lives?” I asked, and Farrah shook her head.

“He doesn’t take students to his house. That would be inappropriate.”

“Of course.” But evidently sleeping with them wasn’t. “So you only saw him at school?”

“Except when he came to my house.”

I sat straighter in surprise. “Mr. B—I mean David came to your house? Were your parents okay with that?”

“My dad wasn’t home. But my mom didn’t mind. She liked David.”

Uh-oh. I closed my eyes and swallowed the sick feeling creeping up from my stomach. “Farrah, Lydia said your mother died. Was that after David started coming to your house?”

“Yeah. Doesn’t matter, though, because she wasn’t real. So she didn’t really die. I won’t, either.”

“Because you’re not real?”

“Right. You’re going to die, though,” she said, looking right into my eyes, and my chill bumps doubled in size.

“How do you know that?”

Farrah shrugged. “Because you’re real. Everything real dies.”

Thoroughly creeped out, I stood and backed away from her bed, and Farrah went back to her book, like I’d never been there at all. And for a moment, I envied her effortless ability to simply move on, like nothing she’d heard mattered. At first, I’d thought facing death would do that for me, but somehow, the less time I had left, the more there seemed to be to do. And it all mattered.

Nervous now, I crossed the room and opened the door enough to peek into the hall. It was empty. I glanced at my watch to see that nearly five minutes had passed. How long did it take to blink into the parking lot, then blink back? Was something wrong?

Tod would never leave me there. Not if he had any choice.

Five minutes later, I’d gone through most of Farrah’s stuff without learning anything new, and I had to get out of that room. Every passing second brought the next nurse check closer, and I could not be found at Lakeside, in the room of a missing resident.

Finally desperate, I took off my shoes and put on the plain white bathrobe Lydia had left behind. Then I pulled the ponytail holder from my hair and shook my head, leaving my hair down to half-hide my face, and knelt by Farrah’s bed one last time.

“Do you know Scott Carter?” I asked, and she nodded.

“How…um…?” Turns out there’s no polite way to ask exactly how crazy someone is. “How is he?”

She looked up at me slowly, eyes wide, expression more coherent than I’d seen from her so far. “He’s real, but he doesn’t know it. So don’t tell him. He might not wanna know he’s going to die.”

That made two of us.

“Thank you, Farrah.” I stood and took one last look at her, wishing there was something I could do to help her. Then I sucked in a deep breath and stepped into the blessedly empty hallway.

I’d gone four steps when a door opened at my back and soft-soled shoes squeaked on the floor. I didn’t turn. Unless she got a good look at my face, whoever was behind me wouldn’t know I didn’t belong. I could have been any brunette mental patient in a bathrobe—a fact which unnerved me enough to make my hands shake. So I shoved them into Lydia’s pockets.

My heart pounded with every step, and when I stepped into the open common area at the center of the ward, agoraphobia crashed into me like a hit from Eastlake’s defensive line. The light felt too bright and the tile floor seemed to go on forever. People milled around like living land mines I had to avoid, without looking like I was avoiding them.

When I passed the TV room, my fists unclenched in my pockets. When I passed the dining area, I exhaled slowly. But I didn’t dare look up from my feet until I’d passed the nurse’s station without triggering any alarms. And even then, I could still hear my pulse rush in my ears, each surge counting down the seconds until I might be caught.

I leaned against the wall next to the visitor’s bathroom and snuck several furtive glances around to make sure no one was watching me. No one was, but my luck wouldn’t hold out forever, and Tod had yet to make an appearance. If I wanted to talk to Scott, I was on my own, at least until then. So in my head I began a countdown, starting with three, trying to slow my racing heartbeat with each number.

When I got to zero, I glanced up one more time, then stepped around the corner into the boys’ hall. Scott’s room was open, and I could hear him talking, but I couldn’t see him, or whoever he was talking to. In a sudden burst of courage—or desperation—I dashed across the hall and into his room, then eased the door shut and stood with my back against it, sagging with relief.

“What’s she doing here?” Scott’s room was a single. He sat sideways in his desk chair, staring at me, and if I didn’t already know where he was, I might have thought nothing was wrong with him. He wore his usual jeans and a T-shirt displaying the logo of some band I’d never heard of. He looked the same, if a little thinner. And maybe he was a little paler than the last time I’d seen him—no more football practice in the sun.

But if not for the fact that he was in Lakeside and that he was talking to himself—or maybe to no one—I might have thought he was…sane.

“You see her?” Scott said, still staring at me, but clearly talking to someone else. He looked confused, but not really surprised, and I wondered how often girls appeared in his room without explanation. “She’s not real!” He closed his eyes and punctuated the last word with a blow to the side of his own head, and I sucked in a sharp breath. “If she’s not real, but I see her, does that mean I belong here?” Another self-inflicted punch, and I jumped, but didn’t know what to do. “No, no, no. It’s not seeing things that makes you crazy—it’s hearing things. So don’t talk to me!” he hissed, opening his eyes to glare at a spot near the right-hand wall.

“Scott?” I said, and his head swiveled so fast I was afraid he’d hurt his neck.

“Nononono, you can’t talk because you’re not here, and I can’t see you, and I can’t hear you, ’cause if I can then I’m crazy, but I’m not crazy. Right?” he demanded, looking at that same spot again. Whatever he heard must have made him happy because he nodded decisively, then turned to stare down at his desktop.

And my heart broke for him.

Scott Carter and I had never been close. In fact, before too much frost had cracked his sanity, I’d thought him shallow, rude, arrogant, spoiled and selfish. But he’d been my boyfriend’s best friend and my cousin’s boyfriend, so our paths had crossed fairly often.

But now, watching him try to convince himself that I was no more real than whoever else he was seeing and hearing, it was hard to feel anything other than pity and sympathy for the boy who’d been one-third of the social power trifecta at Eastlake High.

“I’m real, Scott. And I’m really here.”

He shook his head again and this time covered his ears with both hands, like a stubborn toddler. “That’s exactly what a hallucination would say. You think I’m gonna fall for that just because you look like Kaylee and sound like Kaylee? I see Kaylee Cavanaugh every day, and she’s not real, and you’re not real, either. You’re just another one of his tricks. So why are you talking?”

What? He saw me every day?

I wasn’t sure how to feel about being a regularly featured guest star in Scott Carter’s hallucinogenic existence. But it wasn’t his fault. Because of their hardwired connection, Avari could make Scott see or hear whatever he wanted, and the more Scott suffered, the better Avari fed.

And considering how messed up Lakeside’s newest resident obviously was, the psychotic hellion bastard was probably glutted on his energy alone.

“Shut up,” Scott said to the wall. “How can I freak her out if she’s not really here?” He moved one finger over the surface of his empty desk, like he was finger painting. Or trying to write something. And suddenly I realized why he had no pens, pencils, or anything else that could be used as a weapon—he’d tried to stab me the day he was arrested and he was later declared mentally incompetent. But surely they’d keep him somewhere else—somewhere more secure—if he was still considered dangerous. Would he try to hurt a hallucination?

Maybe I shouldn’t have come without Tod….

“I don’t know why,” he said without looking up, and I was starting to feel like a Peeping Tom, watching uninvited as he spoke to himself. Or Avari. “Her cousin’s hotter, but it’s always Kaylee Cavanaugh.” Scott stopped for a second, listening to something I couldn’t hear, his fingertip still on the desktop. Then he shook his head. “Nothin’. She doesn’t do a damn thing but stand there and watch me. Or she’ll sit on the toilet when I need to go. Or lie on the bed when I’m tired, knowin’ I’m not gonna lay down next to some ghost, or hallucination, or whatever the hell she is. Kept me up till three in the morning last time. But she never says a damn word.” And suddenly he turned to me. “You’re not supposed to talk!”

I could only stare at him. I don’t know what I expected, knowing some of what he’d been through, but this wasn’t it. And I didn’t know what to say to him. So I started with the most basic question, and one he was probably tired of hearing. “Scott? Are you okay?” I asked, my palms pressed against the door at my back. I wished I could melt through it, like Tod could, then wander around, invisible, until he came back.

“I’m crazy, how do you think I am?” Scott snapped. “Were you this crazy when you were in here? Did I come and stare at you all day, watching you sleep, and eat, and piss?”

I shook my head, and he stood, shoving his chair out with the backs of his legs.

“No. Because that wouldn’t make any sense, would it? So why the hell are you always here? Why does he put you here day…after…day? Because I couldn’t take you to him? That’s it, right? He wanted you, and I couldn’t deliver you, so now he rubs my face in you all…damn…day.” His words ended in a whimper, punctuated by three more blows to his own head, and when he came closer, fists still clenched, I inched away, desperately wishing I’d stayed with Farrah.

Then he glanced at the wall again, and his eyes narrowed.

“I can’t hurt her. She’s not here.” I stared at the wall, trying to see what he saw. Avari had messed with the shadows before, making Scott see and hear things in them, until he’d started screaming and cowering away from at the slightest shade. But the only shadows here were beneath the bed and dresser. Just like in the hospital, the staff at Lakeside kept his room lit from all four corners to chase away as many shadows as possible. Just to keep him functional.

He was staring at the wall again, his head slightly tilted. Like he was listening. “Why should he?” Scott asked no one. “He wants to know what’s in it for him.”

“For who?” I asked, and Scott glanced at me.

“For Avari. Pay attention!”

Crap! Did Avari know I was there? Could he see what Scott saw? Is that who Scott was talking to?

No, it couldn’t be. He was talking about Avari. Or maybe for him. But who was he talking to? Or was he completely imagining the other half of the conversation—not beyond the realm of possibility for someone who regularly saw people who weren’t there.

“Scott, I can’t hear whatever you’re hearing. I can’t see your hallucinations.”

He laughed out loud, and the bitter cackle caught me completely off guard. “You’re the hallucination. The rest of us are real.”

The weird parallel between his psychosis and Farrah’s chilled me from the inside out, but arguing with him would do no good.

“No way.” Scott shook his head, talking to the wall again. “He wants more. Something bigger.” He paused as the wall presumably answered, and the smile that crawled over Scott’s face then made me want to hold my breath and throw salt over my shoulder. “Now you’re talkin’.”

“Scott, who are you talking to?” I asked, creeped out to realize that whatever he was talking about was starting to make a weird kind of sense. Nothing I could quite understand, but definitely not lunacy.

“I don’t know!” he shouted, and I jumped, then glanced at the door, worried it would fly open and the room would be overrun with needle-bearing aides. “I’m not talking to you,” he insisted, a little quieter. “Because you’re not supposed to talk! Go away! Goawaygoawaygoawaygoaway!”

I opened my mouth, but before I could think of what to say, the door flew open and a large male aide—Charles, according to his name tag—burst into the room. I stood frozen, pulse racing so fast my vision was starting to blur. I’d been caught. I’d be arrested, and handcuffed, and driven to the police station in the back of the car.

“Okay, Scott, calm down…” Charles started, both hands outstretched, and I realized this was a familiar performance for them both. But when he saw me, the aide’s voice faltered, and I was pretty sure he was doubting his own sanity in the brief silence. Then, “Who are you? You’re not a resident.”

They never called us—er, them—patients. Always residents, like people resided at Lakeside by choice.

My hands opened and closed. I was starting to sweat, and my chest ached until I realized I wasn’t breathing. I opened my mouth and sucked in a deep breath, but that didn’t fix anything. Tod wasn’t back. I was still trapped.

“She’s not real,” Scott whispered, glancing from me to the aide, then back. “Make her go away.”

Charles scowled at me, part confusion, part anger. “You can’t be here. How did you even get in here?”

“I…” But that’s where my words ran out.

I could run, but I’d never get past Charles. He was big, and part of his job was restraining residents, when the need arose. And even if I got past him, I couldn’t get out of the locked ward.

Each breath came faster than the last, but I couldn’t stop them. Couldn’t even slow them. There was only one way out, and I desperately didn’t want to take it. If hellions and assorted monsters hung out across the world barrier from the high school, I didn’t want to know what was lurking in the Netherworld version of a mental health facility. Insane hellions? Was there any other kind?

I closed my eyes, trying to block out the entire room and both of the other occupants. Pulse racing, I tried to think about death. To remember those I’d witnessed so that my wail for them would help me cross into the Netherworld.

But the only death I could think about was my own, and I can’t wail for myself.

“Security!” Charles shouted, and I squeezed my eyes shut tighter, still trying.

A warm hand took a strong grip on mine, and I screamed and tried to jerk away. But he held tight. An instant later, the hum of the air conditioner faded into silence and my ears popped.

Then, suddenly the world felt warm and humid. Cicadas chirruped all around me, and that hand still held mine, its grip confident, but looser now.

“You okay?” Tod asked, and I opened my eyes to find him watching me, dark blond brows drawn low over blue eyes still brilliant in the setting sun. We were in the parking lot, by the trash bins, almost exactly where we’d stood half an hour earlier.

“That was… What was that?” I demanded, as my pulse finally began to slow.

“That was me taking some of the tarnish off this old armor.” He pretended to brush dust off the front of his shirt.

“You call that a rescue?”

Tod frowned. “You don’t?”

“That aide was about to haul me out of the room!” I pulled Lydia’s robe off in several angry movements, surprised to see that my hands were still shaking from the close call.

“It’s more fun when you’re almost caught.”

“That’s not almost. I was caught.” As evidenced by the remnants of panicked adrenaline still burning in my veins.

“Well, now you’re un-caught. And for the record, you’re the second chick I’ve snatched from the jaws of the mental health industry tonight.” His eyes shined in the dying light, and I couldn’t resist a small smile. Yes, I’d been caught and nearly suffered a fatal aneurysm from the shock—several days early, by my count—but it was over now, and I’d gotten what I needed.

“So, you what? Just blinked us both out of there? So that aide saw us disappear?”

Tod’s brows rose. “What kind of amateur do you think I am? He only saw you disappear. He never saw me at all.”

“That makes two of us. I was starting to worry about you.” I dropped Lydia’s robe on the sidewalk and headed for my car.

“Sorry.” Tod fell into step beside me. “It was a little more complicated than I expected.”

“But she’s okay?” I asked.

“She…? Oh, Lydia.” Tod brushed one stubborn blond curl from his forehead. “Yeah. I mean, she’s scared to be on her own, but anything’s better than that place.” He glanced over his shoulder at Lakeside. “And she has your number, right?”

“Yeah.” As I drove home, I played with the idea of inviting her to stay at my house. In a perfect world, that would have been…perfect. My dad needed someone to take care of, and he was about to lose me. Lydia needed to be taken care of, and she couldn’t go back to her own parents.

But if we lived in a perfect world, I wouldn’t be days from death and Lydia wouldn’t have been locked up in the first place. The reality was that she could never take my place, and my dad would probably be in no shape to take care of anyone for a while after his grand scheming failed and I died.

How could there possibly be so many things left to fix, and so little time in which to fix them?

“You wanna come in?” I asked, as I pulled my key from the engine.

Tod looked at me in the light shining through the windshield from the porch light. “Don’t you need to do some homework, or get a good night’s sleep, or something equally wholesome?”

I pushed open my car door. “I am no longer attending school for the purpose of education. At this point, I’m only showing up to keep an eye on Mr. Beck. And speaking of evil demon sires, I have a theory I need to verify. Interested in helping?”

The reaper shrugged. “I have nothing else planned till midnight.”

“Good.” I got out of the car and shoved my door closed as he stepped right through his. “That gives us five hours to…” Oh, crap. I glanced at my cell phone screen again, then groaned. It was just after seven.

I’d stood Nash up. Again.

I took several steps toward the house, then froze when my gaze landed on the front porch. Where Nash sat watching us.

“You know, pretty soon I’m going to start taking this personally.”