The Monster Within

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

“I HAVE to go,” I said, looking around for my purse.

“Go where? It’s nighttime.” Ethan reached for me. “Sam, please. Don’t do this. Stay here and talk to me.”

“Are you going to tell me how you brought me back?” My eyes bored into his.

He sighed. “No.”

“Then I can’t stay.” I broke free from him, remembering my purse was on the living room floor. I scooped it up and walked out the front door. I grabbed the hidden key from the wheel well and got in the car. I had to get out of here before I called Dylan. If I didn’t, Ethan would try to stop me. Or worse, he’d get in the car. I couldn’t go see Dylan with Ethan tagging along.

I backed out of the driveway and pulled onto the main road. I drove until I came to a red traffic light. It seemed like a good time to call Dylan, so I dialed his number.

He picked up on the third ring. “Ben?”

The name shot through me, tore my insides to shreds. “No,” I choked out. “It’s Sam.”

“Sam?” It was clear he never expected me to call.

“I want to talk.” He obviously didn’t know about Ben, or he wouldn’t have thought I was him. But the frantic tone in his voice meant he knew Ben was in trouble.

“I can’t now. It’s not a good time. Tomorrow. After school.”

“It can’t wait.”

He sighed. “Look, my brother is—never mind. I can’t talk now.”

“Don’t hang up! You’ve been cornering me since I moved here. Now I’m telling you I’m ready to talk, and you’re blowing me off?”

“I want to talk. I just can’t right now.”

“Well, it’s now or never.” He had no idea why I finally wanted to talk, so I was hoping I could appeal to his own desperation.

“Ugh! Fine. Where?”

“Your place?” I hated the idea of being alone with him at his house, but what we had to discuss required privacy, and I couldn’t exactly take him to the cottage.

“No. Not here.”

“Why not?”

“The diner.”

“It’s closed.”

“Exactly. That’s what makes it perfect. No one will bother us. I’ll be there in ten minutes.” He hung up the phone before I could protest.

When the light changed, I pulled a U-turn in the middle of the road. No one was around, and I didn’t want to waste time. I drove to the diner, wondering how all this would play out. Wondering what Dylan had to say to me and if he really knew how I’d gotten to be what I was.

I pulled into the diner and parked around back. I cut the lights, hoping no one saw me. Gloria and Jackson didn’t strike me as the type to set up security cameras in the parking lot. If they did, they would’ve seen me get in the car with Nora the other day. Gloria wouldn’t have let that slide, not after I had collapsed in the parking lot. Not after I returned with that lame story about the girl with the flat bike tire.

I took out my phone and texted Dylan. Out back. No headlights.

Two minutes later, he pulled up next to me. He got out of his car and into mine.

“Why is it so important that we talk now?” he asked.

“You know about me, right? That’s why you’ve been trying to talk to me.”

He shrugged. “Yeah.”

“I need to know how much you know. Starting with how I got here.”

He eyed me suspiciously. “You moved here with Ethan, even though you two like to pretend you just met.”

“That’s not what I meant and you know it.”

He didn’t flinch. “Maybe I do. It would help if you were more specific.”

He was going to make me say it. Confirm what he already knew.

“I died of cancer.”

“I didn’t know it was cancer.”

“But you know I died, and you know Ethan did something to bring me back.”

“Yes.” He wasn’t offering any extra information. He was being annoyingly close-lipped.

“Do you know how I was brought back?”

“Yes.”

“Ugh.” I smacked the steering wheel. “Then tell me!”

“She didn’t tell you?”

“She? Who’s she?”

Dylan laughed. “Figures. It’s just like her.”

“Who?” I was losing my patience. I needed answers.

“Nora.”

The wheels started turning in my head. Nora. The coven. The others using black magic. It would take black magic to bring someone back from the dead, right?

“You. You did it! All of you. Your coven. That’s how you knew about me. It’s the only explanation.”

“Not quite. What has she told you about us?” He turned in his seat, leaning his back against the door.

“That you were all friends, but Shannon convinced the rest of you to start doing spells Nora didn’t want to do.”

Dylan laughed. “Why am I not surprised? She would blame this on Shannon.”

“I’ve seen the way the entire school does whatever Shannon says. It’s clear they’re under a spell, so don’t try to defend her.”

“I’m not. She did the spell all right, but she did it alone.”

“I know. Nora told me.”

“Right. So why do you think Shannon is the one who corrupted the rest of us?”

“She wasn’t?” Could it have been Ben or Rebecca, or was I sitting in the same car with the one who’d convinced the other members of the coven to turn to black magic? I leaned away from him, putting my hand on the door in case I had to make a run for it.

“No. The rest of us laughed at Shannon. It was a stupid spell. Who uses magic for popularity? I mean, I felt bad for her. The kids at her school tortured her, but still.”

“Then who? Rebecca?” I raised my eyes to meet his. “You?”

“You met Rebecca. Did she seem like the cutthroat type to you? Before you killed her, that is?” It was clear he hated me for that.

I swallowed hard. “Better to kill an evil witch than an innocent human, right?”

“Except you didn’t kill the evil witch. You killed Rebecca.”

I thought about the way Rebecca had begged for her life. She hadn’t sounded evil, but she wouldn’t have. She’d been trying to plead with me. I shook the thought from my mind. “Nora told me you all started using black magic. Rebecca included.”

Dylan scoffed. “Rebecca wouldn’t go near black magic.”

“Fine. Then was it Ben?”

Dylan’s face contorted, turning bright red. He clenched his jaw. “How do you know Ben? Did Nora take you to see him?” His hands worked themselves into fists.

If I didn’t lie, I wasn’t going to make it out of this car alive. “Nora told me about all of you.”

He eyed me suspiciously. “Ben wouldn’t hurt anyone unless they were trying to hurt him.”

That wasn’t what Nora had said, and I’d seen what Ben had done to her house. He might have been Dylan’s brother, but the guy was pure evil. I remembered what Nora said about recognizing Ben’s magic inside me. Could Dylan feel it, too? No. He would’ve killed me by now. Still, I pushed myself farther up against the door and away from him.

“Fine, then tell me a story. Fill in the blanks for me.”

“Go ask Nora to tell you what happened. I don’t have time for this.” He reached for the door handle.

“I know where Ben is,” I blurted out.

Dylan froze. “Where. Is. He?”

“I’ll tell you after you tell me what I want to know.”

He spun in his seat and grabbed me by my shoulders. Yeah, he was evil. I had no doubt now. I was stupid for calling him, for coming here.

“I’m not playing games. Tell me where my brother is.”

Playing the Ben card was supposed to give me the upper hand, but Dylan was using it against me.

“If you kill me, you’ll never find him.” I hoped that leveled the playing field.

He let go of me, but he didn’t back away.

“I promise I’ll tell you where he is, but you have to tell me what you know first.”

He sat there debating it, probably imagining a hundred ways to rip my head off using magic. Or maybe he preferred using his bare hands.

“You’ve been dying to tell me something, so tell me. I’m right here.” I tried to act cool, like I wasn’t shaking on the inside.

“You’ve gone along with everything she’s said, haven’t you?”

“I’m listening, not answering questions.” My heart pounded at my own boldness. It was either a great strategy or the stupidest move I’d ever made.

“Your boyfriend came to us. To our coven. He heard about us through a mutual friend back where you guys are from.”

“Ethan approached the coven?”

“Are you going to let me talk? I thought you said you were listening.”

I held my hands up, urging him to go on.

“He emailed us and said you were dying. That he needed to know if it was possible to bring someone back from the dead. We told him we didn’t do that sort of magic, that we didn’t even know if it was possible.”

“You’re lying.” They hadn’t turned him away. They helped him. They had done this to me. Suddenly I was glad I’d gotten payback. I was a killer because of them. It seemed only fitting that they became my victims.

“Seriously, either you’re going to listen or you’re not. Pick one, because I have better things to do.”

I crossed my arms, not sure if I wanted to hear any more of his lies. But I sat there and let him talk. I’d come this far. I might as well hear him out.

“We said no, and we thought that was the end of it. We figured you’d died, and Ethan had given up. But that wasn’t the case. One of us broke the trust of the coven and found a spell to help you.”

“Who? Was it you? Is that why you’ve been torturing me? Are you trying to kill me, to correct your mistake so the coven will take you back?”

“I didn’t bring you back. Nora did.”

“Liar!” I was so angry I nearly jumped out of my seat. “Nora’s done nothing but help me.”

“Help you? You think that’s what she’s doing? She’s playing God. She brought you back wrong to get revenge on the rest of us. We kicked her out of the coven the second we found out about you. She’d been using black magic for months, and we tried to be tolerant. We tried to convince her to stop, but after you…well, we couldn’t keep her around anymore.”

“Nora told me the members of the coven are bound to each other. Kicking her out wouldn’t break that tie, so you can stop lying to me. Get out of my car!”

“Not until you tell me where Ben is.”

“Get out!” I wasn’t just angry at Dylan for lying, I was angry at the world. Ethan was going to die, and the only people who could save him were Dylan and Shannon. Two people I hated. Two people who wouldn’t help me in a million years. “Go!”

“Where’s Ben?”

“I don’t know. I lied.” It was the only thing I could think of to make him leave. “I said what I had to in order to get you to talk.”

“Bitch!” Dylan yelled. “If I were anything like Nora, you’d be dead right now.” He got out of the car and slammed the door.

I peeled out of the spot, taking off down the road. I didn’t know where I was going. Only that I wanted to get far away from Dylan.

I was so wired up from what Dylan had said. All the lies. Why had I gone to him in the first place? I should’ve known he wasn’t the answer to saving Ethan. Nora was the only one who could help me. The only one I could trust.

The anger built up inside me. I wanted to get back at Dylan, and I had an idea how. Two ideas, actually. I’d tell Nora I’d changed my mind. That Dylan should be next. Shannon could wait. But first, I had another way to make Dylan pay. To hurt him like he’d hurt me.

I dialed his number and waited for him to answer.

“I can’t believe you have the audacity to call me after—”

“You’re going to want to shut up and listen to what I have to say.”

He stopped talking, but I could hear his labored breathing. He was furious.

“I want to repay you for the hell you’ve put me through since we met, and I know just how to do it.”

“What, kill me like you killed Rebecca?”

“No. Kill you like I killed Ben.” I hung up the phone before he could respond.