Last Time She Died Read online

  Another shift in the earth under her feet. A flash. She was somewhere new.

  A clone with darker hair and a tan walked in front of her. She wielded an awkward tool, like a flattened shovel, which she used as a hoe. She worked through the irrigated fields in the high sun in the middle of a desert. Sand butted up against the green plants. It was hot and both Calis were sweating.

  Dustin—a tan double, not her Dustin—wandered through the tall plants until he stood beside the other Cali. The two talked and smiled under the beating sun. Cali couldn’t hear them, but it was obvious the two were intimate. They brushed shoulders and he wiped her hair from her damp forehead. The way the other Cali looked into his eyes made Cali long for her Dustin.

  Tan Dustin kissed the tan Cali on the forehead. The Cali twin briskly made her way to a cart. She leaned her strange flat shovel against it while digging inside and pulled out some kind of blade. Cali had no idea what it was called, but she could tell it was sharp. Her twin looked familiar with it and hurried back to her spot. Lexi, sporting a tan that looked out of place on her normally pale skin, stopped her. She had a wide grin despite the sweat pouring down her face.

  Both girls looked around before huddling closer together to talk. Cali couldn’t hear the words. Every so often, a quickly stifled laugh would escape one of the girls’ lips. With each outburst, they would look around to see if anyone had taken notice.

  Everything stopped. Lexi looked from Cali’s twin to Cali. She focused on the twin and let out a confused grunt.

  “Cali?”

  “Lexi?” Cali was too shocked to move.

  The smell of rotten eggs descended on her and the world spun away. “No! Lexi!” she cried out. But it was too late. She was gone.

  As had become familiar when Blaine discovered her, the world beneath her feet spun. It was like a pottery wheel, only she wasn’t clay. She spun until everything changed and spinning stopped. Cali stood in a new place, alone for several minutes. Movement caught her eye and off to her left, someone was walking down a set of weird steps placed between two huge trees. Curling wisps of yellow darted out from him.

  He walked her way and Cali realized she had nowhere to go. She closed her eyes tightly and tried to melt into the tree.

  After a minute, she felt the ground harden under her feet. She opened her eyes and Blaine was gone. The grass, the sunflowers, the stairs with the trees, it was all gone. She ran.

  She was still outside, but wherever she landed felt like a different place. It was packed with people and she ran through them but no one took any notice of her and she managed not to hit a single person in the tight group she barged through. She darted behind a tree and everything changed, again.

  The trees were different, thicker if not shorter. They looked similar but just different enough from the tall leafy ones dotting the meadow that Cali knew they weren’t the same. She stood at the edge of a clearing. The air was thick and hot, but Cali stood frozen in place.

  She stared at the structure in front of her. When she’d been younger, she and her family had gone to Central America and she’d seen this place, but it had looked different. The stone looked newer, sharper, and not crumbling like her family photographs. She stood staring at the Mayan City of Cerros.

  Chattering voices and a broken branch just a few feet from where she stood startled her. She ducked under a fat bush, peeking through the holes in the foliage.

  Two young women, both with long dark hair and skin covered in patterned, raised bumps, walked out from behind the tree.

  Cali’s twin was pregnant. As Cali watched her twin talk, she came out from her hiding spot, but neither girl noticed.

  The Lexi-twin rolled her eyes and sighed.

  “I don’t understand you. You have a husband.” The Cali-twin ground her teeth as she stared the Lexi-twin down.

  There was something about the scene that felt off. The setting was sharp, but the Cali-twin and Lexi-twin were fuzzy, as if were out of focus. The words had a wrongness to them, like a poorly dubbed TV show.

  “You know I don’t care for politics. I want something more,” the Lexi-twin said with a wave of her hand.

  Lightning streaked across the cloudless blue sky and rain fell. Cali looked up, puzzled.

  Someone grabbed her wrist and Cali ripped it away. Backing away, she tripped, and looked to see the Lexi-twin standing in front of her. “Cali,” she whispered.

  The Cali-twin was frozen in place, her arm still outstretched.

  “Lexi? What are you—” Cali trailed off.

  “I’m coming for you.” The Lexi-twin grabbed Cali’s hand and squeezed, but a terrible laugh shook the world around her. Their surroundings yellowed. The Lexi and Cali-twins both disappeared.

  “Cali? Are you here?” Blaine’s voice boomed through the trees.

  Cali couldn’t see him, but she ran as hard as she could from the sound of his voice. The scenery around her changed like the backdrop for a play, but Cali wasn’t paying attention. The world around her melted, reformed, shifted, and changed as she ran.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Alexia rocketed back into her body from Belize. She remembered that past life, but what she’d just seen was wrong—like when she’d been looking through the window earlier and seen herself in 1940.

  Cali hadn’t looked like Cali in Cerros. Her name had been Cocam, and she’d been shorter. Her eyes had been brown instead of green and tilted up, not as big as Cali’s. Cocam had fuller lips. Appearance wise, they had nothing in common. Only the Essence was the same.

  Everyone still watched the window. She opened her mouth to say something when she was wrenched back out of her body.

  Standing in front of a Cali, it took Alexia a long time to realize she was in Ireland-seven hundred years after Cerros. Like the others, it was wrong. Cali looked like herself, not Ciara.

  Cali had called her past-self Lexi. Not Aibrean, as her name had been. She’d only been Alexia in Jaydee. She’d never looked like herself or had the same name in any other life.

  About an arm’s distance away stood another Cali. Rain began to pour from the sky, lit by lightning. The second Cali stared up at the storm.

  “Cali?” Alexia gasped. “Cali?”

  Finally, the girl looked down. She made eye contact and Alexia let out a silent sigh of relief. Cali could see her.

  “Lexi? What are you—” Cali’s words cut out.

  “I’m coming for you.” Alexia reached out and squeezed her friend’s hand before everything turned yellow and she was plucked away and slammed back into her Ether.

  “Alexia?” Alexia heard her name ringing in her ears.

  “Alexia?” The voice sounded clearer. She thought it was Leland’s, but he still sounded so far away. She felt a jolt and opened her eyes to Leland shaking her.

  “What?” Alexia stammered trying to focus on the people standing in front of her. A throbbing pain crept slowly from the base of her neck toward her eyes. “What happened?” She realized she was on the floor looking up.

  “What did happen?” Leland straightened as he spoke.

  “You were still here, at least part of you was.” Gregory spoke quickly and twisted his hands as he did.

  “I was just with Cali,” Alexia said.

  Her voice was louder than she expected, and Dustin grunted. She looked over to find him sleeping.

  “He’s healing,” Leland whispered.

  They moved to the kitchen where she tried to relax but ended up pacing. “She was—we were in Cerros. But it wasn’t right. We spoke English and looked like we do now. I came back here. Then I went back to Ireland. They were both wrong though.”

  “What do you mean you looked like you do now?” Gregory asked.

  “I looked like me. Like I do right now, standing in front of you. In both lives, it was the same. And she called me Lexi instead of Allacal or Aibrean.”

  “That doesn’t make sense.” Leland shook his head and then froze. “Unless…” Leland squinted and spoke s
lowly, “it is part of Cali’s ability. Kind of. Maybe she found a way to visit her past.”

  “What?” Alexia asked.

  “The way we travel to our past is only possible because they are your past lives and your Essence. It sounds like Cali was visiting her past and you were somehow tagging along. Since she isn’t Essence, she wouldn’t be able to see them correctly.”

  “She shouldn’t be able to see them at all,” Gregory added. “She has to be extremely close to death to be doing this.”

  “Is she still in Ireland?” Leland asked.

  “No.” Alexia looked at her feet. “She left when I did. It felt like she kicked me out.”

  Leland blew out a long breath and shook his head. “We need her body and her mind. They don’t have to be together, but we have to be able to find them both.”

  “I think Blaine was there,” Alexia said.

  “Oh.” Gregory straightened and looked surprised. “Cali is jumping thorough her past lives to escape him.”

  “Next time she pulls me in, how do I stay?”

  ***

  Cali could feel solid ground under her feet. Nothing stirred around her. She didn’t feel like she was inside a television show anymore, she didn’t feel like she was anywhere. The yellow air smelled stale.

  The last places she visited whirled and mixed in her memory while reality fought its way forward. A bird chirped happily somewhere nearby, and the smell of rotten eggs dissipated with a refreshing breeze. She waited for Blaine.

  When she was sure he wasn’t there, she dared to open her eyes.

  She stood in the same bright field she’d seen before in her dream, in which she’d seen Lexi and a different version of herself having a heated conversation by an archway growing out of the plants in the space before her. She looked around and felt herself relax.

  “Lexi?” she called out. “Are you here?” She heard a sound and turned to a group of tall sunflowers. It was a slight static sound, and as it got stronger, Lexi appeared. She squinted and looked toward the ground like the sun was blinding her as if she’d been in darkness and it was the first she’d seen the sun in a long time.

  “Lexi?” Cali reached out for her. Lexi jumped and shielded her eyes to look at Cali.

  A metallic glint from Lexi’s chest brought Cali’s eyes to the half heart of the necklace. She wore the same one. She moved her hand to brush a blonde strand from in front of her eyes and noticed the burns weren’t stretched across her skin anymore.

  “Cali?” Lexi’s voice broke her concentration. “Where am I?”

  “I don’t know.” Cali looked around trying to recognize her surroundings. “I thought you brought me here.”

  “No, Cali. This is all you.”

  A gust of wind rolled through the field bringing the smell of spoiled eggs and Cali felt her blood run cold. “Something is happening to me. I don’t know where I am. This guy, or creature—” Her voice wavered.

  Lexi dropped her hand from her face. She blinked hard, but her eyes were focused. Lexi looked Cali in the eye. “Blaine. I know.”

  “What?”

  “It’s a long story. Here’s the deal. You need to get our friends in here so we can get you away from him.”

  “Let who in where?” Cali asked slowly.

  “Leland, and Gregory. We need to get into your brain.” Lexi turned up her hands in a questioning manner. “It sounds nuts, I know, but you got me in here, so let them in too.”

  “I-I” Cali stammered. “I have to find Dustin.”

  “We saved Dustin,” Lexi told her.

  Cali gasped. “Saved him from what?”

  “Blaine. We can save you too, but you left your body and we need both. I know this makes no sense but you just have to trust me.”

  She remembered being outside the hospital. She’d been outside of her body. The one thing she trusted most in the world was Lexi.

  “Can you stop him?” The fear was plain in Cali’s voice.

  “I am going to try,” Lexi said. She leaned over and hugged Cali. “Is he here?” She looked around. “Can you control it?”

  Cali blinked. “Control what?”

  “Getting me here. Keeping him out. Anything?”

  “No.” Cali shook her head.

  Lexi nodded. “Okay. Don’t run away. Don’t push me back to myself.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “That’s okay. Just think about keeping me here.” Lexi moved so they were facing each other. She closed both of her hands around Cali’s. “Hold onto me. I’m going to focus on them. Maybe if you just think about Dustin…?”

  “Think about him?”

  Lexi squeezed Cali’s hands making her look into Lexi’s green eyes. “All those times you saw me and I saw you, you were the one bringing us together. You are very powerful. You can do this.”

  Rain trickled down around them. Cali closed her eyes and thought about Dustin. A strange, muffled voice floated to her and she cracked her eyes. A hole had ripped open in the air only a couple feet from her shoulder. Lexi nodded to the opening and Cali realized that she was saying something. Cali focused on her voice.

  “Get in.”

  Cali looked back to the hole. Two men looked at her. One black, one white. Both seemed familiar.

  “How did you do this?” one of the men asked, looking at the edges of the opening between them.

  “Come on! I don’t know how long this will last,” Lexi called to them.

  “She’s right. If we’re going, we go now.”

  Cali looked around the room. “Dustin?”

  He sat crumpled on the couch and stirred at her voice. His skin was unburnt.

  He stood and staggered toward where Cali stood. He looked around the room he stood in with a wild look in his eyes. He stepped to the strange, wavering border separating him from her, looked at Cali, and stepped through.

  The others followed.

  Chapter Twenty

  When everyone stepped through and stood next to Cali, Alexia felt relief wash over her. They would save Cali and Dustin or die trying. Alexia dropped Cali’s hands and turned to face her friends.

  The space around Alexia started to melt. Trees turned to puddles like melted clay. Rocks sank into small gray pools. Everything mixed and blended until the ground was streaks of paint running in all directions and everything else was blindingly white.

  Alexia instinctively grabbed Cali’s wrist and held tight to Leland’s bicep.

  “Quickly!” Alexia’s voice seemed to melt to the floor with everything around her. It didn’t travel across the room as it should have, and she wasn’t sure the others could hear her. “Grab whoever is next to you. Don’t let go.” Her words were twisted and strange.

  There was a popping sound and the world shifted onto its side. Alexia fought to stay upright as the earth tilted beneath her. Dingy beige walls took the place of the striking white. Black and gray speckled tiles appeared under her feet with blue lining the walls of the hallway. The place looked real enough, but there were no people around. There was an airy quality telling Alexia wherever they were standing was only an illusion, like a layer of synthetic reality on top of the real world.

  Dustin doubled over and clutched his stomach. Cali fell to her knees. Alexia crashed into Gregory, who caught her but fell into the Leland in the process.

  “What the hell was that?” Dustin asked.

  She looked around. “We’re in the hospital.” Her voice echoed, and Alexia couldn’t ignore the way it trembled.

  “Then we should—” A ripping sound stopped Alexia’s words.

  “You’re back.” An excited voice echoed down the hall.

  Yellow seeped up the walls like a wick sucking dye, and with the color came a foul smell.

  “This is what happened before the fire.” Dustin’s eyes were wide and he backed up so Cali was only inches from him.

  “The cabin didn’t turn yellow.” Cali’s voice was airy.

  Dustin’s eyes d
arted around the darkening hallway. “Yes, it did. We need to go.”

  “We need to get back to Alexia’s Ether,” Gregory said.

  Alexia nodded.

  A thick yellow cloud surrounded the group, forming a circle around the five. “Gregory? What are you doing here? With them?” The voice in the cloud sounded annoyed as the mass pooled around him, leaving only small, wispy tendrils around the others.

  “Get away from us.” The lump in Alexia’s throat caused the words to come out in a feeble whisper.

  The cloud pulsated with laughter. “You were stupid to come here.”

  Tendrils shot out from the cloud and launched Cali backward and Dustin lost his grip on her.

  The cloud undulated and shifted until it was shaped like a person. Long locks of sandy-blond hair framed a familiar face with hate-filled blue eyes.

  “You’ve done enough.” Blaine’s voice dripped with anger.

  “You’ve been killing us.” Alexia couldn’t hide the hurt from her voice.

  “And you just won’t stay dead. The rest just die to give me what I want. But not you!”

  He took a step toward Alexia and she shrank back, bumping the person behind her.

  “You keep running away and I killed you all. Over and over, but no. You assholes kept escaping. Then, I had a thought.” Blaine paused and looked toward Leland. “Actually, it was you who gave me the idea. When you stayed back in the Cetteri. You separated.”

  Blaine laughed and Alexia shuffled farther back. Whoever was behind her moved the same direction. Cali, next to her, took giant steps away from Blaine.

  “I realized I didn’t have to plan some catastrophe and kill you all. My tracking ability is limited. It takes time to find you. I couldn’t see you all the time.” Blaine swung his arms around wildly.

  “You can’t win,” Leland said from behind her.

  Blaine matched their retreat step for step. The hallway went on forever.

  “I think I can.”

  “You didn’t kill me.” Alexia straightened her back. “Not in this life anyway,” she added after a second.

  “Didn’t I?” Blaine smirked. His voice held a knowing that made Alexia queasy. “But you did prove to be a slippery little bitch. I locked you away and shielded you, but you turned it against me. And how you two got in.” Blaine’s eyes blazed. He swallowed. “It’s no matter. The fire killed you two.” He pointed to Cali and Dustin. “My plan hadn’t been to do this all at once, but you all just seem so excited to see me.”