Page 25 of Guarded By the Nightmare

My eyes widened. “You wouldn’t...would you?” Trent laughed, and I made a show of looking around in mock panic. “Where’s Ella? I’m going home!”

He squeezed me harder to keep me there, and I squealed with laughter.

“You know I don’t want the other guys to see you,” he purred against my ear.

“Just hear me, huh?” I said, purring back, remembering earlier in the night.

I didn’t know it then, but that was our last perfect moment together. Before the story of my life started tearing into two, like prior to that it’d been written on a stretched out scroll, now sliced down the middle, one half-moving on, living the life I could’ve had if I’d never known—and the other half the timeline I was stuck on, frayed and curling off into the darkness, wondering just how the fuck I was going to manage living with myself for the rest of my time.

At that moment though, a thrill ran through me, feeling possessed by him—fuck it, maybe I was a truck after all—and then I pushed him away. “You know, if you and Nolan wanted to wrestle in Jell-O, I can promise you there’d be an audience for that.”

Trent laughed, palmed my ass again, and then let me go. “Finish that, and I’ll find you later,” he said, leaving my new drink with me.

I tookit to the edge of the living room, and when I didn’t see Ella there, I went with my first guess and headed back upstairs.

“Ella?” I asked, knocking on the door. She didn’t answer me—but I tried the handle, it was locked, from the inside. I held my cup with my teeth and unlooped the key so that I could use it—the party was so loud, maybe she hadn’t heard me? And maybe she was reasonably pissed, because I was pretty sure I’d been grinding on Trent for longer than three songs.

When I got the door open, she was inside, but on the floor, sprawled out like a drawing around a crime victim, one arm up, one knee up, like she’d been swimming to the bed.

“Oh fuck, Ella!” I shouted, dropping the cup I’d brought up with me, its pink contents spilling on the ancient hardwood floor. “Get up!” I said, shaking her, then went into full pre-med mode, peeling her eyelids up to make sure her pupils weren’t blown, and feeling for her pulse.

She’d gotten in here alone. She’d locked the door. Her clothes were all on.

What the fuck?

And then I felt a wave of wooziness.

Like someone was starting to pull a dream over me. I fought it, clinging to my brain cells, even as I felt them beginning to shut off, one by one.

Then I spotted her cup on the nightstand by the bed—and felt my heels sticking to the drink I’d been given, now all over the floor.

I fell to my knees, in horror, and because the ability to control myself was quickly departing my body.

I might’ve had a “dump truck” now—but I hadn’t always had one. In fact, in high school, I’d spent six months being bulimic, thinking thatif I just got skinny enough, life would be easier on me. So with my last remaining remnants of consciousness, I stuck a finger down my throat and barfed up my pink drink, where it spattered on Ella’s white sweatshirt as I started to sink to the ground. I watched her breathe beside me until I was there and not there both at once, my ability to think and act swirling away like water down a drain.

The last thing I remembered was Logan coming in, and squatting down to look at both of us, making a disgusted face at the scent of my stomach acid. “God, your girl’s a lightweight,” he said, and I heard Trent answer.

“Don’t call her my girl.”

19

SYLAS

I held time,waiting for Mina to come up with her words.

“I—I want him to pay,” she breathed, eventually, looking up at me with dark, soulful eyes. There were tears shimmering inside them, tears that should’ve belonged to me, and I wanted him to pay, too. The wheels inside my mind were already turning.

“Go to him,” I urged her, releasing my control on time itself. “Speak your piece.”

She looked frightened still, but made an “Uh-huh” sound, and gave a quick nod. Then she panted thrice, and got out of the car, slamming its door hard enough behind her to attract the boy’s attention as I released time back to its prior course.

“Logan!” she shouted, and he paused, squinting at her, until he realized who she was, and his bearing changed.

“Oh, Christ—Mina—what the fuck?”

The second his attention was on her, she changed—and I realized my little lamb wasn’t afraid ofkillinghim, as I had assumed for the entire past day.

She was afraid of the manhimself.

---