Sing Me to Sleep (The Lost Shards Book 3) Page 20

  The porch paint was peeling. One of the stairs had caved in, leaving a gaping hole three feet up. Small trees had grown along the foundation where acorns or seeds had been lodged. There were no neighbors in sight. The closest town was twenty minutes away, and there wasn’t much there to anchor it.

  Stygian pulled up as close as he could get to the house before saplings barred the Mustang’s path.

  Echo stepped out into a sea of weeds up to her knees and walked, dazed, toward the house.

  The air smelled clean here, of growing things and freshly turned earth. The afternoon sunshine stroked her head like a warm, parental hand offering comfort. Insects buzzed in the distance, singing about freedom and celebrating the day. She remembered that song from her youth, the soundtrack to her days and the lullaby she fell asleep to at night.

  The old house was two stories tall, with what looked to be an attic space at the peak. Small, dormer windows peered out from all sides of the slanted roof, surveying the house’s domain. The wood siding was rough in places, the paint curling up at the edges in a patchwork of neglect. Several of the windows were broken, but the glass had stayed in place, leaving a network of cracks behind as scars.

  There was a sound to this place that went beyond wind in the trees, birds and insects. The whole structure seemed to hum. Like the prophecy had hummed, like Mom’s maps hummed.

  Home. This was Echo’s home.

  She hadn’t lived here in two decades, but she felt a connection to the place, as if it belonged to her. Or, maybe, she belonged to it.

  The hum beckoned her onward, singing to her of comfort and trust, of safety.

  Before she reached the bottom porch step, Stygian laid a hand on shoulder to stop her. “Let me go first. The wood looks a little rickety.”

  He didn’t wait for permission. Instead, he stepped over the broken tread and eased his weight onto the porch.

  The wood held firm, creaking in protest of his weight.

  The key her mother had left behind was in his hand, glinting silver in the shadows of the porch. He slid it into the lock and turned it easily, a perfect fit.

  He looked over his shoulder at her, his face made even more handsome by the backdrop of her childhood home. The door framed his body perfectly, as if made for that task alone. The white paint seemed brighter in his presence, the lines of the opening straighter.

  It was as if the house were welcoming him home as well.

  He is yours, a small voice whispered in her mind. Ours.

  It struck her then how amazingly selfless Stygian was. He was always putting himself in the path of danger, facing off against her enemies so that she was safe. Sure, he wanted Hazel’s shards out of him as much as she did, but that didn’t explain why he stood between her and the rat man’s monsters, or why he would go first into an aging home, his heavier weight much more likely to fall through the floor than her lighter one.

  He was a rare creature. A protector, a caretaker.

  That he was sexy as hell didn’t hurt matters either. Even now, watching him move slowly through the door, she could feel her body reacting to the flex and play of his muscles under his jeans. She could remember the heat of his hands as they’d surveyed her body, staking a claim. And she would never forget the way he made her soar inside the grip of pleasure too sweet to be real.

  She wanted to feel his arms around her again. To taste his kiss. She wanted to bask in his heat and feel him move inside her body in a way no other man ever had. She wanted to consume him, keep him, hold him. Forever.

  Was that Hazel’s influence? Or was it her own need sliding through her veins?

  Was there any way to be sure?

  Did she even care?

  Echo followed him inside the house. It took her eyes a moment to adjust to the shadows. As they did, she breathed in the scent of dust and abandonment, wood and old flowers.

  Her mind spun back in time. The space brightened with a golden glow.

  Her mother was in the kitchen, singing as she cooked. Melody and Echo were in the living room, lying on their stomachs on the hickory floor, coloring in front of the TV. Bright lights flashed over the page like confetti. The floorboards were warm under her, strong and solid.

  She was happy. Content. Safe.

  Melody giggled at the cartoon.

  In the kitchen, something crashed to the floor. The sound of glass shattering was as loud as gunfire, breaking the peace of the evening.

  “No,” Mom moaned, as if in pain. “Not yet. Please.”

  The girls raced into the kitchen to find Mom pressed into the corner of the cabinets, crouched and hugging her knees. Even as young as Echo was, she knew that something was wrong. Mom was pale, shaking. A look of horror painted her pretty face. Tears streamed down her cheeks.

  Melody recovered first and rushed over to her. “What’s wrong?”

  There was broken glass on the floor. Red liquid spread out like blood across the vinyl. Kool-Aid. Mom had dropped her favorite pitcher while carrying it to the dinner table.

  Echo followed her sister, being careful to step over the mess. “It’s okay, Mama. We can make more.”

  Mom stared off at something behind her girls. Her blue eyes were wide and she was shaking her head. “It’s too soon. My girls…”

  “We’re right here, Mom,” Melody said. “We’re okay.”

  Echo patted her mother’s face with chubby hands.

  Mom seemed to snap out it then. Her focus shifted from some unseen distance to the two girls in front of her. “Go pack a bag. Just clothes, toothbrushes and three toys. Nothing more. Hurry.”

  “What?” Melody asked. “Why?”

  “We have to leave. Now. Do as I say.”

  “Where are we going?” Echo asked.

  “I don’t know. We’ll figure that out later. Just go. Now!”

  Stygian’s hand on her arm broke her free from the memory. “What is it?”

  “I was just remembering the night my grandfather died—the night Mom got her shards.” She pulled in a long breath. “That was the night we started running. We left this place and only came back a couple of times to pick up supplies. I haven’t been here since I was five.”

  She looked to the left, through the dining room, into the kitchen. The broken pitcher still lay where it had landed, the liquid now a dull, red crust on the floor. To her right, in the living room, were the coloring books she and Melody had been using. The crayons were gone—likely brought with them—but everything else was still the same.

  His fingers stroked her shoulder in a soothing pattern. She wanted to lean into him for support, to use his solid bulk to help anchor her against the reeling memories assaulting her mind.

  It was a house in stasis. A life interrupted. A museum of her past and what her life could have been if not for the shards.

  She had never hated them as much as she did now.

  This could have been her happy home, this could have been a place of refuge and strength. She could have had sleepovers here, had boyfriends pick her up for dates, she could have celebrated birthdays and graduation and all the things that normal people enjoyed.

  Instead, all that was left here was a hollowed-out shell of a promise never fulfilled.

  The wooden floors creaked under her feet as she roamed from one room to another, up the stairs, into her old bedroom.

  There was an animal smell up here, musty and thick. Her bed looked like it had exploded, its stuffing strewn out across the room. The guts of a patchwork quilt had been used for some kind of nest. Bits of sticks and fur and matted filth sat piled in a heap in one corner of the room.

  Echo couldn’t bear to see it like that, so she closed the door and moved to the next room.

  Mom’s.

  Hers seemed to be untouched. The bed was still made. Pretty bottles of perfume sat lined up like crystal soldiers on her dresser. Framed pictures of two chubby-cheeked girls hung on the walls.

  Echo’s hair had been lighter then. So had Melody’s.


  The sight of her sister’s face, bright and smiling, made a lump swell in Echo’s throat.

  She missed Melody so much. Some days she had to pretend she’d never had a sister just so she could pull in her next breath. They had been so close that it seemed almost like some kind of fantasy Echo could no longer believe. Was her child’s mind playing tricks on her, or had she really let someone into her heart as deeply as she remembered?

  Her thoughts started to stray back to the day her sister had died—the day Echo got her shards—but she grabbed ahold of her focus before she collapsed into a weeping mess.

  They were here for a purpose. Echo didn’t know what it was, but she had to stay strong, stay grounded. Hysterics weren’t going to be of any use to her or Stygian.

  As if sensing her thoughts, his hand came back to her again, in another offer of comfort.

  She leaned into him this time, because she had no strength of her own to stand on. Putting one foot in front of the other was taking all her energy, all her focus.

  He pulled her back against his chest and simply held her while she stood in her mother’s bedroom, taking it all in.

  After a moment, she was able to pull herself away and stand on her own two feet. Knowing he was here helped. Knowing he cared helped even more.

  She wasn’t alone. At least not yet.

  Echo refused to think about what would happen next, after they’d done whatever they’d come to do, after they’d found the locket and banished Hazel to hell. She refused to think about going out in the world on her own again, alone and on the run from a man who wanted her dead. She refused to think about how much she was going to miss Stygian and his solid strength, his selfless protection.

  Today’s problems were enough for her to face. Tomorrow’s would have to wait their turn.

  She turned to look at Stygian.

  Concern lined his brow and dulled his indigo eyes. “Are you okay?”

  She nodded, rather than voicing the lie. She was so far from okay she wasn’t even sure what that felt like anymore. But she was all in. Okay or not, she was moving on.

  “What next?” he asked, rubbing her arms up and down as if she were chilled. “What do the squiggles say to do?”

  Echo pulled out the page her mother had drawn. The creepy, lash-less eyes were still staring at her from their bars.

  “I still have no clue what this means.”

  “Maybe we need to look around a little more?”

  She nodded. As rough and full of potholes this trip down memory lane was, it was also necessary. “I don’t think we have a choice.”

  They toured the rest of the house, going through the attic, then back downstairs and through a doorway that led to the basement. Marked on the door frame were dates and heights of the Charmaine girls at various ages. Melody’s last entry was at age seven, and Echo’s at age five, hers marked with her given name, Harmony.

  Her fingers trailed over the marks. She couldn’t remember standing here, but the proof that she had was irrefutable.

  The basement was mostly empty, with only a few canned goods, Christmas decorations and boxes of old clothes stacked against one wall. There was an earthy smell down here, along with something damp. She couldn’t see any sign of water leaking, but the air was more humid and cooler.

  Nowhere was there any kind of picture like the one she carried. There were no trinket boxes with eyes, or books that stared back at them.

  “I have no clue,” she said as she slumped to the sofa.

  Dust motes danced in a low, golden sunbeam, frolicking in the last hours of the day now that they were set free of the upholstery. Considering how long this place had been closed up, it was a wonder that everything wasn’t coated in a thicker layer. While the place needed a few hours with a Swiffer, it wasn’t unlivable.

  Maybe she could stay for a while. Maybe this place was humming as an indication that she was safe here. The rat man wouldn’t find her.

  But if that was the case, then why had Mom started running the night she’d inherited her shards? It’s like she knew what would happen, like she knew she had to run, that something bad was coming for her and her girls.

  Stygian sat next to Echo, his big body taking up a comforting amount of space.

  She loved his size, the sheer mass of him, how solid he was, how she felt like she could hide behind him and be safe. Sure, it was an illusion, but it was a nice one.

  “I’m not sure what to try next,” she said.

  “It’s getting late. We could find a motel nearby and come back tomorrow.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t want to lose all that time.”

  “There’s no water or electricity on here. Once it’s dark we’ll have to search by flashlight.”

  “If that’s what we have to do, then so be it. I refuse to let Hazel win.”

  Stygian nodded. “Okay, then. I’m starving, so I’m going to grab some snacks and flashlights from the car. We’ll stay until we figure out what we’re looking for.”

  The second he walked out of the front door, the house lost some of its magic, some of its life. It became empty without his presence, as if he’d always belonged here.

  Echo shoved away the odd feeling and went to the desk Mom had kept in the corner of the living room.

  Bills were still stacked up in a neat pile. A roll of stamps curled around a pen holder. There were colorful scribbles on the wood, as if Echo or Melody had accidentally gone off the edge of their paper while drawing here.

  The top drawer was stocked with pens, pencils, notepads and a stapler. Two file drawers ran along the right-hand side, both stuffed with paperwork. Without any other obvious direction, Echo began going through the files, looking for some kind of clue that would lead her to the misshapen eyes.

  She found papers from Melody’s first two years of school—drawings and homework with colorful stickers next to the grades. There was no folder for Echo, because she hadn’t started school before they ran.

  Stygian came back inside. He set down next to her a bottle of water, a protein bar and an apple.

  “You should eat something.”

  “I will in a minute.”

  There was a sealed envelope stuffed with pictures and documents. On top was a photo of Mom and a man who had to be their father. They were achingly young, barely more than kids. He was blond and handsome, with a grin so charming she bet he had no trouble picking up the ladies. In one of the photos, they were holding each other, oblivious to the camera catching the intimate moment. The look of love flowing between them was palpable.

  “These are my parents,” she said, angling the photo so Stygian could see it over her shoulder.

  The next few pictures were more of the same. Then there was a document—a death decree for a woman named Bella Charmaine. This was Echo’s grandmother, a woman she’d heard about but had never met.

  In the very next photo, Echo’s father looked completely different. Older. Harder. Colder. The glint of love in his eyes was gone, and in its place was something cunning, something calculating.

  Next were pictures of Mom pregnant, of a tiny baby Melody in her arms.

  Now her father’s calculating looks were all pointed at the baby.

  “Your father had shards, too, didn’t he?” Stygian asked.

  Echo nodded. “That’s why Mom left him. He changed when his mother died, and not for the better.”

  Mom was pregnant again in the next two photos, then Melody was holding her new baby sister.

  Dad was nowhere to be seen.

  A divorce decree divided the stack once more, and on the other side there were no more pictures of Ed Charmaine. He was completely out of their lives.

  Mom never talked much about Echo’s father, but when she did, it was always with that sad, sympathetic tone one used when speaking about terminal illness. Dad is sick. He can’t be around you girls or you’ll get sick too.

  He’d died when Echo was eight. She knew because that was the year that Melody changed. She’d
gone from a carefree, giggling girl to a somber, reserved one in a matter of a few hours.

  “That’s how I knew my family was dead,” she said, her voice haunted. “That’s how I knew Melody died first. Her shards hit me like a train, taking away all trust, giving up all dreams for my life. It was like being dipped in numbness, like breathing in despair and not being able to get rid of it.”

  He said nothing, but his hands settled on her shoulders in silent support.

  “A few moments later, I felt Mom hug me. The feeling was so strong, so familiar. She was blocks away, but I knew she had to be there, with me in the library.” She pulled in a shaky breath. “But it wasn’t her. It was her shards. She was gone.”

  That sense of loss and grief fell over Echo like a shroud. She would never forget the moment she realized just how alone in the world she really was.

  His fingers splayed over her shoulders, his thumbs drawing firm, soothing circles along the tight cords of her neck.

  She looked down at the spray of photos and documents that were her history. Such a thin stack, and yet so powerful.

  “I started to run back to where Mom was waiting for me to get done at the library, but before I got there, something inside of me warned me to veer off. The voice sounded like Mom, but it couldn’t have been, could it?”

  “It’s likely that you do carry a splinter of your mother and sister somewhere inside of you. Not all of us can hear our relatives, but some can. I imagine she was warning you of the danger you’d find if you went to her. The rat man was probably waiting for you.”

  “Do you hear your parents?” she asked.

  His fingers tensed slightly. “I was raised by my grandfather. My mother didn’t live long enough to inherit any shards.”

  Echo sniffed and turned in the chair to look up at him. “What happened?”

  Pain so old it was tarnished shone in his dark eyes. “She took her own life.”

  She stood then, needing to comfort him the way he had her. She wrapped her arms around him and pressed her chest over his heart. “I’m so sorry.”

  Stygian’s hands slid over her back. Tension vibrated through his big frame. “There’s no reason to be sorry. She was weak, too cowardly to face her pain. My grandfather made sure that I was stronger than his daughter.”