The Birch House

Chapter Eighteen

It didn't happen, I told myself. Its a bad dream, just another bad dream. You'll wake up and it'll be gone like fog...

I had my eyes squeezed tight shut. My mouth felt dry, shriveled-up, and I was pressed against Chase's hot, solid side, curled up on the couch in the Birch House.

Terrified.

It's just a bad dream.

But when I opened my eyes, my friend Alex was still dead on the floor in front of me.

"Shut those girls up, Chase, or I will," Chase's father snapped. He was pacing the wooden floor, back and forth, hands clasped behind him. He wasnt looking at Alex's body, shrouded under a thick, dusty velvet curtain, but it was all I could see, now that I'd opened my eyes again. It was as big as the world, and it wasn't a dream, and it wasn't going away. Chase's dad was here, and he was terrifying, and Alex-

Alex was dead. Only Alex had already been dead, hadn't he? Ghostly. Dead during the day...alive at night...

I realized I was crying only when Chase's dad turned on me, staring with red-rimmed eyes. I hadn't felt that scared when I'd stared into vampire eyes...well, maybe once or twice, because Mystic was a scary place, generally, and the vampires were pretty terrifying.

Chace's father - Mr Lightwood - was a tall, long-legged man, and his hair was wild and curly and going gray. Long enough to reach the collar of his leather jacket. He had dark eyes. Crazy eyes. A scruffy beard. And a huge scar running across his face, puckered and liver colored.

Yeah, definitely scary. Not a vampire, just a man, and that made him scary in whole different ways.

I sniffled and wiped my eyes and quit crying. Something in me said, Cry later; survive now. I figured that voice had spoken inside of Chase, too, because Chase wasn't looking at the velvet-covered sprawl of his best friend's body. He was watching his father. His eyes were red, too, but there were no tears.

Now Chase was scaring me, too.

"Lyss," Chase said softly, and then, louder, "Lyss! Put a sock in it!"

Our fourth roommate, Alyssa, was collapsed in an awkward heap against the far wall by the bookcases, as far from Alex's body as she could get. Knees up, head down, she was crying hard and hopelessly. She looked up when Chase yelled her name, and her face was streaked with black from running mascara, half her Goth white makeup gone. She had on her death's-head Mary Jane shoes, I noticed. I didn't know why that seemed important.

Alyssa looked completely lost, and I slipped off the couch and went to sit beside her. We put our arms around each other. Alyssa smelled of tears and sweat and some kind of sweet vanilla perfume, and she couldn't seem to stop shaking. Shock. That was what they always said on TV, anyway. Her skin felt cold.

"Shhhh," I whispered to her. "Alex's okay. Its all going to be okay." I didn't know why I said that - it was a lie; it had to be a lie; we'd all seen...what happened...but something told me it was the right thing to say. And sure enough, Alyssa's sobbing slowed, then stopped, and she covered her face with shaking hands.

Chase hadn't said anything else. He was still watching his dad, with the kind of intense stare most guys reserved for people they'd like to pound into hamburger. If his dad noticed, he clearly didnt care. He continued to pace, up and down. The guys hed brought with him - walking slabs of muscle in black motorcycle leather, shaved heads and tattoos and everything - were standing in the corners, arms folded. The one who'd killed Alex looked bored as he flipped the knife in his fingers.

"Get up," Chase's dad said. He'd stopped pacing, and was standing right in front of his son. "Don't you dare give me any crap, Chase. I told you to stand up!"