The Devil In Disguise

CHAPTER 28: A Message For Her

Bursting in to the Science Block, I ran to the toilets, heart beating fast. Pushing open the worn wooden door forcefully, I walked in to see Corina comforting a shaken Grace, who was trembling all over.

Immediately, I grew concerned. "Grace?" I said, striding towards her and putting an affectionate hand on her shoulder. "What happened?"

Grace looked at me with fear in her eyes, and whispered, "Someone broke into my house last night."

My blood ran cold.

"W-Who was it? I mean, what did he — or she — look like?" I stammered, a million different scenarios running through my head.

"She didn't see them. She didn't even know someone had broken in, until..." Corina trailed off, casting a furtive glance at Grace, who took a deep breath and continued,

"Until I saw the message written on my wall."

I furrowed my eyebrows, recalling the look of her bedroom from the night of Xander's Halloween party. It was very large, with three baby pink walls and then a wall filled with artsy-looking graffiti.

"Was it the wall with the graffiti?" I asked tentatively. Grace nodded and gulped, remembering it.

"I didn't even see it at first. But you know how the graffiti is three specific shades of blue?" she asked me, and I nodded attentively having noticed that feature.

"Well, I was just looking at it. And something didn't seem right, and I was so confused because everything looked the same! So I took a closer look, and you know where my name is graffitied? The big letters in the middle? Well, right beneath it, in tiny writing, someone had written —" she choked off, having gotten to the scary part and I almost screamed in horrific curiosity. Grace took her phone out and brought up a zoomed-in picture and Corina took it, reading out the message.

"Someone had written," Corina said, "'You have a pretty name. It suits your pretty face. Now, I need you to deliver a message for me, dear Grace. If you don't do it, I will come back here when you're asleep and slit your throat instead.'"

Corina took a deep breath and continued,

"'Tell her that no matter how fast she runs, I am faster. Tell her that she will end up on my operation table if it's the last thing I do. She is my target, my goal, my victim, and she shouldn't even try to live her life because I'm about to take it from her. Tell her that.'"

An unnerving silence replaced Corina's voice. But for me, it was loud because my ears were ringing.

Grace was his first target to get to me. That was his message to me.

"I don't know who this person is talking about," Grace's lip trembled, and she blinked rapidly, refusing to cry in school. "And if I don't give someone that message, he's threatening to kill me! What should I do?!"

Corina and I stayed quiet. We couldn't even say something like, 'oh, it's probably a prank,' because someone actually broke into her house and gone into her bedroom at night while she was asleep. And she didn't even have a sibling who would prank her.

"D'you think it was Grey?" Corina broke the silence with a doubtful question. I rubbed Grace's shoulder as she sniffled.

"I mean, it's possible," Grace said helplessly, shrugging, "but why would he do that? He's on the run, he wouldn't be stupid enough to come back. And why my house? And who would he mean by 'her'?

She fired questions at us which were hard to answer. I kept silent, seemingly lost in thought, even though I was much too aware of my heart beating erratically in my chest.

"Maybe... maybe he was after Karissa," Corina said hesitantly. My head whipped up.

"What?" I said quickly.

"I mean, think about it," Corina's voice was getting stronger as she got more sure of her theory. "Xander, Simon, Grace and I all got spiked — but Karissa was the one who was actually taken first."

"That was only because Grey couldn't spike me," I rapidly fired back, closing that loophole.

"But why couldn't he spike you? The waiter spiked us but how come he didn't spike you, it was actually Grey who tried to do that? Maybe that was a distraction from our drinks... maybe Grey didn't spike you at all, but pretended to so we'd think our own drinks were innocent?"

"I think you're right about Grey using my drink as a distraction, but maybe the waiter did spike mine. Grey had said he didn't do it, and even if he was telling the truth, I still didn't drink it. So either way, if Grey or the waiter spiked my drink, I didn't drink it."

"Yeah, but why would he use yours as a distraction and risk you not drinking it? If he'd left it alone, none of us would have suspected a thing but he had to use yours so maybe he was trying to get you to not drink it, keeping you conscious but the four of us unconscious."

"But why would he want me conscious? If he had some big abduction plan for me like you're implying, wouldn't it be easier if I was unconscious?"

"Okay, you're right," Corina admitted. "You're not the victim, let's scrap that. But who could be?"

As Corina continued spewing out theories, I took a deep, inaudible breath. She was right about one thing at least; I was the victim. Although her questions had raised a few of my own: did anyone even spike my drink that day? Was I supposed to be unconscious for him to take? Probably.

I shuddered thinking of his flawless face, his dilated pupils greedy as he looked at me, claiming me for himself like an animal with its territory. He wanted me dead and preserved, my body never decaying, just for him to look at. But the most important part was that he wanted me dead, and I, being alive, couldn't let that happen.

But who was I against him?

The bell rang and I jumped out of memory and into reality. As Corina and Grace walked out of the toilets with me following behind, I suddenly felt a wave of protectiveness for Grace. She didn't deserve any of this; after the spiking incident and then this, she must have felt especially shaken up. I, for one, knew exactly how that felt, and it wasn't a good feeling.

He wouldn't target her just yet. He would know that she'd unknowingly told his victim his message and he wouldn't kill her. He'd save her until I was on the verge, and he'd give me the final push by killing her, or Corina, or Simon... or Xander.

I curled my hands into fists, feeling a surge of fear. Breathe in, breathe out. In, out.

Do you know how it feels to fight an unstoppable force? It feels like trying to fly when gravity makes you fall to your death. It feels like trying to push something that weighs a thousand times more than you do. It feels difficult, helpless, and you feel like giving up.

But I couldn't give up because I'd be giving up on life. And that's what I'd been fighting for for the past two years, so if I gave up now then it would have been in vain.

So I just stuck to feeling helpless and hopeless and feeling like giving up but never being able to.

A/N

WHAT DID YOU THINK OF THE MESSAGE? Creepy. I wouldn't want to find that on my wall.

Vote if you want more! :)
And comment to let me know if you like this book so far! (If you don't, you'll find a nasty message on your wall tomorrow morning)

—deainlustris