Laconic » a.i

2.7

//luke//

She sat next to me on the cool rocks as we stared out to the ocean, her dark hair flowing behind her. Her skin looked even paler when the moon hit it but she still looked pretty as always. She curled her legs to her chest, laying her arms over her knees before resting her chin on top of that. Her blue eyes shone like the flowing water and I couldn't help but feel right for once. The voices in my head had quieted down and I sighed contently.

"We could leave, you know," she hummed. Her eyes never looked my way, instead staying locked on the ocean that stretched out before us. "Go to America or Europe; they'd never find us. We could be safe and everything would be how it should be."

"No it wouldn't," I chuckled, which was what made her look at me. "We're ghosts, we should just be drowning in eternal nothingness."

She gave a small smile, "What happened to the cute Luke who was always at least somewhat happy?"

"Long gone," I sighed, looking away to the water. "He left a while ago."

She leaned her head on my shoulder and I took in her familiar scent. It made me feel better, "It's okay, we all change for different reasons."

I kissed her head and she turned her face up toward me, returning a kiss on my cheek.

"Love you." I told her softly.

"Love you too." she smiled.

"Don't leave again, Bridge."

She wrapped her arms around my waist and put her legs over my lap, pulling herself closer to me. "I won't, Luke, I promise."

The slap that came to my face made me realize that wasn't my reality. Whatever the hell these witches had me on was making it hard to distinguish my dreams from real life. I didn't even close my eyes but it was still like sleeping, and I couldn't even realize when it was happening.

"Welcome back, Freak," the tiny one smiled. I didn't know her name and didn't care enough to figure it out. For now, I referred to her as Gremlin. "You were out for a while. What'd you dream about? Any girl in particular?"

She knew exactly what these hallucination things were doing to me. They've had me on them ever since they captured me the day before just so I wouldn't have the chance to escape like Ashton or Michael -- the Gremlin mentioned that a lot.

They were also doing this to make me feel guilty; it was their own little form of torture. If I lured Cooper to them, they'd spare Emily and set me free. Mali-Koa was the one to make the deal and the two sisters agreed to it reluctantly because they had been looking for Emily for months now. But I didn't want to choose between Em and Bridge, so Mali had raised the stakes: if I didn't get them Bridgette, they were going to erase me, Em, Jeremy, and then continue their search for Ashton and Michael.

I was taken away while I was out with Jeremy. Calum decided we needed to use a "buddy system" like we were children, so I got to join him while he went and visited some girl I didn't even know but he'd apparently been seeing her for the passed month or so that we've been looking for Ashton. Her name was Sally or Sierra or something and she didn't know Jeremy was dead. I thought maybe this was some girlfriend of his but they were acting like brother and sister more than anything. Plus when she mentioned going on a third date with some guy, I realized that this was just a friend he had when he needed or wanted to get away.

Anyway, she had dragged him into some shop because she wanted a new t-shirt so I wandered off inside the store. Next thing I knew, I was in some old bookstore-looking place in the blink of an eye. Mali-Koa, the Gremlin, and a girl that looked similar to her were standing in front of me, along with some woman and the last person I expected to see: Annie Reagan, Michael's ex girlfriend.