Locked

Chapter 1

The shooter is by the door. Sherlock and I are against the wall. Too far for me to reach the shooter before he could fire. Too close for a shot to be anything but fatal.

I’m whispering. “Please, don’t. Please, please don’t.”

“I thought you said you didn’t care about him.” He’s so cold. The hand holding the gun is unwavering.

“I don’t. Listen to me. I don’t.” I’m crying now. I’m shaking apart, the tears dripping down my cheeks. “Please, don’t do this. Just—just…wait…”

“Irene,” Sherlock says quietly. “There’s something I want to tell you.”

I look at him. There’s no fear in his expression. Only acceptance. Only kindness. There’s so much kindness in him as he smiles at me. It burns apart the memory of every scowl, every smirk.

He’s beautiful.

“Hey,” I say to the shooter, through the tears. “It’s my birthday.”

“I know.” He cocks the gun. “And this is my present.”

I move just as the noise explodes out of thin air.

It’s so loud.

It shatters everything.

~~~~
 

CHAPTER ONE

The casserole is burning.

The casserole is burning and the last moving truck is putt-putting away down the road. The new neighbors are probably just beginning to open the tops of boxes, surveying the bathroom and deciding what colors to repaint the walls, and then the bell will ring and I’ll be there with my casserole because that’s the normal thing for a person to do when someone moves in next door.

Except it’s burning.

I rip open the oven, scorching my finger. The casserole’s not too bad. Just a few curls of smoke and a blackened top. I close my eyes. Five minutes later and flames might have engulfed the house. Might have burned me worse than the casserole. If only. Dead people don’t have to play normal with the new neighbors. Or get up in the morning.

I let it cool and then, through the kitchen window aimed directly at the kitchen window of the house across the road, I see someone too lithe to be old and too tall to be younger than me.

A boy.

A boy my age.

There are no better detectors of bullshit than eighteen-year-old boys, and whenever I open my mouth it’s nine hundred percent bullshit. Which is fine. Bullshit is better than the real me.

“Irene?” calls Mom from downstairs. Calls, not yells. To her, I’m still one raised voice away from broken glass. “Did you bring the casserole over yet?”

“Going now!” I shout back and then I’m out the door because the things I can’t face are both inside and outside the house. It doesn’t matter which comes first.

It’s a big house, lots of windows, lots of yard space. Towers over the tiny square thing that belongs to Mom and I. That house had been empty for ten years. Old owner priced way above market value. Rich neighbors, then, but they’d only had one moving truck.  

I ring the doorbell, pick off burnt flakes of cheese, and rehearse. Want me to show you around the neighborhood? You should come over for dinner some night. Hopefully they’ll say no to everything. Not enough people say no.

The door opens and my new neighbor is a vampire.

He’s nearly a foot taller than me. Unruly ink-black hair, and a face made of knife angles. If I were obnoxious, I might use the term shockingly attractive. Or terrifyingly handsome. Holy mother of balls would also be an option. His eyes are crystalized, glittering, and they get even more diamondlike when he sees the casserole.