Midika Crane
Thea
Dad is sitting at the dinner table when I walk back inside.
Despite the fact he is slightly balding, and the scuff of dark hair on his chin suggests something like a beard, we look alike.
Everyone says we have the same nose, and our eyes have the same dark tint around the outside.
He smiles, setting his newspaper down on the table, letting me get a glimpse of the front page.
Jessica’s face has been printed large scale, with a daunting title and, most likely, a degrading passage on how she was depressed and how it was suicide.
If the town believed that, then no propaganda would surface, and everything would be okay.
“Hey honey,” he says, peering at me from behind his reading glasses. I smile at him warmly, dumping my backpack on one of the dining room chairs as I go to sit in the seat opposite him.
“I was just at June’s,” I lie. No point bringing Casper up.
Dad stands, tucking the newspaper under his arm as he wanders to the kitchen. “You look cold. Would you like a drink?”
“Sure,” I say, rubbing my hands together. He has no idea I’ve shown up here in someone else’s car, rather than walking all the way from June’s.
I know he hates the fact I took a route so close to the Phantom Forest.
Dad rustles around in the kitchen for a moment, boiling the jug, getting the tea ready. In the meantime, I kick off my shoes and hang my jacket on the back of the chair.
“Someone else went missing today,” Dad tells me from the kitchen, making my blood run cold. “A boy, this time.”
This is the third person who’s disappeared from town. It can’t be a coincidence. “Who?”
“Ryan Connolly,” Dad tells me. I close my eyes, a mental picture of the young boy clouding my vision. Another one I went to school with.
His family is very wealthy, living in the best neighborhood, providing him with the best clothes and car. He wasn’t a jock, but his money bought him popularity, and even girls.
“What do his parents think?” I ask warily. Prominent figures in this town’s society, Ryan’s parents are known to hold the town on a leash.
Sometimes, we think his father believes he is the substitute Alpha, since no one took over the role since Jasper’s father.
Dad chuckles. “Your boyfriend and his father, along with half the town, are out looking for him.”
My father loves Luca. Loves him. The two get along so well they should be the ones dating.
My father was the one to introduce me to the boy, letting us date straight away, unlike other boys I’d had any interest in before.
“Apparently a man recently moved into the estate in the Phantom Forest. He might be brought in for questioning,” Dad says, setting my tea in front of me. Casper...
He wouldn’t be the reason why they have gone missing, right?
I sip my tea. “I suppose it is the only lead.”
I look down into my cup, taken aback by the sour taste it leaves in my mouth. Not the refreshing, tannin taste I was used to.
And just as I swallow, my heart sinks in my chest as I assess the contents in the cup.
Thick, black... almost like I was drinking straight oil.
I set the teacup down slowly, trying not to scream. Trying not to cry out. Casper had warned me. But this is my father; he wouldn’t poison me.
“Like your tea? It’s new, meant to calm nerves,” my father says. This strikes my heart with full frontal force. He’s lying to me, through his coffee-stained teeth.
My own father just gave me a sedative, and won’t admit it.
I won’t react. I can’t.
“I think I’ll go to bed,” I say carefully, already feeling my tongue is heavy and pasty in my mouth.
He really did it. He really did drug his own daughter.
“Tired?” he asks innocently, catching my gaze within his own. I nod, standing slowly so I won’t fall.
Whatever he has given me, it’s working fast. It seems to be starting at my feet, sinking them to the ground like a weight, before crawling up my legs.
He says ‘goodnight’ but I don’t reply. All I can think about is ‘why’. Why would he drug me? What does he want to do with me?
I need to get out of here, now, before these questions are answered without me even knowing.
I slam my bedroom door behind me, stumbling over heavy feet, feeling as if my body is wading through something as dense as water.
I fall onto the bed, my arms struggling to pull myself up enough to grab my phone.
Luca will come here... He’ll save me.
I try to text, but my eyes are blurring, and my thumbs refuse to move, as if my brain has cut itself off from my body.
I have to crawl on my hands and knees to the bathroom, bending over the toilet to stick my fingers down my throat to throw up the tea.
After I wash out my mouth four times, I drag my numb back legs to my room, before dizziness hits me like a truck, and I trip face first into unconsciousness.
I wake once. I fight through a heavy haze hovering over my mind, catching the sound of two familiar voices. Still on my bed, I stare through the crack in my bedroom door.
Luca and my father are standing there, deep in a heated conversation.
“Now?”
“I had no choice.”
“Why? Why rush the next stage so fast?”
“He’s here. That goddamn man will ruin everything if he finds her. He will take her from us, because she belongs to him.”
I don’t need to hear anymore. I need to get out of here. And the window is my only option.
The one sip I took must have not been enough to keep me unconscious, because I can feel myself coming back to normal, as I force my window open with absolute stealth.
Still talking, Luca and Dad don't notice me rather ungracefully force my body to maneuver through the window.
I fall on my stomach, the ground almost winding me. The moment they realize I am no longer in that room, they’re going to come for me, and do Goddess knows what.
I find my feet as my head clears, the drug I had thrown up fading into the distance of my veins. I’m free... but... where do I go?
My own boyfriend has betrayed me... and my dad has, too. I don't know which is worse.
June's. I can trust her. I circle the house, finding the path that leads to her house. I can run there, and never look back.
Then in the morning—but the police are behind what just happened. At least, half of their force is.
Tears flow without me being able to stop them. My mind can’t put together any proper thought that makes sense to me. Except one. Casper. He knew about the tea, and that someone would give it to me.
He even tested me, and I failed.
Suddenly, a jab of nausea hits me. The drug is still in effect, and it is as if it’s on wave two of its infection of my system.
I fall to my knees in the middle of the path, confusion hitting me every second.
And then I see him.
He’s standing between the trees, shadows curling around his limbs, eyes more violet than I have ever seen. He doesn’t look real—like the personification of magic itself.
It seems to emanate from him in dark tendrils of the night.
Casper.
He almost looks disappointed at seeing me here, in the middle of the woods at night. Striding forward, Casper kneels down in front of me.
Gleaming leather gloves wrap his hands, almost merging into the sleeves of his dress shirt. Why is he dressed so neatly in the middle of the night?
Wait...”Why are you here?”
My voice is raspy, sounding bizarre next to the gentle sounds of the night. And the moment Casper’s silky smooth voice could be heard, I sounded deranged.
“Why did you drink it? I warned you,” Casper mutters, brushing my hair away with his gloved fingers. I shiver. He isn’t telling me why he’s here, and for some reason, I know not to press it.
“I didn’t expect it,” I tell him, staring directly into those violet eyes.
Casper stands, glancing over my shoulder, sighing as he does. I join him, making it to my feet, but not without swaying dramatically first.
Luckily, Casper steadies me, hands gripping my shoulder to stop me from falling onto my butt again.
“Why him?” I ask, my voice weak. “Why my own father?”
Casper looks grim. If he did happen to wander into the woods at the same time I did, then he might know why my own father decided to drug me. And maybe why Luca happens to be part of it as well.
“Because of me,” he tells me. “He was going to take you far away to somewhere so desolate, so alone, you would never escape, nor see the sun again.”
His words take me back for a second. So callous, with no holding back. But what frightens me the most is the fact he did not once flinch, instead staying true to his words of pure honesty.
“Why because of you? What did you do to him?” For a moment, it doesn’t look as if he is going to tell me, by the way he begins leading me down the path.
“I did nothing to him. It is about what I will do to him,” Casper says cryptically. I frown, not quite understanding what he means.
He looks down at me as we walk. “I have been lying to you about a few things.”
“Like what?” I ask warily.
I have been lied to by many people, and now, I don’t know who I can trust with anything today. My own father lied. My boyfriend.
Everyone I love and care about is turning against me, and I don’t even know why.
“My name, for a start,” he says. Casper isn’t his real name?
Suddenly, the sound of someone shouting echoes through the forest. We exchange glances, instantly becoming aware of who is in the forest with us.
“We need to go,” Casper, or whoever he is, insists. He grabs my hand, the leather of his glove feeling foreign.
He begins pulling me away from the sound of the shout.
The sudden change of direction and the insistence on movement has my head spinning, the drug I’d taken earlier begins rearing its ugly head once again.
“I can't,” I breathe, my feet skidding against the path. “I might pass out again.”
And I’m right. Because as Casper turns, a vignette of blurriness shrouds my vision, and I know at that moment I won't be able to stop myself from becoming unconscious.
And the last memory I have before darkness hits is of Casper catching me in his arms.
“I won't let anything bad happen to you. I'll protect you, I promise…”