Eyes in the Darkness (The Coveted) Read online

  Eyes in the Darkness

  The Coveted, Book 1

  Ripley Proserpina

  Rebecca Royce

  As writing with Ripley Proserpina is one of the great joys of my life, I dedicate this book to you—Rebecca

  For Christine and Em. Your lessons about creepy pasta, crytpids, and murder were endlessly helpful.

  And for Becca who sees stories so clearly.

  Contents

  Foreword

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  about rebecca

  About Ripley

  Also by Rebecca

  Also by Ripley Proserpina

  Foreword

  Dearest Reader,

  Thank you so much for picking up this book. It is the first book in a trilogy so please don’t expect resolution at the end of this one. But, Ripley and I always finish our series. You can count on us to do so in a timely manner. We think you’ll love these characters. They are among the best I’ve ever spent time with.

  Thank you for all that you do to support our careers,

  Rebecca & Ripley

  One

  The scandal that started the whole mess would—for better or worse—define our lives for decades to come. It began innocently enough with typical teenager milestones. Kissing a boy in the supply closet. Skipping school and watching the stars come out in the desert sky with my best friend.

  Well, maybe all of it wasn’t innocent. After all, I was a bad girl. Or so said everyone in town who mattered. My grandmother had raised me since my mother’s untimely death. The poor woman had tripped down a flight of stairs when I was three, and that was it for her.

  Every Sunday at church, Gran and everyone else prayed for my immortal soul. It didn’t seem to matter that the preacher giving out all that “godly” advice was fucking at least four of the women in the congregation behind his wife’s saintly back.

  But none of that mattered because everyone else was good, and I was bad. At the end of the day, that was all anyone would remember about me. But when I finally got out of this shit town, I’d never look in the rearview mirror.

  That was my plan, and nothing and no one was going to change it. With one more year in school, I could see the blinking exit sign, so close I could taste it. So real that it wasn’t just a far-away dream anymore but an upcoming plan. The way others decided to go to college or to get a job? I decided to leave. That was it, and maybe it wasn’t much of a plan, but it was what I had.

  The wind blew dust off the road as I trudged toward our mobile home. I’d stuffed a knit cap on my head to cover the loose strands, but it wouldn’t keep the sand and road grit out of it. I could feel it in my teeth and inside my nose. No matter how many showers I took, I could never really get clean of this place.

  A car whizzed by, but I paid it no notice. Long ago, I’d figured out a way to keep my head down and my focus on myself. Every day, as I walked the two miles home from school, I would kick a can. I had a little spot to keep it when I got home, just to the side of the front steps, so it was ready to go the next day. When it became too dented to use, I tossed it into the recycling. In the meantime, it did a great job of confirming what people thought about me—I was a weirdo. The steel-toe of my boots made a satisfying clank when I hit the can and propelled the canister forward.

  My uncle Jay had dropped this particular can one day on his way out of the house. Five in the morning on his way to work at a hospital in Texas, and he was already drunk. Idiot. It was because of a previous drunk driving incident that he couldn’t get hired in New Mexico. I didn’t know if he thought Texas wouldn’t think driving drunk was a big deal, but—newsflash—they did. And newsflash—he was currently doing time in Texas.

  And everyone knew you didn’t want to do time in Texas. New Mexico was bad enough.

  When I got out of here, I was going north. I didn’t even care if it snowed every day. Canada. Alaska. Vermont. Moscow. Iceland. Anything to get away from the dust and the sand.

  I kicked the can harder, and it flew sideways—that was the thing with cans, they didn’t exactly go in the direction you thought they’d go. A car passing by me slammed to a stop as my can flew in front of it. Well, shit.

  At least it wasn’t a fancy car. Or somebody’s jacked-up, after-market outfitted truck. People here were crazy about their trucks. The brake lights lit up, and—good little rule follower—the turn signal blinked.

  I hadn’t kicked the can that hard, and it was pretty much dinged to hell. It had one, maybe two, trips to home and school left in it. But I paid attention in science, and I knew it could do some damage when a car was going fast enough.

  I had a choice: I could run home, or I could deal with it. The survivor in me wanted to run, but I had a reputation, and the police would put two and two together, and suddenly it’s “Lacey Madison, you have the right to remain silent.” Last thing I needed was to have another forty hours added to my community service bill.

  I didn’t recognize the car, which was saying something because this town had five hundred people—four hundred and ninety-five of which were dicks.

  The door opened and out walked Thorn Evans. People might say I didn’t have a heart, but I did. And when I saw that familiar face—tanned skin from working out in the sun, even white teeth, bright green eyesit broke. No. No no no no. Once upon a time, he’d been one of my best friends. He’d been a partner in crime. Actually, he’d been better than that.

  Thorn Evans had been my protector. We might have been children, but he’d made sure I was fed. I wore his cast-off clothes and his boots when he outgrew them. He was my very first friend and introduced me to… nope. Not going there. That way lies madness.

  The passenger side door opened and—fuck me twice—there was Colton mother fucking Ivy. He slammed the door shut, pinning me with a blue-eyed stare that was so familiar, I wanted to cry. Why were they here? They’d gotten out. Why hadn’t they stayed out?

  “What are you doing here?” I asked. My stupid voice trembled, so I made sure to glare extra hard. “Slumming it?”

  “Jesus Christ, Lacey,” Colton started right in. “What are you doing walking home? Anything could happen.”

  “Not your concern.” Where was my can? A flash of red across the road caught my attention. I looked both ways, but the only thing I saw was scrub brush and knee-high dead grass. Ignoring Colton’s and Thorn’s calls, I raced across the road for the can. It still had some life left in it. I dropped it on the ground and kicked it across the street like I was David Beckham.

  “Get in the car,” Colton said. “We’ll bring you home.”

  I jogged across the road, eyes on the cracked concrete. “No spank you,” I said.

  I winced almost as soon as I gave that less than stellar response. I’d always acted like an idiot around Colton. If Thorn had looked out for me, Colton had glared at me. Or ignored me. One thing was certain, though, if I ran, they wouldn’t chase me. Even before they’d left town, heading for the Pacific Ocean in Thorn’s father’s Mustang, my oldest friend had started to pretend he didn’t see me. />
  I had to admit, that Mustang had been way nicer than the four-door sedan they were tooling around in now. If I cared, I might have asked what happened to the other car. Which I didn’t. Because I didn’t.

  “Lacey!” Colton called out. “Wait!”

  But home was a block away, and I doubted they had anything to say to me that I wanted to hear. Damn it.

  “Lacey, come on,” Thorn yelled, and because neither of them seemed to get the hint, I flipped them the bird as I stormed away, holding the damn can and wishing I really could grow wings and fly the fuck out of there. There was silence, but a second later, the car doors closed, and the car engine faded into the distance.

  Smiling ruefully, I mentally patted myself on the shoulder. I was really good at making people leave.

  Because the can was in my hand, and not on the ground, I noticed fluttering paper attached to the telephone poles. Aw, shit. The signs were back up.

  Every few weeks, Vera Dixon put up pictures of her missing son, Robbie. He’d been ten when he disappeared, and his smiling, gap-toothed face was all over town. If he was still alive, he’d be eleven. Personally, I stopped believing in miracles a long time ago, which made my ability to hope for Robbie’s safe return slim to none. Still, I stopped my dramatic escape for a second to stare at the little boy’s photo.

  I swallowed. We all had our own pain, but that family had it in abundance. Drunk dad—but a lot of us could check that box off. Mine had taken off when I was two. Robbie’s mom had sallow and sunken eyes, even before her little boy disappeared. Still, she appeared at church every Sunday, dressed in the same green wrap around skirt that was rapidly getting to be too big for her frame.

  I wondered if she ever ate, or if she just smoked cigarette after cigarette at her kitchen table, staring out the window as she waited for ten-year-old Robbie to come back from school.

  Despite Robbie’s disappearance, our small town was pretty safe. Boring. Invasive. But safe. I sighed. I hadn’t seen Robbie the day he went missing, and even if I had, I wouldn’t have noticed him. I’d gotten really good at putting my head down and pretending that I didn’t give a shit.

  I reached my front porch, put my can in place, and straightened, glancing around. Like every day, Aaron Chee sat across the street, his legs dangling over his porch, watching me. I usually ignored him. It wasn’t like he’d speak to me.

  His long black hair fell in front of his face, rivaling the length of my own. Ever since he’d moved here, his open stares had been a pain in my ass. He was homeschooled, and I never saw him anywhere other than here. Most of the homeschool kids were religious, and the Chees never went to our church.

  I must have just felt like poking a bear, because in that moment, I stared right back. Crossing my arms, I squared off to him. If he wanted to stare, then here I was.

  He glanced behind him at the door of his house like he was making sure no one was there, and then he pushed off the porch. It wasn’t a big jump to the ground, but he landed lightly and straightened slowly, reminding me of some sort of graceful animal—like a panther. He took a step toward me, not threatening in any way, but I stepped back automatically.

  He stopped, catching my flinch, and lifted his hand in a wave. There was something so tentative about it that I dropped my bravado and waved back. “Hi.”

  I had thought he was just a creepy lurker, but he smiled, and my breath caught. Behind all that hair, Aaron was a hottie.

  And way way waaaay out of my league. But now, I was stuck. I’d waved—should have known better—opening the door to conversation, and I’d have to pay the price.

  Aaron checked the road before he crossed over to my yard, studying it as he walked toward me. Self-consciously, I looked where he did, trying to see it through another person’s eyes. I’d gotten used to it. Rotting porch, no grass. Once upon a time, before I’d fully accepted that I was the piece of trash everyone believed me to be, I’d tried to beautify our yard. It was too hot and dry for the grass to grow, so I’d stacked rocks one on top of the other. I’d collected ceramic pots, the cracked ones people threw away after the plants died, and I’d arranged them in a way I thought was artistic.

  Every so often, I straightened it and picked up the things that fell over in bad weather, but I didn’t put the time into it that I first did. I didn’t see the point.

  “Hello.” Aaron pushed his hands into the pockets of his jeans. “I’m Aaron Chee.”

  “I know,” I answered, and inwardly winced at how bitchy I sounded. Why was it when I wanted to be normal, I couldn’t? “I mean, I’ve heard about you.” That didn’t sound better. “I’m Lacey.”

  “I know,” he said. His dark hair fell into his face as he fixed his gaze on his boots. “I’ve heard about you, too.”

  I snorted. “I bet you have. Which story have you heard?”

  “The dicks on the water tower,” he said. He lifted his head, one side of his mouth curving into a smile.

  I rolled my eyes. “Yeah. That wasn’t me. Spray paint is expensive, and I’m saving for other things. If they’d told you about letting the air out of the bus tires before the football team’s away game championship, that was me.”

  He stared at me. “Bet you had a reason.”

  His statement made me freeze. No one would ever think I had a reason to do the things I did. I had, though. I couldn’t say why, but I had a feeling the team needed to stay here. This anxiety had filled me—not excitement because I didn’t give two shits about football—but this knowledge that they could not go. So I did what I had to do. I delayed their departure by a couple of hours, and as a result, they just missed the twenty-car pile-up on the interstate.

  Rather than thanks, I’d gotten in school suspension, lunchtime with the guidance counselor, and another check on my bad girl reputation list. “I’m surprised that you know that about me.” I cleared my throat. “You just seem to stay in your house and stare at me from the porch.”

  He smiled. “I don’t just stay in the house. But I could see why you would think that.” He shrugged. “We don’t go to public school.”

  That was right. There were two siblings. I’d seen the older brother on his way-cool motorcycle. I didn’t know anything about bikes. I wanted to put it on my list: things I had to learn about. I kept it in my desk drawer. Motorcycles was number three. Get out of town was number one. Internally, I shook myself. I had to focus on what I was doing right now.

  Lately, I spent way too much time in my own head. I was forgetting how to talk to people.

  “Why don’t you? Crazy religious?” I rocked back on my feet, a little dismayed by how easy it was to be rude. But then again, I didn’t know him, and if he turned out to be an asshole, I’d be justified.

  He shook his head. “My parents don’t trust the public school system. They don’t like how it skews things in favor of the conquerors, how it rewrites history to make those who stole land the heroes, the complete lack of recognition of the atrocities committed against the native peoples of this country, and the general European bias of all things. Even the maps you study are wrong. Try an internet search for Mercator maps.”

  I was going to, although I wasn’t going to tell it to this hot nerd. “I don’t study at all. I’m just putting in time until I get out of here.”

  He widened his eyes. “Where are you going? Someplace cool?”

  “North.”

  My neighbor blinked rapidly. “Well. That is vague.”

  “Yeah, well.” I had to end this conversation before I did something ridiculous like make a friend. “I have to go in and microwave my dinner. Gran is praying to the Bingo gods tonight. Well, she does that every night—praying, I mean—but tonight she’s doing it with a group. Probably about me. I tend to feature.” And so far, none of her nightly lamenting to the big guy in the sky had stopped me. I still got weird feelings and impulses that did nothing but screw up my life. “You have to go back to doing whatever you do. Bye.”

  He scrunched up his nose. “Do
you want to come eat with us?”

  Did I want to come and eat with them? I swallowed. I hadn’t been invited to anyone’s house for dinner since Thorn and I were little. “Your parents won’t want me to. Trust me. Go ask them.”

  With a glance over his shoulder, he nodded to my instruction. “Sure. I’ll go ask.”

  Hot. Nerdy. Interesting. Polite. And nice to his parents. I’d never have imagined it. “Good luck with that. I’ll be inside with my Hot Pockets. See you the next time you’re creepily staring at me.”

  With that, I turned on my heel, heading to my nightly mess. I closed the door behind me and stared at the scene. Gran certainly did like to leave a lot for me to straighten up. I rubbed my eyes and jumped at the knock on the door. I swung it open, and my neighbor stood there, a bright smile on his face.

  “Come on. My parents would like you to join us.”

  Two

  To say I was surprised put it mildly. I stood, gaping at Aaron like a fish, until all the pieces clicked into place: Dinner. Parents. Permission.

  Well. He’d seen my bluff and raised it.

  Now he waited patiently, hands in his pockets, for me to find my words again. He glanced past my shoulder toward the crowded living room. “Lot of dolls in there.”

  I turned to glance over my shoulder. There were a lot of dolls. They were Gran’s thing. All of us would have been better off if she’d stuck with dolls instead of babies. Six kids, all of them fucked up. Then they’d had kids, and the cycle went on and on.