She clutches at her head and doubles over, screaming.
“Zoë!” I scream. “What’s wrong?”
Her body goes limp and she is hoisted wrathfully in the air by an invisible dark force. I stumble backward, horrified, and collide with Charlie. A cloud of swirling black smoke engulfs Zoë and swallows her into nothing. She is gone.
“Zoë!” I scream again. “No! Zoë!”
Charlie grabs my arms and pulls me close to him, effectively restraining me. His expression is fearful and vacant.
“Where is she? Where’d she go?”
“I don’t know,” he quivers.
A thick fog forms high in the sky and descends over us. “What is that?” I ask Charlie.
“I don’t know, but it can't be good.” He grabs my hand and pulls me quickly toward the tree. The fog descends so rapidly that it only takes seconds before we lose sight of everything except each other. We are forced to stop walking. I squeeze his hand tightly and grab hold of his shirt with my other hand, pulling him close to me.
“I’m scared. What’s happening?”
He puts his hand on the back of my head and pulls me even closer. The soft fabric of his t-shirt rubs against my cheek. The comforting scent of his skin fills my nose but does nothing to quell my fears. He breathes heavily and his heart beats loud enough for me to hear it. Is this the last moment I will ever live?
A bitterly cold breeze slides across us, our breaths instantly becoming visible. A thick, white frost crackles over the dirt and under our feet. A loud voice whispering my name fills the air.
“Emma,” is all it says.
31. YOU FOUND ME
“You are finally here. I have waited so very long for you to arrive.”
A raspy female voice with a thick Spanish accent falls upon us, seemingly from above. The fog slightly dissipates, enabling us to look around to see where the voice has come from. Charlie steps in front of me and holds his arm out across my body. I don’t see what he sees. “What is it?” I whisper.
The fog thins more and a female figure materializes from the darkness of the distant trees. “I won’t let you hurt her,” Charlie says, his voice quivering.
She glides toward us on a fluid cloud of bubbling black smoke. Her black hair hangs in thick, messy waves around her face. Her liquid black eyes reflect the light of the moon. I dig my fingers into Charlie’s arm, terrified of what might happen next.
A terrible screeching sound fills the air. My hands fly to my ears to cover them. The sound transforms into what my mind identifies as the chirping of a hundred different birds. I fall to my knees, crying in agony. Charlie squats in front of me and grabs my upper arms with his hands. I can see his lips mouthing my name but I can’t hear anything he’s saying.
All at once the noise stops. I lower my hands. “Emma, are you okay?” Charlie asks.
He turns toward the woman and demands, “who are you? What do you want?”
“Emma. Please, introduce us.”
I choke on the words, too afraid to talk, even more afraid to ignore her. “She’s Isabel.”
“I didn’t even have to try very hard to hurt her that time. Imagine what it will be like when I put effort into it.”
Grabbing on to Charlie's arm, I pull myself to standing again. “No matter how much effort you put in to it, you’ll never get what you want from me.”
“And what makes you think you can stop me?” she asks, gliding toward me on her cloud of silvery black smoke. She looks at Charlie with a maniacal expression on her face. Her head tilts slightly to the side and Charlie falls to his knees. His body shakes and quivers as if he is having a seizure. He collapses into a heap on the ground.
For a fleeting second, I begin to panic. Then I realize there is nothing I can do to stop her from hurting Charlie. If I show her how terrified, helpless and alone I feel she will use it against me, and against him. I have to fight for myself and hope that she will ignore him and come after me instead. I won’t let her have the satisfaction of knowing how much she scares me.
I muster up all of my courage and step over Charlie’s fallen body toward Isabel. “You’ve had all this time and you haven’t been able to figure out a way to get me. You’ve tried