Nightstruck - Jenna Black Page 0,101
the back or holding my hand. Things he’d done easily and often before. I slanted a glance at him and saw that he was looking down and slightly away from me, as if hiding his face and the feelings it might reveal. You would never guess that just last night we’d been cuddled together on this very same couch, kissing.
I couldn’t blame him. Not when his mother had been beaten up and almost killed because of me. But oh God, did it ever hurt. I wanted to think this was a temporary setback, that in a few hours—or maybe a few days—he’d find a way to overlook my role in his mom getting hurt, but I found I had no more optimism left in me. In one lightning-swift strike, Piper had taken Luke away from me, just when I’d finally allowed myself to hope he was mine.
I was more alone than I’d ever been.
* * *
I hit rock bottom that night. I hadn’t thought I could sink any lower than I had right after my dad died, but I’d been wrong. Back then, in the good old days, I hadn’t known that I was directly responsible for letting the night magic into the city. Grief is a horrible, miserable emotion, but it becomes downright toxic when you add guilt into the mixture.
I couldn’t go on like this. As careful as Dr. Gilliam and Luke and the rest of their family might be, I had no doubt that Piper and the Nightstruck would get to them eventually. I was already drowning in guilt, and it was only going to get worse. Unless I did something about it.
But what could I do? I’d already determined that giving myself up wasn’t an acceptable option. I supposed if I killed myself, that might be enough to make Piper lose interest in the Gilliams, but as low as I felt, I didn’t feel that low. Besides, I couldn’t do that to my mom and my sister. They’d already lost my dad—and I knew my mom was hurting pretty bad about that, despite the divorce and the hard feelings—and they didn’t need me making things worse. And let’s not even talk about what it would do to Dr. Gilliam and Luke, who were bound to feel responsible.
For the first few hours of that night, those were the only two options I could imagine, and they swirled around in my mind on an endless loop. Again and again I rejected them and ordered myself to come up with something better, but my own emotions kept getting in the way, overwhelming me and derailing any potential new chains of thought.
It wasn’t until I finally lay down and tried to go to sleep that I realized there was a third alternative. One that made me break out in a cold sweat and made everything inside me recoil.
The Gilliams weren’t in danger because of me. They were in danger because of Piper. And the one sure way to get them out of danger was to get rid of Piper.
I sat up in bed and hugged my knees to my chest, shivering and sweating, both at once.
It was an absurd thought.
Twice before I’d been faced with the prospect of shooting a fellow human being, and twice before I had balked. Sure, I’d pulled the trigger eventually, but it took the extraordinarily extenuating circumstances of my dad being killed before my eyes and of Aleric swearing the bullets wouldn’t hurt him before I’d been able to do it. And these had all been strangers.
Was I honestly thinking of shooting Piper, my one-time best friend, in cold blood?
I tried to imagine what it would feel like to hold a gun on her, to pull the trigger, and my entire being cried out in horror and refusal. She had turned into a monster, but except for the green eyes and the awful hair, she still looked like the Piper I used to know. The girl who had never been put off by my shyness, who had such a gift for making me laugh, who had listened to me patiently when I’d complained about my parents’ troubled marriage. That girl had had a lot of flaws, I won’t deny it, but I’d loved her like a sister.
Realistically, I didn’t hold out much hope that Piper or any of the rest of the Nightstruck could be restored to their original selves. They’d been changed by magic, and that was something completely out of human reach. I