Twisted

When I arrived back at home, both Alexandria and Brian wore looks that said: Bad news alert. Maybe the school had called, looking for me. Maybe – and this is what made my blood run cold – the same person who called me from Listy’s phone had called them too.

“Rayna,” Alexandria started, gesturing for me to follow her into the lounge room and sit down. She glanced at her husband, who seemed calm and maybe a little regretful. He always was after he hurt one of us but he just couldn’t control his temper.

“Listen, we...” She trailed off, unsure, rubbing her hands together nervously. “Carly called us before. She told us...well. I know this is going to hurt you but...” She hesitated.

I already know, I wanted to shout. She had been kidnapped. I wanted to tell them about the call I’d gotten but that would mean going into everything that had happened today and I just wasn’t ready for that.

“She’s in hospital.” My mind froze. They’d already hurt her? And – maybe even weirder – she’d already been found? “She passed out in school. She hasn’t woken up yet. No one knows what’s wrong with her.”

Wait. That didn’t sound right.

They must have taken my confused face as worry because they started to comfort me – or, well, Alexandria did. Brian wasn’t exactly a comforting person.

“It’ll be alright,” she tried to assure me. “She probably just fainted or something. Maybe she has an iron deficiency or she didn’t eat or drink enough today. We doubt it’s something serious. And we can go to the hospital now, if you like. To see her. I’m pretty sure they’d let you see her, since you’re related.” I could tell she was worried because of her babbling and wringing hands.

“Let’s go,” I said quietly, still confused and wondering if they’d made a mistake. But how could they? She passed out in school, where everyone knew her. It wasn’t like they mistook another girl as Listy.

In the car, I chewed on my lip and assumed the call was another hallucination – god, it was scary how many I had in one day. And I pulled out my phone, suddenly thinking of something. If the call was a hallucination, then it wouldn’t be in my call log, right?

But it was. Right there, shining on the screen.

It said I’d had two calls from Kalista earlier today, only seven minutes apart. Frowning, I put my phone back into my pocket and sat there in stunned silence. It wasn’t a hallucination. And that suddenly had me questioning everything – my life, my sister, and all of today.


We arrived at the hospital within fifteen minutes and waited even longer for someone to give me permission to see Listy. They finally allowed me, though Alexandria and Brian weren’t, since they weren’t related to Listy by blood.

When I entered the room, I was robbed of breath. She shared a room with four other patients and one empty bed, but she was the only one who was unconscious. I wondered briefly why they hadn’t let my foster parents in when it was a shared room – but then decided they probably didn’t want it overcrowded. I could see the other patients occupying visitors. Or maybe they didn’t let anyone other than blood relatives to see someone who’d only been in the hospital for less than a day. I just didn’t know but it didn’t really matter anyway.

I sat in the single plastic chair beside Listy’s bed. Her eyes were closed. She didn’t look sick or injured or in any other way hurt – I could’ve thought she was just sleeping.

“Listy...” I murmured, keeping my voice down for two reasons: I didn’t want anyone to overhear me and honestly, seeing Listy there, unconscious and hurt somehow, I could barely raise my voice above a whisper. “Why are you here? Why aren’t you awake and happy?”

Maybe it was kind of weird for me to be talking to someone who clearly couldn’t hear me but it just felt like I was talking to my healthy sister, minus the replies. And that was why I told her the whole story of today – right from the beginning, including every single messed up detail. It didn’t relieve the heaviness on my chest like they say in all the stories, but my thoughts gradually lost the out-of-control edge.

Uttering the story helped me think. For a moment, I considered a crazy idea – maybe the dark person had taken Listy’s soul and left the body. But that would mean she’d be dead – which she wasn’t – or my life was becoming a fantasy book. I had it all – an unconscious sister, an evil-sounded enemy (who I hadn’t actually met) and the hot guy with a mysterious air.

But it wasn’t a story. It was my life and fantasy stuff just wasn’t real.

Knowing staying beside Listy’s side wasn’t going to make her wake up, I left the room and found Alex and Brian outside. They didn’t say anything but I saw a look they exchanged with each other, one that said, If we don’t say anything, maybe she’ll be okay.

The ride home was silent too, making it not exactly awkward but slightly uncomfortable, and I escaped into my room as soon as we got home. It wasn’t nighttime yet – more like mid-afternoon – but when I collapsed on my bed, my eyes started to close. No tears fell, keeping my promise, but I felt incredibly miserable. And misery always made me exhausted.

So I fell asleep.

I didn’t wake up until the light coming through the window was dark and the house was silent. My head felt like it was stuffed with fuzziness and blurry edges and my mouth was dry as bark. A glance at the clock on my bedside table told me it was near midnight. And it was clear I wasn’t going to be sleeping again any time soon.

Blurriness fading away, I sat up slowly and blinked until my vision focused. Shock crawled through me when I made out a dark figure in the corner of my room – but not as much shock as I’d thought I would feel. Fear was the most present emotion in my mind as I recalled the dark person phone call. What if they’d come for me? But the figure didn’t move and neither did I – well, not really. My hand was searching for something to use as a weapon, while still hiding the fact that I was actually doing that.

Finally, my hand closed on my phone, wrapped up in my blankets and I gripped it with my sweaty palm before throwing it in the general direction of the figure and making a run for the door. I’d thought that, even if I missed, it would still distract whoever it was long enough for me to escape.

But it didn’t work very well. Just as my hand started to close around the door knob, a hand closed around my wrist. A scream nearly forced itself out of my throat but, of course, the person had already covered my mouth. Typical bad luck.

“Don’t scream,” the person whispered in my ear. His voice sounded familiar. “I’m...I’m Blayze. You met me today but I didn’t tell you my name.” That didn’t prove anything. “You said your name is Rayna.” Except that he was definitely my stalker.

Although the man I met today was seemingly my stalker as well.

I nodded slightly to show him I wouldn’t and he dropped his hand cautiously. Then, I whipped around and hissed under my breath, “What the hell are you doing here? I didn’t even know your name until a minute ago and yet, you know where I live and which room is mine!” In the darkness, I could just barely make out the features of his face that showed he really was telling the truth. I could see a dim glint of green in his eyes.

I was starting to shiver when he stepped back from me, letting air soak into the empty spaces between me and him. “I need to talk to you,” he muttered. “You ran off so fast before. And I’m not actually supposed to talk to you until your birthday...” He glanced at the blinking clock just as I did. “But hell, it’s one minute until it actually is. So, give me a minute?” He hopefully cast a weak smile in my direction but all I gave him back was a sharp nod.

I didn’t even know why I wasn’t more scared. There was a creepy man who apparently knew everything about me in my bedroom in the middle of the night. I think that alone gave me reason to start freaking out, let alone the creepiness of the rest of the day. But I just felt empty. Numb.

A minute passed in suffocating silence until the clock ticked over to midnight. The time blinked at us, accusing me of being so unfeeling. I turned my eyes away and back to the green-eyes man – Blayze, he’d said his name was. My gaze was flat, my voice even more as I said, “So. What the hell is going on?”

He looked back, an unnamed emotion stinging in his eyes. Slowly, he gestured for me to sit down and I slumped back onto my bed, the covers creating a soft, warm familiarity. He too sat down but at my desk chair instead.

“Listen,” he started, voice quiet so as to keep everyone else in the house unaware of his presence. “I’m not sure how I’m going to explain this. You probably won’t even believe me but if my suspicions are right, then it might be easier for you to believe. God, I don’t know.” He rubbed his hands over his eyes, as though he were tired, and I just sat there, staring, coldness creeping through my veins.

My voice wobbled only slightly when I uttered my question, the one that was hovering so darkly in my brain. “Just spit it out. What are you trying to tell me?”

His eyes met mine. “Your blood isn’t human.”