The Last Echo

“Her name is Casey Atkins. She goes to the university, just like Antonia did.”

Violet felt sick. She wondered if there were any other connections between the two girls, other than the school they attended. She thought about this new girl, Casey, and tried to imagine what she was like, tried not to think about what she might be going through right now.

She hoped they could find her before it was too late.

“What about you?” he asked. “It was a rough day. How are you holding up?” Violet didn’t want to talk about what had happened at the morgue, but it didn’t matter—Rafe wasn’t really asking after her feelings to be nice. “Can you come to the Center in the morning? Sara’s trying to get some of Casey’s things.” He was asking if she could still work.

Violet shook her head. “I don’t think so. Not yet.” Squeezing her eyes shut, she tried to stave off the fogginess that threatened to steal over her once more. “Besides, there’s not much I can do anyway,” she added, as if that was the only thing keeping her away, her inability to do what the others could.

Rafe went silent again, longer than necessary, and Violet wondered if there was something else, something he wasn’t saying. But then he just softly added, “If you change your mind—”

“I won’t,” she stated resolutely. She didn’t want to know any more, not about Antonia Cornett and not about Casey Atkins. Not now. Not while she was feeling like this.

“Fine,” Rafe said. “Good night, V. Sleep tight.”

Violet hung up, ignoring the odd sensation that penetrated the leaden veil surrounding her. Sleep tight? she thought, wishing she had the strength to smile. Who says that anyway?

And what was that other thing? The barely concealed tenor she’d heard in his voice. Something like affection? Maybe tenderness?

Was Rafe going soft on her?

She shook it off, certain she’d only imagined the tone in his voice. She was disoriented, she reminded herself, as her thoughts once again drifted unwittingly to Casey Atkins.

Rubbing her temples, she wondered how on earth she was ever going to get any sleep now, with the fate of a missing girl weighing on her conscience.

After a few minutes, Violet got up and paced across the room once more. The pills were still there, lying on top of a pile of rumpled T-shirts in the top drawer, and she plucked them out, slipping the cap off without a second thought.

They were easier to swallow than she’d imagined they’d be, and for several long minutes as she lay in her bed staring at the ceiling she thought nothing was happening, that the pills weren’t working. And then her eyelids fluttered, growing heavier and heavier. Until, at last, she could no longer hold them open.

And a dark, dreamless sleep claimed her.

At some point, during the early hours of the morning, the dreams found their way in. They were dark dreams, treacherous, submerging Violet in their murky depths until she was incapable of finding her way to the surface. At first the images were harmless, like some sort of crazy kaleidoscope, drifting in and out of focus, colliding and splintering and reforming again. Happy childhood memories, mostly. Flashes of Jay and her friends. Summer days spent climbing trees and playing flashlight tag. Slumber parties, camping, picnics, cherry Slurpees, and school carnivals. Just quick snapshots that meant nothing at all when pieced together.

And then the images became more gruesome. Glimpses of dead squirrels and possums. A cat with empty sockets where its eyes had once been, now gouged out. And the face of the first dead person she’d ever seen—a girl whose eyes had been wide and pleading. Although what Violet most remembered was the girl’s echo, the haunting voice that had called her away from her father’s side as they’d walked through the woods behind their home.

But it was the last fragments of the dream, images that made her feel as if she were drowning, reminding Violet that her ability was nothing less than a curse, where she saw the faces of killers. The two men who’d hunted in her hometown just months before, killing violently, brutally. Mike and Megan’s father, a man who’d murdered his wife years earlier, and then killed himself in a final act of desperation. And her uncle, someone she loved almost as much as her own father, whose imprint had been earned simply by saving the life of his own niece from the hands of a serial killer. She saw too the sadistic James Nua, who’d ended the lives of his very own children.

Finally, the last man she saw didn’t have a face in her dream; she simply knew him as the collector—but he was there too, a dark, featureless mass, coming closer and closer to where Violet flailed, struggling to remain afloat and desperate to find her way to the surface and break free from the waters that threatened to drown her.

She gasped at the same time she jolted upright, her body gripped in the spasm of an unvoiced scream. As if deprived for too long, oxygen savaged her lungs as she gulped mouthfuls of air, waiting until enough time passed that, at last, her breathing finally found a rhythm that felt steady and calm.

And the tormenting visions faded, becoming nothing more than a memory. Enough was enough, Violet thought. She had to take control. She needed to go to the Center after all.

“Are you sure you’re okay with this?” Violet asked once more before reaching for the door’s handle.

Jay scowled, but not at Violet. He was gazing uncertainly at the neglected façade of the warehouse they were parked in front of. “Are you sure this is the right place?” It was impossible not to notice the grime and the desolation in this part of town. “This is where all the magic happens?” He chuckled, but Violet could hear the concern and couldn’t help wondering at his use of the word magic. She was suddenly nervous about him being there, about having him so close to her team.