I'll Be Waiting, page 30
So what am I going to do now?
They’re in there. Patrice and Lori. I know they are, and they aren’t going anywhere.
I can’t save Shania.
Shania had been ready to watch me die. She’d set me up from the start. She threw Anton’s ashes into the trash, and I want her to pay for that.
But that makes it worse, doesn’t it? I want her to pay, and so if I slam this blade between her ribs, is that why? Not to save my life or to protect Jin, but to make Shania pay?
“Nic…” Anton’s voice whispers from somewhere behind Shania, who’s doubled over, sobbing and retching as she clutches her bloodied chest.
“I don’t know what to do,” I whisper to Anton.
He appears then, as clearly as I’ve ever seen him, his face drawn in a sad smile.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers.
My own tears rise. “No advice?”
That sad smile quirks at the corners. “Did you ever take my advice? Anyone’s? You’ll do what you need to do, and it’ll be the right thing.”
My eyes fill. “I miss you.”
His mouth opens—and Shania lunges at me, howling as she smashes both fists into my chest, pushing me back. I raise the knife, but she just keeps coming, face contorted with rage.
“We aren’t going to stop, Janica.” It’s Patrice now, snarling. “I will kill you. I swear I will.”
I slash the knife. It catches her outstretched hand, but she only shoves me again, harder. Then something flickers behind her eyes. A flash of horror from Shania, quickly replaced by Lori’s death’s-head grin.
“We aren’t stopping, girl,” Lori says. “We will kill you. We will kill your friend back at the house. We will kill anyone who comes to find you.”
Another blow, this one slamming me into the car. My foot hits Mrs. Kilmer’s outstretched hand, and when I look down, Lori grabs for my knife hand, but it’s a half-assed swipe, as if she’s not actually trying to grab it.
Because she’s not.
In that moment, the world seems to creak to a halt. The blood stops pounding in my ears. My adrenaline ebbs. Even my breath returns, clear and even.
I understand what Patrice and Lori are doing … and I lift my hands over my head.
“I’m sorry, Shania,” I say. “If you’re in there, and you can hear me, I truly am sorry. You thought I was responsible for what happened to your sister. I understand, and I forgive you. I only hope you can forgive me for this.”
I draw back the hand with the knife, and victory flares in Lori’s eyes. She sees the end coming. She sees freedom coming. The freedom to bide her time and return when she can, called forth by another family member with this darkness weaving through them.
“I’m sorry, Shania,” I whisper. “I really am.”
I plow my hand into her stomach. Lori throws back her head, her agonized scream almost ecstatic. With the pain comes freedom. A knife in her gut—
I see the moment where she realizes the truth. Where her head whips up, eyes widening, gaze going to the knife in my left hand … while my right punches her stomach a second time.
Lori falls backward, and I pounce on her. I jam the knife into my back pocket and flip Lori over and then pin her like Cirillo did to me. She fights like a wild thing, all gnashing teeth and howls of rage. She wants me to kill Shania. Kill her host. If I do, I release her. I release Lori, and I release Patrice.
This is the horrific thing I am doing to Shania, and it might even be worse than killing her. No, it is worse. I am sentencing her to the fate of her aunt and her sister.
“I am sorry, Shania. Truly and utterly sorry—”
“Nic!”
This time, Anton’s shout has me whirling, knowing it’s a warning and—
Tires roar on pavement. A car is speeding up the road, and the driver can’t see us with the bugs.
I grab Shania and roll as fast as I can. Brakes scream. Tires appear right where my head had been. A door squeaks open.
“Nicola!”
That voice. That wonderful voice.
I’m sorry, Anton, I adore you, but this is the voice I want to hear right now.
Keith appears, his face frantic. He sees me pinning Shania down.
“Call the police,” I say.
He hovers there. I open my mouth to start explaining, but before I can utter another word, my brother—my wonderful brother—nods and pulls out his phone and makes the call.
THIRTY-SIX
The bugs are gone. Maybe that’s the last thing I should be thinking, but it’s all my brain can process as I sit in the front yard, police cars in the driveway, ambulance out front. In everything that is happening—one person injured, three horribly murdered, the alleged killer ranting about ghosts and séances—I have been forgotten, and that is exactly what I want. A few moments to sit and stare at half-dead midges crawling on my jeans.
Keith is with Jin. I insisted on that. My injuries are minor, and Jin’s are not, though the paramedics say he’s stable.
I sit there, watching the midges die, and my mind is empty. Blessedly empty, my body equally empty, drained of adrenaline, only retaining enough energy to keep me upright.
I will need that energy. From experience, I know what happens next. The police will remember me—the only lucid survivor—and I will spend hours in questioning, praying it doesn’t end in a jail cell. But I can’t bring myself to care about that right now.
I’m safe. Jin is alive. Everyone else …
“Nic.”
When the whisper comes, it might be the only thing that could pierce my shock and exhaustion. I follow it to see the faintest outline of Anton. Even without the bugs blocking him, he’s barely there, pulsating as if he’s already fading back to the other side.
“I’m sorry,” he says.
“I think that should be my line.”
He crouches in front of me. “I can’t stay.”
My eyes fill. “I know. I shouldn’t have called you—”
One finger rises to my lips. “Shhh.”
I nod, tears spilling out.
“I didn’t get a chance to finish,” he whispers, his voice barely there now. “At the roadside. When I said I’d be waiting.”
I look up. I can just make him out.
“What I was trying to say is…” He comes closer. “I’ll be waiting. But don’t be in any rush to join me.” He looks into my eyes. “I’m not going anywhere.”
I choke out a sobbing laugh, and I swear I feel his lips against my forehead. And then he is gone.
* * *
I’m in the hospital for observation. I don’t need it, but sometimes people—even doctors—can get overcautious when they hear you have CF. I’ve just suffered a trauma and … who knows? Better safe than sorry.
I’ll argue tomorrow. Argue with the doctors. Argue with Keith. Convince my poor beleaguered brother that I can go home. Or, if he insists, I’ll go home with him for a day or two.
The police have their story. A version of the truth, where we’d been conducting a séance to contact Anton, and Shania swapped out the ashes, hoping to contact her sister instead. She thought we had, and she believed she was possessed by the spirit of her sister, a madness that led her to murder.
When I’d explained, I could feel their gazes on me, the weight of them throwing me back twenty-two years to the detective who’d said, in all seriousness, that this was what came of messing with dark forces. But he hadn’t been entirely wrong, had he? He just didn’t have the whole story, where the “dark forces” were a very specific sort, shadow tendrils that ensnared a family.
They’ll still need to investigate, of course. But the evidence will support my story, which Jin can corroborate as much as possible.
As for what happened to Jin, he’d set out that morning only to have my car die a few hundred feet from the house. When he couldn’t get it going again, he’d fought his way back to the house through that fog of bugs, and been attacked by something in it.
Did my car coincidentally die before Jin could escape? I doubt it. Same as I doubt that was just an unusually dense swarm of midges. Whatever “dark forces” had been present, they’d tried to make damn sure we couldn’t flee.
I’ve pieced together the rest as best I can. It seems Shania saw the story of Anton’s death. She’d already been living and working in Toronto, and that article launched a plan of revenge. She inserted herself into my grief-counseling group where—after a few sessions—she’d requested me as a mentor. Had she always hoped to use the séances to contact her sister and unleash her on me? Had she been working up to that? I won’t ever know all the answers, but when I invited her to join our week at the lake house, she saw her chance, though I don’t think she ever imagined anything like what actually happened.
Shania is undergoing assessment now. I know what will happen. The same thing that happened to her sister and aunt. She will spend her life in a mental hospital, and the horror of that will never leave me.
Patrice blamed me for putting her in an institution. I can argue that Shania put herself there when she sentenced me to death at Patrice’s hands, but that’s not entirely fair. I chose to let Shania live, and that was no mercy. No mercy at all.
When my hospital room opens, I expect to see Keith. Instead, Jin slides in.
“Hey,” I say, rising to sit. “Up and around?”
“I heard you found the speakers,” he says.
I go still, and then I nod.
His face falls and his head drops. “I’m so sorry, Nic. I only wanted to give you closure and reassurance. But it was a patronizing thing to do, especially to a friend.”
“Yep.”
He looks up with a wan half smile. “Not going to tell me that my heart was in the right place?”
“Oh, I know it was, but it was still patronizing, and I would be furious if I didn’t feel guilty being angry at a guy who was beaten with a paving stone.”
“By a vengeful ghost. Don’t forget that part.”
I reach out and squeeze his hand.
He pulls a chair up to my bed and sits. “I’m sorry for all of it, Nic. For Shania and Brodie and Mrs. Kilmer and Dr. Cirillo. For what you had to go through, both twenty-two years ago and what you went through now. But I’m also sorry for what you didn’t get. I really did hope we’d contact Anton.”
I could tell him the truth. Maybe I should. But it feels too private, too personal. Like the moment at the roadside that should have been just between Anton and me, only it wasn’t. This can be.
“I know he’s there,” I say. “I know he’s waiting. And I know, if he could make contact, he’d kick my ass and tell me to start living again.”
Jin’s gaze meets mine. “He really would, Nic.”
I turn away as I nod. “His life was cut short, and I will never stop raging at the universe for that. We had plans, and he’s gone, but those plans don’t need to die with him. They just need to change a little.”
I look over at Jin. “Lucy has always wanted to see the northern lights. What would you say to a family cruise to Iceland? You, me, Keith, Libby, Hayden, Lucy…”
His brows rise. “A cruise with all of us? Are you sure?”
“Absolutely. A celebration. No expense spared.” I smile. “My treat.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My main character, Nicola, has cystic fibrosis, which I do not have, meaning I needed help with this aspect of the story. I found it with K. Vargas, who patiently answered all my questions and read the manuscript to ensure I represented Nicola and CF as best I could. A huge thanks for that and, as always, any remaining errors are mine alone.
Also by Kelley Armstrong
Rip Through Time
A Rip Through Time
The Poisoner’s Ring
Disturbing the Dead
Haven’s Rock
The Boy Who Cried Bear
Murder at Haven’s Rock
Rockton
The Deepest of Secrets
A Stranger in Town
Alone in the Wild
Watcher in the Woods
This Fallen Prey
A Darkness Absolute
City of the Lost
Cainsville
Rituals
Betrayals
Deceptions
Visions
Omens
Age of Legends
Forest of Ruin
Empire of Night
Sea of Shadows
The Blackwell Pages (co-written with Melissa Marr)
Thor’s Serpents
Odin’s Ravens
Loki’s Wolves
Otherworld
Thirteen
Spell Bound
Waking the Witch
Frostbitten
Living with the Dead
Personal Demon
No Humans Involved
Broken
Haunted
Industrial Magic
Dime Store Magic
Stolen
Bitten
Darkest Powers ＆ Darkness Rising
The Rising
The Calling
The Gathering
The Reckoning
The Awakening
The Summoning
Nadia Stafford
Wild Justice
Made to Be Broken
Exit Strategy
Standalone novels
Wherever She Goes
Aftermath
The Life She Had
The Masked Truth
Missing
Every Step She Takes
Hemlock Island
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Kelley Armstrong is the author of more than fifty novels, most recently the Rip Through Time mysteries and a horror novel, Hemlock Island. She lives with her family in Canada. You can sign up for email updates here.
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Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-One
Twenty-Two
Twenty-Three
Twenty-Four
Twenty-Five
Twenty-Six
Twenty-Seven
Twenty-Eight
Twenty-Nine
Thirty
Thirty-One
Thirty-Two
Thirty-Three
Thirty-Four
Thirty-Five
Thirty-Six
Acknowledgments
Also by Kelley Armstrong
About the Author
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
First published in the United States by St. Martin’s Press, an imprint of St. Martin’s Publishing Group
I’LL BE WAITING. Copyright © 2024 by Kelley Armstrong. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Publishing Group, 120 Broadway, New York, NY 10271.
www.stmartins.com
Cover design by Ervin Serrano
Cover art: Ouija Planchette © EngravingFactory/Shutterstock
eISBN 9781250284228
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First Edition: 2024
Kelley Armstrong, I'll Be Waiting
