Torn

Book 1: Torn

by Erica O'Rourke

Genres: YA Fantasy; YA Paranormal; YA Romance

Synopsis

Everyone has secrets. Even best friends. Swirling black descends like ravens, large enough to block the glow of the streetlights. A dull roar starts like a train on the 'L', a far-away rumbling that grows louder as it pulls closer, until it's directly overhead and you feel it in your chest, except this doesn't pass you by. Verity, white-faced and eyes blazing, shouts through the din, "Run, Mo!" Mo Fitzgerald knows about secrets. But when she witnesses her best friend's murder, she discovers Verity was hiding things she never could have guessed. To find the answers she needs and the vengeance she craves, Mo--quiet, ordinary, unmagical Mo--will have to enter a world of raw magic and shifting alliances. And she'll have to choose between two very different, equally dangerous guys--protective, duty-bound Colin and brash, mysterious Luc. One wants to save her, one wants to claim her. Which would you choose?"Who doesn't love a character torn between two dangerous worlds and two risky guys? The only thing safe about this book is how good it is." --Lee Nichols, author of Deception, A Haunting Emma Novel"Dark, exciting and totally addictive!  Just.  .  .wow!" –Kristi Cook, author of Haven "Dark, magical, and delicious!" -- New York Times Bestselling Author C. L. Wilson

Release date: July 1, 2011

Publisher: Kensington Books

Print pages: 321

Sample

I woke up to the smell of Lysol and the end of the world. In my defense, I didn’t know it was the end of the world at the time. I didn’t know anything, and it was better that way. There’s a reason people say ignorance is bliss.

The room looked like every crappy emergency room I’d ever seen on TV, with the notable difference that I was in it—light blue curtains for walls and rolling supply carts labeled with black marker and masking tape, a ceiling of water-stained acoustic tiles and flickering fluorescent lights. The clock on the wall read 12:38 AM, and the ER was just gearing up for the night, the clatter and bustle clearly audible through the curtains surrounding me on three sides.

I struggled to sit up in the hospital bed, which turned out to be a bad idea, and slipped back with a gasp. The pain was everywhere, waves of it crashing through my body like Lake Michigan during a storm, and the room turned inky around the edges. I tried to draw a breath without whimpering, and failed.

Moving was out, and breathing seemed dicey, but I needed to find Verity. If I was here, she was, too, and worse off than me. That, at least, I remembered.

Swirling black descends like ravens, large enough to block the glow of streetlights and neon shop signs. A dull roar starts like a train on the “L,” a faraway rumbling that grows louder as it pulls closer, until it’s directly overhead and you feel it in your chest, except this doesn’t pass you by. Verity, white faced and eyes blazing, shoves me, shouting through the din, “Run, Mo! Run, damn it!” And then a scream, and when I wake, she is on the ground, the copper scent of blood and fear filling the air, my hands stained red to the elbows. “Hang on, Vee, don’t go, don’t you go, someone please, God, help us, please don’t go . . .”

“No visitors until the doctor’s cleared her,” said a woman in the hallway, jerking me back to the ER. Two pairs of legs halted outside my room, their feet and calves visible below the curtain’s hem. Pink scrubs and white Nikes stood on the left, navy pants and scuffed, sturdy black shoes on the right. “Besides, she’s still out.”

Without thinking, I shut my eyes. The curtain rustled, then snapped, like it was yanked open and closed again. “Satisfied?” huffed Pink Scrubs. “She’ll wake up soon. I’ll notify you myself.”

“Did you see the other one?” Navy Pants said, with a gravelly South Side accent. Their voices grew softer as they walked away.

I opened my eyes and strained to hear them. Pink Scrubs was silent.

He spoke again. “Seventeen years old. Seventeen. The guy is still out there. And you want me to sit around while he does it again? To some other little girl?”

Verity. She was here, and these two knew where. I ignored the pain in my shoulder and slowly, slowly pushed up to sitting, biting down hard on my lip to keep from crying out. A black plastic clamp was attached to my finger, wires trailing to a blinking monitor nearby. If I took the clamp off, they’d know I was awake, and Navy Pants would want to talk with me. I needed to talk to Verity first.

The memory of her made something catch in my throat. For a minute, all I could do was stare at my hand, swathed in layers of gauze. Farther up my arm, rusty streaks had dried, flaking off on the white blanket. The sight made me queasy, and I rubbed with a corner of the blanket until the marks were mostly gone. I eased one leg over the side of the bed, planning to drag the monitor on its wheeled cart along with me, when a nearby voice drawled, “Best you not be doin’ that just now.”

I whipped my head around. Black fuzz appeared again, and I blinked until it dissipated. In the corner of the room stood a guy dressed like a doctor, hands tucked in the pockets of his lab coat, slouching against a supply cart.

Silently, fluidly, he moved closer to the head of the bed, stopping a few inches away. Even though I was in so much pain my molars hurt, I could see he was hot—nothing wrong with my eyesight except for the fuzz. He looked way too young to be a doctor, except for his eyes, which looked ancient and . . . angry, somehow. They were startlingly green, like you’d read in a fairy tale. But this guy wasn’t a prince—he was probably a med student. And it didn’t matter what he looked like. He could have horns and a pitchfork, for all I cared, so long as he knew where Verity was.

“I need to find my friend,” I whispered. Farther down the hallway, I could see Navy Pants’s feet pacing back and forth. “Can you help me?”

Something—pity, maybe—crossed his face. “Sit back,” he said, his hand closing gently over my throbbing shoulder. “Close your eyes.”

“I really need to find her.” I settled back as his fingertips brushed against my forehead, feather light. He murmured something I couldn’t catch and didn’t care about.

“Her name’s Verity Grey. Have you seen her?” I asked. His hands paused in their tracings, my skin pleasantly warm where he’d touched, the pain softer edged. I opened my eyes. His expression was stony, mouth tight and eyes hooded.

“Verity’s dead,” he said shortly.

“What? No. No. No.” My voice rose, turning into a wail, and he clamped a hand over my mouth. I struggled against him, trying to explain why he was wrong. She wasn’t dead. She was the most alive person I knew—laughing, clever, charming Verity, bright and bold and reckless enough for both of us. She couldn’t be dead, because there couldn’t be a world without her. I shook my head against the pressure of his fingers on my lips, my tears splashing down over his hand. If I said no enough times, Verity would still be alive. This wouldn’t be real. I wouldn’t be alone.

His eyes met mine, and I recoiled from the fury in them. “Yes. Listen to me. Verity’s gone.”

A sound—an awful, wounded-animal sound—filled the room. It was me, I realized, but he kept talking. “She was gone before she got here, and if you want to help her now, if you want to be her friend, you need to be keepin’ your mouth shut. Nod if you understand me.”

I bit his finger, hard, and he snatched his hand away. “Damn it, I am tryin’ to help you!”

“Who are you?”

“A friend. And I ain’t got a whole lot of time, so pay attention. Verity’s dead, and the rest is flat out beyond you, Mouse.”

The air rushed out of my lungs all at once, the room going hazy again. Only Verity called me Mouse.

Before I could ask him about it, he took my injured hand and swiftly unwrapped the gauze. A large gash across my palm was oozing blood, and I looked away. It should have hurt, but all I could feel were his words, each one like a blow.

“In a few minutes, this room is gonna be lousy with people asking you ’bout what happened in that alley.” His fingers hovered over the injured skin, pressed against my wrist, and he murmured again, impossible to hear over the rushing sound in my head. “Don’t tell them. Say it was a mugger, say it was a gang . . . say you don’t remember.”

“That’s the truth.” Mostly. I frowned at him, swiping at my eyes with my free hand.

He looked up approvingly for a second. “Say it just like that. You might be able to get out of this after all.” He rewrapped my hand and stepped back.

Get out of what? I tried to ask, but the question was crowded out by what he’d said—Verity was dead, and everything in me felt frozen, the pain I’d felt before a shadow compared to the shards of ice gathering in my chest.

He turned to leave, and I was finally able to speak, the words ragged. “Why? Why Verity? Who would—”

He cut me off. “Too many questions. Best for everyone not to ask.” He paused and cocked his head toward the hallway. I could see Pink Scrubs’s feet approaching, Navy Pants following close behind. “Time to go, Mouse. Remember to forget, hmn?”

Pink Scrubs—a harried, middle-aged nurse—dragged the curtain aside. Right behind her was Navy Pants, a rumpled, bearlike man with a receding hairline and stubble that was emphatically not a fashion statement. I turned to look at the doctor, but he was gone.

“Maura Fitzgerald?” Navy Pants asked as the nurse moved to my side, snapping on gloves and pulling out a small penlight. I nodded dumbly.

“Glad to see you’re awake,” Pink Scrubs said cheerfully, shining the light into my eyes. She gestured to my forehead. “That looks better already. How are you feeling?”

“Where’s Verity?” I croaked, swiping at tears again.

They exchanged a look—the look adults give each other when they’re trying to figure out the most effective stalling tactic. I knew that look. I’d seen it before, more than once. It always meant life was going to suck, very badly, for a very long time.

“I need to check your vitals,” the nurse said after a moment. “The doctor will be in soon, and she’ll answer your questions, okay? Your family’s on the way.”

She. Not he. I watched the nurse’s hands, in their purple latex gloves, reach for the blood pressure cuff, and a wild hope sprang up in me. The green-eyed guy wasn’t a doctor, obviously. He’d never put on gloves, had never looked at my chart . . . he hadn’t even worn a stethoscope, for God’s sake. Not to mention he’d been way too young. He must have been some sort of nut job imposter, and he didn’t have a clue about Verity. Which meant she was alive. I sank back and let the nurse wrap the black strap around my arm.

Navy Pants flashed a badge at me and brought out a small notebook. “Detective Kowalski, Miss Fitzgerald. I need to ask you some questions.”

“Where’s Verity?” The blood pressure cuff tightened on my arm, but I ignored it.

Kowalski looked at the nurse again. She checked her watch, made a notation on the chart resting on the counter, and said quietly, “We can’t release patient information unless you’re family.”

At the sympathy in her tone, and the small shake of her head, all that wild fluttering hope collapsed. Mystery Doctor was right, and the frozen feeling swallowed me up again.

“Miss Fitzgerald,” Kowalski said. “Maura. I need you to tell me what happened tonight.”

“It’s Mo,” I corrected him, stomach clenching. Nobody calls me Maura, not unless I’m in trouble, and since I’ve spent the last seventeen and a half years avoiding trouble, I don’t hear it very often. Mystery Doc had called me Mo, right off the bat. And he’d been straight with me about Verity; this guy was just giving me a measuring stare and asking questions. Screw that, I decided. If the cop wasn’t going to tell me anything, I didn’t have to share, either.

“Okay, Mo.” He raised his eyebrow, clearly humoring me. “What can you tell me about this evening?”

I fiddled with the blanket. “Nothing.”

“Nothing? Where were you and Miss Grey going?”

“For ice cream,” I said. August in Chicago is like living in a bowl of chicken broth, the heat and humidity making the air oily and oppressive. Air conditioning and ice cream are the only cures.

“Which shop?”

“Martino’s.”

He smiled, like a coconspirator. “Just down Kedzie? My wife says I gotta lay off their butter pecan.”

This must have been the good-cop part of the routine. When I didn’t smile back, or say anything else, he wrote something down in his notebook. “What time was this?”

“I don’t know. Nine o’clock, maybe? Ten? I wasn’t really paying attention. We had a lot to talk about.” Like Verity blowing off our college plans for absolutely no reason. I shoved the thought away.

“So you left Martino’s, and then what?”

I had another vision of those leathery black shapes and shuddered before I could help myself. My rib cage protested sharply. “I don’t remember.”

Kowalski’s eyes narrowed. “Try.”

“I don’t know.” My voice cracked. “They came out of nowhere.”

“There was more than one?”

“I . . . think so.” Too many to count, especially after the first blow.

“Then what?”

Gingerly, I folded my arms over my chest, as if it would protect me from his questions. “I don’t know.”

Kowalski sighed wearily. “Mo,” he said, “I have been a cop for twenty years this March. I have four daughters, every one of them my pride and joy. My youngest is just about your age. And even though I’ve been on the force her whole life, she still thinks she can put one over on her old man. She’s wrong, which is why she’s spent more time grounded than a Cubs pitcher on the disabled list. Now, you look like you’ve got more sense than my Jenny, so why don’t we skip the part where you jerk me around.”

I wondered if poor Jenny had to sit on the receiving end of a lot of lectures like this. Probably. “It was dark. Someone hit me. I don’t remember anything after that.” Verity’s scream, beneath the roar.

“Someone did a hell of a lot more than hit you. The doc says you’ve got a cracked rib and a dislocated shoulder, for starters.”

That felt about right. I shrugged with the good shoulder.

“You recognize anyone?”

I shook my head. It sounded crazy, especially in the bright light of the ER, but I wasn’t sure they had faces, much less any I knew. But saying so didn’t seem like a great idea.

“They say anything?” Words I couldn’t understand, more guttural than German, and whatever they were saying wasn’t, “Welcome home.” Verity’s words—the few she’d been able to shout before they cut her down—were nothing I’d heard before, either, something fluid and silvery in the dark of the alley. I took too long to answer.

“Mo. What did they say?”

“I don’t know.” True enough. And I didn’t know why I was stonewalling Kowalski. Maybe I thought he wouldn’t believe me. Whatever had come after us in the alley was unbelievable, but I had the bruises to back up my story. Maybe I thought he’d blame me.

Maybe he should.

But Mystery Doc had been honest when I asked about Verity, and Kowalski had just ignored me, so round one went to Mystery Doc.

Kowalski tapped his notebook against the bed rail, and I tuned in again. “Your uncle is Billy Grady, right?”

I scowled at the change of subject. “He’s my mom’s brother.”

“You two close?” A commotion was building down the corridor.

“He owns the bar next to my mom’s restaurant. I help out sometimes. So?”

“Your father worked for him, too?”

My hands clenched the blanket, and I forced them to straighten again. “My dad?” Seriously, who cared about my family right now? The only family who mattered was Verity, and she was dead. Kowalski was worried about my dad? My father was a lot of things—absent, selfish, and a felon, to boot—but he sure as hell wasn’t in that alley with us.

The curtain was ripped aside with a harsh rattle. “Don’t say another word to this man, Mo.”

Uncle Billy, in the flesh.

I dropped my head back against the pillow in relief. Uncle Billy brushed past Kowalski, full steam ahead, but the sight of me stopped him short. I wondered how bad I must look to put that stunned look on his face.

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” he breathed.

Pretty bad, then.

Without taking his eyes off me, he called out, “In here, Annie,” and my mother appeared, looking decades older than she had at the restaurant this afternoon. Another cop, younger, in a uniform, followed her in.

“Maura! Oh, Mo! Oh, my baby!” Eyes welling, she rushed to me. “Oh, sweetheart,” she cried, pushing my hair back with trembling hands.

I love my mother, but she is not at her best in a crisis. Still, the sight of her, in her sensible khaki skirt and blue blouse, her hair scraped back into a bun, her wedding band worn and glinting dully on her hand, made everything too ordinary not to be real, and my tears began again. “Mom?”

“What happened?” She kept smoothing my hair back, like she did when I was a kid, and she smelled like violet hand cream and tea. “I was in bed for the night—you know I’m working the morning shift tomorrow—and then the hospital called, and so I called Billy, and we came as fast as we could. Do you know how I felt, Mo? I’ve been dreading that call. Every parent has nightmares about it. It was horrible—just horrible—I was frantic, absolutely frantic. I said rosaries all the way here.” Also typical Mom. She asks me a question and answers before I can get a word in.

She paused for breath, and Uncle Billy cut in. “What happened?”

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Kowalski pause in his conversation with the other cop, shift his weight, and turn his head to catch my response.

“It’s all a blur,” I mumbled. “My head . . .” My head really did hurt, and with each new visitor in the already-crowded room, the ache spread and deepened.

“Are you in pain? Can they get something for you?” Mom held her hand against my cheek for a second, grasping my good hand as if I might slip away. “Tell me what you need.”

“They won’t tell me anything about Verity.” I choked out the words.

“Oh, sweetie,” she said, her voice falsely bright. “Don’t you worry about it right now. Concentrate on getting better.”

Ah. One of my family’s patented nonanswers.

“Mom, please.”

She looked helplessly at Uncle Billy. “Mo, the thing is . . .” She shot another glance at him, a woman going under for the third time, and he rescued her.

“She’ll be fine, darling girl, just fine, but you can’t see her now. Your mother is right. We need to get you well again, and away from here.” He glared at Kowalski.

They were lying, all of them. The one thing I knew, with perfect clarity, beneath the ice encasing me, was that Verity was totally, completely, not fine.

My mother started weeping silently, and Uncle Billy, never a fan of drama, seized on Kowalski as an escape—and a target.

The first few times they meet him, people tend to underestimate Uncle Billy, with his shock of white hair and wiry little body. His blue eyes crinkle when he laughs, which is most of the time. He’s a good fifteen years older than my mother, and he looks it. He’s a cheerful, crackling guy, always fidgeting, always moving. But piss him off, and he goes still, all that energy coiling up inside him, tighter and tighter, darker and darker, like a summer storm. Anyone stupid enough to keep pushing would be better off taking their chances with an actual lightning strike instead of Uncle Billy’s wrath.

The men’s voices were hushed, but I could hear them underneath my mother’s crying and fussing. “The girl’s been traumatized, you horse’s ass! What are you on about, questioning her now?”

“She’s a witness,” Kowalski said blandly, hitching up his pants. “So far, she’s my only witness, unless you want to make a statement. Anything you’d like to shed some light on, Grady?”

“She’s a minor. And if you talk to her again without a lawyer and her mother’s consent, I’ll have your badge. Wouldn’t that be a shame, Joseph, so close to retirement?” Uncle Billy was giving Kowalski the same look that sent Teamsters packing, but he caught my mother’s expression and, like one of those storms, it stopped as quickly as it started.

“Mo, my love,” he said, coming around the other side of my bed and dropping a kiss on the crown of my head. “Whatever you need, name it.”

I needed Verity back. And Uncle Billy would do it if he could, the same way he’d taken care of me and Mom for the last twelve years, but even he couldn’t raise the dead. I’d known Verity my entire life. We’d started kindergarten together in blue plaid skirts and knee socks. We’d made our first communion together, giggling nervously in puffy white dresses. We’d shopped for training bras and Homecoming dresses. We’d read college brochures and crammed for the finals on the floor of her bedroom. Everything I’d ever gone through—mean teachers, giant zits, first crushes, my father’s trip to prison—she’d been there, making all of it better. Everything bad that had ever happened, she’d carried me. Now it was the worst thing, and she couldn’t help me, because I hadn’t helped her.

I hadn’t totally lied when I’d told Kowalski I couldn’t remember. Some of it was a hideous blur, the black shapes and the screaming, and a lot was simply lost, but one thing I could recall perfectly. The thing I wasn’t ever going to tell him. Verity had told me to run, as those things were settling around us, and I had.

I looked down at my bandaged hand, at the blood still flaking off my skin, trailing up my arm and across my once-green T-shirt. Verity’s blood. Not mine. Verity’s blood on me. The room started to narrow and go black, and my breath came in short, quick pants.

“Mo,” warned my mother, squeezing my hand more tightly, “Breathe, sweetheart.”

“I want to see Verity,” I gasped against the darkness. “Right now, Mom. Please.”

“You’re making a scene,” she said. “Come on, honey. Big, slow breaths. In and out.”

Right. The eleventh commandment of the Fitzgeralds—thou shalt not make a scene.

The doctor—the real one, this time, a dark-haired woman with a low, musical voice—parted the curtains and proceeded to kick everyone out except for my mom. She removed the black clamp from my finger and checked me over, making a puzzled noise. She scrawled a note on the chart. “How are you feeling?”

“Like crap,” I said.

My mother’s mouth thinned. “Mo!”

“We’ll get you something for the pain now that you’re awake,” the doctor said, smiling. “Mrs. Fitzgerald, may I speak to you outside?”

They probably wanted to discuss all the things they didn’t think I was strong enough to hear. When they came back, Mom’s eyes were watery and frantic, the doctor’s gaze speculative.

“Can I go home?” I demanded.

“Soon,” said the doctor. “I’ve ordered a few more tests, and some pain meds. Your mother and I have been discussing your injuries. You were very fortunate, Mo.”

I would have laughed, but it hurt too much.

The doctor’s definition of “soon” was as accurate as her estimate of “fortunate,” because the night stretched out endlessly. Mom dozed in a nearby chair, Uncle Billy kept going out to the lobby to use his cell phone—for what, I had no idea, and decided it was better not to ask—and the ER staff forgot I was there.

All the while, Kowalski and the other cop hovered over us. They should have been out looking for clues.

I am not a people person. Verity was the one who could read people. She had a talent for picking up undercurrents and false fronts. She did it all through middle school and high school, somehow managing to avoid the cliques and the mean girls to be one of those people everyone liked, A-listers and geeks both, while I followed her lead.

Still, it didn’t take a psychic to feel the seriously bad vibes between my uncle and Kowalski, like the detective wanted him to be responsible. Uncle Billy was no saint, sure, but he’d always looked out for me and my mom. Kowalski, on the other hand, was not exactly inspiring a whole lot of confidence, particularly as the hands on the clock inched toward morning.

The ER hadn’t calmed down much—every few minutes I could hear someone run past, or cry out, or throw up, or deliver bad news in a low, solemn voice. It was making me crazy, hearing so much of strangers’ lives and not getting answers of my own, so I decided to go and find some.

I waited until my uncle had left to take another phone call, and coughed softly, to make sure my mom was still asleep in her chair. My meds had kicked in, making it slightly less painful to swing my legs over the side of the bed and ease up to standing. Careful not to bump into any of the now-silent monitors, I slipped through the curtains into the hallway.

Someone grabbed my good arm. “Aren’t you supposed to be in bed?”

I whirled, nearly falling over. It was Mystery Doc,. . .