“Henry!” My feet crunched on glass as I began to move, looking to the bright windows that faced the sea. The white sand was still perfect, no tracks, no scuffle marks, nothing. The waves still rolled in and out as if my brother hadn’t been hurt. But there was no sign of him. “Henry!” I shouted again, panic uncurling in my belly.
Behind me, I could sense my friends were standing in shocked silence. I told myself that I should keep going through the house. Maybe he was somewhere inside? And yet, my instinct said otherwise.
“Deva, could you call the police?” My words came out hollow.
It was the thing to do. Right? In situations like this, people called the police?
My heartbeat filled my ears, and Deva’s voice was somewhere in the distance. I moved through the house like a nightmare, seeing more destruction with every step I took. Flashes of the car accident came into my mind, rising like a shadow around me until it was all my mind could focus on. My parents had been talking in the front seat. Henry had been asleep beside me. Headlights had seemed to fill the windshield, and I remembered the look of horror on my mom’s face.
The memory moved in slow motion, just like I moved in slow motion through the house, fighting my mind to see what was in front of me and not what had happened in the past. I checked the bathroom and saw nothing to indicate Henry had cleaned and bandaged an injury, but saw toiletries thrown everywhere. The car appeared in my mind almost larger than life right at the moment when the glass shattered like an explosion. I remembered the front of the car crushing in, almost swallowing my parents, and then the car had teetered and started to roll over and over again.
Henry had called my name that night.
I called his name now, over and over again as I stared at his room, which was destroyed. Even his expensive computer monitors had been smashed in, and his sheets ripped and thrown about the room. Then I went to what was currently my room. I doubted he’d been in our parent’s bedroom since they died. But still, I searched the room and my bathroom, praying he might have thought to hide in there, but I found the same destruction as the rest of the house, and no Henry.
That night came again, swallowing me as I stood in the center of a room filled with my destroyed belongings. The car had rolled until it was upside down. My back had felt like it’d been torn in half and blood was everywhere. But Henry was so scared beside me. So I’d unbuckled us both, which wasn’t an easy feat given the strain our weight was putting on them as we hung there, and crawled through that broken glass.
I looked at my palm and saw the scars. I felt my knees twinge at the memory.
But I’d led Henry out of there. I’d climbed with him to the road, encouraging him every step of the way, where a stray passerby had seen us and called the police. My parents, there was nothing of them. Nothing that looked like the people I knew. Nothing that could indicate they were still alive.
I couldn’t save them.
But I’d saved Henry.
And now? Now something was wrong. He wasn’t here. Tears filled my vision, and I squeezed my hands closed, as if I could still feel the broken shards of glass that had been embedded beneath my skin. It was my job to protect him. I’d failed him so many times over the years. I’d let my friends take care of him instead of me. I should’ve told my ex that we had to move here. Not just cried and begged him to. I should’ve realized a man who didn’t care about anything that was important to me wasn’t the knight on a white horse I’d made him out to be. I’d thought he’d give me the life of my dreams, but all we had pursued were his dreams. Mine never mattered. But now that I was home, now that I washerefor Henry, he was gone? Hurt?
“Where is he?” I sobbed, big, fat tears rolling down my cheeks as I scanned the room once more before I turned back to the living room and walked down the hall as my vision swam and I began to hiccup.
Someone had righted the kitchen table and chairs. Deva said nothing, just pulled me into one of them, and stared into my face. Maybe she was speaking. Saying something. I wasn’t sure. I felt so far away. So lost.
Deva put her arm around me and hummed softly, her voice strangely soothing as time passed with no meaning, and then I heard the sound of sirens in the distance. Sounds and lights came sharply back to me, and I realized Deva was whispering, “It's okay. I’m here.” Over and over again.
I turned toward her, and it was like everything was clicking back into place. My brother, the guy who never left the house, who didn’t raise his voice, who wouldn’t hurt a fly; He seemed to have been attacked. And our home was vandalized. Why? It made no sense.
Carol came back to us and sat down on a chair across from me. I didn’t know what she’d been doing, but she was pale. Had she seen something I hadn’t? Did she know something I didn’t know?
“Who would do this?” I said, the words tearing from my lips.
Deva and Carol exchanged a look that made my stomach do a flip. Deva’s dark brows drew together and then she spoke softly. “Before the police get here, Emma, listen. Your brother—the crew he was hanging with was pretty dangerous.”
“Crew?” I stared at her in confusion. My brother didn’t have acrew.
“He never mentioned anything?”
I shook my head, shocked. The fact that he had a girlfriend had astounded me considering I knew he hated leaving the house, but now to learn he had a whole crew of friends? How much had my brother changed while I’d been gone? “I thought he mostly just hung around with Alice and stayed here,” I murmured, almost more to myself than anyone else.
They exchanged another knowing glance, and I pulled away from Deva. They knew something. That much was clear. My shoulders were like stone, and my panic was fading, replaced by confusion.
“Tell me. Please. I need to understand.”
Carol sighed and ran a hand through her light brown hair. “Henry can count cards.”
I stared at her dumbly. I hadn’t known that, but it made sense. He was that smart. “Okay?”
What did that have to do with any of this? He always liked to collect action figures and rare collectibles of nerdy things that he loved. And I was pretty sure he dominated everyone in games online.
Deva squeezed my shoulders. “He got into gambling, and then he got into gambling with the vampires.”
