Charcoal Tears by Jane Washington Page B

the Zevghéri. I fell into a normal routine with them, hanging out after school and going to work on my own.
    Everything came crashing down again when I opened my locker at the end of the day on Friday. Hundreds of Polaroids spilled out, a mass of them hitting me right in the chest, the rest of them fluttering innocently to the ground. I picked out one and held it up, and then immediately began trying to stuff all of them back into my locker. The one I had picked up was a picture of me sleeping.
    It had been taken inches from my face.
    Too soon, I found myself facing the back wall of my locker. It had been painted in sloppy red letters.
    Here comes a candle to light you to bed,
    Here comes a chopper to chop off your head.
    The pictures kept sliding back out of my locker, and I was sobbing. One of them had cut my finger, but the sting was muted, existing somewhere in the inconsequential part of my mind that worried about things like homework, and whether I would have clothes warm enough to last me each winter. I could hear the dull whispering of the gathered students rising to an ear-burning babble, and could sense the flash of a cell phone camera, but I was numb with shock. I couldn’t break from the circulatory motion of catching falling photographs and stuffing them back, only to catch them again as there was no room for them to stay. Eventually someone dropped a hand on my shoulder and pulled me back. Quillan picked up one of the pictures and flicked it over. He stilled, looked over my shoulder and his voice boomed out.
    Footsteps scurried behind me and the hall cleared.
    He tossed the picture into my locker and grabbed another one. He released a slew of curses that managed to shock me even further, and then ran his hands through his dark hair, messing up the perfect style. He pulled out a phone and sent a quick text, before reaching over and empting my book bag. He was on the ground, stuffing pictures into my bag when Cabe and Noah ran into the hallway. Arms tightened around me from behind, pulling me away, and I didn’t resist. The arms turned me, and I caught the electric fury brimming in Noah’s eyes before he lifted me, an arm strapped across my thighs. I stared unblinkingly over his shoulder, and Quillan looked up, meeting my eyes. Fire, consuming and dangerous. I wavered, deciding that I was going crazy. For a minute, Quillan had looked exactly like the stranger from the bar. That confused me more than anything, because my feelings for both men were strong, but vastly different. Quillan was important to me, but the stranger… he fascinated me. I didn’t like that they reminded me of each other.
    Not at all.
    Noah got into the back of the car and I curled into the seat beside him. Cabe wasn’t there, and when I said something about it, Noah told me that he was talking to Tariq.
    “I should talk to Tariq too.”
    “No.” He brushed the hair from my face. “Sorry, Seph. Seeing you like this will only scare him.”
    I sniffed, leaning back to stare at the roof of the car. Someone had been in my house. Someone had been watching me sleep. I had thought that the messenger had given up, but whoever it was had simply been proving a point. They had been following me even closer than ever, and none of us had noticed.
    “Can I borrow your phone?” I asked.
    Noah dug into his pockets and dropped a phone into my lap. I looked into his recent contacts, clicking on the one named Miro Quillan .
    He answered on the first ring. “Yeah?”
    “What are the other photos?”
    He paused. “Seph…”
    “Please.” My voice was strong. I could hear Noah breathing erratically beside me, but I was gaining control of myself quickly.
    “They’re all of you in the house, getting dressed, sleeping, fighting with your dad or talking to Tariq. In some of them you’re sleeping on the end of his bed. In some of them you’re in the shower.” He cut his own words off abruptly with the last part, like he wanted to tear out his own