Ruin (The Abby Lyle Chronicles: Book2)

Prologue

The light was small, but bright. Like the pin light from a laser pointer. But it didn’t burn her. It would not dare. And as it darted through the air all scatter-shot first one direction then unpredictably changing course and darting in another, the predator was growing bored with its prey.

She rolled over on her back in a single smooth, continuous motion and stretched out her sinewy body in cat-like fashion. But there was nothing cat-like about her interest in her new toy. There was none of the hunter's instinct. The intense focus. The determination. There was no sense of the recoiled spring paused to pounce. No, a cat actually desired the object of the chase.

But she merely toyed with it in her hands. She could as easily crush it as blow it away like a tuff of dandelion fuzz. It was all the same to her. She had more important prey on her mind.

But it helped her to think. Darting. Weaving and bobbing. Keeping her reflexes sharp. What else could one do trapped as she was in eternity?

There had been too much waiting and waiting for her to bear. And the worst was that when she had been given her opportunity to flee she had squandered it. The anger boiled up inside her like acidic bile burning at the base of her throat. Eternity was a long time to wait for revenge. Sooner, in her mind, was always better than later. Whoever said Revenge is a dish best served cold, was full of it. Revenge, she thought, was best served hot. Swift and hot-blooded.

Fortunately, this time she had a plan. And she would have another opportunity. She had been cleaver enough to create one for herself. And she would not squander it this time. She would lie here in the dark and plan. And when she was ready she would strike. This time her attack would be lethal. She would strike like a cat and she would not fail this time.

But she had to think.

She brushed the tiny pin of light into the corner with one sharp, precise swat. She was tired of her toy--for now. She stretched her lean, strong arms over her head and did a slow, graceful summersault in midair and hung there, in the dark, making plans.

Time had been her enemy, but soon her wait would be over.

Chapter 1

Safe and warm in her bed, Abby Lyle had no idea what was waiting for her at school.

As she opened her eyes Abby realized that every bone in her body ached--still. But this was still the best day of her sixteen years of life.

The room was dark so she knew that it was early even without looking at the pastel pink alarm clock on the nightstand in the hot Pepto-Bismol pink-colored frilly bedroom her stepmother had painstakingly decorated to reflect her personal style preferences. If she didn’t know any better she would have bet this room was designed to torture her, but it was put together long before anyone ever knew she would be here.

Her mother was already up and about somewhere.

She swept her long chestnut brown hair out of her eyes and tucked the stray ends into the scrunchie that kept the mass from tangling. Today, she thought, is the first day of the rest of my life.

Yeah!

Friday night she had been crowned homecoming queen on the arm of the most gorgeous and handsome guy in her new school as practically the entire student body cheered her victory over the most beautiful girl in the senior class. But before the stroke of midnight she was half past dead. Seriously. She was on her way to the afterlife, only to be saved at the last minute by her friends and family.

She shuddered thinking of how close she came...

Her mother had not left her side the whole weekend. She guessed that was probably to be expected when your only living daughter had been so close to death only days before. It had been quite a weekend. A real life changer. And Abby could easily believe it had all been just a very bad weekend if she weren’t still bruised and exhausted from the ordeal.

Get up sleepyhead. Reva Hunter Lyle, Abby's mom, stuck her head inside the bedroom door. I made you your favorite breakfast. It's not organic. But it still smells delicious.

Her mom believed in healthy. And she’d been called overprotective more than once, too.

Abby pushed herself up on her forearms and groaned with the effort. What time is it? Then, redundantly, she glanced over at the clock.

Six o'clock. Reva came into the room and sat on the side of the bed. Are you sure you're up to going to school today honey? You know it would be perfectly fine with me if you stayed home today. You've been through a lot. Her mother placed her hand on Abby's forehead and then, apparently satisfied that there was no trace of fever, pushed a stray clump of hair away from her eyes and smiled, waiting for the word. It wasn't at all like her mother to give her the option of going to school but, it was a testament to how horrible the events of the past weekend had been.

You know, Reva said. I like your hair long.

The length of Abby’s hair had been a point of contention all her life, with her mother always insisting it be kept short. But in the last year Abby had rebelled and grown it long, despite her mother’s protests. That was how she was pulled under just as she was close to escape. She was pulled under by her hair.

Her mother admitted she had visions of Abby’s hair tangled around the hand pulling her down...but the visions had been so vague...

Now they both knew the fate her highly intuitive mother had been trying to save her from.

But it didn’t matter in the end. Abby had faced her fate. And she had survived. Now she had her whole life ahead of her.

Abby still felt drained but she wanted to go to school. She wanted to connect with her friends, Lisa and Daniel. She wanted to sort through what she had gone through and what they had helped to save her from. And she wanted to see Griffin. Of course.

It had all been so strange and unbelievable that she still had a hard time accepting what had actually happened. It turns out that Abby was born a twin. Not just any ordinary, everyday twin. But a conjoined twin. She and her sister, Amber, had been joined at the waist but had been separated at birth. That was where her story began.

The doctors had advised that they be separated even though the operation was a highly risky one. It was supposed to be a matter of life or death for both twins but especially for Amber, Abby's twin, because Amber was the stronger twin. Amber was expected to live if they were separated, but she was draining vital nutrients from her weaker sister, Abby. The medical term was parasitic twin. And it was Abby's survival that everyone worried about. She would continue to grow weaker and weaker if she remained connected to her sister. If Abby died, they both died. Unless they were separated. After separation, doctors knew Abby would be weak. They hoped she could survive, but they made no promises. Amber, the stronger twin, would only grow stronger.

But it didn't turn out that way.

Abby ran her fingers over the large, ugly scar on her side. The only evidence of the sister she had known nothing about until three days ago. Her parents had argued about the operation. Her father, Tom Lyle, had been for it from the start. But her mother, Reva, had resisted the idea, afraid to give her consent, afraid not to. She was young mother, making a very grownup decision.

Reva was sensitive. Not just delicate and emotional and tenderhearted, although she was all those things. But she was also psychically sensitive. She had been from childhood. And her mother. And her mother before her. It was a family legacy. But when she was still very little, Reva's mother had been so concerned about her daughter's reaction to the dark visions that she sometimes had about people in the town, that she had taken Reva to a church that was willing to pray to have the gift removed. From that day on, Reva had stopped have the visions. But she sometimes got very strong intuitive feelings that were vague and undefined. Sometimes she would see strange, disjointed images but she couldn’t piece them together or make them make any kind of sense. She would know when bad things were coming. But now, she could never be sure if it was something awful like death and disaster, or just something awfully annoying like a broken pipe in the laundry room.

Reva had that familiar foreboding feeling when her daughters were born. That something bad was on the way. But she couldn't tell what. So in her mind she assumed it had to be the operation and its outcome.

Despite her fears the operation went well.

It was afterwards that Reva and Tom were awakened in the middle of the night by the doctor. Amber, the stronger twin, had begun to weaken rapidly. Before they knew what was happening and despite the doctor's desperate efforts, Amber was gone.

Abby wasn't sure what happened after that. Something bad. Her mother and father separated and Reva took her daughter across country to Los Angeles. Abby grew up without her father and only the barest contact with her grandmother before she died. And, strangely, never knowing that she had been a twin. She had existed happily, never knowing anything other than that she had moved to Los Angeles with her mother from South Carolina as a baby and her mother didn't want to talk about their past. Reva had been free of her anxieties at last, except for some slightly peculiar overprotective tendencies.

It was only when Reva’s feeling of dread returned with a vengeance that Abby had to move to West Beaufort, South Carolina temporarily, while Reva sought treatment for her anxieties.

As it turned out, Reva's anxieties had been prophetic.

I want to go to school, Mom, Abby told her. You don't mind do you? I mean, you'll be okay won't you? She scanned her mother's face for any sign of the old anxious feelings. Seeing your long dead daughter come back from the dead hell bent on killing your only living one must have been shocker. Nothing can prepare you for something like that. Even when you've grown up with the gift. Even when you've grown up in a place like West Beaufort where the supernatural exists like a death veil hanging loose and thin over the living swathing them in the world of the dead.

West Beaufort was a place of magic that had existed in this part of America for centuries and for generations from the mystics of the Native Americans to the shaman of the African American slaves. Even Abby’s friend Lisa’s grandmother felt that this land energized her innate healing abilities.

I'll be fine. But are you sure you want to go back to school here? I thought maybe you'd want to go back to Los Angeles. Get away from this place.

Abby felt a wave of panic. She couldn't leave West Beaufort now. Discovering she had a past. A family. A father. Roots. All those things had been a revelation to her. They had given her a sense of her own history for the first time after a lifetime of rootless living in Los Angeles. But the people she met here in West Beaufort had given her a sense of having a future too. She had a dad that she was finally getting to know. She had made good friends. The best kind of friends. The kind that save your life when you are being attacked by a homicidal spirit of the dead. You can't get any better than that.

And then there was Griffin. He was the boy she had met her first day in West Beaufort. She had been swept off her feet. Literally. She had stumbled into oncoming traffic--what little there was of it on Main Street in West Beaufort--when she was frightened by a strange old guy named Gus. Griffin had rescued her, picked her up and dusted her off, and made her feel like a damsel rescued by the handsome prince. Instead of the clumsy girl sprawled out on the pavement.

It had seemed so magical how they had found each other. His girlfriend had been the prettiest and most popular girl in school. Roxanne Callahan. She was also the biggest snob and a huge drama queen. But boys never seem to notice those things. Or else they never seem to care.

That's why it was such a surprise that Griffin had noticed her. Not only noticed her, but grown to like her. A lot. Enough to stand up to his girlfriend, who was now his former girlfriend.

They liked books and nature and they discovered that they both had nurturing spirits when they had saved a baby Loggerhead turtle that wasn't strong enough to crawl out of his nest and follow his brothers and sisters into the sea to feed. But that’s another story.

She couldn't give up her relationship with Griffin now. Not when it was just starting.

But she knew her mother would want to return to Los Angeles.

Mom, can we talk about this after school? Abby knew she would hurt her mother terribly if she told her she wanted to stay, but she also knew, for the first time in her life, that remaining here in West Beaufort would be the difference between happiness and a life in limbo--walking, sleeping, eating, breathing, but never really living again. How to you explain to someone that you’ve met the one when you’re only sixteen. Everyone thinks you’re just a silly teenager. But Abby was intuitive like her mother and she knew what she felt for Griffin was once in a lifetime. What she didn’t know was how their story would end.

I'm not hurt. And Amber is gone. I'm not frightened and neither are you anymore. I'm grateful and I don't want to run away. I don't have anything to run away from anymore. Don’t you feel that now?

Reva sighed. You like it here, don’t you? she asked, already seeing the answer in the beaming smile on her daughter’s face.

I love it here, Mom. It’s starting to feel like home. Then she realized she might have hurt her mother’s feelings by saying that which she hadn’t intended to do. Maybe you were wrong about it, Mom. Maybe you could like it too. A brief kiss on the cheek made them both feel better and another mouthful of muffin as she headed for the door gave Abby an excuse for not discussing the matter further. It was going to be difficult to convince her mother that they needed to stay in West Beaufort at least until the end of her senior year. What was she supposed to say?

We can’t leave town, Mom. You see, I’ve fallen in love. Deeply, madly in love and you know how that is. First love, first kiss, first prom and all that good stuff.

God, her mom would be unbearably excited for her. She loved her mom, but, sometimes, she just wished she was just a little less involved. Still, her mom had a job in Los Angeles and her home was still with her mother. She couldn’t leave West Beaufort. She couldn’t hurt her mom.

If she could just figure out this little dilemma her life would be perfect. Just perfect.

Abby drove to school in her father's big, expensive monstrosity of a truck humming along to Katie Perry and feeling good about the possibilities for her life.

Griffin Masters was her Prince Charming.

West Beaufort was her own Enchanted Kingdom.

Chapter 2

I can’t believe Abby would do that, Griffin Masters was thinking as he lay awake in bed waiting for his dad to yell at him to get out of bed as he did every morning about this time.

Who knew she was that kind of girl? He had actually liked her. He had actually thought she was different from the other girls at West Beaufort. Different from any girl he had ever met. How could he have been so wrong? And how embarrassing was it to have Roxanne prove him wrong so publicly.

Girls, he thought, could be treacherous, even the most innocent looking ones.

Griffin Masters hadn’t slept much all weekend.

He had been thinking about how wrong he had been about Abby Lyle. And it galled him to think that Roxanne was right about her all along. Roxanne Callahan could be a real drama queen sometimes. Well, most of the time. And she was usually way overboard. But this time she had been right. Abby Lyle was a slut. And that was all there was to it.

Gosh, he wanted to sleep. It was going to be a long day with football practice after school as they prepared for their final games of the season. And gosh, he hated football.

Well, he didn’t real hate football. He just hated competitive football. He hated how crazy the coaches got over nothing. And he hated how much time it swallowed out of his life. And most of all he hated how his father wouldn’t let him give it up.

His dad, Griffin Masters Senior, who everyone called Grif, had been the football star of his day. As the head quarterback he had lead the West Beaufort Hornets to a division AA state championship in his senior year. And now he expected Griffin to do the same.

He had a lot of other expectations for Griffin as well. He was supposed to go to college at Clemson. Major in business. Then he was supposed to return and continue to build the car dealerships, the family business, into a regional empire. They already had dealerships in Charleston, Columbia and Myrtle Beach. Only a few brief economic downturns had slowed Grif Masters’s economic onslaught. But Griffin was to be his right hand man expanding the business outside the borders of the state of South Carolina into Georgia, North Carolina, Alabama, Tennessee, and beyond.

Grif thought big. And his goals for his son were bigger than a future going to medical school and being a boring old doctor who read books, and perhaps even wrote them, which was Griffin’s dream for himself. So what kind of parent doesn’t want his kid to be a doctor? The kind, Griffin thought, who already has more than enough money but still wants more. Who thinks work is all about the money and net worth is the only measure of success. The kind who looks down on the medical profession because a doctor’s earning potential is limited by the number of patients he can see or the number of procedures he can perform. Who thinks there is no limit to the number of cars the world can consume, after all everyone wants at least two and there’s always a newer model coming down the pike. The kind of parent who is germaphobic and doesn’t even like shaking hands. The kind of parent who has never been sick a day in his life and thinks doctors are for the weak.

Yeah, Griffin thought, it was messed up. But that was his dad.

Griffin, time to get up. You’re mom’s got the breakfast of champions waiting for us downstairs.

Breakfast of champions. Ug! For his dad that meant raw eggs and a skim milk protean shake. Not even orange juice. That was too much sugar. Grapefruit juice with sublingual B-12 packets were what he preferred. Griffin was sent out the door every morning with his shake and a slice of whole grain toast. He had to swallow the eggs in the kitchen because his dad knew he’d just dump it in the hedges in the front yard if he made it out of the house with them. It was all he could do not to barf at the thought of it.

Griffin had tried to explain to his dad about salmonella and how it could make you sick enough to kill you. But Grif bought his eggs from a local farm that he said grew clean eggs from clean chickens and Griffin was just being a little baby about it. Suck it up, he always told him. And besides, his dad’s idol, Rocky, from the movie, chugged raw eggs and that was good enough for him. And it was good enough for his son.

Have you done your homework? Grif asked. You gotta keep those grades up, at least until football season’s over.

Grif barely remembered that Griffin had made honor roll for six semesters straight and was in four honors classes, but he remembered from his own experience that you had to keep your grade up or you’d have to get your dad to talk to the coach and maybe even the principal to keep from being kicked off the team.

He always does his homework, Grif, Griffin’s mother defended him.

There’s always a first time for everything, Mona. After all, we never expected him to break the heart of a nice girl like Roxanne Callahan, either, did we?

There it was. The number two topic of conversation in the Masters household since Griffin had surprised his dad by showing up on the homecoming court escorting new girl Abby Lyle instead of his sometimes girlfriend of the last three years and the personal choice of Grif for his son since they were both toddling around in diapers in the nursery at the West Beaufort Country Club.

Griffin wanted to defend himself. But he couldn’t. He knew by now that it would be all over school how Griffin Masters, star quarterback, star student and boyfriend of the cutest girl in school, had abdicated his position as the coolest kid in school to date the new girl from Los Angeles only to be cheated on and publically humiliated by her.

And all for that weird kid, Snake Clayton.

Chapter 3

Snake Clayton sprang out of bed.

He couldn’t believe how energized he felt. The weekend had been a game changer for him. All those snooty rich kids had a real shock. That Griffin Masters thought he was such a rock star. Everybody did. He had the cutest girl. The prime position on the football team. A rich dad. What more could any guy want? But was he satisfied? Oh, no, not Griffin. He had to win the new cute girl from California.

A California girl. Why would Griffin Masters want to waste his time on a cool girl from the west coast? Griffin was strictly old-school. Old family. The country club set. His kind were the kind that looked down on people like him, Snake thought. The kids with no money. No shiny, new cars. No big houses in the best neighborhoods. A guy like Griffin was too uptight to understand a cool girl like Abby Lyle. He was just too uptight for Snake’s California girl.

That’s why Snake wasn’t surprised when Abby finally succumb to his charms. Well, he was a little surprised. But he knew he was the right kind of guy for Hollywood. He smiled to himself as he remembered the nickname he had given her. He could tell she liked it, even if she pretended to be annoyed by it.

He called her Hollywood because, duh, she was from Hollywood, but also because she was so cool. He could tell. With her long, straight brown hair and simple tee-shirts and jeans she looked like she had stepped right off the beach. And she had a poet’s soul. Snake could tell from her comments in English class that she had a way of looking at the world that saw through people. Saw through the phonies. Saw though the fakery.

He laughed. He had really enjoyed shocking Griffin and his crowd when they caught Griffin’s new girlfriend kissing him, Snake Clayton.

Snake was cracking raw eggs into a glass when his mother ambled into the kitchen to make his usual bowl of cereal. The radio was blasting hard rock which his mother hated, so she reached for the volume level first to take the edge off the music.

What the heck are you eating? she asked, already grumpy from the music.

There’s this guy at school who calls this the breakfast of champions.

That’s disgusting. If you hurl, don’t do it on my kitchen floor?

She picked up the empty egg carton and tossed it in the trash.

Aren’t raw eggs supposed to be dangerous? his mother asked, frowning at the mess on the counter.

Snake chugged the mixture of raw eggs and hot sauce down. Umm. Danger is going to be my new middle name. He grimaced. Just as soon as I brush my teeth.

Ten minutes later Snake was revving the throttle of his bike as he rounded the corner and headed down the street that would take him to the West Beaufort High parking lot. If he hurried he could just fit in a quick workout before class. That’s what he needed. He needed to feel the power. He needed to assert himself. Things were so different. Everything was going to be different now.

The parking lot was still mostly empty. The principal was in. The lunch ladies. And the coach had opened the weight room for the football team. But it was available for everyone. Only nobody ever used it. Today Snake was going to claim his space in that world.

Snake could feel the eyes on him as he walked into the room and he was acutely aware of his less-than-toned physique as he walked among the school jocks.

There was a musty gym smell in the air. The clink of metal on metal cut through the early morning stillness. There was an air of sluggishness. Of sleepy athletes slogging through a mundane task. Only Snake radiated energy.

Snake leaned back onto the weight bench and gripped the weight. Only then did he glance over