“Don’t be afraid,” said the ghost. “We’re just teasing, remember? Like how Maggie teased us?”
Eddie stared at the scissors above him, the rise and fall of his chest growing frantic.
The ghost flicked the scissors open, moving toward Eddie’s chest. The top few buttons on his shirt ripped off, pinging across the room, and then the ghost lowered the blade to the skin just below Eddie’s collarbone, digging a long thin line.
L . . . O . . .
Hendricks felt something sour rising in her throat. She shifted on the floor, surprised to find that the ropes tied around her wrists weren’t quite as tight as she’d expected them to be. She worked her thumb into a knot, trying to pull them loose.
The boy had finished carving up Eddie’s chest. loser, it read, dripping blood. Eddie’s eyes lolled. He didn’t seem to be able to lift his head.
There was a clatter of metal as the scissors fell to the floor.
Now, the ghost held a stapler. Leaning forward, he ripped the duct tape from Eddie’s lips.
“Stop. Please.” Eddie’s voice was weak. “Please, you have to let me go. Please.”
“I thought this was just a game? Remember? That’s what your mother told us when she killed us.”
Eddie’s face creased with confusion. “What are you talking about?”
The stapler lowered to Eddie’s face and snapped shut an inch from his nose. He flinched and drew in a long, shuddering breath.
“What does this have to do with my mother?” Eddie asked, unable to move his eyes away from the stapler. “What—”
The stapler closed over his mouth and—
Snap!
A metal staple shot straight through his skin.
CHAPTER
31
Eddie’s scream was a strangled, gruesome thing. He couldn’t open his mouth past the staple or the metal would rip straight though his skin, tearing his lips in two. Thick streams of blood trickled down his lips and over his chin.
Snap!
Snap!
Snap!
Hendricks flinched each time the stapler snapped closed. She clenched her eyes shut, unable to watch anymore. Tears streamed down her face. Behind her back, she kept working on her ropes, pulling and tugging, her arms trembling with nerves. The smoke in the air was growing thicker. The skin around her fingers felt rubbed raw.
Come on . . .
Hendricks yanked one last time, and the ropes binding her hands unraveled. She felt them drop from her wrists, landing on the ground behind her. For a moment she just lay there, shocked.
Then she leapt to her feet, her heart racing. Her brain felt foggy and slow.
Clumsily, she grasped Eddie by the arm, half-pulling and half-dragging him.
The ghosts stood between them and the door to the hallway. Their eyes were deep, solid pits of black, and their mouths weren’t moving, but Hendricks could still hear them speak. Their voices were whispers and shouts and hissing, all layering one over another. Sometimes they spoke backward, and sometimes their voices seemed to seep out of the walls and drift up from the floor.
You’ll pay for what she did to us
You’ll pay for what she did
You’ll pay
You will you will
Hendricks threw her hands over her ears, but the voices kept speaking into her head. She couldn’t catch her breath. It wasn’t just the stench of the ghosts, it was the air itself; the smoke had left it feeling thin and hot. There wasn’t enough of it.
The boys’ eyes were growing larger, the black taking over their faces so that their noses and eyes and lips seemed to cave inward, sucked into the darkness. They reached out for Hendricks and Eddie, their long, bony fingers grazing her face. She backed away from them, felt the closet behind her.
There was nowhere else to go.
Desperate, Hendricks threw the closet door open and shoved Eddie inside, jumping in behind him and slamming the door.
For a few moments she just stood there, her heart hammering, waiting for her eyes to adjust to the darkness. The smoke was thinner in here, and Hendricks could finally draw a full breath. A sliver of light came in through the crack at the bottom of the door, and it illuminated the outline of Eddie’s face, his mangled lips, and the blood dripping down his chin.
He was bent over in pain, his expression pinched and pale, his arms still bound at the wrists.
Hendricks’s heart lurched. “Let me get those.” She began to fumble with his ropes. After a moment of struggle she managed to dig her thumb into the knot and yank the bindings loose. Eddie pulled his hands away and went to work on his lips.
“Ah,” he moaned, grimacing as he dug the staples out of his skin. Hendricks heard the soft click of staples hitting the floor.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
“I’m bleeding pretty badly.” Eddie’s voice still sounded strangled. His eyes moved to the closet door. “Do you think they’re gone?”
Hendricks held her breath and cocked her head, listening.
Wood creaked in the nursery. And then there was a shuffle, like dry leaves sweeping across the floor. Hendricks’s skin crept.
“Eddie,” she murmured, the word coated in terror. Flames appeared, lighting the dim closet. They crackled along the corner where the wall met the floor, and then slowly crawled up the walls.
The house was coming alive.
“Listen to me,” she continued. “You have to find a way out of here.”
“I’m not going anywhere without you.”
“The ghosts didn’t accept my sacrifice. They want . . .” Hendricks paused. She couldn’t bring herself to tell Eddie that the ghosts wanted him, and so she murmured, “Something else.”
“What did you sacrifice?” Eddie asked.
Hendricks shook her head, tears pooling in her eyes. She remembered how powerful she’d felt as she held Grayson’s jersey over the flame. It had seemed monumental at the time, but now she could see that it hadn’t been a sacrifice at all. It’d been a release.
“Love itself,” she said, her cheeks flaring. “Like Ileana told me to. Didn’t work, though. I think maybe I never really loved Grayson, so it wasn’t really a sacrifice.”
She didn’t know how to say the rest of it. She knew she couldn’t have been in love with Grayson, because what she felt for Eddie was so different. It wasn’t passion and fear and anger and want, the familiar roller coaster of emotions she’d mistaken for love before. What she felt now was so much simpler than that. Trust and acceptance and warmth. A desire to do better, to be better.
It embarrassed her that she’d ever settled for such a pale imitation of the real thing.
There was a crushing sadness in Eddie’s face as he looked at her, but all he said was “Oh.”
The flames had reached the ceiling and were stretching over their heads, hot and crackling. Hendricks’s lips trembled. She thought of her friends outside, wrestling with the skeletons in her backyard. Was it possible that they were still alive?
Or was she already too late?
Horror rose up inside of her. “If we don’t sacrifice something soon, we’re all going to die.”
“The ghosts . . . they kept talking about my mother,” Eddie said. “They said, you’ll pay for what she did.”
Hendricks sensed movement from the corner of her eye and whipped her head around, pulse thudding. But there was nothing there.
The sound of laughter drifted down from the ceiling.
“She used to talk about these boys who bullied her in school.” Eddie sucked in a deep, uneven breath. He was shaking a little. “They killed her cat. And then they just disappeared, and no one ever found out what happened to them. Except . . . she—she killed them, didn’t she? They bullied her, and so she killed them in revenge?”
The closet door blew open with a crash. Three figures hove
red just outside, fire dancing around their feet. Hendricks huddled closer to Eddie.
The lights in the nursery blinked off, on, off again.
You can’t save him.
The ghosts floated, their toes black and dangling. The fire grew, spreading across the floor and chewing its way up through the drywall and insulation. A piece of plaster crumbled from the ceiling and crashed to the ground in an explosion of white dust, fire sparking and crackling around it. The room was suddenly stifling. Hendricks felt her skin start to burn.
The ghosts lifted their hands, pointing at Eddie.
“They need one more,” Hendricks said, choking on the smoke.
He stared at her. Her heart crashed in her ears. He opened his mouth to speak.
“Eddie, no,” she said, cutting him off before he could say a word. “They can’t have you.”
“They already took Kyle and Maribeth.”
The smoke had made Hendricks dizzy. She blinked, hard, trying to refocus on Eddie’s face. She could feel the ghosts coming closer. The fire was everywhere now, the air shivering in the heat. Hendricks realized she could no longer see the door to Brady’s room through the smoke.
“Three lives for the three lives my mother took,” Eddie said. His eyes had glazed over, and he didn’t seem to notice the smoke or the ghosts any longer. “I’m the third.”
Hendricks shook her head. “There has to be another way.”
No.
Eddie turned to her, curling his hand around hers. “I love you, Hendricks,” he said in a rush. “That’s why your sacrifice didn’t work. I was already in love with you, so you couldn’t sacrifice it.”
Hendricks’s throat felt thick. “Eddie . . .”
Eddie took her face in his hands. “I love you,” he said again. “I just need you to know that. Before.”
He lunged past the ghosts, fumbling for the pair of bloody scissors lying on the nursery floor. And then he drove them into his chest.
Hendricks felt her heart stop.
No.
For a moment, Eddie stared back at her, dazed. And then he fell to his knees.
“No!” The word burst out of her like a command as Hendricks dropped onto the ground beside him. She grabbed his arm and pulled it around her shoulder. “Come on, we have to get out of here. Come on.”
Eddie’s eyes flickered. “I’m not leaving, Hendricks,” he murmured. “It’s over.”
She drew a long, sobbing breath. She was dimly aware that the air in the room had grown considerably warmer.
Desperate, her eyes swiveled to Brady’s window.
Her own words rose in her memory, bringing with them a sudden jolt of adrenaline: I used to be fearless.
Not used to be, she thought, hauling Eddie to his feet. I am fearless.
Eddie was fading, but she managed to drag him over to the window. She shoved the half-broken window open with her shoulder—
There was a low popping sound, and then a blast of stifling air swept through the hallway outside of Brady’s room, blowing the nursery door open with a thud. A cloud of orange and red flame billowed into the room, slamming into Hendricks’s back.
Holding tight to Eddie, she pushed herself out the window, flames licking at her feet. Gravity took hold and they rolled, one over another, onto the low-hanging roof and then over the edge, into nothing. For a moment, it felt like flying—
—and then the ground rose up to meet them and they slammed into the muddy yard below. In the pouring rain, the soft give of the mud broke her fall. She lay there, her body stinging, unsure if she could move. Eddie was no longer in her arms. Panic rose within her, and she rose to her hands and knees, wiping the mud from her mouth. She could see his unmoving figure lying a few feet away.
“Eddie,” she choked out. The rain continued to pour relentlessly. She slipped as she clawed her way to him.
He was horribly pale. Blood coated his chest and neck. His eyes didn’t focus.
Tears choked Hendricks’s throat. She grabbed Eddie by the shoulders, shaking him.
“Don’t leave me,” she sobbed.
Eddie’s lips parted, as though he were about to say something. His eyes went still. Something inside of Hendricks crumbled and broke. He was gone.
Behind her, there was a series of explosions. She glanced up just in time to see sparks light up the Steele House windows, and fire spew up through its chimney and belch out the back door, lighting the night. Black smoke filled the sky in a great, roaring cloud. Both stories of the house were flaming now, its freshly painted exterior cracking and peeling under the heat, its shutters hanging from blackened hinges. A deep, yawning darkness stared out from beyond the shutterless windows. It reminded Hendricks of lidless eyes.
For a moment, she thought she saw movement in that darkness. Three shapes standing at the windows, watching.
And then a breeze blew through the yard and into the house, drawing Hendricks’s eyes as it upset the flickering embers and ash. By the time Hendricks looked back up at the windows the ghosts were gone. Steele House was empty.
EPILOGUE
Hendricks stood on the sidewalk across the street from Steele House, staring at the ruins. She couldn’t see much from here—just blackened brick and splintered wood and broken glass—but she didn’t dare move closer.
She knew it was childish, but she thought that if she got any closer, the house might see her.
It had been one month since Steele House had burned to the ground, although sometimes it felt to Hendricks that only minutes had passed. The last four weeks had the surreal quality of a dream she couldn’t wake up from. It was hard to believe that anything was real.
Raven was still unconscious in the hospital. Connor had been released, but his arm would never be the same. Portia was hobbling around on crutches. She and Hendricks saw each other in the halls at school, sometimes, but neither of them spoke. Then again, Portia didn’t really speak to anyone anymore. She stared into space with wide, unblinking eyes. Her lips always seemed to be trembling.
And Eddie was dead.
That was the part Hendricks was having a hard time believing. She kept expecting to wake up and find herself on the floor of Brady’s old nursery back at Steele House, the ghosts surrounding them, Eddie by her side. But that wasn’t going to happen.
Eddie had died to pay for his mother’s crimes. He’d sacrificed himself to save Hendricks and everyone else in Drearford. He was really, truly gone.
Hendricks scuffed the toe of her sneaker into the sidewalk, releasing a deep sigh. So why did she keep coming here? If Eddie was really gone, why did she keep haunting the place where she’d lost him?
Her parents had moved across town, renting a small house while they tried to figure out whether to stay in Drearford or move on to someplace else. There was no reason for Hendricks to walk all this way so she could stand on the other side of the street from her old house. Except—
It pained her to admit, but there was a part of her that expected Eddie to come back. To try and see her one last time.
A soft breeze, thick with the smells of fresh dirt and smoke, swept across the street, making Hendricks shiver. It was getting darker. Time to head back home. She turned, felt something crunch beneath her shoe.
Glancing down, she saw a small silver lighter lying in the street.
She stared at it for a long moment. Eddie’s lighter hadn’t been there when she’d first come back here. She would’ve noticed it. He’d loved that lighter.
She looked around, eyes skating over the yard, half expecting to see Eddie himself materialize from the shadows, familiar beat-up leather jacket hanging from his shoulders. But there was no one. She was alone.
Heart hammering, she knelt and picked the lighter up.
It was still warm.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I’m so lucky to have a truly brilliant
team behind me for all of my books, and this one was no different.
Thank you to my wonderful Alloy family—specifically Laura Barbiea and Josh Bank—for supporting me from the prologue to the final pages. I couldn’t do this without you.
Thanks times about a million to my team at Razorbill. This book has benefitted immensely from Jessica Harriton’s brilliant notes, and Casey McIntyre’s endless support. Additional thanks go to Bri Lockhart, Felicity Vallence, Elyse Marshall, Kristin Boyle and the rest of Razorbill’s sales, marketing and publicity team. I’m continually blown away by how hard you work to help people find my books.
In addition to the people named here, there are so many others working behind the scenes to make this book happen. I am grateful to all of you. I couldn’t have done it without your support.
And finally, as always, thanks to my fabulous, supportive family and friends and, specifically, to Ron, who really believes in this one.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Danielle Vega spent her childhood hiding under the covers while her mother retold tales from the pages of Stephen King novels. Now as an adult, she can count on one hand the number of times in her life she's been afraid. Danielle is the author of the Merciless series and Survive the Night. Follow her @dvegabooks.
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