I remembered Tess and Josh crowing with delight, “sword” fighting with empty wrapping paper rolls in the same space where she now crouched on the floor coughing so hard, blood splattered her lips. Solemn Cub Scout oaths spoken around the table where Matt now sat tied to a chair in an oversized sweatshirt set up in a makeshift straightjacket. Josh raising a plastic gun to his lips and blowing off imaginary smoke in the middle of the room. Now he stood in the same place, leveling a very real gun at Tess.
“Don’t,” I croaked, making a feeble grab for Josh.
He ignored me. “I thought you said it had to be invited in!”
“I’d wager she was.” Elizabeth didn’t pause in circling Tess, pouring salt out of a dark blue canister, but she did jerk a thumb over her shoulder to Matt.
“I deserve this,” he sobbed. “Make it stop! Make it stop! I deserve this!”
Josh swore under his breath, his grip tightening on the gun as Elizabeth tossed the salt canister away and grabbed a bucket filled with what looked like shaved bits of metal—iron, maybe? “Hurry,” he urged.
She finished with the bucket, then grabbed a bottle of water. “Don’t look at me like that. I had to warn them, Derrick. This is bigger than you and your girlfriend.”
“He’s going to kill her.” I tried to struggle to my feet, but whatever happened to me in transit from beach to basement had turned my knees to rubber.
“If it comes to that, yeah.”
My mind raced, trying to figure out some way out of this. But being here was such an impossibility, I couldn’t catch up. We’d just been on a beach nearly six hours away. How could we be back in Fairdealings, in Josh’s basement of all places. What is she doing here? I tried to catch Elizabeth’s eye, but she avoided me, guilt etched along her face.
How could she work with them?
It’s the right call. If she and Matt had stuck with my plan, Tess and I would have still popped up wherever Matt was. Only he’d be alone and helpless. Now, at least, he had a chance. But did Tess?
This is bigger than you and your girlfriend, Elizabeth had said. Objectively, I knew she was right. If the Estrie completed the sacrifices, a lot more people would get hurt. Stopping it should be the priority.
But I’d long since lost my ability to be objective when it came to Tess.
Elizabeth sprinkled the water in a circle, then drew a piece of paper from her pocket and started reading in rapid Latin. An exorcism? Iron, water, salt, incense. I glanced around the room, taking in the symbols drawn on bits of paper taped to the walls.
“If this works—” I kept my voice low, directing my words to Josh. “—you can’t shoot her. I know you’re pissed, I know you want revenge, but—”
“I’m not a murderer, Hernandez.” Josh cut me a disgusted look.
Just a rapist. My thoughts turned to the cell phone in my pocket, but Josh watched me with a look in his eyes that told me he was itching for an excuse to shoot both of us.
“Derrick, help me!” Tess’s voice shrieked, but I didn’t need Elizabeth’s warning look to recognize Tess wasn’t speaking.
How is she yelling? I could barely breathe.
The demon’s voice echoed in my memory. We’re linked, you and I.
I could almost see the tether between us—a line of shadows pulling something from me, something important, something vital, to push into her.
The Estrie crouched down, muscles tense. She wasn’t coughing anymore.
“Watch out!” I shouted to Elizabeth.
Tess’s body flew at Elizabeth with a wordless growl in a rush of dark hair and flashing teeth. Wind stirred every paper in the room, and everything went dark. I could feel the shadows pulsing, writhing against me like a living thing.
Because they were. I could feel their pain, their memories. Chris, sliding the blade up his wrist, Harrison, staring up at the ceiling fan; Ryan, leaping in front of that car;
Beside me, Josh stiffened, and the gun clicked as the safety went off. No. Launching myself at Josh, I knocked him to the floor, fumbling blindly for the gun. Shadows fled the room, bathing us in a sudden light. Josh froze in surprise; I did not. I grabbed the gun from his hand and clubbed him over the head until he went still.
Behind me, I could hear the monster doing something to Matt. Whimpers from him; slurping sounds from her. My stomach lurched with the realization that if he wasn’t dead yet, he soon would be. I glanced around for Elizabeth. Her arm beckoned limply behind the couch. Desperation fragmented my thoughts. What do I do? What do I do?
Time slowed to the staccato rhythm of my pounding heart as I turned to face the creature kneeling at Matt’s side. Blood pooled around Matt’s head, gleaming against the tile. Swallowing hard, I raised the gun in shaking hands. “Stop.”
She didn’t so much as pause in her slurping.
I dropped the gun to the floor. I could never hurt Tess.
But maybe I could slow her down. I tore another bag of incense out of my pocket. The bag flew in an arc of pink powder and then landed on Matt’s chest with a puff of dust that settled over him, clinging to his skin. The Estrie drew back in a hiss as a second bag of powder exploded into the air. Before I could launch the last bag, pain exploded behind my eyeballs.
“Gah!” I dropped to the floor, my nose gushing blood as the strange pull between us went taut.
Chapter 47: Tess
Tuesday, October 4th
STOP! I SCREAMED when my body flew at Derrick, my fists striking him again and again. I struggled to still my hand, to gain some semblance of control over my body. Beneath me, Derrick coughed, blood flecking on his lips as the Estrie pulled energy from him to heal me.
“You’re too late . . .” My lips spoke the words, but I didn’t say them. “The boy’s as good as dead. Upon the next moonrise the ritual will complete. This is your last chance.” She dragged Derrick up by the shirt collar. “You can still take her place. You can still save her.”
What? I stopped struggling, as I realized exactly what Derrick hadn’t told me. Now I knew why the Estrie needed to pull from him to heal me. There was something wrong with me. Something beyond the abilities of even supernatural healing. I wasn’t strong enough to complete the ritual, but he was.
Surprisingly, the Estrie let me reach for the gun. It let me take the weapon in my hand, heavy, solid, cold.
“What?” Derrick looked from my hand to my face. “Tess? Tess! What are you doing?”
Why wasn’t it fighting me?
Oh. The realization hit me with perfect clarity.
Why is it helping you? Elizabeth had asked. At the time her question seemed ridiculous. But now it made perfect sense.
We’ve tried everything else, the Estrie coached me.
“We’ve tried everything else.” I played along, letting the Estrie guide my hand. Control. Just a sliver of it.
“No. You can’t die, Tess. You can’t! I won’t let you.” Derrick grabbed the gun, pulling it away from me.
I snatched it back, my heart thudding at his cavalier handling of something so dangerous, so deadly. “It hates you, Derrick. I can feel it. What is it going to do to you once I’m not here to hold it back?”
“I don’t care!”
He’d die for you, the Estrie’s voice whispered in my mind. It’s an exchange I am willing to make.
I gritted my teeth. You can’t have him!
Then end this.
“It’ll kill you and your mom and my mom and anyone else it wants. And it’ll use my body to do it. I can’t let that happen, Derrick. Please. Let me do this on my own terms.”
It needed consent. Not just from the sacrifices but from me. It couldn’t fully take over my body unless I let it. And it would do whatever it took to break me enough to sign over my life.
“I can’t let you do this,” Der
rick babbled, panic blazing in his eyes. “I can’t do this. Don’t ask me to stand by while—”
I kissed him, pouring everything I had, all the words I’d never said, into my kiss. He tasted of salt, copper, and heartbreak. Bitterness and desperation. After a second’s hesitation, he kissed me back, reaching for the gun as I’d known he would.
Details, he’d remind me, if he was thinking straight. The larger picture mattered, but the devil was in the details.
Why draw us a picture? Why give us the memories? Why not drop me into a nightmare right now like it always had before? Why talk to Derrick at all? The questions looped through my brain as I let Derrick grip the gun in my hand.
The Estrie had tainted every single aspect of my life. When I found solace in my drawings, it corrupted them. Everyone I cared about had been dragged into this somehow. Why involve Derrick? Why link him, when the other sacrifices could be controlled into protecting me?
I pressed the gun flat against the floor as his fingers tried to work the weapon free.
The memories weren’t puzzle pieces. They were shrapnel.
“Please,” he whispered. “I’ll figure this out. You know I’ll figure this out.”
But I already had. It was using him. First by trying to trick him into sleeping with me moments before moonset. If I’d woken up in the midst of that—
I swallowed hard, my mind backing away from the horror of that thought.
Now it was using him in another way.
Everyone has someone, Elizabeth’s voice echoed in my mind. She’d assumed the ritual built in the second person for protection, but she was wrong. They were leverage.
The thought of Derrick becoming one of her shadows like everyone else the Estrie killed twisted my stomach into knots. He mattered. He had his entire life ahead of him. He knew what he wanted to do, he had a college all picked out and an entire future planned in his head. His mother would be heartbroken if he died. He had everything, but all I had was him.
“I love you,” I whispered, giving him one more kiss, then before he could think, before he could react, I laced my fingers through his, yanked the gun into the air, careful, so careful, to keep his finger on the trigger, and shot.
Chapter 48: Derrick
Tuesday, October 4th
“YOU SHOT JOSH Worthington,” the words came out of me in an inarticulate mumble as I stared at his body. “You shot Josh Worthington!” No. She’d held my finger down on the trigger. “Holy shit. You’re a genius.”
Tess stared at Josh, her face ashen with shock. “I—I thought if he died then—”
“It can’t complete the ritual.” Why hadn’t I thought of that? I wanted to grab her, spin her around, and jump for joy, but the body in the middle of the floor tempered the impulse.
Across the room Matt groaned. I rushed to his side, looking for something to staunch the bleeding at his neck. Snatching a blanket off the couch, I pressed the cloth to his throat, unsure what the first aid protocol was for bleeding from the neck. It wasn’t like I could use a tourniquet. That would be strangulation.
“Can you check on Elizabeth?” Giddy relief pumped through me, giving my whole body the kind of TV static feeling I got when my foot fell asleep.
Tess didn’t move. “I’m sorry.”
“Yeah, no.” I waved off her concern. “If you killed Josh, maybe his death could still count toward the ritual. For all we know, the timing is a preference, not a requirement, right? Better safe than sorry.” Hysteria edged my laughter. “I really thought you were going to die for a minute there.”
“I am.” Her voice cracked.
What? My hands went still on the blanket I’d pressed to Matt’s neck. What did she mean—
Blood rolled down her thigh from a pencil-sized hole.
“No.” I ran to her when she went down hard on her knees, but she twisted out of my grip, convulsing.
Her mouth dropped open, spewing out a mass of shadows. They spun together like smoke into a tall, looming silhouette with too many joints. Darkened fingers ending in talons that dragged the floor without sound. Its knees bent like it couldn’t hold its own weight. A grin stretched across its face, empty and dark and wide enough to swallow me whole.
It just kept smiling.
“You—” It spoke with a multitude of screaming voices, all horrifyingly familiar. “—will regret that.”
He’s screaming. The memory of Josh’s voice echoed through my mind. He’s still screaming.
Sucked to be them. “Heal her.” I clamped my hand over Tess’s leg. Bruises colored her neck, and I swallowed hard, recognizing Josh’s handiwork. “Please. You can still—”
Tess’s back arched as she gasped for breath. Her skin bubbled as it burned.
“No, no, no! This wasn’t supposed to happen! It wasn’t supposed to—Tess!” My voice went hoarse.
Her eyes fluttered open, wide with pain and terror. She clutched at me, whimpering, crying, screaming in agony.
“I’ll do it!” I screamed. “I’ll take her place! I consent, I consent, please stop!”
“Too late.” The shadows burst apart and vanished.
Chapter 49: Tess
Tuesday, October 4th
CLUTCHING AT Derrick’s arm, I tried to tell him I loved him. I tried to find some way to communicate that this wasn’t his fault. He’d done everything he could. There was no saving me; there was never any saving me. I’d died at the bonfire.
I tried to explain that before, I died alone. But this time, Derrick held me in his arms. That made all the difference. But all I managed to say was that I loved him.
As far as last words went, they didn’t suck.
Chapter 50: Derrick
Tuesday, October 4th
THE ROOM BRIGHTENED when Tess stopped breathing. I felt Elizabeth’s cool hands on my shoulders as she screamed my name. Heard my mother’s voice. Saw the flashing lights from the ambulance. But all that mattered was the shell of a girl in my arms.
Elizabeth blamed Josh, claiming he’d called her over with questions about some crazy ritual he’d found in a book purchased from her shop, and she’d arrived to find Matt tied up in his basement. She talked about the gun, the way he’d hurt Tess, and threw in something about a suicide pact for good measure.
Matt didn’t make it, so he wasn’t able to contradict her.
Mom’s lab processed the autopsies and lab work in record time, revealing a dangerous cocktail of alcohol and benzodiazepines—date rape drugs—in Tess’s system with evidence of an anaphylactic reaction.
The same drugs found in her system were discovered missing from a pharmacy owned by Liam’s father. An email provided a translation of the book. Texts between the football players pointed to their belief in the sacrificial ritual and Josh’s increasing aggression toward Tess.
The case closed. Josh’s death was ruled self-defense, never mind the blood splatter indicating he’d been prone on the ground when we shot him. Never mind the fact that they never found a weapon to explain Matt’s slashed throat. Never mind the damage done to Tess by smoke and flame absent from the crime scene. Never mind the fact that according to receipts and cameras at gas stations along the road to Florida, it was physically impossible for Tess and me to be anywhere near Josh’s basement, much less the state. Mom returned my car to me without comment, and all those facts were quietly ignored in favor of what could be explained.
One day, Mr. Worthington might come to his senses and ask questions about how the case was handled. But for now, the man seemed too stunned by his son’s death and apparent guilt.
What a terrible tragedy, people whispered. The poor boy just snapped.
I couldn’t stomach the way people stopped looking once they got their easy answer, or the sympathy in their voices when they talked about Tess, as though any of them ever ga
ve a damn about her.
Tess’s mom rallied enough to take over the funeral arrangements—cremation, which seemed extra cruel to me, considering the circumstances of Tess’s death. She planned the kind of memorial Tess would hate, inviting people who’d never treated her like anything but trash to hold her up as some kind of beloved, tragic hero. In death, Tess belonged to them. They scrounged for memories of conversations with her, anything to justify the kind of connection they needed to make her death all about them.
I couldn’t let them do that to her. The night before the funeral, I snuck out of my house. Wren Kepner waited for me, clutching a small urn to her chest.
“I shouldn’t be doing this.” Tears clouded her eyes. “My dad’s going to k—” She broke off. “Be so mad. But . . . she deserved better than we gave her. So if you say this is what she’d want.” She held out the urn to me. “Then may she rest in peace.”
“Thank you,” I managed, returning to my car. I turned Tess’s playlist on as loud as I could stand.
When her stupid cartoon songs came on halfway to Florida, I turned my head out of habit, half expecting to see her sitting beside me, singing along. Instead I saw the urn. Turning my attention back to the road, I held myself there, rigid, because it hurt too much to look. But I could still hear her in the music.
At six-fifteen, when the full moon gave way to sunrise, I scattered her ashes into the waves. As the tide pushed and pulled her away from me, I sank onto the sand and gave myself completely over to grief. I remembered the taste of her, here on this beach. The feel of her skin. The sparkle in her eyes. Her laughter, her tears. I wept, wailed, and made noises I’d never heard before and hoped to never hear again.
When I got home, I found Tess’s mom in the living room. My mom made some meaningless apologies. I played my part, nodding in all the right places.
I’d expected her mom to be mad, but she just smiled and sighed. “Thank you,” she whispered, tears glittering in her eyes as she drew me in for a hug. “For being there for her when I couldn’t.”
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