Slowly, languidly, as though her head was not attached to her neck, Ty swiveled around and stared directly into Em’s eyes. With a gasp, Em stepped away from the window, feeling like she had just jumped into Galvin Pond in the middle of February—her breath had been swept away. Pinpricks of terror ran up and down her body.
Just a few seconds later, the door to the booth swung open. There stood Ty, smirking. Her loose white T-shirt and tight gray jeans were practically identical to Em’s own outfit.
“What are you doing here?” Em said, trying to keep her voice steady. Whenever she stood next to Ty, she was overcome by a frigid sense of blackness. Almost like drowning. She refused to look at their reflections in the projector window. The double vision would only make her dizzier.
“Seeing a movie with my friend Gabs,” Ty said, as though it were the most obvious thing in the world. She trailed her fingers casually along the equipment in the projection booth. “I love a good rom-com.”
“She’s not your friend,” Em said coldly. She looked Ty up and down. “Why are you . . . wearing that? How did you know what I’d be wearing? Why are you trying to look like me?”
“How did you know what I’d be wearing?” Ty countered. “Maybe you’re copying me, not vice versa. Did you ever think about that?” She did a quick spin in the small space, like a model on a runway, and laughed.
Em’s eyes caught hers in the window’s reflection, and her vision swam. It was in fact hard to tell who was who. Her breath hitched in her throat and she willed herself to turn away from the glass.
“You can feel it inside you, can’t you?” Ty whispered. “The heat. The power. The anger. It’s exciting, isn’t it? And scary. Scary how evil feeds on itself.”
“Why me?” The words came out hoarse and quiet. “Why now? Why don’t you just kill me, like you’ve done with all the others?”
For a moment, Ty’s taunting look vanished, and Em detected something else, almost—almost—like sadness. The way an animal might pity its prey, right before devouring it. “You were in the wrong place at the wrong time,” she said, and that brief glimpse of empathy was gone. She smiled. “Don’t you see, Em? I just want to be good. Like you.”
“Good?” Em repeated. It was disgusting to hear Ty even say the word.
“Let the darkness take you,” Ty said, taking a step forward, more seductively now. “Time is running out, you know. It’s almost over. And then the pain will be over, and the transformation will be complete.” It sounded almost like Ty was saying a prayer. “Anyway, I’ve gotta get back to the movie—I don’t want to miss the best part! See you at the party later.” She winked.
And then, before Em could question her or respond in any way, Ty whisked herself out of the small room. As she brushed by, it was as if they shared the same slice of air. As if their molecules mingled for a split second. Two wisps of smoke, twirling around each other.
And the mirrored glass reinforced the sensation—in the vacuum of Ty’s wake, as Em leaned over, resting her hands on her knees and trying to regain her balance, her reflection wavered in and out, like a shifting hologram. Was the girl in the mirror “good,” like Ty had said?
She barely knew herself. There I am. There I’m not.
Back and forth. In and out. No matter how hard she blinked, she seemed translucent.
Holy shit.
She tried to tell herself to keep breathing, but panic roiled inside her, making it hard to grasp on to a lifeline.
I’m disappearing, she thought.
Then aloud: “I’m disappearing.” Saying the words seemed to break the spell. Like waking up from a dream, she clicked back into herself and saw a normal reflection in the glass. She brought a hand to her face and touched her skin, making sure it was there. Making sure she was real. There was little relief, though; instead, she felt like she’d dodged the bullet that would surely get her eventually.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Less than a mile from the Feiffers’ house, JD parked on the side of the road. When he pulled out his phone, his hands were shaking. Within a couple seconds of online research, he was quickly able to nail down two solid pieces of information:
1. The Furies were mythological goddesses of vengeance.
2. They usually appeared in groups of three—and their names were a mouthful: Tisephone, Alecto, and Megaera.
Ty, Ali, Meg.
His stomach rolled and he kept scrolling through webpages, hunting for information. What he read about the Furies put a bad taste in his mouth.
JD’s unsettling interactions with Ty, Lucy, and Mr. Feiffer only served to heighten his unease, not to mention the snake charm he’d found. It was difficult to separate the truth from the madness—it seemed like crazy stories and wild behavior were becoming the norm around here.
But what was he supposed to believe? That three storybook characters had leaped from the pages of Greek scrolls to the streets of Ascension? And that Ty was one of them, along with her cousins?
Meg, Ty, even Ali—all of them were pretty, but off. JD was reminded of the open casket funerals he had been to, and how the bodies looked after they’d been drained, stuffed, and powdered. That’s how these girls were: perfect on the outside but empty and rotten on the inside. You could sense it.
It was definitely weird that the mystery women who had recently entered his life had names that were remarkably similar—just a little more pronounceable—to the mythological goddesses’. And that Lucy and Mr. Feiffer had both dropped hints that connected the Furies with recent happenings in Ascension. But coincidences were not evidence.
And then there was the possibility Em was somehow entangled in this mess. After all, the first time he’d ever heard of the Furies was in the book on her bed. . . . Sweat prickled his forehead. He punched down the window, taking deep breaths of cool air. The wind whispered through the trees outside, as though passing along its secrets.
I can’t believe you’re even considering this, he chastised himself.
JD had always liked order. Gears, circuits, electrical flow: stuff you could categorize, understand, process. But more and more, he felt as though he was entangled in something he couldn’t understand—plagued that he had somehow placed himself in danger. And that other people were in danger.
Three people—four, including Sasha Bowlder—had already mysteriously died this winter. And Ty seemed to be connected to at least two of them.
Could that be a coincidence?
Driving home, he found himself compulsively checking his rearview mirror and craning his neck to see around every bend. He felt jumpy, electric, like he used to as a kid playing hide-and-seek—as though at any second someone might pop up and grab him.
And when he got out of his car, he practically sprinted for the front door, making doubly sure to lock it behind him.
Moments later, he settled onto the living room couch with his laptop, but it was impossible to concentrate.
“Can you turn that down?” JD asked Melissa. She glared at him, but turned down the volume on whatever reality TV show she was currently watching.
As Melissa punched the remote control, JD noticed her nails were literally neon green. Why were girls so weird?
“Is that color called I Fell Into a Nuclear Reactor?” he asked.
“Bright colors are in right now, idiot,” Melissa said. “Ali put the same color on her toes.”
JD tried to stifle the alarm bells that began ringing in his head. “So? Then her toes are radioactive too. And when did you see Ali?”
“This afternoon,” Melissa said, plunging her hands into a bag of popcorn and eating the kernels one by one. “She picked me up while you were out with Ned and we did mani-pedis at her house.”
“I’m glad stranger-danger really made an impression on you, Mel,” he said, trying to keep his tone light.
She rolled her eyes, tucking a strand of strawberry-blond hair behind one ear. “Ali isn’t a stranger, dummy. She’s a friend. Remember?” She looked g
enuinely disappointed.
He reminded himself not to overreact—there were no facts on the table, only insane theories. “I know, I know,” he relented. “But we just don’t know her very well, and with everything that’s been happening around here—I guess I’m just feeling a little overprotective.”
“Well, don’t be. You don’t need to worry about me.”
“Says the girl who almost broke her ankle last week,” he said.
“Almost.” Melissa smiled. “Anyway, all we did was go to her house—which is incredible, by the way—and do girly stuff. Ty was there too. They say I’m practically like family.”
“Oh, yeah?” JD shook his head when Mel held out the bag of popcorn. “So what’s the rest of their family like? Moms? Dads? Sisters?”
Melissa shrugged. “I’m not sure exactly. They don’t talk much about that kind of stuff. It seems like, I don’t know, maybe something bad happened in their family that they don’t like to think about.”
“Where does Ali live?” JD asked, realizing that he’d never gotten a straight answer to that question.
“It’s a huge house out in the Haunted Woods,” Melissa said. “All rickety and old, like something from a movie.”
JD was surprised. “I didn’t know there were any houses back there,” he said. “I thought that was just where Ascension kids went to party.” And where Henry Landon went to die. The snake charm he’d found out there was still in his bedroom upstairs.
“Not like you’d know,” Melissa teased.
“All right, all right. I get it. I’m antisocial.” He nudged her. “And Em always hitched a different ride to those parties.”
The joke fell flat, and a cloud of guilt passed over Melissa’s eyes; she more than anyone else understood the connection between Em and JD. “But the craziest part,” she said, trying to change the subject, “was this amazing garden they have out back. It’s not even a garden, really—more like a field. Of flowers. Here, come here,” she said, grabbing his hand and dragging him off the couch, nearly upending her popcorn bowl in the process.
“Come on, Mel. I have to work,” JD protested, but, keeping a firm grip on his hand, she tugged him out of the room, up the stairs, and into her own bedroom, which was painted a deep shade of purple.
She plucked a bloodred orchid from her dresser, where she’d placed it in a mason jar just next to her jewelry box. “Check it out.” She twirled it in front of his nose, and he instantly began to feel nauseous.
“Did Ali give you that?” he asked. The flower. It was too red, somehow. Unnatural—just like Ty and her cousins. And he’d been seeing it in all the wrong places. First at Drea’s funeral, in Drea’s hands. Then in Ty’s hair. In the torn pictures strewn around Walt Feiffer’s living room. And now here, in his baby sister’s bedroom.
It was the same flower—he was willing to bet—that they’d found in Chase’s mouth on the night he died too.
Melissa’s embarrassment was practically palpable. “She didn’t say I couldn’t have it,” she said.
“You stole it?” He grabbed the flower out of Melissa’s hand. Was it his imagination, or did it make his skin start to burn?
“What’s your problem?” she demanded, following after him as he left her room and started heading downstairs. “What are you doing?” Her voice got louder as he ignored her.
It’s just a flower, he told himself. But he couldn’t help it. He was gripped by a sense of dread. He felt instinctively that with Ali, Ty, and Meg, things weren’t what they seemed to be. He was increasingly convinced they were dangerous, and that Melissa’s minor indiscretion might have consequences far beyond the ones that made sense. JD flipped on the kitchen light, feeling the flower’s weight in his hand. It didn’t have thorns, but he was still scared the thing was going to somehow slice him open.
“You’re such an asshole,” Melissa cried out. “What are you doing? God. I hate you sometimes!”
He didn’t want to just get rid of it, he wanted to destroy it. He walked straight to the sink and shoved the flower down the garbage disposal, ignoring Mel’s hysterical tone. “You have to stay away from Ali,” he warned. “She’s not as nice as she seems.”
“Just because you don’t have a social life, doesn’t mean you can destroy mine!” Tears were welling up in Melissa’s eyes.
It was awful upsetting her, being screamed at—but the relief he felt when the final red petal got swept into the crunching gears seemed worth it. He’d be fine if he never saw one of those flowers again.
“It’s not my fault your friend died,” Melissa yelled before storming out of the kitchen. “It’s not my fault Em doesn’t give a shit about you!” Her final jab echoed throughout the house.
And that’s when it hit him, where he saw the first red orchid—not at Drea’s memorial service; no, it was before that. When Em wore one clipped to her bag for a few days, right around Christmas. Right before they went down to Boston together. Right before she started acting truly batty. Right before Chase died—with a red flower in his mouth when he was found underneath the Piss Pass.
He leaned over the sink, bracing himself with locked arms against the counter. Something was happening here, and it was way bigger than JD could comprehend.
Red flowers . . . and people who died.
Evil forces that Drea’s dad blamed for the deaths of his daughter and his wife.
Em acting crazy, like someone he’d never met.
Walt and Lucy raving about the Furies.
It was all adding up to something terrible, something JD didn’t want to face, but he was beginning to believe that he had no choice. He’d have to meet with Walt tomorrow; Walt had claimed to know how to get rid of the evil for good.
The Furies were in Ascension, they were killing people he knew, and somehow, he’d ended up right in their crosshairs.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Where did u go??? Gabby texted.
You are crazy, girl, Fiona wrote.
Em’s phone was blowing up before she even got to Noah’s house. Noah Handran’s annual shindig marked the start of the spring sports season—the lacrosse team had their first game tomorrow afternoon. It happened every year, and everyone went. Gabby had made Em promise that she’d at least make an appearance tonight.
See you at the party, Ty had said earlier, at the movie theater. Em had a hunch she knew why she was getting all these texts.
Until a few hours ago, Em had still been going back and forth about showing up—if she had limited time left as Em Winters, did she want to spend some of it at a keg party?
And now, clearly, Ty had gotten there first. And everyone thought she was Em.
It was time for major damage control.
Sean Wagner was the first person she saw as she approached the front door. He was smoking a cigarette on the front stoop, his signature baseball cap worn backward. His eyes lit up when he saw her. There was a bottle of whiskey on the step next to him.
“Back for more, huh?” He curled her in for a one-armed hug and she ducked her head automatically to avoid the smell of smoke. “I thought this was going to be a tame night, but you never fail to surprise me, Winters. Although I gotta say, I preferred your clothes from before. Way sexier.”
Em looked down at her outfit—the same one she’d been wearing earlier—and wondered what the hell Ty had changed into. “Sorry to disappoint,” she said. But really, even Sean’s typical asshole comments, the way he scanned her body up and down (and the different ways in which she planned to subtly reject him . . .) they all felt sad in their familiarity. In their everyday-ness. This was just one more thing she would never experience again, one more thing to say good-bye to.
She leaned down and grabbed the whiskey, blindly hoping that alcohol might diffuse her rising panic. The glass felt slick against her lips, and the whiskey burned as it slid down her throat. She clamped her lips shut to keep from coughing.
“That was far from disappointing,” he said with a laugh. Then he stubbed out
his cigarette and opened the door, ushering her inside and to the basement, where jam-band music came from the speakers and Ascensionites lounged and leaned on every available surface.
Em didn’t know what kind of welcome she’d expected, but this wasn’t it. As she stood at the bottom of the staircase, scanning the room for Gabby and the rest of her friends, she felt a million eyes on her, and not in a good way. The room seemed to tilt ever so slightly to the left, and she shook her head to clear it. The drink must have gone straight to her head.
There were some snickers coming from the makeshift “bar”—a card table with bottles on it—and a weird wink from a senior named Jack who she’d spoken to maybe once in her life. She tried to keep a smile on her face, but her insides were rattling with discomfort, like there was nothing in her stomach but splinters of wood.
Someone passed her by and handed her a red cup sloshing with beer. She took a long sip. It was cold and harsh and flavorless. She shifted on her feet, dancing like she had to pee. Suddenly, her shirt was too revealing; her body was on display. Dizziness gripped her and the music danced curlicues behind her eyes. She realized with horror that she was swaying with the music now, that she was putting on a show.
Stop, she willed herself. Stop it.
“I thought you’d left,” Jenna said, coming up behind her and placing a hand on Em’s lower back. “You were so drunk! What’d you do, take a cold shower or something?”
Em offered a weak smile. Her searchlight finally found Gabby, in a gray silk romper and leggings, perched atop a bar stool in the corner near Noah’s pool table. They made eye contact and Gabby’s eyes widened. She hopped down from the stool and quickly came to Em’s side.
“A little much for a Wednesday night, don’t you think, Em?” Gabby whispered, pulling her out of the line of fire into a quiet alcove that held the house furnace and water heater. Jenna crowded in behind them, and suddenly Fiona was there too, wanting to be in on the action. This part of the basement was muggy. Em didn’t like it.
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