“JD!” Melissa yelled, scrabbling toward the center. “What the hell? Where are you going?”
“I’m not going anywhere. It’s okay, Mel.” JD tried to keep his voice calm. He yelled so she could hear him over the distance and noise of the fire. “It’s like a spell. I promise I won’t let it get out of control. You have to trust me.”
Melissa nodded, but she was shaking, and he could tell she was trying not to cry. In the light of the flames, her cheeks were pink-orange; her blue shirt looked black. Her eyes glistened, like tears were on the brink of spilling.
“Shhhh,” he said. “Just a few minutes. You’re safe.”
JD looked around, waiting for the Furies to appear. Praying that they would, yet dreading the moment they did. When they showed up—if they showed up—what would happen then? Mr. Feiffer’s letter hadn’t included a spell or a chant. . . . JD felt sweat beading on his brow. What if he’d missed something? What if this wasn’t right?
There was crashing in the underbrush nearby. Someone was coming. He and Melissa locked eyes, and he braced himself for impact. He waited to see Ali or Ty or Meg emerge from the trees. He spun in a circle, searching the darkness, his eyes already bleary with smoke, trying to guess where they would come from.
Then, a scream. Melissa. The crashing hadn’t come from below. It was from above. A branch, falling from the tall maple tree next to the fire circle. He ran toward her in horror, but he wasn’t fast enough—the branch slammed against the top of Melissa’s head, and she collapsed in a heap in the center of the flames.
Oh god oh god oh god. He edged close to the flames, trying to get past them, but they were as high as his waist and he couldn’t get to her. “Melissa!” he cried out. But she didn’t move.
The fire was licking up into the tree now, racing over its branches. He took a deep breath, steeling himself to charge through the flames. But just then another sound came from behind him. A racing footfall. Thump-thump-thump. He whirled around, expecting the Furies to be at his back.
But it wasn’t them.
It was Crow.
“What are you doing?” Crow’s face was wild; fire-shadows danced across his face and deepened the black craters under his eyes. “You’re going to ruin everything!”
“What are you doing?” JD barked back. “Go away! Stay away! It’s under control!”
Crow pushed past him, looking around frantically for something. Crow began to stomp on the fire with his boots.
“Stop!” JD bellowed, diving toward him. It wasn’t time yet. He landed on the dirt, and a sharp spray of dust hit his eyes and his mouth. But he brought Crow down with him. JD spat pieces of grit from his tongue.
Crow’s elbow went into JD’s ribs, so deep it felt like cracking. They were inches from the fire. JD could feel the sweat all over him—on his forehead, his arms, the back of his neck.
“What are you doing,” Crow said, shoving a calloused hand against JD’s face and pushing him down toward the ground. JD strained against it, feeling his muscles stretch like elastic, so taut that they might snap. No. Let go. He had to trust Walt. Crow was on the wrong side.
“I know you’re part of this,” JD panted. He reared back and kneed Crow right in the stomach, feeling his kneecap make contact, hearing Crow’s sharp intake of breath. JD had knocked the wind out of him, at least for a second.
He flipped Crow over, felt his weight shift, taking the advantage. He pinned Crow to the dirt. He looked down and tried to catch his breath. There was a smear of blood on his right hand. It was red-brown and ugly. “I saw you with them. You’re with the Furies.”
Crow turned his face to the side and spit blood onto the ground, trying to catch his breath. “I’m not working—with them. I was—trying to—strike a bargain.”
“A bargain?” JD huffed. The air was getting smoky and his lungs were tight from exertion. He was worried about Melissa. Maybe he should put out the fire after all.
“I offered myself,” Crow was saying between frantic gasps. “Instead. I thought it would save her. I saw it in a vision.”
“Instead of who?” JD increased the pressure on Crow’s chest. The heat of the fire was starting to scorch his face. A vision.
“Her,” Crow gasped. “They wanted her. Em.”
JD didn’t know what to think, what to believe.
“But it’s too late now,” Crow said. He didn’t look angry anymore. He just looked sad. “I was wrong. My vision was wrong.”
Sweat was dripping down JD’s face. It was hot, too hot. The fire was raging out of control. Soon the whole garden would combust. The moon was high, like a spotlight.
Melissa still lay motionless in a small, bare patch of ground.
And JD realized what he had done.
They’d all die—Melissa would die—if he couldn’t stop the fire, couldn’t get her out of there.
He scrambled to his feet just as a scream tore through the air.
When he turned around he saw Em come running out of the Furies’ house. She was sobbing. Babbling. “It’s almost time,” she was saying. “You saved me.”
“Where are they? Where are the Furies?” He tried to take Em’s shoulders but she pushed past him, moving into the garden, thick with smoke and flame. She was shoving aside the rippling tide of flowers, as though she’d lost something there.
“Em!” JD shouted.
Crow had climbed to his feet next to JD. “That’s not—,” he started to say.
“Shut up!” JD yelled. “I can’t think.” He needed to douse the flames—now. He lunged for the fire extinguisher he’d stolen from the auditorium, but Em blocked him off, a blissful smile on her face and a beautiful white flower in her hand. She grabbed his face on either side with surprising strength and a shock went through him as her lips touched his.
Adrenaline.
Fiery heat.
Desire.
“I love you,” he whispered.
Another frenzied voice broke into the chaos.
“What are you doing?” a girl shrieked behind them.
He broke away from the kiss as a mess of dark brown hair whipped past him. The smell of Ivory soap and cocoa butter lingered in her wake. Em.
Stunned, confused, and utterly frozen, he watched as Emily Winters—another Emily Winters, the real Emily Winters?—plunged into the circle of flames.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Em flew out of her trance like a bullet, immediately confronted with the insane scene in front of her.
There was a circle of raging flames over there, to her right. She could just barely make out a person in the middle of the circle. She looked closer. It was Melissa.
Just next to the fire, two boys wrestled in the dirt. Em squinted. It was JD. JD and . . . Crow?
And then, right there, on her left, amid the greenery . . . Ty. Ty, holding a big, beautiful, white flower. So white it practically glowed. Ty was holding it aloft so that the bright, big moon shone down on it like a spotlight.
It was midnight. Maybe she even heard a bell tolling somewhere in the distance. She couldn’t tell if it was real or in her imagination.
The flower.
It was midnight, and the albino flower had bloomed.
She wanted to reach for it. She wanted to so badly. To have it and rescue herself and stop the transformation. But there was no way she could get the flower and also get to Melissa in time. Em could see she was the only one to save Melissa. The boys were rolling around, too consumed in their own competition, and there was no one else. No one but her. All this for one mistake. One for which she had apologized. It wasn’t right.
She wasn’t going to let Melissa die. She wasn’t going to let another person get hurt because of her. She scrambled to her feet and propelled herself forward with unnatural speed. If the Furies wanted to take her down, so be it—but she wasn’t going to let anyone else die. She covered the ground in seconds and threw herself into the flames. She didn’t see a fire, just the chance to save someone other than herself.
For once.
It wasn’t the searing pain she imagined. Instead it was pinpricks of heat dancing on her skin and an immense pressure, closing in on all sides, like the force of a freezing waterfall coming at her body from every angle—so cold that it feels hot. Except this was so hot, it felt cold. She came out on the other side, within the circle, and saw Melissa at her feet. Em fell to her knees beside her. “I’m going to get you out of here,” she whispered. Melissa’s skin was slick with sweat, and her eyelids were fluttering. She hoisted Melissa’s body into her arms.
She tried to plot her way out of the fiery maze. It was just darkness and smoke everywhere, like in Crow’s vision. Flames were reaching up around her. The threads of blackness pulled at her heart: the same sticky, angry web she’d been walking through for months.
No more.
Through the wall of smoke and flames, she adjusted her grip on Mel, who was cradled in her arms like a baby. Like when they used to pick her up and throw her off the dock at Galvin Pond when they were all so much younger. She sheltered Melissa’s body with her own, and attempted to move out of the circle of fire. She took one step backward, and then another. Meanwhile, the flames grew higher and hotter . . . higher and hotter . . .
She braced herself—cringing against the heightened sensation—and finally managed to twist her torso just enough to deposit Melissa’s body safely across. She could feel the fire eating away at her skin, and smoke filling her lungs.
Smoke was all around her, trapping her, flames lit by JD—just as Crow had seen it.
But he’d misunderstood.
They had all misunderstood.
As she shoved Melissa’s body just outside the flames, she stumbled. The heat ripped at her; now she could feel it everywhere, in her skin and teeth and hair. It was like a fist of pain gripped her from all sides.
Burning flowers. The smell was horrible, intense, searing her nose, making her feel as though her whole mind were on fire. Maybe it was.
And then, suddenly, the pain stopped. There was a high-pitched but very faint ringing in her ears, almost like a hum. Almost like a song. The darkness began to swallow her. But it was different from before. This sensation was strangely soothing, like rocking on a gentle wave. A rowboat swaying ever so slightly. In its embrace, Em felt peaceful. And in an instant, she understood.
I love you, JD, she thought. It was you all along, but I didn’t see it until too late.
I love you, Gabby. I love you for forgiving me. For showing me what real justice and real forgiveness is.
And Crow . . . Thank you for teaching me what sacrifice means.
I love you, Mom and Dad, and Melissa, and Drea. God, Drea, I’m so sorry. We should have known all along—the Furies are evil, and to defeat them, we needed pure love. Not tricks and books and rituals.
You know why the Furies left last time?
Not because of a banishment. And not because of a flower.
Because Edie was willing to give up her own life for yours.
Love. It’s why they kept me from JD.
Because love is the only thing that can kill them.
A scream. A piercing scream that ripped through time, thoughts, space, reality. A silvery scream.
A strong wind began to blow, sucking her out of this world and into another. Stronger and stronger, like a hurricane. A shrieking darkness spiraled around her. The cloudy vapors contained Meg’s and Ali’s leering faces. Their eyes were glass; their bones showed through their perfect skin. She couldn’t look away—she was being sucked into their vortex. Time seemed to be collapsing in on her, heavy and charged.
The dark ocean around her turned to bright, bright white.
She heard voices.
You’ll never be rid of us.
We tried to teach you a lesson.
The words were a patchwork of sinister sounds, a dissonant chord of desperation.
Em could practically hear them scraping against the dirt, trying to keep their footing.
She watched from outside herself—from nowhere, or everywhere—as Ty started screaming. Her precious white flower began to shrivel. In an instant, the petals withered to a papery brown. And Ty began to transform. Her eyes smoldered, dark red and black, like coals. She wavered, twisting in the breeze. Em saw it but also felt it, as intimately as if her own body were disintegrating into thin air.
“She didn’t get what she wanted,” she heard Crow say.
Then there was a huge burst of flame, rocketing them all off their feet. An explosion. The orchids. The Furies’ faces. The silhouette of a tree—black against a charcoal sky. An icicle, melting rapidly into a pool of dirty water.
She kissed eternity.
And then, with a final howl, everything went silent.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
There was the smell of fresh flowers. But not orchids. No, something lovely, and calming, and right.
A quiet beeping went on in the background . . . It was the sound of eternity, patiently waiting for her, waiting for her, waiting . . .
Em’s eyes fluttered open.
The house was gone. There was no garden.
Ty, Meg, and Ali were gone too. A ripple of relief washed over her, tickling her toes. She didn’t know whether to trust the feeling.
Groggily, she lifted her head and blinked several times.
She was in a hospital room. A bouquet of yellow roses, sprays of lavender, and big, bobbing gerbera daisies lay on a table by her head.
And then, seemingly from nowhere, JD was standing over her, holding out a hand. “You’re awake,” he said with gruff relief. “You’re okay.”
“What—what happened?” Her throat was hoarse.
“They’re gone,” JD said.
“Are you sure? What about Crow? And Melissa?” Em said, struggling to sit up. She wanted them all to be okay.
“They’re fine. You’re at the hospital. Your parents are just downstairs getting coffee—you’ve been out for a while.”
The words made Em’s heart soar and her stomach drop simultaneously, leaving an airy, empty space in the middle of her body. “JD,” she whispered. “Am I okay? Are you okay?”
He leaned down to wrap her in a bear hug, and her queries were muffled in his jacket.
“We’re okay,” he said. “All of us. Thanks to you.”
Thank god. And then he let Em go, but not too far. Cupped her dirt-streaked face in his hands and then put two fingers against her throat, feeling for a pulse. Em felt it beating softly against the pads of his fingers.
“You’re alive,” he said.
He was so close.
A burning sob lodged in her throat. Please, let it be true.
“Is it . . . Is it really over?” The words floated out of her, as though spoken by someone else.
His face broke into an uncontrollable smile and his hands tightened around her. “Em,” he said. “It’s really over.”
“How . . . ?” she asked.
“I’m honestly not sure,” he admitted. “But you did it, somehow, when you saved Melissa.”
“JD, all that stuff that happened this winter . . . I never meant . . . ” She faltered. How would she ever be able to say how sorry she was?
“I know,” he said, cutting her off by placing a finger on her lips. “You don’t need to apologize anymore.”
They stayed that way for a few seconds, centimeters apart.
And then he leaned in even closer and replaced his finger with his mouth, kissing her the way she’d always wanted him to. Slowly, carefully. She drank him in and kissed him back. Can you feel this? How right this is? She knew he could. She melted into him, reaching one hand around the back of his neck and hungrily pulling him closer.
He smelled like dew in the morning, like new growth.
As he pulled away, grinning stupidly, Em squeezed his hand and tugged him back. She put her mouth close to his ear—close enough for her lips to brush against the tiny hairs on his cheek.
“I love you, JD,” she said. Final
ly. The words felt so natural, so easy to say.
“I love you too, Emily,” he said.
And they kissed again—a kiss better, deeper, and sweeter than revenge.
EPILOGUE
The bell on Emily’s windowsill issues a tiny ding. She looks up at it, smiling, and scribbles a note on a scrap of paper. Drops it into the basket on her end and pulls it over to JD’s house. She watches him come to the window, pluck the paper from the basket, and read it.
“You’re on, Winters!” he shouts from less than a hundred feet away. “I accept your challenge. What time?”
“After dinner! My mom is making pizza.”
He holds up a finger and moves from the window. When he returns, he is holding a pen, with which he writes a response. The basket creaks its way back over to Em’s side of the line. She feels like giggling the entire time.
Save room for popcorn, JD’s note says. It’ll be your consolation prize after I beat you in Scrabble.
“You wish!” she yells.
He flashes her a grin before disappearing; Em turns back to her laptop, where Crow’s demo album is playing. He’s moved to Boston, into an apartment with a few musicians he knows from Berklee. She and Crow text sometimes.
Em smiles with a trace of nostalgia.
He is doing well—not drinking, not smoking, and getting some gigs with his new band. One of the songs has even been getting some radio play around Boston. It’s her favorite.
It’s called “Emily.”
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