expression.
“—blew the detention block while we were getting the wolves out.” Hank was speaking. Reluctantly, I tore my gaze from Serena. “They were trying to keep us from getting our hands on any of the files or records.” His eyes locked on Sinclair and the look in them sent chills down my spine.
The full implication of his words hit. “So any proof of what they were doing? Any notes on how to reverse it . . . ?”
“Gone,” said Hank. “The wolves are the only proof we have. We at least managed to get them out.”
“So we don’t let her go.” Jason nodded to Sinclair. “We take her with us and keep her until we get the information we need.” He glanced toward the admission building and I knew he had seen Serena. “We hold her until she tells us how to reverse what she did.”
“Do that and you’re signing your own death warrants,” said Sinclair, apparently deciding she’d rather risk Hank’s wrath than stay quiet. “Besides, I can’t tell you how to reverse it.”
“You’re lying,” said Jason.
When Sinclair didn’t immediately reply, Kyle tightened his grip on her arm, digging his fingers in until most people would have cried out.
Sinclair didn’t protest or flinch. She didn’t take the words back or beg. Her blue eyes met mine and in them I saw a shadow of regret. The same shadow I had seen in her eyes when she told me about her sister.
“She’s not lying,” I said softly.
Before anyone could respond, six guards approached. The last of the Thornhill wolves had made it through the gate—even Serena seemed to have slipped out—and the guards must have wondered why we had stopped on the edge of the courtyard.
Two of the men had their hands on the butts of their guns. A third man was familiar: Tanner. The light from the fire made his red hair look like it had been set aflame. He didn’t show any sign that he knew Hank as he stepped forward. “We held up our end of the deal. You’re the only wolves remaining in the camp.”
Kyle glanced at Hank. My father nodded, and he let go of the warden. He stepped back and flexed his hands, then wiped them on his pants as though trying to brush away the memory of her skin.
The warden seemed to become smaller as the guards surrounded her protectively. The look on her face was worn and defeated, and she suddenly appeared decades older. It was almost as though she was only just now really accepting that she had lost.
Kyle and Jason waited until the guards began ushering her away and then they started toward the gate. I hesitated, watching the smoke and flames lick the sky as the sanatorium burned. I wanted to believe it was all over—I wanted to go home and put all of this behind us—but it was hard to turn away.
A heavy hand fell on my shoulder. The touch was familiar, but not in the easy, comfortable way Jason’s or Kyle’s would have been. “You all right, kid?”
I nodded—I might even have said yes—just as a guard shouted.
Everything took on a slow, dreamlike quality as I looked toward the guards. Sinclair had broken away and held a gun—Tanner’s, given the expression on his face—in her hand. She aimed it at my chest, and it was as though all trace of the woman I’d seen when I first came to Thornhill had burned along with the sanatorium. “Do you have any idea how long I’ve worked for this? Do you have any idea what you destroyed? I tried to help you—I tried to help all of them—and you took everything.”
The gun was pointed at me but her gaze slid to Hank. Suddenly, I knew I wasn’t the one in danger. Everything Sinclair had done had been motivated by the loss of her sister. She wanted to hurt me, and she would do it by taking away the thing she assumed would destroy me most to lose: my family.
Without thinking, I threw myself at my father, trying to knock him out of the way as Sinclair swung the gun and pulled the trigger.
Something slammed through my body, setting it on fire. I fell back—fell so slowly it was like moving through liquid—and just before I hit the ground, I saw a dark shape tackle Sinclair: Serena.
My last thought was that at least she and Kyle would be all right, that Hank and Jason would make sure they both got out. Then the world exploded in a burst of white.
“WE REALLY HAVE TO STOP MEETING LIKE THIS.” AMY picked up a stone and skipped it over the dark water. We were on the shore—she was standing, I was sitting—but it wasn’t the lake near Hemlock. Even though a wall of fog—thick and impenetrable—rose twenty feet out and obscured my view, I had a feeling the water went on forever. There were no waves, and only Amy’s stone disturbed the still surface.
She was wearing a familiar white dress—the dress she’d wanted to wear to prom. I glanced down. I was wearing jogging shorts and a T-shirt. Both were too big and both looked suspiciously like they had come from Kyle’s closet. I should have been cold, but I wasn’t.
“Am I dead?”
Amy looked at me sadly. “Maybe,” she admitted. She crossed her arms. “Seriously, I’m beginning to worry you have a death wish. When I wrote ‘BFF’ in your yearbook, I didn’t mean it as a suicide pact.”
“Shut up,” I muttered as I pulled my knees to my chest and wrapped my arms around my legs. Secretly, though, I was glad to see her. I didn’t want to be alone.
“Amy?”
“Yeah?”
“I don’t want to be dead.” I felt guilty saying it—she hadn’t wanted what had happened to her—but the words slipped out.
“I know.” Pebbles rolled under her feet as she crouched next to me and put a hand over mine. Hers was cold to the touch, but for once I didn’t mind. “I don’t want you to be dead, either,” she said.
After a moment, she lifted her hand and sat next to me. She stretched out her legs. She was wearing black tights, but they were ripped in a dozen places, and her pale skin showed through the holes.
“What happens now?”
She pulled at one of the runs in her tights, stretching it out until her whole knee was exposed. “Now, we wait.”
“For what?”
“Some sort of resolution.” Amy nodded toward the fog. “Everything you left behind is on the other side. That moment when the bullet tore through you? It’s still playing out. The universe rolled the dice but they haven’t come to rest.”
“What happens when they do?”
She shrugged and stared out over the water. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “I’m still waiting for my moment to play out.”
“But you’ve been dead for months.” The words were like jagged pieces of metal: they sliced my throat on the way out and left the taste of copper in my mouth.
“There’s more than one reason people get stuck.”
I picked up a handful of gray stones and let them fall through my fingers. “Amy?”
“Yeah?”
“Are you really you, or is this just another dream?”
She smiled her Cheshire cat grin. “Does it matter?”
I opened my mouth to tell her that of course it did, but pain exploded across my chest. Sharp and immediate and ripping me to shreds. Amy and the shore burned away in a flash that was as bright as an atomic bomb, and I fell into nothingness.
It felt as though someone had taken a hot poker and thrust it into my shoulder. I could barely breathe. Barely think. Barely move.
Somehow, I managed to open my eyes. Everything was blurry—like I was underwater—but I could make out an oval of dark skin and a familiar brown gaze.
“Serena?” My voice was the rustle of leaves over pavement.
