Crush

“I think you’re about to,” Kirsty replied. “You could never use it to protect yourself, but protecting me has shown you it’s there.”

“Afraid I’m just not seeing it.”

“I am,” Kirsty said. “I’ll help you see it. As long as we’re together, you’ll always see it.”

The word together jarred Jonathan out of his thoughts. Were they together now? Did he want them to be?

“You should get some rest,” he said. “I’ll stay up and keep an eye on things.”

Kirsty’s face fell slightly, just a flicker of emotion Jonathan couldn’t identify.

“Okay,” she said. “I’ll take the second shift. Wake me up in a few hours.”

“Sure,” Jonathan said. “Good night.”

“’Night.”

16

Jonathan drifted up from a deep sleep. Kirsty had relieved him on watch some time ago, and he’d fallen asleep almost immediately. Now his thoughts swam in the misty remnants of dreams, becoming solid and pulling him higher and higher until he opened his eyes. He rolled over on the bed. The fireplace poker jabbed his side, and he bolted up.

“How long was I out?” he asked.

But no one answered.

The room was empty.

Jonathan leaped from the bed. The rolled towel, bound in strips of gray tape, still clung to the door. But the bench no longer sat against it. The piece of furniture was pushed to the wall.

“Oh no,” he whispered. Kirsty?

Jonathan ran to the door and eased it open. Lights burned in the hall. He searched the walls for any dark stains creeping there. But he saw nothing. He opened his mouth to call Kirsty and then thought better of it. She could have gone out to check the house and gotten trapped somewhere by the Reapers. If she heard his voice, she might leave her hideout and walk right into them.

He returned to the bed and retrieved the fireplace poker. In the hall he moved quietly, keeping his eyes alert for any motion.

Halfway down the hall he stopped at Kirsty’s room. With a trembling hand he grasped the handle. It felt cool in his palm. Gently he pushed down and opened the door. Light from the hallway spilled over the threshold. More light poured in through the window.

It was morning.

Jonathan checked the walls and the ceiling, stepped into the room cautiously, and was met with the pungent scent of pine cleanser, though it didn’t look like the room had been cleaned in weeks. Kirsty’s bed sat to the left. The linens were rumpled, and various articles of clothing lay amid the sheets and blankets. Dozens of magazines, empty diet cola cans, and assorted papers littered the floor. Kirsty’s desk stood to the right, next to a closet with folding doors. It too was messy, but something on its surface caught Jonathan’s eye, drew him closer.

His face stared back at him.

Amid the clutter on the desktop sat a pewter goblet the size of a halved softball. A photograph of Jonathan leaned against the cup. He crossed the room slowly, checking over his shoulder with every second step. He leaned the fireplace poker against the desk and lifted the picture.

A thick, foul liquid coated the bottom of the photo. Drops of the liquid dripped from the paper’s edge, splashing the desktop.

It was the shot Kirsty had taken of him at Perky’s the night of her first date with David. She’d taken the picture with her cell phone, but what was the crap staining the lower quarter of it? Jonathan looked into the goblet and found a low pool of the foul fluid inside.

What the hell?

Jonathan put the picture down. Behind the goblet was a low stack of similar photographs. These too were stained, much more so than his own picture. In fact, the damage to these photos was so advanced that the faces in them were barely visible through great smears of charcoal-gray filth. The picture on top was of a woman, but her features were impossible to make out through the dismal muck. The second picture was of a man, but here too, the face was obscured.

The third picture, another man, made Jonathan’s throat close tight. Even if he had not been able to make out the dull, flat features of the guy through the stain, he would have recognized the cheap blue sweater-vest anywhere.

Mr. Weaver.

The letterman jacket and Denver Broncos baseball cap in the next photo were clearly Ox’s.

The next picture he recognized immediately, and he grew furious. It was the same picture he’d found on the school paper’s website. He’d cried looking at it. Emma O’Neil’s heart-shaped face was covered in a slime of dark fluid.

Jonathan dropped the pictures on the desk and backed away.

Kirsty?

It had been Kirsty all along. Jesus, she’d tricked him. She’d trapped him in her home.

Jonathan turned to the open door, expecting to find her there, smiling evilly at him. But the doorway was empty.

His racing thoughts collided, making it difficult to think. He had to get out. But no. If he fled now, she’d just send her Reapers for him. He needed to find something he could use to stop her. No way was he letting her get away with this.

A spell book?

Kirsty had mentioned something like this yesterday. He’d thought it a really weird bit of information for her to have. Was that the source of her power? Did she have such a book?

Jonathan searched the desk. He found a low pile of textbooks, checked each of them to make sure no occult text was hidden beneath a familiar cover. At the bottom of the pile, he found a leather-bound book and snatched it from the desk. He opened to the first page:

The Book of Adrian.

He read bits and pieces, but the book wasn’t filled with mystic spells and incantations. It was a diary. As he thumbed through the pages, a photograph slipped out and drifted to the desk. He snatched it up.

The girl in the photograph was the saddest image Jonathan had ever seen. Her obese body was crammed into a pale yellow summer dress. Stringy hair drooped from her head like oily threads. Her plump cheeks were smeared with rouge. The girl tried to smile for the camera, but she looked like she might burst into tears at any moment. Her suffering was captured as clearly as her homeliness. Jonathan found a note on the back of the photo. It was written in a delicate, elegant print:

Let the transformation begin.

Though barely recognizable, the girl in the photo was Kirsty. Jonathan knew it would be, but he still found the realization startling. Even so, the picture wouldn’t help him, and neither would the journal.

He left the desk and made a slow turn, taking in the entirety of the room. When he came around to face the closet, he was again assaulted by the stench of pine cleanser.

He grasped the handles of the closet and threw them back.

“Oh my God.” He gagged.

A woman lay across the back of the closet. She wore a blue nightdress and one white slipper. The other slipper sat in the middle of the closet floor. Her eyes stared wide—desperately, eternally. Her mouth was twisted open in a final scream. Jonathan took a step back and noticed two small plastic buckets on the closet floor. This was the source of the sickening pine odor. Kirsty had filled the buckets with cleanser to cover the far grosser stench of a dead body.

“She wanted me to stop,” Kirsty said.

Jonathan spun around and found the girl in the doorway. She held two mugs in her hands. Gently she eased the door open farther with her shoulder and walked into the room. Her expression was absolutely blank.