even worse here than it was back home. Not only was this Nick not in love with her, he absolutely hated her.
Josie’s face burned. She was so humiliated, like she was reliving Madison and Nick’s betrayal. She hadn’t thought anything could be as bad as that moment, but the hatred she saw in Nick’s eyes was definitely worse. She wanted to get out of there, to run as far away from Nick Fiorino as she possibly could, in this universe or any other.
Nick glanced up at the horizon. “Sun’s going down. You’d better get in my car. I’ll drive you home.”
“Get in your car?” Was he crazy? Josie backed away. “I’m not going anywhere with you.” She wasn’t going to be the victim anymore. She wouldn’t put herself in the position to be hurt by this Nick in the same way she’d been hurt by her own. It was the only thing she could control.
“Jo, wait!”
Too late. Josie didn’t care if Jo’s BMW sat in the school parking lot all night. She needed to get out of there. Now. She swung around and stumbled around the corner of the gym, out of Nick’s sight.
TWENTY-FOUR
6:45 P.M.
HOW COULD SHE HAVE BEEN SO STUPID? HOW could she have thought things would be any different here? Whatever she’d seen in her dreams, whatever Jo had led her to believe, was all a fantasy.
Shadows started to creep across the landscape as Josie wandered aimlessly beyond the front lawn of Bowie Prep. She glanced at her watch. A few more hours until she could cross back through the mirror to her own wreck of a life. A life that suddenly didn’t seem so bad.
Josie paused when she reached the sidewalk. Nick was right: the sun was going down and it would be dark soon, and her feet hurt in the high-heeled booties. She should walk back to the parking lot and drive Jo’s swanky car home. But she couldn’t. Nick might see her, and that . . . well, she’d had enough humiliation for a lifetime at the hands of Nick Fiorino. It was only four miles or so back to Jo’s house. She’d just suck up the pain and walk.
The streets were mostly deserted. No one sat on their porches enjoying the warm spring evening. No one was out walking their dog. No one pushing kids in strollers. A few cars whizzed past her, and several of them honked at her. Well, at least someone somewhere in some universe still found her attractive.
As dusk stole across the town, an unnatural chill descended. Josie looked up, expecting to see towering thunderheads piling up into the heavens, but the sky was clear, though perhaps darker than Josie would have thought for that time of evening.
The bright streetlamps bathed the neighborhood with light, but without warmth or cheerfulness. Unlike the ones on Josie’s block back home, these were starkly blue, sterile, and extremely intense. In house after house, blinds were being drawn, shutters latched, like every household was hunkering down for the night. As Josie tramped along, she got a creeping feeling up the back of her spine. The entire town had an air of hostility.
Maybe it was the strangeness of the neighborhood, or maybe it was her confrontation with Nick, but in addition to seeing figures in the shadows, Josie now thought she could hear someone walking behind her. Footsteps, heavy and sharp, matching her beat for beat. But every time she turned her head, there was no one behind her.
Without thinking, Josie quickened her pace.
Up ahead, a trail cut through the thin woods that surrounded the neighborhood. Just like her favorite shortcut back home, it would eliminate a half mile off her walk. The sun’s rays had completely disappeared, leaving the light purply glow of twilight as night rapidly approached. But she knew this trail like the back of her hand, and the sooner she got back to Jo’s bedroom, the better. It was a no-brainer. She rounded the corner and ducked into the trees.
As soon as she was off the street, the atmosphere changed. It was silent. A complete and total lack of sound. The wind didn’t blow; there was no backdrop of chirping birds or the occasional car zipping by on the street that was just a few yards away. It was as if she were in a vacuum, utterly devoid of life.
Something wasn’t right about this place: the woods, the night, the whole damn world. She expected her eyes to adjust to the encroaching darkness after she got out from under the intensity of the streetlamps, but the woods stretching before her looked darker than they should have. Sure, it was night, but the last beams of sunlight should still have lingered on the horizon. She wasn’t sure why, but she began to jog down the path. She could see the light at the end of the trail, signaling the street on which Jo lived, but it seemed forever away. Again, she could have sworn she heard something behind her, rustling the low foliage that lined the trail. This time she didn’t look back, but broke into a dead run. She glanced up at the sky. It was inky black and dotted with stars.
There was movement above her. A dark form blocked the stars from her view. Just as before, it was only a flash, a momentary glimpse of something that looked like wings flapping in the darkness. Deep brown, threaded with black and gray. Gone in an instant.
That’s when she heard it.
It sounded far away at first, a dim rustling noise, but in the complete absence of sound, it was jarring. The noise grew louder, rushing toward her from above. Faster and faster, like an enormous flock of birds swooping down on her. She knew that sound. She’d heard it before. A grating, shrieking flapping of wings in the darkness.
The sound outside the window.
In the darkness.
The bright lights, rooms without switches, houses shuttered up against the coming of night. Suddenly it all made sense. There was something in the dark, something that came with the onset of night. Something dangerous. Something to be feared.
And Josie was in the middle of the woods without any light at all.
The noise grew exponentially louder with every passing second. She pressed her hands against her ears to block out the painful, deafening sound, but it did no good. The noise of the darkness swamped her, dulling her senses and slowing her down.
Josie had a sensation of wind rushing by, air beating with the onslaught of dozens of wings. She caught glimpses of movement, of flesh and talons and beaks, but nothing concrete. It was as if they were moving in and out of a spotlight, and she could only catch a fleeting glance as they passed above her, swooping through the dark woods amidst their deafening shrieks.
The speed of the flying creatures increased, and suddenly Josie felt like she was surrounded by them, an impenetrable wall of these monsters of the dark.
Panic blinded her. “Help!” Josie cried out. “Someone help me!”
She felt one of the creatures swoop around her, circling directly above. Then something swept across her head, brushing her hair. It felt like a wing, only harder. Less like feathers and more like leather. A second wing glided across her back. This time she felt the fabric of her sweater tear as something sharp ripped through it.
Suddenly, there was a shift in the air rushing around her. A pause in the movement and the sound, the eye of the storm. A single shriek tore through the silence, then another echoing ahead. Another and another, as if the creatures were communicating to the rest of the flock. She heard a rumbling in the distance, crescendoing with each passing second. They were coming back. The swarm had been called back.
A talon slashed across her arm. Josie cried out as a searing pain shot from her wrist to her elbow, and she could feel the hot trail of blood trickling from the wound.
In an instant, the air swirled above her; the beating of wings pressed against her from every side. They were swarming, circling, preparing to attack. The light at the end of the trail faded, blocked by the swarm. She waved her arms in front of her face, attempting to cut her way through whatever blocked her path. The creatures of the darkness sliced at her hands, at her arms, at whatever open flesh they could find.
Whatever lived in the night was trying to hurt her.
To kill her.
Josie forced her legs to move as she blindly stumbled forward, but they were on her now. Pecking and cutting, forcing her down. Josie sank to her knees and covered her head with her arms, trying to protect herself.
