Eternity

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 genuinely 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