Eternity

to appear unfazed. “Hi! I, ah, didn’t know you were here. I was just . . . ” He trailed off, unable to come up with an excuse.

“I heard you two come in,” she said, smiling coyly. ?“I thought I’d come say hello. I’ve got to keep a pretty close watch on her these days.”

On Ty? Me too, he thought.

“Yeah, I ran into Ty out there in the woods. . . . She’s just in the kitchen,” JD said, pointing vaguely. “I think.” His mind was racing. Should he excuse himself and make a break for it? Being here with Ty and these trophies was bad enough. Now he had two of them to deal with? And what if Meg was home too . . . ? There was a seesaw tipping back and forth in his stomach, and JD felt vaguely seasick.

Ali’s eyes narrowed. Her lashes and eyebrows were so light that her eyes appeared as pricks of black on a white canvas. The room hung with silence as heavy as the drapes. “You know, you should be careful,” she came right out and said at last. “If Ty’s paying attention to you, that means she wants something. And when she wants something, it’s never good.”

A wave of cold broke over him. “What does that mean?” He wondered if he should say something about the trophies, call her out on being connected to the murders, or simply run.

“It’s a warning,” Ali said. “If things don’t go according to plan, it’ll be worse for everyone.”

“Well, I don’t know what the plan is,” he said. “In case you hadn’t noticed, I’m a little late to this party.”

She smiled brightly. “And it’s been such a fun one. . . . ” Then her face clouded over slightly. “Until Ty got carried away. She doesn’t understand. We’re family. We’re supposed to stay together. . . . ” She trailed off and looked past JD at the trophy case.

“She doesn’t understand what?” JD asked. He knew he should leave, but he needed answers. His frustration and fear were mounting, and he felt like he might bubble over at any second. If there had been something to throw, he would have, then. He wanted to break something. To see it shatter into a million pieces.

“Well, I can’t tell you that,” Ali said. “We have a lot of secrets. I just want to make sure no one was spilling them.” She looked pointedly toward the kitchen.

“I know your secrets,” JD bluffed.

Another tinkling laugh. “Oh, no you don’t,” she taunted. She sidled right up next to him and whispered the next bit into his ear, making him shrink away. “If you did, the past few months would have been very different. In fact, someone’s been keeping secrets from you.”

She was like a cat, batting him back and forth between her paws. He was at her mercy. His brain might as well have been rattling in his skull. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said tonelessly. But he desperately wanted to know.

“Aw, that hit on the head must have confused you,” Ali cooed, reaching up to trace a finger along the scar on his forehead.

It felt like a hot poker being dragged across his skin. He jerked away. “What do you know about that?”

Ali tossed her hair over one shoulder and reached a pointy fingernail up to tap her lips in an exaggerated expression of thought. “I seem to remember a construction site . . . a pipe . . . a terrible accident . . . and a girl who was so in love that she did whatever we asked her to do in order to save you.”

The seeds. Em. That night at the Behemoth.

He’d had it all wrong.

Em. Oh god, Em.

“So all that stuff about Crow . . . ” JD trailed off, recalling how convinced he’d been that he’d seen her kissing Crow at the construction site. How he’d believed Crow was the one responsible for knocking him out. Now, in a flash, he knew otherwise. It wasn’t Crow—it never had been. It had been the Furies all along. They’d tricked him. Possibly even messed with his mind somehow.

“We like telling stories,” Ali said with a shrug. “And we’re pretty good at it, huh?”

The sensation of cold gripped JD even tighter. “Leave us alone,” he said, inching sideways toward the front door. “Leave us the hell alone. What are we, some sort of sick little game to you?”

“A game? Hardly. You know as well as anyone that this is dead serious,” she said. With that, she stepped aside with a flourish, gesturing to the foyer. “Now get out, before Ty gets any more ideas.”

He didn’t wait for her to change her mind.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

I wade waist-deep into a red sea. Above me, the moon cuts the sky with its sharp sliver. . . . Is the sky bleeding? Is this blood I’m marching through? No. Not blood, not sea . . . flowers. Swaying their scarlet petals. Tiny seeds eyeing me. Elegant stems reaching upward. A sharp sweetness all around me. A whole garden of them around my ankles, like children pressing toward their mother. I can feel their cool breath. Exhaling. They are alive. They are evil.

Em was swimming somewhere between the darkness of dreaming and the clarity of wakefulness.

I know this place, I know this hunger. I’m looking for something, something . . . What is it? I stumble through the sea of red, suffocating in its power. Dizzy. My whole body shaking.

Evil. Evil is everywhere. This is my last chance.

“Fire!” someone yells. “Fire!”

Suddenly all the flowers are on fire. The garden has burst into flames in front of me. The air is yawning with smoke and I am no longer alone. It is hot, hotter than hell. Hotter than . . .

“Fire!”

The sounds become more and more frantic. The yelling, the sensation of being choked by smoke and heat. The moon is raining fire. A high-pitched wailing, deafeningly loud . . .

Then, hands were on her—on her shoulders, shaking her fully awake. Someone was screaming.

“Emily! Wake up! Emily! Fire!”

She looked fuzzy-eyed into her mother’s face, etched with worry and fear, yelling into her ear as she tugged Em from her bed. The wailing pierced her ears and the smoke made her eyes water. She coughed, feeling the air come up raw through her throat. Was this it? Was the transformation happening already? Was she dying?

Panic tore through Em’s body and she snapped wide-awake, tingling with fever. She sat up, breathing hard, letting her mom pull her across the room.

“There’s a fire, Em—we’ve got to get out,” her mom said as they made their way down the hallway, which was slowly filling with smoke, coiling like dark snakes.

The fire was real. In her house. That was a fire alarm she was hearing. That was real smoke she was breathing in. It was sticking to her. To her face, to her skin, to her sweatpants and tank top. This was real.

Fire.

“Come on! Get out!” Em’s dad met them at the bottom of the stairs, wild with panic. “Susan! Grab her!”

And just as Em and her mother slipped out the front door, she saw flames licking around the corner of the kitchen door.

Out on the lawn, the fresh air bit cleanly against her lungs. She gulped it down gratefully. It was damp and surprisingly humid outside; it contrasted with the dry smoke inside she had just escaped. She followed her parents to the shelter of the oak tree near the end of the driveway and turned to survey the scene. Here, the wailing was even louder. Two fire trucks were already zooming down the street, screeching to a halt in front of the house.

Seeing them reminded Em of Spring Fling, of Drea’s death, and made her stomach turn in terror. She crouched down, feeling too unsteady to stand up straight.

Her mom kneeled beside her and rubbed her back. “Are you okay?”