They squeeze my hand.
Carter shouts again. “Liva!”
The door to Liva’s room stands open. Something moves inside. We all pause, catch our breath, try not to meet one another’s eyes, steel ourselves.
“Liva?” With one of my crutches, I push the door open farther. The room is empty, and the window is wide open. What I thought was movement was just the swaying of the curtains back and forth in the breeze. The night is dark and endless outside. “She isn’t here.”
“She can’t have just…disappeared, right?” Maddy’s voice is fragile.
Apparently that’s exactly what happened.
The room itself looks well lived in. Liva carefully unpacked her bags, and it’s clear she’s stayed here many times before. Posters of WyvernCon and sewing patterns decorate the walls.
The bedspread is a quilt she made herself, constructed from pieces of all the costumes she made in our first two years of WyvernCon. There’s part of the blood hunter outfit she created, and the very first magister cloak she tried. There’s a square from the Spoiler outfit she made for me, a square from a Time Lord coat, and a slice of the space scavenger uniform Ever wore.
I trace my fingers over the quilt, an amalgamation of so much fandom. It’s smooth to the touch.
I look around me, at the carefully folded robes, the pair of scissors on the bedside table, the coverless book with yellowed pages, lying on one of the pillows. And Ever, standing next to me. The quiet panic in their eyes. The way they seem to be shrinking in on themself.
A rush of anger courses through me. “This isn’t funny.” It’s always Liva, hurting us. Every time. I repeat it louder, walking back out into the hallway. “Liva? C’mon, this isn’t funny!”
I shouldn’t worry about her, and yet I do. I hate her. She was one of my best friends once. I told her about my crush on Ever long before I told Damien. I trusted her. I hate her.
“Liva, please.” Ever’s voice trembles.
Our words are met with nothing but silence. The cabin is quiet. All we can hear is the wind through the trees outside, and the curtain, pushing in and out. A door rattles on its hinges, and Maddy starts to cry quietly.
“Maybe she needed some time for herself.” Carter moves toward the window. “Or maybe the stories are true.”
Then, metallic chimes.
A fragment of a melody, so soft it might as well be a memory.
The start of a song. A nursery tune, maybe.
It’s uncomfortably reminiscent of the ghost stories that haunt this mountain, and it’s terrifying until I realize it must be the wind chimes that hang on the porch, swaying in the wind. Only that. Nothing more.
“I see blood outside!” Carter rushes past me, down the stairs, and out the cabin.
“Carter, wait!” Maddy follows him, awkwardly, painfully, but determined.
“Finn?” I turn back around. Ever stands in the doorway to Liva’s room. I didn’t think it would be possible, but they’ve grown paler still. “Can you come in here, please?”
I follow them in, and they point at the windowsill. The breeze has blown the curtain back again, and now I can see a small wooden figurine sitting on the ledge.
A carving, like the wooden figurines from the ghost stories.
A coyote—very similar in style to the ones Ever themself used in their story, but not quite the same. It’s cruder, the wood a different color.
Something pink and bloody lies next to it. At first glance, I think it’s a piece of meat. But then I remember what Ever said when they introduced the story.
“It can’t be…”
“What?”
All they found was an abandoned cabin, a handprint, a music box, and a bloody, torn-off finger.
Nausea rises into my throat, but I push it down.
Ever steps closer to me, and I flinch away. “I don’t know what’s going on here, Finn…”
“I don’t know either. I don’t want to know.”
“Do you think someone took her for a ransom?”
I gingerly pick up the carving of the coyote and try my best to ignore the meaty shape lying next to it. The all-too-obvious fingernail caked in blood. Nail art with the Gonfalon symbol. “That’s not how the story goes…”
If this is part of a game, I don’t want anything to do with it.
But underneath the figurine lies a small note, splattered with gore. One word, written in blood.
Liar.
Twelve
Maddy
The worst plan in any situation is to split the party, every gamer knows that. But if there is blood outside, like Carter says, he shouldn’t go alone. If the ghost stories are real, no one should be alone.
And I don’t want to be alone either.
“Carter, wait!” My voice is barely audible, and Carter keeps rushing out. His shoulders are tense and he’s shaking his head.
“Carter, wait, please!” I can’t tell what he’s feeling. I still feel his hand in mine and his comforting presence when we walked up the stairs. His whispered “sorry.” But now he’s running, and with every step he takes, it feels like the friend I’ve had since I was a kid is slipping further away.
Liva felt that familiar to me too, once upon a time. She was my unlikely best friend: the popular girl who didn’t mind hanging out with the autistic kid. Popular and autistic shouldn’t be diametrically opposed, but at Stardust High, they are. Being on the lacrosse team gave me some status, but Liva was my friend even before that. It took me months to accept it and stop questioning it.
I’m still trying to accept that it’s gone. Our friendship.
She isn’t.
She can’t be.
She needs to be annoyed by my hair all through this weekend. She needs to be smug about her cabin. She needs to be unreadable, impossible, here.
But all I can think about is the blood Carter saw.
I nearly stumble over the last steps from the patio down to the yard as my knee locks and my body lurches forward. Carter’s already disappeared into the dark.
Before I have a chance to
