Had Chase written this? Was it a message? For her, for Ty?
No, it was obviously a girl’s handwriting. With a shudder, she flashed back to those final moments at the Behemoth, before the Furies had disappeared into the night. The red beads shining against Ty’s pale palm. Ty’s words to her: I’m warning you—they will bind you to us forever.
Bound. Forever. What exactly had she promised the Furies? And why was the reminder here, with the rest of Chase’s things?
Em ripped up the crinkled piece of paper, and then the other poems too. She brought the scraps into the living room and threw them into the fireplace. All of the memories those poems brought—of Chase, of Ty, of Zach, about whom several of them were written—made Em sick. Then there was the rest of the box too. . . . She was about to bring it down to the basement, when one last thing caught her eye. A small Mead flip-top notebook. It was full of brief jottings, written in Chase’s messy chicken scratch.
Em flipped through the pages. The notebook seemed to be his “Ty cheat sheet”—short musings about their time together, things she’d told him, what she liked and didn’t like.
They took me to Benson’s last night, one entry read. But not the biker bar. A different one, around back behind a Dumpster. I barely remember anything except red lights, amazingly hot women, and gold. Gold liquid, gold snakes, gold tongues. Weird. Route 23. Did we kiss?????
Em read it over and over to make sure she had the right place. Benson’s. She’d passed it a million times, and she, Gabby, Fiona, Lauren, and Jenna had a pact that they would go there this summer once they all got fake IDs to drink beer and do karaoke with the leather-clad motorcyclists.
But a secret swank club downstairs? Where the Furies hung out? It was hard to imagine.
Em knew she had to check it out as soon as possible. Any information was valuable information. And she knew she needed her partner in crime. She raced to the kitchen, grabbed her phone, and dialed.
“Hello?” Drea answered the phone like she always did—as though she was surprised, every time, that it would transmit her voice.
“Drea. It’s me,” Em said. Quickly, urgently, she told Drea about Mrs. Singer’s visit, about the poems, the notebook, and the clandestine club. She left out the part about attempting a blood sacrifice at Drea’s best friend’s grave. “We need to go there. Like, tomorrow.”
“All right,” Drea agreed. “But how are we going to get in?”
“Well . . . Chase got in,” Em said doubtfully, not wanting to admit that she hadn’t considered the teensy problem of their age.
“He also happened to be with three gorgeous girls who happen to have supernatural powers,” Drea sighed.
“So we’ll get fake IDs,” Em burst out, as though the matter was settled.
“In a day?” Drea scoffed.
“Drea! Do you have any better ideas?” Em felt the burning in her lungs, the painful determination to get as close as she could to the Furies as quickly as possible. The closer she was, the more chance she had of destroying them.
Drea said nothing for a few moments. Then she spoke with sly satisfaction. “Crow. We’ll ask Crow. He can get them for us. I know he has one. I think one of those guys in the band makes them.”
At the mention of Crow’s name, Em got goose bumps. Involuntarily, she thought of his mouth on hers, her hand tangled in his hair. “Will he do it fast?” Em said, forcing herself to sound calm. She couldn’t understand her own emotions. She didn’t have romantic feelings for Crow, not ones she wanted to act on. So why did she still feel so attracted to him?
“Let’s call him now,” Drea said. Em didn’t reply. “Okay, Em. I’ll call him. You stand by for more.” While Em waited for Drea to call back, she threw her hair up into a bun. She was brushing her teeth when Drea’s call came in.
“What’d he say?” she mumbled, her mouth still full of toothpaste.
“Well, he wanted to know what they were for,” Drea said, and Em rolled her eyes. Like Crow cared that much about their well-being. “I told him we wanted to go to a twenty-one-and-over show in Portland. This band called the Low Anthem. Next time you see him, pretend you love them. I’ll make you a CD.”
“Drea, come on,” Em said impatiently, spitting out the toothpaste. “Did he say yes or no?”
“He said a lot of things,” Drea said teasingly. Em’s heart stopped for a second. Had Crow told Drea about their kiss?
“What did he tell you?” she asked. She could feel her cheeks burning.
“Whoa, killer,” Drea said with a laugh. “He said he worries about us and blah blah blah. I told him not to be a buzz kill. Anyway, he’ll do it. He’s going to pull our pictures from Facebook, and he says he’ll get his guy to do it by tomorrow. That’s rush delivery for us. But I think it’s just for you.”
“Shut up, D,” Em said. But she was too excited to really be annoyed. Tomorrow they would be one step closer to the Furies.