At Drea’s, Em rang the doorbell and knocked a couple of times, to no avail. She knew that Drea was home—she could see the light on in Drea’s basement “study” through a dingy cellar window—so she quietly let herself in, making sure to scurry quickly by the living room, where, as usual, Drea’s dad was sitting practically comatose in front of the blue flickering television. She headed down basement steps, too lost in thought to announce her presence. When she parted the colorful curtains that cordoned off the space, Drea jumped from her seat and gasped.
“God! You scared the hell out of me, Em,” she said, catching her breath. “You look like a ghost.”
Em just stood there, trying not to cry. Seeing Drea made her think of Crow. Which made her think of JD. Which made her think of the Furies. Which made her head ache. It was like being strapped into the seat of a sickening roller coaster and not being able to get off.
“Fire,” Drea said suddenly.
Em looked up, her trance momentarily interrupted. “What?”
Drea sat back down. Em looked at her, finally, and saw that Drea was full of nervous energy—her leg ticked up and down, and she kept rubbing her lips together. Drea pointed to a book in front of her. “I figured out the banishment ritual!”
The book was old and heavy, like the ones they’d seen in the antiquities library. Hidden History: Tales of Small-Town Maine, it was called. “Where did this book come from?” Em asked.
“I managed to borrow it from that library after all,” Drea said vaguely. Em knew what Drea meant: She’d stolen it. “It says in here that there were three sisters who were killed in Ascension—”
“Hold up, Drea,” Em said. “Did anyone see you take this?”
Drea looked Em in the eye and said, “Let’s stay focused on what’s important here. So, like you told me the other day, these three sisters died in the woods, in a fire. But I found out more. As the story goes, the women were practically hermits—the townspeople thought they were witches, or evil seductresses, or some weird shit. Probably one of them had slept with someone’s husband or something.” Drea rolled her eyes. “Point is, they were practically prisoners in their home. They boarded up all the windows because kids would throw stones through them otherwise. But everyone in town still wanted them punished.”
Drea stopped here, to make sure Em was paying attention. She was. She’d sunk down to her knees on the thin rug that lay on the basement concrete. The story made something deep inside of her ache. Vengeance that wouldn’t be satisfied—she recognized the pattern. Surely, this was how the Furies had been born here, in Ascension, Maine. “Go on,” she whispered.
Drea picked up the book and flipped the pages until she found what she was looking for. “Okay, so . . . the townspeople decided to smoke them out—using rags to light fires around the property. But one of the fires raged out of control, and the women were trapped inside. There was no way they could have escaped, no place they could have gone.”
Em winced. There were flames licking at her chest, her cheeks, her hair. She put her icy fingers against her face, trying to cool off.
“You okay?” Drea looked up at her, concerned. “You want a Coke or something?”
“I’m fine,” Em croaked. “So what happened after that?”
“Well, when the townspeople burst in to try and pull them out of the blaze . . . they weren’t there. Only the body of a boy was found, no trace of the three women. It all fits together,” Drea said, turning to look at Em. Her eyes blazed with intensity. Em felt weak.
“What do you mean?” she asked. “Who was the boy? What happened to him?”
“No one knows,” Drea said. She stood up again and started pacing. “But don’t you get it? The women didn’t die. Instead, they became Furies. Or the Furies became them. Whichever. Remember how I said the Furies have existed forever, but in different forms?”
Em felt like she was at the top of a mountain looking down. She was at the edge of something powerful. She sensed it. “So, you’re saying these three women . . . they became Furies. But how?”
Drea shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe their spirits were somehow trapped. Because the way they died—it wasn’t right. They hung around, looking for revenge. They tapped into the eternal, shifting darkness that is the Furies. Anyway, that’s not our problem right now. We need to get rid of them.”
Suddenly she leaned forward and grabbed Em’s wrist. “And I think I know how. It’s just like the theme of the stupid Spring Fling—smoke and mirrors. It’s all about mirroring. The Furies were somehow created by fire. Or during a fire. And by fire we’ll get them out.” With that, she pulled away and jabbed a finger toward a lighter on her desk. Next to the lighter was a pile of debris—bits of sticks and moss, a shredded piece of cloth, some crumpled pieces of paper. Did Drea want to burn that stuff?
“But—they’re not human,” Em said. “How can we burn them to death?”
Drea put on her must I explain everything face. “It’s not like that,” she said. “It’s a ritual. We have to reverse the process. And we have to do it soon. Just trust me, okay? And I need you to be there. It won’t work if you’re not there.” She stared at Em pleadingly, and Em began to see that Drea was dead serious.