“We can’t call him,” the girl said, suddenly desperate and shaking violently. “He’s dead. . . . Dead, dead, dead, dead—”
“Look, just hold on, okay?” JD punched 911 into his phone, praying the signal would be strong enough to connect.
“They’re just waiting for the next one. The next mistake. They’re everywhere. They’re watching.” He could hear a hysterical tremor in the back of her voice. She covered her ears and shook her head violently.
“It’s going to be okay,” he said. Shit. His phone call wasn’t connecting. Come on, come on. He could run to the road and try calling from there, but he didn’t want to leave her.
All of a sudden, female voices shot across the grounds, loud and jarring. “Lucy! Lucy!”
It took a moment for JD to realize that the voices were coming from the little cemetery road, where a sedan had come screeching to a halt. Two figures got out of the car, leaving the engine running as they came toward JD and the girl. As they got nearer, JD was shocked to see Skylar McVoy and the older woman who had accompanied her to Drea’s memorial service.
Meanwhile, the girl—Lucy, apparently—had calmed down. Her eyes were dull and her limbs now hung at her side. “She wants out,” she muttered to JD under her breath. “The others want blood, but she wants out.”
The gray-haired woman immediately went to Lucy and wrapped a blanket around her shoulders. “Sweetie. Are you okay? We were so worried. . . . ”
“I’m sorry, Aunt Nora. I had another episode. I got . . . confused.”
The woman nodded as if this was a familiar routine. “Let’s just go home, then.”
“Aunt Nora—” Skylar started to say. But she cut herself off when she saw JD staring at her. She just stood there, motionless, her eyes veering from JD to the two women and back. She looked down at herself; she was wearing flip-flops and pajama pants.
“We realized she was missing at five this morning. . . . ”
“Oh,” JD offered, not knowing what else to say. Clearly, Skylar had been hauled out of bed. He opened and closed his mouth several times. None of the questions in his brain were able to make it to his mouth. The older woman, Aunt Nora, began to shepherd Lucy toward their car.
“Thank you so much for finding her,” Nora said with a pasted-on polite expression. “We’re so sorry. She’s not well.”
“I’m sorry if I scared her,” JD offered, wanting to help. “I didn’t know what to do. . . . ”
The woman gave him a warm, sad smile. “She’ll be fine. This just happens every so often. She’s still recovering.” She turned and began to walk away.
He saw that Skylar was about to follow her. “Wait,” he croaked. He had to say something.
He came up to her and tried to meet her eyes. “She said . . . ” He licked his lips nervously. “I’m not sure if it matters. . . . ”
“What?” Skylar refused to look at him. Even though she kept her head down, so her hair swung forward, he could see her scarred cheeks were flaming red.
“She was talking about something—or some people—called the Furies,” he said. “She sounded pretty freaked out.”
The word seemed to jolt Skylar back to awareness. She stiffened and raised her face, which was transformed into a glare. “Forget it,” she snapped. “She’s out of her mind. Brain-damaged. Broken. Forget everything you heard.”
“Who is she?” JD asked helplessly. There was a pause, in which every one of his senses seemed to be at high alert. Blood pumped around his joints and insects hummed in the woods that bordered the graveyard.
“She’s my sister,” Skylar spat, before spinning around and stalking off into the fog.
? ? ?
You can’t call him. He’s dead.
JD knew one dead Henry, though it took him a little while to remember who he was. Henry Landon, Ascension High School’s handsome, smart, deceased English teacher.
Henry was just candy to them. Easy prey.
And hadn’t Skylar McVoy been the one to find Henry Landon’s half-frozen body in the reeds deep within the Haunted Woods?
The Furies. I can hear them. They’re laughing.
JD checked the clock in his car. He’d already missed first period. Why not go crazy and skip second period too? He pressed on the gas and made a U-turn, feeling something like lightness in his chest as he drove out toward the Behemoth. He turned up the volume on WMPG, the Portland radio station he loved. He felt surprisingly free, not being where he was supposed to be. ?A light rain began to tap against his windshield as he drove.
Something was happening, something strange. And JD wanted to understand what it was.
Easy prey . . .
For there to be prey, there had to be a predator. JD recalled how Ty had referred to Ascension’s recent deaths as murders. At the time, he’d written it off as bad word choice, but maybe it wasn’t a coincidence. Was the spate of recent deaths really just bad luck?