“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?”
“Yes,” she said. She cleared her throat. “Yes,” she said again, a little louder.
There was the slipping, desperate sensation then—she’d woken from a dream and felt it instantly fading into the backstage of her consciousness. She squeezed her eyes open and shut as if she could seal in the memory.
In a trance, she watched the firefighters, heavy with gear, run toward the house with thick hoses. She watched her father put his arm around her mom and lead her across the grass. Watched the Founts, all four of them, come flowing out of their house. Watched JD scan the crowd and stop when his eyes fell on her. Watched the police car pull up behind the firemen and start asking her parents questions.
She saw it all, but couldn’t process it.
Her house was on fire. She could barely see any flames from her vantage point, but she could see smoke billowing off of it like steam rising from a teakettle.
There was movement on the side of the house and Em turned, expecting to see another firefighter emerge from the bushes. But it wasn’t a man in uniform who rounded the corner.
It was Crow, unmistakably—wearing a leather jacket and beat-up jeans—stumbling toward her. Ignoring the quizzical looks that followed him as he crossed the lawn, he came straight to her.
She stood up to meet him.
“You’re not hurt,” he said.