Em did remember. The smallest bolt of lightning, the thinnest roll of thunder, would send her shrieking into her parents’ room, into their bed, under their covers. That was before everything else got scary. Even now, a part of her wished she could just run for their bed as she used to, and hide. Instead, she was curled up in her own, pretending to do homework and staring at her laptop at the foot of the bed. Thank god the Winterses had been able to keep living in their home after the fire—if Em were stuck in some bland hotel, she’d probably lose her mind completely.
“Are you sure you don’t want to come?” asked Mrs. Winters, breaking into Em’s thoughts. They were going to see the school play with the Founts; her parents saw every performance at Ascension, even the ones Em wasn’t in. Weirdos.
“I’m sure,” Em said. “I’m just not feeling all that well. Tell JD I said congrats.” She kept her eyes on her computer screen, afraid to look at her mom. She was scared she might start to cry. She’d been home from school for hours and all she’d done was leaf sadly through last year’s yearbook and rifle through a wooden box filled with special letters and mementos. She wanted to hold everything in her hands—not just the pieces of paper and scraps of tickets, not just the photographs and shards of beach glass, but the feelings that came with them. The hilarity of one of Gabby’s disjointed notes, passed between classes, unfolded in secret. The excitement of her first trip to Portland without her parents. The peacefulness of summer days spent on the sand and in the salty ocean. Would she never feel those things again?
Mrs. Winters nodded, then came into the room and ran her hand once over Em’s head. “Everything will be okay, sweetie,” she said.
Hot tears pricked the backs of Em’s eyes. But will it? She turned and gave her mom a weak smile. “Thanks. I love you.”
Right before her mom left the room, Em spoke up again. “Mom? Also? I wanted to ask you . . . Can you make homemade mac ’n’ cheese tomorrow night?” If she was still here, and still Em, there was nothing she’d want more.
Her mom tilted her head quizzically and then smiled. “Sure, hon, if that’s what you’re craving. We can have a nice family dinner, the three of us.”
“That sounds awesome,” Em said. She kept her game face on until her mom closed the door.
As soon as she was alone again, she pulled out her notebook and started to write. There was one more person she needed to say good-bye to. She scribbled furiously. And when she was done, she folded up the note and left it on top of the coiled, broken piece of string on her windowsill. She’d kept it there, through all this craziness. On the outside, she wrote JD.
The sun had set. It was time to go.
? ? ?
It was easy to find the house this time. Making her way through the Haunted Woods, with ashen birches violently waving their scraggly fingers in the sky, she had the feeling that she was floating, skimming the ground. She had a mission, and she would not be drawn off course.
The house stood shadowy in the inky-blue twilight, towering up to paint a black silhouette against the sky. Em crept through the clearing, trying to sense whether the Furies were around. She pulled the hood of her black sweatshirt over her head to hide her braid and part of her face; in dark skinny jeans, sneakers, and the sweatshirt, she felt kind of like Drea. Kind of badass.
Crickets whined in the tall weeds around the house, clicking off whenever she got too close.
She peeked into a downstairs window and saw nothing. Nothing moving. ?All dark. She put her toe against the front door and pushed lightly. The door creaked open.
No one was home. Where were they?
The house looked different than it had in the past. Where it had once appeared charred, empty, it was now opulent and decorated. The Furies had been here long enough to transform it. As their power increased, so did their presence. Em’s stomach flipped. Squinting her eyes to adjust to the dim lighting, she saw curved pieces of furniture, a golden chandelier, and a glass case under a tall window. She was drawn to it. Using her flashlight to guide her through the room, she made her way to the cabinet.
There, she saw trinkets that she knew were sick trophies: a ripped piece of one of Sasha’s drawings, Drea’s treasured brooch, and . . .
She inhaled sharply.
Her pen. The pen JD had given her.
Right next to it was a long beaded dangly earring. Just like the one she’d lost on the night of Noah’s party. And next to that, a tiny shred of paper with one word written on it. She practically gagged as her stomach turned over. She recognized that handwriting. JD’s. She knew that note. The word was: Always.
“Get out of my life,” Em whispered. Although she had spoken quietly, the words seemed to echo in the vast black chamber of the room.
Once again, she wondered where the three Furies had gone.