They said something else, their words moving back and forth in sharp measures, but I no longer heard. We changed direction and I followed, watching James’s bent form ahead of me, George’s tall frame loping easily. I started to lag, caught up, lagged again.
We crested a rise and at last I saw the flames. An entire section of the woods was on fire now, the flames sweeping beneath the trees, their light swirling into the darkened sky. The clouds of smoke were thick, and I could feel a wall of heat. We had come the wrong way.
“Goddamn it,” I heard James say. “He’s started it here, too. He’s too bloody fast!”
George said something; then more shots came through the trees. And in a single instant I turned and found that I was alone.
“James!” I cried.
There was no answer, no sound but the crackling of the oncoming fire.
Darling, Gloria said.
I limped back the way I had come, trying to remember the path we’d taken, lost almost instantly. I had a few moments of hideous panic, gasping for breath, before I caught myself and used the tattered remains of my logic. Not the house; George was right about that. But where to go in a fire? To the water. If I could find my way to the pond, I could stay safe from the fire.
I followed the direction I’d heard Gloria’s voice come from. The wound on my knee opened and fresh blood trickled down my shin, but still I kept moving. I saw shapes in the shadows, someone taking even strides, but when I cried out I heard no answer. It wasn’t until one of the shapes passed near me—and I saw he was dressed in full army uniform—that I realized why.
“No,” I said as Harry Sutter walked past me, his handsome face intent on something I couldn’t see. “Gloria, what did you do?”
There were more shouts, alarmed now, more gunshots, and in my ear a sharp bark of laughter. I hadn’t summoned these shapes; Gloria had. I’d summoned her and she’d summoned the ghosts, her power mixed with mine, using it, amplifying it, opening the door to the other side. Someone else walked through the trees—a woman. Davies? Ramona? Who else had she called? I ran and ran, hoping beyond logic that I was going in the right direction as I choked on the smoke and felt the heat rise at my back.
I broke from the line of the trees and found myself in the clearing by the pond. I was at the other side of the water now, staring into the cattails and the tall grass, opposite where James and I had stood earlier. Somehow I had gone all the way around, probably a quarter mile, without knowing it. The woods to my left were ablaze, the flames licking up into the sky, like a nightmare I’d never dreamed could happen, inescapable and obscene.
“Ellie!” came a voice from the woods.
“James!” I cried, my throat tearing, my voice barely audible to my own ears. My eyes watered from the smoke and I could hardly breathe. “I’m here! By the water!”
“I’m coming for you—,” he said, and then he was silent. I screamed his name again, but my voice was no more than a whisper. I started through the high reeds into the water, the shocking cold of it rising to my ankles, the mud pulling at my shoes.
I had gone only a few feet when I sensed someone behind me.
I turned and saw a figure emerge from the woods. A man wearing farmer’s clothes and heavy boots, his cloth cap gone from his dark head. Coming toward me, walking, taking his time, inexorable. In his hands he held a long, thin wire. A living man. Colin Sutter. Coming for me.
“Stop,” I tried to say, but nothing came from my mouth anymore. I sloshed backward in the water, the reeds tangling around my legs and ankles, my hands up as if I could stop him, thinking, This is it—he started the fire to separate me from the others and he succeeded. I was a fool ever to think I could get away. Of course he’d find me—of course. And still he came toward me, not a single word on his lips, because that was how he killed—fast and silent, without a good-bye.
Footsteps sloshed in the water behind me, and Colin stopped.
Something moved to my left, and there was a horrible smell. Another shape moved to my right, coming from deep in the water, making a rhythmic slosh slosh slosh sound. Colin’s face froze in a sort of horror, the shadows of the flames flickering over his features. He gazed behind me in disbelief.
I turned. Harry Sutter stood next to me, tall and still in his uniform, looking at his brother. On my other side Ramona emerged from the water, the drops vanishing off her like air. Her face was sick and intent, her eyes like holes in her skull. Behind her, coming up from the depths, came the man in the houndstooth jacket.
I froze where I was. None of them seemed to see me; all were intent on Colin, who still stood at the edge of the water, the wire drooping in his hands. “It can’t be you,” he said, the first words I’d heard him speak; his voice was raspy with smoke, but beneath that it was deep and melodious. I did not know who he was talking to, as Tommy Sutter had come out of the water now, too, his face so much like his brothers’ but different, wider, with its own kind of handsomeness. Like the others, he made no noise.
I turned back to Colin. I wanted to say something, but suddenly nothing would come. Because there was another shape approaching Colin from behind.
She looked nothing like she had been—and everything like it. I would have known her anywhere, even across the divide of life and death, the divide that she and I had been able to travel, that we now traveled together. She was in the shadows, but still I knew. My mind was sure, and my heart—all of me was certain.
Colin became aware of her as she stood at his back. He stiffened, his expression rigid with new alarm. The ghosts in the water with me stood and watched as a flawless white arm reached out and around Colin’s neck, draped like a lover’s. Another arm came from the other side, the pale hand with its long, perfect fingers touching the side of his cheek, tilting his head. Colin gave a low groan of helpless terror.
Gloria Sutter whispered in her brother’s ear.