Even though the smoke is starting to make me feel sluggish and the back of my head throbs, I can fight. If he kisses me, I can bite the tongue out of his mouth. Dig my thumbs into the corners of his eyes and burrow until I find brain.
Is that what he thought about when he was alone with June? Is that how he rocked himself to sleep at night?
Am I better because it would be self-defense if I did it?
When I do it.
If I can do it.
The thing in me that wants to live speaks for me. “Of course not. I’ve been waiting for you my whole life, Xander. There’s never been anyone but you. “
The best lie is always the truth.
He wraps his arms around my waist. The mushroom caps that I drew out of his broken soul press into my chest, squealing against the buttons of my jacket. The sound sets my teeth on edge, but Xander mistakes my cringe for a hug. He curls his head into the dip of my shoulder, the same as he did on the bench at the farmers’ market. He sighs against my neck, cooling the rose quartz. I set a hand on the back of his head, my elbow cushioned by a flat toadstool. With sweat clinging to his back, he feels like a wet Nerf ball. Porous. Slick. Spongy.
There isn’t enough air. The smoke would be thick enough to choke me if I could remember how to breathe. But the whole world is on fire, not only this house.
One of my hands strokes his hair as the other travels to the waistband of his pajama pants. My thumb traces the pleats in the elastic until my nail catches in the seam of the pocket. There it is—smooth, round metal and the bumpy plastic of a fake ruby.
“Did you ever really like me?” I whisper, my voice as weak and unsure as if I switched languages. Asking could kill me—there isn’t enough time, I know that—but what about not knowing? When you’re facing down the moment you’ll be able to cite as ground zero of your post-traumatic stress—if you should be so lucky to live long enough to get to post—then why not collect all the information?
“I love you,” he sniffles. “I’ve always loved you. I would kill for you.”
And the awful thing is that he means it. Literally. He could fix my life the way he fixed his and Riley’s. He would stab or strangle or poison anyone who hurt me.
Toby.
Dr. Miller.
The Nouns.
My parents.
My sisters.
“Then you can die for me.”
I pull the ceremonial dagger out of his pocket and rear back, bracing both hands on the handle. I bring it down with every ounce of strength in my body. The blade slides into Xander’s shoulder easily, and I keep shoving until I feel the metal bite into the moldy wood of the wall.
The sound of his scream crackles in the air like a broken log. Inside his mouth, I can see his tonsils have turned to smooth white mushroom caps. There’s nothing left but the rot.
Blood rises up between the mushrooms, slipping between stems and caps, spurting onto the sleeves of my jacket, flecking against my mouth. I rub my lips together, tasting hot pennies and dirt.
He looks from the hilt of the dagger to me and back again, a moth on display in a burning museum. Pinned, but breathing. We both know that I could have aimed for his heart. That he could rock the blade out of his skin to free himself. But he’s trapped for a moment, and that’s all the time I need to get myself and Aniyah and the others to safety.
I look back at the sigil on the floor, the shriveled mushroom lying beside it. I can imagine Riley’s hand wielding the chalk, chanting spell after spell over the mushroom. “The mushrooms were never a curse. I just made you see what you’ve been hiding. Magic can’t get rid of what’s inside of you, Xander. I could never fix you.”
“Camila.” He says my name like it’s hope itself. Like it could be enough to change my mind.
I don’t say goodbye.
It’s a long way from the roof to the ground, but I have no choice. I land in the dead grass and roll up like a potato bug.
Yarrow House is erased, piece by piece, in fire as orange as a sunrise.
TWENTY-TWO
MY FINGERNAILS ARE filthy against my pillowcase. I can feel the itch of a scab knitting together where my head hit the windowsill. The stench of smoke and licking flames is stuck in my hair. It’s probably baked so deep in my skin that a part of me will never leave Yarrow.
My mom’s hand is on my shoulder. She tells me there’s been an accident.
I pretend to be asleep until she leaves.
TWENTY-THREE
I WAKE UP again with a sharp elbow in my back and milky breath in my face. My sisters are on either side, squishing me into a Flores-girl sandwich. I open my eyes into Izzy’s.
Over my shoulder, Nora is asleep, her mouth open wide to let a torrential downpour of drool fall onto my pillow—the one with a pillowcase, thank God. What I thought was her elbow boring into my back is actually the nose of Pua the pig, smashed between us.
If Nora is bringing back something she stole from me, shit has gotten very real.
I roll my head back to Izzy.
“Mom told you?” My voice is as raspy as Riley’s. My tongue tastes like smoke and blood.
She sucks her lips in and nods. Her eyes are damp. I wonder how long she’s been watching me sleep, getting more and more scared instead of waking me up. Nora has never been afraid to wake any of us up if she needs the slightest thing—water, a snack, attention—but Izzy bears everything like it doesn’t touch her. She tries so hard not to be a typical middle child that she reaps almost none of the benefits of it either.
“I’m not going anywhere, okay?” I tell her. “I know that a lot of people have been dying, but that’s not going to happen to me. Not like that.”
A tear splashes onto the tip of her nose. “You aren’t wearing your rubber band.”
I glance down at my bare wrist. “It broke yesterday. I’ll put a new one on today. Wearing it was a good idea. It’s been helping a lot.”
She sniffles and nods. “I knew it would be.”
“So humble.”
She takes two big lungfuls of air, and more tears fall down her face. “I’m sorry Xander died,” she whispers.
I’m not, I think.
Skin crawling, I can feel the phantom weight of the dagger in my hand, the squish as it moved through his body and into the wall behind him. I didn’t kill him, but I let him die. He chose to stay in that burning house. I’m an accessory to his death. But I could have been his last victim.
It was self-preservation in revenge’s clothes.
I nudge Izzy’s knees with mine. “Go back to sleep.”
I pet her hair until her eyelids get too heavy to stay open. She sleeps like Nora, throwing her elbows around and breathing loudly through her mouth.
At some point, there will be questions. Xander’s body was found in the charred shell of Yarrow House. The coroner will have to start with all the mushrooms growing out of his skin before they worry about why he was in an abandoned house when it caught fire. Then there will probably be cops and voicemails from Mrs. Greenway. I might tell her to keep the clothes I left in her washing machine.
Today, I don’t want to answer any questions. It’s day seven of the spell.
I leave my sisters to sleep in my bed. Tomorrow, I’ll tell them to stay the fuck out of my room again. Today, it’s nice to know that they’re safe.
* * *
Lucky Thirteen is closed on Sundays. I asked Toby why once—it’s not like she has to go to church—and she told me that everyone deserved a day to themselves. She picked Sunday because it was when her friends could ride with her.
This was before I knew that sometimes Toby’s friends assemble on Friday nights to hunt zombies.
I stand outside the little yellow Victorian, not quite in knocking distance of the door. With the shop closed, the building has transformed back into being someone’s house. A house with a shotgun inside.
I dig my fingernails into the lines of my palm, one by one. Toby and her friends and her shotgun ruined my Friday night. I can claim part of her Sunday.