Trial by Fire

This logic has served me well over the past year. Whenever I’ve felt weak and doubted my path, all I’ve needed to do is think of Rowan and what I did to him. If I didn’t have mercy on him, why should I be merciful with others? There’s a clarity that comes with cruelty. When you’ve alienated everyone who means something to you and you’ve sacrificed every last sense of self, then there really is nothing left to lose.

This girl I’m about to steal has no concept of loss. She doesn’t understand the difference between infatuation and love. That’s a good thing. I don’t want her broken like me. I want her wounded, yes, but stronger for it. There comes a day when every girl loses the stars in her eyes. And then she can see clearly.

This is Lily’s day.




The voice went away for a few moments, and Lily thought that was that. She didn’t really think anything would happen. Then all sensation left her body and the voice came back.

It will be terrifying. It was for me.

There was no more warning than that. At first, she was too stunned to be frightened, but then the fear came, just as the voice had promised.

It was like being numb, but not the warm, tingly numbness of Novocain. This was absolute sensory deprivation. Lily couldn’t feel the clothes on her body, the hard rock under her legs, or the weight of her skin on her bones. She couldn’t even feel the panic that she knew she was experiencing; she could only think it. She was disembodied and she wondered if that meant she was dead.

Then the vibration began. Lily didn’t know if it was a sound, a sensation, or something in between, but a steady thrumming became her only focus in the void. It was a distinct pattern, a unique combination of rhythm, intensity, pitch, and duration that was as recognizable as a friend’s voice. It was a song without notes, as complex as a symphony, and startlingly beautiful. It ended and another began. The second vibration was as unique and as infinitely complicated as the first, and it ended just as abruptly.

As fast as a light being switched on, Lily could feel her body again. She could feel, see, taste, and smell the world again. She was still sitting on the same rock, still staring out at the same Atlantic Ocean, but several things were off. The air smelled clearer and fresher. The sky lacked the vaguely brownish smudge of smog ringing the horizon. There were more barnacles on the rocks and more starfish in the tide pools.

Her skin prickling with a preternatural sense of wrongness, Lily turned and looked behind her.

She was still in a Salem. The shape of the shoreline, as familiar to her as the whirls of her own thumbprint, told her that.

She just wasn’t in her Salem anymore.





chapter 3



Lily sat and stared at the impossible sight before her.

A massive castle like structure loomed where her house was supposed to stand, and beyond that, Lily could make out the outline of a city. She stared at the skyline, trying to make it register. A city larger than Boston stood where little Salem used to be. A city made up of weird buildings that were shaped unlike any she’d seen before. Twisting high above even the tallest skyscrapers were spiraling towers that seemed to be crawling with vegetation. Lily jumped down off her rock and ran up the steep path from the beach, hoping that as she got closer the whole thing would dissolve like a mirage in the desert.

“I’m dreaming. I fell asleep on the rock and now I’m dreaming,” she muttered under her breath, but she knew it wasn’t true. Her skin tingled with awareness of the world around her. She felt completely awake. Whatever was happening to her was real.