Hanna screamed. Someone else was in the alley, their body in shadow. When the figure moved into the light, Hanna realized it was Daniel, Hank’s strange assistant—the one who’d practically snuck into Hailey’s dressing room to retrieve them a few days before.
“W-what are you doing here?” Hanna bleated. He’d come out of nowhere. “Did you shove me?”
Daniel’s eyes narrowed, and they looked even more beady and hollow than ever. “No, but I saw you fall. You shouldn’t be here right now, Hanna. Hank sent everyone home.”
Then why are you here? Hanna wanted to ask, but she didn’t. “I—I was just going over my lines,” she said weakly, jumping to her feet. She glanced down at the chalk A again, her heart pounding hard. “And I’m leaving now.”
“Good.” Daniel was looking at her with an expression Hanna couldn’t quite identify. “A girl like you shouldn’t be alone anywhere. After everything that’s happened to you, I would have thought you’d be more careful.”
Hanna nodded, then scuttled to her car. It was only once she’d locked the doors that she realized that his expression had kind of been ominous. She thought again about the flash of blond hair in the crowd scene the other day. Could Daniel have helped her, somehow? Could an Ali Cat be on the Burn It Down crew?
Hanna’s phone beeped, and she screamed again. She glanced at it in her lap.
Ali just attacked me at school, said a message from Emily. Come now!
Hanna threw the car into drive, her mind suddenly switching gears. She certainly couldn’t worry about Daniel right now. All she could think about was getting to Emily as fast as she could.
The sky was an ugly gray and the air was peppered with low rumbles of thunder when Hanna pulled into the Rosewood Day parking lot next to Emily’s Volvo. In the distance, she could see Emily sitting on one of the swings on the Lower School’s playground. Her head was down, her hair shiny and wet, and it looked like she was in a bathing suit. A nervous bolt surged through Hanna once more.
Spencer and Aria were pulling into the parking lot at the same time, and all the girls rushed toward the swings. Emily didn’t look up at them, her gaze fixed firmly on the ground. Her feet were bare and muddy. Her skin looked slightly blue. There was a hooded sweatshirt balled up in her hands, but for whatever reason, she hadn’t put it on.
“What happened?” Hanna bellowed, dropping to her knees next to her friend and touching her hand. Emily’s skin was cold and covered in goose bumps. She smelled overwhelmingly like chlorine.
“Are you okay?” Spencer sank into a swing next to her.
“Was it really her?” Aria wrapped her arms around Emily’s shoulders.
Emily indicated a purplish bruise on her neck. “It was definitely her,” she said, her voice tinged with sobs. “She tried to kill me.”
She told the girls what had happened. With every sentence, Hanna’s heart began to bang faster. By the time Emily got to the part about Ali pushing her under the water, she could barely breathe. “I shouldn’t have swum alone,” Emily moaned when she finished. “It was the perfect place for Ali to find me.”
“And then she just stopped holding you under?” Spencer repeated.
“That’s right.” Emily shrugged. “All of a sudden, she pulled up and ran off.”
“And she disappeared?” Aria asked.
Emily nodded miserably. “I don’t know how it’s possible, but she was suddenly gone.”
“How did she . . . look?” Hanna asked, her voice catching.
Emily’s head rose for the first time. Her eyes were red-rimmed, and her mouth was drawn. “Corpselike.” She grimaced, then looked down at the hoodie she was holding. “I managed to pull this thing off her before she got away.”
Hanna shut her eyes. Maybe the girl she’d seen on the film set wasn’t a figment of her imagination—and maybe Ali herself had written that note in chalk outside the soundstage. Where else had Ali been in the past two weeks? Maybe she’d never left Rosewood. Maybe she’d been watching them this whole time.
More rain began to fall. Aria paced around the swings, her booties splashing in the mud. “Okay. Okay. First things first. Emily, do you need to go to the ER?”
Emily shook her head vehemently. “No.”
“Are you sure?” Spencer looked surprised. “Ali practically drowned you. The bruises on your neck are as big as plums. And you’re really shivering. You might be in shock.”
“I’m fine,” Emily insisted, crossing her arms over her chest.
But then her teeth started chattering. “Let’s get her in my car,” Hanna instructed.
Hanna lifted her by her arms. The others rushed to help, and they hurried through the rain and tumbled into Hanna’s Prius, settling Emily into the front passenger seat. Hanna turned on the engine and twisted the heat to high. Aria found a blanket in the backseat and piled it around Emily’s legs. Spencer peeled off her jacket and wrapped it around Emily’s shoulders.