Lorraine ignored him. “Star maps and calendars, Soph. Remember when I taught you about those?” Lorraine was bent over the table while Kale was clearing it. She piled my stained place mats and the coupons I would get around to using someday on the floor while Lorraine threw out the star maps and secured them with a polished rock at each corner.
“I need a picture of the girl,” she asked without looking up at me.
Will shrugged and handed me Sampson’s file. I took a guess and laid Alyssa’s grinning mug in her hand.
“No,” Kale said, taking the photo from Lorraine. “We need the picture of the one who was sacrificed. The one with the carvings.”
My throat went dry, but I sifted through the stack, pulling out the photo. I wouldn’t let myself believe the ruined flesh could be Cathy’s; that what had happened to this lifeless thing had anything to do with the smiling girl I had seen in her mother’s photograph.
“You guys should get back,” Kale directed us as she lit the two candles and positioned the photograph on the star map.
“With pleasure,” Will said, moving onto the couch.
“I’ll leave you to this,” Nina said, opening her door three inches and shimmying through.
Lorraine stood in front of the table, which had quickly become a kind of altar. Candles flickered and the stars on the maps seemed to glitter as Lorraine’s palms went over them. Soon the chicken feathers were unbound, their edges burnt. They were scattered and dotted with oil from a tiny jug Lorraine produced from her pocket, and everything was tossed as Lorraine began to mumble. Kale joined her from the other side of the table and both of their voices dropped to the same octave and soon became the same throaty whisper. It got deeper, heavier, and I wasn’t sure if I was hearing it or feeling it as the words reverberated through my chest. My heart started to match the pulse of their speech. My breath rose and fell with theirs. My eyes may have been closed, but I couldn’t tell. Everything I saw was in a deep, red haze and the smell of blood—metallic, thick—was suddenly overwhelming. It was in my nose, I felt it pressing against my eyes, on my lips. I felt the heat dribble in, a tiny drop at a time, until the blood was pouring over my bottom teeth, filling up my mouth. My whole body started to shake and then it was like I was breaking apart—inch by inch.
I heard someone cough and sputter, then felt heat on my cheeks. I opened my eyes and the candle flames seemed to have amassed into one giant orange roar. Lorraine and Kale’s voices rose to a crescendo and the flame seemed to follow. Will’s face was drawn, the dancing firelight flickering in his eyes. I was mesmerized until I heard the crack—so loud, so unholy that the entire building seemed to tremble under the vibrations and all of my friends—Will, Lorraine, and Kale—were lifted off their feet and thrown backward. In an instant, the fire went out, the apartment was blanketed by a bone-chilling cold, and the only sound was the heartbreaking crush of body against wall. Will shot backward, his head smacking the edge of a framed photograph with a sickening crunch. Glass showered over him as he slumped down the wall and huddled on the ground. Lorraine was launched sideways toward the kitchen, her spine crushing against the countertop and bending so far backward that her skull scraped against the tile while her legs folded uselessly underneath her. And Kale tried to brace herself by digging her nails into the table, but whatever was pushing was too strong. There were bloody grooves where she’d dug her nails in, and now she lay like a crumpled rag doll against the baseboards.
I heard myself scream. I felt myself yanking handfuls of hair as my legs turned to useless rubber. My mind warbled as I tried to think of who to go to first—Will, bloodied and unmoving; Lorraine, silent, eyes frozen wide with terror; or Kale slumped and whimpering.
But I wasn’t moving. And I hadn’t moved. The explosion had done nothing to me. I wasn’t singed by the mammoth flame or pierced by the shower of broken glass. I was spared.
“Oh my God!” Nina shouted as she flung her bedroom door open. “Oh my God, what happened?”
Vlad raced out beside her and cleared the overturned table in a single leap. He silently landed a hairsbreadth from Kale and fell to her, gingerly brushing her hair aside, his voice low and soothing as he worked to cradle her. I saw her blink, the confusion in her eyes, the tiny splatters of broken blood vessels spider-webbing.
Nina had her palms pressed against Lorraine’s ruined back and she was looking at me, her mouth moving, color pulsing in her cheeks. She was saying something, she was screaming, but it was all a muffled blur.