Dana stood there, trying to remember if she had gone home to bed and if this could possibly be a dream. Or was she still hallucinating back in the Chrysalis Room? What was real? Was anything at all real, or had her mind simply broken into so many pieces that none of them would ever fit together again?
And … how could she be sure of any answer she might come up with? Now or ever? It was terrifying. It was being lost at sea so long that land itself was becoming more of a fantasy than a memory.
Dana took a few uncertain steps toward the yard but was still unable to see inside. The house remained dark. Had that actually been Connie Lucas? If not, why hadn’t the girl who lived here turned on the lights?
Turn around and get out of here, said a voice in her head. Her logical self. This is wrong. Stay out of it.
Dana moved halfway up the flagstone path. “Connie, is everything okay?”
Run. Angelo could be in there.
Dana shook her head as if arguing with her better judgment. Angelo couldn’t have gotten this far ahead of her. No way. Besides, she had her stick, and it wasn’t like she was going to actually go in there.
That was what she told herself as she lifted a foot to step onto the bottom riser of the porch.
You didn’t even know this girl.
She hadn’t known Maisie, either, but she had dreamed about her and then spoken to her. Dana went up the three steps very slowly.
“Connie? What’s going on? Are you trying to tell me something?”
She was on the porch now. At the open door.
There was a breeze from inside. Cold and humid, like the rush of air from a meat locker. It smelled, too. Like meat. Not living flesh, but something older, lifeless. Preserved.
Those thoughts banged around inside her head, breaking furniture, tearing at her courage.
Run before he sees you.
The inner voice was begging now, and Dana heard it as clearly as if a twin stood beside her and whispered in her ear. She knew that she absolutely should turn and go. There was no sense to what she was doing. None. No logic, no plan, no advantage. It was wrong from every direction. She was totally aware of that. And yet her traitor feet kept moving her forward. It was like the way she felt when she was walking inside a dream. There was the logic of the dreaming mind witnessing and recording the actions, but the body moved of its own will or as if according to some preset choreography learned way down on the subconscious level.
And for a moment Dana wondered if, in fact, she was dreaming. Was all of this real? Was any of it? Had she even gone to Beyond Beyond with Ethan? Or met Angelo at the soccer field? Or been chased? Was any of that likely in her actual life? Maybe all this was nothing more than some kind of extended dream, a nightmare. They said that dreams were actually very short even if they felt real. Was everything about the angel, Maisie, Corinda, all of it just a complex fantasy playing out as she slept through a spring storm in her own bed?
The floor beneath her feet felt too soft, as if she did not stand on it with all her weight. It wasn’t quite the same as when she had astrally projected with Sunlight, but it wasn’t real, either. She almost floated. When she took a breath, the meat-locker stink carried with it the same incense smell of the Chrysalis Room.
Which was when Dana decided that she was not at home dreaming.
This was still part of her spiritual trip with Sunlight.
It jolted her, but at the same time it steadied her. Both in equal measure. All this was part of that same out-of-body experience.
“Sunlight?” she murmured, and her voice echoed as if she’d shouted in a vast, empty stadium. “Help me.”
“He can’t help you,” said a voice. It was a male voice, and it was right behind her. Dana screamed and jumped, twisting around as she landed, dropping her backpack and bringing up her hands, ready to fight.
It was not Angelo who stood behind her. It was an Asian boy, and beside him was a brown-haired girl with hazel eyes. Like Connie, they both wore Oak Valley High jackets.
Like Connie, these were teens who Dana had met only through photographs.
Jeffrey Watanabe and Jennifer Hoffer.
Dead teenagers.
Standing right behind her.
Dana heard the soft scuff of a shoe and she whirled again, and now she saw other ghosts. Connie stood by the far wall, and there were two boys with her. Chuck Riley and Todd Harris.
And then someone walked out of the adjoining room. Another girl.
Maisie.
Dana was surrounded by the dead.
CHAPTER 68
313 Sandpiper Lane
6:09 P.M.
They stood there, staring at her, their eyes filled with shadows, their mouths smiling with sadness.
“No,” said Dana breathlessly. “Please … no…”
Connie raised her hand and touched the pendant she wore. It was a black onyx disk surrounded by twisting red-gold flames. The sign of a total eclipse. Maisie wore the same pendant. Jennifer wore earrings with the same symbol.
Chuck, Jeffrey, and Todd all removed their jackets and pushed up their sleeves to show tattoos on their upper arms.
The eclipse.
Every single one of them.
“I see it,” said Dana. “What … what does it mean?”
“The Red Age is coming.”