The Wicked We Have Done

3

Jace screams.

The bubbling laughter spurts more rapidly from Gordon’s mouth as the girl slides off Salem’s limp body. Warmth has left every inch of me.

A gleam has risen in the girl, sharp and vibrant like a blade slicing open her irises. “Get ready to run.”

Fire mysteriously ignites in the hearth, bursting forth and catching on the couch, the carpet—on the nightie of Salem’s victim. Her face is illuminated as the flames eat her alive, charring her skin, broiling her insides.

In a matter of seconds, the fire has spread to all of the furniture, licking up the walls, igniting the curtains.

“We need to get out of here!” Valerie screams.

But I can’t. Not yet. My own body awakens, no longer paralyzed by invisible chains of terror. I run toward her, toward the girl now only walking muscle and bone—and drop to my knees, skidding across the stone until my legs collide with Salem’s body. I feel around his collarbone, moving my hands up toward his neck, where his head rolls at an impossible angle. It wasn’t an act. He’s gone.

Heat threatens to sear the skin straight off of me.

Someone grasps my arm and yanks me to my feet. “What are you doing?” Casey shouts. “We need to get out—”

A plume of flame erupts from the fireplace. Casey throws me in front of him, guiding me out the door. He runs so fast I can’t even keep both feet on the ground as he carries me blindly down the hill. There is nothing but darkness, the only light from the hell we’ve left behind.

“Where are the others? We can’t leave them!” I jerk backward and we both stumble. He gets up first, takes my hand, drags me to my feet, and doesn’t let go. The ground flies by faster than my legs will carry me, and I’m sure I’m going to trip until the land levels out and brush pelts my arms.

We’re in the forest.

Casey trips, and this time I’m the one to heave my entire body to get him up.

I slow and he tries to tug me along, but I tear my hand free from his grasp. My legs give out and I drop to my knees. My wheezing sounds like sobbing. Maybe I am sobbing. “I’m done.”

He sits next to me. “Hell. We’re in hell. Must have died on the train.” He pauses, and then, “The fuck were you doing back there?”

“Wha . . . what?”

“Running to Salem like that.”

“I needed to see . . . if he was dead.”

“Who cares? He was a terrible person. The house . . . look, look! It’s up in flames. You can see from here. And what, were you going to save him if he was still alive? Was that what you were going to—”

“Who cares? You? Why? Tell me, Casey . . . why did you drag me away? Why not leave me to die?”

“You were the only one I could see clearly.”

“Bullshit.”

“You were being psychotically heroic.”

“So I needed rescuing? I’m a mass murderer.”

“Apparently we’ve all done some pretty fucked-up things to get here.”

“My point exactly, now shut up. Let me think.” Actually, being alone with my thoughts is the last thing that I want right now. The image of the girl’s burning flesh replays over and over in my head. The lodge is on fire. What do we do—where do we go?

There might be other stops within the woods—other buildings with food and beds. Other horrors. Whatever the Compass Room is planning for us next.

The Compass Room.

We were given backpacks with provisions for a reason. The sudden eruption of flames wasn’t an accident. “Everything that just happened . . . that was all on purpose.”

“What?”

“They wanted us out of the house. They want us in the woods.”

Shuffling sounds in the distance—staggered footsteps. I stand, but Casey whispers, “Don’t move.”

We’re at the brink of a grove, before us a clearing where someone emerges, dragging a whimpering figure.

“Shut up!” Erity hisses to Jace, throwing her on the ground.

Casey’s up and pulling me to his chest before I can think. He covers my mouth. I fight against him but he’s too freaking huge. He’s keeping me from her, for no reason, and she needs help.

My vision has adjusted enough to see the darkness splattered across Jace’s shirt. Blood. Something juts from her shoulder.

“Please,” Jace cries.

“This is the only way I can escape,” Erity says.

With a fallen branch, Erity swings at Jace’s head, the contact cracking in the hollow night. Jace slumps to the ground on her back.

“If you want to die, you keep moving!” Casey hisses.

I fall limp, knowing he might be right, but also knowing that any more fighting is completely useless.

With the branch, Erity rushes to scratch a haphazard circle on the ground. Throwing the stick to the side, she picks up Jace’s legs and drags her to the center.

The video on the train had shown Erity as a member of a secret coven that believed they could extract power from human sacrifices.

Casey’s hand slips from my mouth.

“She’s going to sacrifice Jace if we don’t stop her!”

For how small she is, Erity’s strength is phenomenal. I recognize the object jutting from Jace’s chest as a knife handle.

“We have to do something!” I whisper.

“Let me think, let me think!”

There’s no time to think. A howl picks up in the distance, tortured screams filling the air. Even the trees quake in fear, the rustle of leaves surrounding us. Wind whips violently back and forth.

Erity sinks to her knees by Jace, her face lit in excitement. She mutters something I can’t hear; the shrieking now deafens me. I scream along with the noise until Casey covers my mouth again.

Erity is casting a spell.

Tendrils of black smoke swarm into the clearing. She stretches out her arms. “I’m ready!”

She waits to be filled with Jace’s soul.

Suddenly the smoke separates into thousands of black pellets—like oil hit by water. Erity’s expression shifts from joy to horror, and her scream joins those that lace the air. All at once, the smoke rushes forward, slamming into her. She seizes until every pellet has found its way inside her skin.

And then she explodes.

Her body rips into a million pieces. For a second I swear the flecks of her hover in the air, bits of flesh and bone and organ tissue, before they spray all over the forest, all over Jace.

All over me.

Casey releases me in a fit of curses. I race into the blood-soaked field and drop to my knees near Jace. She’s coated in a red, chunky mixture of Erity’s insides. I’m so packed full of adrenaline that I don’t even think twice when I drag the coil of intestine off her chest and press my ear to her soaked shirt, blood squelching beneath my head.

The beat of her heart is solid.

“Casey!” I scream. He isn’t budging. With the help of the full moon, I’ve adjusted to the night. He stands still, gaping at the clearing, running his fingers over his cheeks to clean away chunks of our former fellow inmate.

The knife penetrates Jace to the hilt. There’s no telling if I’ll hurt her more trying to remove it. I take a moment to trace the bone-white handle.

“Dammit, help me, Casey!”

Casey snaps out of it and joins me, kneeling by Jace’s head. He lifts up her shoulders so I can slide her pack off.

“I saw the moon reflecting a little farther that way.” Casey points.

“On water?”

“A lake, I think.”

“Can you carry her?”

He nods, determined, though his entire body shakes.

“I can’t tell how much she’s bleeding. I don’t know if the blade hit anything,” I say as he staggers to his feet with Jace in his arms. I gently peel Jace’s sticky hair off her face. Her cheeks are cold. She won’t be conscious any time soon.

If I can put all of my effort into saving this girl, then I can dull the memory of what just happened.

I wonder if Casey’s thinking the same thing.

As we walk through the woods, a green light illuminates the night for a split second before disappearing.

“Lightning?” Casey asks.

“I don’t know,” I respond, hoping it’s not the beginning of another horror. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

The sun is coming up.

Casey and I have been hovering around Jace for the past few hours, unable to revive her. Her skin is tinged gray, hair laced with blood and the beach’s white, grainy sand. The same sand that stretches for hundreds of yards on the northern edge of a crystalline, perfect alpine lake.

The paradise mocks us. Nothing is reminiscent of the night’s events other than the blood crusted onto all of us, and the knife stuck in Jace’s shoulder. We have to pull it out—the question is when one of us will muster enough courage to do so.

Salem and Erity are dead for sure . . . maybe others are too. I didn’t see anyone else make it out of the house. I don’t even remember seeing Tanner in the living room before the place burst into flame. He could have been burned alive.

In the direction of the lodge, smoke still floats into the sky, clouding the north, filtering the new sun. All that’s left is a hellish orange hue.

I start to cry. I stupidly start to cry. With my adrenaline gauge on empty, I have no way to gain my bearings. In the past few hours, I’ve seen the impossible. Like we’re lab rats in a globe of secret supernatural government experiments. We’re criminals, and we don’t deserve more than that.

I wipe my cheeks, the tears softening up the blood. Casey’s lip rises in disgust.

“I’m fine, thanks for caring.” I return my attention to Jace.

I’m trying to understand what would happen if her heart stops beating. Would that mean the Compass Room deemed her worthy to die? Logically, it would have to. It was obvious that Salem should have died. Erity too. But Jace—I can’t imagine what she did or thought in the past few hours to condemn her.

I’m not going to sit here and watch her die.

I promised myself.

Never again would I wait for anything.

I reach out, curling my fingers around the bone hilt of the knife.

“What are you doing?” Casey’s back tenses. “You don’t know what that will do to her.”

“True, but I know what doing nothing will.”

He doesn’t argue.

I rest my left palm on her shoulder to steady myself. There’s no telling what will happen when I pull—or if I’ll even be able to rip the blade out. If she’ll wake up.

I count to three in my head and yank as hard as I can.

My hand flies back, and only the hilt catapults through the air.

“Fuck!” I scream. This is worse than leaving the knife in her—now the blade is buried deep within Jace and we have no means of getting it out.

Casey jumps up to grab the hilt—wherever it landed—and I examine the damage. I’m expecting to see the sharp edge of the blade where it broke. Instead, there’s nothing more than a shallow puncture wound, maybe an inch deep.

“Evalyn.”

I glance at Casey. He lifts the hilt. The unbroken piece of the blade is coated with blood—about an inch, enough to make the cut in Jace’s shoulder. The end isn’t jagged, but smooth.

Like it’s been sanded down. Like it dissolved.

“What the hell?”

“Why would Erity try to stab her with this?” Casey chucks the hilt onto the sand.

I study it, the blood melding states of glistening liquid and crust.

“She didn’t.” Jace coughs once, raising her shaking hands to wipe her cheeks. “She stabbed me with a knife.” Her words are slurred. “A real, full one. She recognized it. She said it was her ritual weapon.”

I hush her. “Rest. Don’t talk. You can do that later.” I squeeze her uninjured shoulder, releasing a breath of thanks that she’s awake.

Casey kneels next to me. “Where’d the rest of the blade go?”

I pick the handle of the knife up off the sand, running my finger over the smooth, dull edge. Jace says Erity stabbed her with a whole knife. But Jace’s wound isn’t more than an inch deep, which is the amount of blade here.

I hold my thumb into the bit of blade until my skin turns white and leaves a crescent imprint in the metal.

“It’s dissolving,” I say.

“Dissolving?” Casey reaches out and runs a finger over the metal. “Why?”

I shrug, a handful of possible answers racing through my head, though only one seems likely. “This place kills those deserving death. Maybe it isn’t sure about Jace yet.”

“So if they knew Jace was morally tarnished, then the blade wouldn’t have dissolved?”

I brush more sticky strands of hair from Jace’s forehead. Her eyes have fluttered shut. “I’m not sure.”

“You think they’re literally watching our every move, the Compass Room engineers—gods—whatever they are?”

“I think they have to be.”

“So did they make Salem’s victim magically appear? Or Erity’s motherfucking deity?”

“Is that what it was? A deity?”

Casey pushes his fingers through his hair. “We were sentenced to the Compass Room on the same day. That’s the only reason why I even know. Thankfully, she outshined me on all of the news programs. An archaic coven had been reborn. They believed they could waken a deity with a ritual involving a brimstone fire that created black smoke.”

“Then they’d have to sacrifice someone to the deity to gain power,” I conclude. “Right?”

Casey nods.

“So all we know so far are that there are two deaths, and both were somehow caused by a part of the criminal’s crime coming back to life.” But that’s all I can piece together. There are too many open ends in the Compass Room’s logic to try and mentally close any loopholes right now.

I use one of my pairs of underwear to clean Jace’s shoulder after I’ve taken off her shirt. She whimpers and tries to jerk away, and Casey holds her down. “It’s okay,” he whispers to her, fondly—fatherly—and waits with his hands on either side of her neck for her to calm down. “What do you remember?”

She takes a moment to gather herself. “Running through the woods.” Her face scrunches up as she gets ready to cry. I refocus on cleaning her up. “I was with both Erity and Valerie until we lost Valerie. Erity . . . She found that knife sticking out of a stump. She said it belonged to her, and that it must be a sign. I didn’t think to question her. I was still freaked out by the fire. She stabbed me when I wasn’t paying attention.”

“Let me get this straight.” Casey massages his temples. “Erity found a knife out in the woods that was hers, and then stabbed you with it?”

“She was sacrificing Jace’s soul to the deity we saw. She was trying to gain power, maybe to escape the Compass Room,” I say.

“Great explanation, except for the fact that Erity’s deity doesn’t exist.”

“Do you have a better explanation for what we saw?” I snap.

Of course he doesn’t.

“How did she die?” Jace asks.

“Erity?”

She nods.

Casey and I exchange glances, and I return to my work.

“Don’t worry about it right now. Relax and let Evalyn clean you up,” Casey says.

I head to the lake and soak the underwear, wiping her clean for a final time. I rip off the least dingy part of her old T-shirt and use it to make a bandage. When I’m finished, I say, “All done. Try not to move your arm.”

“I don’t know if I can move anything,” she croaks.

“Jace, do you know if you saw anyone else make it out of the house?” I think of Tanner and wonder if I should even care about him.

“I was with Valerie and Erity,” Jace says. “That’s all I know.”

“Damn.” Casey gets up and walks toward the lake.

Jace breaks. A sob racks her body and I hold her down to keep her from moving too much, shushing her. She bites her lip.

“I wanted to die.” She sputters a cough. “For so long. I don’t want to anymore. I finally don’t want to and now it’s inevitable.”

I squeeze her arms. “Don’t say that. You know not everyone is going to die in here.”

She gives me a look that tells me she knows I’m only trying to make her feel better. The CR statistics are dooming for all of us. Some of the beta tests didn’t even harbor survivors.

It’s hard to imagine Jace hating life so much that she tried to take out a family in the process of taking out herself. I remember the video from the train—the decisions the court struggled with. Jace was drunk when she hit that family, but she was clinically depressed too.

“Can I ask you something?”

“What?” she croaks.

“Why did you want to die?”

Not the most appropriate question since I’ve only known the girl for a day, but we don’t have all the time in the world.

Beneath the snot and tears, she doesn’t appear offended.

Her head rolls to the side. “Life is so strange. I grew up numb and not a single person worried about me. It wasn’t until I felt alive that anyone started to care.”

“What do you mean?”

“I was a middle-class B student. My parents are together. People told me I was pretty. No one takes depression in pretty girls seriously. They think it’s angst, or a cry for attention. They think it’s ‘boy problems.’” She remains transfixed on the lake. “It was never boy problems.”

“Then I hit my low. I drove drunk and killed that family. When I came to in the hospital, I saw what death really was like.”

“It’s not pretty.”

“It wasn’t for that family,” she replies. “I’m sure it can be beautiful: the plane we pass into. But I’m not ready for it.”

My body flushes with heat. “I’m not either.”

“You ever been in love?” she asks me next.

I bite my lip hard and gaze at the mountains adjacent to us.

“You don’t have to answer if you don’t want.”

“Sure. I’ve been in love.”

“Were you in love when everything went to shit in your life?”

“I was.”

“He leave you?”

I part my lips, but no sound escapes me.

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. It’s okay.”

“I would have liked to fall in love before I died. I would have liked to know how it felt.”

“Don’t romanticize it. It hurts. Even when things are good.”

She doesn’t say anything, and when the silence starts becoming uncomfortable, I realize she’s asleep.

I try to rest, but every time I see Erity ripping to pieces. My sentence here isn’t even close to being over. We have twenty-nine days left in a place that defies the laws of logic—a place filled with legitimate ghosts and gods that aren’t afraid to interact with us. To kill us.

The real mystery is how many days I have left, or who else I am going to have to watch die.

I stand, walking to the shore. Crouching, I splash my face and gulp down freezing water. It tastes like blood.

Maybe Casey’s right. Maybe I’ve died already, and this is hell.

Finally clean, Jace sleeps on one of the blankets. Even unconscious, she looks very afraid. My hunger pangs decide to act up. The fridge at the lodge was full of food. I wish I had eaten. I wish I had prepared myself for anything to happen.

Casey sits by the water with his hood up, staring across the lake at the mountain range. I wonder what he’s thinking about. I wonder if he’s praying for forgiveness before his own demon appears.

I leave Jace for a moment to join him. He glances over at me and back to the lake when I sit, then says, “Why did you help her? Is it because you think a proclamation of your decency will earn you points?”

“That’s not—”

“Is that why you went to see if Salem was really dead when you could have been burned alive—to make a show of it? So anyone who is watching us could see that you’re not an awful human being?”

His words are searing, even though they shouldn’t be. I was used to this once. So why is Casey cutting away at my core like I haven’t built up any emotional walls?

“It doesn’t matter what we do in here. It matters what we’re feeling when we do it.” I turn to him. His face is hard, eyes bloodshot. Now, being close to him, is the first time I notice the freckles on his nose. He’d be good-looking if he weren’t so angry all the time.

“Two of us are dead. You think they were killed off solely because of their feelings?” he asks.

“Salem had no remorse for the girl he raped. Erity had a purely selfish motive for killing Jace.” My voice sinks to a bitter note. “So when I die, Casey, you can determine for yourself what was going through my head when they offed me. And then you can laugh at my petty attempts to help people. Until then, can you try and not hate me for every single thing that I do?”

His face softens, but it’s too late. I’m up and walking across the beach to Jace, my arms crossed tightly over my chest. But the conversation keeps my mind reeling. Why care about what happens to anyone in here? We’re all adults—adults who’ve done terrible things. We should just have to look out for ourselves at the final moment of our judgment.

However, when Jace wakes, I know I’ll never be able to follow through with my own reasoning.

“You didn’t have to take care of me,” she tells me weakly, “but I don’t know what would have happened if you didn’t. So thank you. Thank you for saving me even though I don’t deserve it.”

“You would have been okay no matter what.”

Her eyebrows scrunch together. “How do you know?”

I lie down next to her. “I don’t know a whole lot about Compass Rooms, but the one thing I do know is the penalty of death isn’t something that’s thrown around in here. You have to prove yourself wicked in order to die.”

“But what if I have already?” Jace questions, worry in her voice.

“Doubt it.” Pieces of the Compass Room’s possible logic fit together in my head. “I think that disintegrating blade was part of this place’s fail-safe.” I touch her shoulder gently. “It doesn’t want you dead. Not yet.”

She relaxes and smiles. “Thank you, Evalyn.”

The twisting horror that’s existed in my gut since the lodge burned down eases up with the gratification of helping Jace, even if it won’t matter in the long run.

She asks me questions all over again—how Erity died, which I try to honestly explain to the best of my ability.

And then the hard one—why they’re making us so miserable.

“They’re trying to scare us, I think,” I conjure up for her. “If the chip is measuring our emotion, maybe they’re trying to make us feel vulnerable.”

Actually, it makes damn good sense. Because of this I want to stay awake. I want to wait for another horror to find us, but it soon becomes impossible.

The next thing I know, I’m shivering so hard it hurts, and I can’t feel my nose.

Dawn is breaking.

Casey lies curled up on one side of Jace, I on the other. Together we’re doing our best keep her warm. My stomach clenches in pain. I sit up and rub at it.

“We need to find food.” Casey watches me from beneath his hood.

“Where?”

“We could go back to the house. Scavenge. I’m sure not everything burned down.”

I shake my head. “The walk is too far. I don’t think I have enough energy to make it, and I doubt Jace does either. I don’t want to leave her alone in the hopes of finding food when there probably isn’t any left untorched.”

He glances at her, and then back to me. “Maybe it’s better if we split. If we’re alone, we don’t have to see any more deaths.”

I swear his bottom lip trembles before he rolls to his other side.

“But I deserve it,” I say.

“Doesn’t mean I want your insides sprayed all over me.”

Point taken.

The air warms, and when the sun is at the highest point in the sky, it bakes us. I keep my sweatshirt on to avoid the burn, but I’m a sauna. Casey leaves for a bit to scout around the lake, and I distract myself by changing Jace’s bandage and making sure her cut isn’t infected.

“On the news they said that people like you do some things because you want to be in control.”

I stiffen. “Do you think that’s why I’m helping you?”

“I don’t think the news knows everything.”

“You shouldn’t trust me so easily.”

Her face is surprisingly blank, heart-shaped lips pulled into a frown. “You’re right,” she says. “But that doesn’t mean I’m not going to.”

I almost expect her to finish with, so there.

Casey returns a couple of hours later. No paths leading anywhere else around the lake, no signs of others. No food.

“Maybe we’ve already failed and they’re letting us starve to death,” he says.

We bake, neither of us saying a word. I’m beginning to wonder if I was wrong in thinking our deaths would be triggered by something monumental, like Salem’s and Erity’s. Maybe Casey’s right, and we’ll fry here until we waste away.

Casey and I make one more weak attempt to find food. Rolling up our pants, we wade into the water and scan the crystal surface for fish. It isn’t even like we have any means of catching them, but knowing they are there will at least give us some motive to find a way.

We search until Casey says, “I have a problem with people causing violence for no reason.”

At first, I don’t understand why he of all people is telling me this. But then I realize that this must be an excuse for his initial hatred of me.

“I’ve suffered already for what I’ve done, if it makes you feel any better.”

“Suffered already?”

“Will suffer until I die in this miserable place.” I walk forward, the cool water relaxing my muscles, a bed of pebbles massaging my feet.

“So you have no desire to repent at all? No desire to ask for forgiveness or to admit that you fucked up and you want to be a better person?”

I catch a shimmer out of the corner of my eye, but it’s the reflection of the setting sun. Casey has stopped moving forward. He stares at me, waiting for an answer.

“Repentance is a privilege,” I say. “Some people don’t deserve it.”

He pauses, like he’s trying to unravel my logic. “So if you don’t want to repent and you know you’re going to die in here, why are you helping me try to find food?”

This boy is not going to give up. “Jace has a good chance of making it out. You . . . maybe. You kind of act like you have a hero complex. I can see our great justice system finding that redeeming.”

He narrows his eyes at me, like he can’t figure out if I’m feeding him lies or not. Or maybe because he knows that I kind of just insulted him. I smile, a gesture of truce.

He doesn’t smile back. “There are no fish.”

I tread toward the shore. “I guess we can begin waiting for night, then.”

The sun falls and the drastic change in temperature washes through the air, this time colder than last night. It’s impossibly cold for how hot it was during the day, so cold our breath escapes us in white puffs even before the sun has extinguished itself completely below the mountains.

I could gather branches to build a fire since we were given lighters. Boiled pine needles would be more sustenance than nothing at all. But then I think of all of the energy it would take to haul wood, and I forfeit the idea.

“D-don’t worry about me,” Jace says between chattering teeth when Casey and I discuss the best way to keep her warm. “My shoulder isn’t infected. I’m as s-screwed as the two of you.”

“Don’t be stupid,” I tell her. “I’ll sleep on one side of you, Casey on the other.”

“Promise you’ll cuddle?” She giggles. She actually giggles. The hunger must be getting to her.

“I think she’s serious,” Casey says. I catch his eye. He’s smiling.

“Both of you are lunatics.” I bury myself beneath the covers and huddle close to Jace.

Third day, no food.

The good thing is that Jace’s shoulder is getting better, but now her biggest worry isn’t infection.

She still hurts too much to move around a lot and spends the day cloaked in a blanket, sleeping through the hunger. I wake her up sporadically to feed her water, and when I’m not doing that, Casey and I lie in the shallow water by the shoreline because it’s so damn hot, staring out at the sparkling surface. We don’t speak for hours.

I study my reflection. My cheeks are hollow, my face so thin that my nose—for once in my life—is too big for me. This transformation probably happened when I was in prison.

Once upon a time, I was proud of my looks. My eyebrows were too thick, my nose too long. My eyes were a few shades darker than my skin—the color of boring—but I still owned all of it.

Once upon a time, self-confidence wasn’t a struggle of mine.

When the sun falls, Casey says, “I didn’t think this would be the way I’d die in here.”

I laugh, the movement of my mouth splitting my lips farther. “It’s not funny. I’m sorry.”

“It’s a little funny.”

Our eyes connect. His are vacant of the anger I’ve become used to.

“How did you think they’d kill you?”

To my surprise, he speaks with ease. “I thought it’d be a simulation. Maybe they’d show me images of what I’d done, or ask me questions. They’d try to figure out if I’d do it again. Then . . . I don’t know. Lethal injection. Something humane.”

I nod, but say nothing.

“What about you?”

I lick my chapped, bleeding lips, playing with the ends of my tangled hair. “I thought that the way they’d kill me would be as chaotic as my crime.”

He doesn’t question further, and we sit in the water together until the sun sets, leaving to change out of our wet, dirty clothes and fall asleep.

Even with the cold and the fear, it doesn’t take me long to drift off. I dream of Liam and the month before the shooting. It was his twenty-first birthday, and he wanted to spend it with me. I took him to a comedy club that smelled like cigar smoke and leather. We dressed up and drank too many glasses of scotch on the rocks because we were both oh-so-adult. And the tab we rang up—good God.

Then we went back to his apartment. I spent years with him and the sex only got better. I may have even cried that night, said something about how blessed I was. I’m such an obnoxious drunk.

I’m crying now, in this dream. Maybe I’m crying because I know it’s a dream. We’re in his bed, and I’m straddling him, dragging my hands up his chest. I lean forward until my dark waves are curtaining him, running my tongue along his jaw to his ear. Golden strands of his hair tickle my nose. “Why are you sad?” he asks.

“I’m not sad.”

Someone grunts, but it isn’t Liam.

I awaken, my arm draped over a warm body, nose buried in the crook of a neck. Casey’s jugular vein thrums against my lips. He stirs, and we simultaneously gape at one another.

“Fuck.”

We awkwardly wriggle away at the same time.

With my sweatshirt covering my hands, I rub my eyes with clothed fists. It only reminds me of how cold I am, and the absence of everything I’ve lost.

For a handful of seconds I allow myself to collapse, the sob escaping my mouth in nothing more than a hiccup. I pull myself together and wipe my cheeks, listening to Casey shuffle behind me, his footsteps in the sand as he heads toward the woods, probably to pee. I thought he was on the other side of Jace when we fell asleep. Did I crawl to him thinking he was Liam, or did he roll next to me in the middle of the night?

“Evie!”

I glance to the edge of the water, where Todd stands.

“Todd!” I jump to my feet.

He points, and I follow his finger to the center of the lake, where a large crate floats. My gaze returns to the beach, to question him, but he’s gone.

“Casey!”

He stumbles out of the woods, disheveled and confused as to why I’m screaming.

Jace sits up, clutching a blanket around her shoulders. “Did I just hear a little boy?”

I point to the lake.

“What is it?” Casey walks forward and squints.

“I don’t know. It could be anything. It could be food!”

“We’d have to swim to it,” he says. “Shit. It’s freezing.”

I unbutton my pants.

“Now? You’re going to swim out there now? Are you insane? At least wait until the sun comes up and we start to fry.”

“I can’t wait. I’m starving.”

“You always this impulsive or—”

“I’m always this much of a fat-ass, actually. Food before logic.” I kick my pants off and run toward the water before I can change my mind. The thought of food—of something finally making sense—recharges me.

Casey curses and starts taking off his pants.

I plunge into the water and scream a four-letter word, dipping my shoulders beneath the surface. My feet kick away from the silt and I arc one arm through the air, the other thrusting water behind me. I don’t wait for Casey, but before I know it, he’s caught up.

“W-worst idea ever,” he says. “C-can’t believe I followed you.”

I laugh and scissor my legs. “Don’t be . . . such a . . . pussy.”

Once we’re to the crate we’ll be fine. It’ll keep us afloat and I can catch my breath. The center of the lake isn’t as far as it appeared to be. Or maybe the box is floating toward us. I groan in relief when I grasp onto the wood paneling, heart pounding in my chest, lungs aching.

With the weight of me and Casey, the box submerges halfway. It’s about three feet tall and five feet wide, made to stay buoyant with weight. Made to float, and to be found.

“Ready?” Casey asks, clinging to the other side of the box.

I’m about to respond when something slithers up my leg. Just a weed, I think, trying to kick it away. But whatever has me isn’t a plant. Cold and slippery, it coils around my thigh and squeezes.

Dragging me down.

I scream and cling to the box.

Casey swims to me. “What?” he yells. “What is it?”

I have just enough time to tell him before I’m choking on water.

“Hold on!” His hands explore me until he finds my leg. “It’s like a tentacle or something!”

A tentacle. Images of Erity flood my mind. Of Salem’s neck broken in half.

“I’m dead.”

“Hang on, Evalyn!”

All I can think is that maybe I should have prayed for forgiveness. Was there really any chance for me in here? I knew there wasn’t. I knew there wasn’t the second I was sentenced.

I start to tell Casey to say good-bye to Jace for me, but it’s too late.

I’m dragged beneath the surface of the lake.

April 14, Last Year

Campus Parking Lot

My phone rang when I was walking to my car. It was Mom. I put in my earpiece and hit the green button.

“Evie?”

“Hey, Todd. What’s up?”

Mom never let Todd call anyone. She must have not been watching him carefully.

“Hi, Evie.”

“Hi, Todd.”

“Why don’t you ever come home?”

The four-year-old had a way of making me feel like shit. “Baby, I’m in school. You know that.”

“But you used to come home on Saturday and now you don’t.” Smart kid.

It wasn’t like I didn’t miss him. I thought about him every day, which is why I couldn’t come home anymore. The only reason why I came home was for Todd. Not Mom. And I didn’t do a good job of hiding that fact.

Before I could respond, Todd whined, “Noooo.”

“Ev?” Mom said.

“Hi.”

“What are you doing?”

“Todd called me.”

She made an audible sigh. Mom hated Todd’s attachment to me. Wasn’t my fault. The pregnancy was unplanned from a man she’d been dating, and since she had a full-time and lucrative career, she couldn’t take care of Todd the way she’d taken care of me. I ended up mothering him in high school as she provided for our family.

And Todd fell in love with me.

Not my fault.

“Well, now that I have you, you coming home Saturday?”

“Meghan and I have plans.”

“You and Meghan always have plans. I have a business trip.”

She wanted a free babysitter.

“Sorry, Mom.”

“For crying out loud, Evalyn. I’m paying for your school, for you to get the degree you want. The least you could do is come home and help out on the weekends.”

It was her favorite card, especially with the extra emphasis on you. What she really wanted to say was, “the useless degree you want.” Every time she brought up that she was paying for my art degree and I shouldn’t act like an ungrateful bitch, the burning in my chest grew a little hotter. “I have class. Tell Todd I love him.”

I hung up.

Nick was waiting for me by my car, leaning on it like he fucking owned the thing.

“Hey,” he said.

“Hey, yourself.”

Nick was handsome in his own unique way. Bright eyes, dark hair, and a slight curve to his nose. Meghan thought he was gorgeous. But he wanted her too badly, and wanted too much from her too soon.

It put a bad taste in my mouth.

“Meghan said you had a spare key to your apartment.”

I halted. His grin was flat, as if he knew I’d be skeptical immediately.

“What of it?”

“I was wondering if I could borrow it.”

I narrowed my eyes.

He quickly continued. “Just for the night! I wanted to surprise her tomorrow morning. You know, the whole coffee-and-donuts-in-bed thing. She keeps hinting at it.”

“Hinting that she’s a fat-ass?”

His mouth hung open until I said, “Kidding.” He needed to develop a sense of humor if he planned on staying with Meghan.

I thought about it. I hated the idea of giving keys to someone who’d been dating Meghan for only a month.

“I’ll leave it on the counter in the morning.” He was practically pleading.

If I denied him, he’d tell Meghan and she’d play hurt puppy with me. It was only a day.

And maybe I could steal a donut.

“Fine.” I reached for my bag.

“Meghan also said you were gonna go to the store. I can pick stuff up for you since I’ll be out anyway.”

He seemed sincere. “It’s fine,” I said.

“I insist. You have a list?”

“Can I text it to you?”

“It’ll probably be easier if you write it down really fast.”

I sighed and fished a piece of paper out of my wallet, along with the key. I didn’t know why I was so hesitant. I was poor and should have been taking advantage of the fact that he was about to buy me frozen chicken and paper towels.

“Cool,” he said when I handed the key and the list over. “I’ll see you tonight.”

It was my fault. My fault, because I forgot about the key, and Nick kept it. It was my fault that I gave him that list—a slip of paper that ended up dooming me. I guess he could have found other ways to commit his crime, but that thought wasn’t comforting.

Nick killed Meghan.

But so did I.