And from the look on Naomi’s face, she saw it too.
NINETEEN
Do you believe in fate, Adeline?
Shock freezes my expression, and a wave of pure fear clenches at my chest. Oh jeez.
Naomi, her eyes wide with concern, hesitates before asking, “Please tell me you know who that’s from.”
I shake my head, unable to look away from the screen.
“It must be some kind of joke,” she suggests, her voice a mere whisper as she stares at the words in pure horror.
My stomach sinks. “No… it’s happened before,” I admit, and her eyes widen.
“Why didn’t you tell anyone?” she asks, as if she would have done anything if I had.
I shrug, not breaking my stare from the screen. “I thought it was a joke too,” I mumble, but even then, it hadn’t felt like a joke. Not really.
“You should reply. See what they want,” Naomi suggests.
Swallowing hard, I force myself to tap out a response:Who is this?
Naomi and I wait anxiously. Very anxiously. The seconds crawl by, agonizingly slow, and a bead of sweat trickles down my temple. Then, the typing bubble appears. My chest tightens instantly, my breath catching as dread coils in my stomach. My pulse pounds, the anticipation suffocating—until finally, themessage appears:I believe fate brought you and your sister here.
My fingers go numb as the phone almost slips from my grasp. But before I can even fully digestthatawful message, another one follows:
Look around. Look familiar?
I whip my head up, my heart slamming against my ribcage. Familiar? What does that even mean?
“Does that mean they canseeus?” Naomi asks, her voice breaking.
My eyes dart around the alleyway. The cracked bricks. The rusty dumpsters. The stench of dirt. Then it hits me.
I know this place. And I know it well. Or at least I used to. Dad used to bring us here. “Wait in the car,” he’d say, every single time. But I’d watched from the window, memorized the way the light slanted through the buildings, the graffiti sprawled across the walls.
My stomach twists violently. My body feels like lead, like I couldn’t move even if I wanted to.
“This is the alley Dad used to take us to,” I mumble, my words hardly forming. Naomi’s eyes enlarge as a flash of recognition appears on her face.
She stutters, “How… how do they know about this?”
A wave of sickness sweeps over me, nauseating. This can’t be a coincidence. Or a joke. Those options evaporated long ago and I was just too naïve to see it. Because there’s someone out there whoknowsus. And they’ve been watching. For far longer than I ever imagined.
“We need to leave. Now.” I force my legs to move, and my mouth to get words out, as every nerve in my body screams at me to run, to get as far away from this alley—this feeling—as possible.
“Do you feel it too?” Naomi whispers, clutching my arm as we quicken our pace.
“Yeah.” My voice is tight, barely a croak. “But it’s probably nothing.”
It’s not nothing. It’snevernothing.
Naomi mutters something under her breath, but I barely register it. My senses are on fire. Everything is suddenly amplified, whether it’s the crunch of snow that hardly even passes for snow, or the faint hum of the wind in the alley. I glance over my shoulder just in case, expecting to see… what? Someone standing there? Eyes peering at us from the shadows? I’m not entirely sure.
Each time I look back, there’s nothing. But every time I do, my heart skips a beat, and my breath catches in my throat.
But the feeling remains. And that’s enough to convince me there’s something seriously wrong.
