“Where are the final pages?”
“They’re not your concern.”
“The hell they’re not!”
Monroe exhales hard, and then studies me for a second with a look of disgust. “Take off your shirt,” he says.
I’m startled. “No.”
He tsks. “Don’t be difficult, Charlotte. I want to see what you’ve done to yourself. Show me your skin.”
He knows. Somehow he knows about my dying flesh, and suddenly I don’t want to show him. Anger wells up inside me.
“Come on,” he says impatiently.
“Go to hell.”
“It’s there, isn’t it?” he asks. “You feel the shadows on your soul, don’t you?”
My eyes snap to his and I nod slowly. “It’s hate,” I say. “I feel hate.”
“Let me see.” He walks around his desk to stand in front of me, his mouth a thin line of concern.
Slowly I unbutton the navy jacket, biting hard on my lip as I slide it off my shoulder. Monroe gasps. I turn to look where he’s staring. My gold—it’s nearly gone. The glow is replaced with something horrible. An unthinkable gray, so cracked and dead, like it’s sucking the life out of me—splintering the skin as I watch.
“What’s happening?” I cry out, truly afraid.
“What have you done?” Monroe stumbles back, knocking into his desk.
“The Need hit at the event, but I didn’t go to it. I helped Sarah instead. I thought that if I fought the impulses, this would all go away. That I could beat it like Onika did.”
“You’re fighting it?” he asks in a hollow voice.
“I don’t want to disappear, Monroe. I’m not ready to go.” I start to sob. “People are forgetting me sooner. Even Alex and Georgia. Even Mercy. I’m fading. And I’m not ready to go.” My voice breaks and I pull my jacket on and wrap my arms around myself.
“I can’t watch it again,” he says, almost to himself. “I can’t.”
I sniffle and look up at him. “Watch me dissolve?”
“No,” he says, like I’m confused. “Watch you fight to live. You don’t understand, Charlotte. You can’t stay here.”
“But I want to.” I sound like a begging child.
“It’s not possible. And if you fight... it’s horrible. It’s so horrible.”
“Is this what happened to Onika? Did the Need do this to her?” Was Onika dead underneath the beauty that I saw, like in my vision? Was the real her this grotesque?
Monroe squeezes his eyes shut. “No. The Need didn’t do this to her. The Shadows did.”
I stare at him, goose bumps rising on my arms. “What are you talking about? There was nothing in your journal about Shadows.”
My skin begins to itch, like a slow crawl stretching over me. It’s the spot. It’s growing. “What happened to Onika?” I ask. “I have to know now.”
He winces at the sound of her name, then takes in a deep breath. “I loved her so much. And like you, she wanted to fight it. But it ruined her.”
“What happened?”
“When she had first started losing her skin, we tried to cover it with makeup. But every day a little more of her was gone. Soon, no one could remember her anymore—except me.”
