He knew doing this meant he’d slid a knife between Thomas’s ribs and twisted. Thomas could hate him, but at least they’d still be alive tomorrow morning. This had to be the last of his work.
No more drawings. No more monsters.
He rummaged around the desk until he found a box cutter, which didn’t seem enough of a weapon against monsters, but it was all he came up with. He turned to go, stumbling on theground rutted with tree roots and damp leaves of gold and russet and crimson. Find the door. Get out of here. His foot slid on a damp patch and he struck out his arm in a desperate attempt to catch himself. He thought he grabbed at a low branch, muzzy in the dark.
But his fingers tightened over smooth, slick skin.
He was still looking down on the damp patch on the leaves; a pool of rainfall in a room where rain couldn’t reach. Except it looked metallic and thick. Except it looked like blood.
That’s when he made himself stare at the ankle he gripped with shaking fingers. It dangled at his eye level, no shoe, just a bare foot with mud between the toes, porcelain white and so, so cold.
He would always be in this moment, his fingers on dead skin, his neck tilted back so he could look up and up and up while inside him a scream began that would never stop.
A boy hung from the trees, vines noosed around his neck and thrust down his throat. Leaves curled out of his ears, still growing, his clothes torn where rose thorns had caught against flesh, all the better to find blood on which to feed.
touch me again and I’ll kill you—
aren’t you pleased?
this is exactly what
you asked for
Bryce Kane stared down at Andrew while a forest grew from his hollowed-out eyes.
THIRTY
Nothing mattered but this—find Thomas.
Before the forest did.
Andrew shoved through a wall of shoulders, tuxes and dresses and costumes, glittering laughter and cruel cut eyes. Everyone wore masks and wings and gold-dusted horns, and their smiles were bloodred slashes against the strobing lights. Monsters danced hand in hand with Wickwood students, all of them fusing together into one shapeless, melting terror while Andrew was the only one who could see them for what they were. The forest dressed up in human skin. It had come for its prince.
Bass shook the floor as he stumbled through the Wickwood auditorium. The rows of velvet chairs had been removed and stored, and the stage was decorated with pumpkins and scarecrows, the ceiling ribboned with thousands of streamers and orange balloons. Every beat of the music pounded inside his skull until he had no room to think. Sweat ran in rivulets down his forehead and he couldn’t stop shaking, couldn’t steady the floor under his feet, couldn’t see as the world undulated and warped before him. He, too, was in costume after all—he pretended to be a slender boy with a serious mouth and eyes always searching for Thomas, but strip that away, and here was the truth.
He was a wretched thing, a rotten thing, a skeleton with his insides already devoured by the forest.
It was too late to save him.
Dancers churned in the middle of the floor, colorful lights pulsing until their faces blurred like water smeared over a painting. Teachers moved through the crowd, scanning for dangers and yet seeing none of them. The clawing need to warn them that monsters filled the dance floor choked Andrew, but he knew how he looked. Fevered and sweaty, wild-eyed and insane. In both fists, he gripped torn-up drawings of friends who were never meant to last.
He had to tell someone about Bryce, but it would be as good as a confession. He’d all but told the forest to do that. It was his fault, his rotted, corrupted, monstrousfault.
He tripped on the train of a long, lacy dress and stammered an apology as the wearer turned to yell at him. Then he backed up straight into a broad chest.
“Here’s the little shit.”
Andrew tried to duck out of the way, but one of Bryce Kane’s vultures grabbed his arm and yanked him sideways with such abrupt violence that he nearly lost his footing. His startled cry was lost under the music, the laughter, the pounding feet and swirling dresses.
“If you’re looking for your girlfriend, he’s busy.” The boy stood taller than Andrew, muscled and swift, his usual smirk replaced with twisted disdain as he grabbed Andrew’s chin and forced him to look toward the refreshment tables at the back of the auditorium.
Because the school was so rural and the kids rarely had achance to let off steam, Wickwood allowed extravagance for their annual dances. Catering had piled the tables high with hors d’oeuvres, everything from salmon canapés to cheese platters and pastries. Hollowed-out pumpkins sat next to chocolate fountains, and the punch bowl billowed with dry ice. Thomas stood near the end of the tables with a plastic cup dangling nonchalantly from his fingers. He looked beautiful and bored, hair perfectly disheveled and white shirt tight around his biceps. Andrew hadn’t noticed that before. Swinging an ax to carve apart monsters had made him stronger.
Beside him stood Lana.
Which peeled apart Andrew’s lie about who he was with, but did it matter anymore? He had to tell Thomas about the art room. He had to—he—should…
He couldn’t think. His vision blurred and his throat felt wrapped with thorns.
