Unlike in our foster homes, our door’s locked, and no barely-functioning excuse for a human is looming over us, breathing fumes so potent one could get drunk off of them. “Why are you shouting in my ear at the crack of dawn?”
“There was this little girl. She was here. In the room.” He swipes his glasses off the dresser and thrusts them on his face.
I’ve never seen him so pale. Then again, there’s sunlight pouring through the grimy window, weak sunlight filtered by wisps of fog, but sunlight nonetheless. Even the squashed cockroach corpse on the bottom of my shoe doesn’t seem quite as black as yesterday.
“Are you sure it wasn’t a nightmare?” The kid’s had his share of bad nights. For three whole years, we had to sleep with the lights on.
“No, dude. I saw her. She was right here.” His finger rocks in the air as he points toward the corner of the room, the small recess between the window and the mirrored armoire. The only thingthereis a giant spider web worthy of a Halloween decoration. I don’t even want to know what size the spider could be, or if it’s currently roaming my room.
I’m about to curl back up when a jolt of heat runs up my arm. The Bloodstone pulses and glows like an eerie prop in a horror flick. Is it signaling the third piece’s arrival? I keep the ring out of Bastian’s line of sight, already thinking up ways to get him to the train station.
Wind batters the window, then leaks around the wooden frame and whips through the room. Cold air slaps me in the face, bringing tears to my eyes.Shit. Shit, shit, shit.
I throw on my clothes. “Stay here. I’m gonna go—”
Before I can finish my sentence, the whole room seems to fizz and pop like an old TV. And then, out of nowhere, a little girl of like six or seven is standing on the ancient floorboards in the recess Bastian pointed out, the one beneath the spiderweb. She’s wearing fuzzy pink unicorn pajamas, and her cheeks are slick with tears. She takes one look at me and Bastian and shrieks.
“You see her, right?” Bastian stumbles back into the bedframe.
Andpresto whamo, the girl disappears.
What the actual fuck?
“You saw her, right? You saw that little kid?” Bastian’s eyes are round as frisbees.
I rack my brain to come up with anything, anything at all that will put him at ease, but I’m not used to pulling explanations for the supernatural out of my ass. Instead, I grab my phone and send a quick text to the Quatrefoil crew:Come to my dorm room. NOW.
“Slate,” Bastian murmurs.
The girl’s there again, wavering like a bad hologram.Panic flares across her face, sapping all the color from her cheeks. Then,zap!A wind kicks up, and I hear a cry behind me. I whip around. She’s now on the other side of the bed, bawling.
My middle finger is toasty, the ring hot as hell, but I don’t have any of the other symptoms I had with the other pieces—no wicked muscle cramps or lit kerosene in my veins.
I feel a weight on my shoulder and nearly jump out of my skin. It’s just Bastian’s palm. His pupils have expanded to the edges of his irises.
“Is she a ghost? Like a real one? Or am I the ghost? I thought I was alive, but”—he pats himself to verify he’s solid, and his voice goes up an octave—“I’m dead, aren’t I?”
“What are you babbling on about? You’re not dead.”
“Isshedead?” He lifts his chin to indicate the little girl.
“No. She’s not dead, either.” At least, I don’t think so, but now that he mentions it . . .
“Then, what’s happening?”
“Jesus, Bastian. Nothing!”
“It’s not nothing!” Bastian whirls on me. “You’re scared shitless, too. Something freaky is going on.”
I square my shoulders. “Me, scared? I’m not scared.”
“Your nostrils flare when you’re panicked. And right now, experts could go spelunking in those hairy canyons.”
I put a hand to my nose.Really?
My heartbeat hammers my eardrums as I watch it happen again—the little girl’s standing in one place, thenpoof,she materializes in another, her body brightening then fading.
Her mouth turns down, and once again, she shows up elsewhere, a howl of wind in her wake. She looks nauseous and terrified. “Help me!”
