There he is. At least fifteen years younger, and it’s a bit grainy, but Sophie has watched his movies. She follows celebrity gossip. It’s him.
Sudden nails of fear rake down her spine. “Oh my god,” she says. “Elena.”
“Elena?”
“She’s with him now.”
Joey doesn’t bother to hide her alarm. “Where? Where are they?”
Sophie points ahead, though she can’t see a thing beyond the streaks of rain. The sweat on her spine becomes a deluge of terror.
60Elena
He’s standing right next to her now. She wants to push him away, to give him a good shove because who does he think he is, trying to intimidate her? Why is she again in that gray area between what she wants and what she has to do to get it?
Cal looks like he’s studying an insect under a magnifying glass. He doesn’t say anything, just looks at her. They lock eyes, and she pushes at his chest. He grabs her arm. The violence of it rattles her. He is not going to let her go. She jerks toward him shoulder-first, but he doesn’t even budge. His face is neutral.
“Get the fuck away from me,” she says with venom she doesn’t have to dig deep for. She half turns away from him, but there’s not much room. She’s pinned between him and a corner of glass windows. She has a ridiculous thought that if she can find something sharp, something heavy, maybe she can smash the glass, get out, then run away.
She sees his reflection in the window. Soberly, as if he wishes things didn’t have to be this way, he shakes his head. “It’s nothing personal,” he says.
And then, before she can react, before she can even wonder whatexactly isn’t personal, something cracks against her skull. She feels an orchestra of pain reverberating through her head. It consumes her. She feels herself wobble. And then she looks back at him. He’s holding something up, raising it over his head. The familiar object is arresting, the way it catches the light. That’s the last thought she has before the pain comes again, this time following a thud that she hardly registers. She thinks of nothing else as the room goes dark.
61Quinn
June 2011
The day of the fall
The back door of Sophie’s house is unlocked. Like a thief, I slip inside.
Clues, I told myself after leaving Joey’s. I’ll hide clues for them. I’ve brought Joey’s sticky notes with me. I don’t want them to find the clues right away. I just need some time to get enough distance. Hopefully, in a week or two they’ll find them and understand.
A voice inside my head asks the question I’ve been suppressing all day.Why run? Why not stay and fight?I could go to the police. River’s dad. I could tell him—but what would I tell him? I think someone is trying to kill me so they can use my blood to do magic? This was part of the reason we aren’t supposed to tell anyone about the magic. Because it sounds insane. If I stay, I’ll have zero protection, even with the police. Because now Robbie has the book. The only way I survive is to run.
I drop my journal in Sophie’s closet. I press it up against the back corner, next to a pair of sandals I know she’ll go digging for on the first hot day of the year. I want her to know, I want them all to know, but they need to find out later, after he’s long gone. My hope is that he’ll come looking for me. I hope I can lead him far away from this town. I don’t know what I’m going to do then, but I’ll figure something out.I’ll fight. He may have the book, but he doesn’t have the magic yet. He needs to do the bloodspell to get the magic. If he does find me, at least I’ll be far from here, beyond this place. Even if he kills me, he won’t be able to finish the bloodspell without the aspens.
Next is River. I see no car in the driveway, which tells me his parents are still at work. Nerves swim through my body, bouncing off the inside of my skin. I try the handle, and it’s locked, but I know where the spare key is. Inside, the sound of muffled music accosts me. He’s a collector of music, practically a hoarder of it, refusing to use an iPod like a normal person and instead insisting on vinyl records. The music comes from his room upstairs. I put a hand on the banister and hover a foot over the first step. He’s up there. I start my ascent as quietly as possible. When I reach the top of the stairs, a thump reverberates off the walls, and I hear the baritone of River’s laugh. I run on my toes to the game room where his Xbox sits on the floor next to a low TV stand with glass-doored cabinets. The choice to leave the antler here with him came to me at the last minute. As I slip it into the tiny closet and press the note onto it, I hope that it will serve two purposes. To leave him a clue and to push him toward Joey.
Once I leave River’s, I stick to the side streets to keep from being seen. They’re gravelly, which makes them less slick from the rain. Under half an hour now until Robbie’s shift is over. I run to Elena’s, trying to think of an excuse I can give to her mother, who will surely answer the door, but I glance inside first and see Marissa Berg of all people standing in the living room. There are a handful of others looking expectant, nibbling on Ritz crackers. Wednesday afternoon Bible study. I hesitate but decide to go around the back. Elena’s first-floor window is perpetually unlocked—her parents don’t know she disabled the lock months ago so she could sneak in and out easier. I crawl inside and open the box under her bed where she stores her weed and see a picture of the group of us, our awkward fourteen-year-old selves, arms draped overeach other, unfettered joy in our eyes. My insides clench as I force down tears. Inside the box, I place the DVD with a pink sticky note on top of his face. I tuck it all back under the pocket-sized Bible, the thing Elena swears makes this box an infallible hiding place.
Finally, I run to my dad’s, Joey’s pack bouncing on my shoulders. I’m out of time, but I’ll leave directly from there. I’ll hike deep into the mountains, where no one will find me, and camp and channel some of Joey’s outdoorsmanship. But first, I have to say goodbye to my dad. I can’t leave without saying goodbye to him. What if something happens to me? I’ll never forgive myself, and, more importantly, he’ll never forgive himself.
His truck isn’t in the driveway.
He’s semiretired and never works afternoons. Poker games don’t start until dinnertime. Unless he’s run out to get more liquor, I can’t think of what he’s doing at four thirty on a Wednesday. But then I realize I’ve answered my own question. I go inside anyway, just in case. The door is unlocked, which gives me hope. I push it open, expecting to see him sitting there on the couch, beer in hand, some game or other on the TV, telling me that he had to take the car in for service. But the room is empty. The couch is sunken in from years of lonely evenings spent drinking his worries away. Eight empty beer cans on the coffee table indicate that he hasn’t cleaned up in a while, or just since last night. My heart wrenches with pain. Over the past week, I’ve used magic to heal exactly no one. And now I have to leave without helping my dad, which was all I wanted to do in the first place. I miss him fiercely, and I won’t get a chance to see him because I have to go now. I walk out through the back door and pull the backpack straps tight, clipping them in the front.
As I step outside, a shadow paints the dirt in front of me. I look up, hope in my heart. “Dad?”
But it’s not him. It’s Robbie. I look at him, and I know he’s seen me.I know it’s over. “No!” I scream so loud my head feels like it’s going to split.
Those two words seem to reverberate through the trees around us.“Dad? No!”
I was so close to getting away. So close. He’s holding a knife, I realize now, and the violence of his stillness sharpens my fear into dread.
62Joey
They wind up the steep driveway with their hearts in their throats, silence screaming in their ears.
