Page 100 of Sinister

“Aww, look at the poor thing. She’s going to cry!” a girl in the crowd exclaims.

My knees buckle, and my hands shake uncontrollably.

I cover my ears with my hands, chanting, “This is not real, this is a dream, this isn’t happening,” over and over again.

I look around again for Sin, but with all the lights dimmed, only the outlines of faces are visible.

But I do see Daphne’s face at the very back of the room.

And when I catch her eye, she gives me a knowing smirk.

Everything feels surreal, like a nightmare I am trapped in forever. The walls seem to close in, and the lights are glaring down on me.

My heart is beating in my ears.

“I can’t breathe,” I gasp, desperately trying to ground myself. “I can’t breathe . . .”

In a blessed moment, I see Sin pushing through the crowd. “Petra!” he calls out, his voice ringing high and clear over the enormous, swelling noise of the malicious crowd. “I’m here.”

“Sin . . .” I begin weakly before realizing that he could have just understood that the baby is his. “Sin, I meant to tell you—” I begin, and Sin starts saying something, too.

But our words are drowned out by a thunderous crack. People gasp, and a scream or two rends the air. Another loud crack fills the auditorium.

“What the hell was that?” someone shouts, while some of the faculty have entered the room and are trying to calm the crowd.

A third deafening crack. The room freezes in time for a split second.

Then, the ceiling collapses with an earth-shattering crash, and something long and heavy falls through, hitting the floor with a sickening thud.

“What is that?” a girl screams.

“My God, what is that?” Other shouts and screams fill the room.

But I don’t scream. I don’t even blink. I only stare at the corpse that fell through the ceiling and whose detached head is now lying near my feet.

It’s Harry.

That I can recognize him at all is a miracle because his headless body is badly disfigured. His eyes have been scooped out, and blood spurts forth from his severed neck. A great gush of it sprays over my baby-blue tulle, over the actual baby cocooned in my body.

“NOOOO!” a loud, guttural yell rings through the auditorium, and I realize it’s coming from me.

I clutch at my stomach and let out the most terrifying scream I can muster.

I am scared the force of my outburst might hurt the baby, but I can’t stop.

Harry is lying before me.

His dead body is lying on the floor right before me. His blood is all over my clothes, and he is dead.

The room is spinning, Sin is still shouting something incoherent in the distance, and the sneers and jeers of the crowd have turned into hysterical sobbing and flat-out pandemonium.

I have no idea if that damned video of me is still playing because the lights are flickering in and out of focus.

My head is pulsing with something bright, and bitter, and black . . .

As I crumble to the floor, my last coherent thought is that I could have come to the ball with Harry. He could have been with me.

He could have lived.