A familiar knot formed in my throat.
He’s okay. He has to be. They all have to be.
Jared, Lukas, Alara, and Priest knew how to take care of themselves, and each other. The last time I saw them at the penitentiary lingered in my mind.
Thinking about them will just make you miss them more.
I splashed cold water on my face and groped for a paper towel, blinking away the memories and the water in my eyes. A blurry reflection passed behind me in the mirror.
I jerked back. “Sorry,” I said, embarrassed by my reaction. “I didn’t see you.”
I turned away from the mirror, the reflection of the back of the room lingered in my peripheral vision. I looked for the person who had come in.
No one was there.
Battling vengeance spirits with Jared, Lukas, Alara, and Priest had taught me paranormal entities could be anywhere. The odds of running into an angry spirit on a hundred-year-old campus, like Winterhaven, were higher than most. But the likelihood of me randomly encountering one in the bathroom seemed exponentially lower, especially if I factored the nightmares into the equation.
My experiences over the last few months had taught me that whatever I’d seen in the mirror would probably be back. I needed to be ready, and eating blueberry Pop Tarts three meals a day wasn’t exactly the diet of champions. Time to lift my ban on the dining hall.
Ten minutes later, I stood in line, scooping unnaturally orange macaroni and cheese onto my plate. I grabbed a pack of cinnamon Pop Tarts to switch things up, and scanned the room for an empty table. Two Black Eyeliners nodded in my direction, inviting me to sit with them. Instead, I took a seat at the opposite end of the table. They didn’t realize I was doing them a favor.
I dropped my notepad next to the congealed ball of noodles and flipped through the drawings. It felt like watching my nightmares in stop-motion—Priest’s hand reaching up from the well, Alara strapped in the electric chair, the spirits of dozens of poisoned children lined up at the ends of their metal beds. There were pages and pages of them, each image more disturbing than the next.
When I reached an unfinished sketch from a few nights ago, a chill crept up the back of my neck. A figure loomed over me as I slept, just like it had in the nightmare. I hunched over the page, filling in the missing sections of the sketch. After a few minutes, features emerged—the feral eyes and elongated jaw of an animal, jutting out from a human silhouette.
Andras.
My fingers tightened around the pencil. I’d left out a detail in the sketch, one I couldn’t draw. In the nightmare, he spoke to me.
I’m coming for you.
It had sounded more like a promise than a threat.
“Another newbie,” one of the Black Eyeliners called out from the other end of the table.
A girl with stick-straight blond hair stood in the doorway, her eyes darting around the room like a frightened deer. She inched forward, her face still puffy and red from crying, and a Winterhaven Welcome Binder pressed against her chest. I recognized that look. Her parents had probably dropped her off this morning. Winterhaven was the last stop for the troubled daughters of wealthy East Coast families. From runaways and cutters to pill poppers and party girls, Winterhaven accepted them all—including me.
Now the school was responsible for us, which wasn’t saying much. None of the teachers cared what kind of trouble we got into behind closed doors, as long as we didn’t kill each other. The party girls kept partying and the cutters kept cutting. Only the runaways lost out because the school was buried so deep in the Pennsylvania woods, there was nowhere to run.
Whispers spread through the room in seconds.
“Too young for drunk driving.”
“Doesn’t look brave enough to be a runaway.”
“I’m going with pills. Definitely.”
“Final answer?”
I tuned out the voices and shaded in the rest of the sketch. Bits and pieces of the nightmare flashed through my mind—the figure watching me in the darkness, its features emerging from the shadows, the paralyzing fear.
It was too much.
I wanted to rip out the page and tear it to shreds. I wanted to fall asleep without being tormented. More than anything, I wanted to forget. But I couldn’t let myself.
“Is anyone sitting here?” The new girl stood across from me, the edge of her tray shaking. “I mean, is it okay if I sit here?” She looked even younger than Priest—fourteen maybe.
The Black Eyeliners laughed. I had already passed on their invitation to sit with them. They probably assumed the new girl’s odds weren’t good, which was reason enough to let her sit with me.
I gestured at the empty seat across from me. “Sit down before the vultures start circling.”
The girl’s shoulders relaxed. “Thanks. I’m Maggie.”
“Kennedy.” I started drawing again, hoping she could take a hint.
“That’s a cool name.”
“Not really.” I didn’t look up.
She stayed quiet for a few minutes, pushing a scoop of orange macaroni around on her plate. I sensed her watching me, but I kept my eyes glued to the page. Eye contact encouraged conversation.
“So why are you here? Sorry—” She bit her lip. “That’s none of my business. My dad says I ask too many questions.”
Her dad was probably a heartless bastard like mine.
“I ran away.” At least that was the story I’d told the police and Aunt Diane. Before the new girl had a chance to ask why, I turned the tables on her. “What about you?”
She stabbed at the ball of noodles on her plate. “My dad just left me here.”
“What did you do to piss him off?”
A tear ran down her cheek. “I exist.”
My pencil stopped moving. The anger in her voice was all mixed up with the pain, and it reminded me of the last time I saw my own father. The morning he drove away while his five year-old daughter watched from the window.
She wiped her face on her sleeve and glanced at my notepad. “That’s cool… and kind of scary. I bet your drawings will be hanging on a gallery wall someday.”
A familiar pain tugged at my chest. My mom used to say that all the time.
“What is it?” she asked, still studying the sketch.
“Something from a dream.”
Her eyes lit up. “The easiest way to get rid of a nightmare is to tell someone about it. Your mind stops fighting the bad dream, and it will go away.”
My nightmares weren’t going anywhere.
“Real life doesn’t work that way. The sooner you figure that out, the better off you’ll be.” I snatched my notepad and stood up, the legs of my chair scraping against the linoleum. “There are some fights you can’t win.”
I walked away without waiting for a response. The last thing I needed was a pep talk about positive thinking from a kid who was crying because her father dumped her at a fancy boarding school. My mother was dead, and I hadn’t seen my dad in years. My days were full of fear and guilt, dead birds and missing girls.
And it’s only going to get worse.
The new girl’s room was easy to find. Her door was the only one without any messages pinned to the corkboard, which made me feel like I’d kicked a puppy.
I knocked, silently rehearsing the apology I’d practiced on the way over. “It’s Kennedy.”
After a moment, I knocked again, listening for sounds inside the room. But I didn’t hear any. Either she wasn’t in there, or she didn’t want to talk to me.
I flipped through the sketches at the beginning of the notepad, the ones I’d drawn right after Lukas gave it to me. Instead of the disturbing images from my nightmares, these pictures captured happier memories—half-finished drawings of Priest wrapping paintball guns in duct tape, Alara holstering a bottle of holy water in her tool belt, Lukas playing Tetris, a rare smile from Jared. Their specialties—the areas of expertise in which they had been trained—were as different as the four of them. Yet each
skill complemented the others; Lukas hacked into databases all over the country and used the information to track paranormal surges; Priest engineered the spirit-hunting weapons that Jared commanded with ease; and when weapons failed, Alara used wards and voodoo arts to protect them. Together, they were a Legion, and for a while, I’d thought I was one of them.
One sketch stood out from the rest—a self-portrait. I ripped it out and pinned it to her board, along with a note.
I’m sorry.
—Kennedy
Clad in military-issue cargo pants and black boots, the girl in the drawing looked brave and determined—like someone ready for a fight. I had already lost my battle, but Maggie still had time to win hers.
As I stood in front of my own room minutes later, I tried to remember what it felt like to be the girl in the drawing. But I couldn’t. With the Legion, I had faced malevolent spirits and destroyed paranormal entities. Now I was alone, and I wasn’t even brave enough to face what was waiting for me on the other side of my door.