I woke up cold, and it didn’t take long to realize why. I’d kicked my sheets off some time in the night—not that it was morning by any stretch of the imagination. It was still pitch black outside, the light from the streetlamp making everything muted and dreamlike. Whatever dream was filtering in my mind vanished as my heart tilted. It felt like my bed was filled with sand. What the hell?

I pushed myself to sitting. Only then did I realize I was leaving dark stains in the trail of my fingerprints. Charcoal. I held my hands up to the filtered light.

“What . . . ?”

Then I leaned over the edge of my bed. The ice that ran through me at that moment made frostbite seem like a sunburn.

My sketchbook was open in a pool of lamplight, a new drawing facing me like a curse. I must have done it in my sleep; that was the only way to explain it. Jane lay sprawled on the stark white paper, her black-inked body face-up, staring at me. Her hands stretched above her head and her legs were straight out under her hips. And around her, in a thick line, was a black circle. Just like . . .

No no no.

Words were scrawled between her hands, in a handwriting that wasn’t mine:

The Tree Will Burn

I wanted to scream.

She was coming back.