Tori bolted for the trail, clutching the jug to her chest. Once she was in the thick of the woods, she changed direction, away from Nathaniel. Away from the tree.

Tori ran until the three boys’ footsteps were muffled, lost somewhere behind her. Then she changed direction again, away from the barn, toward the river. Their voices carried through the trees; she heard the crunch of brush behind her. She pushed herself faster against the pull of her wet clothes.

A hand shot out of the shadows and closed over her mouth. Tori struggled to breathe as she stared up into Nathaniel’s face. He pressed her tightly to his body, the dirt-caked bottle wedged between them. She could feel his blood on her skin, the coppery smell of it thick in her nose. He put a finger to his lips before letting her go. Then his gaze fell to the jug in her arms and his whole body stiffened. Even in the dark, Tori knew Nathaniel had seen it before. His eyes, pinched with pain before, were suddenly alert and fearful.

“Okay, Tori! You made your point!” Jesse hollered. “If you don’t give it back to me, I’m gonna have to tell my dad. You don’t know what you’re getting yourself into, Burns. He’s gonna come after you.”

“She can’t have gotten far,” Bobby said, somewhere close, shaking Nathaniel’s attention from the bottle.

Nathaniel took Tori’s hand and they crept silently through the trees, away from Tori’s property toward Slaughter Point.

“Give it back, Victoria! It doesn’t belong to you!”

“This is stupid. What do you want with an old piece of pottery anyway?” Bobby’s voice wasn’t far behind Jesse’s. Tori could hear him huffing, stomping through the brush as though he was trying keep up. “Why not just let her take it?”

“Because it’s not hers! And I’m sick of her taking everything!”

Suddenly, Tori heard a snap and a shriek. It sounded like Mitch was screaming. “Jesse! Bobby! Help me!” There was a loud scuffle. Nathaniel and Tori squatted in the brush, their breaths held.

“What happened?” Jesse shouted.

“Oh, shit.”

Mitch groaned, breathing hard. “It was a hole. I turned my ankle.”

“Goddamn Will and his fucking holes!” Jesse growled. “We’ve got recruiters coming next week!”

“It’s not my fault. I didn’t see it!”

Jesse let loose with a long string of swears. Tori could feel him looking for her, listening and waiting for her to reveal herself. She didn’t move.

“You listening to me, Burns?” Jesse called out. “Whatever that thing is, it came out of my field! It belongs to me!” Jesse was loud, his footsteps close.

“Come on, Jesse. His ankle’s broken, man. We’ve gotta get him home. You can talk her into giving it back tomorrow. Let’s go.”

Tori waited, listening to the sound of Jesse and his friends’ slow retreat. When they were gone, Nathaniel winced, easing to his feet. He extended a hand to Tori, but she didn’t take it, her hands shaking too badly to let go of the jug.

Nathaniel was staring at it. At the swollen cork and the chipped handles and the cracks in the finish.

“Where did you find that?” His hoarse whisper felt fragile, vulnerable. As if he was afraid of it. Tori clutched it tighter it to her chest.

“I think this is it. This must be the answer Al Senior buried. Jesse dug it up from under the…” Something in Nathaniel’s expression made her pause. He shook his head. His eyes were filled with the same foreboding she’d felt when Jesse tugged at the cork. “You know what’s in here, don’t you?” she asked. “You’ve seen it before.”

“I’ll explain everything, but not here,” he said quietly. And he led Tori back to the barn.

It was past nightfall when they finally made it to the barn. Nathaniel paused at the door, barefoot and bloody, the wet hem of his jeans caked with dirt. He glanced down at the jug in her arms, the way he had throughout the long walk to the barn, with fascination and revulsion, as if he longed to take it from her, and at the same time, as if he never wanted to see it again.

“It’s late. You’re cold,” he said, dragging his eyes from it. “You should go home and get some rest.”

Tori’s teeth chattered, but she held the jug tighter. “You promised you would tell me what this is. I’m not leaving until you do.”

Nathaniel hesitated, his lips pressed tightly together as if reconsidering that promise. Then he held the barn door open, gesturing Tori inside.

“Very well. But I won’t stand by and watch you catch your death of cold.” Nathaniel set to work, making a small fire from kindling, dry pine needles, and twigs. When it began to smoke, he turned his back to her and Tori looked away as he stripped off his wet jeans and draped them over the sawhorse. He slid quickly into an old pair of her father’s khakis, then turned to Tori expectantly, holding out his hand for the bottle. But Tori’s fingers were frozen around the cold stone. She couldn’t set it down even if she’d wanted to. Everything, inside and out, was numb.

He reached hesitantly, taking the bottle and laying it carefully on the floor. Tori’s frozen fingers curled as if the bottle was still in them, and her chilled clothes stuck to her skin. Nathaniel held his hand out to her again. This time, she realized, for her wet clothes.

“I’ll wear this,” she said. Tori draped the heavy blanket over her damp sweater, but it only managed to push the cold deeper into her bones.

“You won’t get warm this way.” Gently, Nathaniel took the blanket from her. He held it like a curtain, open and wide, averting his eyes. “Go on, then. Take off your clothes and we’ll hang them by the fire. Cover yourself with this for the time being. I promise, I won’t look.”

She could hardly feel the tips of her fingers, and her whole body was shuddering. She knew he was right. But she didn’t want him to see her under all this.

He waited, his eyes closed and his head turned away. Over the top of the blanket, the deep red letters carved in his chest caught the firelight. His chest, smooth until this afternoon, had been the only part of him that had been free of scars. The only piece of him that had been untouched by Slaughter’s family.

Tori kicked off her sopping shoes and peeled away her socks. Her jeans stuck stubbornly around her ankles and she had to fight to pull them off. She tugged at her heavy sweater. It was long enough to cover her underwear, but not long enough to cover the rows of fading pink scars on her thighs. She checked again to make sure Nathaniel wasn’t looking. Then she lifted it over her head, clutching it to her body while it dripped on her feet.

She stood in her bra and underpants, vulnerable and naked—angry that her shame felt stronger than everything else. Stronger than her anger at Jesse and her fear of Alistair. Stronger than her feelings for Nathaniel, and the way those feelings confused her. She grabbed the blanket and pulled it around her, high around her neck. It was gritty with dust and pine needles, but it was dry and warm.

Nathaniel picked up her clothes from the floor and hung them beside his. Then he stepped in close, tucking the edges of the blanket tightly under her chin.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

She wasn’t. She wasn’t all right at all. “That jug. If it’s not what Al Senior was talking about, what is it, Nathaniel? What’s in it?”

Nathaniel looked up from the bottle, his face full of doubts, as if he was trying to decide how much to tell her.

“It’s a witch’s bottle,” he finally said. “The one Emmeline made and buried before Archibald Slaughter hanged me. It holds the spell she used to bind me to the tree. I’d wager that if you opened that cork, you’d find something of Emmeline, something of me, and something of that tree inside it.” Nathaniel scratched absently behind his ear, pulling at a section of short-clipped hair Tori hadn’t noticed before, hidden behind the longer strands that fell around his face. “I’d thought it all nonsense the first time I watched her make one for herself and for Ruth. The nails, the heart, the bird bones…It all seemed so foolish.”

“But why would the Slaughters want it? How would they even know what it is?”

“I don’t think they do. Em would have buried it in secret. She never would have told anyone. It would have been too dangerous if anyone found it. Even I didn’t know where it was.”

Too dangerous.

…if they find what’s hidin’ under that tree, then you’re in danger, boy. You both are.

Matilda’s words awakened the chill in her bones. “What would happen to you if someone opened the cork?” Tori heard herself ask.

Nathaniel blanched. “If you believe the lore to be true, then the protective spell would be broken. The power would turn against the one who cast it, in favor of the one who opened it, destroying its maker. And destroying me.”

“You have to hide it,” Tori said quickly. “You have to hide it before they figure out what it is!”

If Jesse had opened that cork, Nathaniel would have been gone forever. And the power would turn against Emmeline—against her descendants—in Jesse’s favor.

“Tori, I can’t—”

“You have to! If anyone finds it—”

“I want you to do it.”

The words sucked all the air from the room, the heavy silence broken only by the crackle of the fire. Nathaniel stood close, his face half-shadowed in the dim light of it. “I want you to bury it. Don’t tell me where. I’m afraid I can’t be trusted not to destroy it myself. And I can’t leave…not yet. Not until I know you’re safe.” He tugged up the blanket where it had fallen around her shoulders, and her heart clenched.

“I should have broken the curse. Jesse was right there, in front of the tree. I should have hurt him, but I…”

She’d wanted to, hadn’t she? Watching him cut the tree, listening as he tortured Nathaniel. She’d wanted to lash out. To make him bleed. She could have ended the curse before he’d found the bottle at all.

“But what?” Nathaniel asked.

“I couldn’t. You heard what Matilda said! Everything will go back to the way it was. You’ll go back to the tree. And I…” And she wasn’t ready to let him go yet. He was the only part of this place she felt connected to. The only place she felt like she belonged.

He held the blanket around her shoulders and pulled her closer, brushing a thumb over her cheek, tipping his forehead to hers until their noses were touching. Until their lips brushed. They were warm and soft and Tori pulled away before any of this cut her too deeply to fix.

“This isn’t right. I should go.”

“Why?” he asked angrily, following her to the door. “Because I’m cursed? Because no matter what happens, I’m going to die?”

“Yes! Because you’re going to die!”

“There are worse things than death, Victoria!”

“Like what?”

“Like spending a lifetime alone!” Nathaniel’s voice cracked. “Will you please just look at me?”

She turned around slowly, to the spell bottle on the floor and the pile of straw he slept on. To the rusted saw against the wall in the corner and the fresh cuts in his skin. Everywhere but at his face. Until she couldn’t not look at it anymore.

“I’m not dead yet, Tori. I feel this! I feel all of this,” he said, clutching his chest. “I feel cold. I feel hungry. I feel completely alive when I’m with you!”

Tori’s eyes welled, tears blurring the name written in blood and scars on his chest. She backed toward the barn door, away from the cracked and chipped witch’s bottle that was holding him together—the curse she was now responsible for.

“I have to go,” she said, racing for home, taking his blanket with her.

It was late. Tori didn’t even know what time it was. The light in her mother’s bedroom was on, and Tori hoped she’d gone upstairs for the night. She snuck in the back door, careful not to let it slam behind her, and tiptoed to the foot of the stairs. The hallway smelled like lasagna and burned garlic bread, and her stomach growled loud enough to wake the dead.

“You missed dinner,” came her mother’s voice from the darkened kitchen. “Want to tell me where you’ve been?”

Tori took two steps backward and stood in front of the entry to the kitchen. Her mother sat at the table in the seat closest to the window, silhouetted by the glow of the porch light outside.

Tori pulled the blanket tighter around herself. She could tell her. About her visit to Matilda’s room. About Emmeline and the child she’d had by Alistair Slaughter’s great-great-gazillionth grandfather. How they were related…But then she’d have to tell her mother about everything else. About Nathaniel and where she’d been and why he’d been staying in the barn. And those were secrets Tori wasn’t ready to share yet. Because once you speak a secret out loud, it’s not just yours anymore.

“Not really,” she said.

Her mother looked down at Tori’s bare, muddy feet. “Were you with Nathaniel?”

When Tori didn’t answer, her mother nodded to herself and stared into her coffee mug. “Are you at least being safe?”

“It’s not like that.”

“Then tell me, what’s it like?” her mother asked, her voice rising. “And don’t tell me I wouldn’t understand!”

“You won’t understand! Because you can’t!”

“And Nathaniel does? Do you even know this boy, Victoria?”

Tori’s face crumpled. It was as if her mother had put words to every jumbled thought in Tori’s head. Nathaniel understood. He felt everything she’d been trying so hard not to—alone, forgotten, and completely out of place. In the barn, in the river, in the cemetery…These places they’d been together…they were the only places where she didn’t feel different. Because she and Nathaniel felt the same.

But Nathaniel would be gone soon.

And then, there would be no place left in this world where she fit.

“I want you to see that therapist we talked about.” Tori’s eyes snapped to her mother. “You’ve been through a lot this year. There’s no shame in asking for help.”

Her fists tightened around the blanket. “I don’t need help.”

“I think you should talk to someone.”

“I don’t want to talk to anybody!”

Her mother sighed deeply. It rattled in the dark, as if she’d been crying, and Tori felt a stab of regret. “Go clean yourself up. I left you a plate in the microwave. Have something to eat and get some sleep. We’ll discuss this in the morning.”

Tori raced up the stairs to her room and leaned back against the door, sliding to the hardwood, thinking about what her mother had said. She stared at her phone and started a text to Magda. Her fingers hovered over the screen. She bit her lip, deleted the text, and dialed Magda’s number instead. When it rolled to voicemail, Tori called Magda’s landline at home. After three rings, Magda’s father answered. There was an awkward pause when Tori told him who was calling. The connection muffled as if he’d covered the receiver with his hand.

“Tori?” Magda finally answered.

“I need your help,” Tori said.

“What’s going on?”

“Not over the phone. Can you come to my house?”

“It’s almost nine—”

“Please? It’s important.” Tori swallowed painfully, fighting the overwhelming urge to cry. Magda was quiet for a moment. “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

Tori disconnected and buried her head in her hands. The pressure that had been steadily growing in her chest crested. Tori felt it rise up the back of her throat. The room blurred with tears and Tori bit her lip hard, but the pain wasn’t big enough. She scrambled up and crossed the room, reaching high in her closet for the box containing the Slaughter family’s abandoned things. She felt inside the bodice of the doll for the razor she’d hidden the day she’d moved here. That night had been a night like this, when the room and the walls and her mind and her throat closed in until she could hardly breathe. She’d made Nathaniel a promise, that she would try not to hurt herself. But she was already hurting. And he was already dying. And those promises felt more like wishful lies, impossible to keep.

Francine’s doll was covered in Jesse’s blood. Her porcelain-dead eyes stared at the ceiling as Tori used Nathaniel’s blanket to wipe the blade. She leaned against her bedroom door and slid back down, sitting against it with the razor cupped in her hand. Then she pressed the blade to her thigh, waiting for the crashing tide to ebb, for the flood to recede, for her head to break the surface so she could breathe.