Aunt Mae hasn’t buttoned her sweater. It’s cold and damp out here. The impulse to do it for her crosses my mind, but there’s not time. And I’ve got to keep my grip on Anders’s arm, too.
He gapes at both of us, his mouth shifting, wordless, as I reach out and take the baseball bat from his fist. He’s gripping it as hard as he can, but I don’t have to struggle to pull it away. I toss it into the ditch without looking. My focus is on Aunt Mae. Her terrified face.
“What happened?” I ask her.
“It wasn’t—the dark ones.” Aunt Mae is short of breath and shivering. She presses one veiny hand to her heart, like she’s pushing a bird back through its cage door. “Two kids. About your age. They came to the door. Said they’d broken down out here—and their phones were dead. . . .” Aunt Mae takes another gasping breath. Anders is fighting against my grip, but I barely notice. “And then they grabbed me and pulled me out the front door and locked me outside.”
I glance down at Aunt Mae’s knees. They’re muddy. So are her hands. Her nightdress is grass stained. I can see a scrape on her ankle, bloody and broad.
They knocked her to the ground. Two teenagers against an old woman. Anger pulses inside me.
“Ow,” says Anders.
I guess I’m gripping his arm a little too tight.
“I went all around the house—trying to get back in,” Aunt Mae gasps. “But everything was locked tight. Then I thought to check the shed. And she was gone.” She crumples. “Everything. Everything . . .”
My heart starts to hammer. Hard and steady.
No. I won’t lose her. Not this time.
“You did have her.” Anders’s voice cuts through the pounding in my blood. “You had Frankie.” He’s staring at me. Steel eyed.
He knows.
And he’s seen. He’s seen me move. He’s felt the strength in my arms. He can feel it right now.
He looks at me, so stunned that his face is a perfect blank. “What are you?”
And then I move.
I race into the woods, with him beside me.
He stumbles at first, then tries to run, then falls. I drag him through the trees like a purse on a broken strap. We rush up to the shed, Aunt Mae padding as quick as she can behind us.
The shed door is hanging open. Even by the moonlight, I can see that the root cellar door is open, too, the barrels and bags shoved messily aside. The cross drawn in my blood, the circle of river stones; they don’t matter against a bunch of clumsy human hands. Their power means nothing to the powerless. I pull Anders, who has clambered to his feet again, toward the gaping cellar.
“I’ll be right back,” I tell him. And then I shove him as gently and quickly as I can down the cellar stairs. I swing the door shut and bolt it.
I turn to Aunt Mae, who is staggering up to the shed. “Are they still in the house?”
“I believe so.” Her voice is raspy now. Painful to hear.
“Will you stay with him?” I point to the root cellar. “I’ll be back.”
Aunt Mae nods.
With my key, I open the back door and slip inside. I can already hear them, thumping upstairs, two loud voices. They’re in my room.
I’m up the stairs, standing in my bedroom doorway, before they can even turn toward the sound of my steps. They’ve switched on the bedside lamp. Frankie is nowhere to be seen. Sasha is digging through the dresser drawers. Her head is down. Carson is standing nearer the door, looking up at the picture of Anders onstage, the one I printed at the library, posted above the row of candles.
“. . . sure we’ll find proof. Because this is seriously sick,” he’s saying just as his eyes float toward me.
I keep still.
I can see the thoughts flash through Carson’s mind. Weighing the risks. Guessing my next move. Then he lunges. He’s aiming for my shoulders, his big hands out and open, ready to knock me down.
It’s only once he touches me that I move.
My hands strike his chest. He flies into the air, lands, slides backward across the hardwood floor. The back of his head strikes the wall. Hard. He slumps, his chin nuzzling his own shoulder.
Sasha gapes at me. Her face is flat with horror. She drops the thing she’s holding—I think it’s a pair of my socks—and takes a small step backward.
I could throw her through the window. The image of glass shattering in a wide, blossoming burst and Sasha flying through it, out into the woods, is satisfying for a second. Like scratching an already-raw rash.
But I just grab her by the arm (“No—no—no,” she’s sobbing) and throw her into my closet.
“Where is Frankie?” I demand.
Sasha gapes at me. “I don’t—you’re the one that had her!”
I block the doorway with one arm. “You didn’t let her out?”
“Let her out from . . .” I see hope and horror mashing on her face. “No. The others must have—”
I slam the closet door and bolt it from the outside. I bolt my bedroom from the outside, too. I was prepared. Sasha’s beating at the closet door, sobbing and screaming, as I run back down the stairs.
But there’s no time for this. Not even to think about it.
I’m back inside the shed in a heartbeat.
“You go inside, Aunt Mae,” I tell her. “They’re secure.”
“Are you sure?” She reaches up and puts a cold hand on my cheek.
“Yes. I’ll find her. It’s all right.”
With a last look at me, Aunt Mae shuffles out into the darkness.
I unlatch the root cellar door. A waft of sour, stale air breathes over me.
Anders, inside, is quiet. He’s standing on the steps, staring up at me. His eyes glitter in the dimness. His face is tight. His words come fast.
“You kept Frankie here,” he says.
“Yes.”
“You kidnapped her.”
“Yes.”
“You’ve kidnapped people before.”
“Yes.”
“Did you loosen the wheel on my car?” he asks. He isn’t even trying to climb out. He’s just watching me now. “Did you take my cat?”
“I found your cat,” I tell him. “I checked your wheel. I told your friends.”
“But you could have let Goblin die,” he says. “You could have let me die.” His voice is calm, all the panic and anger washed away. He’s blank faced, wondering, not quite believing the things he’s seen with his own eyes. “You’ve killed other people. Haven’t you?”
I don’t answer. My silence is an answer anyway.
I want the truth in the open. I want him to see it. To see me. Before the end.
Anders goes on staring at me. I see him putting the fragments together, looking down at the reflection that starts to form. “That woman,” he says. “The music executive. The one in the river. You did that.”
“She wasn’t a woman,” I tell him. “Not anymore.”
The line of his jaw flickers as it clenches. His body is shaking, but he’s trying to hide it. He doesn’t break his gaze.
“And that girl,” he says. “Corrine somebody.”
“No,” I say quickly. He knows. He found out somehow. No wonder everything is falling apart. “Not her. I tried to save her.”
His eyes narrow slightly. “Then . . . what happened?”
I hesitate. I still feel the need to keep Corrine’s secrets. I promised her I would, more than a year ago, on one long night in that old blue barn.
“She wanted things,” I tell him. “That’s all it takes. She wanted things too much.” I tilt my head toward the woods, toward the whispering darkness. “That’s how they get in.”
Anders stares at me, unblinking. “What did she want?”
We can’t keep wasting time. And I need him to believe me. I want him to believe me.
I want it too much.
“It was her stepfather.” I let it fly out. “He’d molested her for years. When Corrine told her mother, she wouldn’t believe it.” Anders’s face shifts. I see sympathy. Anger. “Corrine wanted him gone,” I continue. “She would have done anything. And they knew it.”
“What happened?”
“Car accident. Slippery road. He was dead before help arrived.” Anders almost smiles. I understand. I might smile, too, but I know what came next. “Of course, then they came back for their payment.” This part still hurts. It hurts like a broken branch between my ribs, like something jagged, healed over, buried inside. “At the end, I wasn’t there. We’d had to move. Things went wrong. Just like this.” I gesture down the steps, to the empty root cellar. “I couldn’t save her. But they didn’t get her, either.” I add. “When they came for her . . . she took another way out.”
Anders is silent for a second. Then he asks, in a thick voice, “Why Frankie?” He glances down, into the cellar where Frankie has been trapped for days. He’s sick and horrified by it; the darkness and smallness and the smell. “Is she one of them?” he asks. “Or were they using something she wanted against her?”
“Neither. Anders.” I lean closer, making sure that he can see my face as well as I can see his. “They are taking everything you love. They will destroy everything you love. Do you understand?” He doesn’t answer, but he doesn’t look away. “I was keeping her safe.”
“You were?” He wants to believe me. I can hear it seep into his voice now, a rivulet of water cracking through ice.
“This was the one place where they couldn’t touch her. And now she’s out there.”
His breath catches.
“How did you know she was here?” I ask him. “Who told you? Who is she with?” Anders keeps mute. Shadows flicker on his cheeks as his teeth clench. “I know it isn’t Sasha and Carson. They’re still inside the house. Is it Will and Gwynn?” Anders looks away. “Who is it, Anders?” I push on. “You need to tell me. Whoever took her—they’re in serious danger.”
I bend closer. The smell of the cellar is strong, but I can still catch the distracting scent of him, carried on the warmth rising from his skin.
No. I snap my mind away. This is not for you. This will never, never be for you.
“Anders,” I say. “Please. I know you don’t trust me. But please. Please believe this.”
His eyes move over my face, like he’s reading something written there in small print.
“It was Jezz and Patrick,” he says at last.
Of course. The fragments fall into place.
All of them at once.
Everything he loves.
“Come on.” I reach down and grab his hand.