Page 64

He reached up and petted some of my sweaty hair out of my face. “Don’t you worry, sweetheart, I’m going to get you cleansed and get you back to your old self in no time. You’ll be just like that shy, sweet girl that you were when you first arrived here. You’ll be right as rain in no time.”

Rain…

I really wished he wouldn’t have said that.

Rain would be devastated by this. And enraged.

“Close your eyes, my sweet girl, and sleep,” he crooned softly in my ear, sounding like a lover.

It disgusted me.

It also scared the shit out of me.

Against my will, my eyelids grew heavy and began to slowly slide closed. One last burst of magic blew out of me, and I felt the heat scorch my toes.

My mouth was already open, but no sound came out as I screamed. The smell of my burning flesh and smoke immediately assaulted my nose, and I forced my eyes to open fully for a second before they closed and were too heavy to open again.

I might have passed out, but I did it with the image of the grass in the clearing on fire, the whole thing ablaze, in my mind. Including my poor little toes.

I just hoped in my panic and rage I didn’t set the tent on fire. Poor Finn’s hour was nowhere near being up, and I really didn’t want to be the reason he and those boys burned to death.

Fuck the tent, that could be replaced.

Finn and those boys could not.

15

My head was absolutely killing me. It throbbed with a pain so great it felt as if I had been bashed in the head with a baseball bat. Either that or this was the worst hangover known to man.

Since I wasn’t a regular drinker, I only knew this because I’d seen it firsthand by watching that cow Vivian and her many men the day after they partied half the night.

Fucking Vivian again. There she went, trying to invade my thoughts when I never wanted anything to do with her ever again. I didn’t even want to think about her anymore. It made me feel guilty, as if I were betraying Rain just by thinking her name.

No, not Rain.

My mother.

Fuck, I was a horrible person because I didn’t want to think about her either. I didn’t ever want to think about her.

My eyes snapped open, my vision blurry and nothing like what I was used to seeing when I first opened my eyes in the morning.

I wasn’t in my room, and there was no dreamcatcher hanging above my head. I wasn’t in the Alexander big house at all.

I wasn’t in any house.

The rich dirt of the earth surrounded me.

What in the actual fuck?

How had I gotten here? Wherever here was…

Had I taken up sleep walking and never noticed it before now, because I’d somehow always managed to find my way back into my bed? That seemed insane.

Was I going crazy? I sure felt like it.

So where the hell was I, and how the hell did I get here? I didn’t remember falling asleep. I didn’t remember much of anything happening. I thought I’d talked to Finn, but that seemed impossible because none of us had seen him since he’d disappeared after Rebel had been murdered. He’d ghosted us and fucked with Quinton’s head.

Finn had no reason to be anywhere near the house. We’d been on lockdown for a while now, and it’d felt like forever since I’d left the house. So what the hell had happened to me?