Page 102 of Conjure

Gwen and Lily exchange a look.

“The demon,” I explain, “it wants me. It’s killing my friends and the people I care about because of me. I almost lost Dominic once…”

“It won’t stop…” Lily’s voice is barely audible over the engine. “That’s what Brittany said.”

I open the paper file on my lap to see a grainy, black-and-white photograph of Magdalene Kriger.

Peering through strings of dark, greasy hair, her empty eyes give me chills.

“But what does it want?” I shudder, closing the file. “What will it do when we’re all dead?”

Gwen slows as we near Wilfred’s farm.

Police cars line the road. Paramedics carry a stretcher out of the house. A white sheet covers the body, and a ghostly pale hand is visible from the road.

“Just keep driving,” Lily urges.

“No, wait.” I sit up straight when they carry a second stretcher out of the house.

Dread fills my stomach.

“Camryn,” Gwen asks in a quivering voice as the car crawls past the parked vehicles with their flashing blue lights still on. “Was there anyone else in the house that day?”

I swallow hard, unable to look away from the long, brown locks tumbling like a waterfall down the side of the stretcher.

Somewhere, from the shadowy depths, a lullaby drifts closer.

An eerie melody.

A woman’s haunted voice.

I grow still, my hair floating in the water.

Something is moving closer, barely visible in the pitch black.

A splash of white.

A halo of brown hair that shifts backward with the next momentum.

A pale woman rushes at me through the darkness below.

“Please drive,” I whisper, tears blurring my vision.

A sycamore leaf drifts across the windshield. We watch it dance and twirl before another gentle breeze sends it sailing through the air toward Wilfred’s farm.

“You don’t have to ask me twice,” Gwen replies, stepping on the gas.

THIRTY

CAMRYN

Vibrant orange huespaint the sky as the sun dips below the horizon, casting a warm glow behind the towering fir trees.

Gwen parks in front of the large iron gates to the old graveyard. A chain with a rusty padlock secures the old graves beyond. This place is popular with bored teenagers at night, who like to come here to drink and upturn old headstones.

My heart skips a beat at a crow’s sudden, piercing caw.

Gwen tightens her grip on the wheel, her face drained of color. “What was that back there?” she asks quietly.