Page 103 of Dance of the Phoenix

No.

I couldn’t be back there.

This had to be an illusion.

Looking behind me, I saw the stairs leading up and away from the awful basement filled with the stifling stench of burning flesh. Without thinking twice, I climbed those stairs, realizing I could move as if I was really there.

Don’t think, Aileen. Just act.

I burst through the door to the living room of my old home. I strode to the front door, pulling at the handle.

But it was locked.

Shaking, I looked around me. The house was the same as the last time I’d seen it. Meaning the layout had to be similar.

I walked to the kitchen, then behind it to the door leading to the backyard, where the river full of dead girls’ ashes was.

Don’t think about it, Aileen. Don’t fucking think.

The door was unlocked, and I exited, but instead of being in the backyard, I was suddenly in a hospital room.

Before me, in a bed, lay an eighteen-year-old boy wearing a hospital gown, with a bandage around his bruised neck.

His turquoise eyes were open, staring at nothing.

Logan.

I knew it was an illusion. That this wasn’t real. It was a memory that Atalon somehow forced on me, mixed with the reality that Logan was ... wasdead.

Trembling uncontrollably, my breaths turning short and panicked, I retrod my steps, and once I was through the door, it closed right in my face.

I turned around then and saw I was no longer in the hospital or my old home. Instead, I was in a filthy, messy apartment I faintly recognized.

On the floor of that apartment lay Cassidy, her eyes closed, her face the most serene it had ever been.

It was her old apartment she’d had with her abusive ex-boyfriend, Austin.

And Cassidy, like Logan, was ...

“Get me out of here,” I murmured, running through the apartment to reach the door that led me not to the hallway of that old apartment building but rather to the grocery store I used to work in.

I was at the storage room, and I frantically ran to the front of the store. I pushed myself through the aisles, attempting to reach the entrance, when I saw yet another body lying on the floor.

Zoey.

But Zoey didn’t belong in the grocery store. So far, all the people and places matched, so this made no sense ...

Until I saw her body was wearing black clothes, and a pistol was in her hand, blood trickling from her chest.

My heartbeat became deafening. It was a scene from that one time I was working when there was an armed robbery. I’d wrestled with one of the robbers when the pistol went off, the bullet hitting the robber in the chest, causing his partner to run away.

But that robber’s death wasn’t my fault,I couldn’t help but frantically think, looking down at the dead body of Zoey with horror. Was she a representation of that awful day? Why? Whyher? I didn’t ... I didn’t kill her!

But you feel like you did, don’t you?A voice murmured in my head. A very unwelcome, intrusive voice that made me break out in a cold sweat.

Keep going,I urged myself, forcing my feet to move over Zoey’s body toward the grocery store’s entrance.Don’t look. Don’t think. Just keep on moving ...

I pushed the doors open ... and ended up in the alley behind the Banner Bar, where Ragnor had given Cassidy and me the Imprint.