Page 39

Penny

DYLAN SOMEHOW AVOIDS HER OWN VOMIT AS SHE PUTS ON HER HEELS, but she struggles to get the car door open.

Penny hasn’t even put the car in park. “Dylan, you’re sick. Shouldn’t you go home?”

Dylan scoffs, and Penny takes that as a good sign. The truth serum must be wearing off for real.

“Fine,” Dylan says. “Leave me drunk and defenseless at the mercy of a bunch of assholes. Women supporting women, right?” She slams the door.

Penny lets the car idle as Dylan walks across the parking lot. She’s never been inside the old pharmacy, and she doesn’t want to start now. This is where Alonso’s grandfather died, and knowing what Penny knows now, going to a party here feels like asking for something to happen. Something bad .

There’s a clear escape route. Dylan isn’t Penny’s responsibility after all. She can drive away.

Except Penny just gave Dylan a magical serum that made her spill all her innermost secrets and fears. And vomit all over the Prius.

Penny bangs her head against the steering wheel. Then she grabs her phone and drops Naomi a pin.

It’s a long story , Penny types, but Dylan dragged me here. Can you come? I may need backup.

Penny waits. And waits. Naomi always responds quickly, but right now there are no little gray dots indicating Naomi is typing. Penny almost calls her, but then she remembers their last interaction at the hospital—when Penny ran out, ditching Naomi to go hear the news about Idlewood’s second coven of witches. She and Naomi have barely spoken since.

No wonder she isn’t responding.

Penny is about to type something else—an apology, or maybe a plea. But Dylan is already disappearing inside the pharmacy.

“Dylan!” Penny calls, but Dylan only waggles her fingers over her shoulder in a half wave.

Penny stuffs her phone into her bag and runs after her.

Inside, the old building doesn’t appear to be a meth lab, which is a plus. What used to be the pharmacy’s main floor is now full of ratty couches and folding chairs. There’s a coffee table made of four white buckets and a giant wooden door (hinges still on). The sun hasn’t set yet, but you’d never know it; there are black drapes hanging over the pharmacy’s boarded-up windows. It looks like the set of a cheap emo-rap music video.

There are way more people inside than Penny expected, and most of them are dressed in dark or fluorescent colors. Guitar and bass growl from cracked bookshelf speakers, and old books and art house DVDs sit piled against the walls and on the table.

Dylan stands out like a ray of sunlight in a crypt, but nobody looks surprised to see her. “What the fuck is this music?” she slurs, waving her flask around. She’s somehow managed to get it refilled within sixty seconds of walking inside.

“It’s my friend’s mixtape, so shut up,” says Clay Thornberg, another senior at Idlewood Central.

For a second, Penny wonders if Dylan is going to let him get away with that. But Dylan turns to him, and the corners of her mouth curl up in a mischievous smile. “You gonna make me, Clay?”

Clay stares back at her for a fraction of a second. Then he laughs and turns away.

Dylan, one. Clay, zero.

Penny doesn’t have time to be impressed, because the worst possible thing starts to happen: People begin noticing her. It starts with a few glances her way, and then the whole party realizes that Penny is pressed against the front door. Dylan has completely forgotten about her; she’s whispering to Royce Montalban, who is staring openly at her chest. Then she leads him into the back of the store, her hand wrapped around his wrist like a vise.

Penny wants to bolt out of the pharmacy. Instead, she asks herself: What would Anita do? Her mom would act like she was exactly where she was supposed to be. So Penny relaxes her shoulders and doesn’t make eye contact with anyone as she walks leisurely into the back of the store.

“Cute,” Clay mutters, but he says it in the same way he’d probably say You should run . A few people laugh, but Penny ignores them. At the last second, she glances up to see Kiki Montecito. She’s sitting across the room, a vape in one hand and an unreadable expression on her face. Penny almost waves to her, but Kiki starts texting furiously. Penny takes the hint and keeps moving.

When she pushes through the door into the back, Penny finds a large room that used to be a stockroom and maybe some sort of witchy lab. Dylan has already disappeared. The way her body was angled toward Royce doesn’t leave much to the imagination. There are a few doors off to each side, and only one of them is closed. There’s a low laugh from behind it that makes Penny’s skin grow hot.

She could leave, but that doesn’t feel right. She decides to wait five more minutes. In the meantime, she’ll… explore.

The pharmacy closed decades before Penny was born, but being here makes the place feel almost alive. Penny walks the old shelves, which still hold ghosts of the pharmacy’s past. There’s a package of Band-Aids with ThunderCats on them, and a half packet of Turbo bubble gum. There’s even an old Bunsen burner and some empty glass jars and test tubes, as well as an old mortar and pestle. From the looks of it, the De Lucas must’ve combined their magic with modern medicine.

What was it like, to live in Idlewood when there was a whole coven of witches taking care of everyone? Were people afraid of the De Lucas back then?

Behind the last row of shelves is a set of rickety stairs leading to the second floor. The steps look like they might break, but Penny gingerly places her foot on the first step and peers up. She can’t see anything beyond the stairs, and she’s thinking about trying another step when a bang comes from the front of the store. The sound makes Penny yelp, and in a few seconds, she’s somehow traveled to the top of the staircase. Convenient.

The loft is nearly empty except for a few deteriorating boxes and a pile of broken Christmas lights near Penny’s feet; the De Lucas must’ve cleaned it out ages ago, or maybe people stole everything that used to be here. The middle of the floor sags like it might cave in at any second. The far wall is all exposed brick, and there are stains on the floor in front of it that make the hairs on Penny’s arms stand up.

She takes a moment to lean against the wall. When she closes her eyes, she sees Alonso’s grandfather, Giovanni.

This was where they found him. Shot through the head with a single bullet.

Penny’s chest grows tight. She hasn’t found an explanation for the photo showing Giovanni at the Barrions’ gala. In Penny’s dream, Giovanni’s hatred for Charles Barrion was palpable.

He’s not an angel, he’s a crook… He doesn’t even love you.

If that’s what Giovanni believed, and if he never forgave Charles and Ellie for what they did to him, then that photo of the gala doesn’t make any sense.

“What are we missing?” she says to the empty room.

A floorboard creaks across the room, and Penny looks up. “Who’s there?”

No answer. Is there someone passed out behind one of the boxes?

Penny walks across the room, avoiding the sunken planks. There’s nothing behind the boxes. Maybe she’s hearing things.

Then the floor creaks again, but this time it comes from behind her. She whips around, her heart starting to pound—but once again, there’s nobody. Or nobody she can see.

“Hello?” she whispers.

Hello .

The word isn’t spoken out loud. It comes from inside Penny’s head.

Hello , the voice says again, it’s like a dozen voices all speaking at once.

The floor creaks again. Right next to her.

Penny slowly looks up.

Standing in front of her is something that can only be described as a shape. A form. There is something reminiscent of a head, and appendages that might be arms, but there are no features. It’s colorless, and it’s sucking in the light. Consuming the light.

The Shadow is back. And this time, it’s not a dream.