Page 21

FEbrUARY

The requirements for a séance were simpler than Jodi would have thought. No solstice needed, not even a full moon. Jodi had approached Paige at her locker on the first day back to school.

“Do you still want to try talking to Emily?”

“Yes,” Paige had replied instantly, her eyes wide and hungry. “You’ll join me?”

Jodi sighed. The texts hadn’t stopped, and the numbers kept changing. Just yesterday Zack got one wishing him luck on an exam. Jodi was still having unsettling dreams, and Lucy and Paige had their sleep paralysis. Not to mention the trials.

“I want to know what Emily wants,” Jodi said. “I want to know if she can clarify why these things are happening.”

Paige nodded, agreeing. “Same.”

“And you don’t want to go back to Nan?” Jodi asked.

“I want to go to the rose garden. She told us to go there.” Paige walked with her to their next class. “I’ve been doing a lot more research on all of it. I was gonna go without you all, but if you’re in…”

“We’ll all go,” Jodi said. “We have to do this together.”

Unfortunately, Jodi learned, the reason Paige knew so much about this was because Kiera’s older sister was a practicing Wiccan. It was Kiera who Paige had been getting her research from, inviting her to lunch, quizzing her on the spirit world.

A week later, the five of them and Kiera sat at Burr’s. Kiera would be joining them as their “guide” or whatever. Jodi met Julian’s eyes over the table, giving him a look she hoped conveyed You were supposed to take care of this .

But here Kiera was, smiling and sipping her milkshake, letting Zack steal her fries.

Julian slurped his iced tea and lifted an innocent brow at Jodi. When they’d gotten back to school for their final semester of senior year, Jodi was surprised to find Julian in three of her classes. Paige was still in English with her, but Julian was in economics, second-semester anatomy, and her sign language elective. When sign language let out into a five-minute crossing period before anatomy, he didn’t pack up and run off. He waited and walked with her, showing her the dirty signs he’d learned already.

Now, while Kiera told them instructions, Julian signed to her— Who, me?

She glared as Lucy interrupted Kiera’s prattling.

“So we show up, we hold hands, and she ‘comes to us.’” Lucy tilted her head. “What the fuck does that mean?”

Kiera coughed. “Well, sometimes the spirit may interact with the world around us, so we’re going to bring a Ouija board in case she wants to use it. But Paige tells me she communicates with light?” She looked to Paige for confirmation.

“Yeah, she can control streetlamps,” Paige said, as if that was normal.

“Okay, so if we’re in the rose garden, then we’ll just be within view of a streetlamp—”

“One blink for yes, two for no?” Jodi added drily.

Kiera shrugged. “Maybe!” She smiled brightly and stole her milkshake straw back from Zack.

“How many séances have you done, Kiera?” Julian leaned forward in his chair, mocking her with his attention.

“Well, not strictly a séance, but I’ve sat in on summoning with my sister and her coven.”

“So, this is your first.”

“Uh-huh!” She beamed. Her eyes were obnoxiously green.

“That’s so exciting for you!” Lucy trilled in condescending enthusiasm.

“Luce,” Zack warned. Kiera just smiled between them, unable to read the room.

“What do you need from us?” Zack flagged over Mr. Burr for the check. “Do we need to do anything to prepare ourselves?”

“I guess, have an open mind? I dunno.” She shrugged. “But this will be super interesting. I didn’t get to meet Emily since I moved here after she died, but obviously my whole class talks about her!”

Jodi narrowed her eyes. She already knew about Kiera being a transfer student. Lucy and Paige had done a full background check on Kiera when Zack started hanging out with her. But Jodi didn’t like this chipper enthusiasm for “meeting” Emily. As if she was being initiated somehow.

Lucy leveled a stare at Kiera that made her shrivel. “You do understand that no one can know what we’re doing or find out what happens tomorrow night.”

“Yeah! Yeah, got it. I don’t want you guys in any more trouble.”

Jodi met Lucy’s eyes as Kiera asked Zack for the crusts of his turkey sandwich. Julian shifted in the chair across from her. For the first time, Jodi realized what it was like to live inside Paige, Lucy, and Julian’s heads, knowing that this girl had to go.

She had to be Thrashed.

Rosa always said that Sacramento had the best kind of Februaries. No snow, but just cold enough to bundle up. As someone who had only seen her first snow two years ago, Jodi disagreed. But she was thankful now that the forty-degree evening in the rose garden wouldn’t drop to eighteen degrees while they were there.

She wore two pairs of leggings, UGG knockoffs, and three layers on top with a beanie around her ears.

Julian scanned her up and down. “You look like you’re about to rob a bank.”

She glared back at him and tugged the beanie off her head under the pretense of straightening her hair, and then never put it back on. She slipped into the back seat of Zack’s car beside Paige.

Lucy had offered to pick up Kiera, something that surprised Zack, but he didn’t argue. Jodi had the feeling that Kiera was about to get a taste of what it’s like to be on Lucy Reed’s bad side, and she didn’t even feel bad about it.

They pulled up on the other side of McKinley, a lush park that sprawled two square blocks, with a library, a pond, tennis courts, a castle for a jungle gym, and—on the south side—a rose garden. They parked next to the tennis courts and made sure to keep quiet for the nosy neighbors who always had eyes on the unhoused population inching east from the freeway on-ramps.

It was almost one, and the traffic from H Street, the thoroughfare on the south side, was dying down. Paige led them to the spot she had in mind, a patch of dirt where the pathways in the garden converged. This was the place the five of them and Emily had smoked pot last year. It was within sight of a streetlamp.

“If she wanted us to ‘go to the rose garden,’ then this is what she meant.” Paige plopped down and crossed her legs.

Jodi walked down the center aisle, trying to read the descriptions of the flowers. Zack joined her after a second.

“So, what do you think of her?”

Jodi’s molars ground together. “Who?”

“Kiera. Come on.”

She moved down to the next row. “Honestly? I don’t think you should be dating anybody until the trial is over. It’s not a good look, Zack.”

“You’re right. I know you are. But…” He smiled wistfully. “I like her.”

“Be serious!” she snapped. “You’re under investigation for statutory rape. You’re eighteen, Kiera is seventeen. End of story.”

His face twisted up before he nodded at the ground, and Jodi’s heart sank.

“She’s sixteen, isn’t she?”

“Birthday in May.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Look”—he pushed his hand through his hair—“I don’t have to sleep with her! I just wanna go out with her. Date her.”

Jodi buried the stab of pain and turned to face him, crossing her arms. “And what happens if it doesn’t go well?” His brows drew together and she clarified, “What happens if she gets Thrashed before the trial?”

He let out an exasperated sigh. “ Thrashed. What does that even mean? Fucking stupid word.”

“It means something to the people who’ve been Thrashed,” she said. “To the people who feel like we use them up and throw them away.”

“But we don’t do that.”

“Don’t we?” A night breeze rustled up Jodi’s hair, and she resisted the urge to tug her beanie back on. “Were we going to keep hanging out with Emily after the school year? There are people telling everyone who will listen that we bullied and hurt them. Your old bio partner. Reagan—”

“Reagan has been out to get Lucy for years. These people are jealous or something.”

Jodi felt like there was a chasm yawning between them as he stood playing with the only yellow rosebud that had survived the winter. It broke off in his fingertips.

“They’ve found a pattern, Zack. When it’s a pattern, there’s only so long you can point blame somewhere else.” She walked back to where Paige was trying to meditate among the dormant rosebushes.

Two figures crossed the grass in the distance, the smaller one carrying a large tote bag, like they were going on a picnic. Whatever had transpired between Lucy and Kiera, it didn’t affect the younger girl’s beaming smile when she reached them. Paige helped Kiera unpack her bag—a few crystals, a bundle of sage they couldn’t light, and a Ouija board bought from Target.

Jodi took a seat on Kiera’s right. Zack sat on the other side of Jodi—much to Kiera’s dismay—and Lucy and Julian sat on his other side. Paige made sure she had a good view of the closest streetlamp before sitting between Kiera and Julian.

“Okay, so like, the biggest thing,” Kiera started, her voice all California valley inflections, “is that everyone has to be united . So if anyone thinks this is stupid or that Emily won’t actually talk to us, you have to like, get rid of that.”

Julian mimed tugging something out of his temple and tossing it away.

“Right. So, like, take a moment to center yourself, set an intention for what you want out of the communication.”

Paige’s eyes shut tight like she was praying. Lucy let her gaze soften on the crystals and sage in the center of them. Jodi concentrated on the wind. It was nice that it wasn’t raining, but the chill was still there, seeping under her layers of clothing and freezing her spine.

She’d faced the medium, and she hadn’t expected that to work. But she believed Nan had the ability to connect to the spirit world, and she believed that Emily was still trying to connect.

And she had questions.

Sooner than she expected, Kiera broke their silence.

“Now, we have to join hands and concentrate on Emily.” She opened her palm to Jodi with a smile, and Jodi tried to return it as Kiera crisscrossed their fingers—much more intimate than Jodi would have preferred. Her fingers laced through Zack’s on her right.

Jodi glanced to the street, searching for any late-night joggers or patrolling police cars. Her eyes caught on the streetlamp, and she waited for it to blink at her. Nothing. She looked to Paige and found her waiting for the exact same thing.

“So think of her, picture her. Imagine her presence here with us.” Kiera’s voice was almost soothing in the dark.

Jodi’s thoughts turned inward. She imagined Emily as she’d last seen her. The day before prom at their lockers, asking about the limo. She’d thought in the moment that it was possible Emily assumed she was riding with them. In hindsight, she should have bit the bullet. Jodi regretted a lot about that last month with Emily, but not having the courage for that hard conversation was at the top of the list.

Kiera’s lower tone broke through Jodi’s thoughts—“Emily, are you with us?”

Jodi’s eyes snapped to the streetlamp. She waited, counting her heartbeats.

“Emily, show us you’re with us.”

The streetlamp remained on. Jodi searched for other lamps further away and found no activity.

“Maybe we’ll grab the Ouija board,” Kiera said to Paige. Jodi felt Kiera’s grasp on her hand loosen.

The streetlamp went out, plunging them into darkness.

Paige’s gasp was soft. Jodi felt the crisp tension between her fingers like electricity. And she realized that it wasn’t only the closest streetlamp that had dimmed. Every lamp on H Street was out. Only the moon lit them.

“Ooookay,” Lucy’s skeptical voice came from across the circle.

“Emily, are you here with us?” Kiera asked. Her palm was sweat ing in Jodi’s grip. She could hear her breath shake out of her, the moonlight glowing on the mist of it.

No flicker from the lamps.

Paige sucked in cold air. “Emily, you told me we were safe when I asked you in Nan’s salon. Is that still true?”

Kiera hummed next to her in the dark. “Safe?” Jodi’s brows drew together as she listened to Kiera’s voice. “Maybe.”

Melodic. Like a song. Like Emily’s voice had been.

“Not talking to you,” Julian said, tension in his throat.

“No one’s ever talking to me,” Kiera replied. “Only about me. Isn’t that what you said?”

Kiera’s gaze slid up Julian’s torso like water moving the wrong way.

Julian’s eyes narrowed on her. “You did know her, didn’t you?” he said.

“What’s going on?” said Zack, from Jodi’s right.

“Let’s get back to it,” Lucy’s voice was tight. “Emily, can you hear us?”

“Yes,” Kiera said softly.

“She can? You can tell?”

Jodi turned to Kiera and watched her head pivot to Lucy. Her brown hair fell in thick sheets down the sides of her face, and her posture sagged into something curving and inverted.

“Yes.”

Jodi saw Kiera’s intent eyes, reflecting brightly in the moonlight—

Blue. As the morning sky.

Jodi’s chest rose sharply. She felt the cold air seep in deep. Her fingers tried to pull from Kiera’s hand, and then Emily Mills’s eyes landed on her for the first time in nine months.

Kiera’s nose was longer. Her hair and brows dark. Her teeth almost too small. But there was ice in her eyes and a bright greediness in them that drew the air from Jodi’s body.

“Hi,” Kiera whispered.

“What the fuck,” Zack muttered next to her.

But Jodi couldn’t turn to him. Couldn’t move her head. Couldn’t move her arm. Like waking up in bed feeling something sitting on your chest, or sleeping on your arm until it was completely numb.

Kiera smiled at her.

“Don’t break the circle,” Paige said suddenly. “Not until we’re done.”

“She’s—” Zack stuttered. “We have to—”

“No, don’t.”

Jodi watched as Emily’s blue eyes slid over to Zack. Breaking her trance, Jodi searched the rest of the circle. The lights weren’t back on, but she could make out Lucy’s measured breathing, the stillness of Julian’s posture, Paige’s slow rocking.

“Emily, I have a question,” Paige stated slowly.

Kiera’s head swiveled like that of a doll. She waited.

“What did you write in your journal?”

“Only the truth.”

“I never threw a soda bottle at you, Emily,” Lucy hissed.

“I know.” Kiera’s voice was pitched high and airy.

“What is it about this place?” Paige cut in. “Why did you tell us to go to the rose garden?”

She seemed to think about it. “I didn’t.”

“Do you want revenge, Emily?” Zack finally found his voice.

“For what?”

“Cut the shit.” Tension rolled off Julian in waves. “The drive-in. The inhaler. Paige and me getting hurt. You want revenge, don’t you?”

It was the first time Julian had accepted that anything supernatural was going on. Jodi watched him shift under Emily’s gaze.

“Why would I want to hurt my friends?” Kiera smiled, glancing at each face in the circle. “It’s nice to be back with my friends.”

A choked sound came from Lucy’s throat, and Jodi saw there were tears falling gently down her cheeks.

“Why did you write about a soda bottle, Emily?” Jodi whispered. Kiera rotated back to her. Jodi couldn’t feel her fingertips, like her blood flow stopped at her wrist. “You know that wasn’t your story to tell.”

“You’re right. You should tell it,” Kiera’s voice sang. “That’s one thing she and I agree on, actually.”

Jodi felt frozen, like the winter wind had slithered in through her mouth and taken root inside her lungs. Her arm went numb, up to her elbow.

She looked down and only saw Kiera’s fingers tightly wrapped around her own.

“I’ll protect you.” Emily’s words seemed to float down to her. Jodi raised her eyes. “I’ll protect you from everyone.”

There was an echo reverberating in Jodi’s head. Hissing and shouting floated into one ear and out the other as she tried to focus on the echo. Kiera leaned in toward her, and Jodi watched Emily’s eyes as her voice sang, “She wants you to go to Rosa’s.”

Jodi was at the far end of a tunnel, holding Emily’s hand in the darkness, and her friends were screaming on the other side. Like running at full speed at a brick wall, sound and awareness broke across her.

“—the fuck away from her!”

“Stop it!”

“—swear to god I’ll—”

“Shh!”

“Don’t let go—”

Kiera’s eyes rolled back in her head. She blinked once, and her eyes were green. She fell backward into a rosebush, eyes closing as she fainted.

Jodi was ripped from the ground, uprooted. Arms wound around her chest and placed her on her feet, taking her away.

Her legs folded under her, and the cold wind that had planted itself like a garden inside her chest was rushing upward—

She gagged, vomiting on the grass. Her left arm swung lifeless at her side, her other bracing herself on a tree.

A large, warm hand rubbed her back, pushing her hair away from her face. The others were shushing and gasping just feet away, but Zack was with her.

She sniffed, wheezing and dry heaving. When she straightened, her gaze roved up a water polo team sweatshirt—Julian.

“You okay? What did she say to you?”

Jodi looked over her shoulder. Zack had Kiera pulled to his chest. She was shaking, her sobbing getting louder as Paige hushed them. Lucy was packing up the Ouija board and crystals with unsteady hands.

“You shouldn’t have broken the circle,” Paige hissed at Julian.

“Are you fucking kidding?” Zack turned on her. “We should have stopped this the second Kiera—”

“Shut up.” Lucy hefted the tote bag on her shoulder. “We have to go.”

Jodi blinked her eyes clear and saw the streetlamps were on. Kiera was sobbing and gasping, making too much noise. She remembered the sounds of them arguing just before Emily disappeared.

She wants you to go to Rosa’s .

Jodi pushed it from her mind and refocused on Lucy running across the park with the bag, Paige following, and Zack taking Kiera’s wrist to stumble after them. She was tugged. She looked down.

Julian had her hand in his, taking her toward the cars on the other side of the park. She couldn’t feel it.

“My—my hand is numb. My whole arm.” Her voice shook.

He stopped and looked down. He pinched her forearm and she felt it like a caress. But her hand was still like a dead fish, flopping in his grip.

Red and blue lights flared from H Street. She saw Julian’s face—blue, then red—for only a second before he took her other hand and ran.

She stumbled to keep pace with him, darting around the play ground. Shadows moved in the darkness, sleeping people waking and packing before the cops came.

Lucy’s car was starting on the opposite street. Zack’s was nowhere to be found.

Paige spotted them first, gesturing to them from the passenger seat of Lucy’s car to run faster. Julian threw open the back door, Jodi crawled inside, and Julian’s feet had barely cleared the cement before the car jerked forward, driving like a getaway car.

“What happened?” Paige and Jodi said at the same time.

Paige continued, “What was she saying to you? You looked horrified.”

“She—she…” Jodi took a deep breath. A laugh barked out of her. “She claims she’s talking to my mom.” She laughed again, the sound breaking off as tears sprung behind her eyes.

It was silent for a moment, and then she realized she was shaking—being shaken. She looked down and Julian was rolling her arm between his hands like kindling ready to catch fire against flint.

“She can’t feel her arm,” he explained.

“What?” Lucy looked at them in the rearview. Paige twisted in her seat.

Jodi tasted the vomit in the back of her mouth still. “What happened back there?”

There was a pause. “Those were her eyes,” Lucy said. “You know they were.”

They were quiet except for the sound of Julian’s palms sliding up and down Jodi’s sleeve. Her fingers pricked to life.

When they got to the Thrashers’ house and Zack’s car wasn’t there, Julian started calling him.

Jodi slid her phone from her pocket.

Twenty-three texts. Seventeen missed calls.

Her eyes scanned for anything from Zack, finding nothing. But her dad, Rosa, even Oliver Burns had called and texted.

Jodi’s pulse raced. Paige and Lucy were talking to her but she couldn’t focus as she picked one of the numbers and dialed them back.

“Jo, where are you?” Her dad’s voice was tight. People were speaking in the background.

“What’s wrong?”

“Where are you? Are you safe?”

“Yeah, I’m—I’m safe. What happened?”

“It was an accident, Jo. I tried to cook up some dinner and—” His voice cut off. She heard sirens in the background. “And I must have fallen asleep while waiting.”

There were three working burners on the stove. She checked all four every night before bed.

“What happened, Dad?”

“It was an accident, Jodi, I swear.” His voice was slurring, thick and heavy.

She wanted to stamp her foot. She needed answers, not apologies.

Julian was watching her as Lucy and Paige paced, dialing Zack and Kiera over and over.

A voice through her phone: “Sir, I need you to come back to the ambulance. We need to continue checking your vitals.”

“This is my fucking daughter, alright?!” said her dad.

Jodi hung up, dialing Oliver. He picked up before the first ring was over.

“Are you alright? Where are you?” he asked.

“Oliver, what’s going on? What happened?”

A breathy laugh rumbled into her ear, quickly turning into a cough. “Your dad burned down half your house. It jumped over to mine just before the fire trucks arrived.”

Jodi couldn’t breathe. She sat down in the middle of the Thrashers’ driveway. “Is anyone hurt?”

“No. It’s just like… smoke in our lungs and stuff. Jo, your dad is… I’m surprised he can even stand up straight right now.”

She nodded, even though he couldn’t see her, and squeezed her eyes shut. She thanked him and called Rosa back, letting her rant to her as tears fell down her cheeks.

She wants you to go to Rosa’s .

It felt like admitting defeat. Like saying, I couldn’t hack it on my own. But she sniffed back her tears and said, “Rosa, can I move in with you and Grandma?”

She didn’t say “until the house is repaired” or “until the end of the school year.” She just let it hang on a string, a note played in a different key.

“Of course. Where are you? I’ll pick you up.”

Jodi reminded her where Zack lived and hung up. Paige was explaining that Zack took Kiera home and made sure she was okay. Lucy reached to help her stand up from the driveway, and Jodi let her. She couldn’t meet Julian’s eye when she said there was a fire on her street, and her aunt was on the way to pick her up.

“Oh, my god, Jodi!” Paige gasped. “Is your dad okay?”

“Yeah,” was all she said.

When Jodi squeezed into Rosa’s front seat, Zack still wasn’t home. She listened to Rosa’s tirade about her father, letting the words wash over her, and wishing she could blame this on Emily somehow. Somehow Emily had started a fire and tried to kill her dad.

But she knew it wasn’t true. There were enough demons without Emily.