More steps thundered on the front stoop. Skye bolted toward the back door, just in case this didn’t work, though if it didn’t, she would be buying herself a few more seconds of freedom at most. She’d take it.
“Do you really think you can escape?” Redgrave said. His voice echoed, too; the vampires were inside. Her hands shook as she placed them on the back doorknob. “Silly girl. Don’t you understand?” He was half growling now, his words more like those of a demon than a human being. “You belong to me.”
Which was when the light began to flicker.
Not the electric lights: Those remained as dead as they had been a year ago when her family moved out and cut off the power. No, this was an unearthly light, a sharp blue-green that sliced through the darkness in flickering waves not unlike sunlight against the bottom of a swimming pool. The air chilled around her in an instant, as if she’d opened a refrigerator door. Skye’s rapid, panicked breath made small clouds in the coldness around her.
She knew what this was. This was what happened when a ghost became angry.
And Skye had always known that her childhood home was haunted.
Sleet began to fall, thick, frigid sheets of it, appearing out of nowhere, and behind her she could hear the vampires begin to screech in astonishment and fear. Balthazar had been right: Most vampires hated ghosts and feared them so much that they couldn’t bear even facing them—and the talismans they’d brought to ambush her in her own home had been discarded in the van. They were powerless against ghosts now. And her ghost—the ghost she’d known as a child, the one she had never feared, always welcomed—was striking back with all its might, saving the little girl it had once cherished.
The vampires scrambled back the way they’d come, not quite out the door but close. She could stay in here, remain safe … but no. She didn’t have her phone or any other way of contacting Balthazar, which meant the vampires would have plenty of time to think about how to flush her out. They could set the place on fire, for instance; if she’d thought of that within five seconds, the vampires would think of it soon. She had to use this chance, this momentary disorientation, to get as far away from Redgrave as possible.
“Thank you,” Skye whispered as she yanked the back door open and ran into the night.
The cold air hit her harder than it had before, when she’d been entranced by Redgrave. He hadn’t done her the small kindness of allowing her to grab her coat, and so she wore only her skirt, boots, and a violet sweater that did little to ward off the intense chill. Snow had begun falling again, tiny, sharp flakes that blew sideways with the fierce wind.
Hang on, she told herself. You’re not far now.
Soon the vampires would escape from her childhood house; not long after that, they would pursue her. But Skye thought she’d bought herself a few minutes, and that was all she needed.
It seemed to her that her childhood ghost remained with her—a helpful little shadow trailing behind. Skye could picture her more vividly than ever now: the small girl by the fireside, who wore a long nightgown and hugged her knees to her chest.
But, no. It wasn’t just a picture. The ghost truly was with her—communicating, perhaps, through Skye’s connection with death.
Skye thought, Why didn’t I feel your death, too?
The reply was an image rather than words: the little girl in an old-fashioned hospital, sick from something the doctors didn’t understand. Her tiny hands above the blanket, clutching and pulling at it in her pain, until finally she let go. That was where she had died, not at home. But the death remained unnatural and wrong.
You were poisoned, Skye realized. By who? And why?
The child had never known. Her parents? The strict nanny? Something horrible, though—all those images were immersed in a depthless kind of evil that felt like oil against Skye’s skin.
Skye grabbed at the branches of the trees around her as she took the steep slope down to the riverbank. The wind had never seemed more brutal, and the edges of the water were thickly overlaid with a crust of ice. Still, she knew what she had to do.
Quickly she stripped off her sweater, boots, and skirt, until she wore only her underwear and camisole. The cold was almost unbearable, but she knew that trying to swim in heavy clothes would drown her, and wearing wet things after she got out of the water would freeze her faster than anything else.
And she had to swim. To cross the river. It was the one way to hold the vampires off long enough for her to reach Balthazar. On the other side of the river was the high school, Café Keats, lots of places—and her running na**d and wet into Café Keats would be the gossip of the year, for sure, but that was fine by her.
No matter what the cost, Skye was going to win. She was going to live.
She took a deep breath and jumped into the river.
The freezing water felt like a thousand razor blades slicing into her at once. Skye surfaced and screamed in pain, but she also started kicking as hard as she could, fighting the current to take herself to the far shore.
The cold had its own will, it seemed, and within seconds her limbs seemed almost too heavy to move. Skye kept kicking, though, reaching out with each arm even as her teeth began to chatter. Water splashed her face, stung her eyes. She could feel the droplets beginning to freeze on her skin and hair within moments.
Her ghost seemed to surround her again, but it felt different this time—like she was being shown something. Another way.
A door.
Gasping, Skye’s hand broke through the ice on the far shore of the river. She managed to stumble out, and her wet body felt as if it were freezing to the ground. Shaking so hard she could barely move, she crawled up the riverbank toward the grove near her school.