It took Emily a great effort to swing around and give her best friends a horrified look. Her brain was moving slowly, but the pieces fit. The cops. An Ali shrine. A death plan. When the cops found them—if the cops found them—it would look like they’d killed themselves because of—or in honor of—Ali. Because they were haunted and enchanted by her.
Emily clutched her head, which was now pounding. “What did you do?” she asked Nick. “You pumped something into the air, didn’t you? Something poisonous that will kill us.”
“Maybe, maybe not,” Nick teased.
“I can’t breathe,” Spencer sputtered. “Make it stop.”
Nick shook his head, then reached behind him and placed an object over his face. It looked like a gas mask. He handed a second one to Ali, and she put it on, too. Their bodies relaxed as they took deep breaths of clean air. Mist appeared against the plastic. He breathed again and again, mocking them.
All the while, every breath Emily took hurt. She could feel her cells fizzling, sputtering, giving up. Her friends writhed, too, equally suffering. Tears filled Emily’s eyes. This was it. She could feel it. But I need more time, her brain screamed. She couldn’t die now. She couldn’t let Ali win.
But this was the end. Spencer let out a helpless whimper. Aria dropped to the floor, half-conscious, her eyes rolling to the back of her head. Nick and Ali clasped hands and bounced on the balls of their feet like children. They were loving this.
Emily stared at them. They were savages. Inhuman. Suddenly, energy from somewhere deep inside filled her, and she sprung for Nick, her arms outstretched. He screamed as he landed on his back. She ripped off his mask and tossed it across the room, then grabbed the gun and flung it away, too. When she looked at him again, his neck was twisted, his eyes closed, his lips parted. He took even, steady breaths. She’d knocked him out.
The gun glinted across the room. Emily didn’t know where she found the energy, but she lunged for it and grabbed it with both hands. It was heavier than she expected, the metal cold to the touch.
“Well, well, well. Look who’s tough.”
Emily looked up. Ali peered down at her, the mask still over her face.
“Get away.” Emily pointed Nick’s gun at her.
Ali shrugged and aimed her gun at Emily. “Now, now, Em,” she said kindly, her voice muffled. Then she took off her mask and smiled, showing that horrible gap in her teeth. She dropped to her knees next to Emily. “It doesn’t have to end like this. We can be friends again, can’t we?”
Her breath was hot and sour-smelling on Emily’s cheek. Emily cringed, not wanting Ali to touch her. She glanced at Nick on the floor. He was out cold. Then she peeked at her friends across the room. They were staring at her fearfully but also dazedly, too weak to move.
“I’ll hurt you,” Emily warned Ali.
Ali placed the mask back on her face, then rolled her eyes. “No, you won’t, Em. I know how you feel about me. I know I’m not as pretty as I used to be, but I’m still the same Ali. I know you’ve still been thinking about me. I’ve been thinking about you, too. Especially the last time we saw each other. When you let me out of that house just before it exploded. I’ve never properly thanked you for it.”
There was a knot in Emily’s throat.
Emily gripped Nick’s gun hard and brushed Ali off of her. “Stay away from me.”
Ali sat back on her butt, looking amused. “Does poor widdle Emily not love me anymore?” she said in a pouty, babyish voice, partly muffled by the mask over her mouth.
Emily looked her in the eye. “I never loved you,” she hissed.
Ali drew back her hand and slammed Emily across the cheek. Red streaked across Emily’s vision, her face screamed with heat, and she wheeled backward. The gun flew from her hands and skidded across the floor once more. Emily reached for it, but Ali caught her and pulled her back with surprising strength.
“Say you never stopped thinking about me,” Ali growled, her gun at Emily’s temple now. Her mask came loose and dangled around her neck. She held it against her mouth, her nostrils flaring. “Say you would have betrayed even your best friends if it meant getting me back.”
Emily’s cheek stung. She couldn’t eke out a response. She glanced again at Spencer, Aria, and Hanna. They were barely conscious, their skin gray, their breath ragged. Each had a look of desperation on her face—it was clear they wanted to help Emily, but they simply couldn’t. The gun rested in the corner, out of their reach.
“Say it,” Ali demanded. “Tell your friends just how much you wanted me to live. Tell them you betrayed them. We’ll see how much they love you then.”
“She already told us, Alison,” Aria said weakly. “We don’t care. Emily’s still our friend.”
Ali pressed the gun into Emily’s flesh. “Say it, anyway.”
“Leave me alone.” Emily’s lips trembled. Even though she knew this was the end, even though she’d probably be dead in a few minutes and Ali would escape again, she didn’t want this to be the last thing she ever said. She didn’t love Ali. No frickin’ way.
There was a click as Ali lifted the safety latch. “Say it,” she growled. “Say how excited you were when you guys were looking for me. Say how much you wanted to find me so you could kiss me again.”
“Stop it!” Emily screamed, curling into a ball.
Ali moved the gun to Emily’s temple. “Well, then, say good-bye.”
Emily started to sob. Every muscle in her body trembled. She looked around the room, first at her friends, then at Nick’s limp body, and then at all of those awful Ali photos on the walls, and then, finally, at Ali herself. “I hate you,” she whispered.
“What was that?” Ali growled, looking alien in her gas mask.
Emily was about to say it again, but suddenly, there was a faint sound from upstairs. Ali cocked her head toward the ceiling. Emily did, too. The sound grew louder. It sounded like . . . a police siren.
Ali gasped. She glared at Emily. “Did you call the cops?”
Emily looked at the others. Were the cops coming for them? Did they know? Would they be here in time?
But the sirens were still so far away. Even if the police did reach the house, they’d never find the basement. Tears ran down Emily’s cheeks. Help was so close . . . yet so far away. Ali was going to win this time . . . for real.
“Too little, too late,” Ali said in a soothing voice, pushing the gun against Emily’s head. “Say good-bye, Emily, dear.”
Emily shut her eyes and tried to think of something good and pure. And then, bang. The sound reverberated off the walls. Emily flattened to the ground, terrified of the power.
And then all she saw was darkness.
34
SOMEWHERE OUT THERE
Aria was swimming in a beautiful blue ocean. Colorful fish flanked her sides. Coral waved in the ocean current. A figure treaded water in the distance, and she kicked toward him. When she surfaced, she saw Noel. The sun danced across his cheekbones. His eyes sparkled. But his smile was sad and lonely. There were tears in his eyes.
“Aria,” he said, his voice full of pain.
“Noel!” Aria paddled toward him. “I’ve missed you. I thought I’d never see you again.”
Noel blinked and pressed his lips together. “That’s the thing, Aria. You won’t. This is the last time.”
“W-what do you mean?” Aria asked. Why did he look so miserable?
And then she remembered. That basement room full of Ali. That poisonous gas. Ali and Nick and those guns. That bang.
It all flooded into her memory, twisting her into knots. She looked at Noel in horror, waves lapping around them. “Am I . . . dead?”
Noel’s chin trembled. Tears spilled down his cheeks.
“No!” Aria exclaimed, waving her arms, suddenly hyperventilating. “I-I can’t be dead. I feel so alive. And I’m not ready.” She stared at her ex-boyfriend, full of purpose. She wasn’t ready. She wanted to live; she wanted him back. She didn’t care about that Ali shit anymore. Everyone lied. Everyone made mistakes. They’d get over it, the way they’d gotten over everything.
She reached for him, but Noel ducked under the water. “Noel!” Aria cried out. He didn’t surface. “Noel!” She ducked under, too, but all she saw was darkness. No more fish. No more nothing.
“Aria? Honey?”
Aria blinked hard. When she opened her eyes again, she was lying on a bed in a bright room. A sheet covered her body, and a monitor beeped at her side. A blurry face loomed over her. When her eyes adjusted, she saw it was Agent Fuji.
Aria licked her dry lips. Was this another hallucination? Was she in some sort of post-death limbo? “W-what’s going on?” she heard herself say.
Agent Fuji glanced over her shoulder. Two more blurry figures shot forward. One of them was Byron, the other Ella. “Oh my God,” they both cried, clasping Aria’s hands. “Oh, honey, we were so worried.”
Mike appeared, too. “Hey,” he said sheepishly. “Good to have you back.”
Aria swallowed hard. When she shifted, her head pounded. Did dead people get headaches?
“I’m . . . alive?” she asked tentatively.
“Of course you’re alive,” came a voice next to her. Aria looked over. Emily was propped against a pillow, her eyes open and a wan smile on her face. Her sister Carolyn was next to her, tears in her eyes. Hanna was lying on her side, her mom holding one hand, Kate holding the other. Spencer had a bandage on her forehead and looked pretty out of it, but when she saw Aria’s gaze land on her, she weakly waved.
They were all alive. They’d all made it out, somehow. “How long was I out?” Aria said shakily.
“Two days,” Mike said. “But it felt like two years.”
Fuji materialized at the foot of Aria’s bed. “We pulled you girls out of that room just in time. The amount of cyanide in the air was staggering. If we would have arrived a few minutes later, you wouldn’t have lived. It’s a good thing we were keeping tabs on you that night. Someone followed you to that house. When you didn’t come out, our agent called for backup.” She patted Aria’s leg. “But we got him, honey. He’s in custody. It’s all over.”
“Him,” Aria said thickly. Nick. She thought of his eerie, wolflike smile. The gun trained in his hands. His body falling to the ground, a dim recollection of Emily knocking him out.
“He nearly killed you girls,” Fuji said. “I guess he figured out you were getting too close. Some members of my team figured out the Nick link just about the same time he captured you girls. They brought it to our attention just as he trapped you in that house.”
“How did you figure out it was Nick?” Aria asked.
Fuji rubbed the fine lines around her eyes. “One group of forensic experts was doing the computer piece, and they were able to trace everything back to Nick’s phone—all those A notes, and also the rerouting of the A notes to your phones.” She glanced at Spencer. “We did listen to you—we cross-referenced Preserve patients to see if someone from inside the hospital might be a suspect. Nick was on our list. We had other experts looking at DNA, and Nick came up a match there, too—his DNA was on record from a prior offense before he was at The Preserve. We finally ID’d the third face in the cruise basement where that bomb went off. And last night, we found Iris Taylor tied up in the woods, half-dead. She confessed that he hurt her. It was Nick. It was all Nick.”