Cameron glances at me. “I’m busy.”
She pouts her glossy bottom lip. “So you’re not staying for the bonfire?”
“Maybe we could stay…” he wavers, waiting for me to say okay.
“If you want to stay, that’s fine with me.” My eyes skim the forest as I try to determine how long it would take me to walk back to the house. The last thing I want to do is hang out here. These are not the kind of parties I’m intentionally invited to and I don’t want to sit around and be called a killer all night.
He smiles and pats my arm. “Sounds good.” He backtracks toward the shore to pick up his shirt.
Mackenzie follows him like a lovesick puppy, knocking her shoulder into mine as she passes by me; bound and gagged, hands tied, are you ready to die, pretty girl?
“Watch it, killer.” Her eyes sparkle with hatred.
I flip her the middle finger and she rolls her eyes, chasing after Cameron. “Why are you all wet?” She giggles and gives him a flirty pat on the chest, gliding her palm across his muscles.
I wipe off the areas where he touched me, erasing the dampness he left on me and the feel of his touch. I pick up Cameron’s phone and dial Raven’s number as more cars and trucks pull up. People hop out of the cars; some I go to school with and some are older.
“Hey, Rav,” I say when she answers. “I need you to pick me up.”
“What?” she hollers in the phone. “Em, what are you saying? Aren’t you having fun?”
Cameron seems to be. On the shore, he slips on his shirt, letting Mackenzie ogle him with a starving look in his eyes, like he might rip her dress off at any moment.
“Can you just come get me?” I beg, looking away from the soon-to-be-porno scene. “Please.”
“Yeah, sure, hun,” she yells over the music in the background. “Where are you?”
The connection statics so I weave around the cars and hike up toward the road, tucking in my shoulders as two guys pass by, carrying a keg. “I’m at the lake,” I say, but her voice cuts out so I ascend higher up the road. “Rav, can you hear me?” The signal dies and I sigh, walking up to the top of the road right at the border of the asphalt. There’s still no signal, so I turn up the highway.
About a mile later, I still don’t have a signal. It’s midday, but the clouds are rumbling and the air is tinted with the smell of an imminent rainstorm. I keep walking with no desire to turn around, watching a raven soar above my head.
“Leave me alone, you stupid bird,” I call out. “Go haunt someone else.”
It keeps circling and cawing, feathers falling from its wings. I catch one and spin it between my fingers, trying to remember if these were the same as the ones from my dad’s crime scene. I saw a bag of them once, while I was being interrogated, but I think they were a little bit bigger.
I dodge to the side as a sleek black car with tinted windows turns the corner. The tires screech and the engine roars as it speeds up, the music bumping and vibrating the ground.
Inching further to the side of the road, I wrap my arms around myself and focus on seeing my death, but again there’s only blackness.
As the car drives passed me, it unexpectedly makes a sharp swerve into the wrong lane. There’s little time to react as it races right at me. I scramble to the railing, but the front bumper slams into my legs and I flip up onto the hood, rolling over the top and flying off the side of the road and over the edge of the cliff. I bounce off the rocks, my bones splintering, and the rocks rip at my skin. When I finally roll to a stop at the bottom of the hill, I blink up at the sky and then at my surroundings, realizing I’m lying next to the Angel statue Asher took me to; the one surrounded by crosses and flourishing roses.
My arm is twisted behind my head, my leg is kinked under my back, and warm blood spills down my forehead. Thunder booms and lightning flashes across the sky as I try to move, but I’ve lost all movement in my body. I’m paralyzed.
It all makes sense now, like connecting dots to form a map. The lake, my brakes, Garrick smothering me with death omens. Someone wants me dead and whoever they are has just succeeded.
“Ember,” the wind howls as the Grim Reaper appears above me, its cloak blowing in the wind. I know this is it—my death. It’s time for me to go.
“Close your eyes,” he commands as he begins to pull his hood down with his skeletal fingers.
My eyelids begin to drift shut, but I catch a glimpse of dark hair and eyes. “Asher…”
Then the dark hair melts away and the eyes hollow out. I wonder if this is what death looks like to everyone, or that in my death, I have lost my mind.
“Take it, Ember, or else you won’t make it. And I need you to make it… for a little while.” He plucks a red rose from the stem, bends down, and tucks it in my hair. “Take the life.”
My eyes shut and I listen to my heart fading away, dying inside my chest. My breath submits to the wind and my heart gives its concluding beat. My life leaves my body, like leaves drifting from the trees, and every ounce of pain goes with it.
Suddenly, I don’t want to wake up.
Chapter 14
Some people believe that right before death, a person reaches a point of comfort and numbness and it allows them to see images of every blissful, delighted, ecstatic moment they’ve ever experienced in their lifetime. I’ve died twice, and each time I see the Reaper. So is that supposed to be my happy moment?
“Wake up.” Someone pats my face. “Em, open your fucking eyes. You’re scaring the shit out of me.”
My eyes roll open to the grey sky, Raven’s sapphire eyes, and a thousand wilting roses covering the ground, charred, the once soft petals now ash upon the singed grass.
I gradually sit up and rub the dirt from my skin, then twist my arms and stretch my legs out.
Raven sighs and leans back to give me breathing room. “Holy shit, Em. What happened?”
Every single tree within a quarter mile radius is dead, dried out, stripped of leaves and the dirt is cracked out like desert sand.
Did I do this?