But it was.
When the song had ended, she lifted her head, blinking. There was still no one there. At least, not that she could see.
“I want to see you,” she said, her voice cracking. “Please, let me see you.”
No one answered. Hendricks felt something stir in the pit of her stomach, an ache. This was almost worse than not getting to see him at all. He was there and not there. Close enough to feel, to touch, but not to see.
And then he pulled away. Hendricks wrapped her arms around herself, feeling suddenly lost.
“Where are you going?” she asked, her voice taking on a note of desperation. She wasn’t ready to say goodbye yet.
The lipstick from the sink lifted in the air and hovered in front of the mirror.
Eddie started to write,
I love you. You have to close the seal. He’s comi—
CHAPTER
25
The lipstick halted midair—
And then the tube went flying across the room. It hit the wall and shattered, making Hendricks yelp and leaving a smudge of deep, crimson red that looked disturbingly like blood.
Hendricks pressed both hands over her mouth. Sweat broke out along her brow, and her heart was beating hard and fast. She was too afraid to move, to breathe.
Finally, she lowered her hands and whispered, her throat tight, “Eddie?”
But there was no answer, there was no change in the air, no soft scent of Eddie’s familiar smell or cool brush of his hand against her back. Eddie was gone.
Her eyes crept back to the warning he’d left on the mirror.
He’s comi—
Cold seeped through her. Eddie had meant to write he’s coming, but he never finished.
Which meant he was already here.
Hendricks gathered the bottom of her gown in her fist and darted back into the gym. She didn’t touch the bathroom door, but she heard it slam shut behind her, the sound a sudden crash of wood that made the walls tremble. The low rumble of laughter followed her down the hallway.
She yelped, but she didn’t dare turn back around. This can’t be happening, shouted a voice inside of her head. You’re imagining things, you’re paranoid, you’re—
Hunted, said a second voice, overwhelming the first. If the séance didn’t work, if Justin really was still here, then she needed to find the seven. Now.
* * *
• • •
Hendricks stumbled back into the gym and started pushing her way through the crowd of people. Music throbbed in her ears. The crowd raged. There were so many bodies, elbows jabbing into Hendricks’s ribs and shoulders bumping into her, sending her tripping back a few feet, high-heeled shoes and wingtips stepping on her toes. Hendricks could barely move. Lights flickered, a dizzying array of blues and purples swirling and flashing all around her. They’d seemed so fun, earlier, but now they were menacing. They made the shadows seem darker.
“Portia!” Hendricks shouted, but her voice was immediately lost in the music and the cheering and the voices of other kids singing along. “Vi!”
She spotted Vi dancing in the middle of the room, which meant that Portia had to be close by. Relief flooded through her.
“Excuse me,” she said, and started making her way through the throng of people. “This is an emergency—”
Vi wore a tuxedo jacket paired with a long black skirt with a slit that showed off her legs. Her hair was slicked away from her face. She was dancing with Portia. They were behind a small cluster of students, swaying to the music. Hendricks barreled through the group, muttering an apology. But when she finally saw Portia, her heart nearly stopped.
Hendricks’s skin went cold. She stopped pushing through the crowd, her arms and legs suddenly frozen. She forgot to move. She forgot to breathe.
That dress.
It was a white prom dress with a three-tiered skirt and a sweetheart neckline, and Hendricks would’ve recognized it anywhere. It had been altered. The puffy sleeves were gone, and some of the tiers had been removed from the skirt so that it was sleeker than it had been. But it was the same dress, Hendricks was sure of it. Samantha Davidson had been wearing that dress on the night she’d been abducted and mutilated.
Hendricks lifted her eyes to the girl’s face, and, for one long moment, she thought that it actually was Samantha Davidson staring back at her.
She blinked and it was Portia again, laughing as Vi grinned and spun her in a circle, making her flowy skirt twirl around her.
“Portia,” Hendricks called, cupping her hands around her mouth. She pushed toward her.
Portia frowned, hearing her voice, and scanned the crowd. When her eyes fell on Hendricks, her smile grew even wider. She took Vi by the hand, and the two of them headed over to her.
“You look gorgeous!” Portia said. “Did you find Connor?”
“Yeah, I did,” Hendricks said, her eyes flicking back to Portia’s dress. “What are you wearing—”
“Isn’t it amazing?” Portia asked. “It’s vintage. It used to belong to my aunt Sam.”
“Your aunt Sam?” Hendricks repeated, numb. She felt a lump form in her throat.
“I told you about her, remember? She was supposed to plan her school prom back in the eighties, but she had a nervous breakdown and had to be taken away. She died earlier this year.”
Hendricks’s mouth felt dry. She barely remembered that conversation. Portia must’ve mentioned it back when she’d first joined prom committee, but Hendricks hadn’t thought anything of it.
Now, of course, Hendricks couldn’t believe she hadn’t put it together before: Samantha Davidson had been abducted on prom night. That’s why she’d been wearing this gown, why she kept hearing that stupid Prince song. She felt suddenly ill.
Portia shrugged. “Anyway,” she said, with a flip of her hand, turning back to Vi. “I found this dress in her things. Stunning, right? It cost a fortune to get it cleaned, but I knew absolutely no one else would have one like it, so I had it altered and tailored to fit me. It was all beat up when I found it. Apparently, Aunt Sam did not take very good care of it.”
Hendricks had a sudden memory of Samantha Davidson lying on her side in the clearing behind Steele House, her face covered in blood and dirt, sobbing. Justin dropped his knife, and she lunged for it, her eyes going wide as her fingers curled around the hilt. “I’ll be back for you—”
Hendricks blinked and, just like that, the image was gone. She stared at Portia’s face. She’d always thought she looked like Samantha. Now she knew why.
“Portia,” Hendricks said, her voice shaking. “Samantha’s the one the ghost was after. That’s why he’s been stalking you, you look like her—or at least you look like how he remembered her.” Hendricks grabbed Portia’s wrists, holding tight. “I never told you because you didn’t want to talk about it, but the ghost, it was never Eddie. It was this kid named Justin, he was obsessed with your aunt, and on prom night back in 1986—”
Portia pulled her hand away from Hendricks’s and took a step backward, shaking her head. “What are you doing?”
“The ghost—”
“No.” Her voice came down hard, like an ax. She wasn’t smiling anymore. In fact, her entire face had closed up, her eyes flashing. “That’s over, Hendricks, remember? We did a séance. We got rid of him.”
Hendricks thought of the message Eddie had left for her in the bathroom. He’s comi— “It’s not over. The ghost is back. He—”
“Stop it!” Portia’s expression turned to stone. “Look around, Hendricks. This is prom. It might not matter to you, but it matters to me. It matters a lot. While you’ve been moping about over your ex, I’ve been thinking about this and planning and trying to make everything perfect. And not just for me, for all of us. For you.”
She took Vi by the hand and started heading deeper into the crowd.
<
br /> “Portia, wait!” Hendricks called. She felt a lump form in her throat. “Please,” she tried, fighting through the other students. “This is really important. Eddie—”
“Eddie?” Portia released a short, bitter laugh. “Big surprise, this is about Eddie again. Well, guess what? I don’t care about your messed-up obsession anymore. Go be with Eddie. Enjoy your time together.” Portia kept moving, heading deeper into the crowd. Hendricks was about to follow her when Vi stepped in front of her.
“I don’t really want to get in the middle of this, but I think you should leave her alone.” Vi sounded slightly apologetic.
“I get that she’s pissed with me right now, but this is really important. I don’t think she’s safe.”
Vi chewed on her lower lip, thinking this over. And then, shrugging, she said, “Is anyone ever really safe in this town?”
She turned, and the crowd swallowed her, just at it had swallowed Portia.
Hendricks tried to follow them, but the people were packed in too tight; she couldn’t even make it a few feet. She felt her heart go still inside of her chest. She scanned the crowd for Portia, or Vi, but she couldn’t see either of them.
Her mind spun. She didn’t know what to do next, she didn’t know where they would go, or how to make them listen—
A strangled scream ripped through the gym.
CHAPTER
26
It was the same scream Hendricks had heard the night of the séance. Human at first, and then animal, and then a sound that was nothing like any living creature had ever uttered.
Hendricks felt her stomach flip.
The light in the gymnasium had changed. It was no longer blue and strobing but was now a deep purple and red.
Below the bloody lights she saw her prom, the way it was supposed to be.
And then the lights flashed and she saw another prom woven in with images of her own like scenes from a movie. The room felt like it was closing in on her. Her feet felt unsteady. Her vision was blurred.
She pressed a trembling hand to her mouth, sobs welling up inside of her. She had only a few seconds to observe that other prom before the lights flashed back to blue, taking Hendricks to the present again. But she’d seen that it was unnatural. Cursed.
Oh God, she thought, turning in a slow circle. Oh God, oh God, oh God . . .
A few people had stopped dancing and were looking around to see where the scream had come from. But almost everyone else was still singing along with the music, smiling, unbothered. They seemed delighted by the changing lights. They threw their hands over their heads and cheered.
As Hendricks stood there, wondering what to do, the low, gravelly sound of someone laughing rumbled up from below the sound of music. A few more students lowered their hands, confusion flashing across their faces as the laughter echoed off the walls.
Hendricks felt sick. Justin’s laughter disappeared as music filled the gym again. But now almost every student in the gym looked nervous. They seemed to understand that this wasn’t normal, and they all glanced around at one another, confused. Hendricks thought she heard someone mutter, “Some sort of dumb prank . . .”
Her pulse thudded deep in her throat. The lights in the gym began to flash again, on and off, on and off, quickly, faster than before.
In one bright flash of red light, Hendricks saw students she knew looking around and whispering, fear etched on their features.
And in another, she saw the students from 1986, dancing and swinging in their pastel gowns and tuxes, smiles refreshingly bright. Only, their faces—
Oh God.
Hendricks’s mouth went dry. Her breathing grew shallow.
Their faces.
Their skin was rotting, gray, and garish and pulled tight over their bones of their faces. The whites of their eyes weren’t white at all, but a deep, bloody red. Their lips were scabbed, and hair clung in chunks to their chapped scalps. Blood oozed from their faces.
Hendricks felt the strength drain out of her legs. She wanted to run, but there was nowhere to go. Those bloody, rotten skeletons were dancing all around her, grabbing one another, laughing with their heads thrown back, green sludge oozing between their yellowing teeth. She could smell them. They were putrid, like things that were long dead. When they brushed against her, her skin crawled . . .
There was a sudden slam. Everyone went still.
Hendricks turned and saw Samantha Davidson standing in the gym doorway, dark curls hacked away from a bleeding scalp, her face mangled, her dress drenched in blood. She was still holding Justin’s knife in one trembling hand—
All around her, people started to scream.
But Samantha locked eyes with Hendricks. She looked at her for a long moment, her face slowly rotting away. “He’s coming for you.”
Finally, Hendricks understood. Justin wanted the medium’s power. He wasn’t after Portia—not really. Whether he knew it or not, the person he was really after was Hendricks.
The lights flickered, once, twice.
And then they were gone. All of them. Hendricks was back at her prom, surrounded by people she knew.
She looked back toward the door, but Samantha was gone.
The music had died and now a strained silence filled the gym, punctuated only by unnerved whispers as they all looked around at one another, wondering what was going on.
Hendricks hugged her arms around her chest. She couldn’t believe that she was still cursed, after all the pain she’d endured and Eddie’s sacrifice. Would she never be free?
Almost like an answer, every single window in the gym shattered.
The sound of breaking glass was like a battle cry, and Hendricks threw her hands over her ears. Glass cut into her cheeks and arms and the back of her neck, teeny little nicks that felt like biting insects.
All around her, people crouched and covered their faces, screaming as the air around them filled with tiny, glittering shards.
The sudden silence that followed was like a whispered sigh. Hendricks couldn’t quite manage to inhale. The silence was somehow worse than the sound of screaming and breaking glass. It was heavy, ominous. She felt the people around her shuffle anxiously, wondering whether it was safe enough to run.
Hendricks had been doubled over, staring at the floor, and so she saw the exact moment the first wasp appeared.
It crept up through the floorboards, wings first, body twitching. Hendricks choked down a scream and danced backward, but there was another one, perched on her foot and another clinging to a girl’s leg. She saw one disappear into a girl’s hair, and another buzzing around the sleeve of a boy’s tux.
And then they were everywhere. They seemed to appear out of the air itself. As Hendricks watched, horrified, the insects multiplied, becoming dozens and then hundreds and then too many to count, a buzzing swarm that gathered thickly around people’s hair and faces, clinging to their arms and the bottoms of their dresses, tissue-thin wings fluttering.
All around her, people raced for the gym doors, but there were too many of them. They’d become a stampede. People crashed to the ground, screaming, and—still—the crowd surged onward. Hendricks tried to break away, but she couldn’t help being pulled along with them.
“Hendricks, wait!” Connor was suddenly behind her, grabbing her arm. As the crowd moved toward the door, he fought his way over to the far wall, breathing hard. “I—I think Vi and Portia disappeared through there.”
He pointed to the side of the gym, where there was a door leading out into a hall.
Staring at the doors, Hendricks remembered the conversation she’d had with Portia the night she’d slept over.
Vi and I talked about, maybe, taking things to the next level after prom.
Hendricks thought of all the different ways Justin could hurt Portia and began to feel sick. She started pushing harder, no longer worried
about being polite. Eventually, they made it across the gym and out into the hall, letting the door to the gym fall shut behind them. The door muffled the sound of screaming voices and pounding footsteps, but the vibration still shuddered in Hendricks’s ears, making it impossible for her to think.
“There’s no one out here,” Connor said. Hendricks nodded, scanning the hallway. A few plastic cups from the snack table had rolled up against the walls, and most of the balloons and streamers the prom committee had put up had already fallen from the ceiling and scattered across the floor.
Hendricks swallowed, her breathing starting to steady. “Do you know where else they’d go?” she asked Connor. “Back to Portia’s house?”
Connor shook his head. “They took Portia’s car, but her parents are supposed to be home all night, so I really don’t think they’d go there.”
“What about Vi’s place?”
Connor frowned. “Her parents are pretty strict. I don’t think they’d risk getting caught.”
Hendricks was starting to feel desperate now. “Is there anywhere else they’d go? An after-party? Or maybe there’s a spot around here where people park.”
Connor chewed his lip. “There are a couple of places we could check out,” he said, starting down the hall. “But I’m not—”
They rounded the corner and there she was.
Vi was curled in a fetal position on the floor, her skin pale and moist, the skin under her eyes bruised. She wasn’t moving.
The window above her had been broken. A streamer hanging over it fluttered lightly in the breeze.
“Oh my God.” Connor ran down the hall and dropped to Vi’s side. He took her head off the floor and lightly patted her cheeks. “Vi? Vi, come on, wake up. Vi?”
Hendricks stood above them, horrified. It was just like it had been last time. She had a sudden flash of Raven, looking so still and pale in her hospital bed, of Eddie lying unmoving in the dirt.
Her heart gave a violent lurch. She didn’t think she’d be able to stand losing anyone else.
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