by Meg Collett
Sniffling drew my attention. Peyton stood a few feet away, shaking harder than a skinny oak branch in the year’s first freeze.
“It’s okay,” I told him. “We’re okay now.”
“Do you need help?” he asked me with the tiniest voice in the world.
My shoulder pulsed with blinding heat and the razor-fine undercurrent of pain that promised so much more agony later. I focused on breathing through my nose before I passed out. “Check on Hatter.”
When Peyton scampered off to check on Hatter, I took a shuddering breath. With a hand that shook so hard I could barely move my fingers, I reached up and pulled the knife from my shoulder. I shouldn’t have, I knew this, but instinct had me wrenching the blade free. I pressed my hand to the wound. Blood pumped against my palm surprisingly hard.
I blinked into the semi-darkness. Everything seemed to sway beneath me. The floor tilted up, and I had to reach out to hold myself upright against it.
“Miss Sunny?” Peyton called.
I turned around.
He stood beside Sibyl’s body, which was nothing more than a shadowy lump on the ground. The moonlight cut just right across the space so I could only see a piece of his face, but it was tear-streaked, and his eyes were wide.
Across the garage, car doors started opening. The students stuck their faces out to see what was happening.
“It’s okay, Peyton,” I wheezed, feeling every rib reshuffle themselves in my chest as I spoke. “She’s dead.” To the other students, I called, “You can come out now. It’s safe.”
Peyton shook his head. “But Miss Sunny …”
I groaned, feeling vomit at the back of my throat. I most likely had a concussion, judging by the way Peyton’s form blurred in and out of focus. “You’re okay,” I said weakly.
“But Mr. Hatter isn’t.”
His words were buckets of ice dumped over me. For that single second, my pain left my body, and I knew how Ollie felt. My focus was crystalline. My eyesight perfect. I jumped to my feet. My heart roared in my ears.
In two steps, I closed the space between me and the lump at Peyton’s feet.
The lump was Hatter. Not Sibyl.
“Hatter!” I fell beside him, wrenching his shoulder to turn him over so I could see his front.
He moaned.
I gasped.
There was no end to the blood pouring from his stomach. There was no end to the gaping wound in his belly. No end to the dark cavity I had a clear view into.
“Oh,” I sobbed. “Oh my God. Hatter.”
He blinked up at me.
“There you are,” he said so faintly I could barely hear the words.
He smiled shakily.
“There you are, Sunshine.”
T W E N T Y - O N E
Ollie
We flanked the aswangs easily enough. From there it was like shooting fish in a barrel. I almost felt bad. Then I thought of A.J.’s and Squeak’s bodies hanging from the ferry terminal. The feeling went away quickly after that.
We barely had to fight before the aswangs scattered. It was only then, watching them race off into the darkness, that I noticed the damage to the school.
In the garage, it had seemed like the bomb had dropped right on our heads. But in reality, it had struck south of the campus, near the runways and airplane hangars. Back there, fire and smoke clogged the air, turning the sky blood red. The fence sat in a pile of rock; the nearby rook’s nests were heaped over like twigs snapped in a stiff wind. They burned fast as tinder. The hangars burned brightest and hottest from the fuel stored there.
But the blast hadn’t been isolated to just the back of the school. The building itself, the old Alaskan prison that was my home, had been decimated.
The back wall of the school was rubble, the roofline, including the dome of the dorms, sagged and bowed as if a giant had stepped on it. The windows were mostly shattered. The fire spread along the climbing green vines that covered the brick and fed on bits of wood it found along the way until it was a raging inferno.
Near the front gates, a tall cottonwood burned, ash flicking high into the sky like fluttering white feathers.
It was just like in Marley’s drawings. I shuddered.
And instantly dropped to my knees and puked.
They couldn’t all be true. Not all of them.
A hand descended on my back, and I smelled Luke’s caramel breath. “Ollie?”
“I’m fine,” I groaned. “We have to get to Marley before he does.”
“What are you talking about?”
I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand and, with Luke’s help, shakily stood. “Marley. We have to get to her before Dean does. If we beat him to her, maybe the visions won’t come true.”
Luke’s face went slack with worry. His eyes scanned my body for injuries. When he found me completely fine, he leveled a serious gaze on me. “Dean isn’t here.”
“He will be. He’s coming for Marley. He thinks we’re all dead, but he’s in for a motherfucking surprise.”
That old familiar feeling returned like summertime in Alaska—slow to build, then fast all at once. My spine turned to steel. My vision turned red. Anger fueled my purpose, and it was time Dean Bogrov got his due.
I strode off while Luke was still talking. His words were empty background noise in my head that never quite registered.
He put his hand on my arm and tugged me to a stop. “Ollie. Wait. Where the hell are you going? You can’t just run off into a burning building.”
I blinked up at him as the words settled through the fog of rage. “It hasn’t spread to the administrative wing yet. We’re fine to go up there, at least for a while.”
Luke cocked his head, his grip tightening on me. “How do you know that?”
“Marley’s vision. She told me how it would all end last night. She said there’s no way to change them, but my mother didn’t believe her and neither do I. If we get to her first, we can change how Dean dies.”
It was a fine line, I realized. How closely I wanted to allow myself to believe them, and how much I wanted to rail against them, clenching tight the hope that some wouldn’t come true.
“I’m not letting you go in there.” And judging by his hold on me, he meant it. “Not with Pinto breathing that air too. It’s too smoky, even if the admin wing isn’t on fire.”
I jerked my arm against his hold, but I didn’t budge it. Fear built hot in the back of my throat. My entire plan hinged on being the one to kill Dean. To change the course of Marley’s visions. Like my mother, I didn’t believe we were set on one fate. We had to have some control over our future. We had to.
I tried pulling free again. Again, Luke didn’t release me. “Luke.”
His eyes were hard. I’d never seen him like this. “Ollie.”
“Luke, we have to. Marley is in his office right now, and he’s looking for her. If we’re the ones to kill him, then everything will be okay.”
It had to be. Because then the rest of Marley’s vision wouldn’t come true. I couldn’t let it.
His jaw was set as hard as his eyes. “We don’t even know if she’s in there, never mind Dean. You’re talking out of your head, Ollie, and I’m not letting you step foot in that building.”
I was shaking my head before he’d even finished. My heartbeat pumped in my teeth, expanding them until they were too big for my mouth. “She is in there. It’s part of her vision. If the window breaks and Dean dies in his own blood, then Hatter will—”
I clamped my mouth shut.
Slowly, carefully, like they were the last words he might ever speak, Luke asked, “Hatter will what?”
The fire popped and crackled behind me. By the gate, the burning tree collapsed, spewing sparks high into the sky. I dragged my eyes away from it and back to Luke. “Marley’s visions,” I whispered. “She saw Dean’s death and Hatter’s. But if I kill Dean—”
“You don’t believe in visions.”
“But she told me! She knew abou
t Pinto, and she knew about the well, and she knows about Hatter’s death. I didn’t tell Sunny because she didn’t want to know, but if anything happens to Hatter, she’ll never forgive me.” I was sobbing now, but I couldn’t stop myself.
“Hatter isn’t in there either, Ollie. He’s fine. He’s safe.”
I surged against his hold, but he only wrapped his other arm around my waist, securing me to his side as easily as if his hands were manacles around my wrists. “Luke!” I shouted at him, my words twisting in the smoky breeze, turning them raspy and choking. “That’s not how they work! If I stop one, I can stop them all. I just have to get in there. I just have to kill Dean first.”
But even as I tried to claw my way closer to the front doors of my home, Luke dragged me back.
“Hatter’s going to die if we don’t go in there!” I thrashed and kicked and did my best to escape his crushing hold.
He bent his head down against mine and, cheek to cheek, said, “Ollie, stop it. Just stop.”
“But Hatter,” I whimpered.
“Hatter is fine. He’s with Sunny.”
Tears streamed down my face as I stared at the building and the fire that was far too quickly reaching the third floor and the admin wing. “That’s not how this works.”
He picked me up enough that, as he walked backward, my feet didn’t even touch the ground. When he’d put enough distance between me and the front door, he set me back down, and I swayed against his chest. His hand went back to my waist.
“Ollie?”
I stared at the door.
The burning vines. The crumbling dome. The flames licking up behind the shattered windows. It was all so familiar. So sickeningly familiar.
Then I saw the shadows of the people in Dean’s office. Their silhouettes were dark against one of the few windows that remained, just like in Marley’s sketchbook.
I sucked in a breath.
We were too late.
The glass shattered. A yell split the air right as a body, a slip of a shadow, fell from the window’s edge and tumbled into the open space of a three-story drop, which ended all too suddenly with the thick-sounding thump of a body against the ground.
“What the hell?” Luke hissed.
I tore off toward the spot below the window where the body had disappeared.
Part of me hoped it was Marley. A sick part of me truly did. Because then she would be wrong. Then her vision wasn’t coming true. Because could she see her own death? Would she have known that?
But as I drew closer, I saw the mustache and the round belly. The chest still heaved out labored breaths. As I came to stand over him, blood spurted from his mouth, and he coughed, his eyes weakly swiveling to lock on me.
“Dean,” I said, my blood cold.
“Ollie,” he hacked. “Please. Help. Not like this.”
With my tears drying on my cheeks and my heart beating in slow motion, I crouched down beside him and studied how the blood bubbled from his lips, dripped from his mustache, and trailed down his jowls.
“Does it hurt?” I asked. I didn’t recognize the sound of my voice.
Luke came to stand behind me, his presence warm at my back. He didn’t say anything as I cocked my head and watched Dean struggle to breathe.
“Help,” he managed.
“Where’s Milhousse?”
Dean grimaced. His hand fluttered at his side. “He left.” Blood gurgled in the back of his throat. “Weeks ago. After he made. The ’swangs. I don’t know. Where he went. I swear it.”
He blinked up at me, pleading and bleeding and dying.
I considered him.
In his own blood, Marley had said. He would taste it. He would swim in it. He would suffer in such agony as he stared up at the creation he’d built as it burned to the ground.
Her vision. All of it was true.
So far.
I looked up. At the broken window’s edge, Marley stood, staring down. Her face was grim when her eyes met mine.
I could have ended it. When Dean reached over and wrapped his fingers around my ankle and squeezed, begging me in that weak voice of his, I could have ended it. But I stared up at Marley, and she stared down, and together, in that moment, we decided to let him suffer.
I turned to look back at him.
“Ollie,” he wheezed, but my name on his lips was barely more than a prayer and just as useless.
I stepped back, pulling my ankle from his loose grip.
“For everyone you hurt. For everyone you killed. For every innocent aswang and every innocent kid and every innocent being you hurt. Drown in your blood,” I whispered fiercely, spitting the words from my lips. “Swim in it. Lose yourself in it. And watch your creation die with you. You deserve it, you motherfucker.”
I took another few steps back, watching to make sure he didn’t move, promising myself he couldn’t, that he was really dying. Then I turned. Luke was right beside me.
“Hatter,” I told him. “We have to find Hatter.”
Luke’s expression betrayed a burgeoning sense of fear. He hadn’t thought Marley and Dean were in there. But they had been. And now … now Hatter’s life depended on Marley being wrong.
Be wrong, I told her. Be wrong about this one thing.
I’d thought I could change it. I’d convinced myself I could last night. As I ran toward the garage’s ramp, I told myself I still could. That there was still time. That Sunny wouldn’t hate me, and Luke would still love me, and our best friend wasn’t dying right now.
It wasn’t a long enough run to lie to myself that much.
The grit of the pavement crunched beneath my boots. My loose laces slapped against the leather. Luke pounded down the ramp behind me. Together, we crashed into the subterranean level.
I saw Sibyl first. Her body on the ground. The knife covered in her own blood beside her.
A few feet away. A few puddles of blood. Too much of it.
Then Peyton. Crying. His shoulders shuddering with each breath. Viv had her arm wrapped around his little shoulders, keeping his face turned toward her. The other students had gathered around. The younger ones cried; the older ones looked like they wanted to.
Then there was Sunny.
I skidded to a stop. I pressed my hand to my mouth.
She was cradling Hatter, his head pressed to her chest, her arms wrapped like anchors around his chest, holding him to this world. But I knew. I knew in the way his arm fell limply to the ground.
He was already gone.
Luke’s breath left him in a rush. He sank to the ground behind me. I couldn’t look back at him. I couldn’t.
My eyes met Sunny’s.
“Did you?” she asked, her voice thick with tears, her lips wet with them. “Did you know?”
The accusation dripped heavily, like putrid honey, from her voice.
I shivered. “Yes.”
Her head fell back. Her eyes to the heavens as if she could see them through the dark, wet garage ceiling above us. If Heaven was up there, then we were in Hell down here. Her nostrils flared as she held back her tears, as she fought them off. She began to rock Hatter’s body, lulling him into a peaceful, faraway sleep. Quietly, like she was speaking to God himself, but it was just me she damned, she said, “Fuck you.”
I deserved it.
I deserved it a hundred, thousand, million times.
But oh God.
Oh God, it broke my heart.
“Sunny,” I whispered. I begged. “I’m sorry.”
“When.” Not a question. A demand. She was still staring at the sky. “When did you know.”
“Marley told me last night.”
“A vision.”
“Yes.”
“And you didn’t tell me.”
My ruin. I understood now how Marley’s visions destroyed lives. Not telling Sunny had wrecked her. I would lose her.
She would never forgive me.
But oh God, it hurt.
“I’m sorry, Sunny.”
She
turned her face away from the ceiling and leveled the full force of her glare on me. Her eyes were red. Her nose was red. Her face was an exclamation point of despair.
She’d lost the man she loved today.
She’d lost more than I could ever fathom.
And she only saw the lie.
She only saw the betrayal.
If I were her, I would never forgive me.
“You knew,” she said, her voice far too even. Far too calm. “You knew. And you didn’t tell me. We’ve been to Hell and back and back again. We’ve been through it all, Ollie.” My name on her lips undid me. I began to cry. Because this was the end. This was it. “After all that. All that and you didn’t tell me. You knew. You knew we weren’t okay. You knew we’d broken up. You knew he needed any excuse he could find to matter in this war. And …” She shook her head, her voice cracking. “And you gave it to him.”
“Sunny …”
She shook her head. She kept shaking it as she tightened her arms around him and drew his face up next to hers. His eyes were closed, his hair as disheveled as always. He could have been sleeping, he could have been, if only I could lie to myself that much.
I tried again. “Sunny—”
“Don’t tell me it was destined. Don’t tell me you took the burden of knowing. Don’t tell me you just wanted me to live the last day I had with him. Just … don’t.”
How did she know me so well? How did she understand the very words I couldn’t tell myself? How did she already know the lies I wanted to spin?
“Please,” I begged. “I wanted to change it. I tried. I thought I could.”
I’d lost her the same as I’d lost the friend she held so tightly.
Fuck it, I knew all this, and I still begged.
Had my mom begged like this? Had she begged even though she knew Killian was coming for her? Had she begged for more time?
Didn’t we all beg for more time in the end?
“Ollie,” she said.
I shook my head. “Please, Sunny. Don’t.”
“Ollie,” she started again.
“Sunny.”