by Kat Ellis
“That doesn’t matter. I mean are you okay okay? I know the whole dead body situation isn’t exactly new to you, but that’s a reason in itself for you to be feeling even more . . . I dunno . . . screwed up over it.”
I take a deep breath, and let it out slowly, just like Dr. Ehrenfeld used to tell me to do. “I’m as okay as I can reasonably expect to be, Uncle Ty. If that changes, I’ll let you know.”
“Okay then.” He nods. “So, why were you really at the manor? Is there something going on between you and the Miller boy?”
I can tell he’s trying not to put any emotion at all behind the question, but I still hear the hard edge to it. Thorns do not hang out with Millers.
“Of course not. It’s like I told the cops—I saw him sitting at the side of the road. I couldn’t just leave him there to freeze to death, could I?”
Uncle Ty exhales slowly through his nose. “No. Of course you couldn’t.”
* * *
* * *
When I check my phone, there are a ton of messages and missed calls. But that’s not what catches me by surprise. It’s that the screen is perfectly intact—no cracks at all, except a tiny one in the corner that’s been there for ages. I was sure it was smashed to hell when I picked it up in the pavilion, right before I saw . . . yeah.
It must’ve just been a trick of the light. Maybe a shadow from the spindly branches of the apple trees.
Most of the messages are from Daphne and Carla, of course. Daphne’s dad was the first cop to arrive at the manor earlier, so it’s no surprise she and Carla already know about Freya.
I reply to the latest message.
Ava: Just got home.
Daphne: You OK?
Carla: What the hell happened?! This is crazy!!!
I type and delete a response at least ten times before I give up. I just don’t know what to say about it all.
Ava: Really tired. Going to bed. Talk to you both tomorrow.
I toss my phone on the nightstand, then head for the shower. No way can I sleep without showering. Even though there’s no reason for it—I mean, I barely touched Freya’s face with my fingertips—it feels like there’s a layer of something coating my skin. Not dirt or sweat, but death. I know I probably can’t wash it away, but I still have to try.
Once I’m wearing my coziest pj’s, I head back to my room, not bothering to turn on the light. But, as I go to draw the curtains, lightning illuminates the river outside. In that white flash, I see Freya sitting propped against the black wall of the pavilion, two dark hollows in her pale face where her eyes should be.
Just like Sadie.
I blink away the image, trying to scrub the thought from my brain, and my phone buzzes suddenly.
“Damn it, Ford!” I say as his name pops up.
Ford: Still awake?
Instead of texting, I call him. He picks up after four rings.
“You doing okay? I heard about Freya.”
I brace to say I’m fine, paint on a smile, but I just can’t. “No. Not really . . . Are you?”
I hate that I’m reluctant to ask him a simple thing like Are you okay? because now is not the time to be petty. So what if Ford spent time with the Miller twins over the last few days? It’s not like that’s a crime or anything. And finding out Freya’s dead has to be weird for him too.
“Freaking out, to be honest. What the hell happened?”
“I . . . Can we not talk about this tonight? I already spent hours with the cops, and I’m really tired, so—”
“Have the cops arrested anyone yet? Does Daphne know? She always tells you this stuff right away, doesn’t she?”
I sigh. “I don’t think they’ve arrested anyone yet. It’s only been a few hours.”
There’s a pause while he loads up another question. “Who do you think killed her?”
“I have no idea.”
“None at all?”
I sit on my bed, letting my head fall against the wall. Then I think about how Freya looked, and sit up straight. “Who do you think it was?”
“Dunno. If you’d asked me yesterday who wanted Freya dead most in the world, I’d have said you.”
“That’s not funny.”
“Sorry. But it’s true.” I can picture him shrugging, like he just said the most obvious thing in the world. Is that what everyone at school will think too? That I’m a suspect?
Is that what the cops will think once they find out about all the history between my family and the Millers? And about the fact that Freya and I hated each other?
Because I’ve seen enough cop shows to know they’ll dig around to see who Freya’s enemies were, and Ford’s right: I’m at the top of that list.
FIFTEEN
A twig snaps beneath my foot, but the white-faced owl I can clearly see sitting up in the branches of the apple tree doesn’t move. Doesn’t make a sound. I keep moving forward, into the orchard. It just sits there, watching.
I have to get to the pavilion. It’s important that I get there. Something bad will happen if I don’t . . .
The branches part ahead of me, the path clearing. I step through. The pavilion is mere feet away now, but the open doorway is impenetrably dark.
For the first time, I hesitate. Will something bad happen . . . or has it already happened?
I don’t have time to shake the answer loose. I’m drawn forward as though the darkness has grown arms and is reaching for me.
Just as I cross the threshold, my foot catches on something and I fall forward into . . . my parents’ car?
I look around me, my head filled with that ringing silence that says something has just gone terribly wrong.
“Mom? Dad?”
They don’t answer. Then I see why. My parents aren’t strapped upside down in their seats. They aren’t here at all.
But someone is.
Her red hair cascading down to the upturned roof of the car, Freya gapes at me with hollowed-out eyes. She’s so pale. So still. And then she moves.
Her mouth yawns wider, then snaps shut. Open, closed. Open . . .
Now I’m the one who’s still. I can’t move. I can only watch her jaw hinge wide open, then closed. It’s like I’m hypnotized.
Something trickles from Freya’s eye socket, cutting a thin line down her forehead. Blood, I think. Except it isn’t blood, not really. A thick black liquid drips from her eye sockets and into the lengths of her hair.
Drip, drip, drip.
A stream at first, but then more. A river. A waterfall of darkness covering her hair, turning it black.
And the ringing in my head gets louder, takes form. A voice. Her voice, except it isn’t Freya’s voice. Because she isn’t Freya anymore.
She’s Sadie. And she’s calling to me, with a long-dead, rasping voice.
“We all have to crawl we all have to crawl we all have to crawl we all have to crawl we all have to crawl we all have to crawl we all have to crawl we all have to crawl WE ALL HAVE TO CRAWL . . .”
Sadie drags herself free of the belt holding her, clawing a path toward me through the carpet of broken glass. She’s coming for me. Reaching for me.
An owl’s shriek cuts through her mantra, unfreezing my limbs.
I jolt awake, breath coming hard and fast in the dark. I look around, lost for a second, but then my room in the mill takes shape. The little round window. My desk. My bed.
Lighting up my phone, I see it’s a little after one a.m.
Gradually, my heart stops thundering quite so hard against my rib cage—even when another owl screech echoes from the loft above me.
* * *
* * *
I hear the whispers from the moment I walk into school. Everyone’s talking about the same thing.
“. . . murdered . . .”
“. . . eyes gouged . .
.”
“. . . Sadie . . . ?”
“. . . Sadie . . . ?”
“. . . SADIE . . . ?”
There’s even a shrine at Freya’s locker. Someone’s set a couple of framed photos of her next to a silver skull ornament, with a few of those fake, flickery tea light candles dotted around. At the back is a vase of deep purple calla lilies, and above it, across the locker itself, someone’s written R.I.P. FREYA in what’s supposed to look like blood, but I’m guessing is actually red nail polish.
Principal Gower calls a special assembly to tell the whole school about Freya. She shouldn’t have bothered. Everyone already knows.
I lean back in my seat, trying to steady my breathing. I feel like I’m going to cry or throw up, but I can’t. Not here. Especially not after Uncle Ty’s stern words over breakfast when I tried to wheedle a day off school.
“You have to face them head-on, Ava. That’s what a Thorn does.”
It feels weird hearing Uncle Ty give me the same lecture my dad used to give him. I guess that’s one thing we can still hand down in our family.
Principal Gower stays vague on the details of Freya’s death.
“Gone . . . so unexpected . . . a tragic loss . . .”
She offers sympathetic frowns and counseling to any students who are finding it hard to deal with the news. A lot of the faces around me are red-eyed and puffy by now. I don’t think half of them even knew Freya personally, except from her stupid Haunted Heartland videos. And that raises another question: When are the media going to show up? Because, much as I’ve always rolled my eyes about it, Freya was kind of a celebrity. Her death must at least be regional-newsworthy, if not national.
I swallow a mouthful of sour spit. I hated Freya, and I won’t lie about that just because she’s dead. But I still think it’s gross that her death is going to become some kind of circus.
“My thoughts and prayers go out to Freya’s family,” the principal continues, “especially her brother, Dominic—as I’m sure all of yours do too.”
Dominic. I wonder how he’s handling it all. Okay, I have a rough idea of how he’s handling it—this isn’t entirely alien territory for me. Maybe that’s why I feel like I should . . . I don’t know . . . reach out or something? Would that be weird?
I doodle distractedly in my notebook, letting the principal’s words become a sound-blur. It’s only when Carla nudges me with her elbow, sending a line of ink scratching across the page, that I see what I’ve been drawing: a face with no eyes, stretched into an inhuman scream.
A face that looks a lot like Freya.
Or like Sadie?
I close the notebook.
* * *
* * *
After we file out of the assembly hall, it seems like everyone around me moves at double speed, eyes sparkling. Enjoying the gossip. I mean, of course they are. This is Burden Falls High. They’d roll around and make snow angels out of it if they could.
And everyone’s making the same connection Uncle Ty did to Sadie. Two dead girls, both with missing eyes.
Daphne and Carla walk on either side of me along the hallway, keeping a prickly barrier between me and all the assholes who suddenly want to make not-so-idle conversation with me. Because it somehow got out that I was the one who found Freya’s body. I know it wasn’t Carla or Daphne who let that slither out among the gen pop, which really means it can only have been Ford. But I haven’t asked him; I don’t really have the energy to be mad right now.
Daphne sighs as we clear the throng and head for the lockers. “Locusts.”
“Daph, did your dad tell you if they’ve figured out what happened? I mean . . . who did it?”
I catch Daphne twisting her necklace. It’s her favorite—a long chain with a mosaic pendant she made using pieces of smashed pottery. The way she’s worrying at it, I’m amazed it doesn’t snap. But it reminds me that I still haven’t found Mom’s necklace. I wasn’t exactly in a state to look for it last night.
Guilt floods through me: I didn’t visit my parents at the cemetery. I let the anniversary of their deaths go completely unmarked.
“He hasn’t said anything,” Daphne says. “It’s too early in the investigation. But I really don’t think it’s connected to Claire Palmer.” She leans in secretively. “Apparently, she hadn’t lost her eyes at all—that was just Mateo spinning BS. They’d only gone milky with her being in the water so long, but they were totally intact, not like Freya’s. Still, it’s super weird to have two girls turn up dead, isn’t it? Even if Claire wasn’t connected to Freya, Freya’s death had to be connected with Sadie, right? I mean, the missing eyes . . .”
I shudder, picturing Freya in spite of myself. Starkly pale against the black wall with her bright red hair, and two dark voids where her eyes ought to have been.
“Do you really think . . .” I let the question hang unspoken. Because it’s not possible that a ghost is really out murdering people, is it? Even if it feels like there’s something not quite right—not quite natural—about this whole thing.
But if Sadie is real . . .
Maybe it’s weird, especially now, but I feel oddly protective of Sadie. She was our ghost, handed down through the Thorn family like another wing of the manor. I remember what Mom told me after Grandpa’s funeral:
“Her appearance is a warning that danger’s on the way. But she’s harmless enough . . .”
Carla gives an amused huff, dragging me back to the present. “Last year Jenna Calloway ran into school with her eyes all streaming and bloodshot, saying Sadie attacked her in the woods near Copper Bell Dam, and what did that turn out to be?” She pauses for effect. “Allergies.”
“I don’t think allergies killed Freya,” I reply faintly.
“My point is: Neither did a ghost,” Carla counters. “Besides, Claire Palmer definitely drowned. And I’m betting Freya didn’t, seeing as she was in a fucking orchard. Until we find out how she died, there’s really no point speculating.”
She has a point. I know Freya probably didn’t die from having her eyes torn out—as shudderingly gross as that is—but I didn’t see any other obvious injuries on her. She was just . . . dead.
From unnatural causes?
Carla looks around at the mostly empty hallway and gives a frustrated sigh. “I’d better get to class. Catch you both later, okay?”
She goes over to where her AP chem friends are waiting. They swarm around her like nerdy little vampires, no doubt trying to leech the gory details out of her. When I turn back to Daphne, she’s twisting the chain of her necklace again. “Dad told me he wants to ask you a few more questions, when you’re up to it.”
“More questions? Why? I already gave the cops a statement.” I don’t know anything else. But then I remember what Ford said about me being top of the list of people who hated Freya, and I wonder if Detective Holden has been building up a profile of me as some eye-gouging killer. I have a sudden sweat-summoning vision of him striding into class and dragging me out while everyone whispers.
As if reading my thoughts, Daphne shakes her head. “They’ve probably just narrowed down the time of death,” she says, like her dad investigating a murder is something that happens all the time. Or ever. “They’ll have to start gathering alibis, and they always begin with whoever found the body.”
Because whoever found the body is usually the prime suspect. Even I know that.
We reach my locker to find a bunch of people kind of milling around it. I know immediately there’s something going on even before I see it: an evil eye, scratched deep into the paint of my locker door. Just like the one at Copper Bell Dam; the ones around my window in the cottage; the ones in a hundred other places in this town.
“Do you think Sadie’s coming for her next?” someone whispers behind me. I whip around. The idling gawkers shuffle a little, but don’t scatter.
Jaw tight, I stare right back. “What?”
Some of them squirm and start to edge away. But others stay put—like Mateo Medel and Casper Jones.
Mateo looks like crap. His eyes are bloodshot, and he looks like he slept in his clothes. Next to him, Casper is checking his phone.
Or maybe not just checking it. “Are you recording me, Casper?”
“What?” He looks up, frowning, and I can immediately tell I was wrong.
I point to my locker. “Who did this?”
“How the hell would we know?” Mateo answers instead, voice hoarse. He pushes past a couple sophomores to get right in my face. “But it looks like someone’s got their eye on you, Thorn. Can’t say I blame them. Pretty convenient, wasn’t it, that you happened to go look in the pavilion?”
I don’t budge an inch, despite the fact that my mouth is bone dry and I’m finding it very hard to breathe evenly. Not so much because Mateo’s looming over me, but because I can still see her. Still see the blood. Still taste the metallic, appley tang on the air.
“I didn’t kill Freya.” I’m surprised by how steady my voice is. Maybe there’s some Thorn in me after all.
Mateo makes a skeptical sound in his throat and steps back enough for me to see that Casper’s still frowning at me.
“Mateo, let’s go,” he says. “The cops’ll figure out who did it soon enough.”
SIXTEEN
Bloody Thorn or not, I’ve had enough of all the whispering by lunchtime. It’s become a constant hiss around me: Sadie, Sadie, SSSSSadie!
My mind keeps wandering back to finding Freya yesterday, how she seemed to be staring at me through her empty eye sockets.
Dead-eyed . . .
Daphne and Carla are both waiting at my locker when I get there. One of them (definitely Daphne) has covered the evil eye with a colorful mandala sticker.
“Where have you been? Have you checked your phone?”