Thirty

We spend the next half hour tending to Madison while trying to forget that Garrett's mutilated corpse lies just below the deck. The first thing we discover is that my emergency-medicine book is a piece of shit when it comes to severe blood loss. What does it tell us to do? Get her to a hospital as soon as possible. I almost throw it across the room at that.

The answer, though, is that there is no first-aid solution for this. Madison and I share a blood type and Kit is O negative, a universal donor, so a transfusion is the obvious answer. Obvious if I were writing this scene in one of my novels, but in real life that is a last resort, because we have only the vaguest idea how to do it and my Complete Book of Wilderness First Aid isn't going to give DIY instructions for that to amateur hikers. We will do a transfusion if we have to—Kit goes to rummage up supplies—but we aren't at that point yet.

The book does tell us how to treat a neck wound, which is pretty much what we'd already done, with a few refinements. We peel off the bandages down to the last layer of gauze, confirm that the wound has closed, and then re-bandage it following the instructions.

I go into the kitchen next to make chicken broth and decarbonate a bottle of soda. Yes, I'm treating a serious neck wound like a case of the damned sniffles, but my brain insists that when Madison wakes, she's going to need sustenance. Salty broth and sugary flat soda. The fluids will be essential for helping with the blood loss. Give her that plus rest and warmth, and pray help comes soon.

Madison is resting more comfortably now. Am I worrying because she didn't stir when Garrett was screaming? Yes, but she'd been farther from the windows, and so I'll tell myself it hadn't been loud enough.

"Kit?" Jayla says when he comes back from gathering transfusion supplies. "Can I talk to you for a moment?"

I set down a cup of broth and a glass of soda. "If it's something you don't want me to hear, just say so."

"It's something—"

"Unless it's about Madison," I continue. "Then I'm not going anywhere. Whatever you have to say, whatever your concerns are, say them."

When Jayla hesitates, I lower myself beside Madison and smooth her hair. "It's about Madison then. Let me guess, you're concerned because of what Sadie became. You're worried whatever she has might be contagious. Sadie bit Madison. You're worried that could turn her into a zombie."

At my matter-of-fact tone, Jayla relaxes and sinks onto a chair. "Yes."

"Neither of those other victims was in any condition to bite Sadie," Kit says. "Whatever happened to her, that's not it."

I glance over, my look asking him not to get defensive. We can't do that, even when it's about Madison.

"Sadie bit her on the neck," Jayla says, almost apologetically.

"Raising the possibility of vampirism?" I resist the urge to shake my head. We must treat every suggestion seriously.

I brush back Madison's hair. "I didn't see any marks like that on Sadie or John Sinclair. I couldn't tell with Rachel Rossi. But it seemed to me that Sadie was just attacking in any way she could. She also bit Garrett's shoulder."

"And shoved you into a tree branch," Kit says.

"If we are concerned about Madison, we can restrain her," I say, my voice even. "I won't argue against that. If anyone suggests, though, that we put her outside—"

"No," Jayla says firmly. "Absolutely not. If she shows any sign of not being herself, then we should restrain her, and we should have things ready for that. But no matter what—even if she's like Sadie—we aren't putting her out. We will do whatever we can to keep her safe and calm until help arrives."

Is that possible? Jayla hasn't experienced how strong Sadie can be. If that happened to Madison…

If it happened to Madison, I would take her outside. I would protect Jayla and Kit, but I would stay with Madison, whatever that means for myself.

"Laney?" Kit says.

I look over, and it takes a moment to focus on him. Then I brace, as if I somehow voiced my plans aloud, but he only says, "We need to talk about what's happened. All of it. I know it's not like listing symptoms to figure out a disease. We're talking about something…" He spreads his hands. "Mystical? Paranormal? Supernatural? We need to make sure we're all on the same page, knowing what we've experienced and what we might expect."

I nod.

"So we all saw the fake Sadie, right?" Jayla says. "She came from the forest or the lake or whatever, and she looked fine. Some kind of illusion to lure Garrett away."

"Sadie saw the same last night," Kit says. "She claimed to have spotted me beneath her window, motioning for her to come with me, boat back to town. That's why she gathered up her things. Only I was in bed, sleeping… which I obviously can't prove."

"I saw your expression when Sadie said that," I say. "It wasn't you. I also saw you this afternoon. That's how I ended up on the bluff by the gazebo. I saw you heading that way, and I took off after you."

"Illusions," Jayla murmurs.

I nod. "There's lots of folklore about seeing someone you'd follow, which leads to your death. Here, in all three cases, the illusions didn't speak."

"They motioned and lured," Kit says. "So we need to make sure we hear something before we follow."

"Also be aware there might be more to it," I say. "Going after Kit on the bluff made sense, but for Sadie to honestly have thought Kit wanted her to run away with him seems a bit…"

"Delusional?" Jayla says. "And Garrett not questioning why Sadie was suddenly fine is definitely delusional. Seeing what they wanted to see, and some magic preventing them from questioning it."

"So there are illusions that will lead us away," Kit says. "Also the dead aren't dead. Was Sadie dead? Could anyone tell?"

"We saw her breathing near the end," I say. "I also caught a glimpse of her—the real her. She snapped back after attacking Madison, and she was horrified. That's why she ran."

"So something was possessing her when she attacked Madison?" Jayla asks.

"I think so," I say. "I saw it in the forest too, before Sadie threw me into that tree. She had a dislocated shoulder, yet she grabbed me hard enough to leave these." I show the bruises on both my forearms. "Then she threw me into a tree with enough force to embed a branch in my shoulder."

"Superhuman strength," Kit murmurs.

"It talked to me," I blurt.

Both Kit and Jayla's heads whip my way.

"I—I know I should have mentioned it," I say. "I thought it was Sadie speaking. Then after I found Sinclair and Rossi, I realized it might have been whatever… entity is doing this. I was going to say something, and then Garrett was here, and I… didn't need that."

"What did it say?" Kit asks.

"That I owed it. I'd made an oath and broken it. I knew if I said that in front of Garrett, he'd have…" I flail. "Thrown me out the door to appease it. He already thought someone summoned a demon. And before either of you asks—"

"You only summoned a tiny demon?" Jayla says. "In return for publishing your book?"

"If I'd made a blood oath for that, I'd have asked for a helluva lot bigger advance. But that's exactly the kind of thing Garrett would have thought—that I made a deal with the devil for literary fame and fortune. Or I summoned a demon to torment my ex-husband."

"I have been tormented," Kit says. "Company profits post-pandemic are down five percent. The shareholders are not happy."

Jayla shakes her head. "If Laney ordered demonic torture, it'd have been that every instrument you touch is out of tune forever. Or that your underwear is permanently itchy."

"True," Kit says. "Although, if she wanted me to pine for her eternally, that might explain a few things."

Jayla rolls her eyes. "That's just you, goof."

"No demon summoning or deals with the devil," I say. "In case that isn't perfectly obvious."

"It is," Jayla says. "You wouldn't do anything like that even if you believed it was possible. But what about other kinds of oaths or promises? To what seemed like an ordinary person? Or shouted into the universe, where some entity heard and took you up on the offer." She pauses and mutters, "I can't believe I just said that."

"I can say, with absolutely certainty, that I have not made any promises that might have landed in the ear of an evil entity."

"Wishes?" she asks.

"No wishes to a monkey's paw. No wishes to a djinn. I do wish on falling stars and birthday candles and wishing wells. And I have wished to be published, many times, but in the last few years…" My tone drops as I shrug. "All my wishes were for Anna, which obviously didn't come true."

Kit moves to sit beside me, and I lean against him.

Jayla shakes her head. "If falling-star and wishing-well and birthday-candle wishes could summon demons, I'd be one of the few people left alive. I don't believe in that shit."

"I've been racking my brain for hours," I say. "Even before I realized it wasn't Sadie talking to me. But it's not as if I randomly go around making rash promises to strangers or setting up hex circles in my basement."

"Oh!" Kit says, straightening. "What if it's not about Laney? It's about her house. This is her house, her island. Those idiots copied hex circles and other nonsense they found online. But it really did something, really did summon or wake something—and, yes, I also can't believe I'm saying this—but it summoned or woke some dark entity, and that entity thinks Laney is responsible."

"Because it's her property." Jayla looks at me. "You researched the stagings. The one on the crawlspace hatch was a real hex circle."

"Real in the sense they didn't make it up," I say. "It came from some old grimoire, but it was just meant to ward people away. Bad luck to those who trespass."

"Yeah, well, this is some seriously bad luck," Jayla mutters. "But that doesn't seem right. What about the rest?"

"The stuff in the boathouse was the same. An occult ‘go away.' But I did find some other kind of symbol—rougher—on the bluff this morning."

"Plus the rat king," Kit says.

"And what about the bird-feather wind chimes?" Jayla asks.

"I never found anything online about that, though it was harder to search. I figured it was just generic creepiness."

"That's the answer," Jayla says, jabbing a finger at me. "Sinclair and Rossi found something, and they copied it. Whatever they summoned tried to imitate the wind chimes with parts of Rossi's body. That's the one it chose to copy, which means it's a message. Not a demonic wind chime obviously, but a configuration of materials Sinclair and Rossi used as a wind chime. Whatever that original configuration did, it made some kind of promise. An oath. It called this entity, who expects whatever was promised, and when it doesn't get it, it goes haywire, killing everyone in sight and leaving a similar configuration for you. It's saying you summoned it and reneged on the deal."

"So now what do we do?" Kit says. "Explain it's all a misunderstanding, shake hands with the spawn of evil and go our separate ways?"

"I know that sounds ridiculous," Jayla says. "But it can communicate. We just need to do that."

"Shout it from the rooftops? Hope it hears?"

"Do you have a better idea?" She looks from me to Kit. "Then the rooftop it is."