Thirty-Three

I scramble out of the hatch. Then I remember Madison. Two excruciating seconds tick past. I need to stay with Madison, to protect Madison. And Jayla? Let Kit fight whatever is attacking Jayla while I huddle in the crawlspace? No, Garrett is taken care of. Madison is safe here… at least until I know what's going on.

I glance back to be sure Madison is safely in the crawlspace. Then I slam the hatch shut.

Kit's already running into the great room. I follow, and absolute black envelops me. I can't see Kit's cell phone light. I can't see moonlight through the broken windows. I am plunged into a darkness so complete that animal terror explodes from me.

I'm blind. I've been blinded.

"Laney!"

Kit's voice, sharp with panic, then his hand paws at my arm, as if trying to find me in equal darkness. I catch it and grip his hand, and he squeezes so tight I gasp. He doesn't hear me. I don't hear me.

"Jayla!" Kit shouts. We're barreling through the complete darkness toward a noise, but the noise isn't Jayla screaming. I can't tell if she is still screaming. All I hear is the roar of wings flapping. We're heading that way because Jayla is there. She must be.

Something takes form in the darkness. Black against black, visible only as a whirling blur of motion. The crows. They're a funnel-cloud mass, swarming, and in their midst, I catch flickers of something pale. Kit's light-gray hoodie. My gut seizes. No, I'm holding Kit's hand.

Am I sure it's Kit's hand?

I try to wrench loose, but he only tightens his grip and my brain says this is Kit. Really and truly Kit. Then I remember earlier, Jayla shivering and Kit giving her his hoodie.

Jayla. That is what is at the locus of that whirling mass of crows. Jayla. Except…

Except something is wrong, because she is not fighting. Jayla would be fighting like a demon, snarling and thrashing and punching. Grabbing crows and crushing them in her bare hands.

Once, I'd snuck into a courtroom to see Jayla. I'd hidden at the back, and I'd watched her argue her case with such brilliant ferocity that I'd wanted to cry with grief and something like pride.

That's my Jayla.

My Jayla would be in that maelstrom fighting. But her arms hang down, her shoulders slumped forward, as if she's given up.

Jayla never gives up. Never, never, never. I'm the one who gives up. I surrender. I am afraid, and I do not fight for what I want. She always fights, and if she is not…

The darkness lifts, just a fraction, my eyes adjusting until I can see more than that hoodie. I see Jayla, and she isn't standing there, defeated. She is being held aloft in that swirling mass of crows. She is unconscious.

Unconscious or…

I remember that scream. That bloodcurdling scream. Kit must too, because he drives himself forward, only a few feet remaining until we reach Jayla. He's dragging me, as if no longer aware he's still holding my hand.

We're almost there. Almost to those crows. Almost to Jayla.

Except we don't seem to get any closer. Kit lets out a snarl of frustration. Then I realize what's happening. The crows are carrying Jayla toward the empty windowpanes.

I try to run faster. So much faster. We need to get to her. Need to stop them.

Through the darkness, I can make out that hoodie but nothing more. The only sound is the relentless flap of wings, moving in eerie syncopation.

They fly through the window, and then they're swooping her up, Jayla's figure nearly lost in that swirling mass as I try to track it.

Jayla. Get to Jayla.

How?

It doesn't matter. We'll figure it out. We have to. This is Jayla. Jayla. I will let nothing happen to her.

The clouds part and the moon shines. Kit and I are charging toward the broken windows, and the crows are hovering. They stop there, and then the mass begins to separate, crows winging off, leaving Jayla suspended by only a few.

Suspended twenty feet over the rocks.

"No!" I shout, my scream mingling with Kit's as we run.

Jayla hangs there, bent backward. There is a boom, a crack, a sound that I can't even understand. Something dark sprays against the night, a nimbus of blood around her. Then her body plummets to the rock.

Kit drops my hand, running as he screams, as we both scream. We finally reach the broken windows. Something hits me, like a tidal wave of air, smacking the oxygen from my lungs and hurling me backward.

I hit the floor. My hands slapping down on broken glass. Kit is beside me, scrambling up and running for the windows before I can even start to rise. The force hits him again, and he hurtles past me, hitting the recliner and knocking it over. When he doesn't spring up, I race over.

Kit lies on his back, arms sprawled, eyes closed.

I can't breathe. I can't breathe. For a moment, it is as if the floor opens, darkness spewing up to swallow me whole. Then I drop to my knees and shake him so hard his head lolls to one side. But his chest is rising and falling.

He's okay. Unconscious but alive.

I turn back toward the window. In my mind, I see Jayla again. See the explosion of blood. See her plummeting to the rock. Then I hear a voice, rising from the past. Jayla's voice with the pitch of childhood.

"So you're Laney."

"Your new study buddy," I say brightly. "I—"

"I don't need a buddy. I just need to study. Talk while I'm doing that, and I will duct-tape your mouth shut. Got it?"

My knees wobble, and I want to fall to the floor and sob.

I can't see anything. The room swirls into memories, all our firsts popping like fireworks. That first time we met. The first time I saw her smile. The first time I made her laugh. The first time I balled up the courage to ask her to a movie and she shrugged and said, "Sure, whatever," in that too-cool Jayla way. The first time I dared call her my friend, feeling like I'd somehow managed to snatch a rare gem from under the oblivious eyes of our classmates.

My Jayla is gone.

My Jayla.

Except she's not only mine. She has a girlfriend who might have been "the one." She has parents who adore her. And then there's Kit, and there is no way in hell he is going to wake up to hear me say that I did not go after his sister.

Don't give up. Don't walk away. Don't abandon her, even if it's too late.

I make it three steps before a small voice behind me rasps, "Laney?"

I turn, and there is enough light for me to see a figure in the back hall. Madison's figure. She's moving slowly, hand to her throat, and behind her, Garrett's arm is outstretched on the floor. That arm twitches, and I race to Madison. I yank her away from Garrett's body. His arm twitches once more, and then falls.

"Laney?" Madison rasps.

I guide her into the great room. She's moving slowly, as if in a trance, not having seen Garrett, not seeing Kit as I steer her around his unconscious form. I take her to the sofa bed, and I lay her down. Her eyelids flutter shut.

I glance toward the window, remembering Jayla. I need to go after her. For Kit, I need to go after her.

But I can't leave Madison. Earlier, I did. I ran to Jayla and let Madison stay in the crawlspace because I recognized who needed me more in that moment, and part of me screams that Jayla needs me—what if she's still alive?—but it is that small, infantile piece that only reacts, cannot reason, can only feel. I saw what happened. I know she is gone. The pain of that has me doubling over in excruciating agony, but I know what I need to do.

Who needs me now? Madison.

"Mads?" I say. "I have to check on Kit—"

Her eyes fly open, and they are dark as night. I stagger backward, smacking into the coffee table. Madison's head twists my way, those bird eyes fixed on mine.

I see those eyes—see that thing in her—and rage roils in me. Impotent rage, because I want to grab that thing and shake it and do whatever I can do to it… and I can do nothing, because it is in Madison. In my daughter.

This thing murdered Jayla. Jayla, who'd done nothing wrong.

"Why her?" I rasp, barely able to speak through my rage. "Why her?"

"You broke your oath. There is a price to pay."

That rage turns the world red. "Jayla was not a price. She was a person."

"You promised me peace. Then you brought strangers. You let them poke and prod at me, rip out plants, chop living trees for fires, torment foxes, kill rabbits for sport, pull fish from the lake and let them die, gasping on the rocks. Like I did to your friend."

That is not the same thing! I want to scream the words, but I clamp them back because it has a hostage, the most precious hostage of all.

"I am sorry," I say, as evenly as I can. "I will leave this island—"

"Oh, no, you will not. You are the guardian. You made an oath."

"You killed my friend—my friends—and you think I will stay—"

"You think me cruel? I would have forgiven you for waking me with the cries of the island. I would have acknowledged the mistake and accepted penance. But it was not enough. You let them"—it spits the word—"on the island. Let them try to summon darkness here. They kept coming back, and you did nothing. Then they killed him."

"Killed…?" My heart seizes, and I whisper, "Nate."

I remember what it said earlier.

"You said you let us stay because of Nate," I say. "Because we came with him."

"That was why I did not chase you off. Why I gave you a chance."

"His family had this island before the company bought—"

"Stole," it snarls, Madison's lips curling. "His family took care of me. They had been coming here so long that I was part of them, and they were part of me, and those people stole it from them when they could not say no."

I remember what Nate said about the sale of the island paying for his grandmother's cancer treatments when she was young.

The entity continues, "The boy's mother would still come, sneaking over to visit me, drawn back by her blood to this place. Then she would bring him, and she showed him how to care for me, how to talk to me and let me sleep in peace."

"Then he brought us, and you took that as a sign that we would be acceptable guardians. When we were not—when we began to build—you thought we'd tricked him. Then I made my oath and I changed the building plans, and Nate kept coming, kept visiting, and you knew all was well."

"All was well. Until they came. He caught them—that man and woman. He saw them doing their evil. He ran. He ran to me. But I was sleeping, and I could not wake in time to save him. They hit him with his own shovel. Killed him. Oh, they were horrified… for a heartbeat. Then they cut off his hand. Desecrated his corpse and stuffed his body into the crevice."

"I'm—"

"The boy died!" the thing snarls at me. "He was mine. My guardian. The last of my family. The last of my blood. And you let those people on this island to kill him. That requires a price."

Grief washes over me in a wave that pulls me under for a moment, the world going dark before I rise, gasping, my lungs burning. I want to channel that grief and pain into rage, but it's as if every ounce of energy I have is gone. Sapped by the realization that this isn't about fairness or justice in any sense I understand. It's her justice. Her, because that is what I felt before and I feel now, as hard as I try to think of this as a "thing."

She is a spirit. She is the island. And I have wronged her and paid a price through Jayla. If I could fight for Jayla, I would. If I could offer myself instead, I would. But it's too late—for her and Sadie and Garrett. They all paid a price for Nate's death, which the spirit blames me for.

"You can rest now," I say, fighting for calm. "It's over, and you can rest."

"It is not over. I'm not done. The price is not paid."

My head whips up.

Madison's lips move, the spirit speaking through her. "This girl."

My brain stutters. Long heartbeats pass as it struggles to comprehend. Then it does, and I lunge forward, grabbing for Madison, but the spirit yanks her back and something smacks me to the floor.

"This is the final piece of the price," it says. "Your child for mine."

"No," says a hoarse voice, before I can form words. Kit pushes up from the floor and wobbles toward us. "No."

He pauses midstep, something pulling his gaze toward the window. The grief that passes over his face steals my breath, and I start to rise, but he's swung his attention resolutely back to us as he continues our way.

"It is the price," the entity says. "The girl—"

"Laney's child for yours," Kit says. "I understand that. But if you kill Madison, Laney will never stay. She'll leave and not look back. She'll leave you to anyone who wants you."

"Then I will kill every human who comes after her. Innocent or guilty. Grown or child. I will slaughter them the way I killed the others. Dead but not dead. Left to rot in their husks."

"Laney won't care."

"She will. She will hate me, but she will care."

"Not if you kill her daughter. Anyone but her daughter."

I go still, my gaze rising to his, but he's moving toward Madison, looking only at the thing in her, talking only to it.

"I did this," he says, his voice low.

"No!" I say. "You…"

I keep talking, keep arguing, but Kit drowns me out. "I bought the island. I gave it to her. A bribe so she'd see what life with me would be like. All her dreams come true." His mouth twists. "I tried to trap her with this island, but it wasn't enough, and I left her with a dream she couldn't afford. The only way she could keep that dream alive was to let others come here. I gave her no choice."

"He didn't trap me," I say. "I had a choice. I always had a choice."

But Kit doesn't hear me, and she doesn't either. She only hears him.

When I grab for Kit, Madison's hand flicks up, almost casually, and that force throws me back.

"Don't you dare!" I scream. "Kill either of them, and I will leave you and I won't care who dies."

"You will care… if one of them still lives. If I hold their lives in my hand. But I only need one."

"Take me," Kit says.

I scream with everything I have. Scream to drown him out as I fight the force that holds me from him. That force slams into my mouth, stealing my air, making me choke, unable to speak, to scream, to shout.

"Take me," Kit says. "I'll pay the rest of the price."

There is a pause. One terrible heartbeat of a pause, the room utterly silent, as I fight so hard I black out and surge back. And then the entity says, "Done."

Kit turns to look at me. His face is twisted with sadness as he struggles for something like a smile. "I love—"

The entity doesn't let him finish. She hits him with that force, and he sails across the room, slamming into the wall, his head snapping back. He crumples to the floor as I inwardly scream, still unable to make a sound, to move a muscle. Then a figure appears, hobbling down the hall.

Sadie.

She bends before Kit's unconscious form, wraps her fingers in his short curls, and heaves. I try to scream again, and the world goes black with my trying. The last thing I see is Sadie dragging Kit through the broken window, dragging him away into the darkness.