Chapter 23

It's like moving underwater. Thegravel crunches like tiny shards of glass under my feet, but the air is thick, dense, a steamy fog coating the earth. We weave our way down the driveway, between the cars slick with condensation, feeling our way until we reach the end, where the gravel gives way to smooth pavement. Our cars are lined up neatly like they should be—all except for Ryan's. I shouldn't have questioned Kennedy. If she said he left, he either left or wanted her to think he did. But if he did fake a goodbye and stick around without telling even me, he had to have a very good reason. And I intend to find out why.

By now the fog has become so thick it's hard to breathe, and it's growing heavier by the minute. We need to cross the street before beginning the hike up the steep path through the trees to the cell spot. It's a pretty rocky climb at times, and it can be tricky in slick conditions. It will be incredibly dangerous in the fog. The air hangs heavily on my skin, and the sensation that something large and dark and shapeless is going to emerge out of the fog and pounce on me is so palpable, every muscle in my body is tensed.

Chase and I link arms at the edge of the street. "Ready?" He peers out into the darkness.

"As ever." We walk slowly and carefully, and I try not to let every horror movie I've ever seen play out in my mind. Only the expendables leave the cabin in the woods. The ones who didn't bother to read the script. "It's a good thing we never hooked up."

He laughs uncomfortably. "You're doing it again. Thought hopping. Help me out."

"Because like, in a horror movie, we'd be so dead right now."

He lets out a burst of laughter. "Touché. Thank god for the chastity of our friendship."

"Or lack of active serial killers in the area," I can't help adding.

He winces as we reach the start of the trail and step into the darkness of the forest. "Did you have to add that?"

"I was thinking it." I don't like this fog. It reminds me of water, the feeling of big things with sharp jaws circling unseen. "Kennedy said she doesn't think that's it, though. I mean, she doesn't think a random person hurt Emily or wants to mess with us."

Chase climbs silently for a bit. "That makes sense."

"I think so too. Why would a random person single us out? Wait so long in between attacks? It doesn't feel right. Whatever is happening right now is personal. Someone knows how to turn us against each other." We reach a steep rocky portion, and Chase nods for me to go first.

"I'll spot you."

I look around nervously for a foothold, beginning to second-guess my plan. I think Mila did head for the cell spot, and there's a chance Ryan is out here too. But both of them are seasoned athletes, and I'm not. I boost myself up and begin to climb. I don't talk, focusing on reaching the next flat spot in the trail. The surface is slick and muddy, and the fog is so thick at this level, I can't see above and I can't see below. But my hands eventually reach dirt, and I pull myself up and collapse onto the ground, my chest heaving in relief.

Chase easily joins me and stands and stretches, gazing up at the moon. The fog is thinner at this height. I wonder if we've clawed our way above the clouds. "Happy anniversary," he says suddenly, with a dark laugh.

I pull myself to my feet slowly. "That's not funny."

"It had to have been around now, right? Give or take an hour?" He raises an invisible glass. "To the moment all of our lives were spectacularly destroyed."

"How can you say that? Emily died. We're still here." My voice is swallowed up by the fog. It feels like cotton in my ears, dulling even Chase's voice to a soft, muted sound.

He speaks in cloudy wisps. "Yeah. We are. But we're not okay. You spent the year in a hospital, Chelsea. A year. That's extreme. Kennedy obviously went through some kind of psychological trauma, and Mila took more than her fair share of the blame. We need to find a way to make things right and move on with our lives. That's why I came back." He shrugs helplessly. "I don't think any of us can do another lap of last year. We all suffered."

"Not all of us suffered in Rome." I can't help it slipping out.

"Fair enough." His classic smile reappears, but something is a little off. It's creepy.

"They run out of pizza or something?" I try to resent him, but it's useless. Chase is the kind of guy who can spend a gap year in Europe, floating in a haze of hookah bars, sipping craft beers, and living on a steady diet of gourmet cheese and freshly baked bread, and the worst you can do is wish you were there with him. Even when he acts like it's some kind of chore.

He tightens his jaw and slows as his eyes search through the thin velvet mist. "I wouldn't know. I didn't leave my room." I try to imagine being whisked to a villa overlooking sparkling fountains and cobblestone streets. Designer shops and unbelievable food and buildings built on the ashes of a city that burned to dust.

After a brief moment of silence he darts a look at me. "My father would never risk a scandal, so there was no question of me sticking around. But every time I closed my eyes, I was back here in the burning house surrounded by everyone I let down."

"You never let me down," I say.

"Of course I did, Chelsea." Chase looks at me with an expression that makes my stomach feel tight. His confident aura rarely wavers, but tonight it's been flickering like a candle. "None of this would be happening if I'd been a little faster. Or smarter. I'm supposed to be so fucking smart. And I couldn't figure out how to save a friend. And now I find out Ryan went back for Mila? The only time it mattered one bit, my brain decided to sit it out." He pauses. "I failed. I deserve every last bit of the blame." He stumbles and almost pulls me over with him, but we both right ourselves and keep going. The night is cloaked in silence, stillness. I wish we could just turn around. As much as I dread the house and whatever is within, I dread that something following me into the darkness even more. A house has walls and doors and locks. Out here we are helpless. I see nothing, hear nothing, but Chase, but I feel that it sees me.

It might not be Emily that's been speaking to me all this time. Because it doesn't feel like Emily now. It feels monstrous, as big as the lake and as silent as the fog, as angry as the fire and as corporeal as the house. It feels everywhere, inescapable, and suddenly I want to go back to the hospital, to the place I hated, because everything was so certain there. Half hours of certainty, menus of reliability, pills of predictability. I want the last thing I remember that was predictable and sure. It wasn't good there. I was so glad to leave. But it didn't ruin my life.

"Stop." I look around uneasily. "I have no idea where we are."

"The path only goes one place," he says, his confidence returning a little.

"But the path branches." I falter. A lookout here, a picnic spot there. Dozens of adventures that we wore into the dirt one summer at a time.

"Trust me," he says, starting forward again. But even the words make me uneasy.

"Maybe you should trust yourself. About that night, I mean," I say as casually as I can. "You tried to stop the fire. What else could you do?"

He glances at me briefly. "I wasn't entirely fair to Emily, was I?" His voice is hollow, his expression flat.

"By choosing Mila over her? That didn't kill her."

"I certainly hope not."

"You did sleep with her, though?" I ask abruptly.

"We were all so close," he says in a quiet, very un-Chase-like voice. "Don't you think it started to get weird?"

"How?"

"You and Kennedy. Ryan on the periphery. Emily. Me. For years we were all like family and then suddenly—" He snaps his fingers. "Boom goes the dynamite." He pauses. "I loved Emily like a sister. Sometimes you confuse different types of love."

I wish I could have told Ryan that. Before he got so angry. "But you did love her?"

"Why are you pushing this?" He gives me an odd look.

"I just think it's weird. You had a girlfriend. Emily turned up dead."

"Jesus, Chelsea."

"Mila was here, and you slept with Emily." I look into his eyes. "You messed up. Everyone messes up and you did too. Say it, Chase."

He stares at me for a moment. "Okay. I did. But there was nothing sinister about it. If you want to accuse me of something, carpe diem."

"I don't. I just wanted to—"

"Ask me about my motive," he finishes. "Well, there you go. And if you're curious why I didn't run into a burning building to save my girlfriend, it's because by that point it was physically impossible. I don't know how it all went up so fast, but it did. I hope that's an acceptable excuse?"

"Yes. Sorry. Of course."

"Now can I ask you something? Why exactly do you have so many questions about the fire? I mean, I get that everyone has blank spots. We were in different rooms, there was smoke inhalation, sleep, no one exactly sees a gas leak. And it does seem the Hartfords did quite a job keeping the details under lock and key. But you really seem to know nothing. Like Jon Snow nothing." He looks at me expectantly. Suspiciously?

I edge around him uncomfortably. "I know what I witnessed. None of the rest of you saw what I saw. They told me I have post-traumatic stress disorder with severe insomnia and panic attacks. I have these intrusive thoughts. Like…" I push forward, head down, avoiding his gaze as he tightens his pace to match my stride. "Little movies of terrible things happening that just run on a loop. The theory was, the more I knew, the more intrusive thoughts I'd have, and the more detailed they would be. And the more panic attacks. And I'd think I was dying every day. And I wouldn't sleep. Which is all true. Kennedy asked me why I never sought this information out. Why I didn't ask my parents or a doctor or just read a newspaper. What happened in the fire." I take a deep breath. "But the truth is, I was in a scary place, Chase. I'm not magically better, but things were worse. They were a lot worse. And being back here… the not knowing is hurting me too." I stop and catch my breath.

He reaches out to me and pulls me into a bear hug. "When I say I didn't leave my room… I couldn't. I was so afraid something would happen. How… much can you handle now?"

"All of it. I have to. And then just take it one day at a time, you know?"

He puts an arm around me and we continue on. "Exactly. We don't need to hear all the details in a single night. As for me, to be honest, I might not have caught much more news coverage than you from my pizza cave. I didn't even hear about the gas leak, although I bet that makes Mila nervous."

"Because—" I mime lighting a cigarette.

He nods. "Exactly."

"You don't think she…?"

"I know she didn't." He sets his jaw stubbornly.

"Kennedy thinks she wasn't invited. Do you think she would just show up?"

He looks at me. "Mila is always invited. I'm not leaving her behind ever again."

I blush. "I didn't mean to imply she isn't welcome. Kennedy didn't either. She just… has a theory that the person who made the game cards meant them to be about you, me, and Kennedy, because of some comment Mila made about the invitations. If she's right, it would make you the traitor by process of elimination. Which would mean neither you nor Mila is guilty."

"Oh," he says. "Well, I'm not going to argue with that."

"So if you don't know what started the fire, what about the boat?" Someone has to hold the key to deciphering the tarot clues.

He furrows his brow. "Yeah, some of us took the boat out earlier… Kennedy, Mila, and me. I can't remember anything notable happening. I think maybe we had drinks with Emily at the stone table when we got back. But you went to bed early right? Headache?"

I grab his arm. "So you do believe I was asleep when Emily came inside."

A look of understanding dawns on his face. "Chelsea, no one thinks you locked Emily in the attic or anything. Everyone honestly believes this was an accident."

"Not Ryan."

Chase's expression darkens. "Right." The cell spot is close, almost in view. He takes a deep breath. "Look, I'm the last person who wanted to even consider this, but I don't see an alternative explanation anymore. Ryan's fucking with us. This entire weekend was a setup. He invited us here because he blames us for what happened and he's trying to scare us to death."

I shake my head. "He wouldn't do that."

"No, he wouldn't commit murder. This is catharsis. It's messed up, and I don't believe for a second that he would hurt any of us, but from everything you've said, he truly believes one of us killed Emily. Think about that. Then tell me someone else is more likely to be behind this."

I struggle to answer. "If. If someone did kill—"

"But who? Who would kill a friend? Who could live with themself after that? It would be like some kind of epic torture. Look at Macbeth. As humans, we're not designed to handle it. He thinks we did this thing. No one else makes sense."

I take his arm, stopping him. "But there is an alternate explanation, you just won't listen. It could be Emily that called us back here. Emily or… I don't know, a kind of distorted echo of Emily that drew us back to the lake, the attic, the cellar. It's like she's making us retrace our steps from that night."

He frowns as he starts to walk toward the clearing. "Why?"

"Because it forces us to face what we did." My head snaps up, and I run to his side just as he's reaching the edge of the clearing. "Because when we left the lake house, it got very comfortable living in denial over what happened, but we can't do that here. And she knows that because she knows us."

But Chase isn't listening anymore. He's staring into the empty clearing. "Shit." I gaze around. Soft pine needles blanket the damp earth, untouched by footprints. Up here, above the mossy rocks, we played pirates as children, painted toilet-roll telescopes and popped sunglass-lens eye patches. Later, we discovered this was the one spot at the lake house where we could call home or text a friend. Up farther, from the highest point, you could see over the rooftops, see the sun drain bloody sunsets into the lake or crack the earth to reveal a newborn phoenix rising from the depths.

Chase shouts Mila's name, but the fog seems to swallow it up. He drops onto the ground and leans against a tree, throwing his head back in frustration. "I must have missed her by one minute. I stopped to talk to you. When I went inside, I heard footsteps upstairs. I kept calling her name, but… I couldn't catch up. I failed her again." A chill runs down my spine. There it is again. Footsteps. Just like Mila heard earlier. He rubs his head as if to soothe a massive headache, smearing it with mud. Our hands are stained with dirt and scented with sap from climbing. We look like grave robbers. Maybe Mila's right. I do think in nightmares.

"I'm sorry," I say quietly. "She wanted to use her phone. I thought… It doesn't matter."

He rolls his head over to me. "What?"

I sigh. "You keep laughing at my theories."

He laughs again but not in an amused or mocking way. He laughs like it's the only sound left to make. "I'm sorry. I think my brain is broken." He eyes me. "Mila didn't think it was funny. You know, you got into her head a little bit with the ghost-whisperer stuff."

"So she believed me about Emily?"

"Not exactly—not about the ghosts. Maybe just the idea of haunting. I think she's spooked by the house itself. There are a lot of ways to be haunted. A place, a person, a memory."

"I don't think any of us believed in ghosts until tonight," I say, annoyed. It's the way people word things. Always so careful to separate themselves. Mila was never kicked out of school for admitting she thought about suicide. Spent a year shuttered away in a haze of pills. So she's allowed to believe whatever she wants.

He backs off. "I wasn't insinuating anything, Chels. I mean, come on. Look at what's happening." His eyes meet mine. "The invitation, the game, the attic door slamming shut. The lights and cars didn't cut themselves. We are not alone here. Don't you feel it even now?" That's the thing. Up here, cloaked in thick layers of fog, where no one could see us fall or hear us scream, I do feel it. The clearing is empty.

But we are not alone.

On the lake, too, there was someone, something. The shadow tumbling from Summer's Edge. The something stirring beneath. I take the tarot cards from my pocket and slowly turn them over in my hands. "Whatever Ryan is after, he genuinely believes Emily is still here, and is trying to communicate to him that she was killed, and wants him to find out how."

"Jesus," Chase whispers.

"There's more." I sift through the cards. "He thinks Emily is using tarot cards she made to give him clues. The cards are unsettling. Believe it or don't, but she did make them, which means she had certain feelings about us that I didn't know she had."

He looks at me expectantly. "How bad are they?"

I hand him his card. Chase in the clearing. He takes it slowly and stands, and as the moon breaks through a veil of fog, he's cast in an eerie pale blue light, mirroring Emily's sketch. And it hits me what the tarot card is showing just as he looks up, the blood drained from his face.

"It's me," he says hoarsely.

"Right here. With your phone."

He looks sick. "When did she draw this?"

I shudder. "Sometime before she died."

He grabs my hand and yanks me to my feet. "Come on."

I look up at him, alarmed. "What's the matter?"

"We have to find Mila and Kennedy and get as far away from here as possible." He stuffs the card into his pocket, and I slip the others into mine before he sees them and freaks out further.

"Can you please walk me through whatever is going on right now?"

He shakes his head as he pulls me rapidly through the trees, down into the thicker fog. "Stay close, okay? If you see Ryan again, shout." He glances back at me over his shoulder. "I don't know what he's capable of. And I don't want to know. But I promise you this—Ryan left these cards, not Emily. And they aren't clues. They're warnings."