The fluorescent light above my head flickered.
Not now.
I froze, my hand instinctively moving to the silver medal on my necklace. The Hand of Eshu, the protective symbol Alara had given me.
A sudden pop sent a shower of sparks raining down over me. I ducked and covered my head, my mind scanning through mental pictures of the room. Was there anything in here I could use as a weapon?
Find out what you’re up against.
I glanced at the ceiling. Black smoke coated the inside of one of the light bulbs.
A burnt out bulb. Not a paranormal attack.
I’d been anticipating one since the night I freed Andras, but nothing had happened. Yet. What would Jared think if he’d seen me jump out of my skin over a light bulb? My thoughts always found their way back to him.
Where was he right now? Was he safe?
What if something had happened to him?
A familiar knot formed in my throat.
He’s okay. He has to be. They all have to be.
Jared, Lukas, Alara, and Priest knew how to take care of themselves, and each other. The last time I saw them at the penitentiary lingered in my mind.
Thinking about them will just make you miss them more.
I splashed cold water on my face and groped for a paper towel, blinking away the memories and the water in my eyes. A blurry reflection passed behind me in the mirror.
I jerked back. “Sorry,” I said, embarrassed by my reaction. “I didn’t see you.”
I turned away from the mirror, the reflection of the back of the room lingered in my peripheral vision. I looked for the person who had come in.
No one was there.
Battling vengeance spirits with Jared, Lukas, Alara, and Priest had taught me paranormal entities could be anywhere. The odds of running into an angry spirit on a hundred-year-old campus, like Winterhaven, were higher than most. But the likelihood of me randomly encountering one in the bathroom seemed exponentially lower, especially if I factored the nightmares into the equation.
My experiences over the last few months had taught me that whatever I’d seen in the mirror would probably be back. I needed to be ready, and eating blueberry Pop Tarts three meals a day wasn’t exactly the diet of champions. Time to lift my ban on the dining hall.
Ten minutes later, I stood in line, scooping unnaturally orange macaroni and cheese onto my plate. I grabbed a pack of cinnamon Pop Tarts to switch things up, and scanned the room for an empty table. Two Black Eyeliners nodded in my direction, inviting me to sit with them. Instead, I took a seat at the opposite end of the table. They didn’t realize I was doing them a favor.
I dropped my notepad next to the congealed ball of noodles and flipped through the drawings. It felt like watching my nightmares in stop-motion—Priest’s hand reaching up from the well, Alara strapped in the electric chair, the spirits of dozens of poisoned children lined up at the ends of their metal beds. There were pages and pages of them, each image more disturbing than the next.
When I reached an unfinished sketch from a few nights ago, a chill crept up the back of my neck. A figure loomed over me as I slept, just like it had in the nightmare. I hunched over the page, filling in the missing sections of the sketch. After a few minutes, features emerged—the feral eyes and elongated jaw of an animal, jutting out from a human silhouette.
Andras.
My fingers tightened around the pencil. I’d left out a detail in the sketch, one I couldn’t draw. In the nightmare, he spoke to me.
I’m coming for you.
It had sounded more like a promise than a threat.
“Another newbie,” one of the Black Eyeliners called out from the other end of the table.
A girl with stick-straight blond hair stood in the doorway, her eyes darting around the room like a frightened deer. She inched forward, her face still puffy and red from crying, and a Winterhaven Welcome Binder pressed against her chest. I recognized that look. Her parents had probably dropped her off this morning. Winterhaven was the last stop for the troubled daughters of wealthy East Coast families. From runaways and cutters to pill poppers and party girls, Winterhaven accepted them all—including me.
Now the school was responsible for us, which wasn’t saying much. None of the teachers cared what kind of trouble we got into behind closed doors, as long as we didn’t kill each other. The party girls kept partying and the cutters kept cutting. Only the runaways lost out because the school was buried so deep in the Pennsylvania woods, there was nowhere to run.
Whispers spread through the room in seconds.
“Too young for drunk driving.”
“Doesn’t look brave enough to be a runaway.”
“I’m going with pills. Definitely.”
“Final answer?”
I tuned out the voices and shaded in the rest of the sketch. Bits and pieces of the nightmare flashed through my mind—the figure watching me in the darkness, its features emerging from the shadows, the paralyzing fear.
It was too much.
I wanted to rip out the page and tear it to shreds. I wanted to fall asleep without being tormented. More than anything, I wanted to forget. But I couldn’t let myself.
“Is anyone sitting here?” The new girl stood across from me, the edge of her tray shaking. “I mean, is it okay if I sit here?” She looked even younger than Priest—fourteen maybe.
The Black Eyeliners laughed. I had already passed on their invitation to sit with them. They probably assumed the new girl’s odds weren’t good, which was reason enough to let her sit with me.
I gestured at the empty seat across from me. “Sit down before the vultures start circling.”