Envy (Fury) (26 page)

“So what should we do about it?” she asked. They were losing time to come up with a plan.

Drea shook her head and started the car. “I don’t know, Em. I think . . . I think this is bigger than we thought. I think the banishment ritual needs to happen as soon as possible. I think it’s . . . I think you . . .” She didn’t finish her thought, and worry fell between them like a boulder. Em contemplated telling Drea now about Sasha’s connection to the Furies.

They drove home in tense silence.

In Em’s driveway Drea fiddled with her snake pendant, still not speaking. Em reached down to gather her things. “That’s weird,” she blurted out. Her arm wasn’t bleeding anymore. In fact, the marks Ty had left seemed to have practically healed.

“What?” Drea asked.

“I just . . . I could have sworn that Ty scratched me and broke the skin,” Em said, putting her arm out so Drea could see. “I was bleeding. But now . . . it’s, like, fine.”

“Weird.” Drea’s voice sounded strangled. She put the car into reverse. “I’m sorry, Em. I gotta go. I have to get home.” Em nodded and got out of the car. She had to step quickly to the side to avoid getting hit as Drea peeled out of the driveway.

On Thursday afternoon after school Skylar took Aunt Nora’s bicycle from the garage and rode it to the Haunted Woods, praying that no one would see her along the way. When she got there, the ground had refrozen where the mud had been, leaving craggy peaks and valleys on the forest floor. Everything was still, silent, and full of winter ache.

She’d realized during the week that she had no idea what had happened to her special watch, the silver one her mother had given to both her and Lucy. She hated the memories attached to it, but at the same time, she couldn’t bear to lose it. Sometimes she wondered if she kept it out of familial loyalty or because she felt a sick desire to preserve the memories of the bad times. Wearing that watch was like a constant reminder not to feel guilty about what had happened.

That watch served a purpose.

She knew it was out here somewhere. The last time she’d seen it was right before she fell.

Skylar walked along a sun-dappled path that looked like the one they’d followed last Friday, keeping her eyes trained on the ground. She spotted mottled leaves, scarred sections of tree root, and brownish moss blanketing fallen logs. But no watch. The woods were brittle and motionless, drawn back into an early spring frost. Skylar pulled her knit gray hat farther over her ears and shoved her hands deep into the pockets of her pink flared peacoat, which had been Nora’s in the 1970s.

She looked up to see the sun scooting behind a cloud, and the air turned gray as she looked around, trying to get her bearings. Through the trees she saw a large, boxy brown house, like something from the Colonial era, not more than fifty paces away.
That’s weird,
she thought.
I thought this part of Ascension was uninhabited.
Seeing an unfamiliar landmark suggested to Skylar that she was lost, and she thought about turning around, retracing her steps, and trying to find a different path. But she quickly talked herself out of it. The woods weren’t
that
big, and the party site had to be around here somewhere.

The trees were casting shadows now as the sun dipped lower in the sky. Their branches looked like fingers, poking their way down, grabbing at her. She tripped on a root but caught herself against some bark, rough and sandpapery.

She was less sure all of a sudden. This wasn’t right; she’d been walking for too long. She was lost. What if the owner of that house back there came out and got her in trouble for trespassing? But there was light up ahead—another clearing. She would check it out. If that wasn’t it, she would turn around.

Suddenly she found herself by a pond, where drooping, dead cattails ringed water that glistened with a paper-thin layer of ice. Larger pine trees stood around it, sentinels of this small woodland oasis. There were no benches here, no wooden signposts—this wasn’t a popular watering hole, just a tiny, dark body of water.

Sitting on top of that thin sheet of ice was a red flower—just like the one Skylar had worn at her party. The one Meg had given her. A shiver went through her from head to toe, and she balled up her hands inside her pockets. Memories came flooding back—how Em’s eyes had widened in fear when she’d seen the flower, how she’d grabbed it from Skylar and thrown it into the fire. And now here it was, or one that was almost identical, shimmering red among dead brown reeds and grasses.

As Skylar made her way over to it she felt as though she was walking through a dream. There was something not right about the flower, about the day, about the pond, but she felt unable to change course.

She stopped at the bank, her boots sinking into the slushy muck. The flower was just sitting there, as if it had grown out of the ice. And then, as she reached to grab it—it was
just
within
her reach—her foot hit something solid in the reeds. Something that was not water, mud, or ice.

She kicked at it. It was dense and firm, kind of like a wet, decaying log. She bent down and swept aside the thick growth of tall, sun-bleached grasses.

It didn’t quite register at first. She found herself stumbling backward, almost like her body understood what it was before her mind did. Her stomach heaved and bile came up her throat.

It was a leg. She’d tripped on a leg that was not a log and was lodged in the mud at the edge of the pond.

A leg.

A leg attached to a body.

Both of the corpse’s legs were askew and washed up mostly on the bank; its torso and head were submerged, barely visible beneath the murky water and chunks of floating ice. But she could see enough to know that she was looking at a male face, which stared up at her from just below the surface.

She lurched again, still heaving. The sour taste of fear and nausea filled her mouth. Once she could stand, she backed up again, until she hit something—someone.

Skylar screamed, a high-pitched, frantic scream.

“It’s okay, Sky. It’s just me.”

Meg was standing right behind her. She looked back and forth impassively between Skylar and the body.

“There’s a—” Skylar blubbered. “I found a—”

Meg wrinkled her nose and cocked her head to one side. “Dead as a doorknob, huh?” she said, and Skylar realized she had already noticed the corpse. “Thank goodness we saw your bike out there. We wouldn’t want you out here alone!”

“How did you know that was my . . .” She trailed off, noticing that Ty and Ali were there as well, the three of them arranged like the three points of a triangle.

The air went out of Skylar’s chest. For the first time, she saw Meg—her lustrous hair and cupid’s face, her red choker, her thin fingers—and was frightened. Who was this person, seeing a dead body and observing it calmly as if it was something you see every day?

Ty and Ali weren’t any better. All three of the girls looked . . . blank. Skylar shivered as she was overcome by another wave of nausea. She leaned over and retched.

“Sad, isn’t it?” Ty said placidly, shaking her head like she was watching a disappointing news report. “I think he worked at Ascension. I recognize him.”

“Was he a . . . teacher?” Skylar said, wiping her mouth, still shaking. She found herself wondering what his face had looked like when he was alive. What his mouth had looked like when he talked. What his eyes had looked like when they weren’t frozen in terror.

Ali tossed her blond hair over her shoulder and giggled, a jarring sound that made Skylar’s toes curl in her boots. “Well, you could certainly learn a lot from him.”

Skylar narrowed her eyes. “What are you talking about? Why are you laughing?”

Meg came up and put her hand on Skylar’s back, rubbing it in small circles. “Come on. You’ve had a shock. We’ll take you home.”

Skylar’s skin crawled where Meg touched, and she jerked away. “Shouldn’t we . . . call the police?” Skylar choked out, trying to keep her eyes on Meg but finding them pulled toward the dead body.

“Why don’t you do it when we get home?” Meg said, shepherding Skylar to a path on the other side of the pond. “There isn’t any cell service around here. Come on,” she repeated. “We’ll drive you.”

They walked a short distance in silence until they reached the Lincoln. Skylar’s mind was spinning with questions, but each time she took a breath and opened her mouth—
Who was he? What happened to him? Why were you just . . . standing there, as though you’d been looking for me, or for
him
?
—she found herself too shocked and revolted to speak. Her nose was running; her eyes burned. More even than the sight of the body, she couldn’t forget its feeling. How her boot had felt against human flesh and bone. She tried to stay focused. One foot in front of the other.

“I don’t need a ride,” she reminded them when they reached the car. “Like you guys saw, I already have my aunt’s bike.” Truth was, she really didn’t want to get in the car with the girls. They were freaking her out.

“Don’t be silly,” Meg said, all sugary sweet. “You’re in shock. We’ll come back for your bike tomorrow.”

Skylar didn’t feel like she could argue back. She relented. Still, once all four of them were in the car, with Ali at the wheel, Ty in the front, and Meg and Skylar in the backseat, she tried again to speak.
How did you know I was in the woods?
she wanted to say. But just as she was about to voice a question, Ty turned around. Even with her dark hair and pale skin, she seemed to glow.

“Oh, here,” she said, bringing her hand over the divider between the front and back seats. Clutched in her slender fingers was the orchid. The bloodred flower that had drawn Skylar to the edge of the pond.

Skylar drew back as though it was on fire. “Why—why are you giving me that?” She caught Ali’s eyes in the rearview mirror; her mouth, as usual, was painted into a perfect bloodred grin.

She looked at Meg uncertainly, hoping to find some reassurance, and some answers. Instead, she saw only the tilted birdlike look that was becoming Meg’s trademark.

Ty leaned over and used the flower petals to tap Skylar’s knee. It was the lightest of touches, but it felt like a slice from a knife. “You dropped it in the woods!” Ty said, pouting. “I thought you wanted it!”

“I don’t want it,” Skylar insisted.

They were getting closer to Aunt Nora’s house. Thank god. Skylar couldn’t wait to get out of the car. How could the girls
be acting so casual? They’d just found a
dead body
, for god’s sake! And what was with that stupid orchid?

Skylar knew nothing about Meg or her cousins. But she still knew that something about them was decidedly off.

Skylar already had her hand on the door handle, ready to leap out of the car, when they pulled up in front of Nora’s house. She thanked them hurriedly and moved toward the walkway. As she did Ty rolled down her window.

“À bientôt, escargot,”
Ty said with a wave.

A sheet of cold blew through Skylar’s body. In her whole life, she had heard only one person use that expression before: Em Winters.

Ohmygod.
JD wanted to talk. To her. To Em. To his lovelorn former best friend, who he had been shunning for months. On Thursday afternoon he texted:
We should meet.
Em’s heart nearly exploded.

That’s all it took,
she thought wryly.
Boy sees girl attempting sacrifice in graveyard, boy falls back in love. Why didn’t I think of that before?

So around eight o’clock on Thursday night, after a strained dinner with her parents, Em threw her hair into a messy bun, put her Sorel boots over her sweatpants, and marched over to the Founts’ front door.

One thing was clear: If she wanted to save her relationship with JD, it was time to talk. She might not be able to tell
him the whole truth, but Em was determined to make him understand . . . something. Whether it took burying the past or explaining part of the present or fibbing around the truth, Em was going to make amends.

She knocked. As soon as she did, though, she lost some of her certainty. The last time she’d stood here, she’d been screaming at Drea. And the last time she’d seen JD, she’d been practicing witchcraft in a cemetery. But he hadn’t said anything to anyone, at least as far as Em knew, and now he was reaching out to her. He was still on her side.

She heard JD yell, “I’ll get it!” from inside, and his voice gave her a surge of renewed hopefulness, enough to make her crack a small smile.

She was still wearing the stupid grin when he opened the door; the sight of him in his slightly baggy jeans, white T-shirt, and favorite ratty cardigan—the one with the holes in both elbows and the coffee stain on the right cuff—was enough to make her smile even more broadly. His eyes were the color of autumn. She’d nearly forgotten how absolutely adorable he was.

But JD’s tired, wary expression knocked the smile off her face. This wasn’t going to be easy.

“So, our Reign of Silence is over?” she asked with false cheer as he swung open the door. He shrugged but didn’t respond, just turned and let her follow him through the foyer and into the den.

They settled in the den, as usual, but the awkward silence
between them was unfamiliar. Em tried not to picture JD and Drea cozied up here on the couch. What if he’d told her about Em’s crazy ritual? Then there was a girlish squeal from the doorway between the kitchen and the den.

“Emmmmmmmmm!” It was Melissa standing there with her hair in a braid and a bag of tortilla chips in her hands.

“Hey, Melly,” Em said, grateful for the distraction.

“Thank goodness,” Mel said, crunching on a chip.

“Thank goodness what?” Em said.

“Thank goodness you’re
here
,” Mel said, as though it was the most obvious thing on Earth. “I was starting to think you didn’t love us anymore!”

“We need some privacy, Melly,” JD said. But his voice wasn’t exasperated. It had softened.

“Whatever,” his sister replied. “I have to go upstairs anyway. I’m in the middle of a chat.”