Or Mackey. Or Hart. Or Evie or Sera or Sander.
Because I know they all must have their own dark corners.
Or what if it’s Elora herself ? How well did I really know my best friend?
Or . . . what if it’s me?
Because I’m starting to think that I’m the biggest stranger of all. I’ve been home just over two weeks, without Elora, and I can already feel myself changing. I’m keeping secrets from Hart. And from Honey. Telling half-truths.
And I can’t really even say why.
Later, when I get up, I hear the shower running in Honey’s upstairs bathroom. I head into the kitchen to get some milk. I don’t let myself look at that picture. The one of me and my mom. Instead, I cross to the back window and part the curtains to peek out into the night.
I see the storage shed, and I think about Case again. Crawling around in there on his hands and knees.
I grab a flashlight and head out back. The wind has really kicked up, and Evie’s chimes are singing so loud.
Feels like maybe there’s a storm blowing in.
I push open the door to the shed, then I drop down low and shine my flashlight around the dusty floor. The rough wood bites at my palms and my knees. But I keep looking. I didn’t find anything yesterday. But this time, something tells me not to quit.
So I don’t.
I check every spiderwebbed corner and lift every single box to look underneath. I’m about to give up when something shiny catches my flashlight beam. It’s wedged down in a crack between two of the floorboards. I pry at it with one fingernail, but it’s stuck tight.
I dig a screwdriver out of the toolbox on the counter, and I use that to pry at it some more. And it eventually comes free.
I hold it in my palm and shine my flashlight on the little silver circle.
Saint Sebastian stares up at me. Patron saint of athletes.
Elora’s good luck charm.
The one she’s carried in her pocket every single day since we were twelve years old.
My hand starts to shake, and it makes it hard to turn the medal over. But I have to. I have to know. For sure.
And there’s Case’s name engraved on the back. So there’s no mistaking what this is. Who it belonged to.
It isn’t the name that stops my heart, though. It’s the dark red smudge across the name. Something dry. The color of rust.
I drop the Saint Sebastian medal like it’s on fire.
I want to scream, but I only gag on my own tongue as I scramble to my feet. There’s no air in the shed. I stand there for a long time with the little silver medal lying on the floor in my flashlight beam. Like I’m hitting it with a spotlight.
Finally, I force myself to pick it up. I choke back vomit as I slip it into my pocket and step out on to the boardwalk. I take a few steps toward the back door.
There’s a flash of lightning. The low rumble of thunder. Clouds roll fast across the black sky, and Evie’s wind chimes cry into the night.
They tell me that I’m not alone. Out here in the dark. Something is moving through the cypress trees. Whispering through the tall grass.
I feel it coming closer.
Breathing.
And waiting.
Watching me.
I try to move toward the kitchen door. Just a few feet away.
But I can’t make my feet work.
Another flash of lightning.
Night becomes day, and I see him clear.
Zale stands in the open as the storm gathers around him. He’s barefoot and shirtless. And his blond hair is blowing in the wind.
When he raises his arms to the sky, more jagged lightning splits the dark in half. Electricity surges through me. My whole body tingles with its power.
He’s at least fifty yards away. But somehow I hear him whisper my name.
And it sounds like a storm on the ocean.
There’s a huge clap of thunder. Loud enough to shake the boardwalk under my feet. And the next thing I know, Honey is grabbing my hands and pulling me into the brightly lit kitchen. As she closes the door behind us, rain comes in huge pounding drops. Thunder rattles the windows, and lightning explodes across the bayou like artillery fire. Sweet-N- Low ducks for cover under a stool.
“Grey.” Honey takes my face in her hands. “What were you doing out there in this weather?” I’m shaking too hard to answer. “You know better than that.”
My great-great-grandfather was electrocuted. He’d sought shelter from a storm in the open doorway of an unlocked church, but the thunderbolt found him anyway.
Lightning got a taste for our family then.
It hunts us, Honey says. So we have to be extra careful.
She takes off her robe and drapes it around my shoulders, then she parks me in a chair at the little kitchen table while she makes me a cup of herbal tea. I take the steaming mug, and Honey sits down across from me with one of her own.