“It doesn’t look like it’s worth much,” Jameson commented. “But in this family, that means nothing.” The sound of his voice did something to me—something it shouldn’t have done. Something it wouldn’t have done before I’d read my mother’s postcards.
Close your eyes, I could hear Max telling me. Who’s there?
“We’re incoming,” Oren announced curtly—to whom, I wasn’t sure. “Sweep the plane.”
When we arrived at the airstrip, he opened my door, and I got three escorts to the plane. Behind me, Grayson had switched the phone off video, but he was still on the line with Jameson.
My mind was full with images of them both—and with the words my mother had written to Toby.
The night air was cold and getting colder. As I walked toward the jet, a brutal wind picked up, then gave way to sudden and utter stillness. I heard a single, high-pitched beep, and the world exploded. Into fire. Into nothing.
CHAPTER 76
Everything hurt. I couldn’t hear. I couldn’t see. When blurred images finally began to form, all I saw was fire. Fire and Grayson, standing a hundred feet away from me.
I waited for him to come running.
I waited.
I waited.
He didn’t.
And then, there was nothing.
The world around me was dark, and then there was a voice. “Let’s play a game.”
I couldn’t tell if I was standing up or lying down. I couldn’t feel my body.
“I have a secret.”
If I had eyes, I opened them. Or maybe they were already open? Either way, I did something, and the world was flooded with light.
“I’m tired of playing,” I told my mom.
“I know, baby.”
“I’m so tired,” I said.
“I know. But I have a secret, Avery, and you have to play—just one more time, just for me. Okay, baby? You can’t let go.”
I heard a long and distant beep. Lightning tore through my body. “Clear!” a voice yelled.
“Come on, Avery,” my mom whispered. “I have a secret.…”
Another round of lightning tore through me. “Clear!”
I wanted to stop breathing. I wanted to go where the lightning and the fire and the pain couldn’t touch me.
“You have to fight,” my mom said. “You have to hang on.”
“You’re not real,” I whispered. “You’re dead. So either this is a dream, and you’re not even here, or I’m…”
Dead, too.
CHAPTER 77
I dreamed that I was running through the halls of Hawthorne House. I hit a staircase, and at the bottom, I saw a dead girl. At first, I thought it was Emily Laughlin, but then I got closer—and I realized it was me.
I was standing at the edge of the ocean. Every time a wave crested and came toward me, I thought that it would swallow me whole. I was ready for it to swallow me whole.
But each time, as the darkness beckoned, I heard a voice: Jameson Winchester Hawthorne.
“You son of a bitch.” The words cut through the darkness in a way that nothing else had since I’d been here. The voice was Jameson’s again, but louder this time, sharper, like the edge of a knife. “She was dying, and you just stood there! And don’t tell me it was shock.”
I tried to open my eyes. I tried—but I couldn’t.
“You would know, Jamie, about standing there and watching someone die.”
“Emily. It always comes back to Emily with you.”
I wanted to tell them that I could hear them, but I couldn’t move my mouth. Everything was dark. Everything hurt.
“You know what I think, Gray? I think the whole martyr act was a lie you told yourself. I don’t think you stepped back from Avery for my sake. I think you needed an excuse to draw a line so you could stay safe on the other side.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You can’t let go. You couldn’t when Emily was alive, no matter what she did, and you can’t now.”
“Are you done?” Grayson was yelling now.
“Avery was dying, and you couldn’t run toward her.”
“What do you want from me, Jamie?”
“You think I didn’t fight the same fight? I halfway convinced myself that as long as Avery was just a riddle or a puzzle, as long as I was just playing, I’d be fine. Well, joke’s on me, because somewhere along the way, I stopped playing.”
I can hear you. I can hear every word. I’m right here—
“What do you want from me?”