“See you tomorrow, D,” Em said. Her words came slow, like she was in a trance—she couldn’t take her eyes off the makeshift flag. It couldn’t be a message from JD, she knew that. But the coincidence was too much. She had to investigate.
As Drea drove off, Em crunched across the frozen grass and made her way over to the sailcloth. Stretching onto tiptoes, she worked to untangle the flag, which the wind had wrapped several times around the oak branch. As she struggled with the canvas and her freezing fingers she thought of days spent chasing JD around the park’s small circumference. The afternoon they decided to “trick” their parents by putting plastic ants on their cheese plate. The night they co-babysat JD’s little sister, Melissa, and brought her here to play flashlight tag. Maybe Melissa had been playing with the flag and that’s how it had ended up here? But no, even Melissa was too old for the flag now.
A gust of wind finally shook the flag loose. It flapped open, its edges whipping her face.
“Ow,” Em said to no one, putting her hand to her cheek. But she dropped it and gasped as the flag came into full view. Through the center of it, there was an ugly gash, as though it had been knifed by an animal’s claw. Years of play had never even frayed the material, but here it was, practically shredded.
And then, out of nowhere, the soft chimes of female laughter. Em whipped around, wriggling free as the flag wrapped around her wrist.
“Melissa?” she called out into the dark playground. “JD?”
No answer.
Em swallowed hard. Only a short while ago, in December, she’d been sitting on the swings when she’d found a note in her pocket. Sometimes sorry isn’t enough. A note from the Furies. The thought made her palms tighten in fear.
There it was again. That eerie, beautiful laughter.
She knew that sound. She would know it anywhere.
The Furies. They were here.
Why were they back? She’d already been punished. Why show up here, why now? Would they reappear in her life whenever they felt like it? She thought of the fragments of the story she’d shared with JD in the parking lot. Did the Furies know? Had she brought them back?
She swung her head in all directions, but the laughter seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere at the same time. She started to retreat, moving backward slowly at first and then faster, faster. She turned, leaving the flag. Breathing hard in the night air. She moved toward the park gate, not daring to look behind her.
Suddenly, just before she reached the chain-link fence that bordered the park, a sharp icicle fell from above, soundlessly. Em yelped as it scratched her arm like the tip of a knife. And then icicles were raining down on her, piercing and deadly. Making no sound save the smallest whoosh.
She sprinted down the street but then tripped on a branch, landed on all fours, and skidded on the ice. She heard her jeans rip and felt tiny bits of dirt and salt cut into her knee. Her bag fell from her shoulder. And all the while there was that laughter, shimmering and bouncing like light on a lake. She couldn’t see them, but they were here. She could feel them.
“Don’t you dare come back here!” she shouted as she shakily got to her feet. “I stopped myself! I kept my promise!” She grabbed her bag from where it had fallen and frantically retrieved the stuff that had tumbled out of it. She could feel how panicked she looked, scrambling around on the dark street for her phone, her powder compact, her keys. It made her angrier. She yelled into the night air, “I’ve paid enough!”
She stumbled the last few yards to her driveway, then in through her front door, slamming it behind her, breathing hard. Only inside, away from the moon and the snow and the tree branches that seemed to grab for her, did the echoing laughter diminish.
Em pulled herself upstairs. I didn’t do anything wrong this time. I didn’t say too much, she told herself. I’m safe. But somehow she didn’t feel reassured. This was a warning. She put her cold hands to her face in an effort to ease her burning cheeks. Either the flag or the wind had lashed her skin raw.
CHAPTER TWO
In the dusky tower of her aunt Nora’s old Victorian on the corner of South Main and Maple streets, Skylar McVoy was unpacking the last of her things from a purple duffel bag. She plugged her iPod charger into the wall, arranged a small collection of nail polishes on the rickety dresser in the corner, then draped a few scarves over the edge of the mirror. She surveyed the room—its hardwood floorboards, the bay window that looked out onto the street below, the full-sized bed with its curved metal frame. Her new home. It would take a while to get used to. The whole place was so . . . New England—wooden, salty, and cold. Nothing like her old home in Alabama, where the wall-to-wall carpeting and cheap plastic furniture seemed to radiate with heat. She shivered, tucking her shoulder-length, dirty-blond hair behind her ears before pulling the hood of her sweatshirt up over her head. Maybe she’d ask Nora for a space heater.