But I have a job to do tonight.
There’s nowhere to step on the rotting porch that doesn’t come with a screech or groan of wood, so I walk with my usual sense of purpose. Boots on the ground. Collar up. Zombies behind me.
I step through the back door. There are no lit candles. Everything beyond the doorframe is blackness. Instead of the normal stench of mold and raccoons, the abandoned kitchen is an assault of undiluted fragrance. Orange and sage and cedar and cinnamon. As glass crunches under my boots, I realize that it must be the remains of the essential oil vials that Riley and I spent so much money on. Toby charges fourteen dollars apiece for them.
June and Dayton stop behind me until I fumble for the flashlight app on my phone. No one complains when I keep the light aimed at the floor, the most likely place to find a body. The sunken living room is as we left it—unlit candles sitting on top of stacks of books, empty Gatorade bottles built into squat pyramids.
There’s a noise upstairs. June, Dayton, and I flinch in unison, moving back toward the kitchen.
“I know you’re down there,” Riley’s voice floats down, even before she hits the top step. In the spotlight of my flashlight app, she’s even more ghoulishly gray-skinned and bloodied. “I’m not healing a lot, but I can feel your magic, Mila.”
“Why are you here in the dark?” Dayton asks as Riley descends the rickety stairs.
“Why are you here at all?” June asks.
“Where else was I supposed to go?” Riley asks. “You guys ditched me. Mila thinks that I came back wrong. It’s not like I can go back to my family. I came here to sleep until I die again. I have a candle in my room upstairs, but it went out when I was napping.”
“So, Aniyah isn’t here?” I ask, squinting at the bowed ceiling.
“Um.” There’s a cough from the back door. The four of us spin around and see the outline of a fat body in the doorway. Aniyah Dorsey, alive and well. “I waited in my car until I saw you drive up. Are there no lights in here?”
Dayton scrambles to find a lighter. She lights a taper and hands it to June, who helps her light all the candles around the living room. As the room starts to glow, Aniyah takes a horrified step back outside.
“What the fuck?” she screams.
“That’s rude,” June croaks. I think she’s exaggerating how hoarse her voice is with her broken neck. She’s starting to sound like my gremlin impression. “You’d hate it if people screamed when they saw your face.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t look like a corpse!” Aniyah says, one hand on the doorframe, ready to launch herself back to her car.
“We are corpses,” Riley snaps. “So come in, since you had to go digging around, making up stories about how we faked our deaths.”
“Our deaths were very real,” Dayton says, flashing a glimpse of her neck bruise from under her pashmina. “Obviously.”
Aniyah walks in on trembling legs. She edges around the room the same way that Binx does when he’s wary of the company he’s keeping. She tucks her hair behind her ears and pushes her glasses up, making absolutely sure that nothing is obstructing her view. I notice that she’s carrying her school bag. She clings to one of its straps.
“Is that your evidence?” I ask, jerking my chin at the bag. Now that she isn’t in immediate danger of being murdered, I pity her less. I want to know what she thinks she knows and send her back to her parents before Xander or the cops show up.
She swallows and nods. “Pictures of June at the Celebration of Life. Dayton walking downtown. Riley in the front seat of your car. A copy of Riley’s death certificate, signed by her dad, who must have faked it . . .” She stops and holds up a hand. “I’m sorry. What is that awful smell?”
“The house,” June says. “The raccoons. Our insides decomposing and the smell coming up out of our throats.”
Aniyah hugs herself. “Mila, did you invite me to talk to the literal undead? You couldn’t have just told me that there are actual fucking zombies in this world?”
“There probably aren’t zombies other than us,” Dayton says thoughtfully. “Off the record, Mila is a very powerful witch.”
“But not great with the direction of spells,” June adds.
“Aniyah, I didn’t invite you here at all,” I say, dragging a hand through my hair. “I’m pretty sure Xander wanted to lure you here to hurt you. So, now that you’ve seen that the girls are real-dead not fake-dead, you can drop the article. It’ll make you look foolish and hurt a lot of people who miss their dead loved ones. Go home, lock the doors, and if you see Xander, call the cops.”
“Why? If his parents didn’t fake Riley’s death, then why would he have beef with me at all?” Aniyah asks with more defiance in her voice than in her curled posture. “So the article didn’t work out. It’s not like I care what the most popular boy in school thinks of me. I’m not scared of him.”
“You should be,” I say.
“I’m not going anywhere until someone tells me what the hell is going on,” she retorts. “Beginning to end, full detail. You can’t just spring zombies on me and then not explain how they got here.”
“Your curiosity is not worth dying over,” June says. “This is where your article ends. We didn’t fake our deaths. You were stupid to think we could have. Now get out before you get murdered, too.”
I can see candlelight reflecting in the wetness of Riley’s eyes as she moves her gaze over her shoulder. Toward the door. The undulating flame makes her eyes look wild where they should be expressionless.
Cold dread settles deep under my skin, spreading all the way out to my fingertips. My lips and eyelids are buzzing with fear that I have to choke down whole.
“He’s here already, isn’t he?” I ask Riley under my breath. “He’s been here with you all day.”
Tears spill onto her waxy cheeks. “He didn’t have anywhere else to go.”
I swallow. “Aniyah. Once you clear the porch, run as fast as you can. Text me when you are home and every single door is bolted shut. This isn’t a joke. I need you to get out of here alive, okay?”
But the broken porch steps are already shrieking under the weight of footsteps. The silhouette in the doorway is distinctly Xander’s, from the part in his hair to the field of mushrooms blooming across his torso.
His voice floats out of the darkness. It freezes my bones as it whispers, “Mila?”
TWENTY-ONE
XANDER RUSHES INTO the living room. His chest is pumping like he’s been running. The mushrooms have spread across his chest and down his stomach, covering the front of him in fungi that end abruptly at the elastic band of the black pajama pants I saw him in last night. His feet are bare and caked in mud and blood.
I wonder if the blood is his.
June and Dayton make a dead-girl wall between Xander and me and Aniyah. Riley stands to the side, rubbing her broken wrist.
Xander pauses on the threshold of the living room, visibly recoiling.
“Mila,” he says, making eye contact with me from over June’s shoulder. “Are you okay?”
“Is she okay?” Aniyah asks, pushing past the zombies. “What the fuck is wrong with your skin?” She looks over her shoulder at me. “Is he dead, too?”
Her attention is diverted for a second too long. Xander sinks his hand deep into her hair, fisting his fingers around the roots of her barrel curls.
“Don’t!” Riley shouts.
Arm shooting out, he flings Aniyah sideways. Her head cracks against the handle of the open basement door, and she crumples to the ground, lying very still.