It was a question he’d already asked a dozen times, but I knew he wasn’t just talking about the deaths. He was asking about us.
“I don’t really know,” I said. “But we’re in this together. We’ll figure it out.”
Maybe not the most convincing of statements, but it was the best I could do under pressure.
“Thank you,” he said. “For, you know, not thinking I was crazy.”
“I don’t think I’d ever be in that position.”
“Yeah, but. It feels good. To have a friend who knows.”
I nodded. I hadn’t really allowed myself to notice it, but he was right. Now that I’d told him everything, I felt a little freer. A little less alone. Things weren’t any less crazy or confusing, but at least I wasn’t navigating them on my own.
? ? ?
I wasn’t certain how I was going to make it through the rest of the school year like this. I couldn’t focus at all in American Civ—not that this was a huge departure from normalcy, in all honesty—and spent the entire hour drawing ravens and circles in my notebook. How was I supposed to focus when every movement, every second, felt like careening toward the end? Even the world outside seemed to mirror my thought process. The sky was prematurely dark, clouds roiling like sulfuric soup. And everywhere, the crows. They perched on gutters and trees and car hoods, all watching, all waiting.
They were my protectors. I knew that, in the far corners of my soul. They were my watch. So why were they all here en masse? It made my skin crawl.
After class, I headed straight toward the painting studio to get work done. Or, well, the studio we were using while the other got . . . cleaned. I made sure to go through a different entrance to the arts building—I had zero desire to see my Tarot cards up in the hall. They were my one foray into the mystical world, the one safe zone I had between mundane and magical. Now, even they seemed like too much. I didn’t want to be reminded of the night everything had changed, the night Munin and the violet-eyed girl came in and fucked everything up for good.
The studio was smaller than most, down one of the side hallways in the sculpture wing. And it wasn’t empty. Ethan sat at one of the stools, staring down a still life that was eerily similar to the one we’d begun. They must have picked up the table and moved it down here in one go, though the lighting was a little off from the original setup.
He had his headphones on and didn’t look up when I entered. Not until I sat down beside him and began setting up my own paints.
“Hey,” he said. His voice had that distant, tentative tone of one needing to talk about something, but being terrified of what the conversation would actually reveal.
“Hey,” I replied. I looked over; he wore two long-sleeve shirts layered atop each other and jeans caked with paint and Celtic runes. There were dark shadows under his eyes, and the red knit hat over his scraggly hair told me he hadn’t showered. He only wore that hat when he was feeling particularly gross.
“How are you?” he asked.
“I’m okay. You?”
He nodded like that was answer enough and glanced to the still life.
“I didn’t sleep at all last night,” he said.
“I could tell.”
He closed his eyes and pressed a palm to his head, like he was trying to push out the dreams or memories or whatever was plaguing him. I put a hand on his shoulder. He actually flinched under the touch, then leaned into it.
“I kept dreaming about it. About her.” A small shudder wracked through him.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
He peered through his fingers.
“I don’t know if I can do this anymore,” he whispered. His voice sounded so small.
“What do you mean?”
He closed his eyes again.
“This. Moving on. Pretending everything’s okay when nothing’s okay. Pretending I can sleep at night.”
“What are you dreaming?”
“Don’t really remember. I just know I wake up feeling like I’m suffocating. I’m lucky I haven’t screamed myself awake. Feels like I could be, sometimes.”
I sighed and leaned over to wrap him in a hug.
“It’s stress,” I whispered. “It’ll go away soon.”
“But it won’t. Because they aren’t coming back.” He took a deep breath, his whole body shaking. “I keep thinking about what we saw. And I swear, every time I blink I see that damn circle. And I can just imagine her lying in there, stretched out like that DaVinci picture. It’s horrible. It makes me feel so . . . I don’t know. Wrong inside. Tainted.”
“Like you saw something you weren’t supposed to see?” I ventured.
He nodded. “It’s just a fucking circle. But I keep seeing it and drawing it and I feel like . . . what if these weren’t suicides? What if they were murders or something? And what if that’s just the calling card? What if it means I’m next?”
My heart thudded to a violent stop.
What if he’s next?