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Whatever I’d seen in the mirror would probably be back. I needed to be ready, and eating blueberry Pop-Tarts three meals a day wasn’t exactly the diet of champions. Time to lift my ban on the dining hall.

Ten minutes later, I stood in line, scooping unnaturally orange macaroni and cheese onto my plate. I grabbed a pack of cinnamon Pop-Tarts to switch things up, and scanned the room for an empty table. The dining hall was a breeding ground for everything I hated about Winterhaven—gossip, cliques, self-pity.

Two Black Eyeliners nodded in my direction, inviting me to sit with them. Instead, I took a seat at the opposite end of the table. They didn’t realize I was doing them a favor. Getting close to me was dangerous, and I had the track record to prove it.

I dropped my notepad next to the congealed ball of noodles and flipped through the drawings. It felt like watching my nightmares in stop-motion—Priest’s hand reaching up from the well, Alara strapped in the electric chair, the spirits of dozens of poisoned children lined up at the ends of their metal beds. There were pages and pages of them, each image more disturbing than the one before.

I reached an unfinished sketch from a few nights ago, a figure looming over me as I slept, just like it had in my nightmare. I hunched over the page, filling in the missing sections. After a few minutes, features emerged—the feral eyes and elongated jaw of an animal, jutting out from a human silhouette.

Andras.

My fingers tightened around the pencil. I’d left out a detail in the sketch, one I couldn’t draw. In the nightmare, he’d spoken to me.

I’m coming for you.

It had sounded more like a promise than a threat.

“Another newbie,” one of the Black Eyeliners called out from the other end of the table.

A girl with stick-straight blond hair stood in the doorway, her eyes darting around the room like a frightened deer’s. She inched forward, her face still puffy and red from crying, a Winterhaven welcome binder pressed against her chest. I recognized that look. Her parents had probably dropped her off this morning.

Winterhaven was the last stop for the troubled daughters of wealthy East Coast families. From runaways and cutters to pill poppers and party girls, Winterhaven accepted them all—including me.

Now the school was responsible for us, which wasn’t saying much. None of the teachers cared what kind of trouble we got into behind closed doors, as long as we didn’t kill each other in the process. The party girls kept
partying and the cutters kept cutting. Only the runaways lost out because the school was buried so deep in the Pennsylvania woods, there was nowhere to run.

Whispers spread through the room in seconds.

“Too young for drunk driving.”

“Doesn’t look brave enough to be a runaway.”

“I’m going with pills. Definitely.”

“Final answer?”

I tuned out the voices and shaded in the rest of the sketch. Bits and pieces of the nightmare flashed through my mind—the figure watching me in the darkness, its features emerging from the shadows, the paralyzing fear.

It was too much.

My hand trembled as I fought the urge to rip out the page and tear it to shreds. I was sick of being afraid. I wanted to fall asleep without being tormented. More than anything, I wanted to forget. But I couldn’t let myself.

“Is anyone sitting here?” The new girl stood across from me, the edge of her tray shaking. “I mean, is it okay if I sit here?” She looked even younger than Priest—fourteen maybe.

The Black Eyeliners laughed. I had already passed on their invitation to sit with them, the few times I’d eaten in here. They probably assumed the new girl’s odds weren’t good, which was reason enough to let her sit with me.

I gestured at the empty seat across from me. “Sit down before the vultures start circling.”

The girl’s shoulders relaxed. “Thanks. I’m Maggie.”

“Kennedy.” I started drawing again, hoping she could take a hint.

“That’s a cool name.”

“Not really.” I didn’t look up.

She stayed quiet for a few minutes, pushing a scoop of orange macaroni around on her plate. I sensed her watching me, but I kept my eyes glued to the page. Eye contact encouraged conversation, something I avoided at all costs.

“So why are you here? Sorry—” She bit her lip. “That’s none of my business. My dad says I ask too many questions.”

Her dad sounded like a heartless bastard.

Like mine.

“I ran away.” At least that was the story I’d told the police and Aunt Diane. Before the new girl had a chance to ask why, I turned the tables on her. “What about you?”

She stabbed at the ball of noodles. “My dad just left me here.”

“What did you do to piss him off?”

A tear ran down her cheek. “I exist.”

My pencil stopped moving. The anger in her voice was all mixed up with the pain, and it reminded me of the last time I saw my own father. The morning he drove away while his five-year-old daughter watched from the window.

She wiped her face on her sleeve and glanced at my notepad. “That’s cool… and a little scary. You’re really
good. I bet your drawings will be hanging on a gallery wall someday.”

A familiar pain tugged at my chest. My mom used to say that all the time.

“What is it?” she asked, still studying the sketch.

“Just something from a dream.”

Her eyes lit up. “The easiest way to get rid of a nightmare is to tell someone about it. Then your mind will stop fighting the bad dream, and it’ll go away.”

My nightmares weren’t going anywhere.

“Real life doesn’t work that way.” I snatched my notepad and stood up, the legs of my chair scraping against the hardwood floor. “There are some fights you can’t win.”

I walked away without waiting for a response. The last thing I needed was a pep talk from a kid who was crying because her dad dumped her at a fancy boarding school. My mother was dead, and I hadn’t seen my own father in years.

My days were full of fear and guilt, dead birds and missing girls.

And it’s only going to get worse.

Guilt ate away at me until I finally dumped my tray and headed for the new girl’s room. Her room was easy to find. It was the only door without any messages pinned to the corkboard, which made me feel like I’d kicked a puppy.

I knocked, silently rehearsing the apology I’d practiced on the way over. “It’s Kennedy.”

After a moment I knocked again, listening for sounds on the other side of the door. Nothing. Either she wasn’t in there or she didn’t want to talk to me.

I flipped through the sketches at the beginning of the notepad, the ones I’d drawn right after Lukas gave it to me. Instead of the disturbing images from my nightmares, these pictures captured happier memories—half-finished drawings of Priest wrapping paintball guns in silver duct tape, Alara holstering a bottle of holy water in her tool belt, Lukas playing Tetris, a rare smile from Jared. Their specialties—the areas of expertise they had been trained in—were as different as the four of them. Yet each skill complemented the others: Lukas hacked into databases all over the country and used the information to track paranormal surges; Priest engineered the spirit-hunting weapons that Jared commanded with ease; and when weapons failed, Alara used wards and voodoo arts to protect them.

Together, they were a Legion, and for a while, I’d thought I was one of them.

One sketch looked different from the rest—a self-portrait. I ripped it out and pinned it to her board, along with a note.

Clad in military-issue cargo pants and black boots, the girl in the drawing looked brave and determined—like someone ready for a fight. I had already lost my battle, but Maggie could still win hers.

Minutes later, I stood in front of my own door, trying to remember what it felt like to be the girl in the drawing. But I couldn’t.

With the Legion, I had faced malevolent spirits and destroyed paranormal entities. Now I was alone, and I wasn’t even brave enough to face what was waiting for me on the other side of my own door.

W
hen I turned on the light, my reality came into view one terrifying image at a time. Newspaper clippings, maps, crime scene photos, and pictures of missing girls wallpapered my room. Chalk outlines, surrounded by yellow and black police tape, were layered over weather charts and mug shots of people who had been arrested for bizarre or brutal acts of violence.

Every scrap represented an event that could potentially be traced back to Andras.

I started collecting the articles in the hospital. I found the first one while scanning the newspaper for any mention of Jared, Lukas, Alara, and Priest. The headline read:
Lightning Kills Seven in Fire at Holy Martyrs Church
.

What had started as an attempt to track the demon’s
movements had developed into an obsession, a kind of self-inflicted penance. I had released Andras, which made his crimes
my
crimes.

Part of me wished there was a way to send all this information to Lukas. He would know how to find the pattern in the madness, a skill I’d underestimated until I tried doing it myself. Even though I searched for their names every time I read newspaper, a bigger part of me was relieved I didn’t know how to find them.

They’re safer without me.

As I added the finished sketch of my nightmare to the wall, an image that looked like a music stand caught my eye.

Andras’ seal.

It was the demon’s unique signature. Each Legion member’s wrist was marked with a different section of the symbol. If they rubbed salt on their wrists and held them together, the marks re-created the seal.

I ran my fingers over the unmarked skin on the inside of my wrist, a permanent reminder I wasn’t one of them.

And the reason things would never have worked out with Jared and me.

I scanned the wall for the portrait of his profile, taped above a chart of weather anomalies. The curve of his lips and the long eyelashes that framed his pale blue eyes. For a second, I forgot to breathe. I remembered the way his lips felt against mine, the sound of his voice when he whispered to me in the rain, refusing to leave me behind. I remembered the promise I made to myself that night. The one I hadn’t kept.

I’ll find you.

Did he think about that night?

Does he think about me?

Maybe Jared had already moved on, continuing the search for the missing fifth member of the Legion—one thing I would never be.

I peeled off the wool kneesocks I wore every day even though they itched like crazy and made my room smell like a wet dog. A web of white scars snaked across my legs like a tattoo, a permanent reminder of my mistakes. My fingers traced the ridges in my skin. I hated them, but if there was a way to trade my mistakes for even more scars, I would’ve done it in a second.

I wrestled out of my wet clothes and into dry ones before flipping open my laptop. I skimmed news sites for signs of paranormal activity, the evidence of Andras at work. The Legion taught me that sudden increases in the
number of murders and violent crimes were red flags, with suicides a close second.

A photo of thousands of crows flocked on the rooftops in downtown Pittsburgh made me pause. I clicked on it, and a familiar message popped up on the screen:
Unauthorized portal
. Winterhaven limited student Internet access, allowing only approved news sites and libraries. E-mail was nonexistent, and phone use was restricted to calls home—or, in my case, to Aunt Diane. Not that I’d ever call her.

My in-box was probably overflowing with messages from Elle by now. Even if I figured out a way to contact her, what would I say?
I unleashed a vengeful demon on the world, and no one knows how to stop him
? She’d forgive me because that’s what best friends do. But this wasn’t a failed midterm I could forget about after a pint of ice cream. The next headline made sure of that:
High School Track Star Disappears Without a Trace
. A brunette with delicate features smiled back from the screen, her name printed under the photo:
Catherine Nichols
.

Number 15.

The article didn’t provide any new information:
After the disappearance of fifteen teenage girls, the FBI has issued a statement calling the disappearances “serial abductions,” confirming what the public suspected.

I found a clean page in my notepad and began the ritual that had become second nature by now. My pencil re-created the curves of Catherine Nichols’ face, her high
cheekbones and brown doe eyes. As I lost myself in the charcoal lines, music blared from the room next door. My hand jerked, and a stray line dragged across her face.

Winterhaven never ceased to annoy me. I pounded on the wall, but the girls laughing on the other side ignored me.

I taped the drawing next to the ones of the other missing girls. The row of sketches looked strikingly similar—dark-eyed girls with delicate features, wavy brown hair, and awkward smiles. Pretty in an average way. There was one more thing—something impossible to ignore.

They all looked like me.

Another reminder that the demon wasn’t finished with me, even if I didn’t understand why. Maybe he still thought I was the fifth member of the Legion, and I was next on his hit list.

Next door the music cranked up another few notches, followed by scratching sounds.

Are they moving furniture in there?

“Shut up.” I banged harder.

Someone finally turned off the music. The scratching intensified at the exact same moment my neighbor’s door slammed. The laughter moved into the hallway, and my skin went cold.

The scratching isn’t coming from next door.

I whipped around as a jagged line etched itself into the mirror above my dresser. When it hit the bottom of the
frame, the line—and the scratching—stopped. Within seconds, another mark dragged its way down the glass.

There was something off about the sound. It didn’t have the nails-on-a-chalkboard intensity that would’ve made it impossible to think it was coming from next door. I inched closer and froze.

The lines were being cut from
inside
the mirror.

My eidetic memory snapped mental pictures as the row of lines hit the frame and changed direction, creating horizontal, diagonal, and curved slashes.

Letters.

Words formed, cut by cut, until the message stared back at me.

The meaning registered slowly, one fragmented thought at a time.

Andras knows where I am.

After all the paranormal attacks I’d escaped in places like a haunted well and an abandoned children’s home, my dorm room was the place the demon finally found me? Had it really taken him this long to track me down?

Nineteen days of fear, anger, and guilt turned to rage in a single moment. This was my life now—vengeance spirits and nightmares, missing girls and demons, unanswered
questions and paranormal threats. I was tired of waiting for something to happen. I wanted it to happen now.

“I’m right here!” I screamed, turning in a circle with my arms outstretched. “Come on!”

Silence echoed back at me, louder than a hundred screams.

“What are you waiting for?”

The consequences of my mistakes surrounded me—layers and layers of them taped to every surface in a prison of my own making. I hurled myself at the closest wall, tearing down the photos of dead birds and chalk outlines, electrical storms and flooded streets, mug shots and maps.

Slashes of pink and gray peeked out from beneath the bits of paper still stuck to one of the walls—a print of my favorite painting, Chris Berens’
Lady Day
. A girl floating through the air under a glass dome.

I taped it to my wall the moment the boxes marked
School
had arrived—the ones I’d packed before my house turned
Poltergeist
and I took off with Jared and Lukas. She was the last shred of my old room and my old life. It hurt too much to look at her every day, so I buried her under the scraps of what my life had become.

I’d always believed the girl under the glass found her way out in the end. But maybe I was wrong.

I ripped the print off the wall and tore it in half. The dome split down the center, tearing the girl apart along
with it. The two halves fell to the floor, lost in a sea of articles about the tragedies my mistake had set in motion.

Someone knocked on the door. “Everything okay in there?”

The first print my mom ever gave me lay in pieces at my feet. I picked up the half with the girl’s face on it and folded it before slipping it into my notepad.

“Kennedy, I know you’re in there. Open the door.”

I recognized the girl’s voice, but I couldn’t place it.

“I’m not leaving,” she said.

I cracked the door. One of the Black Eyeliners stood on the other side, looking bored.

She glanced over my shoulder at what was left of my dorm room. “Rough day?” Her tone dripped with sarcasm.

“What do you want?” I asked, holding the notepad against my chest.

“If you’re gonna be a bitch, I’ll just tell the hot guy who’s looking for you that you weren’t interested in his message.”

“What are you talking about?”

The girl sighed and rolled her eyes. “I caught him wandering around Anderson Hall. He said he needed to find you. That it was a big emergency or something. You’re lucky he ran into me and not one of the dorm mothers.” She held up a damp scrap of paper. “He said to give you this.”

I unfolded the paper, and my heart felt like it stopped beating. The black ink was smeared, but I still recognized the image—and who had made it.

Jared.

In the center of the page, he’d drawn a black dove. Exactly like the one tattooed on his arm.

Black Eyeliner Girl gestured at the drawing. “So what does it mean?”

“Where is he?”

She crossed her arms, indignant. “Are you gonna tell me who he is?”

I stepped closer, stopping just inches from her face. “Where is he?”

The girl shrank back against the wall. “Relax. Did you skip your meds today or something? He’s behind Anderson Hall.”

I pushed past her and raced down the hallway.

Nineteen days had passed since the last time Jared and I saw each other, but it felt like forever. I thought about him every day, and every day I fought the urge to take off and look for him.

But now he was here, and finding him was the only thing that mattered.