Foretold Page 30

  “Cassie!” the creature shouts, sounding like a million death rattles. “Stop!” It forces me back down onto the ground, straddling my chest. I try to fight it off, but it grabs my wrists.

  “Cassie! Open your eyes. Come on!” Griffin shouts. He roughly wipes away the grit on my eyes. I blink through it and find him on top of me.

  “Griffin!” I scream. “Get off of me! Help! That thing is—”

  There are fireflies circling Griffin’s head. Not fireflies—sparks. I hear crackling and bursts. There’s an inferno nearby. My face burns and my clothes drip with sweat. “Regan! Noah!”

  “I’m going to let go. Okay? But you can’t move backwards. You’re on the edge of the salt circle,” Griffin says. He releases me, and I rub at my face, my hand coming away with black sand. “Somnum Sand?”

  Griffin helps me sit up. Noah is holding Regan just beyond Griffin’s back. “Yeah.” He drops back on his haunches. “Shitballs, that was insane.”

  I edge away from him and look around. The smoke in the air around us makes it hard to see and breathe. My sleeping bag—or rather, the one Noah let me and Regan use—has been yanked away and is smoldering near the dying campfire. My original sleeping bag is engulfed in flames.

  “What happened to us?” I ask, trembling.

  “I woke up because I heard another team cross the field,” Griffin says. “They tried to be quiet so we wouldn’t hear them, but I’m a light sleeper. I pretended to be asleep, but the second they climbed up the other ridge, I turned to get your attention and…” Griffin pauses, a queer look crossing his face.

  “What? What is it?” Regan asks.

  “The place was all smoky. I could barely see you. And the campfire flames were, like, I don’t know, they were reaching out like arms or whatever, like they were looking for something to burn. Noah’s bag was already on fire down by his feet, and your bag was starting to catch, it looked like. And you guys had these spider things, size of cats, with these long ass spindly legs and… God, they looked like friggin’ nightmares… sitting on your chests. I thought you were dead at first. And I—I grabbed my stuff, my knife, and ran over and—cut one of them! Look.” Griffin points to a trail of fresh blood leading up toward the ridge of trees.

  “Not nightmares. Night Mara,” I say, shuddering. “I read about them in a book Pict gave me.”

  “But we used Somnum Sand,” Regan counters. “They can only get to you if…”

  Noah leans down and rifles through my pack. He picks up my container of sand. “Give me your sand, Griffin.”

  Griffin hands it over, and Noah pours some from both of our containers out onto his hand.

  “Fake,” Noah says with disgust.

  “What?” I ask, startled.

  “Look at Griffin’s. The grains are finer. Yours looks like someone crushed up some black rocks or something.” Noah chucks my bottle of sand into the fire.

  “But wouldn’t your sand have to be fake, too? I saw one of those things surfing your chest, too, man,” Griffin says.

  “Cassie’d already thrown down some when we switched sleeping bags. I figured I was covered,” Noah says.

  “But Bacchy got it for us. For all of us. He would never—”

  “Bacchy wouldn’t. But someone sabotaged your stuff, Cassie,” Griffin says.

  “I don’t know who would…” I trail off. Lots of people would, now that they know about my role in the Bedlam attack.

  “Who else handled your pack?” Regan asks.

  “You almost got us killed. Again,” Noah says to me. “Bedlam attack not enough for you?”

  Griffin turns on Noah. “Weren’t you supposed to keep watch?”

  Their argument heats up, culminating with Griffin accusing Noah of being “more concerned about getting into Egg’s pants than our survival.”

  “Now we’re down to fifty percent of our supplies!” Griffin continues. Noah’s pack. I realize for the first time that his bag of supplies is part of the bonfire that is my old sleeping bag.

  “Maybe if you hadn’t pitched a fit and gone to sleep in the middle of the field!” Noah shouts.

  “Then he wouldn’t have been able to help us, right? Enough. Both of you. We get it.” Regan rubs at her temples. “No looking back. Let’s figure out what we do now.”

  Chapter 30

  We sit cross-legged on the cracked tile floor of what looks like the Taj Mahal’s shabbier cousin and work through our strictly rationed food and water. With Regan and Noah’s supplies gone, we’re left with my stuff and whatever Griffin packed—something he’s been moaning about on and off all morning since it’s curtailed his snacking.

  Regan rests her head on my shoulder and eyes Griffin. “I guess heroes and herpes really are only a letter apart,” she murmurs. I shake my head with a little huff of laughter and continue gnawing the tough piece of jerky in my hand.

  Regan sits up, a thought occurring. “Hey, Griffin, how come nothing happened to you? When you came back to help us, I mean? You had to move backwards in the Coil.”

  “I wouldn’t say nothing.” Griffin holds up his palms, where a star-shaped burn viciously mars the skin of each.

  “Oh my God!” Regan shouts.

  “Yeah. Stings like crazy. Starting to bubble now. Didn’t exactly feel great in the moment, but I guess adrenaline…” Griffin shakes his head.

  “So that’s it?” I ask, hopeful. “Just physical pain?” Physical I can deal with. But the mental… there’s nothing scarier to me than my mind.

  “No. I—I saw some stuff too, I guess.”

  “What did you see?” I ask.

  “Just stuff. Random stuff. It’s fine,” he says.

  “But do you think—”

  “Cassie, holy shit, what difference does it make whether I saw Pict in a Speedo or something worse?” Griffin blows out his cheeks. “I’m okay. I won’t be… I won’t be stepping backwards again if I can help it, and I don’t think anyone else should chance it, either. Okay? Is that enough for you? Can we talk about something else?”

  “Thank you, by the way,” I say, as I look down at the gnarled jerky in my hand. “I didn’t say it before. You saved us.”

  “You guys would’ve done the same for me,” Griffin says, leaning against a marble pillar. “Well, maybe not Egg. She hates me. But you two.”

  “I don’t hate you,” Regan says softly.

  “Wow. Whispering sweet-nothings with your boyfriend right there.” Griffin shakes his head and tips his canteen to his lips. The sound of pouring water is audible.

  “You’re dogging it. Save some water for us,” Noah says.

  Griffin pulls the canteen away from his lips. “It’s a sip. Relax.” The sound of running water continues. Griffin frowns and looks at his canteen.

  I stand and follow the sound, the others right behind me.

  An ocean. There is an ocean beyond this doorway.

  Regan steps down onto the wet sand, and the crisp air catches her curls, sending them tumbling over an eye. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  The peaceful sounds of gulls and crashing waves are at odds with the fact this is an eerie dreamscape determined to kill us. A relatively stable dreamscape, at least, since there is no rippling. I wipe a hand over my face wearily and pull my ICARUSS out of my pocket. “Okay, so this thing is saying we need to go straight.” I let out a humorless laugh and point toward the horizon. “Because of course it does.”

  “I can’t swim,” Griffin says. “No one told me we needed to know the frigging doggy paddle for the Coil Walk.”

  “Boat!” Noah says.

  Sure enough, a little way down the beach near the water’s edge there is a small row boat, white paint chipping off the sides. A boy is pushing it toward the ocean while his two companions watch.

  “Dill!” Griffin calls out. We race over and Dill, Griffin’s friend with the absurdly patchy mustache, pauses in his efforts with the boat to watch our approach with sunken eyes. Joe and Helen, from our mirror scrying class,
shuffle listlessly and stare at the pack slung over my shoulder. Dill licks at his pale, chapped lips.

  “You guys are still in here, too? Do you have water?”

  Regan reaches behind me and fishes out our canteen. She hands it over to Helen, and her group tosses it to one another, drinking greedily.

  “Didn’t you guys have Tessa on your team?” Regan asks.

  “Tessa disappeared,” Dill says. “Ran backwards to get away from…” He blanches, remembering something he does not share, and falls quiet. I close my eyes, spent. I think of Tessa, with her sunflower hair and her warm smile full of metal, confiding in me about her nightmares. About messing up.

  “We heard her screaming. Sounded like she was somewhere a ways back. We waited but she didn’t show, and we started wondering if it wasn’t just the Coil messing… and—I mean, she disappeared in front of our eyes! Same could’ve happened to anyone who tried to go back for her,” Joe says, ending on an angrily defensive note.

  “Moving back doesn’t always do that,” I say. “Pict told me it probably depends on the person and their mental state. So one person can take a few steps and disappear, and another person can run clear across a field and…” I gesture toward Griffin, who holds up his hands to show off the blistering burns on his palms.

  “Too late now. We’ve got to get out of here.” Helen brushes her long braid over her shoulder. She gives Joe and Dill a loaded look. “And there isn’t room for seven people in this boat.”

  I now know what animals must experience when they sense a threat: a crackling heaviness has descended on our group, fog-like, at Helen’s softly spoken words. Every cell within me is suddenly on high alert.

  “You would’ve let Leo DiCaprio drown, too, huh, Rose? No room on that door?” Griffin drawls, raising an eyebrow. His joke does little to defuse the tension.

  “Everyone, let’s just relax… We can figure this out,” Noah says, taking a small step closer. Dill grabs for an oar and holds it out threateningly.

  “Dill! Dude! What are you doing?” Griffin cries.

  “Here’s what I know,” Dill says, ignoring Griffin, his desperate stare boring a hole through Noah. “We saw what happened to Tessa, and you see Griff’s hands are a mess. Moving backwards isn’t pretty, no matter what. And one tiny boat means that one group rides out and the other has to double back to find another way through. As far as I can tell, we’re the group in the boat. You can accept that, or…”

  Griffin shuffles forward, pausing abruptly when Joe drops into a wrestler’s crouch an arm’s length from him. Griffin watches Joe but addresses Dill, his tone hushed. “Dill, you’re my boy. You’re really pulling this? You don’t know for sure we won’t fit.”

  “Don’t come any closer or we’ll have to retaliate,” Joe barks.

  “I grew up around boats my whole life, you moron,” Helen interjects. “That thing is about ten feet by five feet. That means three, maybe four can ride safely, and that’s if it’s seaworthy to begin with. We’re not chancing it.”

  “You’ll be fine. You’re with the princess,” Dill says, gesturing to me. “Her aunt practically runs this place.”

  Joe and Griffin continue to size each other up, their heights and weights making them a pretty even matchup, though Griffin is weakened by his tether to the Laurel Plain and his injuries. Dill and Noah are similarly engaged, although there’s the buffer of a boat and an oar between them. Helen’s eyes dart between me and Regan. The standoff is a silent one, with no sudden shifts on anyone’s part. But every micro-movement is aggressive, every muscle twitch a threat.

  “Okay, this is mental,” Regan mutters, her chest rising and falling rapidly. “No one wants to fight, right? And risk moving backwards? Let’s talk this out.”

  Dill’s expression wavers, indecision flickering in his eyes. Suddenly there is a blur of motion, and Joe is clutching Griffin’s hand in a strong grip, his thumb digging into the pale gray burn on Griffin’s palm.

  Griffin grasps Joe’s forearm with his free hand and cries out, sinking, nearly to his knees. “I wasn’t attacking you, you fucking idiot!” Griffin shouts. Theirs is a kind of mid-air arm wrestling; they vibrate with the effort, a test of strength and, in Griffin’s case, painful endurance.

  “Joe, stop!” Regan screams. She moves to intervene, and Helen blocks her approach with an arm. “Dill, he’s your friend! Do something!”

  Noah grabs at Dill’s outstretched paddle and holds it firm when Dill tries to pull it away. “Listen to me, Dill. If you guys don’t stop and someone ends up moving backwards, getting hurt, that’ll be on whoever caused it. Can you live with that?” They stare at each other fiercely for a few beats until Noah gently releases the oar and raises his hands. Dill glances over at Joe and Griffin, his thoughts warring across his face.

  Griffin has a hand on the ground, the other still in Joe’s vise grip, when, without warning, he throws sand up into Joe’s eyes. Joe screams, immediately releasing him, but has the presence of mind to avoid stepping back as his hands come up to his face.

  Dill tosses the oar into the boat and grabs the boat’s edge, pushing it into the surf and catching Noah off guard. He hurdles a small wave and then jumps in, fumbling with the oar. Noah runs into the water after him, grabbing at the boat with both hands, pulling it back with all his might and catching the crest of a small wave. The boat edges backwards, past Noah, toward the shore, like a bull waved on by a matador. It beaches itself.

  It’s empty. Dill is gone.

  I hear a noise, and it takes me a moment to realize that it's Helen's guttural wail. She grabs for Regan wildly and falls, carried by her own momentum. Her broken screams and incoherent pleas trigger a horrifying realization—Helen’s moved backwards, retraced her own steps. She writhes in agony, lost in what sounds like anguished memories and a terrible physical pain, as shock ripples through me. Regan blanches and looks over at me helplessly. “I didn’t… She…”

  “You’re dead!” Joe shouts, bloodshot eyes taking in his team’s plight. He pulls a small knife from his pocket and crouches in front of Griffin once more, still precise with his movements, but now radiating a savage brutality.

  “Cassie!” Regan calls out. “Bring me your pack!”

  I run the few steps to her, breathing heavily, though I’ve not exerted myself at all. Regan grabs my pack and paws through it, pulling out a few containers of herbs, then digging a desperate hole in the sand.

  “Get in the boat! Hurry, please!” Noah shouts. He throws his hands out, bracing and trying to balance as a wave crashes into him. He fights to remain standing, to give no ground, and manages it. But only just.

  I look back at Regan. “Noah can’t last long out there.” But she doesn’t look up from her hole in the sand. She drops a mix of herbs in it and moves her lips, chanting.

  Joe is solid as a tree stump, the only one armed with a real weapon, fueled with rage and hate. His eyes never leave Griffin, who looks bone tired as he climbs wearily to his feet, his heavy pack still on his back, his face pale even with his darkly tanned skin. He clutches his palm.

  Joe shifts, lunges to strike—and his foot slips in the loose sand. He stumbles, arms flailing, and lands heavily on his side. I send up a silent thank you that it was just to the side. When he doesn’t immediately leap up, Griffin risks a step closer, then nudges him with a foot.

  “Out cold. But breathing,” Griffin calls out. “Head hit a rock.”

  “Really?” I ask, bewildered.

  “Hurry!” Noah cries.

  “Should we try to bring them…?” I say, looking from Helen to Joe with horror, uncertainty.

  “No time! Noah is—come on,” Regan says.

  We run to the boat, Griffin helping me push it farther into the water as Regan scrambles into the thing. We leap inside, and Noah tries to grab for Griffin’s outstretched hand as we pass. He’s thrown off balance.

  “No! Noah!” Regan cries.

  Noah teeters for one moment. I blink the briny water out
of my eyes and clutch the side of the boat, reaching with my right hand as far as it’ll extend. Noah’s hand latches onto mine and we pull at him, nearly capsizing. He lands at our feet with a crash, breathing heavily, his clothes plastered to him.

  Regan cradles Noah as we paddle toward the horizon. I stare back at the two figures lying on the beach.

  We’re okay. We’re okay. Okay. Okay. Okay.

  Chapter 31

  I step backwards. The wooden sliver in my finger from this oar erupts into an untreatable infection. They have to amputate.

  “So, I was a little busy, but did I hallucinate Dill just… disappearing?” Griffin asks, shattering the quiet. He looks troubled. I know they’re close friends.

  “Guess they weren’t kidding about not going backwards,” I say quietly, rowing.

  Griffin curls his fingers into fists and winces, immediately opening them again and looking down at his burns. He turns to me. “Thanks. For whatever you did. The ritual. I hope you didn’t have to give up too much.”

  “That wasn’t me,” I say. I look to Regan.

  “Egg?” Griffin asks, the surprise on his face evident.

  She shrugs. “Button Field Billiards. Only cost me a minute off the end of my life.”

  A blink-and-you’d-miss-it spasm of emotion crosses Griffin’s face, too fast to read with any accuracy. “Thank you,” he says simply.

  Noah stares off across the water. “I hope Dill is okay,” he says. “I just pulled at the boat to keep it from… I didn’t mean to… I didn't know that even in the boat it would—”

  “Woah, yeah, that's crazy,” Griffin says. “Reminds me of this time a girl brought an evil eye into Theban and didn’t realize what she was doing. It's weird, though. Because here you’ve maybe killed one of our classmates and she's treating you with nothing but sympathy, but you—”

  I rest a hand on his knee, stilling his defense. Noah’s eye has teared up, and his jaw tenses as he turns away. The last thing we need is for Noah to dwell on this, to give the Coil something else to feed on. The fact that it hasn't yet is no small miracle, and speaks more to how easy it is to prey on me than anything else.