Red and blue lights flicker in the distance.
Jude pulls my hand to his chest, where his heart beats once again. “Did it work?”
I laugh and cry and nod.
“But I’m alive?”
“Yes,” I say, showing him the ruby, which pulses no more. A special power Seraphina used to hurt hearts and break hearts and stop hearts.
Its final act was life.
“And the curse?” he asks.
“That’s gone, too.”
He closes his eyes for a moment, an exhaustedsmile painting his lips. Then, as though needing proof, he gently moves the collar of my shirt aside.
The mark is gone.
He exhales softly.
“Then allow me to say the words I’ve been dying to say …” His fingers curl around the back of my neck. He draws me close, his voice warm in my ear. “I love you, Selah Whitlock.”
56
UNACCOUNTED FOR
Outside, red and blue lights spin in the dark. Reporters speak into microphones, gesturing toward the front entrance of Foggy Hollow General, camera lights casting long shadows across the glass. Inside, shell-shocked teens sit in the waiting room as a trickle of panicked parents arrive and a police officer moves from group to group, quietly gathering statements.
I sit beside Jude, my hand in his as we wait for news about Twig. Jude’s shirt is torn open, a peculiarity on a typical night, perhaps. But tonight is not typical, evidenced by Wednesday Addams and Chucky’s Bride sitting shoulder to shoulder across from us.
Wednesday weeps.
The Bride sniffles into her phone. “The police said to come here, but we just found out they’retransferring Callie to Morgantown,” she says. “It’s really bad, Mom. Her sister had to do CPR and …”
Her face crumples.
She can’t finish.
Callie Reese is a sophomore who was flung against a stone statue and knocked unconscious. Callie’s sister, a senior named Milly, administered CPR until the ambulance arrived.
“Can you come get us?” the girl asks, wiping at the black streaks of mascara running down her cheeks. “We want to go to Morgantown.”
On the television, the news unfolds. Muted footage of police tape at the cemetery and teenagers wrapped in blankets. A headline scrolls across the bottom of the screen.
Breaking: Several teens hospitalized after Halloween incident in Foggy Hollow cemetery.
The doors leading to triage hiss open and out comes Kate in a long black dress, her face still painted witch-green.
Harrison comes to his feet.
She falls into his arms.
“They’re putting him under sedation now,” she says. “I don’t understand how he burned his foot so badly. They said it went all the way though his shoe.”
Kate pulls away and looks at me like I might have an explanation. Before I can feign confusion, commotion breaks out on the other side of the waiting room.
“She’s his sister.” Griffin Tate gestures towardKate, his bloody forearm wrapped in the tattered remnants of a superman cape. “Maybe he told her something. He was right there with us. He might have seen what happened to her.”
