Naomi blanches. She’s been doing that a lot. I keep thinking the blood will just stay put until it’s safer to re-enter her face, but no. It keeps on trying.
“We can see the rifts.” I pause in case she has more questions, but she’s reverted to silence. “On Halloween night, we opened the tomb to let Seraphina out so we could destroy the curse once and for all. Seraphina used her onyx to call forth this horrible squid-thing. It pulled Ivy and Lainey into the Overlay and they sort of combusted into flame.”
“It grabbed me, too,” Twig says.
Naomi looks down at his boot—his cooked foot—and somehow, even more color drains from her face.
Unsure how much more she can take, I rush onward. I tell her about the strange creature thatcoughed up a glowing seed—my attention wandering briefly to the sour cream container in my window—and Lainey’s surprising return.
“But…” The furrow in her brow deepens. “How is she alive if she combusted into flame?”
“She might not be.” I look at Twig.
The idea seems to give him indigestion.
“Rafe warned us. We thought he was being figurative. But what if he was being literal?”
“Rafe?” Naomi’s voice cracks. “But I thought—didn’t he die with Seraphina?
“I don’t know. He could be a ghost. Or maybe he’s trapped like Carol Ann fromThe Poltergeist.” Stuck in a supernatural limbo. Is this what the Overlay is?
“I’ve never seenThe Poltergeist, Selah.”
“Rafe has appeared twice since Halloween,” Twig says.
“And the last time he showed up,” I continue, “he told me Lainey isn’t Lainey.”
“Who is she, then?”
“I don’t know. An evil doppelgänger?”
Naomi closes her eyes, her knuckles white as she grips the mug. For a second, I think she might be sick.
Twig sets his hand on her back and gives me a look, likeslow down, would you?
But I can’t. I’m already going as slow as I can stand. “Or, she could be possessed.”
“By Rafe,” Twig mutters.
“Rafe can’t possess people.”
“He can control them.”
This is true. He’s done it to Lainey before, manipulated her into doing his bidding. We just told Naomi all about it. But something in my gut objects. My mind keeps returning to Mistress Bramble’s words.
You woke a great hunger. Now, it will hunt.
“What if she comes back?” Naomi asks, her voice trembling with panic. “If she’s not really Lainey and she’s being possessed and her eyes were glowing then we have to tell Harper. We have to tell everyone?—”
“I don’t think we can tell everyone.” I think of my father downstairs—worrying about me, worrying about Twig, worrying about us all.
“We were going to on our podcast,” Twig says.
“That was before, when Lainey and Ivy were missing and we didn’t think they’d ever come back. If we go public now, our parents will have us in therapy before we can blink. I’m not so sure we want to add that to our plate when we have much bigger fish to fry.”
Like how to stop this hunger from hunting.
“But Harper?” Naomi looks up at me, her eyesfilled with fear. Then she turns to Twig, sitting next to her on my bed. “And your sister? Kate and Lainey are friends.”
