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“THIS IS. Choose. Now. Or I’ll kill her.”
“I’m sorry,” Fia whispers.
I nearly jump out of my skin at the next voice. Eden. “Fia, where have you—What the hell? Annie?”
“You can’t see Annie,” Fia says, dreamy and distracted. “You can’t know she’s alive. It’s all ruined. I have to fix it.”
There’s a soft gasp behind me and the gun moves away from my temple, the arm around my neck loosens. Sarah leans heavily against my back.
“No,” I shout, lunging forward to block Fia with my body, but she’s not there. Sarah falls to the ground behind me. “Fia? Fia, where are you?”
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”
Eden is moaning something to God, over and over, but I don’t need God, I need Fia. I spin, trying to find her, then notice the back of my shirt is wet. I touch it, and my fingers come away slick with something thicker than water.
“Sarah?” I ask, already knowing she won’t answer.
Fia’s voice brings back nightmares of empty pill bottles. “I can’t do this again, I can’t, I can’t, no no no no, no no no no.”
I hold out my hands, one covered in Sarah’s blood, the other clean. “Fia, come here. Come here. Let’s leave, right now. It’s okay. We’ll leave.”
A door slams somewhere nearby and I wander in small circles trying to find my sister. I nearly trip on something, and bile rises in my throat as I realize it’s an arm. Sarah’s arm.
“Fia,” James says, and I freeze.
“She was going to kill Annie,” she says. “I had to. I—James, please, please, make it better, fix it, fix me, please please please.” Her breath hitches and a sob chokes out.
I have my hands out in nothing but open space. She doesn’t come to me.
“It’s going to be fine,” James says. “Go get in the car. I’ll be there in a minute. Everything is going to be fine.”
I wait for her to disagree with him, to say something to me, anything, but she simply says, “Okay.”
And then she’s gone.
“You just couldn’t stay dead, could you, Annie?”
“I—I didn’t know this would happen.” Fia left me. Again.
“Of course you didn’t. When do you ever?” He sighs heavily. “Now what I am supposed to do with this?”
I recoil in horror. “This is a girl named Sarah.” She was my friend. She would have killed me or Fia. I don’t know how to feel. I will never know how to feel again.
Eden’s voice shakes. “Will someone please explain this to me? You were dead—I saw you, she killed you, I saw it. You were dead.” She pulls me to her and smashes me in a hug.
James sounds annoyed. “You’ll never be able to keep this quiet in your head. This whole trip is a wash. Fine. Eden, congratulations, Fia killed you for double-crossing us and alerting Lerner so they got
to Sadie first. You can join Annie in death, and please for the love of all that is holy, stay away from us. I’m calling for a cleanup guy who won’t tell my father it’s the wrong body, and I suggest you both run. Now.”
“Go to hell,” Eden spits, then takes my hand and pulls me down the sidewalk, away from the blood, away from the body, away from my sister, once again broken because of me.
I didn’t even get to talk to her.
I didn’t even get to touch her.
And James will fill in the holes in her soul, drawing her even closer to him and further and further away from me.
“There’s a car,” I manage to say after a couple of minutes. “Cole—I don’t know where he is.”
