Calla stared at the ceiling, hands clasped over her chest—gently cradling the tip of a knife against the hollow of her throat and wondering, not for the first time, what death might feel like.

Was it hard and fast and unexpected, like the shock of icy river water? Or was it a steady, inevitable march, leaching from one's body as tar spreads across a stretch of summer pavement? A part of her desperately wanted to know.

Another part of her dreaded the answer.

Whatever the case, she didn't believe in that mumbo-jumbo about the light and the tunnel. Only fools believed in fairytales.

Fools and sadists.

The sound of footsteps dispelled her dark thoughts. Calla sat upright and shoved the knife into the drawer of her nightstand, covering the bone-white handle with a stray sock.

By the time her mother opened the door, Calla was propped against her pillows, pretending to scroll through her phone.

"Calla?" Rosalind slipped into the room, shivering through her robe. She tightened the sash. "It's freezing in here."

Calla nodded toward her window, cracked partially to let in the last remnants of the cold snap that had besieged the town for the last week. "I needed some fresh air."

Her mother made a dissatisfied noise in the back of her throat, moving to sit at the end of the bed. Calla tossed aside her phone, anticipating some sort of grand parental speech. Rosalind had been surprisingly tight-lipped over the last few days, saying nothing of her daughter's near-brush with death. Calla had expected she'd be punished after diving headfirst into a very dangerous situation. It was just the sort of thing her mother was always warning her about.

Keep your head, honey. Don't take unnecessary risks.

Answering what had essentially been a serial killer's dare was the textbook definition of an unnecessary risk. Yet here she sat, notably ungrounded and well fed. She couldn't wrap her head around it.

"Calla..." her mother started. She bit her lip. "Have you decided where you want to go to college?"

"Oh." Calla drew her knees to her chest. "Not yet. Either Cornell or Yale. I haven't heard back about a scholarship, but they're supposed to be finalizing that this week."

"Good." Rosalind tapped her daughter's knee. "That's...good."

That was exceptional, and they both knew it. But Calla held her tongue, unable to gauge her mother's mood.

She glanced over her mother's shoulder—to the door across the hall. The brass knob taunted her. Ask her, it seemed to say. Ask her ask her ask her.

Don't ask questions you don't want the answers to.

"Mom?"

Rosalind didn't look up from her lap. "Hmm?"

"What happened to my brother?"

Her head snapped up. For an uncomfortable length of time, neither said a word. Until Rosalind, knuckles white around the sash of her robe, asked, "Why do you want to know?"

My brother. He was amusing, Stephanie had said, winding her fingers through Vincent's hair as a lover would. And then he wasn't.

Stephanie had killed her brother in the same fashion as the others she'd brutalized. The story had resurfaced as all things did in this town—with a whisper.

A nasty fall. A tragic, terrible accident.

"I just...do," Calla said at length, shrugging her shoulders. She tried to imagine all the ways she might have done it—wrapping her tiny hands around his tiny neck, or else sticking him through the neck with a pencil. Killers had a tendency to follow a specific pattern. There was a normalcy to it that way. An order. Had her mother found him on his bedroom floor, his sister's hands covered in—

"He passed away in his sleep."

Calla kept her eyes firmly on a ripped stitch in the blanket over her lap. "But how?"

Her mother sighed. The mattress dipped as she readjusted herself, crawling over to the headboard to join Calla on her throne of overstuffed pillows. Calla could just smell the hint of her shampoo—lavender. It was as familiar to her as her own reflection.

"Your brother..." Rosalind clasped Calla's hand and pulled it into her lap. She began to play with Calla's fingers, examining them one by one. "Chester. His name was Chester. After the chestnut oak."

"The tree in the backyard?"

"The very same." Her mother smiled, but it was thin and sad. "I wish I had a better answer for you. But his death was...unexpected. Sometimes children just die."

Calla gave her fingers a reassuring squeeze. "That's..."

"Terrible?" Rosalind sighed. More like unbelievable, Calla thought. "They say he went peacefully. There were no signs he'd suffered. He had a bad heart and he just...slipped away. Right out of our fingers."

Calla closed her eyes and pictured the boy with golden curls. "Did he have blonde hair?"

Rosalind tensed beside her. "He did. You remember him?"

"Sometimes." Calla shrugged again. The image disappeared when she reopened her eyes.

"Calla." Her mother planted a kiss in her hair. "That boy loved you. And you loved him. You two would play for hours, giggling together on the floor. There was never a fuss nor a fight between you." Her next words were brimming with heartbreak, long buried in a shallow grave—easy to fill, and easier still to unearth. "You even shared the same bed. You were too old for it, of course. But you wouldn't have it any other way. You'd crawl into his bed when you thought I was asleep, and I'd find you like that in the morning, all curled around him, his little hands buried in your hair." Her voice broke. "You were with him until the end."

Calla rested her cheek against her mother's shoulder, letting her words sink in. That boy loved you. And you loved him.

"I was so worried," her mother whispered, clearing her throat. "I was so worried it would have some...negative impact on your childhood. Waking up to find your brother cold and—" She stopped speaking abruptly. Took another breath. "But you turned out fine. Just fine," she murmured, stroking Calla's hair, her cheek. The words sounded like a reassurance—for her daughter, and for herself.

Calla was sure it was her own imagination running wild, but as her mother laid bare the truth of the empty room and the brother she'd lost, she almost thought she could picture those first bleary moments in bed as a child, waking to a grey dawn and finding her brother beside her, still as a stone. She would rub the sleep out of her eyes and reach for him, touching his cheeks, the dimple in his chin. But his eyes—wide and brown and unseeing—wouldn't quite meet hers.

Impatient, she'd shake him by his shoulder. "Chester," she would hiss, displeased. She liked to crawl under the covers with him and whisper about imaginary worlds before their mother came for them with her morning hair and her grumpy frown, always made less grumpy with a pot of bitter coffee. "Chester. Wake up."

He wouldn't answer. She would remember thinking how strange he felt next to her, stiff and cold now that she'd shifted her warmth away from him. Curiosity would grip her, and she'd turn on her side and pillow her hand beneath her cheek, and she would watch him for one hour and then two, waiting for mommy to come wake him up. Except he was awake. His eyes were open and empty like glass, and crusty on the insides the way hers often were in the morning.

She knew she shouldn't touch him, but she couldn't help it. She'd brush the exposed skin at his throat, marveling at the strange texture that was familiar and was not, pressing the hollow of his throat, testing how far the skin would sink. She would run her little child's finger over his blue lips and then over his eyelids, stiff with what she did not know yet to be death. And she would try to close those eyes, not quite liking the way he stared over her, through her. But his eyelids would snap back up each time she attempted it, like the baby dolls she so loathed, staring at her all through the night.

I was so worried it would have some negative impact on your childhood. But you turned out fine.

Just. Fine.

"Calla?"

She straightened. "I need to go for a run."

Her mother also straightened, hands falling back to the sash at her waist. "Sure. I can order a pizza for lunch, if you'd like."

Calla swung her legs over the side of the bed. "Yeah," she murmured, reaching for her running shoes. "I'd like that."

# # #

She ran all the way to the cemetery.

The backpack over her shoulders hindered her progress. She crossed beneath the cemetery's iron arch, gasping for breath. Cooper could have driven her here, if she'd bothered to wake him. But she'd needed the feel of pavement beneath her feet; already she felt clearer, more sure of her path.

That boy loved you. And you loved him.

Cooper had once asked if she was capable of love. Perhaps she'd throw her mother's words in his face. She was capable of it—as she was capable of all things.

If only she could remember what that felt like: to love someone and to be loved, without the lies and the uncertainty she'd cocooned herself in for so many years. She paused, hovering among the headstones like a sentinel.

"I always wondered what was behind that door."

Calla tightened her hold on the straps at her shoulders. She turned her head; a familiar figure stood on the path behind her, arms wrapped around her middle as if to ward off the cold.

Rachel had always loathed the long winter months. These unseasonable cold snaps used to drive her mad. It's spring, she'd complain, shivering in one of the oversized pullovers she loved to wear between classes. Spring is supposed to be warm. I hate the cold.

"I know," Calla said softly, continuing down the path. Rachel followed in her footsteps—a shadow only she could see.

"Why are we here?"

"You know why we're here." Calla cut away from the path and knelt in front of the headstone that had become as familiar to her as her own home. "We have unfinished business, you and I."

Rachel stood over her shoulder, gazing at her name etched into the stone, unimpressed. "I thought it'd be bigger," she deadpanned.

Calla smiled as she shrugged off the backpack and reached inside. Her fingers had just brushed the edges of the photo album when she heard footsteps behind her.

Rachel sighed, wistful. "Cooper."

Without turning around, Calla asked, "Are you stalking me?"

"Obviously." Cooper crouched down beside her, keys rattling between his fingers. "What are you doing here?"

"Unfinished business," she repeated softly, drawing out the photo album and a handful of other random odds and ends: stray photographs she'd collected from her corkboard; a pair of Grinch-themed socks Rachel had gifted her as a joke for Christmas one year; the scrap piece of paper Calla had found in her clutch that night at the winter gala, torn almost beyond recognition.

Buried at the bottom of the bag was a lighter. Calla reached for it last, and when she laid it in her palm, Cooper sighed. "Is arson on your criminal bucket list, or something?"

"My brother died in his sleep."

That brought him up short. She watched as he fought to keep his expression neutral, but he'd never mastered the trick; his brows rose infinitesimally, lips flattening to hide what might have been a smile. "I knew you didn't do it," he said gruffly.

"Yes," she said, flicking the lighter's wheel. A small flame leapt to life. "You did."

Cooper watched the flame dance between her fingers. "How'd you figure it out?"

"My mother told me. One morning, he was just...gone. Something about a bad heart." She doused the flame.

You were with him until the end.

Cooper settled onto the grass, contemplative. "So. This is a celebratory bonfire, then?" He looked at her. "Count me in."

"We are not here to celebrate," she snapped. "We're here—"

"—to settle unfinished business, yes." His brows dipped. "What does that mean, exactly?"

"You promised."

Calla closed her eyes. I promised to find your killer, Rach. And I did that. Didn't I?

The words felt like a lie. It wasn't enough. It would never be enough. But this—spotting the shadow of a dead girl around every corner—had to end. Rachel was dead, and she wasn't coming back.

I have to let you go, Rachel.

Calla pulled out a bottle of lighter fluid from her backpack. "I can't keep holding on to her like this."

Cooper clasped her shoulder. His hand was warm and familiar. "She would want you to move on."

"He's right."

Calla pursed her lips. She wanted to scream and claw and scratch. She didn't want to move on. She didn't want to let go.

But there was no alternative. Not one that she could see.

"We'll see each other again," Rachel promised.

Calla almost laughed. She'd never given much thought to the afterlife. People lived. People died. The rest was a fool's speculation.

If there was a life after this, she imagined she was destined for the fires of hell, or perhaps an endless, monotonous purgatory. Surely she would be punished. Surely she would suffer.

Rachel had gone where she could not follow.

No. Calla pushed to her feet and doused the pile of keepsakes with the accelerant. Fuck that. If there's a life after this, I'll find you, Rachel. And if the devil tries to stop me, I'll take his crown and come for you anyway.

Calla had to believe that was possible—had to believe that they had some choice in how it all ended. And if they didn't, and it was all up to fate and chance and the whims of some higher power, she would change the rules.

"Love you, Cal." A soft breeze ghosted over her skin, lifting the ends of her hair. "You deserve to be happy."

Calla threw the lighter on the ground and watched her memories of Rachel go up in smoke.