Calla frowned down at the keys in her hand.

What the hell sort of games are you playing, Coop?

Angry now, she pulled out her phone, her eyes narrowing at the string of texts Cooper had left her—and which she had, for the most part, ignored.

Meet you at my place in 20?

Calla.

Bitch hello.

Cory is now stalking me because of you so thanks can you hurry up and get here?

Seriously the guy isn't leaving until he sees you.

Answer him so he leaves me alone.

The texts ended there.

"I leave for a couple hours and you go AWOL," she grumbled, clenching the keys hard enough to hurt, the jagged edges digging into her palm.

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. A gust of cold air blew loose curls across her face and she batted them away, impatient. The keys jingled noisily in her hand.

The keys.

She paused, staring down at the cold metal. Something in her gut twisted. Deep down, she felt the beast stretch.

Cooper...

The guy couldn't so much as leave a scrap of paper in the wrong pocket of his backpack without risking a compulsive tick. Her eyes trailed to the aged hunk of metal next to her, the car sitting cold and still. Experimentally, she walked around to the hood of the car and trailed her fingers over the metal.

Not cold yet. The engine was still warm.

"You were in such a rush to see me," she mused, walking a slow circle around the car. "So where are you?"

Meet you at my place in twenty?

And yet: no Cooper.

Cory is now stalking me because of you, so thanks.

And yet: no Cory.

Just a set of abandoned car keys.

Calla froze, her mind going blank for a moment, like a curtain dropping mid-scene. And then she blinked, and she saw them: those beautiful blue eyes. That coy, dimpled smirk.

The twisting in her gut intensified as a dark certainty gripped her.

She swore, her mouth going dry. Clenching the keys in her fist, she scrolled through her contacts and found Cooper's name. Breathing deeply now, she hit the call button and waited, her nostrils flaring. Like a shark catching a faint hint of blood in the water.

Does he still have his phone? Or has it been destro—

Cory answered on the second ring. "Calla! Finally."

Her eyes narrowed. "Where's Cooper?"

Right to the point. Why mince words?

"He's with me," Cory answered, upbeat. "He's, ah...a little tied up. Here. I'll give him the phone."

A moment later she heard a different voice. High-pitched and panicked. "He's going to kill me, Calla. Please, he's going to—"

"Shush, shush." Cory took the phone back, sighing into the microphone. "He's very dramatic. I thought he'd be...I dunno. More interesting? I mean, you seem to like him. You've kept him alive this long, so I figured..."

You've kept him alive this long. Her heart skipped a beat. In her mind's eye, she saw the flash of a silver knife, black hair tangled in her hands.

She blinked, and the image—the memory?—was gone.

"Where are you?" she asked flatly.

"Hmm? Oh!" Cory seemed delighted by her question. He laughed. "Right. Okay, so this totally wasn't supposed to go down like this...but you kinda screwed up my plan. Which is fine! More spontaneous."

He admitted this with a grumble. She imagined him with a slight pout, his beautiful eyes troubled. She wanted to pop those eyes out with a spoon. Or maybe she'd dig them out with her fingers.

"Where," she repeated. "Are. You."

"You're not usually this impatient," he mumbled, lost in thought. "But this is the real you. Not the other you." A wistful sigh. "There's so much I want to know..."

You haven't seen the real me, Cory Michaels. And after today, you're going to wish you never had.

"Anyway," he continued, positive again. "I had to make some adjustments. But I think it works...we can finish this together now."

She flashed back to their date night at the movies, his hands soft and warm and his eyes filled with hopeful desperation. You'll be able to put all this behind you, he'd said, consoling her in the darkness. Start fresh.

"Cory—" she started, her voice deadly quiet.

"Come to the place where it all started," he said simply, his voice less warm now. In the background, she heard Cooper shout, a frantic attempt to get someone—anyone—to help him. "I think it goes without saying you shouldn't bring my dad or the rest of the welcome wagon with you."

She ground her teeth together. "And where, exactly, is—"

Cooper screamed somewhere in the background—loud enough to cut her off mid-question. Her grip on the keys tightened, and she felt a trickle of water run down her pinky finger.

Not water. Blood.

"I would hurry if I were you," Cory instructed, his voice low and cold. The perfect match to her own.

Before she could gather her thoughts, he hung up the phone, cutting off Cooper's screams so abruptly she went still for a moment. For the first time in a long time, she had absolutely no idea what the hell she was supposed to do.

And then the rage came.

Letting out a wild scream, Calla threw her phone. The screen shattered on impact. She stared down at it, her chest heaving with each shuddering breath. Her throat tightened as the fury clawed its way through her body, consuming every molecule.

The beast inside her belly—the one she should not, could not let loose—shuddered in delight. And then her vision began to go dark. Her peripheral went first, but soon her entire focus had clouded. She blinked and rubbed her eyes with her free hand, cursing.

No.

The ground beneath her pulsed and went black.

She blinked, and suddenly she could see—only to find she wasn't in the cold parking lot anymore. She was somewhere else entirely. A different place. A familiar place.

She stood inside a house, the press of warm bodies surrounding her on every side. Loud music rattled her teeth, and the sharp bite of vodka filled the air. She turned her head from side to side, disgruntled. Black and orange streamers hung from the ceiling. Multicolored lights bounced off the walls, the bodies, the floor. And from somewhere nearby, she could hear obnoxious, high-pitched laughter.

Stop.

It was all she could hear. That fucking laugh. She turned, lost in the crowd now. Where had Rachel gone? She needed Rachel. She needed to find her and get out of here. And where the hell had Cooper gone?

Cooper.

She sucked in a lungful of cold air—cold air. Pain pierced the spot just behind her eyes and she moaned, holding her head. She'd dropped the keys. Cooper's keys.

Cooper.

She tried to turn, to find the keys, only to realize she was lying face down in the gravel. When had she fallen down? And where were the keys?

She wanted to open her eyes. But the pain drilling a hole into her brain kept her locked in place. She took a deep breath and recoiled at the smell of booze. In the distance, she heard laughter.

Nonononostop—

The party. That laugh.

She was on her feet again, trapped in the crowd, her bare arms rubbing against other sweaty bodies. She whirled around, overwhelmed by bright costumes and plastic vampire teeth and red solo cups. Angry now, she shoved through the crowd, the laughter following her. Haunting her.

Rachel. Where are you? I need—

Billowing black hair caught her eye, retreating up the grand staircase. Up-up-up.

Calla darted into the kitchen. She nearly stumbled into a group of freshmen as her vision tunneled, the edges of her sight going dark.

She caught herself against the kitchen counter. Grating laughter made her look up. The retreating figure was almost gone now, that black hair slipping around the corner and out of sight.

Calla took one step forward, and then another, her hand trailing along the kitchen counter. Cool marble bit at her fingertips. She looked down and saw a flash of silver. A rack of gleaming knives.

The ghost of that laughter taunted her.

She slipped one of the knives into her hand without a thought. Without so much as a whisper. And then she headed for the staircase.

NO.

Crying out, Calla lurched to her feet, stumbling into the present day—and straight into Cooper's Mustang. Her hands shook as she braced herself against the hood. Tears of pain streamed down her face. She dry heaved, her stomach twisting.

Cooper will kill me if I throw up all over his car...wouldn't that be a twist?

The thought grounded her. With a few deep, shaking breaths, she managed to compose herself. She stared down at her hands, her fingers splayed against the still-warm metal.

Warm. It's still warm. There's still time...

"Get your shit together," she muttered, pushing away from the car. She scanned the ground, looking for the keys. "Get. Your shit. Together."

Apparently, getting her shit together meant crawling on her hands and knees to retrieve the keys that had somehow found their way under the car. She grunted as she stood, not bothering to brush the gravel from her jeans. Her hands slick with blood—how deeply had she cut herself on those damn keys, anyway?—she fumbled with the car's lock, jamming the car key into the door with so much force she feared she'd accidentally snapped it right off.

She closed her eyes, sucked in a deep breath, and then turned the key gently to the side. The lock clicked and she released the breath she'd been holding. Her nerves frayed, she slid into the driver's seat and slammed the door behind her. The air in the car was cold and still and quiet.

She was just glad it didn't smell like vodka.

No. She blinked, banishing the dark memories. She didn't want to go up that staircase. Not yet.

She didn't want to see what happened at the top.

Her ragged breathing filled the car. Ignoring it, she jammed the key in the ignition and the Mustang roared to life. It shook angrily, as if protesting her presence.

"Definitely should've learned how to drive before this," Calla muttered, grabbing the steering wheel with both hands. The jagged cut on her right hand stung something fierce, but she focused her attention on the gear shift, throwing the car in reverse.

She managed to escape the parking lot without a scratch, though she almost crashed into the line of mailboxes after reaching for her phone—only to realize she'd shattered it to pieces and didn't, in fact, have a phone anymore. Cursing, she slammed on the brakes. The car screeched to a halt, right there in the middle of the road. She let the engine idle while she punched the edge of the steering wheel repeatedly. And then she cursed, grabbing a fistful of her hair, ready to rip out every strand.

She didn't. Instead, she took a beat and sucked in her fifth or sixth deep breath of the afternoon.

"Okay." Calla lifted her hands from her head and rolled her neck. "Okay..."

She eased her foot off the break, preparing to take a sharp left. And then she hesitated.

Somewhere off Briar Lane, Vincent Townson was safe. No doubt shut away in his room, burning a candle to try and block out the smell of his father's beer—but safe.

Come to the place where it all started.

She hadn't given much thought to Cory's riddle, mostly because she'd known the answer almost immediately. Tracy Smith's house. That's where he would be, holding Cooper hostage while he waited for her arrival.

She glanced to her right, staring down the road. In the distance, she could make out the vague outline of downtown Greenwitch. The tallest building—the local county bank—stood at just two stories tall, the bright white dome piercing the orange sky.

And just beyond that bank? The police station.

I could end this now, she thought wildly, staring and staring at that white dome. Tell them where to find Cory. He'll kill Cooper, but he won't get away. Not if I give the police a head start. And Vincent...

Vincent would be safe. There would be no dark fate waiting for him around the corner. Just the stress of his next test. His next big game. ACT scores and college applications and whatever other mundane things he wanted to do with his life.

The possessive part of her purred at the idea.

No one else alive knows my secret, she thought, staring down at her bloody hand. The secret dies with him. But Rachel...

Rachel. She'd almost forgotten why she'd sworn to save Cooper's life in the first place. Why she'd made that deal with her neighbor and thrown herself into this convoluted mess.

She'd sworn to take the one who'd taken Rachel from her. A life for a life. A fair exchange. But that hadn't been the only promise she'd made.

I'm not going to let you die, Cooper.

Sitting there in the dark theater, she'd promised him that much. And not because of their deal. But because he knew who she was. He knew. Whatever fire Vincent lit within her, whatever warmth Rachel had brought to her otherwise bleak life—Cooper Daniels was the only one who'd ever known what she really was.

Was she really so willing to throw that away?

Calla stared at the orange sky, the setting sun lighting the treetops on fire. The car was still freezing cold—she'd been too distracted to turn the heat on—but she welcomed the discomfort. The cold. The pain in her palm. The throbbing in her skull.

She welcomed it all.

After one agonizing moment—and then two—Calla sighed.

She'd made her decision.