I take a deep breath and walk into the girl’s dorm. I’m braced for the gasps and the questions, as prepared as I can get for the onslaught of attention.
One by one, they notice me, and silence ripples through the room. Molly makes a choked noise that I’m not sure is pleased.
But then there’s a small thump to my right, and I turn to see that Teagan’s legs have given out, and she’s on her knees, her huge eyes staring at me.
I want to crawl into a hole and hide, but it’s like I have a spotlight on me. Em makes her way over to me and touches my arm as if to make sure I’m not a ghost.
She’s staring at me with a mixture of fear and wonder.
So many eyes are on me, and my knees start to tremble. But they thought I was dead. I have to say something. Emerie steps to my side like she’s my right-hand woman or something.
I look at her and then back at the crowd.
“I’m sorry.” I shut my eyes to hide from their stares. “I don’t know what happened. I remember going to Praise, and they put Michael under the spike.
“And then suddenly it was last night, and Mark found me in a corridor. I don’t remember anything.”
I flee to my bed and sit on the end of it so my knees don’t have to hold me up anymore. I bury my hands in the blanket, twisting it in knots around my fists.
There’s silence, and then Molly’s voice cuts through. “And what, we’re supposed to believe that?”
I look at her, and she has a sneer on her face. I have no response for her, and she knows it.
She shakes her head sharply. “Either the Daughters are up to something, or you’ve been part of them all along, and you’re just a spy.”
I blanch at that, but Molly continues with a fire in her eyes. “Is that it, freak? They put you here to watch us and tell us when someone is bad? Is THAT why they killed Eva?
“You were watching her with your only friend, and you were jealous and gave her in. You’re one of them. YOU’RE ONE OF THEM.”
She must have been thinking this for a while, as it’s not a snap assumption to reach. My lack of abilities and tendency to stay quiet has made her see me as an enemy.
I just blink at her as her words shoot through me like physical pain. Molly and I were never friends, but I’d never turn her in to anyone, let alone the Daughters.
“I’m not,” I say quietly.
Molly points a finger at me, but then Teagan is standing in front of me. Her hair is loose, probably because she didn’t ask anybody to help her plait it.
“Stop it,” she shouts at Molly in a surprisingly loud voice. “Leave her alone.”
Alice puts her hand on Molly’s shoulder and whispers something to her, but Molly shakes her off.
“No, Alice, I’m done pretending. I’m done with us dying. She didn’t have a life before because she was born here, because she belongs to them.”
I don’t. I don’t. I repeat this to myself, but I don’t think I’m saying anything out loud. Molly’s sad about Eva. I’ve read about grief, and I think this is it.
But I’m not against them. I want to stand up and scream that I’m sorry about Eva, about everyone, that I’d never hurt any of them.
I want to know what happened as much as they do, but us fighting each other will just kill more of us.
But I don’t. I don’t move. The terror takes over again. Silence is life. My own mantra freezes me in place as the werewolf advances on me. Then everyone is yelling.
I can just hear the buzz of noise over the sound of my heartbeat, which feels like it’s in my throat. Emerie is also standing in front of me, and so is Fiona.
I wonder why they’re blurred, but I realize it’s tears filling my eyes. Molly and a few of the girls, including Alice, are pointing at me. They all must agree that I’m…that I’m not with them.
But there are more shapes with me. Teagan has come so close to me that she’s basically sitting on my lap. My staunchest supporter is this tiny water child.
As usual, the noise quietens down to Emerie against Molly. The buzzing I can hear just gets louder until I see Molly snarl but leave the room.
The rest of the girls visibly relax, and my pulse begins to slow, and I can hear and see again.
“I’m sorry,” I say quietly, but Emerie just snorts.
“We can’t fight each other about this. Even if you were one of them, which you’re not, what would we do, kill you? You’ve always been good to everyone, Remy.
“I remember how you were a few years ago. They beat the life and the voice out of you. If you were theirs, they wouldn’t have had to do that.
“I want to know what happened, but if you say you don’t know, then I believe you. Let’s all move on.”
I study Em carefully when she’s done talking. She really is a leader, not just a posturing teenager. When did she have the time to grow up so much?
I don’t realize I’m still crying until Teagan appears with a tissue and wipes delicately at my face.
“I’m glad you’re back,” is all she says. No other questions, no need for validation. She just likes me being around.
The gauze has been removed from her face, but the cuts her fingers made are still healing, and they remind me of how this place makes her hurt herself. I spin her and quietly start to do her hair.
Molly might think I’m capable of standing by and letting this little girl maim herself, but it’s not true, and Teagan knows it.
I finish her hair and then dress and go to breakfast. There are more stares from the boys, but Emerie flanks me like a lioness and sees off any questions.
The others are passing my story around the room. She doesn’t remember. She just turned up. Mark found her. Remy. Mark. Remy. Disappeared. Not dead, not dead, not dead.
I can’t eat anything, and I push my toast away from me, but it’s pushed back as Mark sits opposite me. He doesn’t say anything and doesn’t have any food with him.
He has a bruise under his chin where Four hurt him, which will bring more questions, but nobody talks to us.
Until I catch Callum staring at me. And not the inquisitive or worried stares the others have. He’s staring at me like he’s planning to say something.
I blink, embarrassed at the attention, but he gets up from his table and comes to sit with us. Em gives him a withering look, which he ignores.
He leans forward, his damp hair glinting in the electric lights. “Did you see the blue lightning?”
Emerie and Mark hush him, but he can tell he’s caught my attention. The memory of it flashed back to me: the light in the darkness and then on the ceiling.
I try not to say anything, because the rest of the nightmare is in my head. The hands and the voice demanding to know what I saw.
The Daughters didn’t seem to know what I’d seen, so I have no idea who wanted the information, so I don’t answer Callum.
He nods and reaches for my wrist, looking suspiciously at Mark and Em. I flinch away from him, but he just shakes his head. “We have to talk, Remy, just you and me.”
I can feel my brow furrow as I try to figure out what he could possibly want from me. I don’t want to answer questions. I don’t want to relive my dreams.
And it can’t be good that he knows about the lightning.
“We have to talk, Remy. You have to understand. I’ve seen this before.”
Em takes a sharp breath, and Mark turns to Callum, looking down on the shorter boy.
“What do you know?”
Callum shakes his head and looks around. “Not here. They’ll hear us. Remy, you have to meet me in the chapel. It’s the only place without ears. You can bring them if you want.”
He gestures to Emerie and Mark and then gets up from the table and leaves.
“Ignore him, Remy. He’s just digging for gossip.” Em takes a delicate bit of a cookie she’s holding and casts her eyes around for more people to be suspicious of.
But he knew about the lightning. He knew it was blue.
“Come on.” I decide suddenly and stand up. “I want to know.”
I walk out of the canteen with everyone’s eyes on me. Mark and Emerie are with me like bodyguards.
“Remy.” Mark starts sounding worried. “After last night, just…just be careful.”
Em makes a questioning noise, but neither of us says anything. Emerie’s fine, and she’s been nice to me today, but I’m not going to tell her things unless I have to. I only trust Mark.
We go to the chapel, and it’s dark inside, like earlier today when I woke up there after missing for five days.
Suddenly I find it hard to go inside, and the terror rises from the depths to grip me like a hand on my throat.
I take some shuddering breaths and try to take a step, but I’m backing away from it, and I find myself pressed to the opposite wall, shaking.
“What happened to her?” Emerie is looking to Mark.
He looks at her with confusion. “Why would I know?”
“You found her, didn’t you ask?”
Mark touches his glasses instinctively and shrugs.
“I asked where she’d been, and she said she didn’t know. She was ice cold and really disorientated, so I didn’t interrogate her. I was just happy she was alive.”
“Calm down, Romeo. I was just asking.”
They’re talking about me like I’m not here, but I guess, in a way, I’m not. Mark hasn’t mentioned what he heard when the Daughters talked to me, but that’s not what Em asked.
Mark doesn’t like to lie, but he answered the question. He didn’t ask me what happened, and I didn’t tell him, so that’s what he said to Emerie.
Callum appears from the shadows of the room, and I clasp a hand to my mouth.
“Okay, no.” Mark starts toward me. “Look at her, Callum. She’s fucking terrified. We can’t talk now.”
“We have to,” Callum hisses, looking around us furtively. “I couldn’t save Raj, but maybe I can help her.”
“Raj?” Emerie stares at him. “What do you mean save Raj?”
Callum just gestures us inside the chapel. Mark looks at me, and I manage to meet his eyes. I nod shakily. I saw Raj in that room, but maybe I have to know this.
I can stay silent, stay alive, and I can know what’s happening to me.
I walk into the room before I can talk myself out of it.
The other two follow me, and then Callum shuts the door and turns on a few of the lights, and the flickering reflects off the windows like dancing fairies.
It makes the room less dark, which helps calm me.
Callum looks me dead in the eye. “I’m going to tell you what happened to Raj. Maybe it’ll help you.”
He continues before I can say anything. “Just before he turned eighteen, he started to have dreams about the kids that had died. Melissa was the recurring one, but there were others.
“He was afraid that he was going crazy. He woke me one night because he thought he’d woken and seen us all hanging from the ceiling above our beds, all of us dead.
“I had to convince him I was alive. I was really young, but we were friends. He…he was my first friend here.” Callum pushes his hair out his eyes and continues.
“After the dreams, he disappeared. I was the only one to see him again alive.”
Emerie is frowning at him. “He was hanging in the garden when we found him.”
“Yes,” Callum says quickly, “but how long had he been gone before Fiona found him? Do you remember?”
“Five days.” Mark’s voice is quiet. “Shit. I remember you marking them off on the wall above your bed. We knew he was gone, but we hadn’t found the body or clothes.
“You were convinced he was still alive. But I don’t remember him being found.”
Five days.
“But then he was dead.” Emerie sounded exasperated. “He didn’t come back like Remy did. He was already dead. He’d been there for days. He was hidden. We didn’t find him.”
“No. No, I saw him.” Callum sits down heavily on one of the benches. “I wanted to try and find him, so I got up in the night and went to look around. I found him in here.”
Five days. Then reappearing below the spike.
“He was…crazy,” Callum admits. “He said there was blue lightning in the windows and on the ceiling. He said the lightning was coming for us.
“He kept talking about the ‘Sins of the Mother.’” Callum made quotation gestures when he said that. “That and the lightning. He was terrified, and his skin was cold as ice.”
Mark looks at me and then away quickly.
Five days. Visions. The spike and the lightning. Cold skin. Crazed.
I look at Callum with dread. “And then he died.”
Callum shakes his head with sorrow on his face. “And then he killed himself.”
Silence in the room.
Dead. Suicide.
“I had to tell you, Remy, because you were gone for five days, and you’ve seen the lightning.”
“He killed himself?” Emerie’s voice is quiet.
Callum nods, his eyes averted. “He said if the dreams didn’t get him, the lightning would. Do you remember the glass cup they used to have in here that the Daughters drank out of at Praise?”
I nod. It had been on the altar. They replaced it with a metal one a few years ago. Four years ago.
Callum gestures to where it used to sit. “Raj smashed it. He took a piece and…and he tried to cut open his own wrist with it.”
We’re all staring now, and I feel sick. I look down, expecting to see blood, but there’s nothing.
“But he hanged himself.” Em is quiet now, hugging herself like she’s cold.
Callum nods. “There was blood, but he didn’t do it deeply, because he was shaking so badly. He tried again, but the glass vanished from his hand with a snapping noise.
“He just stared at it, and then he ran. He was taller than me and faster. I never caught him. And then Fiona found him the next day.”
I drop to my knees, ignoring the pain from hitting the stone floor. “Mark,” I say, so quietly I wasn’t sure he’d heard, but he crouches down.
“It’s okay, Remy. We won’t let that happen to you.”
I shake my head. “No, no, I don’t care about me. You don’t remember Raj being found.”
“No, I don’t. So what?”
“It’s because you were in the infirmary.” I remember sitting with him in there when Alice had come to tell me they’d found him.
Mark looks at me for a few seconds and then goes pale. He also goes to his knees on the stone and grips his left wrist with his right hand.
The glass…it had come out of nowhere. There had been a boy in my special room upstairs, the dark-haired boy who they said screamed at night.
He was staring right through me while I asked him what he was doing there. Then suddenly the glass was in his hand, a curved bit of glass that he used, that he cut…
He started muttering in a language I didn’t know, and he brought the glass down on his wrist, slicing the skin away and letting the blood fall out of him in a scarlet wave.
The night that Raj did the same thing. Could that be a coincidence?
The Daughters found us seconds after the cut happened and vanished with Mark.
I found them in the infirmary with the resident medic, another slave, that was doing some magic on the slashed wrist, but a lot of blood had been spilled, and Mark didn’t wake for days.
By that time, Raj was already dead.
Mark shakes his head. “But there have been other times when—” He doesn’t finish, but I know. “—And nobody else has… It must be a coincidence.
”I can’t be controlled like that. They can’t take it from me.”
Blood, visions, scars. Blue lightning that drips from the ceiling like poison. My only friend thinks his multiple suicide attempts might have been caused by someone else.
What is happening to us?
