49
I reach Kennedy’s room andthrow the balcony doors open, but as I’m about to slide my leg over the railing, I hear a familiar, horrible, crushing sound.
Hands knocking.
Emily screaming.
From the attic.
Chase was right.
It’s happening again.
Exactly the same way.
I turn and face the monster. The crushing heat, the smoke, the fire creeping closer and closer, Emily’s panicked voice above me, the pounding in the attic. Not this time. I’m not leaving her this time. I position myself behind the bed and force it across the room, agonizingly slowly, throwing all of my weight, my heart, my terror, behind it. In a nightmare, you get second chances. This doesn’t feel like a nightmare. It feels unbearably real. But I can’t live with the guilt of killing her twice.
I step up on the bed and stand on tiptoe, and my fingers just graze the latch of the attic door. It’s scorching hot.
“I’m here!” I shout up to her.
She doesn’t answer, and the thumps are growing fainter and further apart. I steel myself and go for the latch again, andthis time it comes open. I yank the door down, and a wave of shock runs through me. It’s not her. It’s not Emily. Kennedy is crouched at the top of the ladder, her face pressed low, taking short, shallow breaths. She reaches for me, and I pull her down into my arms. We land on the bed in a swirl of smoke, and she coughs and drops onto the floor.
I try to pull her up, toward the balcony, but she stops me, grabbing my arm.
“Chelsea, wait.” She looks into my eyes, dread radiating out of them. “Ryan is dead.”
I stare at her, my mind spinning like a music box. But then I see it. The shadowy figure comes into view. The panicked swim to the boat, the alibi, the doomed walk back to the lake house, Emily’s silhouette in the attic. The Summer of Swallows. “When did you remember?”
“The boat brought some of it back. When I first woke on the deck, I thought it was a dream. You were so sure you saw someone fall, but it didn’t make sense. Ryan left. How could he have… But then when I was alone on the water, it came back. He followed me. I lived it, like a waking nightmare. I knew what we did.”
I try to comprehend. “Mila figured it out when she went back out on the water too. Chase saw it in the clearing in the tarot card. That’s what you were hiding from me. Not who set the fire. Mila tried to tell me, but Chase wouldn’t let her.”
“The guilt almost destroyed you, Chelsea. Of course he was afraid to tell you.”
“Ryan never came back.” I crawl over to her and we huddle together.
“We saw what we wanted to believe.” Kennedy coughs violently. “I didn’t mean to kill him, Chelsea.” She coughs again and buries her head in my shoulder. “We’ve been lying so long, some parts begin to feel like the truth. But I didn’t mean to do it. I didn’t.”
I take her hand, cold and smooth, and press it to my lips. “I know, Kennedy.” I feel my insides turning from numbness to nausea. The smoke is killing my lungs. “But we have to get out of here.” I start to climb to my feet.
“Wait,” she says again, and pulls me away from the balcony. “When I was a little girl, I used to see ghosts. Especially in this house.”
“But you don’t believe,” I whisper.
She sits, steadying herself on the bed. “I learned long ago to keep it a secret. It scares people. They sent me away once and I never said another word. But this house is special. The ghosts. There was one in the lake that was always angry. The dripping man. But the others looked after me like family. Like one of their own.” Her eyes drift up to the attic, and a sense of dread fills me.
“The tea party,” I whisper.
She nods. “They’ve always been here. It’s like time doesn’t work the same in their world. They’re living every day at once. Reliving. Every moment of my life that I spent at this house, they were there. They don’t leave. They don’t change. To me they looked grotesque—like corpses. But to each other, they look exactly like they did the day they died.”
I look to the balcony anxiously. The fire is burning through the house, devouring the walls, creeping closer. “Kennedy, we have to go.”
“One minute,” she begs. “There are five ghosts in the lake house. The dripping man, the blue lady, the backward girl, the woman on the stairs, and the crushed man.”
I pull her to her feet. “I want to hear this. I do. But we need to get out before the floor collapses.” My bigger fear, though, is that the smoke is making her delirious. Smoke kills more people than fire does.
She pulls back wearily and sinks back onto the bed. “I can’t.”