“We’re done,” I say abruptly.
Kennedy blinks. “Are you sure? No rush. We have all day.”
“Nonsense.” I blow the candles out, leaving only the dim light from the single window on the other side of the ladder. “I have to clean up, you have to make dinner, Chase and Mila probably want to spend some time alone together.”
Chase clears his throat, but Mila grabs his hand and pulls him up.
“She has a point. Sorry Ryan didn’t show up. Well. Not sorry.” Mila squints for a moment, as if there’s something in her eye. “I mean because he’s going to be okay, Emily,” she says quickly. “Just try not to think about it too much.”
“Yeah. Good advice.”
She shakes her head and climbs down the stairs. Chase jumps down after her without a word to me.
Kennedy begins to pick up the candles.
“Leave them.”
She hesitates, her fingers wrapped around one. “It gets so hot up here.”
“I know. I’ll get them later. I just—I’m not completely sure I’m done. Can we leave them up for now?”
She raises her eyebrows. “Around the entire house? Until when?”
I sigh. “I just don’t feel like this was the right time. It doesn’t work if there’s a single nonbeliever in the group.”
Her gaze doesn’t waver. “Who’s the nonbeliever?”
“All of you.”
She laughs. Actually laughs. At me. Nervous laughter, maybe, laughter of disbelief, but it slices through me just the same. “Because we choose to hold on to hope?”
I feel the last remnants of friendliness slide off my face. “No. I don’t think you do. I think you know just as well as I do that he’s dead. But you won’t admit it. That’s the difference.”
Kennedy’s hand goes right to her mouth, like I knew it would. She has no more nails to bite. That’s how I knowshedid it. Every one of them has a sign, a tell. It’s like playing poker with the devil.
It suddenly occurs to me that I must have a tell too. That every moment I spend with them, they’re figuring out what I know. That maybe I did reach Ryan. Maybe it wasn’t wishful thinking. A warning. A sign.Don’t let them know you see. You’re next. A goner.
“Do you really think he’s dead?” Kennedy says. Her eyes cut through me.
“You know what I know,” I say.
“I know that the dead don’t wait for rituals and they don’t care about believers,” she says. “If he was gone, and he wanted you to know, he’d have done it by now.” Kennedy closes her eyes. “Sorry. Emily, I’m so sorry.”
I stare at her, speechless, then escape down the stairs, my heart pounding.
Kennedy. Chelsea. Chase. Mila. It’s not that I blame one more than the others.
All of them are at fault. They share the blame.
Perhaps if any of them had stayed home last year, it would never have happened.
But no one ever stays home. They always come.
Nothing keeps them away.
Not even an inconvenient little death.
I creep down the hallway to the master bedroom and push the door gently open. Chelsea is lying on the bed with the lights off and the shades drawn, a damp washcloth over her eyes. She gets migraines now. It’s one of her vague, unspecific symptoms. Migraines, nausea, insomnia. Exhaustion, paranoia, depression.