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A sound.
It’s a camera. “Oh shit, Charity, is that Paige’s camera?” Bezi asks.
“Heather and Jordan were no-shows too.”
The owl society took the 3 that disappeared at the beginning of the book
Porter’s broken, bloody body is pinned to the wooden structure.
door. She puts her hand over my mouth, but it’s too late. There’s shouting and a rush of footsteps.
We don’t have to wait for these people to show up. “They’re already here,” I say.
the tires have
been cut.
“Yeah. I’m going . . . the pier. I thought . . . saw something by . . . lake.”
There’s a thud from somewhere above me.
Something is on the roof.
a man grumbles from inside. “They already cleared out.” “So what do we do now?” another man says angrily.
“He’s powerful. I know that. I’ve seen what he can do, but can he bring us back from the brink? Maybe we’re too far
“They know who killed all those people back in ’71.”
“What was that?” the man called Alex asks.
A few seconds go by, and when I peer back through the window, Alex is staring me dead in the face.
the angry faces of both men as they shove the door open a little more.
“Push harder!” screams the gray-haired man. “I’ll kill her!”
“We’re gonna hide?” Bezi asks.
and she quickly shimmies down the ladder that leads to the second hidden tunnel.
He grabs me by the front of my shirt and slams me back against the wall.
He presses his forearm against my neck, and my vision starts to blur around the edges.
to bring my knee up in one quick motion, catching him right between the legs. He stumbles back and knocks into the man called Alex.
Alex is crumpled at the bottom of the ladder, screaming like a wounded animal.
a hand clamps down on my ankle.
arrow into the man’s face as hard as I can.
I almost jump out of my skin. My earpiece is hanging against my chest, and I quickly stick it back in my ear.
“Kyle? Can you cut the sound effects?” Static echoes across the channel. “Kyle?”
I follow her gaze. At the head of the path, between us and the office, is a figure.
“You have so much more fight in you than the others,” the figure says.
“Where is she?” Anger bubbles up inside me. “Where is Paige?”
“Her blood soaks the ground and her body lies at the bottom
of the lake, as does the boy’s, as do the bodies of...
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
thanks to someone very close to you. Someone who couldn’t wait to see your guts splashed across these hallowed grounds.”
“Rob.”
thing.” Rob brought me the ad. Rob insisted I follow up on it. It was Rob who acted surprised every time I showed back up at home when the season was over. And it was in Rob’s notebook that I found that sketch of an owl identical to the ones carved into the trees in the forest, and it was
his taxidermic birds of prey, his owls, that watched me as I slept.
The man crouches low to the ground, then springs forward and is suddenly standing directly in front of me. He towers over me, and the pale flesh of his chest heaves as a guttural growl erupts from his throat.
Bezi’s screams fill my ears as the man lifts me straight off the ground and throws me across the path and into the side of the boathouse.
can’t move or breathe or see anything for several moments. But I can hear, and Bezi’s cries fill me with
dread.
I turn in the direction of the sound and see a tall, lumbering figure with their arm raised in front of them.
“Charity!” a familiar voice shouts. “Move!”
The man collapses to his knees, and I loop my arms under
“I’m calling the police,” he says. He reaches into his pocket and steps inside the office.
I suddenly realize . . . it’s Mr. Lamont.
Mr. Lamont turns and glances at the landline. He huffs out a laugh and reaches inside his coat. “Looks like I’ve put myself in a very awkward situation.”
The corners of Mr. Lamont’s mouth draw up in a sinister grin. Something in his expression shifts. Where before there was concern, now there is only malice, anger.
Mr. Lamont produces a revolver
from his coat and points it directly at my chest.
