Page 39 of Summer's Edge

I blush. “I didn’t mean to imply she isn’t welcome. Kennedy didn’t either. She just… has a theory that the person who made the game cards meant them to be about you, me, and Kennedy, because of some comment Mila made about the invitations. If she’s right, it would make you the traitor by process of elimination. Which would mean neither you nor Mila is guilty.”

“Oh,” he says. “Well, I’m not going to argue with that.”

“So if you don’t know what started the fire, what about the boat?” Someonehasto hold the key to deciphering the tarot clues.

He furrows his brow. “Yeah, some of us took the boat out earlier… Kennedy, Mila, and me. I can’t remember anything notable happening. I think maybe we had drinks with Emily at the stone table when we got back. But you went to bed early right? Headache?”

I grab his arm. “So you do believe I was asleep when Emily came inside.”

A look of understanding dawns on his face. “Chelsea, noone thinks you locked Emily in the attic or anything. Everyone honestly believes this was an accident.”

“Not Ryan.”

Chase’s expression darkens. “Right.” The cell spot is close, almost in view. He takes a deep breath. “Look, I’m the last person who wanted to even consider this, but I don’t see an alternative explanation anymore. Ryan’s fucking with us. This entire weekend was a setup. He invited us here because he blames us for what happened and he’s trying to scare us to death.”

I shake my head. “He wouldn’t do that.”

“No, he wouldn’t commit murder. This is catharsis. It’s messed up, and I don’t believe for a second that he would hurt any of us, but from everything you’ve said, he truly believes one of us killed Emily. Think about that. Then tell me someone else is more likely to be behind this.”

I struggle to answer. “If.Ifsomeone did kill—”

“But who? Who would kill a friend? Who could live with themself after that? It would be like some kind of epic torture. Look at Macbeth. As humans, we’re not designed to handle it. He thinks we did this thing. No one else makes sense.”

I take his arm, stopping him. “But thereisan alternate explanation, you just won’t listen. It could be Emily that called us back here. Emily or… I don’t know, a kind of distorted echo of Emily that drew us back to the lake, the attic, the cellar. It’s like she’s making us retrace our steps from that night.”

He frowns as he starts to walk toward the clearing. “Why?”

“Because it forces us to face what we did.” My head snaps up, and I run to his side just as he’s reaching the edge of the clearing. “Because when we left the lake house, it got verycomfortable living in denial over what happened, but we can’t do that here. And she knows that because she knows us.”

But Chase isn’t listening anymore. He’s staring into the empty clearing. “Shit.” I gaze around. Soft pine needles blanket the damp earth, untouched by footprints. Up here, above the mossy rocks, we played pirates as children, painted toilet-roll telescopes and popped sunglass-lens eye patches. Later, we discovered this was the one spot at the lake house where we could call home or text a friend. Up farther, from the highest point, you could see over the rooftops, see the sun drain bloody sunsets into the lake or crack the earth to reveal a newborn phoenix rising from the depths.

Chase shouts Mila’s name, but the fog seems to swallow it up. He drops onto the ground and leans against a tree, throwing his head back in frustration. “I must have missed her by one minute. I stopped to talk to you. When I went inside, I heard footsteps upstairs. I kept calling her name, but… I couldn’t catch up. I failed her again.” A chill runs down my spine. There it is again. Footsteps. Just like Mila heard earlier. He rubs his head as if to soothe a massive headache, smearing it with mud. Our hands are stained with dirt and scented with sap from climbing. We look like grave robbers. Maybe Mila’s right. I do think in nightmares.

“I’m sorry,” I say quietly. “She wanted to use her phone. I thought… It doesn’t matter.”

He rolls his head over to me. “What?”

I sigh. “You keep laughing at my theories.”

He laughs again but not in an amused or mocking way. He laughs like it’s the only sound left to make. “I’m sorry. Ithink my brain is broken.” He eyes me. “Mila didn’t think it was funny. You know, you got into her head a little bit with the ghost-whisperer stuff.”

“So shebelievedme about Emily?”

“Not exactly—not about the ghosts. Maybe just the idea of haunting. I think she’s spooked by the house itself. There are a lot of ways to be haunted. A place, a person, a memory.”

“I don’t think any of us believed in ghosts until tonight,” I say, annoyed. It’s the way people word things. Always so careful to separate themselves. Mila was never kicked out of school for admitting she thought about suicide. Spent a year shuttered away in a haze of pills. So she’s allowed to believe whatever she wants.

He backs off. “I wasn’t insinuating anything, Chels. I mean, come on. Look at what’s happening.” His eyes meet mine. “The invitation, the game, the attic door slamming shut. The lights and cars didn’t cut themselves. We are not alone here. Don’t you feel it even now?” That’s the thing. Up here, cloaked in thick layers of fog, where no one could see us fall or hear us scream, I do feel it. The clearing is empty.

But we are not alone.

On the lake, too, there was someone, something. The shadow tumbling fromSummer’s Edge.The something stirring beneath. I take the tarot cards from my pocket and slowly turn them over in my hands. “Whatever Ryan is after, he genuinely believes Emily is still here, and is trying to communicate to him that she was killed, and wants him to find out how.”

“Jesus,” Chase whispers.

“There’s more.” I sift through the cards. “He thinks Emily isusing tarot cards she made to give him clues. The cards are unsettling. Believe it or don’t, but shedidmake them, which means she had certain feelings about us that I didn’t know she had.”

He looks at me expectantly. “How bad are they?”

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