CHAPTER 18

In Which the Dream Does Not Follow Through

MEGAN. BEFORE SCHOOL.

Oh gods. Why were they standing there? How long had they been there? Why were they outside her house? Why were they arranged exactly like her dream? That couldn’t be a coincidence, could it?

Megan stared through the window for a long moment, long enough to see Chris scratch at the back of his head, Evan say a few words, and Chris clap Evan on the back, then she stepped away from the window. She took several deep breaths. She pinched herself, hard, which hurt an appropriate amount and did not change reality in any notable way.

They couldn’t possibly be here to be mean to her. That didn’t make any fucking sense. It wasn’t going to be like her dream at all if she went outside, so she ought to just go outside. She walked over to the door, taking deep calming breaths, and grabbed her bag, which already had her useless little gun in its holster pouch. Then she placed a hand on the handle, took another deep breath, and steeled herself for the who-knows-what that was about to happen.

Megan turned the handle.

Megan opened the door.

She stepped through the door, tugging on the handle and letting go as she did so. She heard the door latch click shut behind her, the door closing otherwise silently, somehow. Just like the dream. None of them looked her way. She could hear Ryan saying, “Uz two in the morning! I will totally read up, but give me more than five hours. Even I need to sleep some.”

As he spoke, Megan took a step. She could feel her pulse throb in her throat. She wasn’t breathing. She should breathe. As she started breathing again, she took another step, and noted how the steps sounded different. She was wearing flats, after all, so her step was nearly silent, not at all like the thump thump of her heels on the wooden boards of their porch. The balance of her head was different; she had it in a bun instead of its normal pinned back curl-fall. Breathing like a normal person, she took another step and then another, and then one down onto the first step, and should she say something? Another step, just as Ryan finished speaking, and Evan’s head shifted. His eyes fell upon her.

“Hey February,” Evan said, louder than Ryan had been speaking. Ryan’s eyes snapped to Megan, and Chris and Angie both turned, moving their feet and turning their whole bodies in her direction, smiles on their faces. Ryan took her in and then smirked.

Megan’s heart rang like a shining bell, high and joyous.

Then she realized Evan wasn’t smiling like the others.

“Hey December,” Megan replied, her voice calm, not wavering at all. “You done processing?” Angie’s smile split into a grin.

“Sure,” Evan said, his eyes boring into her, his tone of voice cool. “Something like that.”

Angie broke away from the circle, striding up to Megan as Megan reached the bottom of the steps and giving her a hug. “Your hair looks amazing,” Angie said, pulling back, smiling.

“Thank you,” Megan said, feeling nervous about Evan. “It’s a hack job, but my hair got out of its buns overnight.”

Angie blinked hard. “Really? I never would have guessed it wasn’t totally intentional!” She turned to go back to the others, and Megan followed. “It’s artful as fuck.” Evan kept staring at her, his expression serious—not exactly cool, but more… solemn?

As they reached the group, Angie gave Evan some side eye and said, “Someone had himself a little adventure last night.”

A strange combination of relief and fear washed over Megan. This wasn’t her dream. They hadn’t turned against her. But what could that possibly mean? An adventure? And why was he staring at her like that? “You… look fine,” she said, giving Evan a once over. “Are you okay? What’d you do?”

“Well,” Evan said, his tone of voice remarkably calm and steady considering the subject matter. “I have nineteen stitches in my hip, but yeah, I’m fine other than that. Well, pretty tired, I didn’t get a lot of sleep.”

Megan realized she was gaping at Evan, her shock and fear over riding her concern at his behavior. “Nineteen stitches…? What did you do, Evan?”

Ryan was frowning at Evan too, and said, “You didn’t tell us you had nineteen stitches, man.”

“It was late, Ryan,” Evan said.

“What did you do, Evan?” Megan said again.

“Don’t you fucking take that tone of voice with me, February,” Evan snapped.

Everyone got real quiet.

“Sorry guys, we’re going to get real for a second,” Evan said, eyes on Megan. “I want you all to know exactly where Megan and I are at.”

If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

Megan’s stomach fell to her feet. Oh no. She stared back at Evan, cowed, not even noticing how the others reacted.

“Megan,” Evan continued. “I want to be friends with you again. But understand that you’re on fucking probation. You abandoned us. You abandoned us when my sister died. I know how attached you were to her, Megan, I understand that, but she was my sister. Not yours. I could have used your shitting support, Megan, when my sister died.” He spoke with surprisingly little heat in his voice—it was there, but under control.

He paused for a long moment. Megan felt her stomach fall through the ground as she stared at Evan in horror. She’s abandoned them because Evan’s sister died. She’d literally never thought about it in those terms. It had always been how devastated she’d felt over losing her idol, how the three of them had brought that pain to the forefront and she couldn’t handle it.

Megan realized that she was a terrible person.

Evan continued, “Instead you disappeared on us because you ‘needed time.’ I know you. I understand how you work, so I wasn’t surprised, but I was disappointed. And then you fucking broke out the histrionics in front of Lauren the first time we saw—”

“I don’t—I legitimately couldn’t control myself,” Megan said. She had no idea how she wasn’t crying now. Everything felt kind of distant.

“Shut your shitting mouth,” Evan growled, and this time the heat was there. “She was my sister, Megan. Not yours. Yet I kept my shit together while you freaked out and made it all about yourself.”

Megan flinched, and now she did begin to tear up.

“Don’t you dare start crying,” Evan said. “We’re not done.”

“So-sorry!” Megan managed to stifle a sob.

“You should be. So because you’re you, Lauren made everything about you, too, and exiled us to do so. And then you were a coward, and didn’t come back to us when you could keep your shit together. You took three years, Megan. Three years you abandoned us because my sister died, and you weren’t smart enough to even notice what was happening behind your back.

“I want to be friends again, Megan, but I haven’t forgiven you yet. You’re on thin ice, and whatever magic bullshit is going on with our birthdays isn’t changing that. So here’s the deal. You don’t get to chastise me—any of us—for what you perceive as bad behavior. You don’t get to tell us what to do unless we’ve asked for a suggestion. You don’t even get to adopt a harsh tone of voice with me, personally. I’m not interested in any bullshit from you. Do we understand each other?”

Megan nodded frantically. “Yes,” she whispered. “I understand. I promise I’ll be good.”

“Good,” Evan finished. “Now that we have that out of the way, I’m cool.”

Angie said, “I agree with everything Evan said. I had a good time yesterday, Megan, but you are on thin ice here.” Then she looked at Evan. “Now Evan. Time to share your adventure. Megan needs to know.”

Megan gave a small nod.

Evan’s serious visage cracked. His face flushed and he started shifting from one foot to another, finally looking away from Megan. He said, “Well. Um. I may have… gone out… ah, walking after curfew last night.” Megan’s heart stopped. The red in Evan’s face got even deeper and his eyes dropped to his feet. “And, um… boy this sounds fucking foolish in the harsh light of day—”

“Yeah, doesn’t it though?” Angie said.

“Deeply foolish,” Ryan supplied.

“—um,” Evan went on, giving them both a dirty look, “I heard a gunshot, and went to investigate.”

“Like a fool,” Ryan said.

“Stop,” Chris said, looking at Ryan and Angie. “It wasn’t foolish at all.” Their expressions were dubious, at best.

Now Chris focused on Evan, and, his tone even, gentle even, said, “You saved that woman’s shade, Evan.” A chill went down Megan’s spine, gooseflesh rippling up and down her arms.

Someone had died.

Angie and Ryan looked taken aback at that too. Angie opened her mouth and said, “Oh. Well, that doesn’t change the fact that he would have gotten his ass killed too if we hadn’t saved him twice over.”

“What happened?” Megan’s voice betrayed her, and it came out as more of a whimper than the calm question she intended it to be.

“Evan found a Beast,” Chris said. “It had just killed a woman. He shot it, a lot. Ryan had called me a bit earlier and asked me to track him down with this little app thing he put on my phone, and I was close enough to reach him once I heard him start firing. The Beast clawed his hip when he dodged out of the way the first time. Angie summoned this storm owl that knocked him out of the way of the Beast’s second pounce with a giant gust of wind when he couldn’t evade it himself. I killed the Beast, which was easy with how much Evan had shot it—damn impressive, because it was a Menace-class.

“A medium came with the Cleaners and confirmed that the woman’s shade hadn’t been devoured. So it may not have been wise, exactly, but it wasn’t foolish to confront that Beast. It was brave, and it worked out. You didn’t have a chance to save her life, but you did have a chance to save her spirit, and whether you were thinking about it like that or not, that’s what you did last night.”

“Nineteen stitches,” Ryan said, after a few moments of silence as they all took that in. “You know, Chris, your first text this morning arrived at six nineteen. That intentional?”

“Um, no? No it wasn’t,” Chris said with a shrug. “That’s kinda fun though. My birthday and all.”

“Birthday minutes,” Megan said. She thought back to that morning, after the dream. “I… I woke up from a dream this morning, and it was four nineteen when I looked at the clock. Angie’s birthday minute.”

“Hmm,” Ryan and Chris both went, looking at her, considering expressions on their faces.

“That’s a lot,” Angie said, a faint look of puzzlement on her face. “I mean… they’re little things. The time when something happened to happen. A number of stitches. But our birth dates keep popping up. We keep seeing nineteen.” She thinned her lips. “Like Fortune is going, ‘Hey, hey, hey,’ at us.”

Ryan said, “The question is, what does it want?”