“This is insane,” Emma said, when I snuck away from my class huddle to meet her by her car. The red and blue lights from the fire trucks and police cars flashed over her face, giving her expression a look of urgency, on top of the standard bewilderment. “Why would anyone trash Cammie’s project? Just to get out of second period?”

But I had no answer. All I knew for sure was that Eastlake High had lost its collective mind, and the timing was too precise to be a coincidence. I was already dealing with a new Nightmare of a student, dead teachers, and a hellion with more strength and abilities than he should have. And now some kind of violent mental defect was sweeping the student body.

It was all related. I could feel the connection in my gut, even if I couldn’t make sense of it. There was something I wasn’t seeing. Some piece of the puzzle I hadn’t yet found. And the only thing I knew for sure was that until I put the whole thing together, no one at Eastlake High School would be safe.

21

WHEN I WOKE UP at 2:24 a.m. on Tuesday, something lay on my pillow, two inches from my face. I sat up, fumbling for my bedside lamp, instantly alert. It was a purple sticky note, taken from my own desk.

Ice surged through my veins as I reached for it, raising chill bumps all over my body, and those chill bumps blossomed into chill mountains when I read the note.

Three words. Infinite possibilities.

And sleeping, wake.

There was no signature, and the handwriting was unfamiliar, with an old-fashioned, curly look to it.

Avari was back. And he wanted to play.

And that’s when I realized the house around me was silent. No snoring. No groaning couch springs or squealing metal recliner frame as someone shifted in sleep.

Swimming in panic, I pulled on the jeans I’d worn the day before and raced into the living room—then froze when I squinted into the dark and made out the empty recliner and the pillow lying next to it on the floor. Alec was gone.

I whirled toward the couch, but it was empty, too, except for my dad’s bedding, and for one long, horrible moment, I thought he was gone, too. Then something shifted in the shadows between the couch and coffee table, and I realized it was the rise and fall of my father’s chest.

Shoving the coffee table out of my way, I clicked on the end table lamp and dropped to my knees next to my dad. His hands were cuffed at his back and blood had pooled beneath his head, and when I brushed back his hair, I found a sticky lump above his left temple.

Avari had found the keys. He’d possessed my dad in his sleep, found the handcuff keys, then released Alec and restrained my father. My dad had obviously woken up at some point after Avari had taken Alec’s body—otherwise, why hit him? But I’d slept through the whole thing.

And now someone innocent would die, because I couldn’t master the art of defensive insomnia.

Well, that, and because Avari was a vindictive,soul-sucking demon with an appetite for chaos and a yen for my complete destruction. But I couldn’t help blaming myself, at least in part, because I’d failed to stop him. Again.

But maybe I could catch him. The others had all died at the school.

Since my father was safe for the moment, I pulled on my jacket, grabbed my car keys, then headed for the front door, where I froze with my hand on the knob. Stuck to the wood, half covering the peephole, was a second purple sticky note, displaying that same antiquated writing.

A walk I take.

If it was a riddle, it was a very bad one. I already knew he’d gone somewhere. Probably to kill someone. So why start a new game now?

He wouldn’t, unless he was planning to feed from my pain, as well as from whatever energy he funneled through Alec. Which meant he was going after someone connected to me. And that narrowed things down. As did the fact that he was on foot.

But even knowing that, I could think of at least half a dozen people he might target, and I didn’t have time to check on them all individually.

As I stepped into my shoes, panic-fueled, anger-driven plans of action tumbled through my brain, their unfinished edges making mincemeat of my upper level logic. In the driveway, I slid into my driver’s seat and shoved the key into the ignition, and when the interior lights flared to life, I found myself staring at another sticky note in the middle of my steering wheel. My heart thumped painfully. Four words this time, in that antiquated scrolling print.

Fair maid to break.

It was more poem than riddle, but hardly brilliant, either way.

And sleeping, wake

A walk I take

Fair maid to break

Emma.

No, wait. What if he meant Sophie? My cousin and best friend were the only two human girls I knew for a fact that he knew how to find. My hands clenched around the steering wheel in frustration. Emma was my refuge from all things twisted and non-human. Sophie was my own flesh and blood. I couldn’t lose either of them. But I couldn’t save them both; they each lived about a mile from me, but in opposite directions.

I slammed the gearshift into Reverse, anger at Avari burning bright beneath aching fear for my cousin and my best friend. I backed down the driveway and onto the road, then shifted into Drive and took off, dialing as I drove.

Nash answered on the third ring.

“Mmm… Hello?” He sounded groggy, and bedsprings creaked as he rolled over.

“Wake up, Nash. I need help.” I ran the first stop sign, confident by the lack of headlights that no one else was on the road in my neighborhood at two-thirty in the morning.

“Kaylee? Are you in the car?”

“Yeah. I need you to call Sophie and make sure she’s okay.” She wouldn’t answer the phone if she saw my number on the display, especially in the middle of the night.