CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

I take a seat next to Roma the next day in history. Her friend, Tori, is absent. "Sick?" I ask.

She shakes her head, chuckling under her breath. "Nah, she's probably out with her boyfriend somewhere. You can count on Tori to miss at least one day of school a week." She pauses. "Hey, um, can I ask you a question?"

"Yeah, sure. Anything." I straighten my textbooks before meeting her gaze.

Roma takes a breath. "Have you – been listening to the rumours at all?"

I stare at her for a second. "What rumours?"

She examines my face as though she doesn't quite believe me. Then she looks away, waving a hand. "It's nothing."

"No, seriously, tell me. What rumours?"

She sighs. "This thing happened last year between this girl and I. Long story short, shit happened and I had to get new friends because of it. But people aren't done talking about it, it seems. Most of the grade thinks I'm either a bitch or a freak – that's excluding Tori, of course." She fiddles with the sleeve of her navy cardigan. "It hasn't reached you yet?"

I shake my head. "What happened?"

"Nothing really. It wasn't a big deal." She laughs. "Well..."

"What?"

She waves it off, smiling big. "Don't worry about it. It's all good."

I smile. "Whatever it is, I don't believe it. You're not a bad person, and you're certainly not a freak." I look away. "Trust me, I would know," I mumble.

She glances sideways at me, a small frown hovering between her eyebrows. It appears as though she's on the verge of asking me something, but instead she grins. "Thanks."

I nod and pull open my textbook, flipping to the appropriate chapter on the early medieval period.

That's when Kalea walks in, hair hovering about her shoulders as usual. With a sideways smirk, she sits down at the desk directly beside me. I feel a wave of cold and darkness wash over me. "Hello Maya," she says, and my false name leaves her mouth like a taunt, like she knows it's just a lie. Only she couldn't possibly know. Could she?

I shiver. She continues to stare at me and I try to ignore her, focusing on my textbook and on keeping my breathing steady and in control. Roma gives me a nudge with her elbow. She looks at me wide-eyed and mouths, Why is she sitting next to you? I raise my shoulders in a part-shrug, shaking my head in a way that says, I don't know.

All too conscious of Kalea's dark eyes battering against the side of my face, I tear a scrap of paper out of my workbook with shaky fingers and start to write a note to Roma. But I never get past the second word.

A sudden scream rings out in my mind, an image bursting to life: darkness, a black-coated figure, blood. My pen jerks in my grip, extending the end of a letter in a long, harsh line.

Then the rest of the vision rushes in. It's the clearest I've ever seen it.

I stand on the edge of a cold wide room, filled to the brim with darkness. In the centre is a man in a black coat, eyes as dark as his clothing. There's a baptismal font beside him and blue flames flicker in its basin. Instead of creating more light, they just cast even darker shadows.

There's a scream. Suddenly, there's blood pooling by my feet, trickling slowly around my shoes. I sense a fear, a pain that isn't yet my own, and my heart pounds violently against my ribcage. "What have you done?!" I yell. "What have you done?" My cheeks are soaked with tears.

In the shadows behind the man, something moves, shifts – another person. They walk towards the font, their edges clearing, their features growing in definition. I squint into the darkness. When they're one step away from being fully visible, the scene begins to fracture and disintegrate.

"How could you do this?!"

A low, cold voice, says, "This is what you get for denying me, Melissa."

It all dissolves.

I jerk back to reality with a gasp, the man's words still echoing in my head. A hand grips onto my shoulder.

"Maya? Maya, what is it?"

I shake away the lingering ice and darkness. "Nothing, just lost in thought."

"Are you sure? You're crying."

"I'm – what?" I reach a hand up to my cheek, and sure enough, my fingers come away wet. I quickly wipe the tears from my eyes.

Kalea stares at me from my other side, eyes narrowed. Frazzled, I exclaim, "What're you looking at, huh?"

She finally looks away.

"Maya," Roma says.

I realise I haven't explained myself. "It's – it's the light. My eyes are, like, really sensitive to sunlight. It's so annoying."

Of course, Roma is not convinced – we're sitting indoors and its overcast, I'm not exactly in a position to be blinded by the sun – but she chooses to ignore my blatant lie. "Maybe you should go to the bathroom, wash your face. I think it might be a good idea to get you out of this classroom. You don't – you don't look good."

I stand up shakily. My fingertips feel like ice. "Let the teacher know where I am."

"Of course."

I leave.

Outside, the halls are quiet and unfamiliar, cold and dull. I get lost in the tangle of grey and cream walls, have to backtrack and try again before I can find the bathroom. When I do, I burst through the door, palms colliding with the sink bench. My head spins with scenes from my vision, my sight pinwheeling in and out of focus. I grip the sink edge tightly and take deep, soothing breaths. My cheeks are still wet with tears.

"Pull yourself together, Melissa," I tell my reflection. "It was just a vision."

Suddenly, there's a scream. My eyes flick to the door but aside from the wind outside, everything remains quiet. Shaking my head, I turn on the tap and splash my face with ice-cold water. It collects on the tip of my nose, dribbles down my cheeks like tears. And then there's noise again:

How could you do this?!

My ears ring with words that haven't yet been said, with sounds from my vision.

This is what you get for denying me, Melissa.

"Stop...talking to me!" The end of my sentence comes out in a scream. I watch, horrified, as my reflection shatters. The mirror lies in shards upon the sink.

I thought I had my powers under control.

Evidently not.

Panicked, I speed for the door, throwing it open and bursting out into the frigid corridor. But as I do, something slams into me. My back and head hit the wall with a painful smack, blowing the air from the lungs. I gasp, bright spots dancing across my vision. I try to move, but something – no someone – holds me in place.

"Who are you?" they demand, voice sharps as razors.

My head spins, the pain and the visions making it impossible to form coherent thought. I feel dazed and breathless, hot and freezing cold. The light seems to seep from the hallway and a chill sets into my bones.

"Why are you here?"

Slowly the pain in my skull begins to shrink, reducing from a sharp ache to a dull throb. As it does, the bright spots fade and the person before me grows in focus.

My vision sharpens. Suddenly I recognise the person holding me to the wall. "Kalea?"

I should have known. The dark hallway, the cold – all are signs of her presence. There's an iciness where her hands grip my school jumper, keeping me pressed up against the wall.

"What do you want?" She seems manic, terrified, angry. A far cry from the girl who mocked me in class.

I manage to keep my panic under control. "I don't want anything, Kalea," I say slowly. "I'm just coming to school. Same as you."

"How did you know about me? You had to know somehow."

"I don't–"

"Who told you?!" She presses me harder against the wall, her fists digging into my collarbones like solid ice.

"No one!" I shout back. And suddenly the pressure holding me to the wall is gone. Kalea shoots backwards, crashing into the lockers behind her. There's a moment of shock as she comes to grips with the fact that I have abilities, and then the anger sinks back into her expression.

I take a deep breath. "I didn't know anything about you. It was my friend – he just knows about this stuff."

Kalea pulls away from the wall and dusts herself off, unfazed. "He just knows stuff? Come on, you can do better than that. You expect me to believe it was a coincidence that you two just turned up at this school together, with your fake little backstories and fake little names?"

I take a deep breath. "I'm telling the truth. I don't know what you're talking about."

"Look, you people have been coming after me for months. You can drop the act."

"There's no a–" I stop. "Hold on, what do you mean people have been coming after you?"

"Really? You're going to play dumb?" She takes a step towards me.

"I'm not playing dumb, Kalea! I'm not acting or lying – I'm telling the truth."

"Like hell you are." She takes another step.

I hold my hands up in surrender. "Look at my face. Do I look like I'm lying?" She narrows her dark eyes. "I don't know anything about this, I swear."

And just like that, her face falls, the anger evaporating into the wintry air. Her mouth forms an 'O' and her eyes flicker with thought. Then she pulls herself together, crossing her arms over her chest. The air warms. "Well you obviously know something. If I do recall, your boyfriend called me a Bloedskaah. People don't just throw those kinds of words around."

I think for a second, waiting for my heart to slow before I jump into speaking again. "I'll make you a deal, okay? If you promise to answer my questions, I'll tell you what I know. After that, swear you'll leave Caden and I alone."

She scowls. "Sounds like you're getting more out of it than I am."

"Do we have a deal or not?"

She looks at me. "Fine – I'll leave you alone after this." When I don't reply immediately, she says, "Well?"

"You said people were coming after you. What do you mean by that?"

"This is the question you want to ask?"

I just stare.

She breaks eye-contact, her white-blonde hair falling around her face like a curtain. "Look, I don't know who they are. All I know is that they're trailing me. And..."

"And?" I prompt

"And they gave me this." She reaches into the inner pocket of her school blazer and hands me a white business card, crinkled at the corners. It's blank save for a phone number scrawled in blue ink. I look at her, one eyebrow raised.

She rolls her eyes. It's a strangely frightening movement on her face. "Flip it over, why don't you?" Her tone is drenched in condescension, but I do as she says, turning the card over in my fingers.

I inhale sharply, and the card nearly falls from my hands.

"What is it?" she asks, suddenly anxious. "Do you recognise it?"

The front of the card is the same blank white as the back, except in the centre is small printed black and white diagram of earth. Beneath it, in the same printed style, looking for all the world like a normal logo, are three words:

Tomorrow is Endgame.