It was only supposed to be one night. That was all he promised her.

But one night turned into two. Then three. Then four. And suddenly, before Lucas Abbott could even blink, he and Rayne had spent every night together for an entire week. They no longer slept in separate beds. Instead, they shared the sofa, cuddled into one another for warmth and comfort from the restless whispers. Lately, the shadows that surrounded them began to morph; they stretched, shaping into bipedal silhouettes, like an entire crowd of people had been summoned from pure, unmitigated blackness.

Last night, one of the whispers took shape, too.

Lucas could've sworn he heard one of them whisper his name . . .

On Saturday evening, the boys met up in the shack for a few hours to smoke and play cards, and Lucas hoped evidence of their sleepovers wasn't palpable. He studied Cole as he lit the wood-burning stove, searching for any sign of recognition in his features. When none came, he studied his movements, committing each step to memory as Cole set fire to the stove and closed the iron door. Lucas wasn't comfortable with fire, nowhere near as comfortable as Cole was, but he was determined to figure it out. Something in him knew that he and Rayne would be staying in the shack every night now. At least until winter came, forcing them back into their dorms.

The following morning, Lucas stumbled upon the crew gathered in the Dormitory stairwell. Cole and Pierce wore faded jeans and cotton tees—Pierce's gray and Cole's navy green—while David had on his favorite gym shorts and a matching muscle shirt, probably gearing up to do an intense bodyweight workout after this. Lucas walked up to them, dripping with sweat from a co-ed soccer match he'd just had with some kids from Biology class.

To Pierce, Cole said, "You think Jackie has something Rayne can borrow?"

"What're you guys talking about?" asked Luke, using a towel to wipe a heavy fall of perspiration from his neck and forehead.

Pierce nodded to Cole. "He doesn't think Rayne has anything to wear to the dance."

"She's going?" Lucas sounded more surprised than he'd intended.

"Yeah." Cole furrowed his brow. "Why wouldn't she be?"

"I don't know. I just didn't realize it was her scene, that's all." Lucas paused. "I mean, did you ask her?"

"What, you don't think she'll say yes?"

"I didn't say that."

"That's what it sounded like."

"How could I know something like that, Cole?"

"Okay, so, what's the problem?"

Lucas bit the inside of his cheeks. "I just think you shouldn't jump to conclusions and make all these assumptions. You can't keep treating her like Bianca and expect her to like you."

He suppressed a flinch, bracing himself for what he assumed was an inevitable blow.

Surprisingly, Cole stood very still, the fold in his brow growing deeper and deeper until suddenly, it relaxed. "You're right," he said, surprising both Lucas and the others. "No, you're right." He looked at Pierce. "If Rayne says yes, then let me know what Jackie says about that dress."

"You got it," said Pierce.

Tension eased from Luke's shoulders only to crawl right back in and intensify tenfold. He didn't know why. Cole and Pierce were laughing now, arguing and betting over how many muscle-ups David could do with a hangover, but for some unknown reason, Lucas's apprehension festered.

He wasn't sure what he was feeling or why, but if he had to describe it, he would have said it resembled the violent descent of an aircraft: Lucas was alone on that plane, gripping flimsy armrests as turbulence rattled him. Diving nose-first, the cabin would deploy oxygen masks, nearly a hundred of them, countless streamers for his party of one. But Lucas wouldn't be able to reach for any of them. Because if he let go of those flimsy little dividers beneath his arms, then his seatbelt would deteriorate, and Lucas would fly up—way up high and into the ceiling. No, he would fly right through the ceiling and into the sky, only to plummet back to Earth and meet his dreaded end, kissing the pavement and falling straight through to the Hell that awaited him down below.

"Hey, you okay?" Cole asked, and Lucas became aware of the puzzled look on his face. Then, he looked over at Cole's hand on his shoulder.

When did that get there?

"Luke," Cole said softly, giving his bicep a reassuring tap. "Dude, you good? What's up? You look like you're gonna be sick."

Lucas shook his head. "No. Yeah. No. I'm fine. Sorry."

◢✥◣

Bianca Hawthorne wasn't herself.

She ran her hands over her face and smoothed her hair, which was slick with grease and sweat. She hadn't showered in a week, ever since her towel disappeared. If she was being honest with herself, she could've easily gotten a new one from any of the laundry attendants on campus—it wouldn't have been difficult—but she held fast to her excuse.

My towel is gone, the eyeless girl is back, and everything is falling apart.

Her fingers shook as she reached for the hairbrush at the end of the vanity.

Bianca didn't show up for her scheduled psychiatric session that morning. Security pounded on her dorm room door as she forced plastic bristles through tangles, sooner tearing the hair than undoing the knots. Someone forcibly unlocked her door. The physician stormed in. She was reprimanding her, but Bianca couldn't hear her. Dressed in designer jeans and a red blouse, Doctor Campbell took Bianca's temperature and told her to come straight to the Infirmary next time she was feeling ill.

Bianca nodded.

The woman then forced her to take some medication in an effort to lower her mild fever. "You should've told someone. I can't help you if I don't know there's something wrong."

All her fault, Bianca thought.

As she sat at her vanity desk, facing the wall, the doctor placed a manicured hand on her shoulder. "Stay here and rest today. I'll check on you in an hour. But if your fever breaks one-oh-one, then I'm going to keep you in the Infirmary so that I can keep an eye on you. Understand?"

"Yes," she uttered, and her voice broke on the exhale.

Behind them, blurred in the distance, the eyeless girl stood in the corner.

Even with her peripheral vision, Bianca could see that the girl's mouth was wired open, carving the countenance of an endless, silent scream into her jaw. Blood rolled over her lips and chin, dripping between the tall fibers of the beige shag rug beneath her. Those crimson beads pebbled the carpeted cords just before bursting, sending a wave of red stains through each neighboring strand.

"All her fault," Bianca whispered.

"What was that?" the physician asked, hand on the doorknob. When she received no reply, Doctor Campbell simply advised the young girl to lay down, and then, she softly closed the door, shutting out the hallway light.

Bianca Hawthorne was all alone . . . with the eyeless girl.

She stood right beside Bianca now, dipping her head lower and lower, until that blood, that thick, sopping mess, fell over Bianca's hair, and as Bianca rubbed her face once more, smearing that blood over her eyes and her cheeks, the eyeless girl screamed; she screamed so loud, the mirror shattered, and Bianca, with brown eyes flashing green, swiftly blacked out.

◢✥◣

Late Sunday afternoon, Rayne Foster walked into the South Hall towards her psychiatrist's office for her scheduled counseling appointment. Most of the students had weekends off, but a few of the tough cases—like herself—still had mandatory shrink-sessions, even on Sundays. Rayne ambled down the hallway, wondering what webs she could spin today in order to bound Red with enough diversion to keep those uncomfortable subjects at bay.

As she neared the frosty-windowed door, Cole stepped out of the psychiatrist's office, appearing just as surprised as she was to have bumped into one another. "What are you doing here?" he asked.

"What am I doing here? What are you doing here? I thought you hated Red."

"I do," Cole replied tartly. "But Doctor Shaw is gone."

"Gone? What do you mean 'gone'?"

"I mean she just up and left. Stopped coming to work, like, three days ago."

"Well, where'd she go?"

"Hell if I know, maybe Tahiti—what does it matter? She's gone," he said sharply, and Rayne had never seen him so uncomfortable. He rubbed his arms. She recognized the look of disgust on his face like perhaps he was trying to rub away a swarm of insects that had just burrowed beneath his skin.

She eyed the door. "Is everything okay?"

"Yeah." He looked at the door, fists clenching. "The, uh . . . the school still needs time to hire someone new, so . . . it looks like I'm stuck with this jerk for now."

For some reason, she felt sorry for him. She placed a hand on his forearm. "Sorry, Cole."

At the touch, her mind flickered to life with the image of him carrying a young toddler down a flight of stairs, only this time, he was hushing her cries and assuring her she was safe.

Rayne pulled backward, lifting her fingers from his skin.

That was . . . different . . . from what she saw before.

"What's up?" asked Cole, noting her expression.

Rayne shook her head, but she wanted to know more. "Let me . . . Let me walk with you."

"You want to walk with me?"

"Yeah, why not?"

". . . You'll be late for your session."

"I'm not worried about that." She reached for his hand and led him down the marble hallway.

Cole glanced downward, and when he leveled his eyes with hers, any sign of discomfort broke beneath the weight of a grin. He intertwined their fingers, his neck still flush with anger, but perhaps, it lingered now for another reason.

Rayne gripped his hand tighter, focusing on the fuzzy screen in her mind. She rarely did this—probe for information via touch—but then again, she had never been in the presence of someone as enigmatic as Cole Bradford before.

In this vision, she watched him run down a flight of stairs, cradling a child, and Rayne saw fear and determination in Cole's eyes. "It's okay," he whispered. "It's okay now. I got you. You're safe."

The image flashed forward to the interior of a silver, sixth-generation BMW M5.

Cole swiveled around in the driver's seat. "Lainey, you okay?" he asked the toddler in the booster.

Bound with rope in the passenger seat beside him, a middle-aged woman sat with tear-smeared mascara staining her cheeks. Her muffled cries beneath the cloth that gagged her were upsetting the child in the back.

Under his breath, he said to the woman, "You better shut it, or I'll kill you, too."

Rayne tried to pull back, but his hold around her hand remained firm.

These feelings, these visions that Rayne had, were often broken and twisted, flashing before her eyes in fragments, a slideshow of nameless still-frame polaroids. Sometimes they were vague and hazy, much like the frailty of distant memories in the human mind; other times, they were more precise, like watching an old home movie. But more often than not, they were simply various moments in time that had splintered into the ether like tiny electrons, and as they beamed to the back of the television set in her mind, Rayne tried to interpret them, to piece together the pixels and form a cohesive picture.

But sometimes, Rayne got it wrong.

What if I'm wrong again?

"Cole," she began, still trying to loosen her hand from his grip, "do you . . . Do you have any siblings?"

He nodded, pulling his fingers away from hers only to lace them even tighter. "I do. Little sister."

Okay, good. She was on the right track.

Rayne tried probing further. "What's her name?"

"Alaina."

Alaina. Lainey. That could be it.

"Tell me about her."

"Uh—" He broke into a chuckle. "Uh, okay. Sure." He spun around to stand directly in front of her. When she kept walking, he walked backwards with her, saying, "But only if you tell me something about yourself, too."

She smiled, rolled her eyes, and said, "Fine. I . . . I have a little sister, too."

"Oh, do you? See, I didn't know that."

"Yup. So . . . Go on. Tell me about Lainey."

Rayne realized her mistake instantly.

"That's her nickname," Cole said, stopping so abruptly, Rayne nearly bumped into him. He cocked his head to the side. "But I didn't tell you that."

"What?" Rayne feigned ignorance. "What do you mean? Of course, you did"

"No. I didn't." He studied her. "Was that one of those gut-feelings of yours?"

She didn't think he would remember.

Not sure what to say, she started to step back.

"Wait." His smile twisted into a smirk as held tight to her hand and pulled her back. "When you said you used to play games with the kids at school, I assumed you were guessing dumb stuff, like their favorite colors. But that's pretty cool, how'd you do that? Did you, like, stalk me on social media or something?"

"Ew. Definitely not."

"But you knew her nickname. Like, you just knew?"

"Gut-feeling." She shrugged.

"That's not really how those work."

"Well, I don't know what to tell you. Sometimes, I just . . . know things."

"Like what?" When she hesitated, he said, "Come on, I'll tell you all about Lainey. Just . . . tell me. Like what?"

"Like . . . sometimes I can touch a door, and even though I've never been in that house before, I know exactly where the living room is, the kitchen, the bathroom—"

"Houses can be predictable."

"I'll tell you a secret." She leaned in close. "People are, too."

When she pulled back, he smiled and whispered, "Interesting." Then, he turned to walk at pace beside her once more. "But anyways, yes. Back to Lainey. What do you want to know?"

"What's she like?"

"Well, for one, she's the toughest six-year-old I know." He gripped Rayne's hand with increasing confidence the further they walked. She noticed a limp in his right leg and wondered how long that had been there. "I used to read to her," he said, and Rayne could see this as he spoke. "Like, all the time, that was our thing. Bedtime stories, fairy tales, and honestly, I . . . I sort of miss that."

"I miss my sister all the time. Is Lainey your phone call?"

"Always. Really, the worst part about this place is not being there for her. That's my job, you know? I would do anything for that girl, just to keep her safe."

"Keep her safe from what?" Rayne asked, and this struck a nerve.

He released her hand.

No.

If he was envisioning that night, the fire, then now was the perfect time for her to see it for what it truly was. He walked ahead of her, and she tried to match his pace, saying, "Cole, you were right." He stopped. She continued, "The other day when you said I was curious about your past. I am curious. I really want to know. What did you do that got you here?"

He faced her and offered a small, sad smile. "I'll tell, if you do," he said, and somehow, they both knew she never would.

There was nothing to tell anyway.

Rayne stood before him, lips agape, wondering what she could possibly share with him. Her memory wasn't as reliable as the facts, and the facts were terrifying. How dare she stand before him and judge him? Fear him? In spite of her own wrongdoings.

"That's what I thought," he said, exhaling. "You should really head back to Red now. Thanks for walking with me though. I feel a bit better."

"Yeah . . . no problem."

Rayne watched him walk down the hall and eventually turned to walk back toward the psychiatrist's office herself. Just as she was about to round a corner, she heard him shout, "Rayne!" and turned to see him jogging down the corridor.

"Yeah?" she asked.

He was nearly panting. It looked like his knee hurt from the exertion. Bent over, with his hands on his thighs, Cole took a deep breath and stood upright. "Homecoming."

Rayne looked around the empty hall. "Okay?"

"You're going. You know that, right?"

"I am?"

"With me."

"That's . . . not how you ask someone out, Cole."

"Will you go to homecoming with me?"

Despite the disoriented state of her visions, this made her laugh. "Cole, that's cute, but—"

"Rayne."

"Cole."

He pressed his lips together tightly, rolling his eyes and turning away.

"Hey." She quit laughing and sobered up. "I'm sorry. I just don't do dances, okay? Besides, everyone already looks at me like a freak. All I have is my school uniform and some basic street clothes—hardly anything dance-worthy."

Not to mention, she had far more important things to worry about besides some ridiculous high school dance.

"That's not a problem." Cole gestured to their attire, his tone light but firm. "I'll wear jeans, you'll wear a hoodie. Sounds like a win-win to me."

"No."

He exhaled sharply. "What if I told you I've got the whole dress-thing covered?"

"I really wouldn't care."

"Can you at least say you'll think about it?" His voice was more pleading now, a blend of his usual angry dominance mingling with something new, something softer—something that was clearly as foreign to him as it was to her.

Rayne took a deep breath, hating the uncharacteristically sorrowful, nearly boyish, innocence that seemed to twirl behind those seafoam green eyes. "Ugh. Alright, fine," she said, huffing. "You win. I'll think about it."

◢✥◣

Just after detention, Rayne and Lucas met up in the Maria J. Westwood library. They were careful to make sure no one saw them, walking opposing routes and meeting fifteen minutes apart—the last thing either of them wanted was for Cole to stumble upon it and think more of it than what it was.

Since detention ate up so much of their time, Rayne and Lucas only had an hour before the media center would close, which meant that they had to work quickly. Only they weren't entirely sure what they were looking for.

Rayne began by Googling details of the building before it was known as Maria J. Westwood—back when it was a psychiatric sanitorium and a fire burnt down an entire wing over a hundred years ago, in the year 1917.

"Wow," she breathed. "Cole wasn't lying. The entire South Hall really did burn down. Look at that." She pointed to a black and white image, showcasing one wing of the structure that was blackened and charred to rubble. Reading quickly, she paraphrased, "Guess they suspected foul play until some officials came along . . . After that, it's like no one cared anymore."

"Well, I don't," said Lucas. At her shocked expression, he said, "I don't care about any of this. I just want to know why they're killing us."

"What?" She thought this was about the shadows. "What do you mean 'killing us'?"

He paused, perhaps debating whether to continue. "It's just . . . There's been a pattern. One suicide almost every year, for fifty years. Rayne, that's not normal."

"You don't think they're suicides?"

He took a deep breath. "There was someone . . . sophomore year. My girlfriend, Olivia. We weren't together very long, but it mattered . . . more than I could admit back then." His voice grew quieter, almost as if the words themselves were too heavy to carry.

Rayne closed her eyes, remembering the vision she had the first night they slept in the shack together. "Lucas, you don't have to tell me."

"Rayne, you don't understand. She was the only one who believed me."

Her eyelids sprang open. "Are you saying Olivia could see them, too?" For some reason, that stung. This secret, that was theirs, could have been his with someone else before this?

"No," Lucas replied, and Rayne grew angry with herself for feeling relief. "She couldn't see them either. But she believed me," he said, a trace of something raw between his words. "And the day after I told her, right after I told her, she was dead."

"Oh, Lucas," said Rayne. "I'm . . . I'm so sorry."

"Doctor Shaw said my grief altered my perception. Said the shadow people were simply a manifestation of my fears and insecurities, and when I couldn't process Olivia's death, she said I attributed it to the shadows, too."

"Luke, Doctor Shaw is gone," Rayne blurted.

"I know."

"Do you think—?"

"I don't know what to think. It's all so crazy."

Rayne became curious. "Are you . . . I've never seen you at the Infirmary check-in."

"I get there early," he whispered, answering the unspoken. "The guys don't know, and I really want to keep it that way."

"So that's why you didn't drink at the party," she inferred.

"No, I don't . . . take them," he admitted. "Don't give me that look. The shadows are real, and I know that now more than ever. The reason I didn't drink at the party is because . . . I made a promise to myself. I haven't touched alcohol ever since, and I never will."

Rayne's curiosity tugged at her. She wanted to ask him why. What happened to make him take such a vow? And what brought him here, to this place, with her? But instead of probing for answers, instead of touching him, as she'd done with Cole and Mr. Matthews, Rayne let it go. She didn't want any information from him that he wasn't willing and ready to share.

So she kept her hands to herself.

Rayne shifted in her seat. "Cole, uh . . . He asked me to homecoming, by the way," she said, tugging her ear.

"Oh?"

Lucas's expression seemed bored, and she realized: "You already knew."

He smiled gently. "Pierce is gonna see if Jackie can hook you up with a dress. So, you're going, then?"

"Dances aren't really my thing."

"I figured. Not really your scene?"

"Honestly? Yeah. Dances are for losers."

"Well, I'll be there," he said, his voice carrying a hint of amusement.

"Mhm. Case in point."

Lucas laughed softly. "Well, okay then."

"Hey, but if I do . . ." She restrained herself from touching his arm and offered a warm, pearly smile instead. "If I do go to homecoming, would you dance with me? Just once?"

He shrugged. "Sure, I mean, if Cole's okay with it. I don't mind."

Well, that wasn't what she wanted to hear.

She pulled back. "Uh, first off, I don't need his permission."

"Maybe you don't, but I do." His tone was light, but there was a flicker of seriousness in his eyes.

"He doesn't own me, Lucas. If I want to dance with you, and you want to dance with me, then we're going to dance. You got that?"

"It'll be my funeral," he said with a soft chuckle, but when he faced her, the warmth of his golden gaze seemed to stir something between them. His eyes softened, the teasing edge slipping away. "Of course. I'd love to dance with you, Rayne." He held up his index finger, that playful glint returning. "Just once, though. Okay? That's it." He glanced at the clock in the corner of the computer monitor. "Ugh, the library's closing soon. Quick, look up the chick who was murdered on campus. I'm sick of all this fire-insane-asylum stuff. I think M.J.W. is a better place to start."

"Okay." Rayne hovered over the keyboard. "How do I do that?"

"Her name was Nicole Livingston. Try putting it in the search. The whole thing was bizarre—there's gotta be something about it, right? In some sort of article somewhere?" He watched her input the name into the search bar with a quick keystroke and roll the scroller on the mouse. "Anything?"

Rayne shook her head. "They must've scrubbed it off the internet. All I can find is an obituary." Obviously, they would have gone to great lengths to keep such a thing out of the press with a school as prestigious as this. "It's not really detailed," Rayne continued. "Just her family and—"

Rayne stopped, feeling her heartbeat quicken and rise in her chest, so high it hit her throat and she couldn't swallow the ball of tension that gathered there. In the upper-righthand corner of the browser, there was a portrait of Nicole Livingston.

And it was a spitting image of Nikki.

It was the same girl, only Rayne had never seen Nikki wearing glasses before.

In the monitor's reflection, Rayne suddenly saw her, standing behind them, and Rayne spun around, now face-to-face with an apparition of Nikki so ghastly, Rayne's scream caught somewhere in her throat, and all she could do was lean back, peel away from the girl's gaze, and whimper.

"Rayne?" Luke shook her shoulder. "What is it? What do you see?"

Nikki's skin had been bitten with the stench and hue of decay. Her crestfallen eyes mutated until they were silver and lifeless, a dense fog clouding them. Rayne braved eye contact with the apparition once more, and Nikki's mouth twisted with agony.

Silence stood between them, and nothing moved.

Nothing except for Rayne's beating heart, and Nikki's trembling bottom lip.

"They're the same," the girl whispered with a sob, and that lip—that gray, quivering lip—shuddered endlessly. The mist over her eyes darkened until it was pitch black, and a dark, crimson liquid poured from her eyes and lips. "They're all . . . the . . . same!" she screamed.

And Rayne screamed with her, falling backward off her chair and into Luke's arms. "R-Rayne," he sputtered, "what is it? What's happening?"

When she opened her eyes, the girl was gone.

Rayne eyed the monitor. Studied the obituary portrait as tears fell down her cheeks. "I—I thought . . . I thought she was . . ." She shook her head. "Lucas, I know her."

"You can't know her. She's dead."

"No, I've talked to her. Multiple times. I—I . . ." she trailed off, overcome with sobs accentuated by shuddering hiccups for air.

"Just breathe. Just breathe. It's okay," he assured her, holding her close and stroking her hair. She didn't need to explain what she had just experienced, because he knew. He just knew. "It's okay," he whispered.

The librarian ambled over with her cat-eye glasses and beige tweed sweater.

Lucas shouted, "We're alright over here, ma'am! She just thought she saw something and got a little spooked. Sorry if we scared you."

"Happens a lot in here," the old woman muttered, her voice dull and coarse. "Library closes in five. Log out and get out."

At the announcement, Rayne brushed the tears from her cheeks, hurried to her feet, sat down in the chair, and began typing like a madwoman.

"What're you looking for?" Lucas asked, fixing his chair and sliding back over.

"Anything. Anything at all."

"Rayne—"

She hit the keyboard. "There's nothing! There's nothing here!"

"Rayne, it's going to be okay."

"It's going to be okay?" she snapped. "Lucas, I've been talking to a dead girl for a week. And I had no clue, I had no idea. No wonder people keep looking at me like I'm batshit crazy. And we're out here Googling, like that's really going to help anything . . ."

"Rayne."

"Stop saying my name."

"What else can we do here? You tell me."

"We're just kids! And we're in way over our heads, Luke!"

"Well, we have to do something!" After taking a moment to regain himself, he placed a hand on her shoulder. "Rayne, as silly as it feels to sit here and Google this, you've already figured something out. We know now that we don't have to keep digging. You can talk to this girl directly."

"What if she won't talk to me?" Rayne wiped her cheek, realizing her tear ducts were still streaming. "Pierce works in the office right?"

"Yeah."

"There are cameras out there, out there in the woods. I've seen them. Can he get his hands on the security tapes from ten years ago?"

"I mean, if they're still in the office, then maybe. But that was over a decade ago. For all we know, it was confiscated as evidence for the case. I wouldn't get my hopes up if I were—"

"Luke." She wanted to grip his sleeve but refrained. "We need to see what's on those tapes."

"I'm sure the police reviewed them countless times. If they didn't find anything, then what makes you think—?"

"They don't see what we see. No one does. We have to do this."

Lucas glanced at the monitor. "I still think we're better off if you just—"

"I don't know if she'll talk to me again, Luke." She still hadn't seen the blue-eyed man, after all. "We need a backup plan just in case. If you're right, and these suicides aren't what they seem, then who's next? David said you're all just waiting for the other shoe to drop, so . . . let's catch it before it hits the ground!"

Lucas ran his fingers through his hair and sighed. Rayne spun back around and began clicking away at the keyboard once more.

"What're you searching for now?" he asked languidly. When he saw the picture on her screen, he cocked his head to the side, slowly pulling his fingers from his shaggy blonde hair, and sat upright. "Is that . . . ? Rayne, that's Mr. Matthews."

"No. It's not. It's his dead twin brother." She faced Lucas and didn't appreciate his expression, so she turned to the monitor. "Don't do that."

"Do what?"

"Look at me like I'm crazy. Not you." She threw her finger to the screen. "This guy, Daniel Matthews . . . He's been haunting me for over a year now, and I want to know why."

"Mr. Matthews' brother has been haunting you?"

She ignored the disbelief in his voice.

Her fingers froze over the keys.

"What is it?" Lucas asked, noticing the change in her demeanor. "What did you just read?"

"There . . . There was a blood moon on the night of the murder . . ."

"Murder? Is that what landed his brother in jail?"

Promptly, and with a voice unlike her own, she said, "10:39 P.M."

"What?"

She shook her head and met his eyes. "Lucas." Sounding like herself again, Rayne grabbed his hands, wishing she could reverse their roles and transfer images to him for once. As she read the vague article about Daniel Matthews, a handful of repressed memories had finally flooded the canals, and Rayne saw a large full moon, gleaming red against a black evening sky, and then, the cracked screen of her cell phone, lit with the time.

Rayne whispered, "10:39 P.M."