With a strange, pained look on his face, he slammed the door. As soon as she heard the lock mechanism engage, she turned back to face Victor. To her bewilderment, he appeared to be alone. Why didn’t he have an army of Dark Ones with him? Equally perplexing, why was no one trying to stop him? St. George’s had a security team—where were they? Had there been a battle? Were they all dead on both sides except for Victor? Then she remembered what had just happened with Mr. Baker. She’d watched him try to engage Victor, only to turn the gun on himself. There was the answer to her question. Victor didn’t need an army to defeat the security at St. George’s. All he needed was his mind and the legion of demons who possessed it.

“You’re powerless to stop me, little girl,” he said, his voice slithering down the empty corridor.

“If you want me, come and get me,” she shouted.

Lightning flashed and thunder crashed, as what had to be a massive thunderstorm bore down on the school. Wind howled like a tempest and rain battered the windowpanes, slamming the building in sheets. She wondered if an actual tornado was going to hit them at the same time a vortex of evil was ravaging the school from the inside.

Something hit her like a brick to the side of the head, and the world went black.

At first she thought she’d been hit by an actual piece of flying debris, but then she realized that she felt no physical pain. She was still standing. Her eyes were still open, but she was immersed in darkness. Then, slowly, a terrible, familiar setting began to materialize around her.

“No,” she murmured, hugging her chest as she scanned a little girl’s bedroom . . . the same bedroom where Victor had locked her up in the compound in the woods after she’d been kidnapped. The shag rug, the cushy bed with the pink-and-purple comforter, the troop of stuffies against the pillows . . . all back with stomach-churning authenticity.

“Oh, Sarah Beth,” a woman’s voice said. “Did you have another nightmare, sweetheart?”

Sarah Beth turned to find Fake Grandma in her apron standing at the doorway.

“What’s happening?” she said, confused.

“Don’t tell me you’re dreaming about that silly school again . . . ,” the old woman said with a hollow smile. “There’s no such place as St. George’s Academy. No school for special kids with special gifts. It’s time to stop playing make-believe, Sarah Beth, and grow up. This is your home now. This is where you belong.”

Was it possible that she’d never actually been rescued? What if everything that she’d thought had happened to her since was some sort of delusion? Maybe because of the stress and abuse, she’d lost her mind and made all of this up to cope with the horror?