Jasper was still frozen in shock, looking at the scene before him, his face strangely blank. He stood in a spot where neither the light of the streetlamps nor the ambulance’s headlights could reach him, his back turned to the paramedics getting out of the vehicle. None of them noticed him as he shook in the wind, shrouded in darkness.

I jumped when I suddenly felt hands untying the rope around my wrists.

It was a third officer, a woman looking down at me with a worried expression. “You all right there? Are you—”

I didn’t wait for her to finish whatever she wanted to say but lurched to my feet the moment my hands were free. She shouted something after me, but I didn’t care, already running towards Jasper.

“Jas!”

He turned slowly, blinking at me. One of his hands was still pressed against his chest, fingers smeared with red. “Seth,” he rasped, “I think I’m going to—”

That was all he got out before his legs suddenly gave away.

Somehow I managed to catch him before he hit the ground, my arms wrapped around his middle.

Unable to hold him up for long, I lowered him to the ground so that he was lying on his back. “Jasper?” I whispered, pulling his head onto my lap. “Jas, open your eyes. You’re okay, just look at me. Look at me—”

He didn’t react in the slightest. His eyes were shut, his entire body limp in my arms. By now a large part of his shirt was tinted crimson, the color shockingly bright against his pale skin. The flickering light of the police car painted his face in a ghostly blue glow, illuminating the thin sheen of sweat on his face.

Dark spots danced before my eyes as I stared down at him, motionless and unresponsive, his skin hot beneath my fingertips despite the freezing temperature. “No,” I whispered. “Jasper, please—”

A man’s voice interrupted my senseless stammering. “Let go of him, please. Let us help him.”

I looked up to see two paramedics towering above me. “N-no, you don’t understand, he’s my—”

A hand on my arm interrupted me. “Come on, Seth, let them do their job,” Mrs. Whitworth said. When had she gotten here?

“There’s nothing you can do right now.”

Swallowing, I lowered Jasper’s head to the ground and got up. Mrs. Whitworth wrapped an arm around me and pulled me against her side as soon as I was standing, like she was fearing I was going to follow Jasper’s lead and pass out.

She led me only a few steps away, to where Noelle and Evelyn were sitting next to each other on the curb.

I felt like I was in a trance as I sat down, only now realizing that my pants were wet where I had been kneeling in the snow. “I’m going to need to do a quick checkup on you guys,”

the female paramedic announced, coming to a stop right before me. “Can you tell me your names?”