This summer had passed him by somehow. The other students and teachers had all flown home. Leo, whose parents were surgeons who traveled the world fixing up people who couldn’t otherwise be fixed, flew out and met them wherever they happened to be. Daphne Elizabeth, whose parents ignored her the entire summer and then lavished her with gifts right before she left, which she’d grudgingly admitted made being ignored almost worth it, still went home whenever she could. And if her parents didn’t want her, she’d go visit some other family member. Even Rahul, whose parents rented a tiny chalet in France every summer because he was too “odd” to live with them at their home in Delhi, took the summer to be with family.

When Leo had left, he’d frowned at Grey. “When are you going home?”

“Tomorrow,” Grey had said, looking away.

“Ouais, mais… If you don’t have any place to be, you can come to Thailand with me. We could go snorkeling.”

Grey had shaken his head. “No. But thanks.”

Leo, like Daphne Elizabeth—or DE as almost everyone called her—and Rahul, was clueless about the curse, the reason Grey was never invited home. They knew Grey didn’t like talking about his family or his home, so they never brought them up.

But never bringing them up didn’t change the truth: that something dark stalked him, had stalked him since birth. That the Rao curse might have already claimed someone he cared about, and he was terrified it would claim him next. Maybe other people would find it odd that Grey, a well-educated, not-quite-eighteen-year-old, would believe in such a thing. But what choice did he have? When other kids were learning their ABCs and “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star,” Grey was learning the words to a familial curse. Ever since he could remember, he’d been told nothing, nothing, was as important as the curse was. So the least he could do to atone for his mother’s death—for which he took full responsibility—was to keep away from the manor, to keep his father cushioned from the reminder. He didn’t blame his father at all.

The only real place Grey felt safe, like he couldn’t hurt anyone, was in the mountains. The great towering stone, jutting out from the earth like vengeful gods, felt indestructible. They’d been there millennia before Grey, and they’d be here long after he was gone.

His cell phone beeped in his pocket. Grey frowned; he’d forgotten to silence it.

Where are you?