“Please,” said Rastin, heaving for breath as I helped him to his feet. “Autographs later.”

I swiveled to find Patrick hovering close by. Wes still lingered in the door, his face a mask of pure shock. Charlotte stood beside him, dumbstruck.

“Joking aside,” said Rastin, looping an arm around my shoulder. “We need to get out of here.”

“But—” began Patrick, gesturing to where Rastin gripped his shirt.

“Now!” Rastin rasped, and then he nearly collapsed.

I caught him and hauled him upright, bearing as much of his weight as I could.

My brain told me to get him out of there, stat.

My heart, though. It knew I wasn’t finished here yet. “Stephanie—”

“She lives,” Rastin said. “But we will not if we stay.”

“Wes, get his keys,” I said as I helped Rastin toward the door. “Charlotte, you and Patrick take the Dart. Follow us out.”

No one argued. Wes dug through Rastin’s blazer pocket, the one the medium indicated with a nod.

“Go,” Rastin urged. “All of you. Before he returns.”

Patrick, hurrying to Rastin’s other side, helped me usher him out. Charlotte, in the meantime, ran ahead to the Dart.

“You swear she’s alive?” I asked as we ambled to the Beamer.

“He will not let her die,” said Rastin, even as he faltered again, his knees giving.

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” I propped him—maybe a bit roughly—against the side of his car while Patrick broke off to catch up with Charlotte. Rastin winced. It was then that I got a better look at his chest—the source of his pain.

His shirt, though spattered with blood, showed no slashes or cuts.

That only left room for an internal issue.

His heart.

Wes, rounding the Beamer, climbed in on the driver’s side.

“C’mon,” I said, deciding that, for the moment, it would have to be enough to know that Stephanie was alive. And so long as Rastin was here, well, I couldn’t let him die. “We have to get you to the hospital.”

“No hospital,” said Rastin as he slid into the back seat.

His head lolled to one side before he passed out.

“Just go,” I said to Wes as I climbed in next to the medium. Wes shifted the car into gear before I could even pull the door shut.

We peeled out, tires kicking up gravel as we raced back the way we’d come, Charlotte and Patrick in the Dart barreling after us.

“Dibs on the car if he croaks,” said Wes as he gunned the gas.

“It’s a rental,” murmured Rastin.

“Hey!” yelled Wes, his gray eyes flashing in the rearview. “Are you faking back there?”

“Sometimes . . .” Rastin murmured as he faded out again, “I wish I were a fake.”

FIFTY-SEVEN

Stephanie

Half running, half sliding, I rushed down the steep, tree-covered embankment of white that sloped to the lake’s edge.

Though my ears burned from the cold and my fingers went numb, the threat of hypothermia didn’t concern me as much as the thought of what he would do when he discovered I was gone. Because as far as I knew, he had just killed whoever had come to help me.