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Back Reunion Save as PDF
Chapters (62)
  1. Cover
  2. Full Page Image
  3. Introduction
  4. Advance Praise for Reunion
  5. Dedication
  6. Map
  7. Quote
  8. Prologue
  9. All About Eric Weiss
  10. The Young Magician
  11. From the Wikipedia entry for Middleton:
  12. Where They Used to Live
  13. All About Carrie Keene
  14. The Girl Detective
  15. All About Alana Bright
  16. The Warrior Princess
  17. All About Daniel Sharp IV
  18. The Boy Genius
  19. I’ve Done My Part
  20. The Only Warrior Left
  21. The World Beneath the World
  22. Even Less Fun Now
  23. The Flawless Performance of Innumerable Lines of Code
  24. Like Time-Lapse Photography
  25. You Don’t Have to Go Home but You Can’t Stay Here
  26. This is Where She Gets It
  27. I Never Believed in Prophecies
  28. Normal People Stumble Along
  29. INTERLUDE: The Case of the Candy Cult
  30. That’s How Her Story Ought to Go
  31. Normal Is Whatever You Grow Up With
  32. Even Good Kids Have Their Limits
  33. INTERLUDE: The Menace of the Middleton Monster
  34. Alanis Morissette Irony or the Other Kind
  35. What You Want Is Not the Most Important Thing
  36. INTERLUDE: Trapped in the Goblin’s Lair
  37. The Slowest Person in the Room
  38. INTERLUDE: The Final Secret of Dr. Sax
  39. All Part of King Jeremy’s Land
  40. INTERLUDE: Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark
  41. You Breathed It In, All the Time
  42. INTERLUDE: What Happened
  43. Danny Sharp Doesn’t Believe in Ghosts
  44. Ice and Bottles of Zima
  45. You Were Right All Along
  46. A Lot of Sacrificing to Do Tonight
  47. You Walked Right into It
  48. How Magic Works
  49. Was This Your Master Plan
  50. This Time, I Swear, We Can Do It Right
  51. You’d Think He Would Know Better
  52. Fresh Blood on Its Hands
  53. Any One of a Thousand Different Men
  54. The End of the World over There
  55. These Are Not Ideal Conditions
  56. Lightning and Thunder, Demons and Angels
  57. Into the Jaws of the Dragon
  58. Unafraid at Sunset
  59. Epilogue
  60. Acknowledgments
  61. About the Author
  62. Other Works by Christopher Farnsworth

Alana walks over to Eric and looks down on him. For a second, her eyes are full of wrath. For that second, there is a potential in the air, like a gathering of static before lightning jumps from storm to ground.

Eric is pretty sure she’s going to kill him where he stands. He tries to think of a spell, a countersign, anything. Nothing comes to mind.

Alana takes a deep, shuddering breath, and some of the murder leaves her eyes.

“I know exactly what you mean,” she says. “I paid more than any of you to save this town. Don’t you ever forget it.”

Eric should shut up. He really should.

“Then why do we have to do this all again?” he asks.

Alana trembles. “There is exactly one reason we are here again. And you know what it is.”

Eric feels the blood drop out of his face. He swallows hard.

Alana turns to the others. “Did he ever tell you? It’s him. He was supposed to die that night. He was supposed to break the cycle. We all could have moved on, and led normal lives. But he wouldn’t. He was too scared. We had to save him. And that’s why we’re all here again. Because he couldn’t do what he was born to do.”

She looks back at Eric, as if deciding whether or not to hurt him. Then she shakes it off and walks away.

She’s around the corner before any of them exhale again.

Carrie turns to Eric. “Is this true?” she demands. “You could have ended it all that night?”

He shrugs. Might as well come clean. “Hey, sue me. I didn’t want to die at seventeen. Did you?”

“No,” Carrie says. “But I would have. I was ready. I was prepared. I thought you were, too. If it would have kept this from happening again.”

“That’s the point: nothing would have kept this from happening again,” Eric says. “I don’t need you to tell me how wrong I am. Nobody does. Why don’t you finally get a life of your own so you can stop fucking with everyone else’s?”

Carrie stares at him for a moment. “Wow,” she says. Something seems to occur to her. She looks at Danny. “Did you know about this?”

Danny, astonishingly, looks embarrassed. “I had an idea.”

“And you didn’t tell me?”

“Obviously not.”

Carrie shakes her head. Somehow she still has the Creek’s soggy, crumpled menu in one hand. She flings it at Danny, and it smacks wetly against his chest. “You colossal asshole.”

Without another word, she goes to her little blue car and drives off.

Danny looks at Eric.

“Shut up,” Eric says, and walks away, just so he’s not the last to leave.

13

This is Where She Gets It