BooksBarbecue
Back Reverie
Chapters (53)
  1. Front Cover
  2. Letter from the Author
  3. Title Page
  4. Copyright
  5. Contents
  6. • One •
  7. • Two •
  8. • Three •
  9. • Four •
  10. • Five •
  11. • Six •
  12. • Seven •
  13. • Eight •
  14. • Nine •
  15. • Ten •
  16. • Eleven •
  17. • Twelve •
  18. • Thirteen •
  19. • Fourteen •
  20. • Fifteen •
  21. • Sixteen •
  22. • Seventeen •
  23. • Eighteen •
  24. • Nineteen •
  25. • Twenty •
  26. • Twenty-One •
  27. • Twenty-Two •
  28. • Twenty-Three •
  29. • Twenty-Four •
  30. • Twenty-Five •
  31. • Twenty-Six •
  32. • Twenty-Seven •
  33. • Twenty-Eight •
  34. • Twenty-Nine •
  35. • Thirty •
  36. • Thirty-One •
  37. • Thirty-Two •
  38. • Thirty-Three •
  39. • Thirty-Four •
  40. • Thirty-Five •
  41. • Thirty-Six •
  42. • Thirty-Seven •
  43. • Thirty-Eight •
  44. • ∞ •
  45. • Thirty-Nine •
  46. • Forty •
  47. Epilogue
  48. Acknowledgments
  49. Excerpt from Be Dazzled
  50. One
  51. Two
  52. About the Author
  53. Back Cover

“Mr. Montgomery, we thought it might be you,” said one. Kane couldn’t even look her in the eye. “Step out of the car, please.”

Together, they scooted from the car. Sophia shook off her shock first. “You don’t understand. We were just walking along the path when this thing came out of nowhere and chased us. This massive animal…”

Sophia’s voice fizzled out, leaving Kane to wonder if she’d seen the shadow that chased them. One officer said something into their radio. The other turned to Kane. “The Cobalt Complex is a crime scene, Mr. Montgomery.”

Kane’s mouth was dry. He nodded.

“And private property.”

Nod.

“That you’ve trespassed on once already.”

The world went wobbly beneath him. He grabbed the car’s hood to keep from falling. What the hell were those things? There was no way to describe them and no point in doing so. The police wouldn’t believe any of it. They would think Kane had caused the damage to the mill himself. Again.

Holy shit.

“It was my idea,” Sophia blurted. “It was, I swear. I asked to come here. I wanted to see…to see it all for myself. The mill. Kane didn’t even want to come. I made him come back. Please don’t get him in more trouble.”

The officers eyed Sophia incredulously. Her hair, the color of cocoa powder, had come unbraided and floated around her jaw, a few strands caught in glistening spit at the edge of her frown. She had on her Pemberton uniform—the all-girls private school in town, which was an honorable and mysterious institution that gave all the locals a superstitious pause—but it was a mess from their run. Still, the cops paused.

One nodded toward Kane. “Detective Thistler let us know you’ve got an appointment with him and your parents this afternoon.”

“Yeah,” Kane said. “We were on our way. We’ll head over right now, I promise.”

Everyone waited to see if a consequence would happen, and it did. The same officer rounded the cruiser and popped open the back door. “Miss, you head home. Kane, grab your stuff. You’re coming with us.”

• Two •

The Witches

The East Amity Police Station had three interview rooms. Two of them were simple boxes of concrete, containing only steel tables and steel chairs. Interrogation chic. The third, Kane was told as he was led through the halls of the station, was called the Soft Room. It had couches, a basket of plastic geraniums flanked by tissue boxes, and a lamp.

Kane clung to these details. No one was going to torture him in a room with upholstered couches, right? The blood would soak into the fibers. It’d take a small pond of seltzer to scrub out.