Her aunt wheezed for a moment, trying twice to speak before the words made it out. “I’ve always … loved you … Charlie.”

Charlie pulled back and gave Aunt Jen a calmed look. “I love you, too,” she said softly, and then she ripped open her stomach. “I really do.”

Charlie reached her car; she was running so fast she ran a few yards past it before she could stop. She wanted to keep running, to keep this feeling alive. She opened and closed her fists; the blood on them was tacky and growing uncomfortable. She started the car and opened the trunk to get the first-aid kit she always carried. Standing in the beam of the headlights, Charlie took out some gauze and hydrogen peroxide and carefully wiped her hands clean finger by finger. When she was done, she examined them and nodded, satisfied; then she got in her car and sped off into the dark.

CHAPTER SIX

John was counting Charlie’s breaths, one-two, three-four, in-out, each intake of air a marker of the time going by: that this was real, that she was not going to vanish. Hours had passed, and the sky outside was lightening, but still he could not take his eyes off her. His bed was narrow; she was curled on her side as she had been in the trunk, her back pressed against the wall, and he was perched on the edge, careful not to touch her. Jessica had taken a brief nap on the couch, and now she was up again, pacing the short length of his bedroom.

“John, we have to take her to a hospital,” Jessica said for the second time since she awoke, and he shook his head.

“We don’t even know what’s wrong with her,” he said softly. Jessica made a frustrated noise in her throat.

“That’s all the more reason to take her to a hospital,” she said, biting the words off individually.

“I don’t think she’ll be safe.”

“You think she’s safe here?”

John didn’t answer. One-two, three-four, in-out—he realized he was counting her breaths again, and he looked away. He could still hear her breathing, though, and the count went on nine-ten, eleven-twelve … He could feel her presence beside him; even though they weren’t touching, he had a constant awareness that she was close by.

“John?” Jessica prompted, and he looked first at Charlie, then at Jessica.

“Clay said something,” he said.

“At the hospital?” Jessica frowned. “Something else?”

“No, before that. He had Ella at his house.”

“That creepy doll from Charlie’s bedroom?”