Sawyer’s waiting for me around the next corner. He’s there for a moment and then phasing through the door up to the roof.

I run forward, bum-rush the push handle, and mount the staircase. My hand trails the cold railing as I jump the steps, the flashlight beam skipping along the walls.

I throw open the door to the roof, and the wind snatches the last bit of breath out of my throat. From here you can usually see St. Clair Middle past the quad out front of school. The rugby field and tennis courts out back. The skyline in the distance to the east, the sea of trees interspersed with the city. It’s too foggy to see far beyond the roof today. And no one is up here.

No one except Sawyer.

Sawyer, standing with his back turned, watching the horizon.

He steps and steps again across the pavement, leaving a red trail in his wake. His aura, red with notes of black, bleeds from his ears, seeps from his skin. A dark, horrible color shaping the energy of the atmosphere around him. A cloud of smoke and dust forms a snake, which curls around his neck; and then wasps, which buzz around his head; and then a demon, which jumps back from his body with its wrists curled and then scuttles back in, quick as a spider down a hole.

What’s happening? He’s like the rainfall—there, and then not. Fluid, and solid.

He stops at the barrier railing—the only thing between a ledge and a drop off the building. “Would you say you hate school?”

“Leave me alone.” I close the distance cautiously.

“Would you say you hate your classmates and teachers and the way that they’ve treated you?” His Southern accent is old and haunting.

Stronger now. Come on, Jake. “Leave. Me. ALONE.”

“Why would I do that?” Sawyer laughs—like a child at first, and then the sound deepens into the laughter of a man. “I don’t want to! I don’t want to!” But the voice is still that of a child.

The clouds darken over the school, threatening a sudden storm, and I notice a bloodstain on the right side of his head, where his hair shatters in a spray of crusted blond across his forehead.

My feet start sliding from under me, pulling me toward him, and I slap the pavement with my butt.

Sawyer sics on me like a predator. His aura pulls me up like hooks under my armpits, and then I’m dangling there, right in front of him, slightly above him. Gone are the blue eyes from before. Black depths have filled their place. A vacuum, powered by his face, rips the air, oxygen, and life from the marrow of my bones. My muscles ache, and I collapse, drained, exhausted, dizzy.