His fingers dig deeper into my skin, and he pulls me closer, his face only a few inches from mine. “You’re lying.”

With the spellbook tucked beneath my arm, I manage to push my other hand against his face, his chin, and force him away. “I’m not lying,” I spit, yanking my arm free from his grasp and starting toward the door.

“So they did find his corpse?” he asks, his voice hollowed out, thin and strained.

I stop and look back at him. “What?”

“In the lake?” he says, as if this clarifies it, raising a single blond eyebrow. “They recovered Oliver?”

“Oliver isn’t dead,” I say, a sour taste forming at the back of my throat.

A quick bark of laughter escapes Max’s lips. And when his mouth falls flat, he leans in close to me again, brows slanted, his teeth grating together. “I watched him sink beneath the ice.” His upper lip curls into a disgusted grin, his nostrils flare.

I shake my head. “You’re full of shit,” I say, but still, I reach out for the edge of a chair, my knuckles turning white where they grip the striped, navy-blue upholstery. “Oliver didn’t drown.” But even as I say it, the room begins to spin, the watch inside my pocket begins to tick impossibly too loud, beating against my skull.

One boy missing. One boy dead.

Which boy is which?

Max shakes his head and says something, but his voice feels too far away, the room tipping on its side, the merry-go-round moving too fast and I want to get off. I need to get out of this house. I dip my eyes to the floor to keep the walls from spinning, and I stare at a beetle turned up on its back near a couch leg—dead. I feel myself cracking apart, little tiny fractures in the shell of my skin. And once the first fissure splits open, the rest will shatter.

Max didn’t die that night.

Max didn’t drown in the lake.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” he says now. His face sways just out of focus, a blur of hair and bloodshot eyes and a cruel grin, but he’s still too close, and I release my hold on the chair. I step away from him, reaching for the open doorway, feeling bits of ash sticking to my skin. Like they will never be washed off. Like I will never escape these flames.

But then there’s someone in the doorway, blocking my path. Hands reaching out for me. I look up into his too-green eyes and I feel my pupils narrow to tiny pricks.

Oliver.

Oliver is standing in the doorway.

I choke back a strange, terrified sob. Relief flooding through me. “What are you doing here?” I ask, gasping for air, ash spilling down into my lungs.