“Perfect,” Jasper remarks, his upper lip tugging into a sneer as he sways back slightly from the fire, his balance teetering, no longer sober. “We’re all so fucked.”

I shake my head. “I only know that a boy is dead.”

And that Oliver went into the woods that night. That I found him in the trees. And that he walked around the lake to the cemetery yesterday and stood over Willa Walker’s grave. That something bad happened the night of the storm.

One boy survived. One boy died.

“It was an accident,” Jasper insists, looking at me from across the fire, both eyebrows raised, but his head lolling a couple degrees to the left, like he wants me to believe him. Like he’s trying to convince me. Only an accident. Nothing to see here. Nothing to report. Go about your business.

But I don’t let it go. “How did he die?”

Rhett tosses the half-burnt stick into the fire, letting it be devoured. “We said it was an accident,” he growls, releasing his arm from around Suzy. Fed up. Pissed. He doesn’t want me here, standing around their bonfire, asking questions.

A hush cuts over the group, and I know I’ve pressed it too far. Rhett stares at me like he might step past Suzy and fold his hands around my throat to shut me up. To keep me quiet. For good. A wedge of unease folds itself beneath my skin, willing me to turn and leave. But I don’t move.

Jasper clears his throat, staggering to the left, like he’s struggling to keep himself upright. “I vote we just keep drinking until the road clears, then we get the hell out of here.” He tilts his head back and takes another gulp of the booze, eyes swaying back into his skull. “I barely notice any of it when I’m drunk.”

I catch Suzy rolling her eyes. It’s obvious Jasper has had too much to drink, and it’s irritating even her.

Another brief quiet falls over the group, and I try to stop myself, to hold it in, but the question falls out anyway. “Notice what?”

“The voices,” Lin answers quickly, in a near whisper, before Rhett can stop him. And the whites of Lin’s eyes peer at me like I should know what he’s talking about. Like the moon witch can surely read his thoughts. Understand the hint of something hidden behind his pursed lips.

And maybe I do know what he means.

I think about the howls I used to hear when I was little, echoing from the cemetery—weeping howls, madness howls, the howls of the dead. Just like all Walkers before me, we hear what others can’t. We see.

My heart vibrates too quickly and a chill rolls down my back, one vertebra at a time. “What kinds of voices?” I ask. I need to know.