Page 78 of The Unknown

“What were you doing?”

I lift the flashlight. “Trying to signal for help.”

“With Lindy on the loose?” Ronan says.

“But it wasn’t her,” I say, thinking of the way the flashlight droppedto the ground. As if the hand that had been holding it suddenly ceased to exist. “I didn’t see anyone. I didn’t hear anyone. It’s like Heather just…vanished.”

Normally, I’d assume that someone attacked her. But who? Certainly not any of them. They just came from the house. There’s no way one of them could have just been on the shore. Not without me seeing them. Even working together, they couldn’t have attacked Heather, dragged her somewhere, stripped off her dress, and hung it that high in the tree in a matter of minutes.

Everything that just happened would seem impossible if not for the fact that it did, indeed, happen.

Susie and Heather are gone.

Their clothes are now in the tree.

It seems to me that only one person—or thing—could have done it. And only Julianne is brave enough to speak the name out loud.

“Azra,” she says.

Ronan releases a frustrated groan. “For fuck’s sake, please don’t start with that.”

“Do you have a better theory?” Julianne says, facing each of us in turn. “Do any of you?”

No one does. Including me.

“It’s become abundantly clear that we summoned Azra,” Julianne continues. “They were here, on this island, asleep for maybe a hundred years. And during the séance, we woke them up. Now everything that happened back then is happening again.”

“But why now?” Ronan says.

“Because look at us.” Julianne throws out her arms so we can take in her high-necked dress, her button-up shoes, her entire period ensemble. “We’re dressed like the original women of New Avalon, living like them, basically being them. And it’s enough to fool whatever they summoned back then. Azra thinks we’rethem. And now they’re trying to do what they did a hundred years ago—destroy us one by one.”

She’s right. So far, this strange series of events has hewed closely to Ronan’s script. Susie’s character first, followed by Heather’s. If the pattern holds, Julianne will be next. She has every reason to be scared. Especially because Azra doesn’t need to have read the script. They wrote the first draft.

“I’ve felt things,” Violet suddenly says, holding a hand against her cheek, as if she’s checking for a fever. “At night. Like I’m being watched.”

“Me, too,” Julianne admits. “A presence in my cottage. Something—”

Violet nods. “Familiar.”

“The first night here, I woke up and swore that it was my first husband.”

Julianne doesn’t need to say his name. We already know it from the séance. Dean. But we didn’t know that beforehand. At least I didn’t. I only learned it as my hand followed the glass around the table, spelling it out.

“I thought it was my father,” Violet admits, referencing another name the séance made me familiar with. Frank. “I could smell him. Pipe smoke and English Leather aftershave. Like he was right there in the room with me. At first, it made me so happy. My father was back! But then, the longer it went on, I became terrified. Because I knew he shouldn’t have been there.”

She might as well be talking about Molly. That’s how similar our stories are. And now I, too, feel happy-scared. Because now I know it’s not just me who’s experienced such things, which is both comforting and terrifying.

“Has anything like that happened to the two of you?” Julianne says, turning to me and Ronan.

“No,” he immediately says. “I haven’t. And neither have you. I’m sure it’s just—”

“Our imaginations?” Violet says. “I thought so, too. Until this happened.”

She gestures to Susie’s and Heather’s clothes hanging limply in the tree.

“But ghosts don’t exist,” Ronan says.

“They do.”