CHAPTER 7
We barely make it out.
The fire trucks arrive. Sirens. Lights. Neighbors filming.
Greyville Manor burns like it’s been waiting for permission.
I watch the roof collapse.
I don’t cry.
Jack stands beside me, faint as breath in cold air.
“This is my fault,” I say.
“No,” he says. “This is theirs.”
A woman watches from across the street. Dark clothes. Too calm.
She meets my eyes and nods once.
Later, after my parents are too busy with insurance and shock to notice me slipping away, she finds me.
“You see the dead,” she says.
“I see one.”
Her smile is thin. “That’s enough.”
Her name is Messiliah.
And she tells me something that makes my stomach drop.
“You can bring him back,” she says.
Jack goes very still.
“But,” she adds, “something else will want to take his place.”
