"And Yuri dove into a concrete pool the wrong way and broke his neck on the incline," Devon said. "Tam was bitten by a snake while hiking with her family, and the hospital they carried her to was out of antivenom. Andrew Billings-he was one of our older members-he went in for routine surgery and died three days later from a staph infection. And you remember the big storm they had on the west coast a couple of weeks ago? Mario went surfing in it. It was a stupid thing to do, and everyone was begging him not to, but he said the waves were 'too rad to resist,' so he did it anyway. Never came home. And then there's Samara. You remember the E. coli thing last week, out in Idaho? She was the first victim." He looked at Rita. "That's seven. Who am I forgetting?"

"Mike."

"Oh, yeah." Devon shook his head grimly. "Guy had a run-in with a swarm of bees. He was deathly allergic. Of course he always carried epi on him, but the doctors said there was so much venom in his system he never had a chance."

"Africanized bees?" I asked.

"It happened in Canada, so I doubt it."

Normal bees rarely stung human beings. Generally people only got swarmed like that when they disturbed a hive. And people who were allergic to bees were fastidiously careful about never doing that.

The more I learned about this situation, the more bizarre it got.

"There've been other deaths," Rita said. "Outside our circle."

"All of them DNA orphans?"

She nodded.

"Someone's killing us off one by one," Devon said grimly. "And they do it in a different way every time, so that no one will make the connection. That's why we wanted to talk to you live, instead of by email. To warn you about it."

My head was spinning. Bees. Snakes. Germs. Drunk drivers. Teen recklessness. What kind of organization had the power to orchestrate deaths like that? And why would they do it? Were we really the product of some secret scientific experiment, like one of the discussion threads had suggested, and now the people responsible for our existence were trying to erase all evidence of their work? It seemed pretty far-fetched to me, but compared to the alien abduction idea it sounded downright reasonable.

And of course there was one thing these two didn't know about. A thing that sent chills down my spine, now that I suspected its true significance.

I told them about Miriam Seyer. How my brother had caught her casing our house. How she had come to my school to buy my art, then started questioning me about my dreams. It seemed an unlikely coincidence that someone just happened to start stalking me the same time all this was going on, but try as we might we couldn't fit the pieces together. Had the other kids been approached before they died?

I sketched Seyer's face on a napkin for them. It was hard to do; my hands were trembling now. It wasn't every day you were told you might be on someone's. .h.i.t list. When I handed it over to them they stared at it for a long time, and I knew they were committing every detail to memory.

"So," I said, trying to sound calmer than I felt. "What happens now?"

Devon hesitated. "We trade phone numbers and addresses, so that we can talk to each other offline. No more meaningful discussions online. It probably would be safest if we all quit the group. Though, then we wouldn't be able to keep an eye on things." He paused. "I should come meet your mother in person, so that if someday you need to get away from your house for a while I can offer you a safe place to stay without everyone getting all paranoid about it."

Jeez. I hadn't even considered the possibility that I might have to flee my home. "What makes your place any safer than mine?" I demanded. "The fact that you haven't caught anyone casing your place doesn't mean you're not being watched."

"My folks own a cabin out by Front Royal. It's a last resort, but I can get the keys to it if I need to."

Would it really come to that? Running away from home so that our families would be safe, hiding in the woods so that a mysterious cabal of murderers wouldn't be able to find us?

"What about your dad?" I asked, my voice shaking slightly. "You said he knows the truth about us. Did you tell him about the killings?"

Devon hesitated. "Yeah, I told him. He said I was reading too much meaning into purely random accidents. And that if there was any trouble heading our way he would hear about it in advance, and he had enough friends in high places to make it go away." A shadow crossed his face "That said, he did arrange to have our security system upgraded. Not very rea.s.suring."

Rita stared at me. "Are you going to tell your mom?"

For a moment I was silent. There were so many discordant emotions colliding in my head at that moment that I felt strangely numb. Love, fear, hope, desperation, despair . . . not the kind of mess you could sort out over lemonade at IHOP.

"I don't know," I said softly. "Are you going to tell yours?"

She snorted. "Yeah. Right. Like fostermom would give a d.a.m.n if I disappeared."

Devon pushed a napkin toward me; it had a number and address on it. I wrote down my own and gave a copy to each of them. The act was strangely liberating. We would be proactive, take control of our fates, rather than just wait for unnamed enemies to strike.

As I headed up front to pay for my drink I saw that Devon was leaving a really big tip on the table.

Mom didn't get home until late that night; evidently the Koontz monster had put her in charge of closing. By the time she finally arrived I'd been pacing around nervously for so long that I'd worn a rut in the carpet, and Tommy-who fluttered about me like a crazy moth all that time-had offered every bribe at his disposal to get me to tell him what was going on. But this story would be hard enough to tell one time; I didn't want to have to do it twice.

Shortly after eleven o'clock Mom arrived. She looked exhausted-mentally and physically-but as soon as she saw me she knew that something was wrong, and that became her top priority. She sat me down in the living room and asked me what had happened.

So I told them both everything. Because when you get to the point where you're talking to strangers about running away from home in order to stay alive, it's time to come clean. Mom took it all pretty calmly, but it was clear that she had her doubts about the global teen-murdering conspiracy. So I took them to the computer to show them the death notices online. To my horror, I saw that two more had appeared since our meeting in IHOP. One was for a kid in Montana who had run into an angry bear while taking out the garbage. The other was for an older guy in Perth, Australia. Car accident. Those must be the easiest to arrange.

When she was done reading I sat there in silence, waiting for the axe of judgment to fall. A knot in my chest was making it hard to breathe.

"Tomorrow," my mother said quietly, "first thing in the morning, we're going to the police."

I felt a wave of relief so powerful it made me dizzy. "They're not going to believe us," I whispered. "They'll think we're crazy."

"Hush." She pushed back a stray lock of hair from my face. "I'm not going to tell them about the bears and the bees and how a global conspiracy of scientists is targeting my daughter and her friends because of their genetic code. To be honest, I'm not yet sure how I feel about all that myself. But I am going to tell them that a strange woman is stalking my children, and that I'm afraid for your safety. They'll listen to that. I'll make them listen."

I fought the urge to cry. "Thanks, Mom."

She looked at Tommy. "They'll want to question you about what you saw. You good with that?"

He nodded. There was a spark of pride in his eyes now, crowding out the fear. The crazy little kid with the video games was needed to protect his family.

"C'mon," she said, taking my hand in hers, patting Tommy on the back to set him in motion. "Let's make this place safe for the night."

We made the rounds of the house together, window by window, door by door, making sure that every possible entrance was securely shut, and that everything that could be locked was locked. It wasn't so much an act of protection as a ritual of purification, banishing malign influences from our home.

And it seemed to work, for when I climbed into bed, my heart wasn't pounding any more, and the knot in my chest was gone. The last thought I had before I fell asleep was gentle and rea.s.suring. It's going to be all right, I told myself. Everything's going to be all right.

7.

MANa.s.sAS.

VIRGINIA.

THE BLACK GLa.s.s PLAIN beneath my feet is hot. So hot! I have to walk quickly if I don't want my feet to burn. The doors are back, but now they're made of metal, and they're round, like bank vault doors. A dry heat radiates from them, sullen and stifling.

The heat is significant. That awareness comes to me viscerally, born of animal instinct rather than intellect. In the same primitive manner, I know there are clues behind those doors that could tell me why it matters so much, but when I reach out to touch one of the handles-gingerly, like you might test an iron to see if it's heating up properly-the metal is so hot that I pull back with a yelp of pain. Not my brightest idea.

A disembodied voice in the darkness cries, "Jesse!"

I begin to run. Not because I have anywhere to go, or because there is anything specific to run away from, but because the heat of the ground is less painful if I'm moving. The air sears my lungs with every breath. Where is all this heat coming from? Why are the doors impa.s.sable? The answers matter, they matter so much, it's a question of life or death that I must figure out before it's too late- "Jesse!"

Golden flames flicker around the edges of the doors; the circular handles are glowing bright red now, and smoke is filling the air. I cough, barely able to breathe.

"Wake up, d.a.m.n it! Jesse! Wake up!"

Suddenly the dream was gone. For a moment I was totally disoriented. The room I was in looked like my bedroom, but the smell of it was wrong, all wrong, and light flickered weirdly at the window. Rita was there, leaning over the bed and shaking me fiercely by the shoulders. What was going on?

As soon as Rita saw that I was awake she gripped me by the arm and tried to drag me out of bed. There was fear in her eyes. "We need to get out of here, Jesse!"

Suddenly the room came into clear focus, and with it an understanding of just what was happening. Outside my window, fierce yellow light was flickering. All around me the house was sputtering, snapping and popping like wood in a fireplace. I could see tendrils of smoke seeping in over the top of the door, and I could smell the stink of melted carpet and broiled plastic. The air was warm. Too warm. Way too warm.

The house was on fire.

I struggled to get out of bed as quickly as I could. As soon as my bare feet hit the floor I could feel how hot the wood was, which sent a wave of panic surging through my veins. I looked toward the window, hoping to escape that way, but flames from the first floor were already licking at the bottom of the wooden frame. No way out there. Rita called for me to join her at the door, where she stood with her hand poised over the k.n.o.b, tendrils of smoke coiling over her head like snakes from h.e.l.l.

Mom's bedroom was downstairs, I realized suddenly. Right in the middle of that inferno.

"JESSE!" Rita screamed.

I stumbled to the door, and heard her mutter a prayer under her breath as she pulled the door open. A thick layer of black smoke gushed into my bedroom. We ducked down as low as we could and darted out beneath it. There was a window at one end of the hallway and through it, the flickering orange glow picked out highlights along the roiling black smoke-clouds overhead, lending them an almost animate aspect. The whole lower floor was being consumed.

It was hot. So hot. Impossible to breathe in such heat. Impossible to think clearly.

"This way!" Rita cried. She grabbed my hand, and we sprinted toward the center of the house together, covering our mouths with our shirts, keeping our heads as low as we could. A ribbon of fire suddenly shot out of the dark cloud overhead, terrifying in its abruptness. We kept on running. The smoke stung my eyes, and I could feel tears streaming down my cheeks as I struggled to keep them open. I knew that, in fact, it was only a few yards to the central staircase, but in those terrifying moments it felt like a thousand miles. All we could see ahead of us were black clouds, streamers of fire, and the ominous orange glow that seemed to be coming from somewhere beneath it all. The closer we got, the worse it looked.

The staircase was located in the center of the house. We headed toward it in the desperate hope that it was still pa.s.sable. But when we came to the place where the hallway opened out onto a landing, we could see it was already too late. The fire itself was downstairs, and long tongues of flame licked out through the living room's wide archway, spewing flames and soot and sparks up into the stairwell. The smoke was so thick that the stairs themselves were all but invisible; here and there you could see sparks of yellow flame where the banister had caught fire, but otherwise, the way out had effectively ceased to exist.

Sweat pouring down my face, I crouched down low to the floor, gasping for clean air and trying to think clearly. It was a nearly impossible task. I suddenly understood why animals trapped in a fire might bolt in the wrong direction or even freeze in place, unable to move at all. It took all my mental fort.i.tude to overcome the raw animal panic that was flooding my brain, to do something other than turn around and run screaming back the way I had come. But I knew if I did not focus-if I did not think-we were both going to die.

The fire was coming from our side of the house, and it felt like the floor beneath us might collapse into it at any moment. But the other side of the house didn't appear to be burning yet, so that side of the landing should still be stable. Tommy's room was on that side of the house, with a roofed patio right beneath his window. a.s.suming we could get there before the fire did, we might all make it out alive. Including Tommy.

I put my hand on Rita's arm, nodding toward the column of churning black smoke in front of us. Her eyes grew wide and she mouthed something like you're friggin crazy-but then she looked at it again and nodded. She might not know or care about Tommy, but it was clear we weren't getting out the front door.

And so we leaned down low and filled our lungs with as much clean air as we could, and then we ran. Or crawled. Or some desperate stumbling motion midway between the two, that involved trying to keep our heads as low as possible while getting across the landing before our flesh was cooked. The heat was like nothing I'd ever felt before-like someone had thrown us into a blast furnace and slammed the door shut behind us-and I tried not to breathe at all, afraid that my lungs would burn if I did. I closed my eyes to protect them from the smoke, which made the journey twice as terrifying. But at least it would protect my vision for later.

It seemed like an eternity that we were stumbling through h.e.l.lfire, but in reality it must have been no more than a few seconds. As soon as I felt the temperature drop I fell gasping to the carpet, and Rita collapsed beside me. Coughing, we struggled immediately back to our feet and began to move down the hallway again, desperate to put as much s.p.a.ce between us and the burning staircase as we possibly could. I coughed up black spittle as we ran.

Tommy's room was at the far end of the hall. His door was closed-thank G.o.d!-which meant that the air in his room should still be breathable. We opened the door, rushed inside, and then slammed it shut behind us. There was a thin grey haze hanging about the ceiling, but otherwise no overt sign that anything was wrong. The air in his room was blissfully cool.

I looked around for my brother.

He wasn't there.

My first thought was one of utter relief. He must have woken up in time. He must have gotten out. I could see that one of the windows in his room had been shattered; if he'd climbed out through it he could have dropped down onto the patio roof. There was a tree in the backyard whose branches reached to the edge of that roof; maybe it was strong enough to bear a young boy's weight, allowing him to descend safely.

But something about the room was all wrong for that. Maybe in a calmer moment I could have figured out what, but right then all I could do was stare at the broken gla.s.s with my mouth gaping as Rita headed toward the window. She grabbed my arm and tried to get me to come with her, but I yanked myself loose from her grasp. "Check the closet!" I yelled, while I ran over to the bed. We had to make sure Tommy wasn't cowering in some dark corner, too overwhelmed by fear to respond to us. Grabbing hold of the blankets, I jerked them off the bed and threw them to one side. An a.s.sortment of socks, cookie wrappers, and several small electronic devices went flying along with them. The usual. No brother there. I knelt down and looked under the bed. No brother there either.

I was no longer sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing.

I looked up and saw Rita standing by the closet door, shaking her head. No Tommy. The smoke seeping in over the door had gone from grey to black, and I could taste soot on my tongue. There was panic in her eyes. I nodded toward the window, then caught sight of Tommy's desk. His laptop was open and it was on; he'd probably been online when the fire started. I grabbed it as I pa.s.sed, yanking the power cord loose from the wall. Whatever was wrong here, his computer might offer a clue.

And then we were at the window, and Rita shoved it open and climbed through. I could hear her land with a resounding bang on the patio roof six feet down. I tried to follow, but it was hard to maneuver through the narrow window with a laptop in my arms, especially with gla.s.s shards sticking out of the frame. I wound up losing my grip and falling straight down to the patio roof, one arm clutching the laptop to my chest. It wasn't a long drop, but under the circ.u.mstances, it was terrifying. All the air was knocked out of my lungs as I landed beside Rita, and I could feel the lightweight roofing shudder beneath our weight. Overhead, smoke was now pouring out of Tommy's window, and the h.e.l.lish light of a hungry fire blazed right behind it. We had made it out just in time.

We slid down the patio roof as quickly as we could, desperate to get to safety before it collapsed beneath us. The tree branch was thinner than I remembered it, not strong enough to bear the weight of one frightened teenager, much less two. Rita and I grabbed for it anyway, hoping it would at least slow our fall. No such luck. The only thing I got hold of was a handful of leaves, and they came loose with a tearing sound as I tumbled over the edge of the roof and hurtled toward the ground. I tried to brace myself as the earth rushed up at me, but it was all happening too quickly. I hit the ground hard, and for a moment just lay there, breathless and stunned, pain resonating in every inch of my body. Then a piece of burning shingle landed right by my head and I struggled to my feet again, hoping I hadn't broken anything important. The world around me suddenly looked strangely colorless, and the ground seemed to sway beneath my feet as Rita and I ran across the open yard, to a thick stand of trees that backed on the park. I still had the laptop clutched in my arms, but had no way to know if it had been damaged.

Not until we reached the tree line, and I could grab hold of a trunk to steady myself, did we stop to catch our breath.

The entire house was engulfed in flames, its terrible light transforming midnight into day. Anyone who hadn't gotten out by now wouldn't stand a chance, and the full horror of that was just starting to sink in. My brother was missing, but at least he might still be alive somewhere. My mother . . . her bedroom was downstairs, in the very part of the house where the fire had started. There was no way she could have gotten out in time.

Tears started to run down my face, stinging my cheeks. Rita tried hug me, but I was numb, and it was probably like hugging a statue. I began to shake violently, and despite the heat from the nearby fire I felt strangely chilled, as if we were standing outside in the dead of winter rather than on a warm June night. "Mom," I whispered hoa.r.s.ely. "Please don't leave me. Please don't die. I need you . . . !"

Sirens were approaching now; their piercing wail made my head feel like it was splitting open. The whole world was full of spotlights and crackling flames and doors slamming open and fire trucks wailing, all of it pounded in my head in fearsome chaos, too bright and terrible for any sane mind to absorb. I could see people leaving their houses and gathering in the street, some of them with pets or possessions clutched in their arms. Terrified that the fire would spread to their houses as well. I saw the faces of my neighbors, and they looked like the faces of demons, with the burning house reflected in their eyes. And then I saw her.

I froze in place, and something about my expression must have frightened Rita. "What?" she demanded hoa.r.s.ely. "What is it?"

I pointed.

The goth woman stood across from our driveway, her demon-eyes taking in the whole scene. Her long black hair shimmered with sparks of reflected fire as she turned her head from side to side, not staring at the house like everyone else, but studying the neighborhood around it. As if she was looking for something in the shadows. Or for someone.

For a moment my heart forgot how to beat.

"Is that her?" Rita asked.

I nodded.

A strong hand gripped my shoulder. "We need to get out of here," she said. "Fast." I wanted to argue with her, to tell her that we couldn't leave yet, but no words would come. I wanted to explain to her that my mother needed me, that this fire had been my fault, and I needed to go to her and apologize and make it all better. Mom was waiting for me, didn't Rita realize that? But the words wouldn't come out of my mouth. Because they were wrong, all wrong. Suddenly I started crying about words I didn't understand, and a terrible loss I couldn't put a name to. While the whole earth swayed beneath my feet, and the world I had lived in for sixteen years came crashing down around my head in a rain of hot embers.

"Come on," Rita urged gently. With a steady hand she encouraged me to move further into the woods with her. There were shadows there, I knew, deep enough and dark enough for two girls to hide in, even with the fire nearby. "I saw a place where you can wait by the road without being seen. I'll go get the car and bring it around. No one will know you're there." And she added, as an afterthought, "You'll be okay."

I wondered if she really believed that.

As we left, I looked back one last time. There were flashing lights coming up the road, and the sirens were so loud they made my ears hurt. The bonfire that had once been my house was as bright as the sun. Numbed by grief and confusion, I let Rita lead me into the shadowy depths of the park.