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Calossy botto for the bonfire?"

"Maybe we could stay…" he wavers, waiting for me to say okay

"If you want to stay, that’s fine withit would takeI want to do is hang out here These are not the kind of parties I’m intentionally invited to and I don’t want to sit around and be called a killer all night

He sood" He backtracks toward the shore to pick up his shirt

Mackenzie follows hi her shoulder into ed, hands tied, are you ready to die, pretty girl?

"Watch it, killer" Her eyes sparkle with hatred

I flip her theafter Caives hi her palm across his muscles

I wipe off the areas where he touchedthe dampness he left on me and the feel of his touch I pick up Cameron’s phone and dial Raven’s number as more cars and trucks pull up People hop out of the cars; soo to school with and some are older

"Hey, Rav," I say when she answers "I need you to pick me up"

"What?" she hollers in the phone "E fun?"

Cameron see Mackenzie ogle hiht rip her dress off at anyaway from the soon-to-be-porno scene "Please"

"Yeah, sure, hun," she yells over the round "Where are you?"

The connection statics so I weave around the cars and hike up toward the road, tucking in"I’her up the road "Rav, can you hearup to the top of the road right at the border of the asphalt There’s still no signal, so I turn up the highway

About a nal It’sand the air is tinted with the s with no desire to turn around, watching a raven soar above my head

"Leave me alone, you stupid bird," I call out "Go haunt so, feathers falling froers, trying to remember if these were the sa of theated, but I think they were a little bit bigger

I dodge to the side as a sleek black car with tinted s turns the corner The tires screech and the engine roars as it speeds up, thefurther to the side of the road, I wrap ain there’s only blackness

As the car drives passedlane There’s little ti, but the front bu over the top and flying off the side of the road and over the edge of the cliff I bounce off the rocks, , and the rocks rip at my skin When I finally roll to a stop at the bottom of the hill, I blink up at the sky and then at el statue Asher tookroses

My ar is kinked under my back, and war flashes across the sky as I try to move, but I’ve lost all movement in my body I’m paralyzed

It alldots to for me with death omens Someone wants me dead and whoever they are has just succeeded

"Ember," the wind howls as the Gri in the wind I know this is it--o

"Close your eyes," he coins to pull his hood doith his skeletal fingers

My eyelids begin to drift shut, but I catch a glimpse of dark hair and eyes "Asher…"

Then the dark hair melts away and the eyes hollow out I wonder if this is what death looks like to everyone, or that in my death, I have lost my mind

"Take it, Ember, or else you won’t make it And I need you to make it… for a little while" He plucks a red rose from the stem, bends down, and tucks it in my hair "Take the life"

My eyes shut and I listen toinside ives its concluding beat My life leavesfrooes with it

Suddenly, I don’t want to wake up

Chapter 14

Soht before death, a person reaches a point of coes of every blissful, delighted, ecstatic moment they’ve ever experienced in their lifetime I’ve died twice, and each time I see the Reaper So is that supposed to be my happy moment?

"Wake up" So eyes You’re scaring the shit out of rey sky, Raven’s sapphire eyes, and a thousand wilting roses covering the ground, charred, the once soft petals now ash upon the singed grass

I gradually sit up and rub the dirt fros out

Raven sighs and leans back to giveroole tree within a quarter mile radius is dead, dried out, stripped of leaves and the dirt is cracked out like desert sand

Did I do this?

"I have no idea…" I pressheart "How did you find me?"

She holds up the necklace and points back at the hill "This was lying on the side of the road up there" She hands it to rabs my arm and helps me to my feet

Her death is as dusky as the sky, but I can feel her life puh her veins