By dinner, Harold had officially lost control of the narrative.

The gate-locking incident had not gone unnoticed. Teenagers, as a species, notice everything adults least want them to.

Where are the shoes a camper was wearing twenty minutes ago?

The camper has no idea.

The adults are having a super-secret meeting?

Every kid in a five-mile radius develops the observational skills of a CIA analyst.

By the time food was served, the rumors had already begun reproducing. Fast. Like evil little gossip rabbits.

"I heard there's a murderer in the woods," one girl whispered as I passed the drink station.

"Don't be stupid," another said. "It's a bear. They closed the gate to keep him out."

"A bear can get around a gate," a third girl replied.

"So can a murderer," the first grumbled.

I filled a plastic cup with water and tried not to think about the truth, which was a thousand times weirder than bears and possibly worse than a murderer. At least a murderer made sense.

What did one do with a village of ghosts walking on water?

"Smile," Mateo said from beside me.

I jumped and sloshed water over my wrist. "Do you have a bell? Can we put a bell on you?"

"I've been told it would ruin my mystique."

"You do not have mystique."

"I have so much mystique," he said with a grin. But the grin looked forced.

That stopped me.

Mateo without full sparkle was as unsettling as anything else I'd seen.

"What's wrong?" I asked.

His gaze flicked toward the table where Harold stood talking to Kayla with lots of big hand gestures. All his bluster seemed to have returned and then some, but dark sweat stains had soaked the collar and underarms of his shirt.

"He looks like a panic-marinated rotisserie chicken," Mateo said out of the side of his mouth.

He wasn't wrong.

"He told me to lighten the mood tonight."

I nodded. "That tracks. Let me guess, no more spooky songs?"

Mateo tapped the tip of his finger against his nose twice. Then, after a moment of hesitation, he pulled me further away from the kids at the drink machine. "Here's the thing, though. I don't remember playing any spooky songs."

I studied his face for any sign of a joke, but saw only plain worry.

He rolled his shoulders. "I mean, I know I played the Crow Bride song, obviously. I even remember writing it." His eyes darted down and to the left. "Mostly."

My pendant hummed softly, warm against my summer-heated skin. "Mostly?"

"Nevermind. Let's get in line, eh? Those burgers look—"

"Mateo." I thought about grabbing his sleeve and dragging him outside, but figured that would just arouse the suspicions of the already suspicious group. "Was it like a dream?"

"No." He dragged a hand through his hair. "More like an acid trip."

I glanced across the pavilion.

Griffin stood near the far wall with Jada and Sol. His eyes found mine immediately and my expression must have really said something because he started toward us without hesitation.

My idiotic heart gave a tiny hop-skip.

Not the time. For God's sake, read the room.

"What happened?" Griffin asked when he reached us.

Mateo looked between us. "So, you two have moved straight to the telepathic stage of the relationship? That was quick."

"Mateo," I said.

"Sure, right." He sighed. "Crisis first. Romance later."

Griffin's brows drew together.

I waved a hand. "He's just deflecting."

"As any reasonable person would," Mateo said.

Sol and Jada joined us. "What's going on?"

"We're drawing attention," Griffin pointed out.

We all glanced at the campers. Too many of them were watching us.

Mateo threw a wink and a wave. "Mind your business. Just getting things ready for tonight's campfire." Then, in a whisper to us, he said, "I'll show you."

We all traipsed behind him to an empty table in the back of the room. He plunked his guitar case on there and popped the dented brass latches.

The warm wood, polished to a soft shine, lay nestled in worn velvet. Stickers decorated the edge of the case facing me. There were several bands, most of whom I'd never heard, a cartoon frog, a pink glitter skull, and a faded label that read, This Machine Annoys Fascists.

Mateo opened a little hatch in the case and withdrew a folded sheet of notebook paper. "This was tucked under the strings." He unfolded it and handed it to me.

Last week, he'd helped me make lists while the campers hammered stencils into leather bracelets. I recognized the same dramatic, looping handwriting on the first few lines of this page.

She knew him first by the weight of his shadow, and still she let him take her hand.

Then the words grew more cramped, angular. The pen had gouged into the paper in places.

When crow bone splits and black eyes weep, the dead shall wake from borrowed sleep.

I stopped breathing.

Griffin's hand settled against my lower back. It was a welcome support because my knees had turned weak and gummy.

Mateo pointed to the next line. "I know I didn't write that." His voice had dropped so low I could barely hear him over the dinner chaos.

When children dream of ash and flame, the old ones rise and speak their names.

The pavilion tilted slightly under my feet.

Not literally. It was just in my head.

I think.

"Bad dreams," I whispered.

Griffin made a low sound that seemed a little like a warning growl.

Mateo fidgeted. "Keep reading."

The gate shall close, the road shall bend. The Crow King begins where stories end.

Outside the pavilion, a crow cried.

Mateo slouched against the table. "Too much mystique," he said. "Not cool, right?"

Nobody rushed to disagree.

For the first time since I'd met him, Mateo looked like he might actually prefer the silence to continue. That, alone, was enough to set off alarm bells in my brain.

As if they hadn't been blaring for all of recent memory.

Jada leaned closer to the paper, her brows knitting together. "Crow bone splits? What does that mean?"

"The totem," Sol said. "It cracked straight down the middle."

She drew back. "When?"

"When we were standing right in front of it with Harold," Griffin said.

I folded the paper back into a palm-sized square. "We need to show this to Harold."

Mateo snorted. "Do we, though?"

"Yes."

"Harold hasn't been handling this situation with any great amount of flair or competence."

What the heck could I say to that? It was a fair statement.

Jada glanced toward Harold, who was now smiling so aggressively at Kayla I feared his face might split at the seams. "We'll show him, but not here."

"Agreed," Griffin said.

Sol rubbed both hands over his face. "The kids are already halfway to feral. If they realize how panicked we are, it's over."

"We are not panicked," I said.

Four sets of eyes leveled devastating looks on me.

"Our panic is entirely internal, therefore it doesn't really count."

Mateo raised his hand like a school child. "As an expert in internal panic, I support this distinction."

A burst of laughter erupted from the far end of the pavilion and several campers started pounding rhythmically on the tables. At first, I assumed someone had started a normal chant. The most popular was a thing that involved slamming drink cups down while reciting, oh beware of the snare of the ricky ticky bear.

Then the words settled into my mind, unsettling as needles sinking deep into my soul.

"When crow bone splits and black eyes weep..."

I struggled to draw a breath.

Mateo's face went slack.

Every muscle in Griffin's body tensed. His eyes flashed gold for one second before he closed them and turned his head downward.

The chant spread slowly across the room, inching along from camper to camper like a virus.

"When crow bone splits and black eyes weep, the dead shall wake from borrowed sleep."

A girl from the owl cabin giggled halfway through the line. A split second later, her brows drew together in an expression of confusion.

A boy near the serving window mouthed the words without ever looking up from his burger.

Two younger campers from the deer cabin clapped along in apparent delight.

"I didn't write that," Mateo whispered. "I sure as shit never sang it to anybody."

"I know," I said.

"Why do they know it?"

Griffin moved so suddenly, I startled. He crossed the pavilion in long, controlled strides and planted himself beside the table where the chant had started. "That's enough."

He didn't shout, but the command in his voice cut cleanly through the noise.

The clapping stopped.

Several campers stared up at him with wide eyes.

A few of the older kids looked annoyed.

One boy gave him the universal teenage expression for, who died and made you king?

He's not the king. Not yet. But he could be.

Fuck me. Where the hell did that thought come from?

I rubbed the heels of my hands into my eyes and ordered myself to get a grip.

"We were just signing," the defiant boy said.

"Where did you learn the song?" Griffin asked.

The boy shrugged. "Around."

Another camper frowned. "Mateo's going to play it tonight."

"If he hasn't played it yet, where did you learn it?" Griffin asked.

She just scowled at him.

Mateo took a step forward and held both hands up. "I'm sorry to announce Mateo is retiring from music, effective immediately."

The kid with the purple hair scratched her head. "It was just stuck in my brain."

"Mine too," the boy next to her said.

A chorus of murmurs echoed around the room.

"Same."

"Yeah."

"Me too."

"I dreamed it," a small voice said. "Not just the words, either. I saw it played out."

Every head in the room turned to look at evan.

He sat at the end of one table, his hand wrapped tightly around his cup of lemonade.

Jada crossed to him and crouched by his side. "You dreamed about that song?"

He nodded. His eyes took on a glassy, far-away quality. "Not when I was sleeping. When I---There was a lady crying. She had a red cape thing."

Please help me not throw up in front of this whole group of kids.

Griffin's eyes met mine across the pavilion.

Harold jumped out of his seat, sending his chair screeching across the concrete floor. "That's enough of all this nonsense."

No one said anything. The pavilion had fallen so quiet I could hear the noise of a single fly, bumping against the window screen.

Harold's face turned a deeper shade of red, and he pointed at the little group of us in the corner. "I said no more."

Mateo held both hands up in surrender. "For once in my life, I was obeying an order."

"They already knew the song," I said.

Harold looked around the room and seemed to register the way the kids were watching him. His expression changed in an instant. His camp director mask slid back into place, the broad smile and booming voice replacing the anger and frustration.

"All right, everybody!" he called. "That's enough weirdness for one meal. Plates to the wash tubs and then everyone off to evening activities. Kayla, your cabin's got crafts, right? Over to the rec hall for you."

For a moment, based on her steely expression, I was certain Kayla was going to argue. But then she glanced at her campers and practicality won.

"He's right," she chirped in fake glee. "We are off to make crafts, my little deer."

The world stood still for one heartbeat. Two. Then chairs scraped and kids lifted their dishes with a clatter. The normal machinery of camp life lurched back into action.

But the normalcy seemed as thin as wet tissue. If anyone scratched at it even a little, it would tear away and the darkness beneath would consume us all.

As we trailed the campers out of the building, Griffin's fingertips brushed against mine.

"You okay?" he asked.

"I used to worry I was crazy. Now my biggest fear is that I'm sane. If I'm sane, all this is real."

He gave my hand a gentle squeeze and walked away without so much as a single comforting lie.