(Content/trigger warnings for this chapter: self-hatred, depression-like thing)

-Ranya-

I kept waiting for Pitch to reappear. He never did.

No one spoke, even as tears continued to tumble down one girl's face. Paralyzed bodies, both human and not, splayed across the floor. Self-hatred burned in my chest.

Dakota's eyes still scorched with fire, but everyone else stared at the floor. I tried to meet their hollow gazes. They wouldn't look.

The crying girl had one rosy cheek like half an apple. She whispered to herself as she glanced around. Then she looked back at me. "This is your fault."

I was who had brought everyone here together despite the pendant's warning. Pitch had attacked here because of me and my defiance against him. I had no defense for the girl's accusation. My weight took this moment to seize me.

"Ranya didn't know this would happen," Dakota said. On the surface, I knew she was right, but my core was too convinced of my fault.

"I quit." One one-rosy-cheeked girl crept over the bones and bodies clogging the base of the stairs. "We can't beat anyone like this."

"Don't leave," I managed to say. "There might still be Fear Angels outside. We need to stay here for a little while."

"Why?" the girl asked. "They wanted to paralyze us all—no thanks to you. You led them right to us!"

"I didn't know—" I tried.

"Of course you didn't," said another girl, whose fingernails were long and the color of blood. She'd been staring at a wall, her dyed black hair a shroud around her, but now she narrowed her eyes at me. "I should have known. Why should we follow you?" She started up the stairs.

The remaining boy, who had long spidery legs, didn't say anything. He avoided my gaze, and all three of them left.

It reminded me of the day I had lost my friends. I recalled their twisted and mirthful stares as they laughed at my hot tears, and recalled my cut off from happiness as sudden as being shoved off a cliff.

Dakota and I stood alone on the decimated battlefield. She looked at me with an expression I couldn't read. I looked back. Then my gaze fell away.

My crescendoing guilt forced me to admit: "I was warned something dangerous was coming."

Dakota stood there for a second before she said, "By who?"

"My sister's first Guardian Angel. I didn't know what he was warning me about, though."

Dakota stayed silent.

Outside, the wind began to howl. Snowflakes churned thickly against the window. "I'll call 911," I said. "Someone has to get all these people to the hospital." They couldn't stay in the basement and get everything they needed to survive. I sat on a pile of skulls and pulled out my phone.

"I can't sense a curse in you," Dakota started. "That wasn't what Pitch meant, unless he used the Stalker."

"I know. I think he meant I'd end up isolated. That was something he complained about in the movie—being alone." I looked up at Dakota. "He's planning to take everyone who cares about me, and make sure no one else starts."

"We'll just have to stop him before he can." Her eyes flashed bright. My family was still innocent to her.

I just nodded. There wasn't any emotion behind it, though. "We still have our plan," I stated instead.

"Yeah. I don't know how much he's aware of it. I only started sensing his presence right when he first spoke. He could have known what to say if the Stalker was watching for him, but he doesn't know why we want him in Windshallow."

I turned on my phone. "We still need a way to trick him into revealing himself here."

The thick green coat I still wore vanished with a soft tinkling noise. Great. Getting back home is going to be awful now. I cursed myself.

Dakota's eyes widened, but she said, "We have to get these things out of Windshallow."

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