Hunter: "The whole time we were looking for Azalea, all I could think about was how awful it'd be if I never saw her again."

Hannah: "It honestly seemed like everything just kept crashing down around us."

Alex: "I'll say—it was literally one bombshell after the next."

Azalea Rose Jackson:

"Where are you taking me!?" I screamed, mind throbbing with terror.

The circular end of an icy barrel pressed against the back of my neck as White Robe ushered me hastily forward. I barely had any time to take in my surroundings, a dark night of overwhelming shadows and moonless melancholy, before I was forced into a long black car.

The driver stared at me from behind a mask, a sleek covering stitched with lace and sheening from the vehicle's pale door light. It seemed more feminine to me than did the pointed-top hood that White Robe wore, the vile complement to his silken fabrics.

Who is she? my brain whirred.

I didn't have long to dwell on it. The moment White Robe shoved me into the back seat, the driver turned her eyes—her mask—to the road in front of us, preparing to disembark. We must have run over a dozen stoplights as she zoomed down the highway.

I gazed through the window for landmarks, anything that could tell me where we were. To my right, I spotted a large gas station and a fancy shoe shop next to it, the station announcing its Now Open! status in wiry neon letters while the shoe shop's lights were dimmed and its glass doors sealed to customers.

Wait. I shivered. I know this road.

I flicked my head left, where a collection of duckling statues followed their tall and silvery mother along the outer gates of the brilliant, if gaudy, twenty-four-hour mall and supply store known for servicing one very special college campus both day and night.

Scofield-Andrews—they're taking me to Scofield-Andrews!

It seemed only seconds before we were screeching to a stop above the crunch of asphalt, before White Robe was grabbing me by the arm and yanking me from the back seat, before he was shoving his gun between my shoulder blades and pushing me across the cracked pavement.

"Park the car," he called to Lace Face. "Then meet us inside."

With fervent, unyielding eyes, she pulled away, White Robe's gun pressing into my back all the while.

"Why are you doing this!?" I shrieked, frantic eyes scouring the black night air. "What did I ever do to you?"

"Ask the one who bore you," he rasped. "The one who made you the beneficiary of all her wealth and prestige—gifts bestowed by entirely depraved machinations." As he talked, he pulled a key from his pocket and twisted it inside the lock securing the school's backdoor entrance.

"What the heck are you talking about?" I screamed as he shoved me forward through the open door creaking with the wind.

That raspy voice began to laugh. "Ignorant child," he said darkly. "You know nothing of the sins of long ago, of all that your mother once did. But you will—you will know soon enough."

The door behind us creaked again, the snap of Lace Face's shoes echoing down the hall as she stepped inside the building, striding swiftly to catch up to us.

It seemed only seconds before her clicking heels were clattering next to White Robe, her thin figure leaning to whisper something in his ear.

"Yes," he breathed. "Bring it in."

She turned without speaking and darted down a second hallway. I heard a metallic key twist inside a lock, the creaking of yet another wooden door.

Where's she going? I thought to myself, shuddering. And what on earth is she about to bring?

White Robe stopped moving, standing suddenly still and staring forward. "This," he breathed raggedly, "this is where it all began." In time with the spooky squeak of the wooded floor, he twisted his body slowly away from me, lifted his robed hands in front of him. "This, Azalea Rose, is where your mother stole the life of an innocent girl—this is where my soul was broken."

"What?" My eyes grew wide. "Are you saying my mom killed someone?"

He held his silence.

"Is that what this is all about—?"

"No!" he barked. "This is about revenge."

He was still facing forward, hands spread wide in the air as his breath came out like the throaty growls of a grizzly bear. I blinked once, twice—fear quaking through me—and with a single gulp, I began to slowly creep backwards. I felt my feet land one at a time, hoping wildly that they wouldn't find a whining floorboard as I stepped.

White Robe was still wheezing in rumbles when I had placed about ten feet of distance between us, and I kept eyeing his tenuous frame as I moved, as I trembled with every whisper of his rasping groans. Clenching my fists tight and shutting my eyes for strength, I turned and dashed away as fast as I could. I raced around a corner and slammed through a set of double doors. After blitzing past what looked like a chemistry lab, I cut left and continued to run, listening for the heavy clanging of White Robe's shoes as he chased me.

I darted through a media plaza stationed next to a women's restroom, then held my lightning pace until I made it to a forked hallway splitting off into two paths. I went to the right and ran until I reached an elevator next to a wide window through which the lights of the Scofield-Andrews parking lot filtered in imperfect rays.

I gripped the first of the window's locks, dry with age and disuse, and popped it upward with a heavy crack. As I secured my hands on the second lock and began pulling, the elevator behind me dinged—such a sudden and terrifying noise that I lost my grip and fell backwards as the silver doors were thrown open...and as Lace Face stepped from behind them.

She pulled a pistol from her purse and pointed it directly at my face. "Get away from the window," she ordered. "Now, Azalea Rose."

Quaking with both fear and rage, I complied, lifting my hands and slowly stepping back from the clear glass as I stood to my feet. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the shadow of a long robe moving quickly behind me. In an instant, White Robe was upon me, stabbing the long silver needle of a syringe into the side of my neck.

Every inch of my body began to tremble. The room started to swirl and spin, and my legs suddenly found themselves unable to support me as I toppled to the ground.

Eyesight blurring, I stared blearily at both of my kidnappers.

"Did you get it?" I heard White Robe's calm yet breathless rasp.

Lace Face motioned to a long beige bag that was still in the elevator.

White Robe walked to the elevator to retrieve the bag and dragged it toward me. He unzipped it, and out fell a human body. The cheekbones and nose had begun to rot and decay, but there was no mistaking the face that lay before me. A face that, though robbed of much of its beauty, still possessed a meek and mystifying countenance—it's eyes unmistakable, it's hair long and elegant and lovely, its lips dyed the remnants of a bright and sweetly succulent red.

It was the face of Cassandra Singleton.

"The blood," White Robe mused to Lace Face.

She handed him three vials of thick crimson liquid, along with a clear bag of white roses. He leaned down next to me, that robe of silk only inches from my body, and spread the roses radially around my head before coloring each of them individually with blood from the vials.

I tried to struggle, tried to squirm, but my body refused to cooperate; it was as if I were overlaid by a metric ton of unyielding, immoveable bricks. Fading into unconsciousness, I watched White Robe open the final vial, watched that fluid darkness as it sloshed menacingly inside.

Invisible tears ruptured and streamed down my cheeks as he drenched my face and hair in the liquid life of the woman whose horrified eyes stared lifelessly into my own.