Page 37 of Deadly Secrets

The second card showed the Moon. The Moon foreshadowed a problematic, unclear path ahead.

“Things may not be what they seem. Therefore, you must proceed cautiously.” A danger ahead, watching my back. How much did she get paid for all this bullshit?

And finally, the last card: the Two of Cups.

“Love is in the air. It looks like you’ll meet someone soon who will turn your world upside down,” she claimed.

“That’s Noah for sure,” Maggie interjected.

“Well. I think I’ve heard enough…thank you, but we need to leave.” I grabbed Maggie’s hand and dragged her toward the exit. Definitely a waste of money.

“How was it?” Noah asked.

“A lot of bullshit.”

Noah and Maggie laughed while she gave him a summary of everything the fortune teller had told us. I was eighteen; of course, I would fall in love with someone eventually. I didn’t need a fortune teller to tell me that. The whole thing was ridiculous.

On our way to the house of mirrors, I noticed that Zayn was staring at me. We hadn’t had a chance to talk since I discovered at The Cave that he was friends with Ander and Noah. There wasn’t much to talk about. We hooked up, and that was the end of the story, but at least it would be good to clear the air between us. You know, rip off the Band-Aid. Still, I couldn’t get him or the moment we shared in New York out of my head. The way his fingers curled inside me. I could still feel his hands gripping my ass while he fucked me against the wall.

I bought tickets for all of us, but we were separated into two groups. Maggie and I entered with the first group; the boys joined the second one except for Ander, who decided to skip the attraction. He said he would wait for us at the exit so we could all go to the haunted house together.

It had been quite a while since I ventured into a house of mirrors, but this one differed from the ones I remembered from my childhood. It was set with a Halloween theme. Spiderwebs were draped in every corner, and screams echoed from the speakers hung around the space. The flashing lights switched in no particular order from bright blue to bloody red and dark green.

At some point, a group of people pushed us, and by the time I stopped spinning, Maggie’s grip on my hand had slipped.

“MAGGIE!?” I shouted. She was nowhere to be seen.

I kept moving forward, sometimes walking into a mirror and smacking myself in the head. It could have been over five minutes when I saw someone’s reflection in one of them. I quickly turned around, trying to see where it came from. Seeing their face or where they were with all the changing lights was impossible. The figure stood only a few steps away from me, hidden in the shadows. The stranger was wearing a black hoodie, black trousers, and a mask, very similar to the ones from the movie The Purge.

“Hi. Sorry. Have you seen a girl dressed as Harley Quinn?” They didn’t respond. In fact, they didn’t move an inch, their body eerily still.

I initially thought they might have entered with my group, as there were fifteen of us, but I didn’t recall anyone dressed in black. Maybe the stranger was part of the show, an actor, although something was frightening about the way they stood still, not answering my question.

“Thank you anyway. She’ll probably be waiting for me at the exit.”

I stepped back, accidentally bumping into a mirror. Simultaneously, they advanced, the red lights reflecting off something they held in their hand.

A fucking knife.

All my senses told me to run, and I obeyed. I kept running and turning at every corner, trying to find the fucking exit. I could hear them getting closer, their boots hitting the ground.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

Suddenly, I saw the exit. I ran out of the attraction like I’d seen the devil to jump straight into the arms of another one. I crashed into Ander’s chest with such force that he dropped his phone.

“What the fuck, Sienna! Since when has a house of mirrors been scary?”

“Oh my God. Someone was chasing me with a knife!” I yelled at him. I was shaking.

“Calm the fuck down. It was probably an actor. Jesus. You’re having a panic attack.”

I couldn’t breathe, my ears were clogged, and my mouth tasted like metal.

Ander held me while moving us away from the exit.

“Let me know if you’re going to throw up. I wouldn’t want to end up covered in your vomit again.”

It took me a few seconds to process what he said, but I couldn’t help but let out a nervous laugh when I did. Suddenly, the panic and fear I’d felt just moments ago slipped away, if only for a minute. He still remembered what happened when we were kids, but I guessed it was one of those experiences burned into your memory. Ander didn’t have a change of clothes, so he spent the rest of the day smelling like sour milk.

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