Page 51 of Virgin Sacrifice

You were looking better, so I went to sleep in my room, text if you need me.

Best,

Luz

I winced as I reached down to pick up my bedding from her floor. The throbbing pain in my ankle was by far the worst, but I couldn’t ignore the stinging of the cuts on my feet or that every part of my body was stiff and achy from exhaustion of having spent half the night in the cold.

By the time I made it back into my room, I had nothing left to give. I knew I needed to clean up the cuts on my feet, but I couldn’t resist the temptation of crawling into my bed for just a couple of minutes to rest. Then I would shower, clean myself up, and wrap up my ankle . . .

The sound of my phone ringing jolted me from my sleep, although the bright rays of the sun pouring in through my window were the first thing my foggy brain processed. I closed my eyes, the light causing my head to throb painfully, before fumbling for the source of the irritating noise as I tried to make sense of what was going on.

My fingers wrapped around the slim, vibrating rectangle, and my brain caught up to reality as the events of last night rapidly reloaded in my head.

Halloween . . . Nixon. . . Autumn was sick . . . someone chased me . . . the woods . . . no, they chased me, the sheep . . .

The noise came to a sudden halt, my mind still whirring a million miles per hour, only for the ringing to start again less than a minute later.

I groaned, lying back deeper into my pillows, wishing I could hide from reality forever. Instead, I flipped my phone around to see who was calling and slid my thumb over the Accept button when I saw it was Autumn.

“Hey,” I muttered, still half asleep.

“Oh, thank goodness!” Her voice rang out so loudly and I had to pull the phone away from my ear.

“Ouch,” I hissed. “Indoor voice, please.”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” She continued, at a much lower volume, “I was just worried when you didn’t answer my texts and calls. I thought that, like, maybe I got you sick too, and I was getting ready to kick down your door to make sure that you were okay.”

I cringed. “Ugh, no, please don’t do that.” I flipped through my phone to see what I had missed.

It was well past noon, and in addition to three missed calls from Autumn, I had more texts from Aaron, one from Melody, and another from an unknown number.

“Is everything okay?” asked Autumn.

“Hmmm,” I murmured as I scrolled through Aaron’s increasingly incomprehensible texts, before realizing she had asked me a question.

“Oh, yes, rough night, but how about you? Are you still feeling sick?” I said, hoping to shift the focus back onto her. I had no idea what, if anything, I should tell Autumn. I was going to have to come up with an explanation for my injuries at some point, but right now I needed to buy myself time to think.

“Oh yeah, loads better,” she said, her voice brightening. “It must have been some weird twenty-four-hour bug. I still feel, like, tired and achy, but the vomiting stopped, and I managed to eat some crackers this morning.”

“That’s wonderful. I was so worried about you last night,” I replied, smiling. I was relieved to hear that she was doing well even as I continued to look through my messages.

Melody had sent me a photo of her and Aaron in their costumes. It looked like they had a hell of a time last night.

“Thanks so much for taking care of me.” Autumn kept talking, and I tried to listen to her, but I was distracted by the last remaining text I had, the one from the unknown number.

UNKNOWN: Did you have a happy Halloween?

A shiver ran through me as I stared at the odd message, trying to figure out who it was from.

“Luz?” Autumn’s voice pulled me away from the message.

“Yes, sorry,” I responded, rubbing my eyes blearily. “I zoned out. What did you say?”

“You really do sound like you had a rough night,” she said sympathetically. “I’m sorry I was such a wreck.”

“Oh no, that wasn’t it at all,” I stammered, feeling bad. “I just rolled my ankle in the dark and was having a hard time sleeping on the floor, so I came back here early in the morning, when I figured you were better,” I blurted out. “You were basically the perfect patient, really, couldn’t have asked for better.”

“Oh no. Poor, Luz, your ankle. What happened?”

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