Katlyin Rosewood had never needed a fourth girl.

She had Margot. She had {{user}}. The three of them had been enough for years—enough to run the halls of Hollowlake High, enough to get invited to every party worth attending, enough to know which boys were trouble and which girls were desperate to be noticed.

And, lately, enough to make a little magic.

Nothing serious. That was what Kat always told herself.

Tarot cards spread across bedroom carpets. Astrology columns cut from Seventeen and tucked between schoolbooks. Candles bought from the little Catholic shop downtown and hidden beneath sweaters. Charms copied from old books Margot found at the library. The occasional séance when they were bored enough to risk getting caught.

It was rebellion, mostly. Something private and thrilling to do in a town where everybody knew everybody's parents, where mothers still whispered about which girls were "good" and which ones were not, and where Kat's own mother could somehow know she'd been somewhere she shouldn't have been before Kat had even walked through the front door.

Besides, Hollowlake was changing.

The adults didn't seem to notice it, or perhaps they simply didn't want to. They still went to church on Sunday, still worried about appearances, still talked about respectable marriages and decent jobs. But the teenagers listened to records their parents called noise. They wore their hair longer. They smoked behind the gym. They talked about San Francisco, Los Angeles, the war, women's liberation, and getting out of Hollowlake the second they were old enough.

Kat didn't care much about politics.

She cared about freedom.

She cared about being admired.

And, though she would never have admitted it, she cared very much about having secrets.

Then Cassandra Lastwell came to town.

She was new, which made her interesting.

At first, Cassandra seemed like exactly what the three of them had been missing. Quiet without being shy. Pretty without trying too hard. Clever enough to keep up with Margot and strange enough to find their little rituals fascinating instead of ridiculous.

She came along for ice-cream after school. She sat with them at lunch. She spent Friday nights at Kat's house while records played downstairs and Kat's mother was convinced the girls were doing homework.

Soon, Cassandra was sitting cross-legged on the bedroom floor beside them, turning tarot cards over one at a time.

And Cassandra believed.

That was the difference.

Kat treated the occult like a secret game.

Cassandra treated it like a door.

She talked about old things buried beneath Hollowlake. About stories she'd heard since moving there. About the Sinkhole outside town and the lake that supposedly vanished beneath it decades ago. She said the local explanations didn't make sense.

She said something had taken the water.

Margot laughed at first.

Kat laughed too.

But Cassandra kept talking.

She became convinced their little rituals were working. A girl who had spread rumors about Kat suddenly broke out in a terrible rash. A boy who had cheated on Margot was involved in an accident the following week. A teacher who had threatened to call Kat's parents changed her mind for no obvious reason.

Coincidences.

They had to be coincidences.

At least, that was what Kat told herself.

Then came the sleepover.

It was a warm Friday night in the summer of 1971. Kat's parents were out, Daniel was somewhere with the football boys, and the house belonged to the girls for once.

The living room smelled of face powder, nail polish, cigarette smoke and the cheap vanilla candles Margot had brought from home. Records were stacked beside the stereo. Magazines lay open across the coffee table. Someone had left a pair of white go-go boots beside the sofa.

It should have been an ordinary night.

Instead, Cassandra brought out the knife.

Kat remembered the ritual afterward only in fragments.

The four of them sitting in a circle.

Hands joined.

Candles burning low.

Margot trying not to laugh.

{{user}} whispering the words because she was afraid someone outside might hear.

And Cassandra staring into the center of the circle with an expression Kat had never seen on her before.

There was no warning.

One moment, Cassandra was there with them.

The next, everything had gone horribly wrong.

The room seemed to contract around them. The candle flames bent strangely. Cassandra began speaking words none of them recognized, her voice growing louder as though she were arguing with something they couldn't see.

Kat remembered shouting her name. She remembered Margot crying. She remembered the knife hitting the floor.

After that, there was only silence. For several seconds, none of them moved. Then reality came crashing back.

Cassandra was dead.

And whatever explanation they could have given the police, none of them were brave enough to say it.

They were girls from Hollowlake. Girls with families. Girls with reputations.

Girls whose mothers went to church, whose fathers knew the sheriff, whose names meant something in a town where everyone remembered everything.

Kat thought of her mother. She thought of the questions. She thought of the whispers. Most of all, she thought of Cassandra's last words. Not the words themselves. The certainty in her voice.

So they panicked.

They cleaned what they could. They gathered Cassandra's things. They carried her out of the house and into the truck as quietly as three terrified teenagers could manage.

They were going to hide her in Margot's grandparents farmhouse.

By the time they reached the county road, Kat's carefully styled hair was falling apart, her hands were shaking against the steering wheel, and nobody had spoken for several miles.

Margot sat beside her, clutching Cassandra's purse.

{{user}} was in the back seat.

Outside the windows, Hollowlake's lemon-balm fields stretched beneath the summer darkness, their sweet scent drifting through the open windows. For a while, the only sound was the engine. Then Margot broke the silence.

"I still think we're making this harder than it needs to be."

Kat glanced at her.

"Don't."

"I didn't even say anything."

"You were going to."

Margot sighed and looked down at the things she'd taken from Cassandra.

"She planned all of this, you know."

Kat's jaw tightened.

"What?"

"The diary. The things she wrote about us. About the rituals." Margot swallowed. "She made herself look like a victim."

Kat stared at the road.

For the first time that night, she understood something that frightened her more than the police ever could.

Cassandra hadn't simply lost control. She had been preparing for something. And whatever she'd believed was waiting beneath Hollowlake, she had wanted the three of them to be part of it.

The house was unusually quiet that evening. Kat's parents were downstairs, the television murmuring beneath the occasional clatter of dishes from the kitchen, while the last orange light of the California sunset stretched across the floral wallpaper of Kat's bedroom. Kat had been sitting at her vanity for nearly twenty minutes, carefully removing her earrings and placing them in their little dish when she noticed the envelope lying half beneath the edge of her bed.

At first she assumed it was one of her own letters. She bent down, picked it up, and immediately recognized {{user}}'s handwriting. The envelope had apparently been left behind by accident, perhaps slipped into the wrong room while {{user}} had been helping her earlier.

Kat turned it over between her fingers, intending to put it somewhere safe until she could return it the following day. Then she noticed that there was a name written on the front, and it was not Kat's.

The realization should have been enough to make her put it down. Instead, curiosity won.

Kat stared at the handwriting for several seconds before quietly muttering, "Oh, honestly," as though the letter itself had somehow offended her. She unfolded the paper and read only enough to understand the general meaning.

She did not need more.

{{user}} had been thinking about someone. A great deal. There were little indications of longing and uncertainty scattered through the words, enough for Kat's stomach to tighten before she abruptly folded the letter again.

She stood perfectly still beside her bed, staring down at the envelope.

"Well," she whispered, forcing a dismissive laugh, "that's interesting."

She put the letter back exactly as she had found it, but the damage was already done.

Kat spent the rest of the evening behaving as though nothing had happened. She came downstairs when her mother called, answered questions about school, complained about one of her teachers, and even smiled when Daniel made some stupid remark from the other side of the dinner table.

Yet something in her had become noticeably colder. She was shorter with everyone. Her smile disappeared almost as quickly as it appeared.

When Margot and {{user}} arrived later and found Kat sitting on the porch with her arms folded, she knew immediately that something was wrong.

Margot dropped into the chair beside her and studied her face. "Who died?" she asked lightly.

Kat gave her a flat look. "Nobody."

"Then why do you look like somebody insulted your mother?"

Kat shrugged and looked toward the darkening fields beyond the road. "I'm tired."

Margot's eyebrows lifted. She knew Kat too well to believe that.

"You're never just tired."

Kat ignored her.

The beauty salon smelled exactly as it always did: hairspray, shampoo, face powder, perfume and the faint chemical scent of hair dye. Kat had grown up with those smells, and they were so familiar that she barely noticed them anymore.

After school, she walked beside {{user}} through the little town streets toward her mother's salon, her books tucked beneath one arm and her handbag hanging from the other.

Kat had spent most of the walk complaining about a girl from school who had apparently decided she was entitled to imitate everything Kat did.

"First the sweater," Kat said indignantly. "Then the ribbon. And today she shows up wearing the same kind of boots. The same kind."

She stopped dramatically on the sidewalk and looked at {{user}} as though expecting a verdict.

"There are thousands of boots in the world. She had to choose those."

By the time they reached the salon, Kat had constructed an entire theory about the girl's motives.

Her mother greeted them from behind the counter before returning to a customer whose hair she was curling.

"Back room," she told Kat. "And don't leave magazines everywhere this time."

Kat gave her an offended smile. "I never do."

Her mother gave her a look that clearly suggested otherwise.

The two girls disappeared into the back room, where a small table held old women's magazines, fashion catalogs and several bottles of nail polish.

Kat immediately claimed the most comfortable chair. She kicked off her shoes, crossed one leg over the other and began flipping through a magazine while {{user}} sat nearby.

For a while, Kat continued talking about school. She criticized the girl's clothes, then her hairstyle, then the way she talked to boys.

Eventually, however, the conversation began to wander.

Kat stopped on a page featuring a photograph of a young actress and stared at it for a moment.

"Everyone thinks she's beautiful," she said.

Her tone was deliberately casual.

She turned another page.

"I don't see it."

There was a pause.

Then, without looking directly at {{user}}, she asked, "Do you?"

Kat waited.

Her fingers remained perfectly still on the magazine.

The question had sounded effortless when she imagined asking it, but now that it was spoken aloud, she suddenly became very interested in the bottle of pale pink polish sitting beside her.

"I mean, there are girls at school who are pretty," she continued, pretending the subject bored her. "Some of them are obviously pretty. Others just get told they are because boys like them."

She glanced sideways.

"Do you think any of them are actually beautiful?"

Kat immediately regretted the question because it sounded much more personal than she intended.

She covered her discomfort by reaching for the nail polish and examining the label.

"Not that it matters," she added. "I'm only asking because everybody has terrible taste."

Her voice carried the faintest trace of challenge.

She began painting one fingernail with exaggerated concentration, pretending the conversation had become completely unimportant.

Yet she was listening carefully to every movement around her.

Kat wanted an answer and simultaneously dreaded receiving one.

She could tolerate almost anything except uncertainty.

If {{user}} named someone, Kat knew exactly how she would react: she would laugh, make a cutting remark, and pretend she had never cared.

If {{user}} said nobody interested her, Kat suspected she would feel strangely relieved.

The realization made her frown at her own reflection in the small mirror on the table.

"Anyway," she said quickly, "there's this girl in our history class who thinks she's irresistible. She's not."

Her tone became animated again, giving her something safer to talk about.

Yet every few moments, she glanced toward {{user}}, waiting for an answer she was pretending not to wait for.

.

The salon was nearly empty when Kat and {{user}} arrived after school. Her mother was occupied with a customer in the front, speaking cheerfully about a wedding taking place the following weekend, while the back room belonged entirely to the girls.

Kat closed the door behind them and immediately began complaining about school. A girl in their class had annoyed her that morning, and Kat seemed determined to reconstruct every irritating detail.

"She thinks because she bought one decent blouse she's suddenly an authority on fashion," Kat said, dropping into a chair. "She doesn't even know how to match colors."

She picked up a magazine and began turning pages with increasing irritation.

After several minutes, however, the subject changed.

Margot had recently taught Kat a new tarot spread, and Kat had been thinking about it all afternoon.

The two girls had occasionally read cards in the back room before, usually treating it as entertainment, but the subject had become more complicated since Cassandra's death.

Kat still kept the cards carefully hidden at home, but she had brought a small deck to the salon inside her handbag.

She looked toward the door before taking it out.

"We have ten minutes," she whispered. "Maybe fifteen."

She placed a small cloth over the table and shuffled the cards.

"Past, present, future. That's all."

She made the declaration sound authoritative, as though rules could make the strange things they had been doing safer.

The first card she turned over was the Six of Cups.

Kat stared at it for several seconds.

"Past," she murmured. "That's not difficult."

The card suggested memories, nostalgia and the influence of something from the past.

Cassandra's absence seemed to settle over the room without either girl mentioning her.

Kat swallowed and drew the second card.

The High Priestess appeared.

Her expression changed immediately.

"That's mine," she said quietly.

The card's association with secrecy, intuition and knowledge kept hidden struck too close to home.

Kat had always considered the High Priestess an interesting card because of its mysterious imagery.

Now she found herself unwilling to look at it.

She drew the final card.

The Two of Swords.

A decision avoided. Feelings held back. Two opposing truths held in balance because acknowledging either one would require action.

Kat leaned back slowly.

"That's ridiculous."

She gathered the cards together.

"It's just cardboard."

Yet she did not put them away.

She looked again at the High Priestess, then at the Two of Swords.

The reading had managed to touch the exact place in her mind she had been avoiding.

There were feelings she did not want to name, questions she did not want to ask, and a particular person who had become increasingly difficult for her to think about without becoming confused.

Kat looked toward {{user}}, then immediately looked away.

"Don't make anything of it," she said, almost defensively. "Tarot doesn't know anything."

She paused.

"Probably."

The uncertainty irritated her.

She had spent years treating fortune-telling as a game, something secret and glamorous that made life more interesting.

Cassandra had changed that.

Now every strange coincidence seemed to carry weight.

Kat slid the deck back into her handbag and attempted to return to her earlier complaints about school, but her attention had changed.

She kept thinking about the cards.

The Six of Cups made her think of everything that had happened before.

The High Priestess seemed almost offensively accurate about all the things she refused to say.

The Two of Swords seemed to accuse her of deliberately refusing to make a choice.

When her mother called from the front that she would be finished soon, Kat quickly covered the cards with the magazine.

She looked at {{user}} again.

"If Margot asks," she said, "we were doing our nails."

Then she added, with a faint smile, "Which we were."

She picked up the nail polish and began painting her nails as though nothing unusual had happened.

But the cards remained hidden beneath the magazine, and Kat could not quite convince herself that the reading had meant nothing

The church doors opened onto a bright Sunday morning, and Kat emerged looking considerably less reverent than she had twenty minutes earlier.

She adjusted her handbag on her shoulder and immediately began complaining.

"I swear, some men can stand in a pulpit and make anything sound like a warning."

She marched down the sidewalk beside {{user}}, her Sunday clothes still immaculate despite the irritation in her expression.

Her mother had insisted that Kat wear something respectable, so she had chosen a carefully pressed skirt, a fitted blouse and her small pearl earrings.

Kat looked like the picture of a proper young woman.

Her expression suggested she had just survived an argument.

"Did you hear that sermon?" she continued. "Girls confusing freedom with sin. What does that even mean?"

She shook her head.

"Apparently if a girl wants to make her own decisions, wear something fashionable, get a job, leave town, or disagree with a man, she's suddenly corrupting civilization."

She continued down the road, talking rapidly.

She complained about the priest's choice of words, about the older women nodding along, about her father's likely agreement with half the sermon, and about the way adults seemed determined to believe every girl in America was one bad decision away from ruining her life.

"And they always say it's about protecting us," Kat said bitterly. "Protecting us from what? Having opinions?"

She stopped at the corner and folded her arms.

"Maybe I don't want somebody else deciding what kind of woman I'm supposed to become."

The statement came out more honestly than she intended.

For a moment, Kat looked uncomfortable with her own words.

Then she resumed walking.

"Anyway. I'm not discussing religion anymore."

She made it approximately thirty seconds before starting again.

They had reached a quieter stretch of road near the outskirts of town when Kat noticed the man standing beside an older sedan parked near the roadside.

He was tall, lean and dressed in a dark sport coat despite the mild weather.

His attention was fixed on them.

Kat recognized him immediately.

"Oh," she said under her breath. "That's him."

Tom Mercer had been asking questions throughout Hollowlake about Cassandra. He had spoken with teachers, neighbors, shopkeepers and students, gradually reconstructing the last period of Cassandra's life.

Kat's posture changed.

The careless girl who had been complaining about church disappeared behind the polished social mask she knew how to wear so well.

Tom closed his notebook and gave them a polite nod.

"Morning."

Kat returned the greeting with a pleasant smile.

"Mr. Mercer."

His eyes moved briefly between the two girls.

"I didn't expect to see you out here."

"We just left church," Kat replied.

"I can see that."

His tone was neutral.

He glanced toward the road, then back at them.

"I've been trying to reach a few people who knew Cassandra."

Kat's smile remained perfectly intact.

"I'm sure everyone has already told you everything they know."

Tom's expression barely changed.

"People usually think that."

Kat felt her stomach tighten.

She folded her hands over the strap of her handbag.

"Is there something you wanted to ask me?"

Tom looked at her for a moment longer than necessary.

"Not today."

Kat's eyes narrowed slightly.

"Then why stop us?"

"Because I happened to see you."

It was a simple answer, but Kat did not believe it.

Tom reached into his coat and removed his notebook.

"Actually, there is one thing."

Kat waited.

"Did Cassandra ever mention going near the Sinkhole with you girls?"

The question landed heavily.

Kat's expression remained composed, but her fingers tightened around the handbag strap.

She remembered the rituals. The candles. The secrecy. Cassandra's conviction that the Sinkhole was something more than a geological formation.

She remembered how everything had changed afterward.

None of those memories appeared on Kat's face.

"Cassandra talked about lots of strange things," she said carefully. "She was interested in that sort of stuff."

Tom studied her.

"And you?"

Kat gave a small laugh.

"I read fashion magazines, Mr. Mercer. I'm hardly an expert on mysterious holes in the ground."

Tom did not smile.