“Don’t tell me what I can’t do or have. My dad’s been trying that for years, and it doesn’t work. If Luca’s going home, I’m going with him, and you’re going to take me to him.”

She shook her head, and her eyes were clearer than they’d been a minute earlier. So she probably meant it when she said, “I wasn’t sent here to help you.”

“Then why were you sent?”

“To bring you water. And to make sure you haven’t escaped.”

Escaped? How the hell would I escape from a cage crawling with deadly plants?

“Addison. Please. Can you get me out of here? Will you please take me to Luca? Please. I want to go home.” I’d never been less embarrassed to beg for anything in my life.

“I can’t.”

“I can pay you! I left my purse at school, so this is all I have, but it’s yours.” I pulled a folded twenty-dollar bill from my pocket and shoved it at her, but Addison stared at it like she didn’t even recognize it. “Please get me out of here.”

She studied me through narrowed eyes, and I could see the effort it took her to draw her thoughts back into focus. “You’re a fool and you don’t listen. You only hear your own voice and feel your own pain. You can go home, but I can’t take you. And you can’t take yourself until you start listening. Until you want it, more than anything else.”

“I don’t…” I frowned. “I don’t know what that means. Please help me. I’m scared. I don’t want to die here.”

“No, you don’t,” she said, and a fresh coil of fear wound its way up my spine. “The pretty boy is in your school. In the kitchen, waiting for his ride. The rest, you’ll have to do for yourself.”

“How?” I demanded, panic surging through my veins as she began to fade from sight. “I don’t know what to do!”

“Listen, Sophie,” she said, and the last syllable of my name lingered in the air between us, even after she’d disappeared.

“Listen to what?” I shouted. But there was no one there to answer. “Aagggh!” In my anger and frustration, I forgot the jungle gym was only four feet high and when I stood, my skull crashed into the grid of bars overhead. That fresh pain and my own stupidity only made me madder, and my fist shot out without consulting my brain. My knuckles slammed into one of the bars and a new, sharp pain shot through my hand, resonating in my index finger even once the initial wave had dulled.

I glanced at my hand and found a thin trail of blood rolling down my finger. A single drop lay on the ground, beneath the bar I’d hit, and another one hung from the bar itself. From a jagged point in the metal, where it hadn’t been welded properly.

As I watched, the end of one small vine strainedagainst the metal bar it was wrapped around, stretching toward the drop of my blood on the grass. To my fascination and horror, when the vine couldn’t reach, it began to uncoil itself from the bar, then snake its way through the grid and into my makeshift cage through a more direct route.

And that baby vine wasn’t alone. Several others—mostly the small, thin ones—were straining toward the blood I’d spilled, and the constant slithering sound began to take on both speed and urgency.

Shit! The plants were bloodthirsty, and I was bleeding. Given enough time, could they rearrange themselves enough to actually reach me? According to Luca, one thorn prick was enough to kill me.

Another drop fell from my punctured finger, and the slithery-slidey sound thickened. My pulse raced and my heart beat too hard. They were coming inside the jungle gym, because my blood was inside the jungle gym.

If the vines were that desperate for a couple of drops inside the cage, couldn’t they also be drawn to even more blood outside the cage?

I used one finger to catch the drop about to roll off my hand and smeared the blood across a bar at the bottom of the cage, near the drop spilled on the ground. The slithering seemed a little more desperate in response, but that could have been wishful thinking on my part. I’d never wished for anything so hard in my life.

I studied the grid of bars and vines around me, looking for a gap big enough for what I had in mind. And finally I found one. It had opened up a couple of feet from the blood I’d spilled, as the vines strained toward the offering.

Okay, Sophie, you can do this. It’s just a little blood.

I took a deep breath, then stretched my hand out in front of me, fingers spread. Palm flat and defenseless. Then I slammed my hand into the jagged piece of protruding metal that had cut me in the first place. Sharp, hot pain bit into the fleshy part of my palm, at the base of my thumb. I gasped and closed my eyes for one second. But that was all I could afford. The vines could smell—or sense?—the fresh blood, and the slithering all around me grew even more frantic.

Eyes squeezed shut, I pulled my hand down, and hissed when the metal tore through my skin, leaving a jagged, half-inch laceration in my flesh. Then I pulled my hand back and bit my lip to keep the rest of my pain bottled up. No telling what kind of monsters out there would hear me if I screamed, and would want their own taste of the feast the creeper vines thought they were about to enjoy.

Breathing through the pain, I knee-walked several feet over to the gap that had opened even wider in the metal grid. Careful not to touch the vines still slithering slowly over the bars, I stuck my cut hand through the gap and opened and closed my fist several times, to get the blood flowing. I watched, fascinated, as it began to drip on the ground, a foot outside my cage.