The cop cocked his head. The paramedic cupped his hand to his ear. “Who?”
Emily turned around, gesturing to where Ali had just been lying on the grass. She took a big step back. Ali was gone.
“No,” she whispered. She wheeled around. The paramedics were loading her friends into ambulances. “Aria!” Emily screamed. “Spencer! Hanna!”
Her friends turned. “Ali!” Emily screeched, waving at the now-empty spot where Ali had been. “Did you see where Ali went?”
Aria shook her head. Hanna held her oxygen mask to her face, her eyes darting back and forth. Spencer’s skin paled with terror, but then a bunch of EMTs surrounded her, helping her into the back of an ambulance.
Emily turned desperately to the paramedic. His face was backlit by the Hastingses’ burning windmill. “Alison’s here. We just saw her!”
The paramedic looked at her uncertainly. “You mean Alison DiLaurentis, the girl who . . . died?”
“She’s not dead!” Emily wailed, nearly tripping over a tree root as she backed up. She gestured toward the flames. “She’s hurt! She said someone was trying to kill her!”
“Miss.” The cop placed a hand on her shoulder. “You need to settle down.”
There was a snap a few feet away, and Emily pivoted. Four news reporters stood near the Hastingses’ deck, gaping. “Miss Fields?” a journalist called, running toward Emily and jabbing her microphone in Emily’s face. A man with a camera and another guy holding a boom raced forward too. “What did you say? Who did you just see?”
Emily’s heart pounded. “We’ve got to help Alison!” She looked around again. Spencer’s yard was crawling with cops and EMTs. By contrast, Ali’s old yard was dark and empty. When Emily saw a shape dart behind the wrought-iron fence that separated the Hastingses’ yard from the DiLaurentises’, her heart leapt. Ali? But it was only a shadow made by the flashing lights of a police car.
More journalists gathered, spilling from the Hastingses’ front and side yards. A fire truck screamed up too, the firefighters leaping from the vehicle and pointing a huge hose at the woods. A bald, middle-aged reporter touched Emily’s arm. “What did Alison look like?” he demanded. “Where has she been?”
“That’s enough.” The cop brushed everyone away. “Give her some space.”
The reporter shoved the microphone at him. “Are you going to investigate her claim? Are you going to search for Alison?”
“Who set the fire? Did you see?” another voice screamed over the sound of the fire hoses.
The paramedic maneuvered Emily away from them. “We need to get you out of here.”
Emily let out a fevered whimper, desperately staring at the empty patch of grass. The very same thing had happened when they saw Ian’s dead body in the woods last week—one minute he was lying there, bloated and pale on the grass, and the next he was . . . gone. But it couldn’t be happening again. It couldn’t. Emily had spent years pining over Ali, obsessing over every contour of her face, memorizing every hair on her head. And that girl from the woods looked exactly like Ali. She had Ali’s raspy, sexy voice, and when she wiped the soot from her face, it had been with Ali’s small, delicate hands.
They were at the ambulance now. Another EMT clapped the oxygen mask back over Emily’s mouth and nose and helped her onto a small cot inside. The paramedics buckled themselves in beside her. Sirens whooped, and the vehicle rolled slowly off the lawn. As they turned onto the street, Emily noticed a police car through the ambulance’s back window, its sirens silenced, the headlights off. It wasn’t driving toward the Hastingses’ house, though.
She turned her attention back to Spencer’s house, looking once more for Ali, but all she saw were curious bystanders. There was Mrs. McClellan, a neighbor from down the street. Hovering by the mailbox were Mr. and Mrs. Vanderwaal, whose daughter, Mona, had been the original A. Emily hadn’t seen them since Mona’s funeral a few months ago. Even the Cavanaughs were there, gazing at the flames in horror. Mrs. Cavanaugh had a hand resting protectively on her daughter Jenna’s shoulder. Even though Jenna’s sightless eyes were obscured by her dark Gucci sunglasses, it seemed like she was staring straight at Emily.
But Ali wasn’t anywhere in the chaos. She’d vanished—again.
Chapter 2
Up in Smoke
About six hours later, a perky nurse with a long brown ponytail pushed back the curtain to Aria’s little cordoned-off nook in the Rosewood Memorial emergency room. She handed Aria’s dad, Byron, a clipboard and told him to sign at the bottom. “Besides the bruises on her legs and all the smoke she inhaled, I think she’s going to be fine,” the nurse said.
“Thank God.” Byron sighed, penning his name with a flourish. He and Aria’s brother, Mike, had shown up at the hospital shortly after the ambulance deposited Aria here. Aria’s mom, Ella, was in Vermont for the night with her vile boyfriend, Xavier, and Byron had told her that there was no reason for her to rush home.
The nurse looked at Aria. “Your friend Spencer wants to see you before you go. She’s on the second floor. Room two-oh-six.”
“Okay,” Aria said shakily, shifting her legs underneath the scratchy, standard-issue hospital linens.
Byron rose from the white plastic chair beside the bed and met Aria’s gaze. “I’ll wait for you in the lobby. Take your time.”
Aria slowly got up. She raked her hands through her blue-black hair, little flakes of soot and ash raining onto the sheets. When she leaned down to pull on her jeans and put on her shoes, her muscles ached like she’d climbed Mount Everest. She’d been up all night, freaking out over what had just happened in the woods. Even though her old friends had been brought to the ER, too, they’d all been taken to separate corners of the ward, so Aria hadn’t been able to speak to any of them. Every time she’d tried to get up, the nurses had swept into her room and told her that she needed to relax and get some sleep. Right. Like that was going to happen again.