The first time Lily Mercer saw the rose, she thought it was a joke.
She'd been at Ravens Hollow High for three weeks, long enough to know the rhythm of its hallways—the way laughter echoed too loud off the linoleum, how the seniors claimed the courtyard benches like thrones, and the faint hum of fluorescent lights that never quite drowned out the whispers. But nothing about the school's ordinary chaos prepared her for the rose.
It sat inside her locker, crimson petals fanned out like a warning, its stem coiled with a black silk ribbon. No note. No fingerprints. Just the flower, too perfect, too still, as if it had been placed by someone who knew how to make beauty feel like a threat.
"Whoa," Jax said, leaning over her shoulder. His breath smelled like sour gummy worms. "Secret admirer?"
Lily forced a laugh, but her chest tightened. "Probably someone from art club. They're weird about symbolism."
Ava, her perpetually skeptical lab partner, plucked the rose from the locker
with a pen. "This isn't symbolism. This is creepy. Silk ribbon? That's, like, twenty bucks at Minerva's."
"So?"
"So, no one spends twenty bucks on a prank." Ava snapped a photo, her chipped black nail polish tapping the screen. "You should report it."
Lily rolled her eyes, but her fingers trembled as she tossed the rose into the hallway trash can. Just a joke, she repeated in her head. Just another stupid high school thing.
She didn't notice Ethan Voss watching from the alcove near the stairwell, his hood shadowing his face as he bit back a smile.
Ethan had always been good at waiting.
He waited through chemistry class, scribbling equations he'd solved in his head a week ago. He waited through Mr. Haskins' droning lecture on stoichiometry, counting the seconds until Lily's pencil would snap—her tell when she was frustrated. Three... two... one...
Snap.
He glanced sideways. She scowled at her notebook, her charcoal-stained fingers smudging the paper as she erased a mistake. He wondered if she'd noticed the tiny camera he'd planted in the air vent above her desk. Probably not. Lily noticed colors, moods, the way light bent through windows—not the cracks in the world where secrets hid.
After class, he followed her to the art room, lingering outside the door as she
rummaged through her cubby for pastels. Her voice floated into the hallway, bright and annoyed: "—another college pamphlet from my mom. She thinks if I get into RISD, I'll magically stop being a 'waste of potential.'"
Ethan's jaw tightened. He knew about Lily's mom—the way she'd packed up their lives in Portland after the divorce and dragged Lily to Ravens Hollow, a town too small for Lily's big-city edges. He knew about the fights, the slamming doors, the way Lily's sketchbooks were filled with eyes that never blinked.
He knew because he'd read her emails.
"Hey, Voss."
Noah Carter slung an arm around Ethan's shoulder, reeking of Axe spray and nacho cheese. "You stalking Mercer or what?"
Ethan shrugged him off. "Just waiting for Haskins."
"Uh-huh." Noah smirked, but his gaze flicked to the art room door. "You know she's into, like, tortured artist types, right? Not math robots."
Ethan didn't flinch. "Good thing I'm both."
Noah laughed, but it sounded hollow. Later, Ethan would replay the moment and wonder if Noah already knew. If he'd seen the rose, the ribbon, the way Ethan's gloves had smelled like bleach after third period.
By lunch, the rose was gone from the trash.
Lily tried not to care. She sat under the oak tree in the courtyard, picking at a
salad while Ava ranted about the school's "oppressive dress code" and Jax scrolled through conspiracy theories.
"—and then the principal tried to say my band shirts 'incite rebellion,' like rebellion's a bad thing?" Ava stabbed a carrot slice. "This town's a glorified cemetery."
Lily half-listened, her eyes tracing the cracks in the sidewalk. Someone had spray-painted a tiny crimson rose near the bike rack. Weird. She pulled out her phone to snap a photo, but the paint vanished when she zoomed in.
"You okay?" Jax asked.
"Fine." She tucked her phone away. "Just... does Ravens Hollow have, like, a rose obsession? I've seen them everywhere."
Ava snorted. "Only obsession here is football and bad decisions."
Noah dropped onto the grass beside them, his freckled face flushed. "Talking about Ethan? Because he's making great decisions."
Lily frowned. "What's that supposed to mean?"
"Nothing." Noah tore a dandelion from the ground, avoiding her gaze. "Just saw him lurking by the art room earlier. Dude's been... off."
Off.
The word stuck in Lily's throat. She thought of the shadow she'd seen in the hallway mirror after third period—someone standing too close to her locker, too still. She thought of the Spotify notification that had blinked and died at
midnight. Delete the playlist. It's predictable.
"Maybe he's just shy," she said, too quickly.
"Shy?" Noah barked a laugh. "He hacked the school's grading system in eighth grade because Ms. Greeley gave him a B."
Ava leaned in. "Wait, that was him? I heard the district had to hire, like, cyber-ninjas."
"Cyber-what?" Lily's phone buzzed. An unknown number.
[You're welcome.]
The message disappeared before she could screenshot it.
Detective Maria Reyes hated roses.
They reminded her of funerals—her mother's casket drowning in white lilies, her ex-husband's bouquet of apologies after the divorce. But the rose on her desk wasn't white. It was crimson, its stem wrapped in black silk, identical to the ones found clutched in the hands of two missing girls.
"Third one this month," her partner, Cole, said, tossing a file on her desk. "Sophie Nguyen. Sixteen, honor student, vanished after practice. Parents say she was 'stressed,' thinks she ran off with some boyfriend."
Maria ignored him, holding the rose under UV light. The lab had found traces of benzodiazepine on the petals. A sedative. "She didn't run. Someone took her."
"You're chasing ghosts, Reyes." Cole flopped into his chair, scrolling TikTok.
"Teens disappear every day. They come back when they're broke or pregnant."
Maria's nails dug into her palms. She'd heard the same excuses when her daughter, Gabby, had reported her stalker last year. He's just a kid. He'll grow out of it.
Until Gabby came home to roses scattered on her bed, their thorns carving MINE into her sheets.
Maria pocketed the rose. "I'm visiting the high school."
Ethan's hands didn't shake as he typed.
He sat cross-legged on his bedroom floor, surrounded by screens—Lily's Instagram, her Spotify, the live feed from the camera in her locker. He'd watched her all day: the way she'd jumped at the bell after lunch, how she'd lingered by the bike rack, staring at the phantom rose.
Predictable, he thought, deleting her playlist again. Safe. What a joke. Safety was an illusion, and Lily was too smart to cling to it for long.
His phone buzzed. Noah: [Dude, where'd you go after chem? Haskins almost wrote you up.]
Ethan typed back: [Migraine. Tell Lily I'll get the notes from her.]
He waited.
Three minutes later, Noah replied: [She says she didn't take notes.]
Ethan smiled. Of course she didn't. Lily Mercer was all instinct, no order—a
storm in human form. He'd watched her lose herself in paintings, her hands moving faster than her mind, and he'd wanted to crack her open, to see what chaos looked like from the inside.
His cursor hovered over her email. One click, and he could wipe her college applications. Erase her escape routes. Keep her here, in Ravens Hollow, where he could fix her.
But not yet. Games were only fun if both players stayed alive.
Lily's mom was drunk when she got home.
Again.
"—ungrateful, just like your father," she slurred, waving a wine glass at Lily's sketchbook. "Scribbling all day instead of trying—"
Lily tuned her out, retreating to her room. The thorn she'd fished from the trash can glinted on her desk, sharp and accusing. She'd Googled crimson rose threats earlier, but the results were all poetry and Pinterest boards.
Not everything's about you, she told herself.
But then why did the anonymous messages keep coming?
[Predictable.]
[You're welcome.]
[Look closer.]
She'd tried blocking the numbers, but they always changed. Always vanished.
Now, she pressed the thorn to her fingertip, watching a bead of blood rise. Focus. She sketched the rose from memory, its petals too symmetrical, its thorns too sharp.
Her phone lit up: [Art's better when it hurts.]
She froze. Outside her window, a branch scraped the glass.
Or was it a knife?
Detective Reyes found the second rose in the woods behind the school.
It was raining by then, the sky a bruised purple as her flashlight cut through the downpour. The rose lay at the base of an oak tree, its ribbon snagged on a root. Nearby, a phone buzzed in the mud—Sophie Nguyen's, its screen cracked but still glowing.
Maria crouched, her knees protesting. The last text: [Did you really think you'd find me? -C.P.]
C.P.
Crimson Phantom. The name the media had given the stalker linked to the missing girls. Maria's stomach churned. Gabby had gotten the same messages last year.
Her radio crackled. "Reyes—Nguyen's backpack just turned up in the river. No body."
Maria stared at the rose. "Any others?"
"What?"
"Roses. Were there roses?"
A pause. "How'd you know?"
Ethan watched the news report with a bowl of cereal in his lap.
"—authorities urge residents to stay vigilant," the anchor droned, as footage of the river flashed on screen. Ethan muted it, focusing on the camera feed from Lily's room.
She was asleep, her sketchbook open to the rose. He zoomed in, admiring the way she'd shaded the thorns—jagged, desperate, alive.
"You're welcome," he whispered.
His own sketchbook lay open beside him, filled with Lily in fragments: her hands, her eyes, the curve of her neck. He'd drawn her surrounded by roses, their stems coiled around her ankles like chains.
In the corner of the page, he'd scribbled a quote from The Picture of Dorian Gray: "To define is to limit."
Lily Mercer would never be limited. Not by her mom, not by this town, not even by him.
But he could try.
At 2:17 a.m., Lily woke to the sound of her window creaking open.
She lay still, her pulse roaring in her ears. Rain pattered the sill, and for a moment, she almost believed it was the wind.
Then she smelled it—roses, thick and sweet, clawing down her throat.
She lunged for the lamp, her fingers brushing the switch as something cold pressed against her wrist.
A thorn.
No—a rose, its stem curled around her arm like a serpent.
She screamed, thrashing, but the flower dissolved into shadows as light flooded the room.
Her sketchbook lay on the floor, the rose drawing smudged.
Just a dream, she told herself.
But on her windowsill, rainwater pooled around a single crimson petal.