Hell's Hollow by Summer Stone

you,” I said, and I moved a little closer, too. His tug pulled at me. I used The Hollow to strengthen my shield.
    “What is it?” His eyes scanned my face. The skin on the undamaged part of his face looked smooth and clear. I wondered what it would feel like to touch it.
    I couldn’t bring myself to tell him what I’d heard, didn’t want to hurt him.
    “You don’t want to meet me anymore,” he said, looking away.
    “No, it’s nothing like that.” It gave me a perverse thrill that he was worried that I wouldn’t want to meet him.
    “What then?”
    I took a deep breath. “I asked around about your family a little bit. The story they seem to know in town is that, well, that both you and your mom died in the fire.” I imagined it would feel awful to hear that his own grandmother had led everyone to believe he was dead rather than acknowledge him.
    “Yeah, I know,” he said, like it was nothing.
    “You know?”
    He nodded. “It was safer that way.”
    “Safer for who?” I touched his knee, felt a zing of pain, like a shock. My hand felt magnetized to his body — The Hollow wanting me to heal. I pulled my hand away. “Is she afraid people will give you a hard time because of how you look?”
    He let out a dismissive breath that wasn’t quite a laugh. “That’s never been a concern. It’s for their safety. For yours.” He pushed back from me a little.
    “What do you mean about being the son of the devil?” I asked, hoping he wouldn’t run.
    He looked up at the moon. It highlighted his scars in an eerie way. “The night of the fire, before it happened, my dad called me devil’s spawn. Grandmother told me later it was because I belonged to the devil that I started the fire, that if I ever went back into the world, I would hurt people without even meaning to. So if she told everyone I’d died, it would make it easier for me to stay hidden.”
    “What the hell? Tell me you don’t believe that.” How could she have convinced him this made sense?
    He looked confused. 
    “Devil’s spawn? What does that even mean? And how could you possibly hurt anyone without meaning to?” I wanted to run up there and punch her. My blood boiled.
    “She said the devil would work through me to make bad things happen — like the fire.”
    I shook my head. “That doesn’t make sense. What do you remember about how the fire started?”
    “I only remember the smoke and the flames, my dad running into the fire to pull me out.”
    “Where was your mom?”
    “She burned.” He looked away.
    “Didn’t he try to save her, too?”
    “It was too late for her.”
    “Why?”
    “She was…” His eyes turned intense. “I never remembered this before…”
    “What?”
    “She was lying on the living room floor in her blue nightgown, not moving. Only… only it was before the fire.”
    My stomach did a little flip. “Wait, what? She was dead before the fire?”
    He squinted his eyes shut, trying to remember. “I don’t know. I can’t remember. I just — I see her lying there, still.”
    “And then what?”
    “I was scared. I hid in my closet like she said. She’d told me to hide in my closet. She’d told him I was at Grandmother’s. I can’t remember.” He was breathing hard.
    I hugged him, and his tug latched on to me, drawing my energy out of my body as if it were sucking the marrow out of my bones. I pulled away, scooted back to my tree, wooziness spreading throughout my body.
    “What was that?” he asked, looking shaken. “Did I hurt you?”
    I shook my head.
    “Sera? You shouldn’t touch me.”
    “It’s The Hollow,” I said. “It wants to heal you.”
    “I believe you can heal. I know you can. But… not this,” he said, pointing to his face. “This isn’t fixable.”
    He’s afraid , I thought, afraid he’ll end up like the chipmunk . I couldn’t blame him. I was afraid of that, too.
    I knew Myra had been lying to him. I just didn’t understand why. But it made me wonder — what if