Watch Your Back

The second installment in the Devil's Backbone series continues the story of Ashley Layne, a college student at the elite Nevaeh University whose ties to a secret society called the Devil's Backbone Society (DBS) have entangled her in arson, cover-ups, and violence. Each chapter opens with a private journal entry from one of the four male leads, offering perspectives they do not share aloud.

Two and a half weeks after a fire at Nevaeh's old science hall, Ashley is barely functioning. Her friend and romantic interest Heath Briggs attempted suicide by hanging shortly after the fire and survived only because her stepbrother Nate Essex found him and performed CPR. Ashley isolates in her bedroom at the home of her mother, Carina, and stepfather, Max Essex, unable to stop replaying the image of Heath's body. Nate, who is grieving just as deeply, pleads with Ashley to come downstairs for their parents' sake. She manages a brief appearance but nearly breaks down when a stray word triggers memories of Heath. Ashley's father, Stuart, arrives as a surprise from South Sudan, and his warmth steadies her through Christmas Eve.

On Christmas Day, Heath appears at the door, having discharged himself from Sunshine Valley Center, a mental health recovery facility. Ashley sobs into his chest, terrified he will vanish. Her friend Carly, who is also Heath's cousin, accompanies him. Royce D'Arenberg and Carter Bassington, the other two boys in their group, also arrive. Heath raises the possibility that hypnosis explains the boys' trance-like behavior during the fire, when they set the blaze with no memory of doing so, inadvertently killing a janitor and making themselves unwitting accomplices to manslaughter. His therapists dismissed the theory, but Heath finds it more plausible than any alternative. Royce accuses Ashley of failing to protect Heath, and tensions flare until Nate proposes everyone sleep in a blanket fort so Heath is never alone.

After the holidays, Nate works to prevent Heath's expulsion from the DBS, whose elders argue that his suicide attempt damages the organization's reputation. Max explains that the society is far more than a social club: Its alumni network wields enormous power, making membership essential. Nate warns Ashley that Heath might be safer without her, since his fear of hurting her under hypnosis partly drove the attempt.

Back at Nevaeh for the spring semester, Ashley learns from Carly that Nate's ex-girlfriend Paige faked a pregnancy to manipulate him, though he never corrected the story publicly. A bodyguard named Lionel Hughes appears at Ashley's dorm, hired by an unknown client, but she refuses his services. The next morning, a car driven by a DBS member veers across the campus green, killing the driver and injuring several students. Hughes tackles Ashley out of the car's path. Carter reveals he tried contacting Ashley dozens of times since New Year's Eve, but every message went undelivered. Ashley discovers that Carter, Heath, and Royce are all blocked in her phone and realizes Nate blocked their numbers while she slept in the car after a New Year's party, during which he also changed her out of her gown without her consent.

Ashley confronts Nate with two slaps, one for tampering with her phone and one for undressing her while she slept. He argues he was enforcing the distance Heath's doctor recommended. Heath punches Nate for calling Ashley a degrading name. The group then identifies Dr. Fox, the campus psychologist who conducted therapy sessions with Heath and Royce, as their prime suspect for the hypnosis. Breaking into his office, they discover that every DBS member's therapy file contains blank session-note pages, while non-member files are filled with detailed notes. Ashley recovers a single word from his notepad: "Hyperion," the name of a Greek titan. She also raises a disturbing possibility about Royce's unexplained past sexual encounter with Paige: Since Royce never found her attractive, the encounter may have been hypnotically induced, amounting to a form of sexual assault.

At a DBS party, Nate impulsively tells his mother, Jocelyn Reynard, that Ashley is his girlfriend to stop Jocelyn from pushing him toward Paige. Jocelyn escalates the lie into a fake engagement announcement. Shortly afterward, Carter receives a phone call from a private number, and his eyes go glassy. He corners Ashley in a restroom and begins choking her. Ashley scratches his face and screams his name until he snaps out of the trance. Heath bursts in and punches Carter. Royce arrives with a knife, ready to attack, but Ashley shields Carter, insisting he was not in control. Nate traces the triggering call to a number registered to Abigail Monstera, a former student whose diary Ashley found in her dorm the previous semester and who was previously believed dead.

Ashley comforts Carter through his guilt, and they grow closer. Meanwhile, the other three boys confront Dr. Fox at his home. Fox smugly confesses to planting the suicidal impulse in Heath's mind, and Heath, enraged, beats him to death. The group cannot call on the cleanup resources of Carter's mother, Portia Levigne, because she holds leverage over Carter from a previous killing and has threatened to frame Ashley. Ashley takes charge instead, staging a break-in and setting the house on fire. The university later reports Dr. Fox as having taken early retirement, suggesting someone else is also concealing his death.

Carter cancels Ashley's dorm room without her consent and moves her belongings into the boys' apartment, forcing her to live with them. She visits Royce's mother, Katie, at Clearview Correctional Facility, where Katie is serving a life sentence for murdering six DBS initiates 24 years earlier. Katie insists she has no memory of the killings and believes she was not acting of her own free will, a claim that mirrors the boys' experiences. On the drive home, a deer collision strands Ashley, Royce, and Heath at a rural motel, where Royce confesses his feelings and he and Ashley sleep together for the first time. Heath joins them, establishing a new dynamic among the three. Carter, after initial jealousy, accepts the arrangement.

After a DBS weekend event, Nate kisses Ashley and admits he cannot stop thinking about her. She pushes him away, and he retaliates with insults about her other relationships. Weeks of hostile tension follow. Then the student who moved into Ashley's vacated dorm room is found dead in Lake Placid in circumstances mirroring Abigail Monstera's death. Max and Carina reveal that Carina has been stalked for nearly a decade, and a threatening note was left at their door. Ashley recognizes the handwriting as matching Abigail's diary. A second visit to Katie confirms that "Hyperion" was the name of a military project run by Jocelyn's father, combining hypnosis with experimental drug protocols. Jocelyn's master's thesis at Nevaeh focused on hypnosis, and she had access to her father's classified research. The boys resist accepting their longtime family friend's involvement.

At Nate's 25th birthday party, Ashley gives him a family heirloom watch. In a private moment, Nate confesses his feelings but says he cannot share her the way the others do. Before leaving, he asks Ashley to sign what he describes as a prenup required before he inherits his estate. Too distraught to read the 30-page document closely, she signs. Afterward, Ashley spots a birthday card from Jocelyn whose handwriting matches both Abigail's diary and the stalker's note. She rushes out and collides with Jocelyn, who does not deny involvement and gloats that no one will believe Ashley. Jocelyn snaps her fingers, and Ashley collapses.

Ashley wakes in a locked room at a psychiatric facility in Montana. A doctor named Dr. Marion tells her she was transferred due to escalating delusions and presents documents showing Nate holds her medical power of attorney, signed on the forms she believed were a prenup. The doctor claims Heath died by suicide in December, that Ashley's parents admitted her on Christmas Day after a psychotic break, and that Carina and Max recently died in a plane crash, leaving Nate as her only family. As an orderly escorts Ashley back to her room, she spots Jocelyn in a white coat, introduced as "Dr. Sarah Russo," who pretends not to recognize her. Then Dr. Fox rounds the corner, alive, also claiming they have never met. Ashley screams that Fox is dead, but the staff treat her outburst as proof of her delusions. The novel ends on this cliffhanger, leaving Ashley unable to determine whether everything she experienced was real or whether Jocelyn's experiment has entered a new and devastating phase.