But I don’t care.
“It’s Linden,” I say. “He wants to know if I can come over later.”
Mom lifts one side of her mouth in an I-told-you-so smile. “He must have enjoyed your company last night.”
“I guess,” I murmur, a little apprehensive now. “Is that okay?”
She glances over at Sierra for advice.
Sierra turns to me and I try to look as innocent as possible. Unfortunately it just occurred to me that if they say yes, I could use this as an opportunity to meet Smith. I force my face to stay neutral as Sierra continues to study me.
“Linden’s parents seem very big on safety, judging by their party last night,” Sierra says, the words sounding like someone’s dragging them out of her. But I could kiss her anyway.
“I’d want you back by dark, for sure,” Mom says, and my heart leaps as I realize she just said yes.
“Of course,” I say calmly, my thumbs itching to text Linden back.
And then to text Smith.
Linden and I have a brief text-versation and agree on noon. But I tell my mom we said eleven. An hour should be long enough for Smith. I think. I’m hardly an expert here.
“Mom, are there any extra cinnamon rolls?” I ask.
“Do we ever not have scads of leftovers?” she replies. “Why?”
I shrug and smile. “I thought maybe I’d bring some to Linden.”
“Oh,” Mom says. “That would be very . . . thoughtful.” She pulls herself up from the floor and gets into her wheelchair to go into the kitchen and prepare a dozen of them herself. “Do you think he’ll want a container of extra frosting?” my mom yells from the kitchen.
“He’s a guy, isn’t he?”
I take a long shower and stare at my closet for a good five minutes, trying to decide what to wear. Nice? Super casual? What does this invitation mean, really?
I have no idea.
After sifting through my entire wardrobe—twice—I settle on my favorite jeans and a pretty shirt I haven’t worn to school in a while. When I check the mirror, I decide I look nice, but the truth is I’m having trouble mustering up enthusiasm.
I’ll feel better after Smith and I have changed things. I’ll get excited again.
In an odd parallel to last night, both my mom and aunt send me off, admonishing me very strictly to go only to Linden’s house, and to drive right up to the door, and for goodness’ sake look around the car before I get out, and lock the doors, and about a million other precautions I’ve been following since I was, like, four.
I get a little exasperated as I keep chanting, “I know, I know, I know,” but I catch a glimpse of the worry Mom’s been trying to hide, and I sober when I realize that some of this morning’s gaiety was false for her too.
Once I’m in the car, I have to head south, even though the spot I asked Smith to meet me is north, because I know both my mom and Sierra will stay on the porch watching me until the car is out of sight.
Three blocks later, I make two quick right turns and head toward the corner where I’m supposed to pick up Smith. It’s funny how he looks exactly the same as the last two times. Same dark jeans, same coat, although he’s wearing a black ski hat today. I feel a little pang of guilt as I pull over and unlock the door for him. It’s clear and crisp today—which is a nice way of saying it’s freezing.
Smith doesn’t waste any time. “Tell me what you saw,” he says, pulling his hands out of his pockets and blowing on them for warmth.
“It was . . . it was awful. There were pieces, Smith. It was the most terrifying thing I’ve ever seen in my life.” And I’m not embarrassed when my voice cracks.
“Take this next right,” he says, pointing. He leads me down a road I’m unfamiliar with to a very small park that’s hardly more than a three-car parking lot and a teeny clearing. “Can you work in the car?”
“Um, shouldn’t I be able to?” I ask, completely lost.
“I think so. I guess I’m asking if you’re warm enough and if you can relax in here. You need to be at ease.”
“As at ease as I’ll ever be with that picture in my head.”
“That’s the best we’re going to get, I guess. Here.” He pulls the necklace out of his pocket and drops in into my fingertips. I feel its unnatural warmth and a tiny part of me sighs in relief. I realize I’ve missed it.
I don’t have time to analyze that.
“Just like last time?” I ask, the stone nestled in my hands.
“Except that it should be easier. You’ll be amazed how quickly you’ll get better at this.”
“I hope so,” I say doubtfully. But I remember the two minuscule steps I was able to take during the vision this morning. It took every ounce of strength I had, but I did it. Even without the stone.
I focus on the stone with my eyes wide open and remember the sensation of entering my second sight from last time. When I find myself standing in the bloody room again only a few seconds later, I’m shocked by how effortless it was. That part, anyway.
“Are you ready for me?” the voice of Smith asks.
“I’m ready,” I say aloud, quickly looping the focus stone around my neck. “Let him in.” I don’t have to yell this time. I simply murmur the words and then Smith is beside me.
I start to comment on how easy it was this time, but Smith isn’t looking at me. He’s staring at the carnage. He steps closer to one of the mounds of hacked flesh that looks like it might be her head, and hunkers down.
“Do you know who it is?” he asks.
I shake my head. “I think it’s a girl. The—” I gag for a second then push it back and point. “The shirt is purple.” Although, I realize with a start, Linden was wearing a purple shirt last night.
It’s not the same shade of purple, I tell myself, trying to calm my raspy breathing. And he’s too big. Too tall. This is a small person. “What do I do?” I say aloud when I find my voice.
Smith leans on his heels and pushes his coat back to slip his hands into his pockets. His forehead is filled with wrinkles. “A third death. I guess technically it could have been the fourth if we hadn’t diverted Jesse. This has got to be the same guy.” He looks down at the gory mess and shakes his head. “Let’s avert this one again,” he says after a long pause. “But we can’t keep doing this forever.”
“You want to quit?” I say but Smith cuts me off.
“You’re misunderstanding me. We can’t just keep avoiding the killer. Next time, we’ll have to take steps to catch him.”
“Oh,” I say, feeling dumb. He showed me how to save Jesse’s life and he’s about to help me save this girl too. Of course he’s not going to just walk away. “So what do we do now?”
“First let’s figure out where we are.” Smith begins to walk around the scene with an ease that I envy. It feels like I’m carrying ten-pound weights around my ankles. I touch the stone and remind myself that his freedom is only because he’s powerless here. I have to funnel all of my energy and concentration because what I do changes things.
I take in the room, noting the cement floor and the walls made of Sheetrock. The roof slopes on both sides and is made of some kind of metal. “It’s a shed or a workshop, I think.”
I slowly start walking toward a set of doors on one end, and Smith nods approvingly. “You’re getting better already,” he says as I reach for the sliding metal doors. But even though I can feel the doors under my hands, I can’t make them open.
“We’re not physically here, Charlotte,” Smith says, startling me away from my task. “Remember that. We’re an impulse, a compulsion, nothing more.”
“I’m going to have to rewind in order to see anything else then,” I say. Mentally, I tell the scene to rewind. Though it starts slowly, soon it picks up speed, going faster than I ever managed with Jesse. I watch, my stomach clenching, as the same black-clad, masked figure enters the scene and demolishes the girl in reverse with a two-foot-long blade.
I’ll never be able to sleep again.
/> UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
..................................................................
SIXTEEN
I grit my teeth, grateful that at least in reverse, the girl’s body is coming back together. It’s only when we reach the initial strike of the machete that I’m able to figure out who it is—because the very first thing the monster does is slice his blade across her face.
My throat convulses, but I stare hard as her skin is made whole. “Nicole,” I whisper. “Nicole Simmons.” She’s part of the student council leadership and she reads the announcements on the school TV channel every day. I’ve seen her each morning my entire junior year. Every student in the school would recognize her.
I wonder briefly if the killer knows this. If he slashed her face first because it was so identifiable. Or was it just happenstance?
But my personal connection with her goes back well beyond that. Nicole used to live two houses down from me. Our moms were friends. We played together all the time. My Oracle stuff wasn’t even the reason we stopped being friends. Our parents used to do things as a couple and then suddenly one of them was gone and the other was in a wheelchair. Stuff like that is too much for casual friendships. And when the parents move on, the kid generally does too.
Even so, now that I know who she is, this feels even more personal. More important. Maybe she’s not really my friend anymore, but she was.
Still, in reverse, the killer drags Nicole out of the shed by her hair and finally the doors open, and Smith and I are able to exit the workshop turned slaughterhouse: him, quickly; me, with my slow, grueling steps.
“No way,” I breathe as the killer takes Nicole right to her door. A few seconds later, she’s safely in her own house and the killer is ringing the doorbell.
I halt the scene and, after a few panting breaths, turn to Smith. “He’s going to take her from her own house!” I say in shock. “This whole time we all figured that if we were at home we’d be safe. This is going to start a panic. People are going to be afraid no matter where they are. They’ll—”
“Unless you stop it,” Smith interrupts, pulling me back into the moment. “Go back a little more. I bet her parents aren’t home.”
I swallow and nod and focus my energy on pushing the scene back even further. Sure enough, in a surprisingly short time, we see two adults leave in a black sedan.
“Okay, stop now,” Smith says.
I do and we’re standing in front of a half-raised garage door, watching Nicole’s parents depart.
“Is there another car in there?” Smith asks.
I duck down and look under the edge of the garage door. “Yeah, one more.”
Smith blows on his hands and then rubs them hard together. “I think the simplest thing is to get her to go to a friend’s house as soon as her parents leave.”
“Wouldn’t it be easier to have her to leave with her parents?”
“Possibly, but we don’t know where they’re going. Maybe it’s somewhere she can’t go. On a date? To a bar? You only get one shot at this and you want to pick the path that’s most likely to succeed.” He grimaces. “‘Least likely to fail’ is probably more accurate.”
He has a point. “Okay. She’s on student council. She’s probably friends with the other girl on there. Sara Finnegan.”
“That should work.” He stands with his arms crossed over his chest, observing the scene. “Because you can’t physically affect anything, you’re going to need to go under the garage door, reverse the scene again, and slip through the door and into the house while the parents are leaving.”
“Aren’t you coming with me?”
“I’m going to stay here and keep an eye on him,” Smith says, pointing at a nondescript gray SUV parked about half a block down beside a snowbank. Fear clenches at my stomach.
“Is that the killer?”
“That’s him. If he gets here before you can finish your job, I’ll yell for you.”
“Can you do that?”
“Yell?” Smith asks, looking confused.
“No, stay here. I mean, you’re in my second sight—shouldn’t you have to stay with me?”
His forehead wrinkles. “I’m not sure. But if I stay right here—if you leave me right here, it seems like I could.”
“What if I need your help?”
Smith shakes his head. “It’s been over two weeks, Charlotte. Assuming this has all been the same guy—and I really think it is—then he’s more than ready to kill again. We know he would have killed Jesse. He’s probably planning this murder right now. He’s got to be getting frustrated. And people who are frustrated are unpredictable. What if he suddenly changes his mind? Or comes in early? Then your vision’s no longer accurate. I think one of us needs to watch his car. And since I can’t actually do anything . . .” He lets his words trail off.
I look down the road where I can barely make out a dark form through the windshield. The killer, just yards away.
Except that he’s not real; he’s just in my head.
But this is his future.
Smith is right; someone needs to keep an eye on him. “You have the stone,” he reminds me softly.
“I’ll make it happen,” I vow, and without letting myself have a second thought, I duck under the garage door.
It’s eerie walking past the frozen car, feeling like as soon as I start the scene, they’ll be able to see me. “I’m not really here,” I whisper. “Not here.”
I position myself right beside the back door and focus on moving the scene backward again. Mr. and Mrs. Simmons almost brush me as they walk backward into the house and as the door closes—opens, technically—I slip through. I pause the scene, and before I let it start up again, I take several fortifying breaths. Smith believes I can do this by myself and he appears to be right; I’m just going to have to feed off of his confidence.
As ready as I’m ever going to be, I go ahead and start the scene again. As soon as the garage door closes, Nicole peeks through a barely cracked door and then runs to the front window to watch them drive away. I get right up next to her and shout in her ear, “Go to Sara Finnegan’s house!” There’s an insane amount of thought and will behind my shouting, but I’m already so worn out, it’s easier to vocalize as well.
I don’t know what kind of mischief Nicole intended to get into, but when I yell at her, she straightens and gets a funny look on her face. “Go to Sara’s house now!” I scream the word now as loud as I can.
Then I start to push with that same flow of energy that I used with Jesse. And Nicole moves. It’s slow. Like she’s fighting me almost, but she’s going. I focus on the stone—on all of my energy going through it and getting bigger, stronger, and together, we walk. We’re halfway across the kitchen when she suddenly veers off and I almost cry in disappointment, knowing I’ll have to catch her and then get her back on track.
“No! Sara’s house!” I yell after her, my slow steps not equal to her near run down the hall.
But a few seconds later, she appears with a jingling set of keys in her hands, and relief courses through me. I’m okay; it’s working. I start pushing again. I push, I shove, and for the second time today I break into a sweat and feel my clothes dampen, but I don’t give up. I’m so close.
Nicole pauses for a second at the garage door, looks at the small white Suzuki, and then dubiously down at the keys in her hands.
She’s going to change her mind. She has no reason whatsoever to go to Sara’s house. But I picture her mutilated body in my mind—especially that first strike that destroys her face—and put every ounce of will into my command as I shout Sara’s name once more and shove with all my might.
Ten seconds later, Nicole is in the car and the garage door is rising. I’m on my knees, too exhausted to even stand. I know we’re not out of the woods yet, but there’s nothing else I can do except keep shouting in my head for her to go to Sara’s.
It’s only as her
car starts to move that I realize I’ve got to get out of the garage or I’ll be stuck on the other side of the door from Smith. I don’t want to leave the vision without finding out what he saw. I crawl across the cement. One hand, one knee, the other, the other. Slowly I make my way out of the garage as Nicole backs out. The door closes just inches from hitting me, and her little car makes its way down the snowy roads in the direction of the town center.
I kneel in the snow in front of the house and let the scene continue to play. For a second, I don’t see Smith anywhere. Then I catch sight of his form jogging up the road, just ahead of the gray SUV.
“Charlotte,” Smith says, gasping, when he reaches me. “He just saw Nicole leave. He’s furious.”
The SUV pulls right over the edge of the yard, plowing through the snowbank. A masked man jumps out and I hear an unearthly scream emanate from his mouth that makes every drop of blood in my veins turn to jagged ice.
The shriek of a monster.
I leap to my feet as he draws near. Something whistles by my head and I hear a loud thud and turn my head sharply toward the workshop.
The machete. He’s thrown it into the side of the shed where it digs in just enough to stick, and wobbles crazily back and forth. He gets back into his car and—after a couple of tries—backs out of the pile of snow, driving slowly down the road in the opposite direction as Nicole.
“He was waiting,” I whisper, my eyes still glued to the machete. “He had this all planned.”
“Looks that way,” Smith says tightly. “She’s safe now. Let’s get out of this scene.”
It takes hardly a thought for me to cast us both from my second sight. Then we’re back in my mom’s Corolla, the heat blowing hard on both of us and the touch of Smith’s fingertips very light on my temple before he lets his hands fall and leans heavily against his seat. “Doing this right—catching this guy—is going to take work, Charlotte.”
“Thank you, Mr. Killjoy. Can’t we take two seconds to celebrate the victory we’ve had?” I ask with my teeth chattering despite the hot, stifling air in the car.