I don’t turn my bedroom light off—Mom knows I’m weird and sleep with it on. Ideally she won’t try to check on me, but if she does, I’m going to have to hope that she’ll decide I just want my privacy.
If not . . . I’ll have to deal with that later. I can’t think about it right now. I lace on my warmest boots and once I’m bundled up, I push my window open and crawl through it. Turns out it’s way harder than movies would have you believe to climb out a window. Especially in a coat. But eventually I manage.
And immediately fall over in the snow.
Cursing under my breath, I brush myself off and carefully turn around to close the window, making sure it’ll still open for me.
Ducking my head against the frigid wind, I start off toward a neighborhood only about half a mile from my house. I don’t know exactly what time Michelle will be passing by and it’s possible I already missed her. I stand huddled under a lamppost with my face buried in my scarf for almost an hour before I see her. I don’t know why she’s all dressed up, but as she approaches she’s the epitome of an all-American girl in a green wool coat and bouncing sable curls. I fall into step with her as she passes by. I don’t know what to say. “What are you doing?” I finally settle on.
Michelle doesn’t react, doesn’t startle, doesn’t seem to have even heard.
“What are you doing?” I ask, sharper this time, yanking her arm to turn her to face me. “You shouldn’t be out here. Alone, especially.”
Her eyes are vacant for a few seconds and I grip her tighter.
Then with a few slow blinks, her eyes come into focus. She yanks away and snaps, “What the hell are you doing to me?”
“It’s okay, I’m here to help,” I say, putting my hands up to show her I mean no harm, even though what I want to do is grab her and make sure she doesn’t bolt.
“Where am I?” she asks, and I can tell she’s on the verge of melting down.
“You’ve been—” Somehow I don’t think the term mind control is going to help right now. “Hypnotized,” I decide on, “out of your house and I’m here to send you back home.” I gently lay a hand on her arm but she jerks away.
“Get away from me. Freak,” she adds. Even though I know the words are fueled mostly by panic, they stab my heart just like the knife I’m trying to hide from her.
“Fine,” I say with a sigh. “I’m a freak, but you’re the one out in the middle of the night with a serial killer on the loose, Michelle. Why are you here?”
She hesitates, unable to counter the blunt truth of my words. “I don’t know,” she says, and I can hear the edge in her voice. “I was . . . I was at home. Someone was coming to see me.”
“You should go back. You’re close. You just have to turn around and go down that street.”
“Why are you here?” she says, and it’s clearly an accusation.
“To save you,” I say simply.
She stares and I can see fear and suspicion warring in her eyes. “Should I call the police?”
As tempting as it is to just say yes—to let the cops swoop in and rescue us both—I already called them with just enough information to get them to the right place at the right time. I hope. Michelle calling now would screw everything up. “No. Please don’t.”
“If you say so,” she says dubiously, but starts to turn, clearly anxious to be indoors. And away from her crazy ex-friend.
“Oh, just a sec,” I say, a hand on her shoulder. I hesitate, and for a moment I want to renege—to take my whole plan back and just run home and burrow down under my blankets. But I can’t. I have to do this. “Switch coats with me.” I’m already slipping my arms out of mine.
“Why?” Michelle asks, clutching at her beautiful emerald-green coat—a Christmas present, I bet.
“Because I’m going to take your place,” I say softly.
She stares hard at me for a long few seconds, but something in my face—maybe that years-old connection, I’m not sure—convinces her and she begins to unfasten her buttons.
We swap quickly.
She steps away, but doesn’t leave—seems to be waiting for something.
“Listen, Michelle, I know we don’t get along anymore, but I need you to not tell anyone about this. About what we just did. No one. Ever.” I end with my voice hard as a rock.
She’s quiet. I itch to leave, but I have to know what she’s going to say first. “There’s something wrong with you,” she says icily. Then she turns and walks away for a few steps before breaking into a run. She doesn’t look back.
I wait until she’s out of sight before taking her place on her route. I’d better hurry if I’m going to rendezvous with the killer on time. I speed-walk until I’m a block away from the scene I saw in my vision. Then I force my stride to slow to the almost drone-like pace Michelle was using.
I swear my heartbeat is as loud as a bass drum as I approach the basketball court in the public park where I watched Michelle get slaughtered in my vision this afternoon.
Except that now I’m the girl in the green coat.
I continue walking, following the path I remember her taking, ready to jump out of my skin at any sound, any movement. Even so, I’m unprepared when an arm wraps around my neck and pulls me backward against a hard chest. I see the flash of steel before I can even suck in a complete breath to scream and I wonder why the hell I thought this was a good idea.
At least this means I won’t kill Charisse, I think as the killer lifts my chin the same way I did in the vision with Charisse.
“Charlotte?”
My eyes fly open as the killer thrusts me from him. “Smith?” I have to force my voice to make a loud enough sound to be heard as everything I thought I knew shatters into a million pieces.
But even though my mind is screaming that I can’t have been so deeply betrayed, the rational part of me recognizes the medium build, the average height, the sheer normalness that makes Smith blend in so smoothly, your eyes slide right past him. A human chameleon.
It’s too late to deny, so Smith doesn’t bother with pretenses and rips his mask off. His eyes burn like red-hot coals, searing me with his fury. “What did you do?” he spits at me.
“It’s over,” I say, rising very slowly to my feet. “The cops are on their way—they might be watching right now.”
“You’re lying,” Smith says, but I hear the doubt in his voice.
“I called them before I left home.”
“An anonymous tip? And you think they’ll believe that?” he sneers, but his bitterness is laced with desperation.
“With four teenagers dead, the Feds in town, and the killer still at large, I think they are taking every tip seriously,” I say, trying to sound more confident than I am.
He pauses, then focuses very hard on me. “And what are they going to do when all they find is a teenage girl wielding a knife with traces of blood on it, and a fake name of someone she swears exists?” he asks with cruel smile, and I’m horrified to realize my hand is out of my pocket and gripping the knife, pointing it at Smith.
I try to put my arm down, to conceal the knife again, but I can’t move. “How are you doing that?” I ask shakily. “You’re not an Oracle.”
“Oh no, Charlotte. I’m what Oracles dream of in the darkest of nights.”
“What are you?” I whisper.
“They call me the Feeder,” he says. “I live on the energy from your visions. The ones you don’t fight. Do you have any idea how much stronger you’ve made me in the last three weeks?” He grins, an expression that makes my heart race. “No one can stop me now. Especially not you.” He turns and begins to run.
“Stop!” I scream, but not with my mouth. I scream in my head, with the same kind of command I use in my second sight. I reach for him with the same hands that pull the drape away from my second sight. In an instinct I don’t understand, I picture the future that’s only seconds away—but is the future, nonetheless—and see Smith stopping, turning. Coming back.
He wears a
pained grimace, but a few endless seconds later, it works. He returns to stand in front of me his teeth clenched so tightly the muscles are standing out painfully on his jaw. “You can’t keep this up for long,” he says. “You have so much less control than I do.”
“You don’t want either of us to get caught,” I say. “You’ll sacrifice me if you have to, but you know I’m innocent. And they’ll find that out too.”
“Are you?” he asks, and his smile deepens as blades of terror slice through my heart. “If you’re so innocent, then where were you last night?”
My control splinters. Smith takes advantage of the tiny lapse and turns to run again.
“No!” I can’t let him get away, I can’t! In that moment, I have no idea what I’m doing; there’s no thought, only an impulse I don’t recognize. I wrap my fingers around the pendant, and pull us both out of reality and into . . . somewhere else.
I lay stunned on the mirror floor, staring up at my dome. My supernatural plane.
And Smith is here with me.
He scrambles to his feet and starts running and it takes me only a second to realize he’s heading for the door at the edge of my reflective floor. The one he claimed to have no knowledge of.
And another second to understand: he’s been here before.
He sprints and for some reason the door doesn’t recede for him—and as long as I’m on his tail, it doesn’t for me either.
He’s faster than I am—he reaches it first and for a second I wonder what he thinks he’s going to do. It’s locked. But he doesn’t even hesitate as he grasps the doorknob, pulls it open, and disappears through it.
“No!” I scream, and dive for the door as it’s closing.
I’m too late and I slam into the hard surface, but my fingers close around the doorknob, forcing the door to stay close to me.
It’s locked.
Locked to me.
It’s Smith’s door. It’s always been his. The depth of his lies makes me feel angry and stupid all at the same time. I grip the knob like my life depends on it—and I suspect it might—and realize it’s changed again. Almost the entire door is a pane of glass, with only a thin wood frame around it. I can see clearly into it now, but the knob still won’t turn.
I have to get in there. I have to find Smith and keep him from getting out of my second sight or he’ll be able to control his physical body again and get away.
And leave me lying there, unseeing.
I stare through the beveled glass at the shadowed room that lies behind it and fume. This is my world and I most certainly did not invite Smith to even enter, much less make his own pocket within it. I need . . . I need . . .
A hammer. Something like a hammer.
I’m supposed to be able to control this world—why shouldn’t I be able to summon one? I try to picture a hammer appearing in my hand, but that’s too easy and somehow I knew it was. I try to think like an Oracle. To reflect back on what I’ve learned during my nights here.
I consider the scene with Linden the first night I reached the door. The way it just appeared. It must have been Smith, trying to distract me from the door.
Well, if he created a future for me, then I can certainly create one for myself.
I look up at the dome and picture the very near future and a lighted scene starts rolling my way. It’s going to be tricky—I need to step only halfway into the scene while still holding onto the doorknob—but I pull the near-future frame very close. It’s not a full scene. It’s simply me, standing in the darkness, holding not a hammer, exactly, more like a bat or one of those nightsticks cops always have on TV. It’ll work. I put one foot into the scene, and like the night I took my own place in the scene with Linden, I will myself to be the person I’m seeing. And to not let go of the doorknob.
It takes several seconds for the future to reach me, but in a few moments, the stick is in my hand and I swing at the door with all my might.
The glass shatters with a crash that echoes through the entire eternal dome and I plunge into Smith’s domain.
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
..................................................................
TWENTY-EIGHT
Everything is dark and small. It’s like my supernatural plane in faded miniature—a lesser twin of my own world. I keep the bat clenched in my hand. I don’t know where Smith is or what he’s doing in this little alcove in my brain. I don’t know anything. Even the few things I’d figured out about the supernatural plane are uncertain because of Smith’s lies.
The air darkens even further and I feel my stomach twist as I peer up at the scenes around me. It’s the murders. All of them. Even the ones I didn’t see.
Bethany running from black-clad Smith. He loops an arm around her neck and pulls her against his chest. His knife flashes. Red.
Eddie, Smith standing over him, a short bat in his hand. He swings it above his head like an ax, bringing it down on Eddie’s body with all his strength. Matthew, the back of his head exploding. Nathan . . .
Nathan!
I step toward his scene. There’s a dark figure holding a knife, but I can’t tell if it’s Smith.
Or me.
I run forward, ready to fling myself into the scene, but just as I leap, the dome rolls and a dark chuckle emanates from the space surrounding me.
I trip and fall on a gravelly surface that’s cold, but not snowy. The wind blows my bangs across my forehead as I get to my feet. I’m on the hill beside a freeway bridge overlooking a section of the road near my house. A sinking feeling engulfs my heart as I realize where I am.
I’m standing beside a truck—a light gray Chevy—and I know without looking that its license plate number is AYT 247. My breath comes in gasps as I peer into the driver’s seat at the man I’ve never known and always hated.
He’s not alone. There are two people.
Him.
And Smith.
I watch Smith point up the road and then slip quickly out of the passenger seat. As soon as the heavy truck door slams shut the truck takes off, spraying pebbles that sting against my skin.
I can’t look.
I can’t not look.
My breathing is ragged, as I watch the gray Chevy slam into the white car, which holds my parents, Sierra, and six-year-old me, with a deafening crunch.
I saw this once before in a vision. When I was six. But that time the truck hit the hood of our car, swinging it around to where another vehicle rammed the door closest to Sierra. I watch now, my throat choking, as the gray truck plows into the passenger door, pushing the car around just enough for the passing vehicle to hit the driver’s side door, pinning my parents in a veritable death trap and leaving Sierra and me almost unharmed.
Six-year-old me made the change—I delayed us over ten minutes by spilling juice all over my shirt. It should have been more than enough and I’ve always wondered why it wasn’t.
It did matter. Couldn’t have mattered. It was no accident—he was waiting for us.
I whirl back around to vision-Smith. “You did this!” I shriek, even though I know he can’t hear me. He’s not really here; he’s just a phantom. A memory. I stand there, barely managing to remain upright. Everything I always thought I knew was wrong.
I didn’t kill my father.
Smith did.
And my entire world tilts off-kilter.
“How could you?” I whisper.
He stands there, silently, out of sight of the crash scene, with a tiny smile of satisfaction on his lips. I want to strike him, to punch him in his smug mouth, and my hands are clenched into achingly tight fists when he turns, looks directly at me, and grins.
My two seconds of surprise give him the upper hand and by the time I lunge at him he’s already moving away. I leap, but a second later I’m sinking through the ground and settling into another scene. I turn, looking for Smith, wondering where I am, but he’s gone.
I try to walk f
orward but something holds me back. I look down at my arms and there are thick strands of black twine tied around them. My hands, my elbows, my feet, my knees. I try to brush them away, but they only tighten painfully until I let out an agonized groan and stop trying.
“That’s better.” Smith’s voice again. But not from all around me like before; it’s definitely from above. I look up and see a giant Smith’s face, enormous fingers holding something. All of the strings are connected to it and it takes only seconds for me to realize that he’s put me in a bizarre puppet/puppeteer scenario.
“This isn’t real,” I whisper in confusion. These strings, this weird setup, it’s not actually true. It can’t be. His dome is somehow different than mine. It shows the past. It shows physically impossible scenarios. I don’t understand any of it.
But my hands are moving and now that I can see past the strings, I realize I’m at my house. I’m making coffee. My hands reach into my pocket and pull out a small, dark glass bottle. I add something to the drink and then wrap my hands around the steaming mug. The heat from the coffee seeps through the ceramic and burns my palms, but I can’t let go. Tears sting my eyes from the excruciating pain, but the strings just guide my feet down the hallway to my aunt’s room.
“Thought you could use a fresh cup,” my mouth says against my will as I set the mug on my aunt’s desk and am finally able to release my burning, throbbing fingers.
“Oh, thank you, Charlotte,” Sierra says with a smile, and takes a sip.
The strings yank me backward and I fall on my butt, jarring my spine. But still, backward, backward, until the lighting changes and I’m in a new scene.
A grave site. I stand by my mom as she sobs. I don’t want to look but the strings turn my head and I see Sierra’s name on the stone. “No,” I whisper. “I won’t do it.”
“You’ll do whatever I want you to,” Smith says from above.
I try to run. But I take only two steps before the strings pull me back again. I claw at the grass, my fingernails tearing against the stony soil, but still the strings drag me. My bathroom this time. The air is steamy and I see my mom’s empty wheelchair sitting beside the deep tub. She’s lying in the warm water with her eyes closed, a rose candle burning on the edge of the bathtub.