Текст книги "As Dead As It Gets"

Автор книги: Katie Alender

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Текущая страница: 7 (всего у книги 18 страниц)

I PULLED DOWN A DIRT ACCESS road and parked on the shoulder. In the highly unlikely event that someone came by, I’d just say I’d been driving home and got lost. That wouldn’t explain why I was wandering around in the forest, but if I combined it with a simpering helpless-teenager face, I was positive it would do the trick.

Logistically speaking, I felt pretty confident about the whole operation. The rain had let up, and the moon was full and round, bathing the night with blue light so bright that even under the canopy of the trees I could see the reddish-brown color of the pine needles on the ground. I had my phone with me, and approximately every fifty feet I checked to make sure the GPS signal worked so I could find my way back to my car. In case that failed, I also marked my trail, putting slashes of chalk on tree trunks to indicate which direction I should go to find the previous tree.

In other words, getting lost in the woods—not an option.

And I wasn’t exactly scared of encountering Lydia—for all the awful things she’d done, she still had yet to really hurt me. I still thought of her as Lydia first, ghost second—more pest than danger. I couldn’t help it, even though I knew it would be smarter to see her as a real threat.

But my faith in the book of charms was nearly absolute. I had it tucked between my two sweatshirts, because just seeing it might even be enough to scare her off. I’d bookmarked “For Temporary Immobilization of Spirits” and “To Send Spirits to a State of Rest,” and I wanted her to stick around long enough for me to read one and dispatch her to the next plane. Lydia in a state of rest—someplace far, far away from me—sounded pretty heavenly, if you’ll excuse the pun.

An hour later, I was freezing through all of my layers and beginning to lose hope. My camera was slung around my neck, and I’d been taking pictures every twenty feet or so—trying to stay alert in case Lydia decided to drop a tree branch on my head (or the whole tree).

I’d seen one ghost so far—a Native American girl about my age, with a bullet hole in her shoulder and a healthy splotch of blood on her animal-skin cape. She was intent on some kind of hunt, and she didn’t even look up at the flash of the camera.

I kept moving.

The sound of every footstep, no matter how lightly I tried to tread, seemed magnified in the air around me. And the harder I concentrated, the longer I walked, the louder my breathing got. It became a complex little routine—walk, pause, chalk a tree, take picture, look at picture; repeat.

As the minutes continued to tick by, I wondered if I’d made a mistake. Luckily, not the terrifying kind of mistake I usually ended up stumbling into—more of a tactical error. Just because this was a place Ashleen knew didn’t mean I’d find her here. And if she wasn’t out here, what good would it do for me to be stomping around in the wilderness in the middle of the night? Like her brother said—they’d searched these woods already.

Two and a half hours in, there was no sign of Ashleen, the white light, or Lydia herself. If it hadn’t been for the fact that I was an ice cube on legs, I would have fallen asleep on my feet. A growing sense of futility began to overwhelm me. I gave myself five more pictures before I would call it a night and go home.

The next picture, nothing.

Or maybe just three more.

The next picture, nothing.

This will be the last one.

But in this picture—

Not nothing. Something up ahead, disappearing around a tree. I zoomed in on it.

The heel of a bare foot, mid-stride.

I hurried to that tree and took another volley of photographs, then started scanning them. Nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing—

Ashleen. And she wasn’t lying on the ground, comatose. She was standing up, walking around.

I looked up. “Ashleen!” I called. “Ashleen! It’s Alexis!”

There was no answer. I sped up to a trot, as fast as I dared go on unfamiliar terrain.

“Hello? Ashleen? Are you out here?”

I went about fifty feet before stopping to take more pictures. If I could find the bright white light that I’d seen when I found Kendra, I’d know Lydia was nearby and I could force her to lead me to Ashleen. I took one last exposure and looked down at the screen.

“Oh,” I said, taking an unsteady step backward.

Ashleen was standing in front of me.

But only in the picture.

It was like I was suddenly two people: myself, stunned, mentally and emotionally; and also a version of myself who was vividly aware that there was a ticking clock counting down the seconds until I completely and utterly lost the ability to think or act rationally.

Ashleen, a girl I knew well enough to call a friend—a girl whose party I’d been to a few days earlier—was dead.

I’d never seen the ghost of a person I knew before—I mean, besides Lydia. But Lydia was no friend to me.

I wandered away and sat on a fallen log, squeezing my eyes shut to hold back the tears. I couldn’t let my emotions take over. I couldn’t let myself think about Ashleen’s mother or brothers—or my mother—or anyone at school or how they would react. Not out here in the middle of the woods. Not when I was a sitting duck for Lydia to attack.

“Stop it,” I said out loud. “Stop it. Get a hold of yourself.”

For a moment I sat among the soft sounds of the February night. There were no birds singing, no insects creaking—only the rustling of the pine trees around me.

I sighed and looked at the picture again.

Ashleen stood a few feet away from me, staring right at the camera. She was barefoot, wearing a light purple dress made of gauzy layers of fabric. The top was detailed, ruffly, and feminine. But the bottom of the dress just kind of…disappeared. I mean, looking at it, you couldn’t really say, “That’s the bottom of the dress.” It just dissolved into the air.

I stared at it, with a sense déjà vu, until it hit me: it was the dress from the dream I’d had the night of Ashleen’s party.

I looked around, suddenly in a panic, thinking that not only had Lydia just crossed over from bad ghost to evil ghost, but that there was a distinct possibility she could invade my subconscious mind, too. But even if she could plant dreams in my head, why would she use a purple dress? As far as I could remember, I’d never seen Lydia wearing a dress like that one. What could it mean?

I looked back down at the picture and studied Ashleen’s confused expression. Sometimes ghosts don’t understand what’s happened to them—they don’t even know they’re dead. So they just wander, thinking they’re in a dream.

But it wasn’t the look on her face—or even the dress—that bothered me the most.

No, the really bizarre thing was that, in her left hand, Ashleen held a bouquet of yellow roses.

In all my pictures of ghosts, I’d never seen one actually carrying something that wasn’t part of what they wore when they died. For example, one day I’d taken a picture of a woman downtown—she wore a long black Edwardian-era dress and walked hunched over, with her hands out in front of her. The whole effect was startling and horrible, almost demonic, like she was prowling around, ready to strike out at someone.

Then, after watching her pass countless living people without even noticing them, I realized what she was doing: pushing a baby carriage. Only, the baby carriage didn’t exist in her ghostly plane. Have you ever heard the saying, You can’t take it with you? Well, it’s true. Unless you’re wearing it, you can’t.

So why—and how—was Ashleen’s ghost holding roses?

There was something else in the last picture. I glanced at the photograph and noticed, over her shoulder, a bright white spot of light, barely shining through the trees.

My heart raced. I raised my camera, removed the lens cap, and flashed off a few more exposures.

Ashleen had begun to wander away, but the light was still there. It was getting closer, in fact.

“I’m sorry, Ashleen,” I said into the night air. But I wasn’t focused on her any longer. I had to get rid of Lydia before she could do this to anyone else.

“Lydia!” I called, in the direction of the light. “Stop being a coward and show yourself!”

I reached for the charm book and opened it to one of the pages I’d bookmarked. My hands shook as I looked over the spell. Should I immobilize her first and then send her away? Or just send her away? The immobilization spell was much shorter. I had a better chance of actually finishing it.

I began to read it aloud.

“Excuse me.” Lydia’s voice interrupted me. “What are you doing?”

I raised my voice and kept reading.

Lydia slapped the book from my hands.

As I knelt to pick it up, she got right in my face. “I asked you a question. Why are you out here in the middle of the night?”

“I know what you did,” I said. The bookmarks had fallen out of the book, so I flipped through the pages. I found the “move to a transitional state” first and held the book in an iron grip.

Lydia looked over my shoulder. “What does that mean? A transitional state? Permanently? Do you know what that sounds like?”

“It sounds awesome,” I said, starting to read.

“No,” Lydia said, having the gall to act appalled. “It sounds like limbo. Like a gray void. You would put me in a gray void forever?” She tried to knock the book out of my hands again, but her fingers passed right through it.

She was weak right now. I stopped reading and looked at her, unable to pass up the opportunity to tell her off.

“You made the choice,” I said. “You’re the one who killed Ashleen.”

Her eyes went wide. “Who’s Ashleen?”

“Give me a break.”

“No, seriously. Who’s Ashleen?” She looked around. “Is there a killer out here?”

Oh. My. God. “You’re already dead, Lydia,” I said. “And if you didn’t kill her, who did? And why does she have your yellow roses?”

“What yellow roses?” she asked. She was beginning to sound scared. “Alexis, I don’t want to go to a transitional plane forever. I didn’t kill anybody—”

Biggest, fattest “whatever” in the history of humanity.

I glanced down at the page and opened my mouth to read the spell, determined not to let her distract me again.

And then—

The laugh.

It swirled in circles just like it had in the empty field—a tornado of malevolent energy, with me at its center. I felt it pulse against my skin like the wings of a thousand evil butterflies.

And in one motion, the book was ripped from my hands.

It exploded into dust in midair.

I shrieked, unable to stop myself, and covered my ears with my palms. Then, in a panic, I turned to run, my camera bouncing against my side. I felt a crunch and the rough jolt of a tree trunk against my hip, and changed directions.

Still, the laughter followed me, wrapping around me as tightly as a spider binding its prey.

If only I could find my way out of the woods—back to my car—

But my mind flailed like a bird with a broken wing. There was no way I would be able to focus enough to find the trees I’d marked. I’d be driven deeper and deeper into the woods—and if I didn’t freeze to death or fall off a cliff, I’d be driven mad by the laughter.

Suddenly, my mad scrambling carried me through a pocket of freezing air.

As I tumbled out the other side, the laughter disappeared.

I plopped to the ground, my breath as loud in my ears as a passing train, and looked up to see Lydia standing a few feet away.

She pursed her lips and stared down at me.

“Why…?” I had to stop speaking to suck more air into my lungs. “Why, Lydia?”

I couldn’t contain my tears anymore, and I started to sob.

It was the ultimate display of weakness, and I expected Lydia to try to hurt me, to torment me, to chase me farther into the woods.

But she didn’t.

A few minutes passed, and Lydia didn’t go away. She didn’t speak, either.

She just stood there, looking at me.

Finally, I got to my feet, my legs unsteady beneath me. “I’ll leave you alone. I won’t try to send you to the void. I swear to God. Just stop hurting people. Please, Lydia.”

Without speaking, she turned to walk away. Her body grew fainter and fainter.

“Please!” I cried, too exhausted for pride. “I’ll get down on my knees and beg you, if that’s what you want. Or take me—kill me—do whatever you want to me, but…”

She was gone.

I pulled my phone out of my pocket and groaned. The crunch I’d felt when I hit the tree had been the face of my phone cracking.

I drew in a breath of cold air, burning my throat and lungs.

I was totally lost, with no way to get back to my car.

Life’s not fair—I get it—but this was ridiculous.

And then there was a sudden sharp snap! and I looked up just in time to see a huge branch about to fall right where I was standing. I rushed out of the way, swinging around another tree trunk, full-on bear-hugging it like a frightened toddler hugging her mother’s leg.

After the massive branch crashed to the ground, and the dust and leaves settled, I took a step back…and saw the chalk slash on the bark of the tree in front of me.

I would have broken down in relief, except there was no part of me whole enough to break down. So I just followed the chalk mark to the next marked tree, and gradually made my way back to the car, surrounded by the miserable silence of the forest.

“HEY, HONEY, YOU’RE GOING to be late for school,” my father said, sticking his head into my bedroom the next morning.

I squeezed my eyes shut tighter and pulled the blankets up to my chin.

“It’s already seven fifteen, you know.”

He was waiting for an answer, so I croaked one out. “It’s a four-minute drive.”

“But don’t you have all sorts of elaborate beauty rituals?”

“No.” I burrowed down into my pillow. “That’s Kasey.”

“What’s me?” my sister’s voice piped up. “Lexi, you’re going to be late.”

I turned away from them to look out the window.

“Never mind,” Kasey sighed. I heard her walk away.

“Well, don’t cut it too close,” Dad said. He left too.

Could I really make myself get out of bed and go to school—just walk around like a regular person having a regular day?

I felt a gentle hand on the back of my head. “Sweetheart, you overslept,” Mom said.

I collected all of my strength and sat up.

“Oh, you’re already dressed,” she said. “Are you feeling okay?”

I muttered that I was, and Mom went to the kitchen. I swung my legs—stiff in the dirty jeans I’d been wearing for nearly twenty-four hours—over the side of the bed and sat there, staring at nothing.

The fact is, I wasn’t “already” dressed. I was still dressed. And any paranoid parent worth his or her paranoid salt would have noticed that—and the scattered pieces of dirt on my pale beige carpet—especially my carpet, of all carpets, because I was a borderline OCD-level clean freak.

My parents hadn’t noticed.

But apparently my sister had.

“What happened to your carpet?”

I swung around. “My shoes were muddy.”

Kasey stood in the doorway, staring at the floor. “Why were your shoes muddy?”

“Because I stepped in some mud,” I said.

“How’s Jared?” she asked.

“He’s great,” I said. “How’s the cradle-robber?”

She rolled her eyes and sniffed, but she didn’t back away in a huff like I’d been hoping she would. “Keaton is fine. He got accepted to Berkeley.”

“No kidding,” I said. “That’s good. I mean, it’s pretty close…if you guys are still together.”

She shrugged and sort of swung on the doorframe a little. “I don’t know. I’m too young to get that serious…don’t you think?”

Kasey had just turned fifteen. I’d just turned sixteen when Carter and I started dating. And I didn’t feel like we were too young to be serious. It just felt so right with him. I mean, until Aralt and the Sunshine Club came between us, I could see myself with Carter forever. Not that we’d have gotten married right out of high school or anything, but I just never pictured us breaking up, because I just couldn’t imagine not wanting to be with him.

“I think it depends,” I said. “I think if it’s important to you to make it work, you’ll make it work.”

“Was it—” She cut herself off, and I knew she’d been about to ask about Carter—if it was important to me.

“Yeah, well,” I said.

She gave me a sad smile.

“Anyway, it doesn’t matter,” I said. “I have Jared now.”

Her sad smile turned into a little grimace.

That’s when I noticed, out of the corner of my eye, my cell phone. It sat on the nightstand with the shattered screen on display for everyone to see. Naturally, my life would be much easier if I could keep my sister from seeing it.

“I’d better get dressed for school,” I said.

“You’re already dressed.” Her eyes narrowed. “Wait, did you sleep in your clothes?”

“Good-bye, Kasey,” I said, getting up and moving toward the door.

She backed away. I gave the door a push and picked up my phone to get a better look at it.

But Kasey had peeked back in. “Holy cow, what happened?”

I stepped forward, tucking the phone behind my back. “Excuse me, have you ever heard of privacy?”

“Your phone—” She craned her neck to try to see. “It looks like—”

“It’s fine,” I said, slipping the phone into my pocket. “I cracked the screen yesterday. It still works, though.”

I waited for her to ask me what I’d been doing that would crack the screen.

Stop, I thought. Don’t ask any more questions. Just go be normal. Be happy. One of us to has to come through this okay, and it’s not going to be me. So stop asking questions.

Her face fell. Her feelings were hurt. She looked like a little girl.

It’s for your own good.

She didn’t need to get messed up with ghosts again. She just needed to be a normal teenager.

“Sorry, Kase,” I said, and shut the door.

By the end of the day I was so exhausted from my constant fear of saying the wrong thing that I didn’t even want to go to Jared’s house. I knew they’d find the body before long—maybe even that same night. So I went straight home and got into bed.

Luckily, Kasey was off with her friends, so at least I didn’t have to justify my bedridden afternoon. I closed my eyes and let the misery sink down through my body. I could feel it going into my pores, through my skin, into the muscle and sinew, right into the core of my soul.

I was the only person in the world who knew Ashleen was dead.

How long would I have to carry that knowledge around with me while the police searched and Ashleen’s family suffered?

Lydia’s voice was clear and cold. “Warren, pity party of one, we have your table ready.”

I opened my eyes and stared at the ceiling, afraid to move. But Lydia came and stood right above me. Her long ghost-hair hung down, almost touching my face. I fought the urge to try to brush it away.

“Listen to me,” she said. “I didn’t kill that Ashley chick. I didn’t push Kendra off that cliff. And I don’t want to be sent to the transitional plane.”

“Go away,” I whispered.

“I’m not going away until you apologize.”

I sat up, not afraid anymore. I couldn’t help it. Lydia was just too aggravating. “Apologize? For what?”

“For accusing me of murder,” she said, sitting on my desk, right on top of my camera. “I’m not a murderer.”

“You tried to kill the whole Sunshine Club,” I said. “Or have you forgotten?”

Her jaw dropped. “That doesn’t count! A, I was possessed, and B, it didn’t work.”

“So if you didn’t kill Ashleen, why were you in the forest last night?” I asked. “Hmm? Just out for a hike?”

The thing was, I did believe her. Taking even a fraction of a moment to think about it, I realized that luring girls to a miserable demise in the woods was way too subtle for Lydia. If she wanted to kill people, she’d do it in the mall food court or something.

“I was there…” Her voice trailed off, like she really didn’t know why, and then she reloaded. “I was there because I…” She was staring at the floor, as if trying to remember something that bothered her.

“And you were out there when Kendra was hurt, too!” I said. “And you were in my car that day at the nature preserve—”

“No, I wasn’t,” she said. “That wasn’t me. And yeah, I was there when you found Kendra—I mean, when I found her for you, you’re welcome very much—but I’m not the one who hurt her.”

“Honest to God?” I asked.

“I swear on my own grave,” Lydia said.

I rolled my eyes.

“Excuse me, my grave is pretty important to me.”

I leaned back against my pillows and covered my face with my hands, suddenly exhausted.

“I’m telling the truth,” she said.

I opened my eyes. “I know. But if you didn’t attack Kendra and Ashleen, then who did, Lydia?” A giant sigh forced its way out of my lungs. “And why are you always around?”

I would never have thought ghosts could blush, but Lydia was actually blushing. She pursed her lips and stared out the window. “I’m not telling you.”

“Tell me,” I said, “or I’ll find another copy of that book, and it’s off to never-never land you go.”

She flounced and huffed and folded her arms and gave me the dirtiest look in the history of dirty looks.

“All right,” I said, standing up. “I’m going to go check eBay.”

“You won’t send me to limbo?” she asked. “If I tell you? You promise?”

Technically, I’d promised the night before. Not that there was any reason to remind her of that.

“Fine. I promise.” As much as I wanted Lydia to go away, I knew I had a really unique opportunity, and I had the presence of mind not to squander it. I’d met ghosts before, but always in battle. Never just in a regular conversation. “But…Lydia, ghosts aren’t natural. You shouldn’t even be here to begin with. Why wouldn’t you want to move on? Isn’t it lonely for you here?”

“I do want to move on,” she said, swinging her legs through my desk chair. “I guess. But not to a transitional state—for all eternity. I mean, think about it, Alexis. No matter how much you hate me, do I deserve to be in a gray void for the rest of time?”

I sighed. And I really did think about it.

If Lydia didn’t kill Ashleen—and if that wasn’t her in my car…

Then, no, of course not. Yeah, she tried to kill the Sunshine Club—but to be fair, when I was possessed, I tried to kill my family in their sleep. If Kasey hadn’t stopped me, I could easily have been a mass murderer.

I leaned my head forward and rested it in my hands. Of all the things I didn’t need.

“Ha!” Lydia said. “I’m right, and you know it.”

“Okay,” I said. “If you didn’t hurt Kendra or kill Ashleen, you don’t deserve the gray void. Now tell me. Why are you always around when these things happen, if you’re not causing them?”

“You know what?” She raised her chin haughtily. “I’m tired of your accusations. I’ll see you later. If I feel like it.”

And she disappeared.

When I heard my mother’s car pull into the garage, I strained my ears to listen to her—the way she walked, the way she hung her keys on the hook—for any indication that she’d heard something about Ashleen. Overcome by my need to know if she knew, I stuck my head into the hallway.

Mom stood by the garage door, head down.

“Mom?” I asked.

She turned and looked at me, a magazine open in her hand. “Hi, honey. How was your day?” Her voice sounded normal—light, but with an undertone of tension. Still, nothing that hinted at an awareness of Ashleen’s death.

“Fine,” I said, going back into my room.

Later, I went out into the living room and turned on the TV, slumping in the corner of the couch with the remote in my hand.

Behind me I heard the front door open. Kasey’s voice called, “See you tomorrow!” and the door closed.

“Hey,” she said, leaning over the couch. “What’s up? What are you watching?”

It was some lame Judge Somebody show where the judge works herself up into a lather trying to be funny while she messes with people’s lives.

“Nothing,” I said.

Kasey dumped her stuff behind the couch and came around to sit next to me. I moved my legs to make room for her, but I turned up the volume a little, too—just enough to hint that I wasn’t in the mood for conversation. My sister caught the hint, so we watched the rest of the show in silence.

“If we ever end up suing each other over a rowboat,” Kasey finally said, “just shoot me, okay?”

“You got it,” I said.

The trumpety music that announced the start of the six o’clock news sounded, and suddenly I didn’t want to know if there was any news about Ashleen. So I flipped to a show about misbehaving dogs and leaned back with my eyes closed.

A minute later, Mom came out into the kitchen. “What do you girls want for dinner?”

Before we could reply, her cell phone rang.

My whole body tensed. It was like the energy in the room spiked before she even answered it.

“Hey, Jim.…What? No. What? Okay. Thanks. Bye.” Her phone hit the counter with a clunk. Her voice was like a clear tube made of glass so thin it would shatter if you touched it. “Alexis…turn to the news.”

My fingers were like stumps. I fumbled with the remote until Kasey took it from me and switched the channel.

A reporter stood on location at Ashleen’s house, wearing her sad face. “Although police aren’t releasing details about the location of the body, they did confirm that it was missing teen Ashleen Evans. Autopsy results will be available later this week, but an anonymous source inside the police department told us there doesn’t appear to be any evidence of assault. The family has declined to speak to reporters, but they have released a statement asking for prayers and information that could lead to the arrest of whoever is responsible.”

Mom’s face was gray. She came up behind the couch and put a hand on Kasey’s and my shoulders.

They went to a split screen with the reporter in the studio. “Have the police compared this to the Kendra Charnow case at all?”

The field reporter adjusted her earpiece. “No, Dana, not officially. But obviously that’s something that we’re hearing a lot of from neighbors.”

Their chatter blurred together like squawking birds in my brain.

I searched the trees for a flash of Ashleen’s ghost or the purple dress. But what I saw, right behind the reporter, was a blast of white light.

I sat up and leaned forward. It hovered by the trees, and then it slowly grew larger in the frame—coming closer to the woman with the microphone, who was interviewing a crying teenage boy.

“Alexis,” Kasey said, and I turned to look at her, feeling my pulse pound against my ears. I thought she was going to accuse me of being involved or knowing something. But she was just looking for a shoulder to cry on. She wiped her eyes and leaned toward me, burying her face in my hoodie.

I put my arms around her, but I couldn’t take my eyes off the newscast.

“They found the body?” Lydia had come back and was staring at the TV. Her voice was serious and utterly snarkless. “I saw it last night. It was pretty close to where you were standing.”

“What was she wearing?” I asked.

Kasey sat up and looked at me, sniffling. “What? Why would you ask that?”

Lydia shrugged. “Regular clothes. Sweatpants…a shirt. Blue? I don’t know. It was dark.”

But not a purple dress?

I kept my eyes on Lydia, wanting to ask her more questions but unable to as long as Kasey was in earshot.

Suddenly, the room was filled with a brilliant white light—just for a moment. Then it was gone.

I glanced back at the TV. The white spot that had been drawing close to the reporter was gone.

“That—” I searched the edges of the room. “What—”

Kasey sniffled. “Huh?”

“What?” Lydia said.

“Nothing,” I said, to both of them. “Never mind.”

The field reporter was running out of things to say, but she kept talking, clearly desperate to remain the center of attention. “One of the search party members mentioned to me that they found a—a lens cap, like from a camera. Not like a small snapshot camera, but the bigger kind—”

An SLR.

“—about fifty feet from the location of the body. So that might be something the police are interested in, but it also might be unrelated.”

I went stiff.

“Lexi?” Kasey asked. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” I said. “I’m just fine.”

I sat in my car with the engine off, watching the rain slide down the windshield. I wished I’d brought an extra sweatshirt, but I didn’t want to go back inside and risk having Kasey ask me what I was doing.

Plus, being cold made it easy for me to lie to myself and believe that’s why my hands were shaking—not because of what I was about to do.

I balanced the business card on my knee and picked up my phone.

AGENT F. HASAN, was all it said. And her phone number.

Agent Hasan was maybe the second scariest thing in my life besides ghosts. She worked for the government—though it was impossible to tell exactly which department she worked for—and she had a talent for showing up right when you needed her. When she’d come to clean up the Sunshine Club mess, she’d told my sister and me that she didn’t give third chances.

So I might be burning a third chance I didn’t have. But even I had to admit that it was time to get someone else involved.

Lydia walked through the passenger door and sat down, reclining so her feet went through the window. “Where are you off to?”

It was too late to hang up—the call was already going through.

“Nowhere,” I said. “Go away.”

Lydia peered at the business card. “Who’s that?” she whispered.

“Hello, Alexis.”

There was no mistaking Agent Hasan’s voice. She always sounded slightly bored, like she couldn’t believe she was wasting her time with you. It was, to put it mildly, insanely intimidating.

“Hi,” I said. “How…how are you?”

“What’s happening?”

“Um,” I said. “I don’t know if you’ve seen the news at all lately.”

“With regard to what,” she said, “specifically?”

“The girls,” I said. “The ones who go out into the woods.”

“Kendra Charnow and Ashleen Evans?”

Okay, so she had been watching the news. “Yeah…I was thinking that maybe you might want to find out more about that.”

She waited a beat before speaking. “And why would you think so?”

“It just seems like maybe there’s something weird going on.” I glanced over at Lydia, who was leaning close to hear both sides of the conversation.

“Define weird.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe…possibly…supernatural?”

“Hmm,” she said, though she clearly knew all along that that’s what I was getting at. “Why don’t you tell me why you think so?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I mean, I don’t have a specific reason. But doesn’t it seem worth…I don’t know, looking into?”

“Alexis, let me clarify something for you.”

“Okay.” My voice had dropped to a rasp.

“If I think there are mice in my kitchen, eating my protein bars, I can install a camera and a motion sensor and look into the situation. You follow?”