As Dead As It Gets

“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 ru

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?”

“I think so,” I said.

“Or I can set out some poison and mousetraps and take care of the situation. Understand?”

“I understand,” I said.

“Poor mice,” Lydia whispered.

“I don’t look into things,” Agent Hasan said. “I take care of things. Now, if you know something about Kendra and Ashleen, and you think we should talk, I would really appreciate it if you could say so right now.”

“No!” I said. “No, I just wanted to bring it to your attention.”

“All right, then,” she said. “Because if you have any special reason to suspect paranormal activity, I need to know so that I can come over to Surrey and deal with it.”

It hit me that it wasn’t just the laughing white light that would be caught in Agent Hasan’s mousetrap. It would be Lydia. And me.

Because having supernatural eyes made me a supernatural freak, too.

“I don’t,” I said. “I don’t have a reason.”

“Then we don’t have anything else to talk about, do we?” she asked.

“Nope,” I said. “Nothing. Thanks.”

“You’re welcome, Alexis.”

I hung up and sat back, staring into the rain.

“Who is that woman?” Lydia asked. “She talks like a mafia hit man.”

“Close enough,” I said.

“What does she do?”

“She’s the one who locked Kasey up for ten months,” I said.

“Wow,” Lydia said. “You’d end up in a padded room.”

“And you’d end up in the gray void,” I said. “And to her, it would be a job well done.”

Lydia gave me a wary look and vanished.

IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN the last thing in the universe I felt like doing, but when the bell rang after school on the following Monday, I took my camera and reported to the Wingspan office for the Student Council shoot.

As I put my hand on the doorknob, everything hit me at once: dizziness, confusion, hope, misery—a veritable smoothie of conflicting emotions.

Just be professional, I told myself. I’d seen Carter. I’d talked to him. How bad could it be?

But when I walked into the studio I saw exactly how bad it could be.

Carter and the other three officers were standing together, talking about some student government issue, which would have been fine—if Zoe hadn’t been hanging off of Carter’s arm like an overprotective purple-haired poodle.

She glared at me, but I was distracted by Marley Chen, who came and stood next to me. Marley was the features editor—basically my partner on all things yearbook-related. She had long, straight black hair, and most of her clothes were vintage. She acted like an air-headed Valley girl, but having worked with her a few times, I knew she was the second smartest person (behind Elliot, of course—no one was as smart as Elliot) on the yearbook staff. Maybe I was deluding myself, but I felt like we were becoming almost friends.

“Hi, guys,” she said to the Student Council officers. “Give us a minute to get set up, and then we’ll start.”

I went through to the adjoining classroom that the Wingspan staff used as a studio. Marley and Elliot came in while I was slipping my camera onto the tripod.

“Why is she here?” Marley whispered. “This is only for officers. She’s just a class rep!”

“I don’t get what he sees in her,” Elliot said simply, pushing up the sleeves of her NYU hoodie.

I locked the camera in place.

“Not to mention,” Marley said, “that it’s completely juvenile to drag your girlfriend to a yearbook photo shoot.”

“Agreed,” Elliot said, casting a disdainful look toward the doorway.

“Um…thanks, guys.” I was taken aback by this unexpected show of loyalty.

Marley sensed it. She shrugged. “You’re part of the Wingspan now, Alexis. We look out for our own.”