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Carter shrugged. “Anytime.”
We pulled out onto the road without any trouble. Lydia sat in the backseat, her face pressed up against the glass.
“So,” Carter said. “Any chance you want to tell me anything?”
“About what?” The words came out automatically. My standard fear response. Deny, deny, deny.
“About anything,” he said. “Or not.”
“Um,” I said.
“It’s okay. You called me. That’s enough. All I wanted, Lex…” He cleared his throat. “All I ever wanted was for you to call me when you needed help.”
Elliot’s words played in my head like an audio recording. People have to earn your trust.
I stared at Carter’s profile as he watched the road.
And I thought:
You came when I called you.
You came without knowing why you had to come.
You said you’d always be there when I need you, and you meant it.
“It’s a ghost,” I said. “It’s another ghost.”
I told him everything, start to finish. I was getting used to saying the words now, and I found that things I’d stumbled on when I was talking to Megan and Kasey came out easily. No matter what Agent Hasan said, I couldn’t blame myself for this. I couldn’t present the situation as if it were my fault. I could have moments of weakness, I could even invite trouble for myself, but that wasn’t what I’d done this time.
I didn’t do anything wrong.
I was only trying to help.
Carter listened, not as shocked as I would have expected him to be. But then I realized—he, like me, and Megan, and my sister, had been through this twice already. He believed in ghosts and he knew how dangerous they could be.
“So, it’s chasing other girls away from you,” he said.
“Away from me and Jared.”
“And it’s punishing them if they try to come between you.”
“Yeah.”
“But why is it attacking you?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I mean, it’s not just attacking me. It’s kind of obsessed with me. It comes to my house and sleeps in my bedroom.”
“Jared thinks she’s trying to get you guys to be soul mates?” He couldn’t hide the distaste in his voice.
“Yeah.”
“Then maybe…what if she’s not really attacking you?” he asked. “What if she’s trying to get you closer to him?”
I sat back.
The day at the nature preserve, when my car had spun out of control—
It hadn’t spun randomly. It started by trying to turn left instead of right.
Because Jared had turned left?
And on New Year’s Eve, when Laina came after me in the field…it had driven me right into Jared’s arms.
I tried to remember all the other times she’d shown up.
There was the night we quarreled in the car after Ashleen’s party. And the night Jared found out I was taking yearbook pictures—with Carter. It was like she was showing up to bully me, or punish me.…
And those long stretches of time when there was no sign of Laina…
They were stretches when things were going well between Jared and me.
“I think you’re right,” I said. “She’s not trying to kill me. She’s just trying to get me to go to him.”
Now that Jared was on board with that plan, what hope did I have?
Halfway into town, Carter glanced at his gas gauge. “Sorry, I need to stop and get gas. You can stay in the car. Want anything from inside?”
“No,” I said. “But I have to pee.”
He parked and started the gas pumping while I went around to the back of the building. The light was on and the door was shut, so I couldn’t tell if the bathroom was in use or not. I took a step back and looked around. The property butted up against a densely wooded area.
And then, through the trees—
I saw a flash of bright light.
Laina?
Did that mean my sister was out there?
“Kasey?” I called.
The light was deep within the woods, but I could see it moving through the trees.
I glanced back at the car. Carter had gone inside. If I stopped to tell him where I was going, I might lose sight of the light.
“What are you doing?” Lydia asked, appearing next to me.
“I see her,” I said. “I see Laina.”
Lydia stared into the woods. “You really think your sister is here, of all places? What are the odds of that?”
It didn’t matter what the odds were. “What am I going to do, Lyd, not go?”
I tore across the grass and into the trees, trying to follow the light. After I’d gone a hundred feet or so, it faded from my view—or got so far ahead that I couldn’t see it.
I paused, panting, and looked around.
“Call Carter,” Lydia said. “He’ll come help you look.”
Right. I still had 8A’s cell phone in my pocket. I reached down to grab it.
But I didn’t get the chance.
The ball of white light came at me like a tiger lunging at its prey, and everything went white.
And then it went black.
KEEP GOING.
The words faded into my consciousness like the first glow of a sunrise.
I heard crunching, and it took a moment for me to identify the sound: footsteps. Feet walking on leaves.
My feet?
I tried to open my eyes, but they were weighed down by an all-consuming heaviness. My lungs, too, seemed leaden and reluctant. I heard ragged breathing—my breathing?—and felt a tearing pain in my chest.
If I concentrated, I could seek out the awareness of my feet, feel the texture of the forest floor beneath them. But my concentration was slippery—as quickly as I found it, the awareness slid out of my grasp as if it had been nothing more than a shadow.
Run! It was an order, and my body was obeying.
The footsteps came faster and faster, and then suddenly I seemed to be floating. There was a stu
I opened my eyes.
I was lying on the ground, surrounded by trees.
When I tried to put weight on my wrists to push myself up, a blazing pain shot through both of them. But it faded after a moment, and I pressed up off the ground and sat on my heels.
Keep moving.
My thoughts came like a thick, dark liquid slowly pouring out of a bottle. As soon as enough of them had lined up back to back to back in my head, I realized that something was very wrong.
My hands, feeling detached from my body, plucked at the silky layers of purple fabric on my body.
The dress. I was wearing it.
I must be dreaming.
I got to my feet, and suddenly my left hand was filled with a bouquet of yellow roses.
And I was walking. The trunks of trees passed by me, each one leaving a series of vertical echoes imprinted on my vision.
Where am I going?
I hated it—this helpless wandering, this sense of dread, of looking for someone, endlessly searching.
Was I ru
From Laina?
No, no, it was the other way around—I was looking for someone.…
For Jared.
I have to find him.
It was wrong, but I couldn’t make myself stop. I had to keep searching for him. And the only way to search was by walking.
So I walked.
The night sky sank into a deep indigo. The air cooled around me.
And I kept walking.
Gradually I grew thirsty. Surely I could stop somewhere, rest, soothe my parched throat.
No. Don’t stop.
I didn’t stop.
More time passed—how long? An hour? Two hours? My legs burned. I couldn’t even feel my toes anymore. My feet were numb from the cold and from the constant pricking of pine needles.
“Please,” I said. “I’m so tired. I need water.”
I couldn’t stop, though.
It wasn’t that I tried and failed—it was that I didn’t even know how to try. Some force was pushing me onward, farther into the deep, cold night.
Worst. Dream. Ever.
After maybe an hour of unanswered pleading and babbling, I decided to save my voice and my cracking throat. My thoughts drifted away while my body drifted ever forward.