Sleep No More
Page 25

At the sound of a door closing, I look up. “He’s in,” I say, breathing hard. “Did we do it?”
“Probably,” Smith says. “But you know how fickle the future can be. We hope that when he decides to go out on his own, he’ll change his mind.”
“Now what?”
“Pull the curtain back over your second sight—the one you use when you fight visions. It’ll kick us both out.”
I concentrate on blackening my visionary world and almost instantly I’m back at the library, sitting across from Smith, peering at the focus stone, his fingers on my temples. “Holy crap!” I say, pulling away from him and letting the necklace clatter to the table. “Did that seriously just happen?”
Smith looks at me with one eyebrow raised.
I move my arms and legs, straighten my back. I was absolutely exhausted a few seconds ago. But now I don’t feel tired. The bone-crushing weariness I can recall so clearly is nothing but a memory.
Because it wasn’t physically me—just like Smith said.
“Did it work?” I ask.
“Did you really change what’s going to happen? Yes,” Smith says with certainty as he picks up the necklace and slips it into the little velvet case. “You’ve worn yourself out though; you won’t be able to fight visions off for a couple of days.”
“I haven’t been anyway,” I say, too mentally tired to realize I shouldn’t admit that.
Lie to someone who was just inside my head? I shake the thought away; it feels wrong on too many levels.
“That’s probably good,” he says. “If the universe sends you more visions that have anything to do with the murders, you’re going to want to see them.”
“Why aren’t you tired?”
“I didn’t do anything. You have to understand, Charlotte, I’m like a . . . an instruction manual. I know what to do, but I don’t actually have any power on my own. I’m useless without you.”
“So, is that it?” I ask as he rises.
“For now. You saved his life, don’t ever disregard that. But the murderer is still out there.”
“Do you think it’s all the same person?”
His brows furrow. “I’ve been over it a million times. Different methods, differences in the victims, and no . . . ‘signature,’ I guess you would call it.” He turns to me now. “But doesn’t it seem like it must be the same guy?”
I nod as he voices the same suspicion I’ve been harboring. That I suspect everyone in Coldwater has been.
“Maybe he’s a first-timer and hasn’t settled on a method yet. Maybe Bethany was an accident, even. Maybe he didn’t plan to kill her right then and there.” He shrugs and scuffs at a stained path on the carpet with one shoe. “But if it’s the same guy, there’s a good chance he’s going to kill again.”
“More after Jesse?” I say, and my gut clenches with a hundred fears at once. Another death. Another gruesome vision. Another strange session in my head like the one I just went through.
“If you get a foretelling of it, you have my number,” Smith says.
I nod and he starts to walk away. Then he stops—one hand on the study-room doorknob—turns back and asks me quietly, “Does he know?”
I startle. “Who?”
“The boy who helped you all those years ago?”
Linden. The story he doesn’t remember. The day I fell for him.
The day I caught Smith’s attention.
A burning wistfulness curls into my stomach and I whisper, “No.”
“That’s probably for the better. For everyone.” And then he’s through the door and walking away, blending in seamlessly with the sparse crowd of library patrons.
FOURTEEN
The next day, I wake up and rush to the television, but there’s nothing. For two more days, still nothing. By the morning of Christmas Eve, I’m starting to feel cautiously optimistic. I think we did it. We saved him. I saved him.
I don’t hear my mom up and moving around yet, so I lean against my pillows and pull up my comforter and let myself feel like everything’s okay for a few more minutes. I try to remember the dream I had last night. About Linden. It was a good dream; I can recall that much. Lights, music, dancing. But not much else. Unfortunately the harder I try to remember, the faster it slips away.
When I finally put on some thick socks and make my way to the kitchen, Mom greets me with a hug and the smell of dough baking. Each year we spend much of Christmas Eve day making dozens and dozens of cinnamon rolls. Dough and sugar from one end of the kitchen to the other. Then we pack the rolls into foil trays and take them around to the same list of neighbors and friends we’ve been delivering to since before my dad died. It was the first tradition we picked back up after the accident.
Seeing my mom up to her elbows in dough at our low kitchen counter brings back a hundred memories of doing exactly the same thing in previous years. I’ve been so caught up with murders and visions and Smith, I’m ready for some normalcy.
“Give me just a sec,” I say, and run back to my room to get dressed.
Several hours later—both of us covered in flour, dough, and sticky smears of frosting—my cell phone rings. We giggle as I try to wash my hands fast enough to answer the phone and not get it too messy.
I see the name LINDEN flash across the screen and my mirth melts away, replaced by something exponentially better.