Sleep No More
Page 56

“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.