“Hey!” The single word sliced through my shallow sleep.
I groaned. My whole body was stiff, chilled to the bone, and I ached everywhere.
Something nudged my leg—something that felt an awful lot like toes. “Hey! Wake up!” someone said. The owner of the toes, I assumed. The voice was female, and familiar.
The events of the previous night and the reason I was so cold and uncomfortable came flooding back. “Kimi?” I said, voice rough. I cracked open my eyelids, raising a hand to guard my eyes from the painful burst of sunlight peeking around the neighboring building.
Kimi stood in the doorway of the sliding glass door, one foot in her apartment, the other nudging my leg. Her hair was up in a loose bun, and her sweats looked oh so cozy compared to my damp clothes. Her arms were raised partway and her hands were outstretched, fingers curled around the handle of a Taser that was aimed directly at me.
“Who the hell are you,” she said, “and how do you know my name?” Her brow furrowed, and she shook her head, planting her raised foot back on the hardwood floor inside. “And how the hell did you get up here?”
I sat up, joints stiff and moving slowly, and scooted my butt back in the chair, rubbing my face with frozen fingers. “It’s me, Kimi,” I said, irritation lacing my voice. What was she playing at?
“Me means nothing to me,” she said. “I don’t know you.” She shook the Taser for emphasis. “Now, get up and get out of here, or I swear to God I will use this on you.”
I held my hands up, palms to her and fingers spread. Slowly, I stood. “Kimi, what the fuck? It’s me, Kat . . .”
She stared at me, her face a mask of confusion. The faint wrinkle between her eyebrows deepened, and she shook her head. “But—but you look . . .”
Oh, right—the disguise. I’d forgotten I was wearing a stranger’s face. No wonder she didn’t recognize me. I didn’t look like me. “Magic,” I told her. It was the easiest explanation and, depending on your understanding of the universe, more or less true.
Kimi lowered the Taser, and I took that as a cue to lower my hands as well. “At least your voice sounds like you,” she said. “I might not believe it’s actually you, otherwise . . .”
I pushed the hair out of my face with one hand, the thin, blonde strands feeling foreign. “Sorry if I scared you. I just needed somewhere to crash.”
“No, it’s fine,” Kimi said with a wave of her Taser. “Just a minor heart attack.” Her eyes skimmed the length of my body. “Did you stay out here all night?”
I nodded. “Yeah.”
“Jesus. You must be freezing.” She took a backward step, gesturing for me to follow her into the apartment. “Come on, get in here. Take a shower or bath or whatever you want to warm up. I’ll make some coffee. Are you hungry?”
“Yes to all?” I said, feeling like a stray dog as I followed her in.
I wasn’t usually a fan of baths, but the bone-deep chill made me crave one. The hot kind, not the icy kind. If I never took another ice bath, it would be too soon.
I soaked in Kimi’s claw-foot tub for at least a half an hour, an oversized mug of coffee on the tile floor nearby. The sounds of bacon crackling in a pan on the stove in the kitchen was just audible through the door, creating the most delicious anticipation. The water felt so good that I could’ve stayed in there for hours, but the lure of bacon was undeniable.
When the water started to cool, I figured it was time to get out. I stood and dried off while the tub drained. Kimi had lent me her bathrobe and offered me some clothes, but she was very much on the petite side, and nothing she owned would fit me. I didn’t even try. I’d tossed my things into the washer while the tub was filling up. In an hour I would have fresh, clean, dry clothes. Until then, the fluffy bathrobe would do just fine. I cinched the robe’s belt tight around my waist and pulled on a pair of Kimi’s socks, then bent over to wrap the towel around my hair.
Feeling like a whole new person, I left the bathroom. The smell of bacon smacked me in the face as soon as I opened the bathroom door, and I was drooling immediately. I crossed the vast living area, the high ceilings making the space feel cavernous, and made my way to the kitchen.
“Do you like pancakes?” Kimi asked. She was standing at the stove, spatula in hand. “I hope so, because I’m already making them.” She flashed me a smile over her shoulder, then turned back to her cooking.
“Dude, I will eat anything you put on a plate at this point . . .” I headed for the coffeepot, mug in hand. It was nearly empty. “But, yeah, I’m a big fan of pancakes.” I refilled my mug and wrapped the fingers of both hands around its almost-too-hot surface, then turned, resting my butt against the edge of the counter. “I buzzed to get in last night, but you must’ve been out. Late night?”
Kimi shook her head. “I sleep with earplugs.” She glanced behind her at the rest of the apartment. “The windows here suck. They do literally nothing to keep the outside noise outside.”
I raised my mug, taking a sip of steaming coffee. “I guess that’s the price you pay for a sweet spot like this,” I said.
Kimi laughed. “It’s the price you pay when you don’t actually pay that much for a place like this,” she corrected. “So . . .” She flipped the three pancakes on the griddle. “What’s going on?”
“What do you mean?”
She faced me, expression skeptical. “You look like Miss Teen USA, and you spent the night on my balcony,” she said. “So cut the BS, Kat. What’s up?”
I returned her stare, considering what exactly to tell her. Not everything, obviously. I certainly wasn’t about to admit that I’d crashed on her balcony because I was avoiding Nik. “I need a favor,” I finally said, thinking through the bullshit I was about to spew her way, surprised to find that it was actually a good idea. It worked with what I’d seen in the latest echo, and it just plain old made sense. My best work tended to be when I improvised, so I really shouldn’t have been surprised. “Your sister,” I said, “she goes to Newport, right?”
“Yeah,” Kimi said. “We established that yesterday. Why?”
I tapped the nail of my index finger against the side of the mug, the ceramic making a faint clink. “Do you think she’d be able to bring me to her school as, say, a cousin visiting from out of town?” If I could slip into the school relatively unnoticed during the school day tomorrow, the shadow souls would be too distracted by the students and I could dispatch them before they had a chance to attack me. I might not even need to try the whole stuff-them-in-the-mirrors tactic.
Kimi cleared the three pancakes off the griddle, stacking them on a plate beside the stove, then ladled fresh batter onto the hot surface. “This has something to do with all that weird stuff going on there, doesn’t it?” She glanced at me sidelong. “Is it related to your people?”
“Sort of, but not really. It’s complicated . . .” I set my mug down. “Remember how I told you to tell your sister to play hooky for a couple days?”
Kimi nodded, returning the ladle to the bowl of pancake batter.
“Well, something really awful is going to happen there,” I said. “And soon. But, if your sister can get me into the school during the school day, I think I have a way to stop it.”
Kimi leaned her hip against the edge of the counter, concern shining in her eyes. “Is Nina in danger?”
“Every single kid at that school is in danger,” I told her. “But the thing that’s going to happen—the bad thing—that won’t happen until nighttime, so it’s safe enough for her to go to school tomorrow . . . just so long as she’s gone before dark.” I took a single step toward Kimi. “I swear I wouldn’t ask you to do this if it wasn’t important, Kimi. People are going to die. A lot of them.”
Kimi’s eyes opened wide, showing the whites all the way around her hazel irises. “Shit. Yeah, okay.” She nodded numbly. “It shouldn’t be too hard to get you in there,” she said. “Our parents are out of town, so they won’t be around to ask any questions, and Nina worships me. She’ll do pretty much anything I say.”
“Awesome,” I said.
Kimi inhaled, holding her breath for a few seconds. “I’m going to have to tell her who you are and why you’re there,” she finally said. “She knows me too well—she can tell when I’m lying, and she’ll only agree to do this if I’m being honest with her.”
“Fine with me,” I said. I reached for my mug and brought it up to my lips, taking a sip. “So long as she doesn’t spread the word to all her friends, feel free to tell her anything you want.”
“Alright,” Kimi said, turning back to the stove. “We’ll eat, and then we’ll head over to my parents’ house.”
I nodded. “It’s a plan.”