19

Bobby

Saturday: 8:29 PM

Jeremy Glass might be the strangest guy I’d ever met. One minute, he was mocking me, treating me like he’d never met anyone dumber in his life. The next, it was as if a curtain had gone up and there was a totally different person standing there. Someone I could maybe hate just a little bit less.

I didn’t know if I could ever be friends with Jeremy Glass. I still wanted to kick him in his metal shin. But something in his eyes told me that he was a lot tougher than he looked. And maybe his smarts went further than his big mouth.

I placed my palm in his, and Jeremy Glass and I shook hands.

“Can you promise me something?” I asked.

“Depends.” Jeremy flashed me a lopsided grin.

“Will you please not tell Gabe about what happened tonight? I don’t want her to know that there’s a—that I’m a ticking time bomb. If I—if something happens to me, she can deal with it then. I don’t want her to have to worry so much.”

He stared at me for a beat without the trace of a smile. “If you like. Though I think your girl is tough enough to deal. Plus she’ll rip your head off if she finds out.”

“But she’s not going to find out. Because you’re going to keep your mouth shut. And if I’m—if I fail—well—I won’t know the difference.”

“If that’s what you want, Bobby,” he said softly. “But I think you’re underestimating Gabe.”

I closed my eyes and sucked in a breath, hoping I wasn’t making the biggest mistake of my possibly really short life by trusting Jeremy Glass.

I got up and started pacing again, then stopped and pressed my face to the window. The city sprawled below in a geometric grid of light. I couldn’t help but thinking it looked a lot like a web. And I felt a lot like a fly. I wondered where the spider was.

I couldn’t panic. I had to think. “I’m ready to tell you what I saw when I was—seeing stuff. If you’re ready to hear it.”

I told him how Brittany had been attacked in the limo and then, later, the church. Her transparent form watched us as closely as if we were broadcasting the final minutes of the Super Bowl.

I didn’t know what happened to her after she’d been dragged to the basement, but it was clear her attacker had killed her at some point.

And that it was the same person who’d attacked Marisa.

“What?” Jeremy exploded from the couch. “Why didn’t you say the person who killed the ghost girl was the same person who attacked Marisa?”

“I was sort of semi-conscious at the time.”

“Damn it,” Jeremy was up tugging at his hair, his limp more pronounced than ever. “Fuck. We really have to do something.”

“Maybe we should just go to the police.”

“You’re not thinking, Bobby. Marisa will have to testify. Identify this creep. And your evidence is worthless. Hey—yeah—I’m your favorite neighborhood freak. I can tell your fortune by touching your toilet seat. I mean, only Agent Reston knows what to do with your evidence. We’ve got to work with her. It’s our only option.”

I let out a breath. I wanted to disagree. Come up with a better plan. But there was none.

“So what do you suggest?”

“We return to the scene of the crime. Right now that’s all we have.”

“And we can see if there’s anything else there that gives us info?” I felt queasy. I was saying the words, but the idea of going under again terrified me. “What about Brendan Wavestone’s ring?” I added.

“I don’t know, Bobby, you tell me. Did the ring place Wavestone at the crime scene? Otherwise what we have is a lost and found object. I guess we can bring it back to him…since your girlfriend has an in with the guy.”

“We’ve got to go to the church, don’t we?” How did I know that Agent’s Reston’s antidote would hold? What if I was immune to it and I was lost forever in a vision?

“Yeah,” said Jeremy. He flashed me a sad kind of look. It was at that moment I decided that maybe I really could trust Jeremy Glass. And maybe, with his help, I had a fair chance of surviving the weekend.