“Yes, we are,” the body agreed.
Con flinched and stumbled backward. Looking around, she saw she wasn’t in Virginia any longer. This was her old bedroom back in Lanesboro. Mr. Bob, the stuffed bear that had kept her safe during storms since before she could remember, sat serenely on her pillow. Through the floorboards, she could hear her mother downstairs in the kitchen listening to gospel radio.
“You’re not real,” Con said. “You can’t be.”
“Neither are you,” the body replied, except now it was Con when she’d been a little girl. “Do you understand that now?”
Con nodded, feeling the sting of tears on her cheeks. All the things she remembered, this was who had actually done them. Not her. “What happened?”
“We died. That’s all,” the girl explained. “It doesn’t matter how.”
“I’m not dead,” Con said without conviction.
“But you should be. Deep down, you know that.”
God help her, she did. “I’m scared.”
“I know, but it will be better this way. It’s peaceful, I promise. Don’t you want to feel at peace again?”
Con nodded. She was so tired.
“But you have to be quick. This may be our only chance,” the girl said.
“How?”
“There,” the girl said, pointing to the floor by the window. “The broken glass.”
Con picked up a shard, dimly wondering why there would be broken glass on her bedroom floor.
“There was a storm,” the girl said. “The tree outside broke the window. Momma must have missed some of the glass when she swept up.”
That made sense. Bad storms rolled through Lanesboro all the time. Even Mr. Bob was nodding in agreement, and he loved her the most. Con looked down at her wrist.
“You know what to do,” the girl said. “We belong together.”
That jarred Con out of her stupor. She dropped the broken glass. Get out of here. Get out now.
“No,” the girl wailed, although already it was turning back into a cadaver. “You’re not real. You’re nothing.”
Con fled down the hall, the hallucination fading with each step. On the landing, she crashed into a wall, but somehow she managed not to trip and fall down the stairs. She heard something clatter to the ground, but she didn’t stop to see what it was. She burst through the screen door into the sunshine, hoping the fresh air would wash the smell of that room away, but it was in her head now and she would never forget it.
Her stomach kicked again, and she stumbled into the tall grass and retched until her body grudgingly accepted there was nothing left. Then she slipped gratefully to her knees and rolled onto her side. She lay there panting, listening to the lazy thrum of crickets. A red-and-black ladybug climbed halfway up a leaf before flying away. It seemed real enough, but then so had the girl up in the bedroom. Dr. Fenton had said that Con’s condition would worsen, but she hadn’t said anything about her hallucinations turning homicidal. She needed to get back to the car where her pills were.
In the distance, she heard the sound of voices. She was still so disoriented that, at first, she didn’t register them as real. It wasn’t until a pair of men appeared from around the side of the house that she snapped out of it. Both wore boots, green cargo pants, and tactical vests similar to the one she’d found in her dad’s old footlocker when she was nine. Her mother had whaled on her when she’d caught Con wearing it. At their belts were sidearms.
It was her first time seeing him in daylight, but Con recognized the taller man instantly—the driver of the SUV outside her old apartment building that first night. The same one who’d shown up at the Glass House when she’d gone to talk to Jasper. She’d know his cragged, pockmarked face anywhere. How had he tracked her here? She’d only been in Virginia for a few hours. Unless Pockmark worked for Gaddis and this was all part of some elaborate setup.
Easing herself onto her stomach, Con prayed that the grass was thick enough to hide her. At the back door, the two men stopped and conferred quietly. Eventually, the younger man disappeared inside the house, leaving her alone with Pockmark. He stepped away from the house in her general direction. Con flattened herself against the ground and held her breath. He toggled his LFD, asking for updates. The answers didn’t appear to make him happy.
“Keep looking,” he barked.
The younger man returned.
“And?” Pockmark asked.
“Clear, but someone was definitely here. And recently. I’ve got fresh vomit in the hallway outside the bedroom.”