He found me in the bathroom closest to my locker between first and second class.
“Kinda pervy, don’t you think?” I said when he drifted through the wall.
He looked around—all of the stall doors were open. “You’re alone.”
That was beside the point. I shrugged. “You were right, there is something big happening tomorrow night.”
“I told you!” He looked strangely excited. “All the campus ghosts are ready to join you. Larry in the cafeteria also haunts the hospital. He says there are some there who want to join in as well, especially when they found out you were involved. You got rid of a bully for them last month?”
Bent. He’d managed to get to the hospital because of the infection he’d left in Gage, who we ended up taking to the emergency room. What he’d done to Gage and the others wasn’t like what Noah had done to Wren. Theirs had looked like angry wounds. Other than the veins, my sister didn’t have a mark on her.
That I knew of.
I hadn’t heard from her since she sent me the text. I kept hoping she’d get in touch again. I reached out for her before going to bed last night, but all I’d gotten was a head rush, and I’d had to sit down for a minute until the world stopped spinning. Maybe I’d overdone it with the séance earlier.
Or maybe Wren was all kinds of messed up.
She wasn’t gone, though. She was still here, still close and we were still connected. Until that changed, I could be concerned about her, but I couldn’t afford to panic. I concentrated on Noah, and all my fear, anger and frustration went into that little box in my mind with his name on it. Whatever he had planned for us wouldn’t happen until tomorrow, so I still had time.
“I don’t know what is going to happen,” I told One-Shade. “But we believe a ghost named Noah McCrae is going to try to use the combined energy of the concert and Haven Crest to cross over. Permanently.”
He actually shuddered. “That would upset the balance. There’d be chaos.” His gaze locked with mine. “You’ve seen what happens when the rules are broken—bad things happen.”
I didn’t admit my ignorance by saying, “Rules? What rules? There are rules?” I just nodded. “I appreciate your help. I really do.”
He smiled. Then two girls walked in, chattering away to each other as though they were in their own private bubble, and One-Shade fled through the same wall he’d used to enter.
“Did you hear that Sarah and Mace broke up?” one of the girls—Beth was her name, I think—asked the other, whose name I didn’t remember.
“Ohmigod, yes. Oh, the things I would do to him if I got the chance!”
My eyebrows crept up my forehead.
“What are you looking at, freak?” Beth demanded.
It took a second for me to realize she was talking to me, because I was looking at the older man who had followed them into the bathroom. He stood behind the other girl—Lucy, that was her name—with his hand on her shoulder. I watched as that hand crept lower over her chest, settling over her breast. She shuddered. I didn’t blame her.
The man glanced up—right at me. He didn’t move his hand. In fact, he brought his other one to the party as well, smirking at me the whole time.
“Hey.” Beth snapped her fingers in my face. “I said what are you looking at?”
I pushed her aside. I was bigger than her, and I was stronger than most girls my age. She staggered into one of the stalls, books falling to the floor.
I didn’t apologize; I was too intent on Lucy and the man molesting her. “Who is he?” I demanded.
She actually looked frightened of me, which was good, because if she’d called me a freak as well, I probably would have knocked her out just so I could deal with her abuser.
“The old man that likes to touch you in ways he shouldn’t.”
Her face went white. “I don’t know what—”
Scowling, I looked her right in the eye. “Brown hair going gray. Blue eyes just like yours. Smarmy smile. Likes sweater vests. He’s standing right behind you. He’s the reason you feel cold, why sometimes you feel like you’re being touched when there’s no one there, and I’m willing to bet you dream about him and what he used to do to you. A lot. You thought it would stop when he died.”
A tear rolled down her cheek. “My uncle Clark,” she whispered. “Oh, my God, do you actually see him?”
“Blue shirt, gray sweater vest—argyle. Faded jeans and Top-Siders. Sound about right?”
She started crying harder. Uncle Clark removed his hands. He didn’t look so confident right then. And seeing her upset made him shrink back.
Beth—who had come out of the stall—put her arms around her crying friend. She looked at me with an expression that was half pissed off, half respectful. “It’s true what they say about you?”
“Most of it,” I replied. I pulled an iron ring off one of my fingers. It was just an old nail a guy named Chuck had hammered around a mandrel, but it was effective. I also pulled a Sharpie from my bag. “Come here,” I said.