“I don’t want anything bad to happen to her. I just wish she’d treat you better. Sometimes she does, and other times, I want to shake her and tell her to smarten up. I don’t like seeing her mouthing off to you when you’ve been nothing but nice to her.”
I walked down the hall.
Derek exhaled behind me. “Okay, yeah, Simon would say that’s kind of ironic, me not liking someone else snapping at you.”
“I didn’t say a word.” I let him squirm for a second, before glancing back. “It’s different. I know that. And I know you’re trying to tone it down. Occasionally even succeeding.”
I moved into the living room. “I should have told Tori about your dad. It would have been easier if it came from me. I knew that. I just . . . I chickened out. We’re getting along so much better, and I didn’t want to screw that up.”
I stopped in front of the window. “Can you get her trail from here?”
“Yeah.” He knelt, then glanced up at me. “Whatever happened, it’s not your—”
“Let’s just find her, okay?”
We could deal with my guilt later. I’d certainly had enough practice dealing with it, after killing Dr. Davidoff.
I didn’t say that, but he knew I was thinking it, and the look on his face—that mix of pain and anger and helplessness— reminded me why I was crazy about him. He wasn’t always the nicest guy. He wasn’t always the most romantic boyfriend. He wasn’t about to write me poetry or bring me flowers anytime soon. But that look said more about his feelings for me than all the poems and flowers in the world.
I crouched and kissed him, whispering, “I’ll be okay. But thanks.”
He mumbled something, gruff and unintelligible. I started to stand. He squeezed my knee, then bent to pick up Tori’s trail.
She’d come in that window, as I thought. There wasn’t any blood on the floor, though, so no sign she’d hurt herself badly crawling through. Derek followed her scent into the front room. As
soon as I walked through the doorway, I saw the hole. Not a big one. Barely two feet wide, the rotted floor freshly cracked, bits of sawdust still scattered around. Fresh blood glistened on a jagged piece of broken wood.
I raced to it. Derek grabbed the back of my shirt when I leaned over the hole. Below, I saw a pale figure, arms and legs askew. Tori.
I ripped from Derek’s grasp and ran toward the kitchen, where I’d seen a basement door.
He caught me before I reached the doorway. Didn’t stop me. Just grabbed a handful of my shirt again, slowing me down.
“Be careful,” he said. “The floor’s rotted. The stairs—”
“—will be rotted too. I know.”
Taking my time going down those basement stairs was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. I kept leaning and bending and straining, trying to see Tori. Finally, Derek scooped me up and lowered me over the side, then let me jump to the floor.
“Go,” he said. “Just be—”
“Careful. I know.”
I ran across the room, my gaze on the floor so that I wouldn’t trip over anything. There wasn’t much down here—vandals had stuck to the upper floors. I was almost to the section under the hole when someone stepped in front of me.
I let out a yelp and stopped short. There stood an old woman with long, matted white hair. She was dressed in a frilly nightgown better suited to a five-year-old.
“What are you doing here?” she said, advancing on me, forefinger extended, yellowing nail headed for my eye. “Get out of my house.”
I stumbled back—right into Derek.
“It’s a ghost, Chloe.” He recognized my reaction, even if I no longer shrieked every time I saw one. “That means you can go”—he put his hands around my waist, lifted me, and walked forward—“right through it.”
The old woman let out a screech and a string of curses.
“This is my house,” she screeched. “Rebecca Walker. My name is on the deed. I still own it.”
I ignored her and raced over to where Tori lay sprawled on the floor.