Release me. Now. Or I ...........'" "Yes, you are," hissed Thalia. "We have to get out of here, fast. Can I call for a car? I can't stay here, I'm getting that terrible sense of wrongness." "And I'm getting that weird image. I'm going outside." The girl grabbed her purse, and together they left the house. It took only a few steps to feel the cold, and then it was like they'd plunged into the Arctic Ocean. Thalia screamed as her toes burned against the frozen surface of the sidewalk. It wasn't ice, but frost; an icy rain had fallen that had crystallized as it struck the ground. The sky was even colder, a white, cloudless sheet that made it seem more like winter in the Antarctic than New Orleans. Everything smelled of snow, like the winter of her childhood. She was running, barefoot and shivering, and she could hear Thalia behind her, howling, screaming her name. Something told her she wasn't leaving this until her toes froze like pickles. She felt another scream building inside her, felt the hot stream of liquid running down her leg. _My dress!_ The material that covered her body was made of special fibers, and she had only learned how to do this when she got to high school. In sixth grade, she'd learned that when they asked, she'd be able to make a dress from the fibers. It worked by pulling them apart and forming them into different shapes, like a spider weaving its web. She couldn't help herself now; she started giggling, feeling that crazy feeling she'd felt when she was in school, when the teacher had to pick on somebody to keep the class in line. _Go ahead_ , she thought. _Pick on me. Do whatever you want. I've had enough._ Thalia screamed again, and now something was _tweeting_ on the pavement in front of her. Thalia was turning, and she could hear her feet scraping the ground. She knew the girl was running away, so she wasn't surprised when she stopped. She caught her breath and tried to get her dress off, but her hands wouldn't move. She couldn't even open them. She screamed, her eyes rolling back in her head, and then it was over. She was standing, frozen to the ground. "Thalia, wake up!" she called. Then she realized that Thalia wasn't there; she'd gone, and the girl had left her. _I'm_ _all alone_ , she thought, and then she felt something, just out of her reach. "Thalia?" she called. "Thalia, can you hear me? Please answer me. Don't leave me out here." And then she felt the ice, so thick she thought she might sink right through it. She could have run, but she was afraid to. She had never felt anything like this before, and her heart was pounding, pounding, but there was something, far away, something pulling, like she had to go. She tried to move her feet, but they were as heavy as blocks of granite. She tried to move, to get away, but she could only bend her knees, bending over. Thalia's name was in her ears, and the sky wasn't moving, not even when lightning split the sky in two, leaving a deep crack that stretched from one edge of the universe to the other. "Don't," she said, "please don't leave me." The next thing she knew, her eyes were open, and she could see, she could breathe, and she could see the street, but that image she saw wasn't the one she knew, it was the snow under the asphalt, sparkling, sparkling like diamonds. _Go home_ , she heard herself think. _Go home. Don't leave me._ And then the air screamed, and there was a rushing feeling, like a scream without words, and all at once, it was as if she were in another world, another galaxy, as if she were in a place she had never seen. It was the wrong place. There was something she couldn't see. There was something she couldn't hear, or feel, or understand, and she tried to look, but there was something to stop her, something that was there, but it wasn't there. And then she heard someone screaming, and it wasn't Thalia, and it wasn't her, and it wasn't anybody, and it wasn't any sound she'd ever heard, and when she tried to think about it, she couldn't remember. And she wanted to ask someone, but the sky was spinning. The sky was spinning and falling and falling and spinning and she screamed. And then she heard the voice, she could feel it was the same voice, and she screamed and fell, and then she heard the voice again, and again she heard it, and the voice was saying something, and the voice was laughing, but it wasn't the voice she wanted to hear, and she felt something, a voice, and there was the sky, falling and spinning, and she was falling and there was the sky, and it was spinning and falling, and she was falling into it, but it was spinning and spinning, falling. The earth was spinning, spinning, falling. And falling and spinning and falling, and spinning. And spinning. And spinning. And spinning. And spinning. ## Epilogue **D** o you know why I asked you to go with me?" Vicki hadn't, not really, and with a little shock she realized she'd never told him that her father had died. Had been killed. He was talking about the man who had been hit by a car while he was walking across the street. "Who would do such a thing?" "You know," he said. "Your old man. My old man." "I didn't think it was him." "You're damn right he was. He wanted to get his picture in the papers, you know, show what a good person he was. That's how we all want to be, right? Show them that we're so perfect, that we're God's gift to the world. What do you want to bet he's the kind of guy who works hard at being just that, so that he doesn't have to deal with any of the hard stuff in his life? Maybe he was on a long plane flight, or visiting some relatives he didn't get along with, or didn't have to wait tables at one of those places, you know, where you eat. Maybe he stopped by to talk to that pretty girl who works at the bookstore. You know, the one that's always asking you to buy those books on crystals and how to improve your lot in life. He's a nice guy, but he didn't want to be seen as a nice guy, so he did it to make it look like he didn't have anything to do with his death. It was right after you called him and asked him to stay away from us that he got killed." "I never called him," she said. "Of course you did. Your mom told me that you asked him to stay away from us." "She doesn't know what she's talking about." He shook his head. "Listen, we can't just assume your dad has been playing games. There are other explanations. He was mugged, or mugged someone else, or maybe there was some sort of mix-up with who your dad is. The truth is out there, probably. I'm sure we'll find out what happened to him when we go to the coroner and see what we can get out of the medical examiner." "This isn't a game," she said. "And if you're trying to trick me into thinking this isn't a game, this is it. I told you that you couldn't come here." "I have something you need to see," he said. "I'm pretty sure you're in trouble." "What kind of trouble? And what did you do? The whole plan just fell apart, and I thought we were going to get away." "You have to let me explain. No way you get in trouble because you were following me." "You left me." "I didn't know what to do. I knew you wouldn't follow me unless you were sure there was something in it for you. And I had to get the evidence, because if you have this thing with Thalia, I don't want to mess that up. That's why you have to let me explain. Otherwise you'll get in trouble. You know how that goes." She turned and walked away, but she was frightened of what he'd do if he found her. She wasn't going to go out and try to meet him somewhere else, because she wasn't stupid enough to think that he would be waiting for her. This was his fault, and if he didn't want to talk to her, she would wait for him. If he wanted to talk to her, she'd talk to him. She went inside. She was glad they'd put a sheet on her father, because she wasn't sure what he'd do. She went into the kitchen and called to her mother.