“I’d say it’s good to be seen, but it’s not,” said George, looking at me steadily. “Just how crazy are you?”

“On a scale of one to ten?” I bit back a laugh. “Crazy enough that we’re having this conversation. How’s that for a starter?”

“Can you function?” She leaned forward, bracing her elbows against her knees. It was such a familiar gesture that my chest tightened, making it hard to breathe. “The way I see it, this is either where you man up and stop letting yourself freak out, or where you admit that you’re too cracked to do the job and hand things over to somebody else. It’s your call. You’re the one who isn’t actually dead.”

I winced a little at the word “dead.” “Can you not—?”

“Can I not what? Call myself dead? It’s true, you dumb-ass. You’re talking to me because I represent the part of you that still has a fucking clue how bad things are going to get. You’ve been fucking around since Tate decided to play martyr, and I’m tired of it. The team needs you. I need you. You can either step up, or you can step down, but you can’t keep treading water like this.”

She would have gotten better, whispered Kelly.

“Be quiet,” I muttered.

“You’re only saying that because you know I’m right,” said George implacably. Apparently, the voices in my head couldn’t hear each other. That was just another slice of crazy pie. “God, you never could take an honest critique. You would never have made it as a Newsie.”

“Then it’s a good thing I never tried to.” My knees were shaking. I sagged back against the counter on my side of the van, resting my weight on my hands. It was as much to keep myself from trying to grab hold of my hallucination as it was to keep from falling over. “How do you expect me to step up for something like this? This wasn’t the plan.”

“No, the plan was to make me do it.” She looked at me solemnly, alien eyes wide and grave in that familiar face. “We always knew one of us was going to be finishing things alone. Maybe we didn’t know why, exactly, but we always knew this would happen ect how.” Her solemnity broke, replaced by the half smile that meant she didn’t want to be as amused as she was. “I have to admit, even when I was being self-important, I never thought they’d put ‘assassinated to conceal a massive political conspiracy’ on my Wall entry. I always figured it’d be something less… I don’t know. Something less your department.”