“We already called them. They said they’d look into it.” I hear a muffled crackling, like Jezz might be standing beside a snapping bonfire. “But that’s all. They might be too late.”

“Where are you?”

Jezz’s voice gets even softer. “In the woods, out off County N. Near the Malcolm place.”

“What?” My brain fuzzes. “Jezz. What are you doing?”

“We’re just checking. Patrick’s with me.” Jezz murmurs. There’s more snapping. Now I realize that it’s the sound of their feet crunching on the forest floor. “And Sasha and Carson are out here somewhere. They’re going to go up to the front door and pretend their car broke down, and then while the old lady’s distracted, we’ll check the place.”

“Sasha and Carson?”

“I know. They’re asses. But they’re the only people we knew would definitely be in on this.”

“What do you think you’re going to do?” I ask. “Raid some old lady’s house?”

“Dude,” Jezz says, a little more loudly. “She has Frankie.”

My thoughts won’t line up. “We don’t know that for sure.”

I hear Patrick mutter something in the background. “Right,” says Jezz. “Plus, Sasha saw stalker girl loosening your wheel.”

The floor tilts under me. “What?”

“She was driving past your place that afternoon, and she saw Thea in your driveway, messing with your car.”

The floor tilts in the other direction. I’m barely staying upright.

Sasha could be lying, covering up for herself or for Carson. Or not.

How would Thea have known about the wheel if she hadn’t loosened it herself? Some psychic vision? Should I really believe that?

“I’ll come out there and help,” I say. But then I stop.

Thea is watching my house.

She said she would be. She’ll be here by now. I can practically feel her out there, her eyes staring at me from somewhere I can’t see.

There’s no way out. The Nissan’s right in the driveway, in clear view of the woods. Even if I sneak out a window or something, I can’t get into the car without her seeing me. Seeing me and following me—or at least trying to.

“We’re coming up behind the backyard,” Jezz whispers. “I’d better go. Park way down the road and come find us.”

The phone goes dead.

I lift the very edge of the curtain. The woods are there, dark and thick. It’s getting close to midnight now. There’s a fingernail of moon in the sky. I scan for anything moving, anything with wisps of long white hair.

And then, much closer to me, I see something else. The rusty red X that had been streaked across my windowpane is still there. But it’s thicker and brighter now. It’s fresh.

I’m not just being watched.

I’m marked.

And she’s done all of this before.

I stagger back from the window. My heart hammers.

Okay, I tell myself. Okay. So, everything you felt—about this girl actually trying to protect you, about her being essentially good—is a lie.

And everything that you thought, in the dim, rumbling, paranoid parts of your mind—about her being some obsessed psychopath with a plan to control you, a psychopath who might actually, somehow, be behind all the other insane and terrifying things that are happening to you, and who might have kidnapped or hurt or even killed the girl you wish could be yours, just like she’s apparently done before—is true.