After seeing Kristi again, he realized she was still under his skin. It wasn’t as if he wanted to get back together with her. No way. But he couldn’t deny that there was something about her that caused him to think stupid thoughts and remember forgotten moments in sudden sharp clarity, memories he’d considered long forgotten.

He exhaled heavily.

The smart thing—the only thing—was to leave her alone as much as he could.

Wasn’t it bad enough that she thought she could predict her father’s death? Did she have to bear this onus for other people as well?

Kristi unlocked the door of her apartment and stepped inside. To the rooms that had been occupied by Tara Atwater, one of the missing students. Get over it. The apartment had nothing to do with Tara vanishing. She went missing from the campus and that didn’t keep you from signing up for classes. Wouldn’t you have taken this apartment anyway, even knowing?

“Not on a prayer,” she murmured, unable to stop the goose bumps from rising on her flesh. She double-checked the dead bolt as Houdini, who must’ve been waiting on the roof, hopped through the partially opened window, climbed over the kitchen counters, and disappeared.

“My stepmother would have a heart attack if she ever saw you on the cabinets,” Kristi said. The cat peeked out at her. Houdini still wouldn’t let her get close, but he was starting to seem to want to interact.

She filled the cat’s bowl, made herself a bag of microwave popcorn, and spent the next hour and a half organizing her desk, not only for her schoolwork, but also to organize her notes on the book she hoped to write, the book about the missing girls, if it turned out they all had come to bad ends.

She looked around the small space where Tara Atwater had lived. Had Tara, like Kristi, slept on the trundle bed? Had she noticed the small closet smelled of mothballs? Had she complained about the lack of water pressure? Had she made popcorn here, used the same microwave, experienced the uncanny feeling that someone was watching her?

Kristi plugged her laptop into her printer, logged on to the Internet and began downloading and printing any article she could find on the missing girls. She located their MySpace pages and looked for any hint of them belonging to a cult or being interested in vampires. She thought there were some veiled references in their likes and dislikes columns, and decided to check them out further later. Tonight she’d gather information; later, she’d sort and analyze it.