I couldn’t stop thinking, Paris? What about Stefan, poor chump, who thought that Belinda just needed some time to stretch her wings before she settled down?

“I have to go now,” Esme said. She sighed. “I shouldn’t be talking about this. Just tell Stefan if he ever remembers anything, you know, to just not say it.”

“What do you mean, anything?”

“He’ll know what I mean.”

“Stop this! You’re following me even now. At least come see me.”

“No,” she said. “I’m scared.”

She hung up. I stood and glanced around me. The only buildings were those one-story commercial affairs, all of them still. From where was she watching me? All the cars parked along the street were dark and seemingly empty. I got up and went to my car, stuffing my phone into my pocket as I hurried along. A door slammed and someone else was running, their soles slapping in time with mine, whether toward me or away from me, I couldn’t tell. My keys were in hand: Another thing I’d always told myself was that I would never be one of those fumblers hauled out of her vehicle by the zombie because she couldn’t start the car. I threw myself into the front seat, locked the doors and smoothly stuck the key fob into the ignition...but the car wouldn’t start. It was that crazy gap that sometimes occurred as a result of good intentions, in this case, the anti-theft lock. Those painful prickles of bio-electric current raced up my throat and forearms. I wrestled with the wheel, jiggled the key.

Just then, the thin guy in the hoodie, his face obscured by a balaclava, rose up from the ground like smoke on the driver’s side. His face was separated from mine by an eighth of an inch of glass, and I could see his breath and the level look in his pale blue eyes. Where had he come from? Was he the one running behind me? Was he under the car? I tried to scream, but my voice was as balky as the ignition. Then I reached into my pocket and found the whistle Jep put there and blew on it like all the sons of Aaron at Jericho. A car horn stuttered and then blared. But the hoodie figure didn’t take off running. Horribly, he slid back down out of my sight and, when I glanced in the rearview mirror, he was nowhere to be seen. Did he drop down a manhole? Crawl into a yard behind one of the rows of picket fence, no more than two feet tall?

Suddenly, I was able to turn the key. My car roared to life. And then another lock clicked over as well, this one in my brain.