Maybe one of the alleys. Maybe if he could get off the main avenues and onto the side streets, he could lose the monster that way. He bolted to the right, zigzagging up and around, then back onto another narrow street with mushy wood sidewalks. He left the walkway shortly after setting foot on it—too squishy; slowed him down—and instead he went for the middle of the road and ran up the center as fast as his bruised legs could carry him.

“No!” hollered his invisible advisor. “Not that way! You’re headed right for—”

Rector didn’t hear the last part of that sentence. All he heard was the rush of air and the gasp in his throat as he flew into open space for the second time in the span of five minutes. The world crunched and shook, and he could hear the fizzling stars that swam in front of his eyes.

The white-hot sparkles swarmed, popped, and faded. He thought he might be able to see now, so he opened his eyes. Or he tried, then realized that they were already open.

Standing above him was someone just a bit smaller than him. Chinese, he thought—something about the shape of the eyes behind the other guy’s visor. And about Rector’s own age. But that couldn’t be right, could it? Everybody knew that Seattle was no place for women or children, or even grown men who’d very recently passed the ripe old age of eighteen.

But here was a living counterexample, shaking his head. Behind him, a ponytail swayed, dusting the tops of his shoulders. It was Rector’s turn to ask “Who are you?” but the words wouldn’t come. His mouth wouldn’t work. The outline of the other boy faded until it was something cut from a coal black shadow, backlit as he was by the mouth of something wide and white—the curved edge of the street above.

A hole. He’d fallen through a huge chuckhole in the middle of the goddamn street, Rector thought as the stars came back and everything went away except for Zeke.

Zeke, who was just saying Well done, dummy, when Rector passed out.

Chapter 7

Seven

Rector dreamed, or maybe he didn’t.

He heard Zeke a time or two, saying his name. But Rector was tired of talking to ghosts, so he didn’t answer, even when Zeke was demanding, and even when he sounded worried. To hell with Zeke and his worries. Rector was dying, anyway; they could hang out and be ghosts together, and wouldn’t that be a kick in the pants? No good deed goes unpunished, or so he thought sourly as he tossed and turned and tried to tell the difference between asleep and awake, alive and dead.