“Do you think the arrows can really hurt the Memory Thief?” I ask, thinking out loud. “I mean, they just make a kinda weak puff of colorful stuff. Even if it’s a magic puff.”

“Puff the magic puff,” Germ says listlessly. She’s lying on the one decrepit, strappy outdoor chair, with her legs dangling over the arm. “Maybe it could, though. Maybe you just have to hit her one time. What if you get her with just one arrow, Rosie, and all your troubles are over?” I think about this, but it’s too hard to imagine.

“I wish we knew where she was hiding,” she goes on after a moment. “It’s weird to sit and wait for you to be attacked.”

Something nags at me.

“There’s this giant piece missing,” I say. “I still don’t know what happened the night I was born. There’s some big part of the whole picture that I can’t see, and it’s important. I know it is. The thing about someone out there swimming, waiting for her, and how it’s tied to that night.”

Germ nods slowly, thoughtfully. “And I guess that’s the one thing the Murderer won’t tell.” She runs a hand through her thick blond hair. “He’s not really the kind of person to do a good deed.”

I loll a lazy, tired foot in agreement. And unbidden, my mind drifts back to Ebb—to the things he said about his parents, to his own wish to do a good deed to cancel out a bad one.

And I sit straight up.

“Unfinished business,” I say.

Germ looks at me in surprise, confused. “What?”

“It’s something Homer said about moving Beyond. And then Ebb was saying he feels like if he can just save someone—just one person—he can cancel out his guilt for what happened to his parents.”

Germ squints at me, not quite following.

“What if it’s the same for the Murderer?” I say in a rush. “What if, if he helps me by telling me his secret, he makes up for the person he didn’t help? And what if that could let him move Beyond? Every ghost wants to move Beyond, more than anything else, don’t they?”

Germ, catching on now, smiles.

“I’ve gotta talk to him,” I say, standing up and moving quickly toward my bike, feet crunching in the dry leaves.

Behind me, Germ hurries to her bike too.

“You can’t come,” I say.

“It’s just talking to a ghost,” she says. “It’s not mortal combat or anything.”

And because Germ can be as stubborn as I can, I don’t argue.

We pedal into the woods and ride for home, and the Murderer.

CHAPTER 19

When we get to my house, Ebb is just arriving for the night, floating across the lawn with Soggy and Crafty Agatha. Seeing us, he brightens and floats over.