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Slipping into her head was as easy as releasing a sigh Seeing her pupils shrink and explode back out to their norh someone had wrapped a line of barbed wire aroundsecond

Chubs’s face appeared at the corner of my vision, eyes wide When he tried to stand, I knocked him back doith my foot No It wasn’t safe Not yet

The woman looked around, her eyes wide and unfocused That’s when the pounding began in my ears Da-duh, da-duh, da-duh, da-duh… I couldn’t tell if it wasWhen she didn’tblack shapes of hermyself to look at his reaction as the black weapon was placed in his outstretched hand

"Listen to me very carefully," I said The blood was bitter in hway You are…going to walk into that forest and keep walking until an hour passes…and you are going to sit down in theto eat…or sleep…or drink, no ining that into herexactly that, was beco, but because rip on consciousness was

You can do this, I told ht me, or that I had never practiced In the end, it was all instinct Like I had known all along

I closed h the darkeneddown the highway, one hand on the wheel, the other pointing to the rest stop up ahead I parked the car a ways back, half hidden by the trees, and began to walk toward the lone black van in the parking lot I stayed with this ht breeze, until her partner reached the van, his rifle up and ready to fire

I forced thebut air where Black Betty had been in the parking lot I traced the line of memories back to the boys at Walmart, to the secret they had revealed about East River The i down a car

"Now, you’re…you won’t remember any of this, or any of us"

"I won’t reht had just occurred to her

I let go of her neck, but ained soo away She turned sharply on her heel and started to o away

No, it got worse A trickle of sweat began at th ofto my face My shirt was a second skin I dropped into a crouch If I was going to faint, it was better to stay close to the ground

God, I don’t want to faint Don’t faint Do Not Faint…

I heard Liaht, and I leaned away

"Don’t--" I began Don’t touch e, because the last thing I saw before I closed my eyes wasn’t the old asphalt, it wasn’t the sky, or evenmemory of my own Of a few days before, when Lia to Derek and the Dos, so off-key that it had even Chubs laughing Zu had been sitting right behind hi out to the wailing electric guitar And it had been so easy then, to laugh and pretend, even if just for a second, that ould be okay That I belonged with them