Phobic (35 page)

“We need to tell someone,” he mutters on in his rant, fingers flying on his phone. “We need to get Kody or somebody over here.”

Todd shakes Sierra again. Her head lolls, but she doesn’t wake. If only he had some water to splash on her face. He can’t tell if the vision thing is over or not, but it must be. Seconds pass. Or maybe minutes. It could’ve been an hour for all he knows. What did she see? Is she okay?

What’s happening to Piper?

Finally, Sierra’s lids flutter. No coughing. No gasping. Her eyes blink open and she stares right at him, glassy-eyed, like a doll.

“What’s going on?” Todd demands. “Where’s Piper?”

“I think—” she wheezes.

“Sierra!” Jordan freaks out, dropping his phone. He smears her hair down like she’s a clay sculpture he’s trying to shape. Kody, who lives the next street over, clangs up in his rusty old Geo Metro. A few kids from school pile out with him, but Todd ignores them, his attention still on Sierra.

“What, what do you think?” Todd prompts, aching, dying for the answer. “What did you see?”

Her lids flutter and she takes a breath before answering. “I think I know how you can get back in.”

“S
he can’t—she won’t!”

I can hardly contain myself, which is ironic seeing as how I’m more restrained than I’ve ever been. I won’t let Ada get him.

Determined, I push against the boards and try to
leave
the wall, but I move about as much as if I were standing still. Anxiety builds like a teeming ocean, but as hard as I try, I don’t budge. I huff and wipe a hand at my brow.

A beetle scuttles across the narrow panels. Its tiny legs tick tick up the side of me, skirting up my skin.
Ew, ew, ew!
I writhe and squeal, try to wiggle away as the beetle’s skittery legs inch up toward my face.

“Get off. Get off!”

With gut-wrenching effort I duck back. A draft of flavorless wind lets me know I’ve parted from the siding. Hope pinches in my chest; I try to dangle there, to peel myself further. Too soon, I’m sucked back into the boards.
Eek, I did it
. Panting, I shake off the nerves, but the movement rattles the boards through the length of the wall with a deafening sound.

Squiggles curl along my limbs, but I square my jaw and lift my feet, climbing like Spiderman along the flipside of the walls. I’m still trying to figure out
how
I pushed out from this. How Ada did it. How she manipulated things, like the lights.

I’ll beat this. I will.
Determined, I push upward, trying to lift my fingers, like I’m breaking through soil over my grave, but a stony rush of pain keeps me in the floorboards. If only I knew whether or not Ada has gotten to Todd yet.
Todd, whatever you do, don’t listen to a thing she says.

Claw marks scratch into the underside of several low steps. No way—
steps?
Am I back under those stairs? At the thought I whirl around like a dolphin in water.

Ada’s skeleton, clothed in the simple yellow dress, lies on the floor. The dark, open gaps where her eyes once were gaze off, and her gaunt teeth spread in a lipless smile, though I’m pretty sure her final moments in here were anything but happy.

The gag is slack around the top of her spine. Her bony hand outstretches as if she’s pleading for help.

“I’m sorry this happened to you,” I say, “but I’m not going to let you trap me here. Or Todd.”

I can’t imagine what it must have been like for her. To not just die, but be confined instead. And in bug-and-mold-infested walls, no less. I square my jaw. It doesn’t matter now. She can’t take Todd’s body. Thomas’ soul wasn’t imprisoned here like hers was. I’m pretty sure Todd will die, since his soul will have nowhere else to go.

I barrel through the bones of the house, speeding here and there, hoping for some sign of her. The boards in the wall creak against the pressure of my movements. I sashay along the hallway until I reach the kitchen, and then flatten myself to the floor. The red wool rug over The Spot smothers against me. I fight its weight, until the floor falls out from underneath me.
The Spot.

I land on the concrete with a thud and a throb in my knees. Cool air hits me like a rocket blast, and it takes a second to realize why I’m kneeling four-legged. Why the heels of my hands are chafed.

I’ve gone back to being my full size. My body is solid—not boxed-in and fluid.

I blink to make sure this is really happening, dig my fingers against the icy, gritty concrete, trace along the edge of the bloodstain painted beneath me.

“I’m back,” I whisper, and this time my voice works. “I’m back.”

Kneeling up, I run my hands over my face, my neck and arms. Stupidly enough, I even hug myself. No wonder the bloodstain never left here. For some reason, this spot is immune to Garrett’s freaky time freeze.

Did Ada know about this? She had to—she’s haunted my house for years. But maybe the immunity thing doesn’t work for her because she’s dead. My body is still alive.

A glint of silver catches my periphery. In the corner lies the six inch or so knife I dropped the night I first saw Thomas’ ghost in the library. I’d completely forgotten about it.

Using the few blocks of wood laddering up the side, I pull myself to my feet. I have to stand with my head crooked to one side, and I brace one hand against the low ceiling. The pain in my side is back.

“Mom,” I whisper, grazing my stomach. I don’t know if it’s my body or not, but I’m
me
again. “You knew? Is this some sort of safety zone?”

But why?
a thought adds.

What sounds like a door clatters shut, and shoes scuff along the floor above me until they fade off. Ada must have come back in. Is she still in my body now that I—well, I am too? I wait for another set of footprints to join hers, but relief is a thick drink. She’s alone. She didn’t find him.

Without hesitation I push up against the trap door. Bracing myself against the wooden steps, I clench my teeth and heave. The door gives, but nearly smashes my fingers. I steal a breath and try again. I keep at it until the door spews open and the rug curls at one end like a tongue.

No Todd. I
have
to get my body back before she finds him.

Pits sweating, arms shaking, I mount the ladder. With each step, grain settles onto my tongue and splinters embed into my arms, like someone is scraping me against a raw-cut fencepost. I rise; the fridge and china hutch loom over me. I’ve got the perspective a small child must have on their world.

But the minute my hand braces against the floor to pry the rest of me out, my arm becomes see-through. It turns back to ghostly blue, and it flattens, coursing along the wood.

Drat. I don’t have a clue how to reverse what she did.

On top of that, a squeal sounds from nearby once I descend. Ada. She must have felt something, too.

A racket of steps jerks my attention. In a rush, I leave the trap door open, but roll the rug back over, saving enough of a sliver for me to catch a glimpse of her shoes. Or, Todd’s sister’s beat-up Nikes that I borrowed, anyway.

“He’s got to be on her cell phone,” AdaPiper mumbles. I snag a glimpse of my backpack before she slings it up, presumably on the counter. My brain bumbles for an idea—for some way to distract her.

I slither up until I’m in the wall beside her, feeling my body liquefy and suck back into the wood. Ada gasps and looks around as if she feels something too.

A bang comes from the servants’ staircase diagonal from the basement door, and I push to my tiptoes, straining my calves to see what it is. The doorknob whines, and then Todd’s curly head pokes through. My heart crash-lands into my ribs.

“Todd!” I cry, but clasp my hands over my mouth. Ada jerks. She’s pulled my strawberry-blonde hair into a twist on top of her head, and a scowl rests on her forehead. She clutches her side where spots of blood are starting to leak through her clothes.

“What will it take to get rid of you?” she mutters, circling the room. Does that mean she heard me?

I don’t know how to press myself out again like I did before, to make Todd see me. I slink down, frantic in the confined flooring. I’m stuck here. Even if I try and leave the trap door, I’ll just be wedged in the boards again.
Come on, Piper. Think!

AdaPiper’s face brightens, and she sets my phone on the counter. “There you are,” she says. Todd steps into the kitchen, eyes crawling all over her.

“What is going on here?” he demands, pointing back to the servants’ stairs. “In case you forgot, I know how to get in through that secret passage, remember?”

AdaPiper beams at him, but he smacks her hand away.
Go Todd
.

“You shove me out, clearly freaked, and now you’re all happy like the hills are alive with the freaking sound of music?”

“Go home, Todd!” I shout, heading back toward the trap door once more. “Run!” Run far. Run fast.

He says nothing. I can’t tell if he heard me or not.

“I do not know what you mean,” Ada goes on as if I never said anything. “But come with me. It will be easier to show you.”

“What’s with the fancy talk? Stop it!” I imagine him flinging her off again and folding his arms. “Do you have any idea what we’ve gone through trying to get to you? You act like you don’t even care!”

We?

“It’s a trap, Todd! It’s a trap!” I still don’t know if he can hear me, but I can’t keep quiet.

“What are you talking about?” he says. “I’m not taking another step until you tell me what’s going on. Why did you lock me out? Piper, does this have anything to do with that Ada chick?”

I can hear the eye roll in AdaPiper’s voice. “This is futile. Time is of the essence, after all. Thomas!”

No, she can’t! My hands helmet over my hair, my thoughts firing. I’ll toss up the rug—he’ll see me! I just have to prolong things somehow, until it’s too late and Thomas fades.

“Who is Thomas?” Todd asks.

No. No!

“Hold it!” I yell, pushing up the rug. The floppy mat droops back over me, until Todd’s fingers lift it completely. I gaze up at him, at his astonished face. He looks as if he’s just seen how he’s going to die.

His mere presence lures me, and I’m tempted to climb, to go to him, to rub it in Ada’s face. But I know I can’t rise any further.

“Piper?” Todd staggers back, one hand in his hair. I slide a glance at Ada. Her nose fidgets like a bunny rabbit’s, and her lips are in an open pout over her teeth.

“How did you—?” Ada snarls.

“I won’t let you do this,” I tell her.

Todd’s eyes boggle like those crafty ones I used to glue on projects as a kid. He looks as if he’s about to pass out. His glance darts back and forth between the two Pipers.

“How—?” Ada asks again. Even from this distance, she’s looking down her nose at me.

I’m not about to spill what I’ve discovered; that this spot is my home base in the stupid game she’s playing. Instead, I turn to my friend.

“Todd, don’t trust her! She’s Ada.”

“What?”

“Watch.” Again, I step out of the trap door, only to have my body grow insubstantial. Todd’s nostrils flare in AdaPiper’s direction.

“What did you do to her?” he snarls.

AdaPiper opens her mouth, but the temperature in the room drops, freezing us all in place. And Thomas wafts in. His form is more faded than ever before. It flickers in and out of sight, like he’s barely hanging on. Any minute now the smallest gust will blow him to ashes.

“Ada,” Thomas moans. “Do it. Now.”

I pivot around the small space, run my fingers through my hair, when I see it. I have no other choice. Especially not when AdaPiper sneers and thrusts the hitch at Todd’s throat.

He rears back, but a disgusting look of satisfaction rests on AdaPiper’s face. Todd doubles over, as Thomas’ body slowly fills with color.

“Todd!”

A million thoughts ride through in seconds, but I quell them just as quickly. Ada is
not
going to do this to him. I won’t allow it. And I won’t be trapped here.

Todd lets out a huge groan as his body tumbles to the floor.
No—Todd!

I stare at his body in shock, unable to breathe, to think. The satisfaction on Ada’s face builds, and she kneels beside Todd, brushing a hand across his cheek like he already belongs to her.

“I’ll show her payback,” I stammer, driven to desperation. I scuttle around and pick up the knife. Gritting my teeth, I take a deep breath and plunge the metal into my chest.