“We’re at the top of the tramway. Something happened. I need you to come get us.”

“Are you hurt?”

“No, we’re … okay. It’s just, Quentin is kind of freaking out. He won’t talk to anyone but you. He’s really scared. We were supposed to be back before school let out, but we got up here and he just lost it. I’m so worried about him.”

Relief washed over me so completely, my knees almost buckled. “Stay on the line. I’m leaving now.”

“Please don’t tell my mom.”

Damn it. I knew she’d called me for a reason. “I won’t. Stay right where you are.”

Cookie pawed at me, frantic for information on her daughter. I covered the phone while retrieving my bag and keys. “They’re okay,” I said to her quietly. “They decided to skip school and take the tram to Sandia Peak. But something happened with Quentin.”

“Oh, my goodness, what? Is he hurt?”

“No. She said he’s scared. Either he has a fear of heights he didn’t know about or something else happened. Something supernatural.”

She grabbed her bag. “I’m going with you.”

“No, she didn’t want me to tell you, and you have to pretend I didn’t.”

“What? Charley, this is no time to be the beloved aunt. She skipped school. Anything could have happened. She is going to be grounded for the rest of her natural-born life if I let her live that long.”

“I just promised her I wouldn’t tell you. Besides, you have a date to get ready for.”

“A date?” she screeched. “You’ve got to be kidding. I can’t go on a date.”

“I went to a lot of trouble to set this up. You can’t leave me hanging, Cook. And this is just as much for Amber. You need to act like you know nothing about this.”

“Why? So you can be the hero? I am perfectly happy with being the bad guy in this, Charley. She will be punished for skipping school and pulling something so dangerous.”

“I know,” I said, putting a hand on her arm. “And she’ll do the right thing. You watch. But let her be the one to tell you, Cook. If she knows I told you, she’ll never trust me again.”

“I can’t be worried about your relationship with her—”

“She tells me everything, Cook,” I said, trying to get my meaning across. “She asked me the other day about contraception.”

After an absorption rate of approximately twenty-four bytes per second, taking into account the limited RAM we were working with, Cookie screamed at me. “She’s twelve!”

I winced and pressed the phone against me harder, hoping Amber hadn’t heard. It did sound bad when I said it aloud. “I was going to tell you, I swear.” Then I beamed at her. “She told me she wants to wait until she’s married to have sex.”

Cookie calmed instantly.

“But she doesn’t know when she will want to have kids, so she was asking me the best methods.”

“And you fell for that?”

“I have a lie detector built into my genetic code, remember? She hasn’t done anything. I promise. And in case you’re wondering, Quentin is a virgin, too.”

“I so don’t want to know how you know that.”

“I scrolled through her texts one night when she was over,” I explained regardless. “I had to make sure there was nothing going on. I’m the one who brought him into your lives. It would kill me if something happened to Amber that you’d resent me for.”

“Charley, Amber is her own girl. I would never blame you—”

I heard Amber talking into the phone and held up a finger to put Cookie on pause. “I’m here. I’m headed that way now.”

When I pressed the phone to my shirt again, Cookie just said, “Go.”

I tore out of the apartment and ran to Misery. The tram was only about fifteen minutes away from me, then another twenty-minute ride to the top. I prayed Quentin would hold on.

* * *

It didn’t take me long to figure out what the problem was, why Quentin wouldn’t take the tram back down the mountain. There simply weren’t many things creepier than a dead girl in rags staring you down. She must have picked up on the fact that Quentin could see her like she did with me. She stood in front of me, her long dark hair in matted strings over her face, hiding most of it. But her eyes shone through the strands. Especially when she got close, as in an inch from my nose, and glared, her eyes completely void of life. It didn’t matter which direction I turned, she was there, nose to nose, staring me down like a gangsta. She’d probably crawled out of a TV screen at some point in her life. Or death. Either way.

But I had to give it to Quentin. He was right not to want to come back down. She was creepy as heck. I didn’t want to take the ride back down either.

I’d taken out my phone and tried to talk to her, but she just stared. Not really seeing. I couldn’t even look out over the gorgeous landscape. If I turned to look out a glass panel, she’d appear in front of me, hovering outside the rail car, creeping me out even more.

“Look,” I said to her, gripping my phone harder, “cut this crap out and cross through me.” Everyone quieted and shuffled their feet. I couldn’t blame them. My one-sided conversations with the departed often sounded weird even on the phone. But I couldn’t help that now. “You are scaring people. Are you doing it on purpose?”