Kelley Armstrong - Haunted

I squeezed his hand. "Thank you."

Trsiel wheeled through the crowd, grabbed my elbow, and tugged me away.

"The basketball court," I called back to Kristof. I gestured to the north end of the building. "It's that way."

Kris nodded and jogged off.

We started our search where we'd begun-in the janitorial rooms below. As we hurried down the hall toward the lunchroom and office, something clattered to the floor in one of the storage rooms, like a broom or mop falling over. I veered toward it. Then, from the end of the hall came the muffled sound of a phone ringing. Someone answered after the first ring, with a reedy, feminine-sounding "Hello."

Trsiel changed course. I darted ahead of him and ran through the closed office door. On the other side, back to us, stood a slight, pale-haired figure. Tinny music wafted from a cheap radio on the desk, the rise and fall of the music cutting into the phone conversation. I took a step closer, then saw the gnarled hand clutching the receiver. The elderly male janitor.

As I turned to leave, the song on the radio ended, and the janitor's words became clear.

"… exit door shouldn't be locked. I opened them all myself this morning." Pause. "Which room is it?" Pause. A sigh. "I'll send Lily." He hung up, then muttered, "If I can find her. Damned girl is making herself scarcer than usual today."

He lifted the walkie-talkie. Trsiel and I stayed where we were, hoping to catch the room number so we could head off Lily there. The janitor pushed the Call button four times, but only static responded.

"Lazy kids," he grumbled.

He stalked to the door and yanked. It didn't open. Another pull, but it stayed shut.

"Goddamn it!" he said as he yanked on the door.

I stepped through to the other side. A broom had been jammed through the handle. Trsiel and I looked at each other, then dashed for the stairs.

On the main level, doors all along the corridor banged open and slammed shut as kids raced out of classes. We headed for the gym. As we turned the corner, a shriek cut through the din. I leapt through the wall and came out in the boy's changing room. Two ten-year-olds were whipping each other with wet towels, dancing out of the way, and screeching with laughter.

We walked through the next wall and found ourselves in the men's shower room.

"Circle around back to the hall," Trsiel said. "But keep your eyes open in here for that young man Brett."

As we stepped into the changing area, a loud pop sounded. A man leaning into a locker jumped, head clanging against the metal shelf.

"Damn it!" he said. "Did those boys get hold of caps again?"

"Nah, that came from the classrooms. Science club, I'll bet," another man said with a laugh. "Those kids. Remember when they made that-"

Three more pops. Then a scream. As Trsiel and I ran for the hall, one of the men shouted, "Someone's shooting. Oh, my God! Brooke! Brooke!"

We raced through the wall, into the women's changing area. Inside, women were shouting their children's names as they ran, half-dressed, for the door. Others grabbed their cell phones to call 911, while more raced to a rear emergency exit, only to find it locked.

"Fire alarm!" someone yelled. "Pull the fire alarm!"

A teenage girl dove into our path, racing for the alarm, but it sounded before she reached it.

The hall was now jammed with people, all trying to get to the front door. I thought I heard a shot, but the screams and shouts all around us were too loud for me to tell, much less pinpoint a direction. I soon lost sight of Trsiel. I didn't stop to look, just kept plowing forward through people.

Trsiel's hand grabbed mine, tugging me backward.

"This way," he said. "The first shots came from over here."

One of the distant screams took on a shriller note, filled with more than panic. Screams of pain.

We followed the sounds into a room of stationary bikes. A woman lay huddled in the corner, screaming as an elderly woman tied a tourniquet around her thigh, trying to stanch the flow of blood. Jaunty music played, then a man's chipper recorded voice came on, enjoining listeners to "pedal faster, but not too fast-save your strength for the big hill at the end."

Across the room a woman my age still sat on a bike, pedaling erratically, stopping, then restarting, eyes wide with shock. Blood dribbled from a bullet nick under her arm. More blood, mixed with flecks of gore, spattered her face. That blood came not from her, but from the man in front of her. He lay backward over his bike, feet still trapped in the pedal straps, a hole through his eye socket.

Behind them, a young woman lay on the floor, convulsing, as a young man in sweats hunched over her, telling her, "It'll be all right, honey, just hold on, honey, help's on the way."

As I looked around the room, I remembered those newspaper clippings I'd seen in Lily's memory. Not single murders, but killing sprees. Lily said she wanted to be noticed. She wanted to be remembered. This wasn't about killing one man who ignored her. It was about killing everyone who ignored her, and that meant everyone she met, everyone she could hit.

"Savannah!"

Trsiel grabbed my arm.

"No!" I said, trying to yank free.

His grip only tightened, as firm and unyielding as the Nix's. "Go and make sure Savannah is safe. Then start hunting. If you see Lily-if you even think you see her-call me. Don't try to stop her. You can't."

"I know."

He released my arm and I tore off in the direction of the gym.

THE HALL HAD CLEARED AS EVERYONE JAMMED INTO the section near the narrow front doors. The panicked screams had given way to sobbing and angry shouts of "Move!" and "Get out of my way!" Through the commotion, though, the sound I heard loudest was the softest-the whimper of frightened children. I tried not to think about them, packed into that seething mob. People knew there were kids here-they wouldn't let panic override caution. Or so I told myself. It was the only way I could keep going in the opposite direction.

"Eve!"

I was almost at the gym when Kristof hailed me. I looked across the scattering of people to see his blond head cutting through them.

"Savannah," I said, rushing to him. "Where is she?"

"I can't find her."

"Here, I'll-"

He grabbed my arm as I raced past, toward the gym. "She's not there, Eve. The courts are empty. They closed for lunch hour. She must be in the cafeteria. Where is it?"

"No, Lucas just dropped her off. If her class was after lunch, she'd have eaten at home. She-Art! She has art class on Saturdays. They were downtown last year, but they must be here now. The studios are up the hall."

I turned and ran in the other direction, passing through the logjam at the front door and racing to the studios on the other side. Distant sirens blared. Then a shot. Another. More screams behind us.

The first studio door was closed, the room dark and empty. In the next, we found the remains of a class-a half-dozen adults huddled behind tables, a few whaling at the locked exit door. Unfinished sketches papered the floor. One middle-aged man grabbed an upended easel and threw it at the window, but it only bounced off the thick glass. A younger man raced for the hall.

"No!" a woman screamed after him. "It's blocked. Stay here!"

My gaze swept across the faces, seeing no Savannah, no one even close to her age. As I turned, I caught a shimmer in the corner-like a portal, but much weaker, the glimmer so slight only a practiced eye could see it.

"There!" I said, pointing. "She's cast a cover spell."

I raced across the room and knelt beside the empty spot.

"Good girl," I whispered. "Smart girl. Stay there. Stay right there."

A shot sounded in the hall. A young woman to my left screamed. A figure wheeled through the door. Another young woman-skeletal-thin, all jutting bones, with greasy brown hair and an acne-pocked face.