He wasn’t going to let it drop. “You froze up completely,” he said. “It looked like a petit mal seizure —”
“They’re not seizures,” I said, careful to keep my voice cool and calm but betrayed by the drop of sweat trailing down the side of my face. “They might be hallucinations, but they’re not seizures.”
In spite of my desire to cut and run, I wasn’t going anywhere until the heavy, dizzy feeling passed. Wyatt seemed to sense that, and — much more gracefully this time — he put his hand on my arm and gently eased me down onto a bench behind us.
He watched me anxiously. “What do you mean ‘they’ — this has happened more than once?”
“Yes,” I said, too dazed to lie. “That one makes three times.”
“What is it that actually happens?” he asked.
I tried to find a way to explain it. “It’s like a dream, except I’m actually there.”
“Where?” His eyes searched me, taking in every detail of my appearance, the way he always took in every detail of everything. It made me feel prickly and self-conscious.
“Wherever the Hollywood Killer kept his victims.”
“You’re there … with the victims.” The disbelief in his voice sent an angry chill through my body.
“Not with them,” I said, bristling. “It’s like I am them.”
That shut him down long enough that I could continue.
“Like the one from The Birds,” I said, “Brianna. And Faith, with the wheelchair. And then this one, with the dinner table and the roses. But I didn’t hear the girl’s name this time. I guess it was probably Lorelei.”
Wyatt stared at me.
“It’s like … a vision, or a trance or something. I feel what they felt. I can even see the necklace he makes them all wear — the rose necklace. I can’t see the killer’s face, and I can’t really hear his voice … I don’t know how to explain it, only — I’m there.”
“Willa.” Wyatt frowned. “I’m sorry. There’s got to be some other explanation.”
“Why?” My voice was hollow and brittle. Maybe because he really did sound apologetic.
“Because there hasn’t been a murder with a dinner table or roses,” he said. “And there are no necklaces. You must be imagining all of it.”
No table. No roses. No necklace.
Could I really be making it all up? The headaches, the visions, the flashes of light — could there be a tumor pressing on my brain, convincing me that all these crazy things were real? I thought of the dead body that wasn’t in the pool and the water that wasn’t in the tub and the writing that wasn’t on the walls.
But the name Henry. Water. A necklace. The stuff the psychic said …
“Is there anything I can do or say,” Wyatt said, “to talk you out of going to see this Fitzgeorge woman?”
I took a shaky breath and straightened my cardigan, trying to think up a reply.
“Right,” Wyatt said. “I didn’t think so. Then can you do me a favor?”
I glanced down at the floor, my resolve slipping away.
And then he said, “Let me come with you.”
The parking lot was deserted — Wyatt insisted we wait until everybody else had gone home, so there was no risk of our being seen together.
I was halfway to his silver Prius before a couple of thoughts tumbled into my head at once. Firstly, that maybe Wyatt was the murderer and here I was, hopping into his car. Secondly, I was still supposed to be mad at him. In fact, since the moment we met, I’d never not been mad at him.
I stopped walking and turned to him. “Just to be clear … you’re not the killer, right? If you are, you have to tell me. Murderer’s honor.”
He raised a single eyebrow and unlocked the car doors. “You coming or not?”
“Yes, coming.” I opened the door and climbed in, tossing my backpack into the backseat. When I was all buckled in, I looked over at him as he plugged Leyta’s address into his GPS. “So tell me again why you offered to go with me?”
He glanced at me before pulling out of the parking lot. “I had a feeling you’d try to take a bus or something —”
“A cab, probably,” I said. “If I tried to take a bus, I’d end up in Kansas.”
“Anyway, I thought it would be better if I drove you.”
“But you don’t believe in psychics.”
“No,” he said. “I don’t.”
“And you don’t even want me to go.”
“No,” he said again. “I don’t.”
We stared at each other for a second before he pulled his eyes away to look at the road.
“Then you haven’t answered me at all. Why are you doing this?” I asked. “You clearly think I’m crazy.”
“I never said you were crazy. I said you must be imagining things. But in retrospect, maybe that was a little dismissive.”
“Harsh might be a better word. Insensitive …”
He gave his head a frustrated shake. “You can’t be angry with me for not believing in something I have no experience with, okay?”
We turned down Hollywood Boulevard, which was thick with sightseers. There were costumed characters everywhere — Spider-Man, Superman, Catwoman, Elmo, the Statue of Liberty, a guy in metallic paint pretending to be a robot…. They looked weird and fake even from a distance, but people were still lining up to get their pictures taken with them.
“There’s the Chinese Theatre,” Wyatt said as we drove by a building that looked like a pagoda. “It’s pretty famous. Have you been yet?”
“No. I heard it’s not much to see. Movie stars have tiny feet.”
He snorted. “All of them?”
“Well, let’s see, Wyatt. Let me consult my list of famous people’s shoe sizes right here and —”
“Why are you reacting that way?” he asked.
“Why do you have to pick everything apart?” I shot back.
He sighed and checked the mirror as he changed lanes. “Okay, forget it. I was only trying to make conversation, but I guess I shouldn’t bother.”
I glanced over at him. He looked a little hurt. “I’m sorry,” I said. “It was nice of you to try. But talking to you is so … complicated.”
“What does ‘complicated’ mean to you?”
“In your case?” I said. “It means you don’t know when to let things go.”
He adjusted his air vent so it blew away from him. “Yeah, I can see that.”
I gazed out the window as the navigation voice instructed us to turn left in two hundred feet. We’d passed from the crowded, garish boulevard into a residential neighborhood where the tiny houses were small and crumbling. Each one was unique, but they all shared the qualities of age and neglect: chipping paint, cracked windows, limp curtains, drooping chain-link fences.
“I don’t like letting go of things,” Wyatt said in a thoughtful voice. I realized he’d been thinking of my words this whole time. “Not until I understand them.”
I wasn’t sure how to respond.
“What’s the number on that duplex?” he suddenly asked.
I craned my neck to see it. “Fifteen-oh-one.”
“Then we’re here,” he said, pulling into a spot in front of a decrepit building. “Let’s go find out what the future holds.”
Leyta Fitzgeorge was about thirty, tall, and wispy thin, with long waves of mouse-brown hair. She wore a forest green polo shirt that said GAME WORLD with a pair of khaki pants.
“Sorry about the shirt,” she said. “I know it detracts from the mystique and all. I have to leave for work pretty soon.”
“It’s fine,” I said. “I’m Willa, and this is my … classmate, Wyatt.”
“You work at Game World?” Wyatt asked.