But my personal connection with her goes back well beyond that. Nicole used to live two houses down from me. Our moms were friends. We played together all the time. My Oracle stuff wasn’t even the reason we stopped being friends. Our parents used to do things as a couple and then suddenly one of them was gone and the other was in a wheelchair. Stuff like that is too much for casual friendships. And when the parents move on, the kid generally does too.

Even so, now that I know who she is, this feels even more personal. More important. Maybe she’s not really my friend anymore, but she was.

Still, in reverse, the killer drags Nicole out of the shed by her hair and finally the doors open, and Smith and I are able to exit the workshop turned slaughterhouse: him, quickly; me, with my slow, grueling steps.

“No way,” I breathe as the killer takes Nicole right to her door. A few seconds later, she’s safely in her own house and the killer is ringing the doorbell.

I halt the scene and, after a few panting breaths, turn to Smith. “He’s going to take her from her own house!” I say in shock. “This whole time we all figured that if we were at home we’d be safe. This is going to start a panic. People are going to be afraid no matter where they are. They’ll—”

“Unless you stop it,” Smith interrupts, pulling me back into the moment. “Go back a little more. I bet her parents aren’t home.”

I swallow and nod and focus my energy on pushing the scene back even further. Sure enough, in a surprisingly short time, we see two adults leave in a black sedan.

“Okay, stop now,” Smith says.

I do and we’re standing in front of a half-raised garage door, watching Nicole’s parents depart.

“Is there another car in there?” Smith asks.

I duck down and look under the edge of the garage door. “Yeah, one more.”

Smith blows on his hands and then rubs them hard together. “I think the simplest thing is to get her to go to a friend’s house as soon as her parents leave.”

“Wouldn’t it be easier to have her to leave with her parents?”

“Possibly, but we don’t know where they’re going. Maybe it’s somewhere she can’t go. On a date? To a bar? You only get one shot at this and you want to pick the path that’s most likely to succeed.” He grimaces. “‘Least likely to fail’ is probably more accurate.”

He has a point. “Okay. She’s on student council. She’s probably friends with the other girl on there. Sara Finnegan.”

“That should work.” He stands with his arms crossed over his chest, observing the scene. “Because you can’t physically affect anything, you’re going to need to go under the garage door, reverse the scene again, and slip through the door and into the house while the parents are leaving.”

“Aren’t you coming with me?”

“I’m going to stay here and keep an eye on him,” Smith says, pointing at a nondescript gray SUV parked about half a block down beside a snowbank. Fear clenches at my stomach.

“Is that the killer?”

“That’s him. If he gets here before you can finish your job, I’ll yell for you.”

“Can you do that?”

“Yell?” Smith asks, looking confused.

“No, stay here. I mean, you’re in my second sight—shouldn’t you have to stay with me?”

His forehead wrinkles. “I’m not sure. But if I stay right here—if you leave me right here, it seems like I could.”

“What if I need your help?”

Smith shakes his head. “It’s been over two weeks, Charlotte. Assuming this has all been the same guy—and I really think it is—then he’s more than ready to kill again. We know he would have killed Jesse. He’s probably planning this murder right now. He’s got to be getting frustrated. And people who are frustrated are unpredictable. What if he suddenly changes his mind? Or comes in early? Then your vision’s no longer accurate. I think one of us needs to watch his car. And since I can’t actually do anything . . .” He lets his words trail off.

I look down the road where I can barely make out a dark form through the windshield. The killer, just yards away.

Except that he’s not real; he’s just in my head.

But this is his future.

Smith is right; someone needs to keep an eye on him. “You have the stone,” he reminds me softly.

“I’ll make it happen,” I vow, and without letting myself have a second thought, I duck under the garage door.

It’s eerie walking past the frozen car, feeling like as soon as I start the scene, they’ll be able to see me. “I’m not really here,” I whisper. “Not here.”

I position myself right beside the back door and focus on moving the scene backward again. Mr. and Mrs. Simmons almost brush me as they walk backward into the house and as the door closes—opens, technically—I slip through. I pause the scene, and before I let it start up again, I take several fortifying breaths. Smith believes I can do this by myself and he appears to be right; I’m just going to have to feed off of his confidence.

As ready as I’m ever going to be, I go ahead and start the scene again. As soon as the garage door closes, Nicole peeks through a barely cracked door and then runs to the front window to watch them drive away. I get right up next to her and shout in her ear, “Go to Sara Finnegan’s house!” There’s an insane amount of thought and will behind my shouting, but I’m already so worn out, it’s easier to vocalize as well.