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the bench. She turned, all the while watching me. She took a slow step toward me, gracefully, although so terribly wrong with her skirts falling apart and her face peeling as if she’d been horribly sunburned rather than having lived for many centuries.
    She was coming to me.
    I had to move. But this was a vision . I was there with my mind, not my body.
    She took another step. Two more, and she would be able to touch me. I willed myself to move, and managed a single step backward. Relief flooded through me; I could escape, I could get the hell out of here. The exit was to my right, so I shifted my weight to that foot and began taking steady steps. I still couldn’t force myself to run, but I was going faster than she was in her stately pursuit, as her frail cloth slippers took step after step.
    It was the slowest, dripped-in-syrup hunt, and every step I took required intense will from me, incredible energy. In my peripheral vision, I saw I was approaching the door. Maybe once I stepped through its threshold her strange lock on me would be broken and I could run .
    I thought my way carefully through each backward step. I counted the black-and-white parquet squares between us. She extended her hand to me, half flesh and half bone, as if beseeching me to stop. But I was so close, so close, so close. There was the door, the rounded stones in an arch, and then I was through it.
    I could sense the grand staircase behind me, but I couldn’t take my eyes off her. If I looked away, maybe she’d blurt forward like a rabbit. To keep her slow, I had to watch her. The floor changed under my feet to the stone tablets of the grand entryway. I kept going. Now I could see the balustrade. I would have to go down backward, watching her. I could clutch the banister and use it to guide me down the stairs.
    I was there, I was there, I could feel the slight breeze drifting up from the front door open far below me. She shook her head at me.
    Instantly the vision ended, and I was back in the library looking at the closed door.
    I screamed.
    The doorknob turned.
    The ornate, oval golden knob slowly spun.
    The door flung open and crashed against the wall. The woman wasn’t there, but I heard a small moan in my ear, and cold air passed through my hair. The presence was behind me, so I ran forward, down the short hall, into the ballroom.
    The organ began playing a complex song with half notes and quarter notes in a rapid volley, a virtuoso performance to mock my flight down the sharp, wicked stairs. It was as if the organ knew I had been trying to convince myself I hadn’t heard it, and was rolling out its most deafening and grandiose performance.
    As soon as I got outside, the organ stopped mid-tune.
    Silence. Except . . . from far away, the faintest hint of a laugh.

C HAPTER F OUR
    Paranoid delusions, with the idea that someone is watching you
or stalking you, can be a big part of schizophrenia.
    Â 
    â€”Class presentation excerpt,
Bethany Robb and Phoebe Irving

    I tore into the apartment, making little half-breath screams. They were in the kitchen, all three of them. Mom was chopping something while Steven entertained Tabby at the table.
    â€œThere’s a ghost,” I shrieked. “She’s living in the house and she’s your ancestor, Steven, and she drank blood, and she . . .”
    I went on and on, sobbing. I told them everything I’d seen—and what Miles had told me. Mom finished her chopping and came to sit at the table, staring at Tabby, this kind of grieved expression on her face. Clearly she didn’t want Tabby to hear it and get scared. She just wanted me to shut up so she could pay attention to the kid that did matter.
    Steven looked at me only once, then his gaze flickered back to Tabby.
    It was always this way. When I’d told them about fainting over Richard Spees, Mom had actually laughed. “You sure know how to work yourself up,” she’d said at the time, and her face