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clamped in her hand. With the part of her brain that was still her own, she was trying to remember how to kill a monster. Silver stakes and silver bullets … but were those for werewolves? Vampires? And what was Tommy now, precisely? How did you kill a GPS?
    She fell twice on her way up, but eventually she made it to the grave, kneeling on the squelchy dirt, the picture still in her hand. She’d left the car door open, and she could hear the GPS clearly.
    “Lie down.” She did. There was a razor blade glimmering on top of the tombstone—a little treat that John had left, she figured. “Pick it up,” said the GPS … but instead of moving up, Maureen’s hand moved down, not toward the razor but toward the piece of candy Sam had pressed on her, the lump of chocolate in her pocket.
    “Pick up the razor!” the GPS said. Maureen made herself ignore it. She opened the wrapper and popped the sweet into her mouth. As the taste burst over her tongue—chocolate and caramel, so long denied—she made herself remember every good thing in the world: gossiping with her sister over lunch; watching Liza, eight years old, twirling on the skating rink, or Tommy Junior, dressed in a tuxedo for the prom. She chewed and swallowed, and the noise of her chewing and swallowing drowned out the voice of the GPS. She remembered crying when Liza had placed baby Ryden in her arms, his head in the crook of her elbow, and how good the house smelled when they’d gone apple picking and baked apple pies. She thought about Santa Fe and Carmel-by-the-Sea. “You don’t get to win,” she murmured into the dirt. “Not any more.”
    Then, as he’d told her, she picked up the razor. “Right wrist first,” said the GPS. But instead Maureen walked back to the car, the razor glittering silver in her hand. It must have guessed what she meant to do, because the instant before she used the blade to sever the wires, the GPS started screaming all the hateful words he’d ever used to her,
fat bitch
and
dumb ugly cow, selfish
and
stupid
and
worthless.
She ignored them. With the taste of candy still sweet on her tongue and tears on her cheeks, Maureen sliced the wires,then gouged ridges out of the screen. Still she could hear it, a telltale heart that refused to be still. “Maureen,” it rasped in a strange insectile buzz. “Maureen.”
    Finally she heard something else, footsteps approaching through the underbrush, the drunken hoots of laughter.
Mischief night
, she remembered. The cemetery would be full of teenagers, daring each other to sleep in the mausoleums. It gave her an idea. She left the driver’s side door open, left the mangled GPS on the seat, and ran and hid behind a tree. The teenagers—kids, really, three boys and a girl—came stumbling up the path a minute later.
    “Holy shit,” said one of the boys. “That’s a car.”
    “Good one, Steve,” the girl sneered. Quick as a cat, the girl snatched Maureen’s purse off the car’s floor and began expertly rifling through it as one of the boys picked up the GPS and turned it over in his hands.
    Be careful
, thought Maureen.
It pinches
. But she had the idea, quickly turning into a certainty, that the machine wouldn’t hurt them, that it couldn’t hurt anyone but her.
    “Maureen!” it croaked.
    The boy looked bored. “You hear that?” he asked.
    “Prob’ly just a burglar alarm,” said another boy. “Like, it’s programmed to say a name.”
    The first boy poked at the screen. “Well, anyway, it’s busted.”
    “Yeah, but someone’ll want it,” said the girl.
    The GPS made one last attempt, calling her name almost sweetly, as Tommy once had. “Come to bed, Maureen,” it said. “Shuddup,” said the boy. He pulled off his sweatshirt, wrapped it around the GPS, and shoved it in Maureen’s stolen purse, whichthe girl had slung over her shoulder. Maureen watched it all, panting, shivering in the woods until she was sure they were gone.
    * * *
    “You want to hear something