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was watching me, and Jennifer was making angelic faces looking heavenward. I hated that they were laughing at me, especially with Josh watching.
    Nakita and Josh were beside me, and I held my breath as the bus drove away. The three kids who got off with us gave us a long look before heading down the sidewalk.
    â€œMadison?” Josh asked, and I exhaled.
    â€œIt’s okay,” I said, trying to get rid of my anger. I hadn’t handled it well, but it was only my second scything. “We know who she is, and what she’s doing tonight. That’s more than we did ten minutes ago.” I glanced at my watch, surprised to find out it had only been just that long. “Barnabas is probably a few houses up,” I said as I put my hands in my jeans pockets and started to follow the bus’s route. “You want to just walk it?”
    Josh immediately shouldered his bag and fell into step beside me. Nakita, though, lingered behind, head down, arms crossed over her middle—thinking.

Chapter Three
    The loud bang of the Laundromat’s door hitting the wall brought Barnabas’s eyes up from where he sat with an untouched vendor-dispensed coffee before him. I watched the woman who just left drag her bratty kid to the busy street, not even using the crosswalk to dart over the six lanes to reach the apartment complex on the other side. The building was the same one from my flash forward—minus the fire trucks. The air-conditioning was on in here, but it was humid from the dryers, and it smelled like bad coffee and fabric softener. The place was empty now, apart from us, and Josh leaned over to open the dryer that someone had left going. The heat billowed out to warm my feet, and slowly the noise died to nothing.
    Josh slid from the dryer, sighing as he went to stand before the concession machine. He jiggled the change in his pocket before exchanging it for a double-stuffed, massive cookie the size of a plate. I looked at it enviously as he brought it back and slumped into the couch beside me. Nakita was in the chair next to Barnabas, and I propped my feet up on the table.
    â€œYou found the place okay?” I asked Barnabas as Josh took a huge bite, white cream squishing out the back.
    Barnabas nodded, running a hand over his loose curls as his gaze went out the window to the apartment building. “How about you? Did you find Tammy?”
    Nakita rolled her eyes and set her purse on the table. “She blew it.”
    My brow furrowed, and Barnabas’s eyes widened. “She’s dead?”
    â€œShe is not dead!” I said, then lowered my voice when an attendant poked his head in before vanishing into a back room. A sitcom laugh track rose faintly, and I leaned toward Barnabas. “I know who she is. Blonde. Bossy—”
    â€œAnd thinks Madison is a wacko,” Nakita said as she snapped open her purse and brought her camera out. Focusing on the rows of silent washers, lids up, she added, “You just had to blurt it out.”
    â€œHey. I’m not the one telling her I’m trying to save her soul,” I said, and Barnabas exhaled loudly.
    Totally unperturbed, Nakita looked at the back of her camera and the digital screen. “Stay home or you’ll ruin your life was the first thing out of her mouth. We had to get off the bus.” Glancing at Barnabas, she added, “Did you see Tammy get off?”
    Barnabas pulled himself out of his slouch. “Could have. I saw a girl the right age get off the bus with a boy. She looked scared.”
    I nodded. “That was probably her. Jeans, pink shirt. Blonde?”
    â€œYup, she lives on the third floor, corner apartment.” Barnabas sipped his machine-made drink, grimaced, and set it down. “Sweet seraphs, this is bad. So what happened on the bus?”
    My focus blurred as I thought back to it. Maybe I hadn’t screwed things up too badly. “Other than she and her friends thinking I was a