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clutches my hand to drag me along. “Hurry,” he says, weaving through the tourists, intent on getting to something or someone in the distance.
    â€œHurry where?”
    He points with his free hand as we narrowly avoid toppling a tour group of Brazilians in matching green-and-yellow sports jerseys. “It’s her, Maddy. The girl from Stamp’s cell phone.”
    â€œVal? How? Where?”
    He stops short, pulling me behind a giant green soda machine. “I saw her in the audience at the last show.” He peeks around the corner of the machine and quickly looks back. “When you almost pushed Stamp offstage.”
    I picture her from Stamp’s phone, glimpses of spiky blonde hair, pale little face, black fingernails, mesh-covered thigh. “How could you tell?”
    â€œI can’t. I just … don’t ask me to explain. I think, I mean, I know it’s her.”
    â€œSo what are we doing behind this soda machine?”
    â€œShe stopped at the caramel corn booth.”
    I risk a glimpse past his shoulder, although he grimaces like I’m about to get us caught. The midafternooncrowd is thick, but I know the popcorn stand he’s talking about. There, in a line of about five people, is a waif with spiky blonde hair. And then she’s gone, abandoning her place in line and making for the caricature booth.
    â€œLet’s go, Columbo.” I snort. “She’s on the move. Although, it doesn’t look like her.”
    Then again, as I catch flashes of her in the crowd, it could be. A peek here, past a burly man in a tank top, looks like her. Then, as she coasts through a sea of sticky-fingered field trip kids, she looks nothing like her. Too tall, too short, too broad, too thin.
    â€œWhy is she avoiding us, then?” Dane says.
    â€œHave you seen yourself lately?”
    â€œFunny.” Then he stops, turning his back to her as I peek under his arm and notice a spiky blonde-headed someone sniffing our way, then turning quickly to disappear into the crowd.
    â€œThat little minx!” I’m sure it’s her. Kinda, sorta, maybe. I’m dragging Dane along, weaving in and out of tour groups and sweaty, sunburned families until we turn the corner near the cheesy pretzel stand, and—poof! No more Val. Or maybe-Val. Or could-be-Val. Or probably-was-Val.
    I start again.
    Dane holds me back. “We could do this all day,” he says, stretching one arm over my shoulder. “And we’ve got another show to do in an hour.”
    It feels good, his arm like that.
    People smile at us, two kids obviously on break from some show, not hiding their affection.
    â€œWhy would she be here?”
    â€œIf it even was her.” Dane cocks one beautiful eyebrow.
    I slap him playfully on the chest, right between two smears of fake blood on his T-shirt. “You’re the one who convinced me it was, remember?”
    He sighs, shaking his head. “Maybe I’ve just been on the run too long.”
    And I know he means forever, not just now: his whole Afterlife, ever since he was reanimated. This school, that school, before Chloe, after Chloe, and now with Stamp and me. I lean into him, to show him I understand, that I care, and he nuzzles his chin on the top of my head, you know, the way guys do.
    It feels good, and I don’t want to think it was Val scoping us out. I want to be anonymous, boring. I can’t believe undercover Sentinel skanks are watching our every move, like Dane believes they are.
    â€œIt probably wasn’t her,” I say. “We’re just being paranoid.”
    â€œYeah, probably.”
    We’re almost back to the front entrance of the theater, all fake spooky with cobwebs in the windows and plastic ivy on the brick facade. A little girl in a Victorian apron and bonnet hands out pictures to our fans.
    She nods at us warily, as if she’s going to tell our manager about our little between-show