She hadn't, somehow, expected the next words out of his mouth to be, "I found your book."

"Mar's Guide to Seers, 1976 edition," J.D. said. "A classic of the genre. Chapters two and seven are out of date nowadays, but it's a good choice. Hiding it under the tampons was a great idea, but what can I say? I got a B-plus in Human Anatomy in two different schools."

Veronica didn't say anything.

"You're a seer. I don't get why you never told me. I wouldn't have turned you in to the government registry, I would have understood. We could have been partners, real partners. Not like me and my father. A seer and a hunter, equal and opposite, working together."

I didn't tell you because I wanted to get away from you. Veronica's hands found her party dress in the closet, the one she'd worn to Remington. Her fingernails started to shred the fabric, slowly and painfully.

She heard J.D. sit down, his back against the closet door. He relaxed into it, the door creaking once, and talked to her.

"You fed the jocks to a ghost on purpose, that night they attacked you. That was great. My father would've been impressed," J.D. said. "Then you went and drained yourself.

"Someone we killed came back as a ghost, and you've been feeding them," he continued, relentlessly. He understood now. He knew why she'd been so pale and ill. He'd seen right through her. Veronica twisted the fabric in her hands, threads coming apart under pressure. "I'm going to guess Heather. Fucking Heather. You're not the first seer to do that trick. It gives you more control over the ghosts, but makes them more powerful."

I already knew that, Veronica thought. She'd planned for it.

"I remember years ago we did a job in this small town in California," J.D. said, slowly and meditatively. "All the local hunters were dead. We met up with the town seer, Maria. She let me stay at her place, in her kid's room; she took care of me. I liked her at the time. I think she felt like I shouldn't have been allowed to be there, that I was too young or something. It turned out her only son had died in a car crash. She loved him, so she fed his ghost. She kept bleeding herself, watching him grow, and she helped him find other victims. He killed twenty-three people, including Maria, before we got him. Technically, my father killed Maria, snapped her neck, but we didn't put that in the report."

Veronica could hear the sound of his breath, steady and regular.

"I can help you end her," J.D. said. "I know what I'm doing. I started when I was twelve. I think I hated it at the time. My dad made me do it. But everything would be different, with you."

I need you out of my house and out of my life. Veronica knotted together the shreds of the dress, which she'd torn into a set of long strips.

"You know that, when a hunter dies, you bury her by the nearest hospice as soon as you can," he said. "So that her blood protects against other ghosts rising. It's just a superstition, the effect wears off. One day after she blew herself up, what was left of her was in the ground. Two days after that, I was wearing my mom's old badge and taking her place in the crew. Then, you helped me. You set me free. After you shot him, I realized I actually wanted to quit. I didn't want to do it any more, but I'll make an exception for you. Let's hunt Heather together, tonight. What do you say?"

Veronica heard him stand up. Time had run out. She had to finish what she had to do.

"I tried a lot of different things," J.D. said. "Playing cards, holding down a job, re-grouting the shower. All that normal crap. But I realized nothing worked. There's only one way this can end. The only question is whether you'll come with me or not."

She heard him punch through her lock. The wood splintered open around the metal. The knob clattered to the floor, and the door flew open.

Veronica hung from her closet rail, head down, eyes closed, a noose around her neck. Under her clothes, the rest of the fabric was looped around her waist to support her. She swung back and forth, her body still, hanging from a rope like an executed murderer.

The ultimate fake suicide.

J.D. said nothing for a long while. She wondered if he'd left. Eventually, he spoke again, sounding flat and numbed.

"Well, this places Heather Chandler firmly in the someone-else's-problem column," he said. "It's a pity you can't see the petition our fellow students really signed." There was a sound like tearing paper, ripping off the original innocuous phrasing of Heather Duke's petition. "Even I signed. No matter how this goes down, I won't exist afterwards. An anonymous pile of fragments, or a free man. Here's what we promised.

"We, the students of Westerburg High, will die. Today. Our burning bodies are the ultimate protest against a society that degrades us. Fuck you all.

"It's not very subtle, but neither is blowing up an entire school. A Norwegian in the boiler room and a pack of thermals in the gym at the pep rally. Damn it, Veronica. We could have toasted marshmallows together."

Veronica heard movement on the ground floor of the house, a footstep on the stairs below.

"Veronica! Dinner!" her mother called. "Veronica?"

She thought she heard J.D. scrabbling for the exit out the window, but she couldn't risk it. She couldn't dare move until after her mother forced her way into her bedroom and screamed.

"I should have let you take that job at the pasta restaurant," her mother said. "I didn't want you coming home late at night. I should have gone to parent-teacher interviews this semester. I should have taken us to church more than just Easter and Christmas. I should have ..."

Veronica opened her eyes. Her hand crept up her back and loosened the knots. Breathless, still breathing, she dropped to the floor.

"Why so tense, Mom?" she asked.

—

Pauline Fleming was a busy woman. Her teenage suicide prevention program tugged at vulnerable heartstrings and brought out the best kind of inner sunshine, radiance, and bonding in everyone. The other staff had initially scoffed at her and played yet another a round of bash-the-hippie, oh weren't they so clever and original, but Pauline had the last laugh on them. She'd been interviewed by three major news networks in the past week and expected to hold an even bigger tribute next week. That sweet girl Heather Duke, so beloved by all her peers, was a wonderful support to the cause and a true leader. Not to mention that she looked so spiritual and inspiring in front of the camera. Pauline might ask the dear child for some little fashion tips, later.

Pauline definitely cared about every last one of her students, which was all that motivated her to act in the first place. So, of course, she had the time to talk to every teenager who approached her, even one who was normally sullen and quiet in her classes, one of those bad-attitude cases. The boy who always wore that horrible dusty black coat, such a negative color. He was going through a tragic time after his father's death, getting in trouble for fighting. His legal guardian ought to be called in for a talk one of these days, but Pauline had no idea who that was.

The troubled youth had an intense stare that Pauline found highly off-putting. There were dark circles under his eyes as if he had not slept. She would have to counsel him later that that sort of look was not helpful for future prospects when interviewing for college or work.

He spoke first, rather aggressively. "I let you have all those love-ins. I thought that hippie shit might actually help. But Veronica Sawyer killed herself last night."

'I let you' indeed, Pauline thought. That phrasing was very rude, but she was a tolerant woman. And that was terrible news.

"How dreadful. We'll have to put together a tribute for her. Do you have any photographs?" Veronica Sawyer had been a very popular student; a lovely girl, Heather Chandler's soulmate, beautiful and truly deep inside. She was one of Mrs. Pope's star English students, Pauline hazily thought. Did she also write a lyrical suicide note?

"Honestly, I think that's the thing Veronica would least want. She despised you. She called bullshit on you from the first. She was right," the boy said. He still had that horrible stare. And bad language, too, but that was understandable for a grieving soul. "She was smarter than me."

"Look, I understand this troubles you, Jamie," Pauline said. She was pretty sure that was his first name. It was hard when they used initials or nicknames. She snuck a stealthy look at the clock. "We have the pep rally starting next period, so I can't stay now, but afterwards I would love to talk this over with you. You know where my office is."

Pauline gave him a warm and friendly wave and left out the door. Part of him certainly hoped the boy would take advantage of her offer and come for some serious counseling; another part of her hoped she would never see that unsettling glare again as long as she lived. But that was such an uncharitable thing to think. She loved all her students, after all.

—

Veronica came late to school, a ghost walking the empty hallways. She saw Martha, from a distance, but didn't stop to say hello. She ducked out of sight and into the women's bathrooms whenever she could. She brought a pouch full of her special hairpins and other picks.

She flicked open the tumblers to J.D.'s locker. Thank you, Martha, for the suggestion. There were interesting things in that locker. One loaded gun, complete with Ich Lüge bullets. She carefully put it in her handbag and checked her watch. The pep rally began in fifteen minutes.

She walked down the dusty concrete steps as quietly as she could. She took out the gun, holding it ready to use. The boiler room was an underbelly of the school she'd never visited before. Flaking white paint on the walls, hairline cracks running through the concrete and the floors, and a fire alarm on the walls. Cut wires dangled from the bottom of the alarm. She approached the bottom of the steps and a hallway, and saw the black figure bent down in the center of it.

"May I see your hall pass?" she said.

She had the satisfaction of watching him jump, turn around, and see her standing there alive with his own gun pointed at him.

"I knew that loose was too noose," J.D. said. "Noose too loose. Damn it."

"Put the bomb on the ground," Veronica said. J.D.'s eyes flicked contemptuously downwards to the bomb at his feet. "I knew that. Stay back," she said. She felt her hands shake slightly and saw the end of the gun waver before her, but J.D. didn't move forward. "It's not just Heather's ghost, you know. It's all of them. Heather, Kurt, Ram, and your father." She'd hoped that naming Bud Dean would rattle him, but J.D.'s expression didn't change. "Heather's controlling the others. She remembers everything, especially what we did. She's intelligent. She was the one who told your father. She tried to make Heather commit suicide. And I think she killed this guy called David Harper. I haven't seen him as a ghost, and the accident report said he had a lot of alcohol in his blood, but ..."

That one actually got a reaction. "But he was Heather's boyfriend," J.D. said, following the direction of her thought. "I saw him that night at the Snappy Snack Shack, recognized him from the funeral. Asshole parked in the handicapped zone." And suddenly an alternative theory of David Harper's death flashed across Veronica's mind. J.D. seemed to understand her sudden suspicion. He quirked an eyebrow, as if to say oh, seriously? "No, darling, I didn't kill him. The accident report spooked me at first, all he did was talk to me and die. Don't drink and drive, kids. If what you say is true, Chandler's a different kind of ghost."

He was just interested enough to talk. Perhaps that was progress.

"You offered to fix this," Veronica said. "And now that you're on the opposite end of the gun, I can trust you a lot more. Put your hands on your head."

Suddenly, he lurched forward. Veronica let off the gun. J.D. shouted and reeled sideways, but by then he was already on top of her. He was angry, demonic in his pale face and dark look, fighting swiftly and brutally. A monster who wanted to blow up an entire school. His right hand smashed her wrist against the wall and she dropped the gun. The back of her head hit the wall, hard.

"That offer came with an expiry date," he snarled. J.D.'s coat was torn above his left bicep, but if she'd hit him it didn't seem to slow him down. Veronica struck out with her left hand, almost randomly, and her nails sunk into his cheek and drew blood before he battered her aside. He grabbed her by the hair and slammed her head into his knee, twice.

Veronica felt herself collapse bonelessly, almost out of consciousness, part feigning it but mostly just giving way to the stars in her head.

The world was black, and then the darkness receded from her. She lay crouched on the ground. Veronica opened her eyes, cautiously. The bomb was taped to a column. Red numbers on it blinked downward. J.D. was still bent over it, working carefully.

The fire extinguisher wasn't far from her. She unclipped it from the wall, quiet as if they were in a tomb. Veronica crept up behind her ex-lover, the heavy weight of the extinguisher ready to strike.

He saw or heard her just before she brought it down. The extinguisher glanced off his shoulder instead of his skull. Veronica saw his bag spill open, saw the gun slide across the floor in the opposite direction. She made a dive for it. J.D. fled, plunging through a pile of metal drums, knocking them down around her. Veronica held the gun, standing on her feet.

She approached the bomb. A black casing, red buttons, and a countdown. Two minutes and counting.

He was crouched in the corner, hiding like a rabid animal. "You know Martha's at school today, right?" Veronica said. "She pitied you, but then she started to see you're psychotic, not just pathetic - Turn off the bomb." There was no time.

"I couldn't stop them. The only place that different social types can get along is in heaven," J.D. said. In his voice was the bleak finality at the end of all things.

The countdown was on, she knew she couldn't run, and she panicked. "I'll kill you, I swear to God, I'll fucking kill you. How do I turn it off?"

"Try the red button." J.D.'s crouch was like a tiger, ready to leap.

Her glance slid to the three identical red buttons near her, then back to her enemy. The fucker would think it was hilarious if all three buttons triggered the bomb.

"Which red button?"

He threw up a middle finger. Veronica fired. She wasn't sure herself where she was aiming, but J.D. jerked upward and then his finger exploded in a shower of blood and gore. J.D. clutched his hand. Blood streamed from it. He was maimed, unnerved, and in in pain. He dropped to his knees and crawled, grasping an old piece of rag, trying to staunch all the blood. He stared at the wound as if he couldn't believe she'd actually done it.

Veronica held the gun, unwavering. "It's over. Help me end it."

The blood soaked the cloth wrapped around his hand. He looked up at her, met her eyes. "So maybe I'm blowing up an entire school because nobody loves me. But it's pretty deep, isn't it? They'll see the ashes of Westerburg High and they'll say, there's a school that self destructed not because society didn't care, but because that school was society. You want the slate clean as much as I do."

"You know what I want?" Veronica said.

He leapt up, a knife suddenly in his left hand, lunging. He was on her. She could smell smoke and feel the weight and heat of him. She fired again. The barrel was hot like fire in her hand. She'd shot him point-blank. The knife arced down, stabbing the bomb. J.D. clung to it to hold himself upright, then slumped down. The countdown had stopped. He fell to the ground and lay still.

She didn't bother to tell his unconscious body what she wanted.

Four seconds left on the counter, frozen in time. Veronica put the gun in her pocket and started to unstrap the bomb from the column. She pried off the duct tape with the edge of a lockpick.

Then J.D. was on her again, grappling her from behind. He'd played possum. He'd done her trick. They both wrestled for the gun. His blood soaked Veronica's hands. She squeezed his bloody right hand and he cried out. Blood from J.D.'s torso soaked her shirt. His eyes were desperate, blood running down his face. He trapped her right hand on the ground with his good hand, pinning her down with the weight of his body.

Once, it would have been playful wrestling, tangled in the sheets of her bed. This time, they were fighting for their lives. No, this was fighting for death. Veronica brought her knee up into his groin, hard. He grimaced and fell to the side, on top of her. The hot metal of the gun was trapped between them.

The gun fired. Veronica thought it was her, at first. A torrent of liquid soaked her shirt and she felt fire and heat. Then J.D. collapsed over her and she rolled him off her, feeling only dead weight. A growing pool of blood formed under him. The gun was still between them, the barrel hot. Veronica picked it up and thought of firing a round directly into his skull, just to make sure.

Instead, she aimed high and fired against the far wall, twice. Then the gun stopped working. That seemed to be the end.

With the bomb tucked under her jacket, she walked up the stairs. Her bruises felt like one big ache. She could still hear the distant noises of the pep rally, the cheering and screaming.

She thought about looking in at the gymnasium, one last time, to see Heather McNamara cartwheeling like mad, Martha somewhere in the back, Dennis holding hands with his new girlfriend. It would be nice to see what she had saved. But there wasn't really time. She left the school halls behind.

Veronica pushed open the door at the top of the stairs, out in the fresh air. She placed her free hand on the banister to steady herself. Then she called out.

"Heather, come to me."

Veronica waited, and in moments Heather Chandler appeared before her in the air, pouting. Bud Dean stood behind Heather like a bodyguard, although Veronica couldn't see Kurt and Ram anywhere. Well, Heather was the one who really mattered here.

Heather looked annoyed, as if she knew that she'd been summoned like a dog.

"It's over," Veronica said. "I fed you. You should know that the connection goes both ways. We're bound together, you and me." She touched her sleeve, over the ragged places on her wrist where she'd cut, again and again. "I worked out how to destroy you. I'm going down, and you're going down with me."

She opened her jacket, over the bomb.

"Wait a second," Heather said, "I really think we should talk about this."

Veronica grappled with the knife embedded in the bomb. Could she get the timer to come on again? Or just apply her cigarette lighter to the end and hope for the best. She held Heather in her place, the connection between them stronger than steel.

"As in, before you ineptly try to blow us both up, best friend, I think you should enjoy the pep rally," Heather said.

And then, on either side of the double door, Heather McNamara and Heather Duke walked out. Only they weren't themselves. Veronica looked at them, and she saw foreign colors glittering behind their eyes, shimmering underneath their skin. Kurt and Ram lurked inside them, invisible to everyone but Veronica, two malicious ghosts using the human bodies to attack.

Heather McNamara pinned Veronica's arms behind her back. She was taller and stronger than Veronica, with a cheerleader's muscles. Veronica couldn't make her let go. Heather Duke held the bomb. She shook her large green handbag upside down, and out cascaded makeup and brushes and stationery. Anyone could have told that she was possessed by a wraith, since Heather Duke would never show that much disrespect to L'Oreal matte blush or her Parker fountain pen set. Duke's body slipped the bomb in her handbag and fastened it back together. Her face was twisted into a leer Veronica had often seen on Kurt's face.

Heather faced Veronica in triumph, laughing at her own success, her mouth flashing radiant blue and her dress red as blood. "I'd love to say this was all my idea," she said, "but this plan's all on Wonder Boy. Great life choices there, best friend! And now, it's mine. The bomb goes off at the pep rally, and every soul in Westerburg High belongs to me.

"Think of it as the apology you owe me." Heather drew almost close enough to touch Veronica, but instead of reaching out a spectral hand she only beamed in pure exultation. "I ruled Westerburg when I was alive. I deserve it now that I'm dead."