“We’re on our way,” Cassie said. “Don’t let him in.”
“I WASN’T PLANNING TO.”
“And don’t—” she hesitated. “Don’t panic.”
“TOO LATE.”
I hung up. Pressed my forehead against my knees. On the other side of the door, Jimmy knocked again.
“Diane? Did I do something wrong? Is this about the thing with Stacy Morrison? Because I told you, she was just helping me with algebra?—”
“JIMMY, I NEED YOU TO GO WAIT ON THE SIDEWALK.”
“But it’s cold.”
“IT’S OCTOBER. YOU’LL SURVIVE.”
A wounded pause. “Okay. But I’m not leaving. I came all this way to see you.”
All this way. From 1996. Through whatever tear in the fabric of space-time my possessed phone had apparently created.
I was going to kill Cassie. After she fixed this, I was going to kill her.
My phone buzzed. 428 matches. A new message from someone named Greg, whose profile photo appeared to be from the mid-seventies based on the leisure suit and aggressive sideburns.
Hey groovy lady. The vibes are telling me we’re cosmically aligned. Coffee?
I threw the phone across the room again. Tequila watched it skid across the floor.
You’re going to break that.
“Good. Maybe if I break it, this will stop.”
Has breaking things ever solved your problems before?
“There’s a first time for everything.”
That’s the spirit.
Cassie arrived twenty-three minutes later,which was twenty-three minutes of me hiding in my kitchen while Jimmy Kowalski paced my front yard and occasionally called out questions like “Did you change your hair?” and “Is that a cat? I didn’t know you had a cat!” and, most concerningly, “Why does everything look different? Did your neighbors get new houses?”
She brought Liam, who looked like a man resigned to his fate, and Margaret, who lookedintriguedin a way that made me deeply nervous.
Also Luna, because apparently the talking cat was a package deal now.
“He’s still out there,” I hissed from behind my curtains. “He’s been doing calisthenics. I think he’s trying to impress me.”
Cassie peered through the window. Her face did something complicated. “That’s… he’s very…”
“Eighteen. He’s very eighteen. I KNOW.”
Liam moved to the window, took one look, and said, “Right. Tea, then?” before disappearing into my kitchen like a man who’d learned that the only way to survive magical chaos was consistent hydration.
Margaret was already examining my phone, which was now sitting on my coffee table, buzzing steadily, screen filled with faces I hadn’t thought about in decades.
“Interesting,” she murmured.
“‘Interesting’ is not the word I’d use.”
