I drew her into a hug, held her for a long moment. With her weight against me, I could feel my own frayed heartbeat.
I waited until it steadied, then pulled away from her and checked the door. It wasn’t locked. No guard outside.
“Why are you so messed up?” she asked.
“I fell.”
“Poor baby.” She brushed dirt from my jacket, traced the scratches on my hands. “But there’s no emergency?”
I settled her onto the bed and sat beside her. “I think someone gave you something. In those drinks.”
“Yeah. Everyone’s been lovely, though. I’m glad you’re back.”
“It was Dr. Lyon who drugged you. He stole my phone and texted you, to make you think I’d left. What happened was, he took me out to the woods and killed me.”
She blinked. “What?”
“That’s why you had to stab him.” I pulled out the butterfly knife, unfolded it, and placed it in her hand. “You found this here, under the bed. It saved you.”
She stared at the blade. “You’re being weird, Jess.”
“I’m telling you what you have to do.”
“What happened to you out there?”
“Lyon and two men took me into the woods. They threw me from the car, and I died. No one will ever find my body.” I took her hand. “I know it’s terrible, but you were strong. You saw them take me, and you stabbed Lyon when he came for you. A lucky strike to the neck.”
“Jessica. Stop.”
“You will remember me being here, telling you all this, but I’m something your mind made up afterward—a way to cope with trauma. It’ll feel like you’re crazy at first, but in a week or so, the two men who helped kill me will confess. You’ll be a hero.”
She pulled away.
I looked at the door. Lyon would come here alone, surely.
If he wasn’t, I’d have to kill everyone with him. A tougher sell for Hiromi’s defense team, but as Grandmother had said, everyone is capable of great violence in the right circumstances.
The rest of her story would hold up. Perhaps, in a week or two, the police would find a body out in the woods, the right age and size. Wild animals would fix the rest.
I would knock Hiromi out before I left, as if Lyon had got in one last blow. Then an anonymous call, to get the cops here before anyone had time to clean up.
“You look different,” Hiromi said.
“Because you’re imagining all this.”
“No, you’re Jessica. But not the one I know.” She leaned forward, touching my cheeks, kissing me softly on the lips. “The real one.”
I gazed back at her, wondering what she saw. Had something dropped away, now that my cover story was done?
“I’m a ghost,” I said, returning her kiss, feeling the sparks grow.
“Ghosts don’t have scars. More like a robot. Dangerous parts, put together from scrap. You don’t really try to hide it.”
“Not with you,” I said.
There was a noise in the hallway, coming closer. A single set of footsteps.
I took the knife from her. “You’re the hero of this story. I’m just a ghost.”
