“Christ,” Jenny sighed. She looked at the clock. It was 6:34 a.m. on a Saturday.
“Don’t take the Lord’s name,” Darcy whispered.
Jenny stretched her arms. Darcy had said she didn’t like sleeping with other people, due to a certain cousin named Heywood who used to share her bed when he visited and always peed in his sleep. That was perfect for Jenny. She’d given Darcy blankets and pillows to use on the couch.
“Let me get my car keys.” Jenny yawned.
“Oh, no, that’s okay,” Darcy said. “It’s only a mile or so if you go through the woods. And I feel like hiking in the woods for a while.”
“Okay.” Jenny knew what Darcy meant—there was nothing better than the solitude of those woods, away from everybody. She sat up.
“It’s cool, you don’t have to get up,” Darcy whispered. “I was just letting you know so you didn’t think I was a disappearing spaz or something. I left you The Return of the King, cause you don’t want to miss that one when you just saw the other two! No, seriously, don’t even get out of bed. I insist.”
“All right.” Jenny rubbed her eyes, feeling disoriented. She’d been lost in a terrible dream, one where all the people she’d killed were back for revenge, chasing her through a dark tunnel somewhere. “Um, see ya, Darcy. Thanks for coming over.”
“Thanks for inviting me,” Darcy said, though it had really been her idea. “God bless!”
When Darcy left, Jenny dropped back into bed and pulled the covers over her face to block the daylight. It was way too early.
Ashleigh clomped through the woods, cursing Darcy’s hefty body at every thudding step along the way. She felt like an elephant lumbering through the jungle. An elephant with an aching back.
She wasn’t really going back to Darcy Metcalf’s house—she intended to avoid that place as much as she could, without blowing her cover. So far, nobody seemed to have noticed the renewed activity at the Goodling house, which was tucked at the back of a cul-de-sac. The house to their left had never sold, and the one on their right had been foreclosed on and lay empty. The only other house on the cul-de-sac had belonged to Dick Baker, the realtor/lawyer whose face was all over town, and who had been put to a miserable death the night Jenny Mittens went psycho.
She arrived at her house red-faced and puffing for air, her socks squishy with sweat inside her tennis shoes. She trudged up the front steps, staggered inside, and locked the door behind her.
Exhausted, she crawled upstairs on her hands and knees. She felt the baby flip around inside her.
“Fuck you, baby,” she whispered.
She glanced into the guest room, where Esmeralda was staying, and a snarl came to her lips.
Esmeralda sure hadn’t run off. She lay in her bed, still deep asleep. Tommy lay beside her, one arm over her hips.
It looked like they’d done it. Tommy was wearing only his boxers, and Esmeralda wore Ashleigh’s favorite flannel pajama bottoms, which were polka-dotted with the Superman logo. They were too small for Ashleigh, now that she was stuck in Darcy’s fat, pregnant body.
Esmeralda wore a simple, thin gold chain they’d found in Ashleigh’s mother’s jewelry box. Tommy had taken one of the Ashleigh’s finger bones to the garage and drilled a hole in it, and now it hung around Esmeralda’s neck, on her chest between her bare tits.
Ashleigh looked up and down Esmeralda’s gorgeous dark body, and she felt a sharp sting of jealousy. Tommy was falling for her. But Tommy was Ashleigh’s opposite, her property.
And Esmeralda was Ashleigh’s doorway to the physical world. She had the power to kick Ashleigh right out of Darcy’s body at any moment, and then Ashleigh wouldn’t be able to do anything except try to get born again as an infant somewhere. Ashleigh would forget everything again, like she did each time she was born, and Jenny would have a long, peaceful, and possibly happy life.
But Jenny had killed Ashleigh, and Ashleigh wasn’t going to let her get away with that.
Besides, Jenny would be watching for Ashleigh now. She might track Ashleigh down when Ashleigh was still a small child and kill her all over again. Jenny had done that before, in India, maybe two thousand years ago.
Now, Ashleigh had to worry about Tommy and Esmeralda getting too close. A bond between them could lead, in time, to an alliance against Ashleigh. She needed their primary loyalties to her, not to each other. She would get to work on that, too.
Ashleigh went to the computer in her room and hopped on the Internet to gather up some information.
It was time to build a Jenny trap.
Chapter Twenty-Nine