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“What?” Isobel swung around. The voice had come from behind her, she was sure, but when she looked, no one was there.
“Isobel?” Nicholas asked. “You okay?”
“Huh?” Isobel turned around and looked at Nicholas and the others who were watching her. She swiped at the sweat on her brow but then blinked. Her hand felt weird. Swollen. Too large for her arm, like she had a giant lobster claw for a hand. What the—
She jerked her hand in front of her face and shook her head.
Okay. It was normal. Not swollen.
“Aw, is poor little Isobel finally going crazy? Cracking like crackers?”
“Who said that?” Isobel turned so fast her head felt like it moved more quickly than the rest of her body.
“Whoa,” Nicholas said, reaching out and steadying her. “Honey, who are you talking to?”
“Hearing voices is how it starts, you know.”
Isobel jerked away from Nicholas, looking all around her, trying to figure out who was talking. “Do you hear that?” she asked the guys who were all staring at her like… like she was crazy.
“Crazy. Just like me, baby girl.”
Isobel spun around and then she screamed.
Because there, dangling from the neck by a rope, was her mother, her toes barely scraping the bar top.
Chapter Twenty-Four
ISOBEL
Isobel tried to run forward to help her mom down, but her legs wouldn’t work. They were distorted like in one of those carnival mirrors.
“Mom!” she cried out, reaching out. If she could just get to her in time, if she could cut her down before—
“Why didn’t you save me?” her mom gasped, her hands going to the rope around her neck as her legs started to twitch horribly.
“Mom!” Isobel screamed, again and again, but it was like a faraway sound—a tinny recording on one of those old tape players her dad used to keep around.
Why couldn’t she get back in her body? If she was human, she could cut her mom down.
She blinked and Mom was gone. But so was Isobel. Her body was gone. She was outside it. Separate from it. Separate from everything. Even time.
That meant she could go back and undo it all. She wouldn’t let Mom leave them. She’d wrap Mom in her Supergirl cape to keep the bad thoughts away. And she’d always be a good girl so Mom would love her enough to stay.
Noises buzzed like insects all around.
Pulling her back.
No. Mom.
“Iz!”
“Isobel. Can you hear me?”
“Izzy, talk to us.”
Hands.
Shaking her body.
