Dead Air by Michelle Schusterman (best books under 200 pages txt) 📕

fence, but I was closing in. A shriek almost caused me to trip, and for one horrible moment, I was positive Sam had been electrocuted. Then movement to my right caught my eye, and I glanced over just as Roland tackled Emily.

Relief washed over me, and I put on another burst of speed. Three yards to go, two, one . . . I grabbed Lidia around the waist and we both fell to the ground with an impact that knocked the wind out of me.

She rolled over with unnatural speed, but I managed to hold her down. My elbow stung, and I felt blood trickling down my arm. Struggling to pin her with one arm, I aimed the camera at her face.

“Let me go.” The low, growling voice wasn’t Lidia’s any more than the grotesque smile twisting her lips.

“I’m trying to,” I gasped. Then I pressed the shutter button and held it down.

Lidia’s eyes rolled back in her head as the flash pulsed like a strobe light, and her body went limp. Through the neon spots dancing in my vision, I glimpsed the hulking outline of a man with a curled mustache just before he vanished in a light gust of wind.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DEMONS

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Dangling my legs out the back of the ambulance, I watched through drooping eyelids as Dad and Jess talked with a few police officers. Next to me, Oscar sighed impatiently while the paramedic continued fussing over the lump on his head.

“I’m fine,” he said for probably the hundredth time in the last hour. The paramedic rolled her eyes and, adjusting his bandage one last time, headed over to check on Sam.

“You were out cold,” I reminded him, tugging the blanket the police had given me tighter around my shoulders.

“Yeah, but only for, like, a minute.”

I offered him a section of blanket. Oscar shook his head just as a particularly chilly gust of wind hit. “Oh, fine,” he muttered, tugging the blanket around his shoulders. Smiling, I scooted closer to him.

Dad kept glancing over at me, like he was worried I might disappear. After everything that had just happened, I figured he was mentally booking our one-way tickets home. I’d already told my version of tonight’s drama to three different police officers. And it wasn’t exactly a truthful version.

I mean, the part about Emily attacking Sam was true. The part about Roland wrestling her off him and getting a knife slashed across the face for his efforts was true, too. So was the part about Mi Jin pinning Emily to the ground and refusing to budge until the police arrived. And the part about Jess giving Lidia CPR and crying when she finally came to. And the part where Dad hugged me so hard I thought my ribs would crack, then promised I’d be lucky to be ungrounded before I was fifty.

But I didn’t tell the police about Red Leer. My last decent photo was of Lidia standing at the end of the corridor, which was blurred with transparent outlines. The constant flash I’d used in the courtyard turned the pictures of her face into a warped, overexposed mess. I thought about how it would sound if I explained the whole thing to the cops: Well, she’s been possessed by the ghost of a pirate we picked up back in Rotterdam, and he tried to use her to free all the ghosts of the prisoners here at Daems. Luckily, Lidia’s dead brother helped me save her with my camera.

I figured that would just convince the police I had some sort of head injury, so I kept it to myself. But the P2P fans were going to hear all about it in my next blog post.

Which honestly would probably be my last blog post.

“Hanging in there, you two?”

Oscar and I looked up, startled. Roland smiled, then winced and touched the bandage stretched along his cheek. “I keep forgetting about this thing.”

“How bad is it?” I asked, holding out my arm. “Because I think I lost a few layers of skin on my elbow. It’s pretty epic.”

Roland chuckled. “Mine’s a shallow cut. Although they said it might scar.”

“Scars are cool,” I assured him. “Um . . . I’m sorry about, you know . . .”

“Locking me in a van with a psychopath running around?”

“Well, yeah,” I admitted. To my relief, Roland looked amused.

“You really thought it was me pulling all that host-curse garbage?” he asked, and I nodded. “Why?”

“Er . . .” I wrinkled my nose. “I thought you were jealous.”

Roland’s eyebrows shot up. “Jealous? Of what?”

“Well, that Emily was so obsessed with Sam. Because, you know . . .” I glanced at Oscar for help. He leaned away from me, palms flat as if to say, Leave me out of this. Sighing, I turned back to Roland. “I guess I thought you were in love with her.”

For a second, Roland gaped at me. Then he burst out laughing.

I rolled my eyes. “Okay, so I got that wrong.”

“A little bit, yeah.” Roland shook his head, still grinning. “I’ve had my eye on her for a while, but believe me, that isn’t why. She struck me as a little off from the very beginning.”

“So you got her fired?”

“Yeah, but that was before I realized she genuinely needed help. And Sam . . .” Roland glanced over to where Sam stood a little apart from the others, his expression lost. “He’s just clueless. I kept trying to tell him Emily’s behavior was getting obsessive, but he didn’t want to listen. Eventually, everyone but Sam could see it, and we fired her.”

“When did you realize she’d set Carlos up?” I asked.

“Not until recently,” he admitted. “Sam started getting letters from her again, and the writing reminded me of the threats that scared off Bernice. None of us thought . . .” His face tightened a little. “We didn’t realize how bad it had gotten, or we would’ve done something sooner.”

“Roland!” Jess called, waving for him to join her, Dad, and the policemen. One was still examining Emily’s smartphone. I’d given it