Possess

the room, she could see Sammy hitch his Transformers comforter up over his head as she entered.
    “Sammy?” she said softly. “Are you asleep?”
    He took a breath, then paused. She could picture him trying to figure out this change in their pattern. “No,” he said at last.
    “Good.”
    As she crossed to his bed, Sammy pulled the comforter down and flattened his body against the wall to make room for her in his twin bed. She climbed in, careful not to touch him, then waited until she felt his toes gently press against the back of her legs.
    “I had a nightmare,” she started. Sammy giggled. “Elephants again.”
    “No.”
    “Not elephants?” Please, please, please don’t say it was the phantom cat.
    “Mr. Moppet.”
    Kill me.
    “Not a nightmare,” Sammy said adamantly. “Not a dream.”
    “Of course it was a dream.”
    “He’s here.”
    Bridget turned halfway around. “You saw him?”
    Sammy shook his head. “But he’s here.”
    “It was just a dream,” Bridget said as she settled back into the mattress. “Go to sleep.”
    Sammy snuggled into his comforter. Suddenly Bridget wanted to wrap her arms tightly around her brother and protect him from the world. It had been building slowly, but with Peter’s death, Bridget couldn’t help but worry about Sammy. Alexa and Father Santos were right: Death followed her around. Could this new power of hers be somehow to blame? And if Father Santos’s theory about her dad was right, could Sammy have inherited the same curse? He could hear the phantom cat, how long before he was hearing voices in the walls too?
    She couldn’t let him face that. Her determination to visit Milton Undermeyer doubled. If there was something she could learn that would save Sammy from her fate, she’d find it.
    Sammy yawned and rolled onto his stomach. “Mr. Moppet was here, Bridge,” he said. “He was.”
    “Okay, Sammy,” she said, trying to appease him. “Whatever you say.”
    “He was,” Sammy said through another yawn. “And he wants something in your closet.”

Twenty-Four
    I T WAS A GLORIOUS MORNING . The November sky was unusually blue, and a layer of thin, wispy clouds streaked across the heavens, so high only the space shuttle would be able to see them up close. The pea-soup fog that had been parked over San Francisco for the better part of two weeks had miraculously evaporated.
    As they emerged from a tunnel, Bridget sucked in her breath. The orange-red spires of the Golden Gate Bridge towered above them, silhouetted against a perfect sky. In the almost sixteen years Bridget had lived in San Francisco, she could count on one hand the number of unblemished, picturesque days she’d seen. This one topped them all.
    Matt snaked his truck onto the Golden Gate Bridge. Once onto the span, he pulled to the far right lane and slowed down so that the joggers were almost passing them. At that speed Bridget soaked in the view. A navy of white sailboats had invaded the bay, filling the empty spaces on either side of Alcatraz Island. Ferries shuttled tourists around the “must-see” sights of the bay while cargo tankers slowly maneuvered into port. She could even make out a hiker’s neon yellow jacket amid the wilds of Angel Island.
    Beyond the bay, the silver-and-glass high-rises of the financial district glittered in the morning sun. They huddled together on their itty-bitty strip of land, reckless and defiant, jutting out into the bay like they were built directly on the water. The Bay Bridge soared out of their heights with no beginning and no end as it stretched toward Treasure Island.
    It was just like a postcard.
    “Cool, yeah?” Matt said. They were the first words he’d spoken since he picked her up, and she noticed how forced and strange they sounded.
    “Yeah.” Good answer. The awkwardness in the truck swamped her. She paused a second, wondering what else she should say to him before the obvious popped into her head. “So it was okay? I mean with baseball practice and all?”
    “No worries,” Matt said, moving back into the fast lane as they began to climb the hill on the north side of the bridge. “Sunday’s a pick-up practice. Optional. I usually go, so I figured it would be no big deal to ditch.”
    “Thanks.”
    They fell into silence again, and Bridget was grateful that Matt didn’t force conversation on her.
    She’d only seen Milton Undermeyer once, on the last day of his trial. Her mom had kept her and Sammy away from the