Bonnie tugged at Meredith's sleeve. "I have a very bad feeling about this," she hissed.

Meredith turned back to Jim. "You mean Isobel? Where areher parents?"

"Isa-chan, I mean Isobel, I just call her Isa-chan, you know..."

"It's all right," said Meredith. "Just say what comes naturally. Go on."

"Well, Isa-chan only has her grandma, and Grandma Saitou doesn't even come downstairs much. I made her lunch a while ago and she thought I was-Isobel's father. She gets...confused."

Meredith glanced at Bonnie, and said, "And Isobel? Is she confused, too?"

Jim shut his eyes, looking utterly miserable. "I wish you'd go in and, well, just talk to her."

Bonnie's bad feeling was only getting worse. She really couldn't stand another scare like the one at Caroline's house-and she certainly didn't have the strength to Call again, even if Damon weren't in a hurry to get somewhere.

But Meredith knew all this, and Meredith was giving her the sort of look that couldn't be denied. It also promised that Meredith would protect Bonnie, no matter what.

"Is she hurting anybody? Isobel?" Bonnie heard herself ask as they crossed through the kitchen and toward a bedroom at the end of the hallway.

She could hardly hear Jim's whispered, "Yeah."

And then, as Bonnie groaned internally, he added, "Herself."

Isobel's room was just what you'd expect from a quiet and studious girl. At least one side was. The other side looked as if a tidal wave had picked everything up and thrown it down again randomly. Isobel was sitting in the middle of this mess like a spider on a web.

But that wasn't what made Bonnie's gut churn. It was what Isobel was doing. She had laid out beside her what looked a lot like Mrs. Flowers' kit for cleaning out wounds, but she wasn't healing anything.

She was piercing herself.

She had already done her lip, her nose, one eyebrow, and her ears, many times. Blood was dripping from all these places, dripping and falling onto the unmade sheets of her bed. Bonnie saw all that as Isobel looked up at them with a frown, except that the frown was only half there. On the pierced side, the eyebrow didn't move at all.

Her aura was shattered orange with black lashings through it.

Bonnie knew, all at once, that she was going to be sick. She knew it with the deep knowledge that overcame all embarra.s.sment and which sent her flying to a wastebasket she didn't even remember seeing. Thank G.o.d, it had a white plastic bag lining it, she thought, and then she was completely occupied for a few minutes.

Her ears recorded a voice, even as she was thinking she was glad she hadn't had lunch.

"My G.o.d,are you crazy ? Isobel, what have you done to yourself? Don't you know the kind of infections you can get...the veins you can hit...the muscles you can paralyze...? I think you've already pierced the muscle in your eyebrow-and you shouldn't still be bleeding unless you've hit veins or arteries."

Bonnie retched dryly into the wastebasket, and spat.

And just then she heard a meaty thud.

She looked up, half knowing what she would see. But it still was a shock. Meredith was doubled over from what must have been a punch in the stomach.

The next thing Bonnie knew, she was beside Meredith. "Oh, my G.o.d, did shestab you?" A stab wound...deep enough into the abdomen...

Meredith clearly couldn't get her breath. From somewhere a bit of advice from her sister Mary, the nurse, floated into Bonnie's mind.

Bonnie pounded with both fists on Meredith's back, and suddenly Meredith took a huge gulp of air.

"Thanks," she was saying weakly, but Bonnie was already dragging her away, away from the laughing Isobel and a collection of the world's longest nails and the rubbing alcohol and other things that she had on a breakfast tray beside her.

Bonnie got to the door and almost collided with Jim, who had a wet washcloth in his hand. For her, she supposed. Or maybe for Isobel. All Bonnie was interested in was making Meredith pull up her top to make absolutely, positively sure that there were no holes in her.

"I got it-out of her hand-before she punched me," Meredith said, still breathing painfully as Bonnie anxiously scanned the area above her low-rise jeans. "I'll have a bruise, that's all."

"She hit you, too?" Jim said in dismay. Except that he didn't say it. He whispered it.

You poor guy, Bonnie thought, finally satisfied that Meredith wasn't perforated. What with Caroline and your sister Tami and your girlfriend, you don't have the first idea of what's going on. How could you?

And if we told you, you'd just think we were two more crazy girls.

"Jimmy, youhave to call Dr. Alpert right away, and then I think they're going to have to go to the hospital in Ridgemont. Isobel's already done permanent damage to herself-G.o.d knows how much.All those piercings are almost certainly going to be infected.

When did she start this?"

"Um, well...she first started acting weird after Caroline came to see her."

"Caroline!" Bonnie blurted, confused. "Was she crawling?"

Jim gave her a look. "Huh?"

"Never mind Bonnie; she was joking," Meredith said easily. "Jimmy, you don't have to tell us about Caroline if you don't want to.

We-well, we know she was over at your house."

"Doeseverybody know?" Jim asked miserably. "No. Just Matt, and he only told us so that somebody could go check on your little sister."

Jim looked guilty and stricken at once. The words poured out of him as if they'd been bottled up and now the cork was out of the bottle.

"I don't know what's going on anymore. All I can tell you is what happened. It was a couple days ago-late evening," Jim said.

"Caroline came over, and-I mean, I never even had a crush on her. It's like, sure, she's good-looking, and my parents were away and all, but I never thought I was the kind of guy..."

"Never mind that now. Just tell us about Caroline and Isobel."

"Well, Caroline came over wearing this outfit that was-well, the top was practically transparent. And she just-she said, did I want to dance and it was, like, slow dancing and she-she, like,seduced me. That's the truth. And the next morning she left-just about the time Matt came. That was the day before yesterday. And then I noticed Tami acting-crazy. Nothing I could do would stop her. And then I got a phone call from Isa-chan and-I've never heard her so hysterical. Caroline must have gone straight from my house to her house. Isa-chan said she was going to kill herself. And so I ran over here. I had to get away from Tami anyway because me being there at home just seemed to make it worse."

Bonnie looked at Meredith and knew that they were both thinking the same thing:and somewhere in there, both Caroline and Tami propositioned Matt, too.

"Caroline must have told her everything." Jim gulped. "Isa-chan and I haven't-we were waiting, you know? But all Isa-chan would say to me was that I was going to be sorry. 'You'll be sorry; just wait and see,' over and over and over. And, G.o.d, Iam sorry."

"Well, now you can stop being sorry and start calling the doctor. Rightnow , Jimmy." Meredith gave him a swat on the behind.

"And then you need to call your parents. Don't give me those big brown puppy-dog eyes. You're over eighteen; I don't know what they can do to you for leaving Tami alone all this time."

"But-"

"But me no buts. Imean it, Jimmy."

Then she did what Bonnie knew she would, but was dreading. She approached Isobel again. Isobel's head was down; she was pinching her navel with one hand. In the other, she held a long, shining nail.

Before Meredith could even speak, Isobel said, "So you're in on it, too. I heard the way you called him 'Jimmy.' You're all trying to take him away from me. All you b.i.t.c.hes are trying to hurt me.Yurusenai! Zettai yurusenai! "

"Isobel! Don't! Can't you see that you're hurtingyourself ?"

"I'm only hurting myself to take away the pain. You're the one who's really doing it, you know. You're p.r.i.c.king me with needles inside."

Bonnie jumped inside her own skin, but not just because Isobel suddenly gave a vicious thrust of the nail. She felt heat sweep up into her cheeks. Her heart began to pound even faster than it was already going.

Trying to keep one eye on Meredith, she pulled her mobile phone out of her back pocket where she'd stashed it after the visit to Caroline's house.

Still with half her attention on Meredith, she went on the Internet and rapidly entered just two search words. Then, as she made a couple of selections from her hits, she realized that she could never absorb all the information in a week, much less a few minutes.

But at least she had a start.Just now, Meredith was backing away from Isobel. She put her mouth close to Bonnie's ear and whispered, "I think we're just antagonizing her. Did you get a good look at her aura?"

Bonnie nodded.

"Then we probably should leave the room, at least."

Bonnie nodded again.

"Were you trying to call Matt and Elena?" Meredith was eyeing the mobile phone.

Bonnie shook her head and turned the phone so Meredith could see her two search words. Meredith stared, then lifted dark eyes to Bonnie's in a kind of horrified recognition.

Salem witches.

21.

"It actually makes a horrible kind of sense," Meredith said. They were in Isobel's family room, waiting for Dr. Alpert. Meredith was at a beautiful desk made of some black wood ornamented with designs in gilt, working at a computer that had been left on. "The Salem girls accused people of hurting them-witches, of course. They said they were pinching them and 'p.r.i.c.king them with pins.'"

"Like Isobel blaming us," Bonnie said, nodding.

"And they had seizures and contorted their bodies into 'impossible positions.'"

"Caroline looked as if she were having seizures in Stefan's room," said Bonnie. "And if crawling like a lizard isn't contorting your body into an impossible position...here, I'll try it." She got down on the Saitous' floor and tried to stick her elbows and knees out the way Caroline had. She couldn't do it.

"See?"

"Oh, my G.o.d!" It was Jim at the doorway of the kitchen, holding-almost dropping-a tray of food. The smell of miso soup was sharp in the air, and Bonnie wasn't sure if it made her feel hungry or if she was too sick to ever be hungry again.

"It's okay," she told him hastily, standing up. "I was just...trying something out."

Meredith stood up too. "Is that for Isobel?"

"No, it's for Obaasan-I mean Isa-chan's grandma-Grandma Saitou-"

"I told you to call everybody whatever comes out naturally. Obaasan is fine, just like Isa-chan," Meredith said softly and firmly to him.

Jim relaxed a hair. "I tried to get Isa-chan to eat, but she just throws the trays at the wall. She says that she can't eat; that somebody's choking her."

Meredith glanced significantly at Bonnie. Then she turned back to Jim. "Why don't you let me take it? You've been through a lot.

Where is she?"

"Upstairs, second door on the left. If-if she says anything weird, just ignore it."

"All right. Stay near Bonnie."

"Oh, no," Bonnie said hastily. "Bonnie is going with." She didn't know if it was for her own protection or Meredith's, but she was going to stick like glue.

Upstairs, Meredith turned the hall light on carefully with her elbow. Then they found the second door on the left, which turned out to have a doll-like old lady in it. She was in the exact center of the room, lying on the exact center of a futon. She sat up and smiled when they came in. The smile turned a wrinkled face almost into the face of a happy child.

"Megumi-chan, Beniko-chan, you came to see me!" she exclaimed, bowing where she sat.

"Yes," Meredith said carefully. She put the tray down beside the old lady. "We came to see you-Ms. Saitou."

"Don't play games with me! It's Inari-chan! Or are you mad at me?"

"All thesechans . I thought 'Chan' was a Chinese name. Isn't Isobel j.a.panese?" whispered Bonnie from behind Meredith.

One thing, the doll-like old woman was not, was deaf. She burst into laughter, bringing up both hands to cover her mouth girlishly.

"Oh, don't tease me before I eat.Itadakimasu! " She picked up the bowl of miso soup and began to drink it.

"I thinkchan is something you put at the end of someone's name when you're friends, the way Jimmy was sayingIsa-chan ,"

Meredith said aloud. "AndEeta-daki-ma.s.s-u is something you say when you start eating. And that'sall I know."

Part of Bonnie's mind noted that the "friends" Grandma Saitou had just happened to have names starting withM andB . Another part was calculating where this room was with relation to the rooms below it, Isobel's room in particular.

It was directly above it.

The tiny old woman had stopped eating and was watching her intently. "No, no, you're not Beniko-chan and Megumi-chan. I know it. But they do visit me sometimes, and so does my dear n.o.buhiro. Other things do, too, unpleasant things, but I was raised a shrine maiden-I know how to take care ofthem ." A brief look of knowing satisfaction pa.s.sed over the innocent old face. "This house is possessed, you know." She added,"Kore ni wa kitsune ga karande isou da ne."

"I'm sorry, Ms. Saitou-what was that?" Meredith asked.

"I said, there's a kitsune involved in this somehow."

"A kit-su-nay?" Meredith repeated, quiz-zically.