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He shifted his gaze to Levi and … was that a smile?

Jack stopped watching the game. Instead, he divided his attention between Levi and the game. Levi followed every Toliver pass with his binocs, and each time the ball behaved strangely. Nothing big, just little shifts like the wind might cause.

But the air was still.

The half ended with another NBR interception. The teams left the field with the Greyhounds leading seventeen–zip.

“What’s up with Carson?” Eddie said. “I’ve never seen him like this.”

A kid in front of them turned around. “It’s gotta be because of somebody messing with his locker. His concentration’s off.”

The kid next to him said, “If he’s really any good, the locker stuff shouldn’t bother him.”

“Well, either way,” said the first, “whoever’s been doing it oughta be strung up on the school flagpole.”

Jack didn’t like the sound of that.

“Gotta be more to it than rigging his locker,” Jack said.

“Yeah? What else is different? Unless he’s throwing the game, and he’d never do that.”

“Right,” Eddie said. “Never.”

“No way,” Jack added, and meant it.

Carson Toliver might have a dark, ugly side, but one of the things he would most want in this world was victory over NBR. So what was happening?

Jack looked at the lone figure standing at the corner of the stand.

Levi? He kept talking about “talents”… could he…?

Nah.

While Eddie hit the refreshment stand again, Jack spent the remainder of halftime mulling ways to convince Levi to leave Toliver to Jack. The mood of the SBR crowd was dark. A couple of shoving matches started between South and North kids but were quickly broken up. Jack hadn’t come up with anything by the time the Badgers and Greyhounds returned to the field.

“Okay, Carson!” Eddie yelled. “Do it! Show ’em what ya got!”

But all Toliver had was more of the same. And Levi kept tracking every pass with his binocs. SBR fans wailed as Toliver threw another interception, his third of the game.

As the offense came off the field, the coach pulled his quarterback aside and spoke to him. Whatever he said threw Toliver into a rage. He pulled off his helmet, grabbed it by the face mask, and began smashing it against the bench. He kept it up until it cracked, then started walking off the field. The coach grabbed him and shoved him toward the bench, where he sat with his head in his hands.

Jack suspected what had happened, and that was confirmed the next time the offense took the field: Toliver remained on the bench.

Levi turned and started to walk away.

“Be right back!” Jack said as he leaped to his feet and started down through the crowd.

“Bring me some popcorn!” Eddie called after him.

Jack caught up to Levi by the school.

“Where you going? The game’s not over.”

“Yeah, it is.” Levi slowed his stride but didn’t stop. “We lost.”

“What do you think of Toliver’s passes? Pretty weird the way they went off course.”

“Wind can do strange things to a football.”

“Except there’s no wind.”

Levi shot him a sidelong glance. “Maybe it’s a haint. If he thought he had one after him before, he’s probably sure of it now.”

“Haint?”

“Yeah. You know … a ghost.”

Oh, right. Toliver had asked Mrs. C about someone being haunted …

And then a beautiful idea hit Jack, perfect, complete in every detail … a way to tighten the screws on Toliver and keep Levi in line.

“You said you had blood…?”

13

One of the things about living in a small town was that people tended to know their neighbors, maybe too well sometimes. Everyone knew something about what everyone else was doing. And they recognized strangers. No outsider could cruise the streets without being noticed. As a result, folks tended to be lax about security. The Tolivers were no exception.

Jack led Levi through the orchard to the rear of the Toliver house. The place was dark. Jack checked the garage—empty. The parents were at the game, watching their son. Jack remembered Carson’s window from Monday night. A twist of Levi’s penknife popped the screen out of its groove,