Hopper House (The Jenkins Cycle Book 3) by John L. Monk

hotel: tight leather skirt, sleeveless black top, slippery smooth nylons, and skyscraper pumps. She’d also done up her hair and applied makeup.
    I smiled in appreciation. “What’s the occasion?”
    “It’s Sunday,” she said. “I always dress nice on Sunday.”
    “What happened last Sunday?”
    “Are you saying I looked bad?”
    “No, just … never mind. I didn’t cook. I wasn’t sure if you—”
    “Leave that to me.”
    “There’s not much left,” I said as she shooed me out.
    Less than five minutes later, she called me back in for our feast. For me: Ritz crackers, the last piece of bread with a thick spread of peanut butter, and a chunk of fish. Rose had crackers smeared with peanut butter.
    “That’s all you want?” I said.
    “Watching my figure,” she said, and poured me the last batch of purple Kool-Aid.
    For our entire stay, she’d hogged the grape something fierce, leaving me with the cherry flavored stuff. Maybe sharing was her way of apologizing. I’d have to give her more stuff to apologize for.
    “Wow,” I said after a sip. “Delicious.”
    “It’s my favorite , ” she said. “I’m sorry, Dan. I promised to answer your questions and didn’t. So go ahead.”
    I took a sip to cover my surprise. If I acted too excited, I’d spook her. I’d have to start small, work my way up.
    “Do you really think it’s aliens?”
    “Mostly.”
    Now to spring it on her.
    “Did you commit suicide?”
    Rose frowned. “Ask something else or I’m going back upstairs.”
    “Okay,” I said, hands raised for calm. “Sorry. How long have you been coming back?”
    “Fifty-five years.”
    I pursed my lips in a silent whistle. “Wow. I’ve only been doing this for … well, you know from my story. So what, you stay here every time you land in Georgia?”
    “I always land in Georgia,” she said bitterly. “Hoppers only appear in places they’ve been before they died, within a hundred miles or so. Back then, people around here didn’t travel much, including me.”
    I stared at her in astonishment. “Are you serious? But that would mean…”
    “How many places do you show up?” Rose said.
    Every year, until I’d left for college, my family would pile into an RV and travel the country: up and down both coasts and every state in the middle. If what she said was true, no wonder I’d never noticed.
    “Lots of places,” I said. “Any place I show up, my family took me there first. If you’re right, that explains why I never had a ride in Hawaii or a different country.” I shook my head. “All this time and I never realized it. Where did you learn this?”
    “From others like us. We talk. Someone figured it out.”
    “How often do you run into them? Pretty rare, right? If you can only tell by the weird special effects.”
    “We have ways of finding each other,” she said in a low voice, “and I’m not comfortable with this line of questioning.”
    I nodded. “That’s fine—not trying to make anyone uncomfortable. Here’s an easy one: do you also have a super memory? Of everything you ever—”
    “Yes,” she said.
    “Three weeks, super memory, hundred miles, got it. And when you get kicked, do you go to the Great Wherever?”
    “I told you when we met. It’s a stasis chamber.”
    “Right,” I said. “Stasis chamber. How silly of me.”
    “That it?” she said. The mood in the room had definitely turned defensive.
    I shook my head. “What did you mean when you said your clock got reset?”
    Rose said, “Sometimes that happens, but only with good friends. Now we’ll arrive at the same time, wherever we are, and we’ll kick at the same time, too. Most hoppers come and go randomly, but we’re now perfectly in sync.” She held up a hand, forestalling me. “By the way: you should keep what you said about hopping directly into other skins to yourself. If you meet other hoppers, I mean. They either won’t believe you, or they’ll tell someone they