I step closer, grab her by the shoulders to make sure she hears this. “No. No matter what happened, you didn’t ask to be murdered. This is not your fault, Jane. It could never be your fault.”
Slowly, so slowly, she looks up at me, her eyes half-lidded, and somehow part of me knows what she’s going to do before she does it. Wants her to do it, but never even dared to hope that she would. Tilting her head up, she balances on her toes and presses her lips against mine.
Time moves slower around large objects due to their gravitational pull. Fractions of seconds pile up around the bases of the pyramids. Jane is like that. I swear time moves differently around her.
I go completely still, locking my muscles in place; if I’m still, she won’t know how much I’ve wanted this, how my body is screaming out for more touch. If I’m still, she won’t know how desperately I want to crush myself against her, twist my fingers in her hair, bury my face into the hollow of her neck until all I can smell is hot metal.
The lamp flickers on and off, strobe lights behind my closed eyes. Her lips are soft beneath mine, her arms too warm beneath my fingertips, but it’s nothing compared to the rush of heat in my blood. All I can taste is copper and all I can think is how loud my heartbeat pounds in my ears, and I wonder if Jane can hear it, if it sounds like it’s taunting her.
It’s only when the kiss breaks that I can move again, coming up for air with a noiseless gasp. We stare at each other, Jane’s eyes wide and glazed, her lips still parted. It takes everything in me not to reach back out, not to grab her hips and press her to me.
“Jane—”
“I’m lonely,” she says, her voice ragged.
A stone hits my stomach and I drop my hands, curling my fingers into tight fists as the heat leaves my veins.
“That’s not,” I say, stepping away from her, “a good reason to kiss somebody.” The words are sticky in my throat. “Trust me on this.”
The silence is thick between us, and that feeling of chance, of a beginning, dies without a sound.
“I’m sorry,” Jane whispers, staring at the ground. “I shouldn’t have done that. I just . . . I miss being able to touch. To be touched.”
I swallow hard, something in my chest cracking painfully. “It’s okay. It’s nothing.”
I get it, I do; the need inside is a greedy, grasping force. But she doesn’t want me, not the way that I want her. I shove my heartache down as far as it will go, seal it and cauterize it. And because there’s nothing more to say, I sit on the bed and start to tug my boots off.
“Should . . . should I leave?” Jane asks, one hand gripped in the other. It’s the first time I’ve seen her look awkward, like she doesn’t know what to do with her arms. This must be how I look when I’m with Phillip.
“You don’t have to do that.”
“It’s fine,” she says. “If you want me to leave, I will.”
She’s hiding it well, the despair. But I’ve heard it too often in my own voice to mistake it. That awful dread that you’ll be turned away again, outcast and mocked. It always happens, when they finally figure out what I am; I’m always waiting for that sudden look of fear and disgust.
“No,” I say, “I don’t want you to leave.”
Jane’s mouth goes slack with relief, but she keeps her chin firm.
“But I do need to get some sleep.”
“Right. Of course,” she says, nodding too quickly.
I pull on a pair of sweatpants and brush my teeth, washing away the tang of hot metal that’s still on my lips. I pause over the sink, catching my reflection in the mirror. My eyes are dark holes in my head, my cheekbones razor sharp and flushed. I close my eyes, press my forehead against the cold glass. It’s too much, everything inside me twisting and needy, the trapped scream pounding against the cage I keep it in.
I’m lonely, she said. As if a few days as a ghost can compare with the endless want that lives inside me. And I can’t even tell her.
I push away from the mirror and grab my sleeping pills from the counter. I don’t want to dream tonight.
My phone wakes me up, pulling me out of a sweaty, foggy sleep. The drugs make my limbs heavy, and it feels like I’m swimming through the air as I reach to answer.
“Hello?” I mumble, my tongue too big for my mouth.
“Oh, hey, Lex. Did I wake you?”
“’Sfine.”
“I finished the autopsy. Did you still want to come by?”
I fight to clear the cobwebs from my head and check the name on the phone. Carl. Autopsy. Right.
“Yeah,” I say, kicking my blanket off my legs. “Yeah, I do.”
“Well, come anytime after noon and I’ll give you what I have.”
“Okay. Thanks, Carl.”
I hang up the phone and struggle to sit up. My mouth tastes sickly sweet, like I downed a liter of cream soda. My eyes roam around the mess of my apartment and settle on Jane curled up in my chair. She’s awake but unmoving, her eyes tracking me in bed. She looks so small, her knees tucked under her chin. Small, and vulnerable, like she’s still waiting for me to make her leave. There’s a knot in my chest that wasn’t there yesterday.
“Hey,” I say.
“Hi.”
“Veronica’s autopsy is finished. I’m going to go see Carl.”
“Oh,” she says. “Okay.”
“Do you want to come?”
“Yeah,” she says, relief flitting across her features when she realizes I’m not going to talk about last night. It stings more than it should. “Yeah, I really do.”
The car ride is strained, both of us too polite, and I’m almost grateful for the stench of decomposition and licorice because at least I have an excuse for the pit in my stomach.
“Lexi! Good to see you again,” Carl says, like there isn’t a corpse with a gaping hole in its chest behind him. I can see the wet, red shine of organs filling the cavity, looking more like chunky soup than body parts. Or maybe I’m thinking that because there’s a ladle sticking out of the goop.
“Hey, Carl. How’s it going?”
“Can’t complain,” he says, smiling. “Job security, am I right?”
“Yeah.” That joke gets less funny the more I hear it. “So what do you have for me?”
Carl peels off his red-slicked gloves.
“Not much, I’m afraid. There’s no usable DNA,” he says wearily. “All the blood we found is from the victim. This killer is precise, probably wore gloves, took precautions.”
“So they’re smart,” I say. “They came prepared.”
Carl motions me toward his office, where he picks up a folder from his desk and hands it over to me.
“Multiple stab wounds consistent with a single-edged blade,” he says.
“Multiple?” I repeat, flipping through the pages.
Carl nods. “Single cut to the neck, multiple injuries to the chest and abdomen. That’s what the cops call overkill.”
“What does that mean, the killer was angry?” I ask. Why stab this girl so many times and Jane only once?
“I don’t do the why,” Carl says, “only the how. Official cause of death is massive blood loss, and I’m ruling it a homicide.”
Jane scoffs softly. “No shit,” she says.
“Do the cops have any leads?” I ask.
“Not yet,” Carl says. “They’re gonna be pissed about the DNA. No blood, and we didn’t find any skin under her fingernails, so she didn’t get to put up much of a fight. No defensive wounds at all, in fact. He must’ve been strong, or was able to get close to her.”
“Come on, Carl, there’s got to be something you can tell me,” I say, frustrated.
“Sorry, Lex, this one’s looking like a real dead end,” he says wearily. “There’s not much more to tell. Unless you want to see her.”
“See her?”
“Yeah,” he says. “See the body.”
I swallow hard. No, god, no, I don’t want to see her. But this isn’t my decision to make. I tilt my head
until I can see Jane’s face. She looks pained, her mouth twisted tight and her eyes flickering white.
“I don’t think—” I start to say, but Jane cuts me off.
“Yes,” she says. “I want to see her. I want to see.”
“Uh, actually, yes,” I correct myself, stomach sinking. “I’d like to see her.”
“This way,” Carl says, unflappable as ever. He leads me out of the office and toward the wall of small metal doors that each house what used to be a person.
He stops in front of one row and opens a door, reaching inside. I brace myself for what’s coming.
The table rolls out almost silently and the white of the sheet is too bright under the fluorescent lights. I blink and then Carl is peeling back the sheet and something mean and vengeful peels back my lips.
The girl on the table isn’t that much older than Jane or me. She’s bloated from the water, her skin pale and blue against the dark of her hair. I keep my eyes on her face, refusing to look at the rest. I’ve never given much thought to my body, even when it’s under someone else’s. I’m reckless with it; I forget to feed it, don’t rest it, carve into it with needles and ink. I never think about how it’s keeping me alive, how my heart is beating, how my lungs are breathing. How easy it is to lose everything you’ve always taken for granted.
“Veronica,” Jane says next to me. “That was her name.”
There’s a ringing in my ears, and it takes me a moment to realize it’s a telephone.
“I’ll be right back,” Carl says. “Stay put.”
He disappears back into the office, and Jane takes his place on the other side of the table.
“She looks so cold,” Jane says, running ghostly fingers down the girl’s face.
“I know. But that’s not her anymore.”
“He was right, she didn’t fight,” Jane says, frowning over the body. “Look. Her nails are still perfect.”
I don’t want to see, but I force myself to look, to pretend this is a picture in one of my textbooks, all the yellowed bones diagramed and labeled. Here is the clavicle. Here is the manubrium. Here is where it joins with the sternum.
There’s an ugly Y shape stapled down her chest and stomach that doesn’t obscure the few dark, deep cuts. But her arms are unmarked, nothing but sallow, waxy skin all the way down. Her fingernails are painted a dark, shiny blue with tiny white stars.
Jane looks down at her own hands, the skin creamy and unblemished. “I didn’t fight back, either.”
“Then you were surprised by the attack,” I tell her. “I’ve spent the last week with you, and there’s no way you would go quietly.”
“But why dump her body and not mine?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “Maybe it’s not the same person. Maybe Trevor’s right and they got spooked?” Without thinking, I lift one of her fingers to look closer, and to my horror the nail falls off into my hand.
“Shit!”
I stare at the nail in my palm until I hear a snort. I look up at Jane and she has a hand clamped to her mouth.
“Acrylic,” she says, and then tries to stop her laughter again.
“It’s not funny!” I hiss at her.
“It’s a little funny,” she says, and I’m freaking out but at least her eyes are back to brown.
“This is evidence.”
“He said they already did the DNA; it’s just a fake fingernail now. It’s not like she’ll miss it.”
“Carl!” I yell, turning toward the office.
Carl ducks his head out of the door, the phone still tucked under his chin. “Yeah?”
I hold out my hand like an offering. “I touched her, I’m so sorry, but one of her nails came off.”
He covers the mouthpiece with his hand and shrugs. “No harm done,” he says. “Just toss it.”
“In the garbage? But . . .”
“She’s going straight to Woodlawn. Talking to them right now,” he says, turning back into his office.
“Oh.” I turn around.
“What’s Woodlawn?” Jane asks.
“Crematorium,” I tell her. I look down at the nail in my palm and wonder how much she paid for it. If she got them done for a special occasion. Maybe she just liked stars. I wonder how fast the polish will burn.
“Let’s go,” I say, pulling the sheet back up over Veronica. She deserves better than this, to be open and displayed for us.
“Lexi.”
“We got all we can.”
“Lexi.”
I look up, and we’re no longer alone.
Veronica’s ghost is wearing a low-cut, cream-colored dress that’s soaked through with blood, a sticky red cross plastered to her neck. Her stomach is a mess of skin and fabric and wet meat, and I raise my eyes until I’m looking at her wide-eyed face.
“I thought it was just me,” she says, staring at Jane.
“Veronica,” I breathe.
The ghost’s eyes flicker away from Jane to me.
“You’re not one of us,” she says, frowning.
“No.”
“She can see us, though,” Jane says. “Even touch us. See?” She threads her fingers through mine, holds our hands up so Veronica can see.
“How?” she asks.
“It’s a long story,” I say. I look behind me anxiously, but Carl is still in his office.
“We can explain it to you,” Jane says. “Come with us back to Lexi’s place; we’ll tell you everything. There’s another ghost there, too, Trevor; he can teach you.” She’s talking too quickly, her voice high-pitched.
She’s excited, I realize, to have another ghost around. Someone just like her, maybe killed by the same person, a violent bond that ties them. I untangle my hand from hers, and she doesn’t even notice.
“I don’t—I don’t think I’m supposed to be here,” Veronica says.
“No kidding,” Jane says. “But it gets easier, I promise.”
“No,” Veronica says, taking a step back. “I mean I’m not supposed to be here. Like this,” she says, gesturing at her body. “I don’t understand. I’m dead. Why am I still here?”
“You were murdered,” I tell her. “It almost always creates an echo—a ghost.”
“But I don’t want this,” Veronica says. Her body flickers out, then back in, like someone turning a switch. “I don’t want to be a ghost.”
“Someone killed us,” Jane says. “Don’t you want to find out who?”
Veronica shakes her head. “The dead should stay dead. This isn’t right.” Her hand goes to her neck, fingers gripping the cross.
“Lexi?” Jane says, looking at me anxiously. “Make her understand.”
“You don’t have to stay on this side,” I tell her, looking back and forth between the office and the ghost. “I can help you, if that’s what you want.”
“What?” Jane says, spinning to me. “No, that’s not what I meant. What are you doing?”
“Please,” Veronica says. “I just want to go where I’m supposed to go. Where my grandma is waiting for me.”
“But—no!” Jane says. “Veronica, please, you don’t have to go right now. Just stay for a while; maybe you’ll like it.”
“It’s her choice, Jane,” I say quietly.
“Goddammit, Lexi,” she yells at me, but I look past her to Veronica.
“Can I ask you a few questions first? I’ll be quick.”
Veronica swallows hard, then nods.
“Did you see who did this?”
She shakes her head. “I just remember lying on the ground. I couldn’t move. And then the pain.”
“You couldn’t move?” Jane repeats.
Veronica nods. “I tried. It’s like my arms and legs were frozen. I couldn’t even open my eyes.” She flickers out again, and Jane makes a frustrated sound.
“What’s wrong with her?” Jane asks me.
“I’m not sure,” I say, frowning. “I think she’s weakening.”
Veronica flickers back in, her form blurry at the edges.
“Was there anything else?” I ask quickly. “A voice, a smell, a sound?”
Her face goes small and scrunched. “I could smell gasoline. On the ground. And someone said ‘no.’ They were angry, and they said ‘no.’ Now please. Help me.”
“You understand—I don’t know what’s out there,” I say. “I can’t promise anything. I don’t know what’s waiting for you.”
“I know what’s waiting for me,” Veronica says. “And I’m not afraid.”
“Lexi, don’t,” Jane pleads one last time, but I move past her and stand in front of Veronica.
“Okay,” I tell her. “Don’t fight it.”
She nods, and squares her shoulders back. “I’m ready,” she says.
I reach out with my magic and start to push. I see Veronica’s lips start to move, a whisper of prayer in my ears.
“. . . should walk in the valley in the shadow of death . . .”
She doesn’t resist me, doesn’t try to stay. I push, gently, until her ghost slips into whatever is waiting on the other side.
“I didn’t know,” I say, breathing hard. “That it could be like that.”
“Like what?”
“Peaceful,” I say. “Something they don’t need to fight. A good thing, not a threat I make.”
“Well, I’m glad you’re happy,” Jane says bitterly.
“It’s not about me,” I say. “It’s what she wanted.”
“You didn’t even try,” Jane says, blood pooling under her chin.
I rub a hand over my head and turn back toward the office.
“Where are you going?” Jane demands.
“She said she couldn’t move,” I say, and open the door wide. “Carl?”
He’s still on the phone, but he covers the mouthpiece. “Yeah?”
“Could she have been drugged?” I ask.
“We checked, toxicology tests didn’t show anything suspicious,” he says.
“Any chance it missed something?”
He shakes his head. “No way. We ran them twice; first time came back inconclusive, so we did it again to be sure.”
“Inconclusive?” Blood rushes to my head.
“Yeah, pretty sure that was just the cancer drugs, though.”
I stare at him. “What?”
“Didn’t you see that? It’s in the report,” he says. “Poor girl didn’t have long to live, anyway. Stage four lung cancer.”
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