“Damn,” I mutter. Ahead of me, I see the car. Flames lick through a gap in its hood, casting strange orange shadows on the rusty, rippled loading dock doors. The car is upright, but a spiderweb of cracks on its windshield tells me it flipped at least once before landing here. I smell a coppery wash of blood. Dizzying, overwhelming—it is everywhere.
I grab the door handle, gather what little strength I have left, and yank. It won’t budge, and for a split second I have the sensation that I am not here, that I am dead, a ghost girl trying, laughably, to move objects in the physical world. I close my eyes, picturing the windswept crane, and steel myself for one final tug. Metal scrapes metal and sends a jarring reverberation up my arm the door finally opens.
My breath catches in my throat, relief mingled with horror. It is not Taryn, but a young girl, maybe sixteen, with tangled blond curls and a silver bracelet around her tanned wrist. Blood runs down the side of her face, soaking the embroidered neckline of her white peasant blouse like a bloom of red flowers.
She isn’t dead—a vein still pulses weakly in her neck—but she is close to it. Her right arm and leg appear to be broken, as does her neck, and blood seeps from a wound in her head. Up and down, up and down, her chest rises and falls, her breaths small and pitiful. She coughs, and a ruby drop of blood escapes from the corner of her lips. She takes another breath. And then, with chilling finality, she goes still.
In a fog I hold two fingers to her neck. There is no pulse. A little voice in the back of my head tells me she is beyond help, but I wrap my arms around her waist and pull. I hear a metallic snap as I manage to get her out of the car and lay her down on the street, and I can only hope I haven’t broken something else in her. She’s small, but I am so weak that I nearly black out from the effort. Kneeling, I tilt her head back. I lay my hands over her heart, her blood sticky on my skin, and push down hard, pumping rapidly. Moving to her face, I pinch her nose closed, put my mouth over hers, and blow.
I have every intention of saving her, however unlikely her recovery is, but the second my cold, dying lips touch her warm ones, the sudden urge to take her body overwhelms me, as strong as a riptide.
No! I tell myself, jerking myself away from her lips and beginning to pump her chest again. But the smell of her jasmine perfume is so heady and I am so light-headed that when I lock my mouth back on hers, instinct takes over. Instead of blowing into her lungs, I hungrily breathe in again and again. Power surges through my veins, a feeling of simultaneous falling and rising up, like a playground swing. After a few minutes I taste something sweet: her life essence.
I try to stop, but it is beyond my control. Tears stream down my face as I draw out her soul, her life force flowing through my mouth, its sweetness expanding, then finally beginning to wane as it makes its way into the ether. A sensation like thousands of static shocks pierces my body, small blue sparks dancing between her forehead and mine. I think of heat lightning, those far-off strikes in the night sky. They are so common in summer, flashes unaccompanied by thunder. I see waves crashing on the beach of a lonely planet, deep in space. Small silvery chimes, the voices of stars singing a hymn. My mother’s face appears in my mind, but she looks different from what I remember. Her skin is smooth, glassy and glittery, celestial dots of light making up her irises. Her dark hair, a mirror image of my own, is made up of the void of space, comets trailing through its ebony tresses. Her mouth opens, but there is no sound when she speaks. It doesn’t matter; I can read her starry lips. Not yet, Seraphina, she’s saying. Not yet.
Purple, then white, the little lights move at ever more dizzying speeds, and I realize with a jolt that I have badly miscalculated. I have never inhabited a body this broken and close to death, and fiery agony shoots up and down my broken limbs, even as I feel them being slowly repaired by my immortal essence. I roll over on the asphalt and see my old body has already turned to dust and is quickly dissipating in the breeze.
The far-off wail of sirens penetrates my consciousness. I need to get out of here before the police show up. And I need to get my bag—it’s got my ID inside, the one with the name Cyrus gave me, as well as the book that can never fall into human hands.
Knees buckling, I push myself to standing and take a wobbly step forward. Just a few more feet. But the smell of blood and gasoline makes me sick, and I fall to my knees, and that’s when I realize that Taryn is there, watching.
I’m dizzy and frantic—just how much has she seen?—and try to call out to her. But the flickering lights from a police car round the corner and she takes off down the alley. I will myself to move, to get to the crane and retrieve my bag, but again the pain takes over, pulling me down. My eyes flutter closed and I sink into blackness.
nine
Through the faint pink of my eyelids, I see fluorescent lights overhead. The air is sharp with antiseptics. The feeling of terror, of something being off, seeps in from the edges of my mind, but I can’t remember why I’m scared. Tentatively, I open my eyes. The windows reveal a hazy afternoon, the sun pushing its way through the approaching fog and shining on the palm trees. Muffled voices blend with a clattering of wheeled carts and heels clacking down a tiled hallway.
Reaching up to my temples, I feel a bandage and circular sensors connected to wires. I touch my hair, which falls just above my shoulders in loose curls. What the—? I shake my head, trying to clear it of the dizzying panic that is beginning to take hold. A white plastic bracelet stands out on my tanned arm: Kailey Morgan, F, age 16.
In an instant, the events of the previous night come flooding back: the crash, the blood, the moment when I ceased being Jennifer Combs or Seraphina Ames or whoever I truly was and instead became Kailey Morgan. Bile rises in my throat as I sit up in the hospital bed and scan the room. The monitor to my right beeps rapidly, echoing my thudding heart.
A nurse enters through the propped-open door. “You’re awake!” I regard her with wide eyes, too alarmed to speak. “I’ll go get your parents.” The woman exits as quickly as she came, leaving me in stunned, frantic silence.
An experimental wiggle reveals that my broken arm and leg have already healed. I only hope that happened before the ambulance came for me. I wonder how close the doctors came to figuring out that I’m not quite like any other human patient—that I’m something more: a body snatcher, an immortal, a killer.
With horror I remember my bag with Cyrus’s book in it. Is it still on the crane? What had I been thinking, leaving it behind? I have to get back to the docks and find the book.
I swing my legs over the side of the hospital bed and stand. I will have to run—What choice do I have? Kailey’s parents will realize immediately that there is something horribly different about their daughter. As I rip the sensors off my temples and wrists, I hear voices coming closer.
“. . . concussion . . . needs rest . . . might be a little confused . . .”
I look down at the hospital gown—white with a pale-blue daisy print—and realize how ridiculous I will look running past the nurses’ station, out the door, and down the street. Grimacing, I slip back into bed and rearrange the sensors on my skin.
Moments later a woman rushes through the door. She is pretty, though the dark circles under her eyes call attention to the shallow lines at their corners. Following her is a rugged-looking man, blond hair mixing well with the gray threads in his sideburns. He looks as sleep deprived as the woman.
“Kailey! Oh, thank God!” The woman pulls me into a tight hug, then leans back to look at me. I recoil slightly. “What happened?” The couple, along with the nurse, waits for my answer.
“Um . . . there was . . . a dog. I didn’t want to hit it.” My new voice is high-pitched, a far cry from my last body’s throaty cadence.
Kailey’s father winces. “Oh, Kailes.”
The woman tucks a stray curl behind my ear. “Your brother’s down in the cafeteria. I don’t know how he can think of food right now—” Her voice breaks off as a boy enters the room. He is lanky and looks s
lightly older than Kailey, with the same dark blond hair and bronzed skin.
“Thanks for trashing my car, sis,” he says. His tone is casual, but I can tell from his bloodshot eyes that he’s been crying.
“I’m sorry,” I say distractedly, my mind fixed on the untenable situation I’ve woken up to and on my bag, vulnerable and exposed, with its dangerous secrets.
“Bryan,” Kailey’s mom says warningly.
He holds up his hands and grins. “Kidding!” Then his expression turns serious. “What were you doing in Jack London anyway? It’s dangerous down there. I thought you had that art gallery thing in Berkeley.”
My eyes dart between Bryan and Kailey’s parents, who lean in expectantly. What can I say? I was trying to end my unnaturally long life, then when I tried to save your daughter, I accidentally took her body? “I . . . yes. I did. And . . . I—” The heart-rate monitor beeps at a faster pace.
Just in time, a young doctor in a white coat knocks on the doorframe, then comes in without waiting for a response. I lean back on the bed and force myself to take deep, calming breaths. “I’m sorry. I feel really dizzy right now.”
The doctor elbows past Kailey’s mother and waves a pen flashlight quickly in front of both of my eyes. He returns it to his pocket with a blank expression and consults my chart.
“When can we take her home?” Mrs. Morgan asks.
My heart sinks. Home? The only place I want to go is back to the cranes to get my bag. After that . . . I shake my head. Then what? Waking up as a teenager with a loving family is so far out of my plan, I can’t even begin to contemplate my next move. Hot tears sting the back of my eyes, and I look up at the ceiling, forcing them back.
I’d been so ready to let go, but here I am, in the body of girl whose family doesn’t even know she’s dead. The rational part of me knows that there was no way Kailey could have survived that crash, but the guilt that I have taken yet another life is overwhelming. The heart-rate monitor picks up once more with my swell of emotion, and I focus on taking deep, calming breaths.
“Normally I’d want to keep any patient who’d been in a serious crash overnight,” the doctor says with a frown, “but all her tests have come back normal. There’s nothing physically wrong with your daughter.” He checks my pulse. “To be in an accident like that and come away without a scratch, it’s . . . unbelievable. Do you know what a miracle it is that you are alive?”
I blink my new eyes. “Trust me, I know.”
ten
I stare through the station wagon window as the Morgans’ car pulls up to a single-story Craftsman house in North Berkeley. It looks like a fairy-tale cottage, set back from the street and surrounded by redwood trees, a colorful herb garden poking up in front of its old, leaded-glass windows. As Bryan and his parents walk through the heavy oak front door, I pause on the porch, listening to the low tones of junk-sculpture wind chimes jingling in the breeze. The chimes are beautiful, made of antique silver spoons, pieces of jewelry, skeleton keys, and dried bones.
Entering Kailey’s house feels horribly wrong. I’ve taken more lives than I can count in the years since I left my original body, but never have I stayed around to see the life the person left behind.
Bryan turns and looks at me. “What’s up? You waiting for a hand-delivered invitation?”
I force a weak smile. “Give a concussed girl a minute to smell the roses,” I say lightly as I step through the threshold onto a vintage hardwood floor inlaid with a dark walnut border. In front of me is the living room, where well-worn velvet couches sit on an artfully clashing selection of Persian rugs. Beyond that is a kitchen that is welcoming in its messiness. Kailey’s mother sets her purse on the counter. “You should go lie down, honey. Doctor’s orders.”
I pause. To my right and left are two hallways, each leading, I guess, to bedrooms. But which way is Kailey’s? I take a chance and head to the right, taking a few cautious steps before Bryan clears his throat.
“You think just because you’re a medical marvel, you get the master bedroom?” His tone is still lighthearted, but the look in his eyes is not. I can tell that he’s worried about me. Well, not me—he’s worried for his sister. I am gripped by the sudden urge to tell him the truth, but I am fully aware that the Morgans won’t believe me. At best they would think my concussion was worse than the doctor said. At worst they’d suspect I needed to be in a mental institution.
“Just checking to see if you were paying attention,” I say, smoothly exiting down the other hallway. My voice sounds hollow, the veneer of playfulness utterly false.
The first open door reveals an unmade bed strewn with jeans and hoodies. A multicolored jumble of Chuck Taylors spills out of the closet.
I continue down the hallway to the next room. The scent of jasmine perfume hangs heavy in the air and I know it’s Kailey’s room even before I look inside. I shut the door behind me and exhale deeply. You’re almost there. Just wait for them to fall asleep tonight, then you can go to the cranes, get the book, and figure out Plan B—whatever that is.
The room is painted a vivid shade of dark turquoise, and the bedspread is a silk quilt in a lighter green, closer to lime. Purple throw pillows with black beaded fringe are piled at its head. The effect is that of being surrounded by giant peacock feathers.
I’m drawn to a violin case that leans against the desk. The violin is one of my favorite instruments. Was Kailey a musician? Looking more closely I see that it’s covered in a thick layer of dust. But in the corner is an easel with a half-completed painting of a girl standing on a beach, staring out to sea.
The scene is all gray: cloudy sky, fog bank rolling in over choppy whitecaps. The girl looks like Kailey, her sparkling eyes the most colorful spot on the canvas. Despite the bleakness of the scene, she looks happy, as though she can see something, just out of view, that gives her hope. Looking closely I see that she’s outlined the shapes of mermaids just visible beneath the surface of the choppy sea. She never had a chance to fill in their details, but they are undeniably there.
It reminds me of our voyage from Barbados to New Amsterdam. I had been furious with Cyrus for killing our servant in a fit of rage and had spent as much time as possible alone on the upper decks, the ocean breeze whipping my hair across my face. The opaque surface of the Atlantic frustrated me. I wanted to see beneath. I wanted to believe there was another world below us, where mermaids combed their hair under a permanent drift of golden silt and played music on a sunken harpsichord.
Turning away from the painting, which fills me with inexplicable sadness, I regard a mirrored vanity that hugs one wall, postcards and ink sketches tucked between the glass and the frame. I pick up a stack of photos of Kailey and her friends: on a camping trip, at a school dance, lounging next to a gleaming pool. One girl appears in several of them; the magenta streaks in her dark hair make her easy to spot. Kailey’s eyes stare out at me in photo after photo, shining with life.
I regard my new body in the mirror and furrow my brow. This is the first time I’ve been a teenager since my original body died, and the feeling is jarring. My eyes are a grayish green, with long, thick lashes, and my hair meanders from light brown to a shimmery gold where the sun has bleached it. It hangs past my jaw in loose curls, with a swoop of wavy bangs. My nose is a bit too pert for my liking, and my lips are a dark shade of coral, striking against Kailey’s tanned skin.
There is no tangible difference between the face that I see in the mirror and the face in the photos, nothing I could point to with certainty to prove that everything has changed. And yet I don’t think I look like her, that smiling girl that Kailey was.
“What do I do now?” I ask the stranger in the mirror. “Do I keep being you? Or do I go back to the cranes and jump?” Kailey doesn’t answer me.
The choice to die had been easy when my body was falling apart around me. If I follow the same course now, I will be actively killing a human body. But if I don’t follow through on my plan, where will I go? I have no t
ies to the world, no real skills. Cyrus always made sure I was dependent on him for everything.
I tear my gaze away from the mirror. The most important thing now, other than the bag, is Cyrus. By now he knows I’m gone. But will he accept my letter at face value or will he wonder if I am still out there, on my own, away from him? He knows me so well—he used to even be able to predict my dreams. Will he somehow instinctively know what happened? Will he feel my presence and come searching for me? Will he read a news report about an accident and wonder if, in a misguided attempt to save a teenage girl, I switched into her body? With Cyrus, anything is possible, and being dragged back to the coven is the worst thing that can possibly happen. I’d be under constant surveillance. And Cyrus would make me very, very sorry for tricking him.
On the desk is a laptop computer. I swipe my finger over the track pad and the blank screen is replaced with an Internet browser window. I pull up the San Francisco Chronicle website. There were plenty of murders and car accidents reported in Oakland over the weekend, but thankfully, nothing about Kailey’s incident.
I click back to Google and type “jack london car accident,” which brings a slew of results. Narrowing by date, all but one disappears.
It’s a hit on the police blotter page on the Oakland Tribune’s site. “October 16th, 12:38 AM, Alice and Second Streets, Oakland: Police were called after a Berkeley minor was involved in an injury accident. No fatalities and no arrests were made.” I let out the breath I had been holding—the report wasn’t too bad and didn’t stand out among all the other incidents in the area.
Google Maps tells me it’s only two miles from the Morgans’ house to the downtown Berkeley BART station, and then a straight shot to downtown Oakland. Studying the map, I realize that Berkeley High School is right next to the BART station.
The Alchemy of Forever Page 5