Ghost Heart (The PSS Chronicles #3)

by Ripley Patton

  “Hey,” I said, catching up with Passion and grabbing her elbow gently to stop her forward march. “Can you stop for a minute?”

  “What?” she asked, whirling around to face me.

  “I’m sorry, okay? I’m sorry about your sister, and I’m sorry I was a jerk about the Olivia thing. I just don’t know what to do with that right now.”

  “I know,” she said, her guard dropping. “Me neither.”

  “Can I ask you something?”

  “Sure.”

  “When you felt her did you see or feel anything that might give us a clue to her location?”

  “No.” she shook her head. “It was different this time. I didn’t feel where she was at all.”

  “But if there was anything, even something little that could lead us to where they are—”

  “And by ‘they’ do you mean Grant and Olivia, or do you just mean Danielle?” She wasn’t angry this time. Her eyes were just sad, with maybe a hint of pity.

  “I mean all of them,” I said, but it was a lie and we both knew it.

  “You need to think about this,” she said, softly, putting her hand on my arm. “For the last eight months, you didn’t have your sister and she didn’t have you. My sister was my twin and we were close, and when she died I didn’t think I’d be okay, you know? I thought I’d end too. But I didn’t. I went on living, and doing things, and meeting people, and changing. And loving. You’ve had a life for the last eight months, even without your sister. I know you don’t remember it, but you did, so it’s possible.” Her eyes were trying to tell me something, and I looked away. I pulled my arm away too. This was way too heavy of a conversation to have in a cornfield with a girl I barely knew.

  “So, if I had such a great plan for defeating the CAMFers,” I said, trying to lighten the mood, “you think you could let me in on it?”

  “Yeah, well, you didn’t exactly share it,” she said, wryly. “You tended to keep the rest of us in the dark. That was mostly what you and Olivia fought about. She hated that you didn’t tell her stuff, that you wouldn’t trust her.”

  “We fought?” I asked, teasingly. “I thought we were the best couple ever?”

  “I never said that.” Passion looked up, peering through the corn in front of us.

  The wind had picked up and the rustling of the stalks had grown louder. No, it wasn’t the wind. Someone was crashing toward us, not just one someone, but a whole platoon.

  “Don’t run,” I said, taking her arm again. There was no point. They were already on top of us.

  “Hold it right there!” an armed Holder yelled, crashing into our row, his automatic weapon pointed at us.

  In a minute, my uncle’s men had surrounded us on all sides.

  “So, obviously, I’m free to go,” I said, smiling at the one closest to us.

  “Your uncle was worried for your safety,” he said with a straight face. “This field is unsecured. He was afraid you might run into trouble. We’ll escort you both back to the farmhouse.”

  “I bet you will.” I gestured for the guy to lead the way.

  They took us back, surrounding us all the way.

  My aunt and uncle were waiting on the front porch, Jason standing next to them, the dusty ATV parked to one side. When I looked at him, he glanced away. So much for me being the fine rebel leader Passion had portrayed me as. It looked like Jason had led the Holders straight to us, instead of leading them away like I’d told him to. They didn’t seem to have the stuff from the barn though, so maybe he was still playing both sides. Either way, I expected my uncle to chew us all out. But he didn’t.

  “Good. You’re back,” he said instead. “We’re flying out from a local airstrip in two hours. You have an hour to pack.”

  “Remember,” my aunt added. “We’ll be in high desert, but it’s still fall, so bring something warm.”

  “We’re going to Oregon? Today?” Passion blurted. “But I’ve never flown before, and I only have one set of clothes.”

  “Come with me,” my aunt said, stepping down and wrapping an arm around her. “I’m sure Samantha has something you can wear. Let’s go get you out of that hideous camouflage.”

  I watched them walk into the house together, disappearing into the shadows.

  “So what gives?” I turned to my uncle. “You’re suddenly ready to do this?” Half of me was screaming with excitement, the other half was screaming with fear. This was my uncle I was dealing with. He left nothing to chance.

  “The final arrangements in Oregon fell into place this morning,” he said. “And you’re obviously ready to go.”

  “You were waiting for me to run?” I saw Jason smirking out of the corner of my eye. Had that whole scene at the barn been a set up? Had they planned for me to hear it?

  “I was waiting for you to show some heart,” my uncle said.

  21

  OLIVIA

  The scratching in the wall did not come again. Danielle, or whoever she was, had abandoned me. All her promised help, scrawled notes, and tender touches had gotten me absolutely nothing, zilch, nada. They’d taken my hand. Anthony had fucking cut off my ghost hand. My PSS was gone. And so was Grant. They’d taken him somewhere else, or killed him, I didn’t know which. The only thing they’d left me with was pain.

  Even it was fading, a little at a time, the pain where pain had never been before making way for a far more disturbing sensation; the sensation that my hand was still there. I could feel it. As long as I wasn’t looking at that awful, blank, fleshy stump, my ghost hand was there in my mind. I could move it. I could see it. A phantom limb of a phantom limb. So, I did everything I could not to look at the stump. Or when I did, when I forgot and accidentally moved it across my line of sight, I pretended it belonged to someone else. Because it did. That couldn’t be me. It just couldn’t.

  For a long time, I just lay there, trying to figure out what I could have done differently. Could I have stopped Anthony? What decision could I have made that would have prevented me from ending up here—handless and alone? Thinking of the past was comforting. In every memory of myself in my mind’s eye, I had two hands. But something kept bringing me back to the present, something hard and sharp, digging into my backside. When I finally rolled over and found the chain mail cuff that had been on my wrist, the one to protect everyone from the hand I no longer had, I hurled it across my cell and laughed. I kept laughing and I couldn’t stop. It sounded awful and strange, and it hurt my lungs and my face and my gut. Eventually, the laughing turned to crying and that hurt too.

  Maybe I was going mad.

  Maybe going mad was the best alternative. Because when my brain began to work again, it thought things like, This will make my mother happy—the hideous ghost hand gone and just a normal handless girl for a daughter.

  Or, this was my punishment for reaching into people and pulling things out. I deserved it. I must have deserved it.

  Or worse yet, Why hasn’t Marcus come for me? It’s too late now. Everything is ruined. I am ruined.

  I’d seen him in a cornfield. With Passion. I’d gone to them when Anthony had laid the knife made from her blades to my wrist. I had kissed Marcus and told him I loved him, and he had kissed me back. No, he had kissed her back.

  What had they been doing, just standing around in a field together? They were supposed to be rescuing me. I’d told Passion where we were and that Grant was here. I’d told them to come. But what if they weren’t coming? What if they were together now?

  I knew that didn’t make sense. Passion liked girls, and she liked Samantha, specifically. She hadn’t kissed him. I had. But he hadn’t know it was me. He’d called her Passion, and he’d kissed her back. Why had he done that?

  No one brought me food or drink.

  It was like they’d forgotten I existed.

  Fuck them.

  I cannot explain what it means to have a piece of yourself severed from you. Something that has always defined you. Something that makes you who you are. I had been
the girl with the ghost hand. Now, I was a girl with no hand. I was stump girl. All my life, I’d felt different and other. Sometimes that had sucked, but part of me had liked it and reveled in it, and I hadn’t even know that until it was gone.

  Yes, I was having a grand old pity party and no one was invited but me.

  There was nothing left to do except drift in and out of a troubled sleep, waiting for someone to come and help me.

  Waiting for Marcus.

  Waiting for anyone.

  * * *

  She came to me in my dreams, a ghost in black robes, floating straight through the wall of my cell like a dark angel. When she settled next to me, I wasn’t surprised. That’s how dreams are. Strange things happen and they aren’t strange. It didn’t seem unusual that I could not see her face, except for the glow emanating from deep in her cowled hood. It didn’t seem odd that I knew her, or that she knew me. And when she touched me with her hand, I felt warmth flow out of it into my body like a river of goodness, and I heard her voice in my head.

  All will be well.

  You will be whole.

  Your hand will come back to you.

  Perhaps in the dream world, all those things were true.

  “Please,” I begged her. “Help me. Get me out of here.”

  Soon, she whispered in my mind. But you have to be strong. You can’t give up.

  “No,” I argued. “You have to help me.”

  You have to help me, she said, which made no sense. Why had she come into my dream, if not to help me?

  She turned her head toward the cell door, exactly the way Princess Leia does in that holographic R2-D2 message just before she blinks out.

  And she blinked out.

  My ghost disappeared.

  The door to the cell slammed open, and I sat up, groggy and disoriented, as Dr. Fineman barreled in, several guards flanking the door behind him.

  He looked me over, his eyes settling on the wrist stump in my lap, and he scowled, rage flaring in his eyes.

  “Bring him in,” he barked over his shoulder, and two more guards dragged Anthony in between them.

  He was bloody, and beaten, and he did not look triumphant anymore.

  “Look at her.” Dr. Fineman grabbed his hair and yanked his head up, pointing it in my direction. “She was mine. I went to great trouble to acquire her. She was the key to everything I’ve been working toward for years, and now she is useless.”

  “She was too dangerous,” Anthony croaked. “She killed—”

  “Silence!” Dr. Fineman yelled, and one of the men holding Anthony pulled back a meaty fist, pounding him in the ear. I’d received that same blow so many times from Anthony, it had to be karma. Very ugly karma. “She killed no one, you idiot,” Dr. Fineman spat. “That unfortunate accident was a result of the amplifications I’d done in my lab, a side-effect I’ve already remedied. You have no understanding of science or what I’m doing here. You’ve ruined a very costly investment, an investment worth more than you will ever understand. I needed her PSS and her hand, and now I have neither. I have nothing, and you are going to pay for it.” With a horrible glint in his eye, Dr. Fineman gestured to the guard, who pulled out a large, sharp-looking knife from his belt. “What about a hand for a hand?” Fineman asked. “Does that seem fair?”

  “No,” Anthony cried, staring at the knife in horror. “You can’t.”

  The two guards holding him lifted him by his armpits and dragged him toward me.

  I scuttled back, pressing myself against the wall as they pinned his arm and hand to the slab in front of me.

  “No,” he whimpered. “Please.” He craned his neck, trying to look back at Dr. Fineman. “You have her PSS. I used the new device.”

  “I have nothing,” Dr. Fineman glared at him. “You did something wrong. The entire sample was contaminated. Her signature was so muddied I could barely tell what it was, let alone who it was from. It is useless. I will never be able to identify the markers for her powers now. Her ability is lost forever and so is any hope of duplicating it, thanks to you.”

  A part of me rejoiced at that. They’d taken my hand, but they hadn’t gotten what they wanted. Dr. Fineman was royally pissed off about that. His maniacal plans had been ruined by his own guys, by a seed of dissent nurtured by Palmer and brought to fruition by Anthony. Still, another part of me mourned. The power of my hand was gone. Lost forever. No one had it. Not even the CAMFers. My ghost hand had truly and utterly disappeared from the world.

  “No, that’s impossible,” Anthony argued desperately. “I did it right. It worked exactly like you—”

  “Enough,” Dr. Fineman said, glancing at the man with the knife.

  As much as I hated Anthony, I had no desire to see him mutilated right before my eyes. But no one was asking me. One minute the blade was in the air, the next it was slicing into his skin.

  I buried my face in my knees, waiting for the screaming I knew would come. I couldn’t even cover both my ears with my hands.

  The sounds Anthony made weren’t the worst of it. Under his screams and moans, I could hear the grunting of the men who were holding him down and the crunch and snap of bone as they severed his wrist. His hand did not come off easily like mine had. The knife did not pass through it like butter. He must have passed out because I could still hear them sawing at it even after he’d stopped making noise.

  “Take him away,” Dr. Fineman said at last. “And clean up all this blood.”

  I didn’t lift my head to the sounds of them dragging him out. I didn’t move a muscle when someone swabbed the blood from the slab I slept on. I was hoping they’d forget about me, these monstrous men. They could leave me down here forever and I wouldn’t care, as long as they left me alone.

  “What are your plans for the girl?” someone asked.

  “She’s useless to me now,” Dr. Fineman said. “We’ll dispose of her in the morning.”

  “Yes, sir,” the voice said, as they closed and locked the cell door behind them.

  * * *

  I got my wish and they forgot me for a while. I don’t know for how long. Time stretched on. Or didn’t. It had to have been more than one night that I lay there. However long it was, I spent it contemplating my own death. They’d killed Marcus when he was here; he’d just managed to come back. And Marcus had claimed they’d killed Danielle. After what I’d experienced, I was beginning to wonder if the notes and the hand and the ghost were all a part of a delusion I’d made up to cope. Maybe there was no way out of here but to die.

  When I stumbled to the wall where I’d hidden the first note, there was nothing there. Either someone had taken it or it had never existed. When I scrambled in the dirt where I’d dropped the second note, I found nothing.

  But Grant had heard her. He’d yelled at her and scared her away. He’d seen the key, and we’d used it to together to free our bonds. Unless Grant had been a part of the delusion too. Where were the handcuffs we’d taken off and his shackles? Someone had removed them from the cell, or they’d never been here. What if they’d drugged my food all along, and nothing I’d thought was real had ever happened? Suddenly, the only thing I was sure of was my missing hand and Anthony’s, his blood still streaked across the slab I lay on.

  I slept fitfully, and once I woke with a start, something flashing across my eyelids, pulsing like a strobe and drawing me back to consciousness. But when I opened my eyes, I saw the fluorescent bulb hanging above me, drab but constant.

  And then they finally came for me.

  I had wondered how they’d kill me.

  Cut my throat? Strangle me? Sever my other hand with a guillotine and let me bleed out? Nothing seemed beyond belief anymore.

  So, when Dr. Fineman came in and said, “You are a very, very, lucky girl,” I knew I wasn’t.

  I didn’t respond, staring past him. If he was going to kill me, I was going to give him as little satisfaction as possible.

  “It seems just when we have no more use for you, someon
e else does. You’ve been ransomed, my dear. Well, not truly yet, but arrangements are being made and negotiations will commence shortly.”

  I didn’t believe a word of it.

  “Don’t you want to know who has saved you?” he taunted me. “And not just you, they’ve asked for your friend, Grant, too. Two of you for the price of one, really. Such a steal.”

  I stared at his shoes, the smart Italian ones he always wore. Those pompous shoes.

  “There’s only one problem,” he said. “I’m afraid you’re no longer in the condition they might expect. There’s the small issue of your missing hand. I imagine Mr. James and your mother won’t be pleased about that.”

  Mr. James and my mother? Was it possible?

  “Oh yes,” he said, sensing the smallest kernel of hope in me. “They’re actually on their way here right now. And it isn’t just your mother and Mr. James. All your little PSS friends are coming. At least the ones who are still alive.”

  He wanted me to ask about Marcus. I knew he did. But I didn’t believe any of it.

  “You’re lying,” I said. I’d seen Passion and Marcus in a corn field a day ago. Or had it been two days? They could be on their way. It was exactly what I’d been hoping for. I had to ask him. I had to know. “Is Marcus with them? I thought you said he was working for you.”

  “Perhaps he still is,” Fineman said, smiling wickedly, delighted that he’d baited me into asking. “There’s only one way to find out.” He gestured to the guards. “Take her upstairs to one of the empty staff suites and get her cleaned up. She needs a shower, and some clothes, and come up with some way to hide the missing hand. Let them find that out after the exchange, not beforehand. Beforehand. ” He chuckled. “That amuses me.”

  “Yes, sir,” one of the guards said, taking me by the arm and helping me stand.

  I didn’t believe it. This was just part of the game before they killed me, to give me false hope.