Beautiful Dead Book 1

by Eden Maguire

  Matt’s blank eyes told me that he had no clue what this meant.

  “Post-traumatic stress disorder,” I explained. “Zoey’s brains are cooked. She has no memory of what really happened.”

  His guard dropped again. “Let’s not talk about Zoey,” he said, cozying up to me. “Darina, I’ve forgotten how cool you can be, you know that?”

  This was where the eyelash flutter came in, and more pouting. No words. It turns out I deserved an Oscar.

  “You think out of the box,” he went on. “I like that about you. Not like Zoey.”

  “I thought we weren’t talking about her.” Less than twelve hours ago I’d been with Phoenix. Now here I was with Matt Fortune, trying not to feel nauseated.

  “Right. Zoey had her chance and she blew it.” His arm was resting along the back of the seat, his hand creeping onto my bare shoulder. “So how come you played hard to get way back then?”

  I chose not to waste my breath by going into the issue of loyalty between friends. “You want the truth?” I simpered. “I didn’t take you seriously, Matt. I thought you were out of my league.”

  Matt Fortune was immune to irony. Maybe his mom had vaccinated him against it, along with rubella and chicken pox. His hand was definitely resting on my shoulder now. I pulled up to the curb and jerked the car to a halt, half a block from the mall. The sidewalk was crowded with the after-school crowd.

  “Anyway, I didn’t want to get hurt. I thought you and Zoey would get back together.”

  “She was crazy even then,” he confided, leaning in more closely. “It’s not like I didn’t offer to get back with her…” He suddenly seemed to realize we’d stopped moving. “Hey, I thought we were going for coffee.”

  “In a minute,” I murmured softly. “So how much time did you waste on her?”

  “Too long, hanging around her place, telling her Jonas was a loser.”

  “Yeah, loser.” Don’t say too much, don’t push too hard.

  “Maybe it was Jonas’s Dyna that did it for Zoey.”

  “Maybe. He was such a loser!” Matt snorted and rested back against the seat. “The Dyna comes nowhere near the Tourer FLXH. The Street Glide—now there’s a motorcycle!”

  That was it—I’d found a solitary emotion lurking in his dark heart. Jealousy. Now I could safely stir it. “Jonas never looked cool on that bike. He wasn’t born to ride.”

  “Tell me! The guy was an amateur. You put Jonas Jonson and me in a competition and I’d outride him every time.”

  I held my breath. “Did you ever do it—race him, I mean? Did you win?”

  “What do you think? Face it—am I going to admit it to you, even if I did?”

  “Oh, I get it—it’s illegal.” Reel him in, slowly, slowly. Accept the dirty hand creeping along my collarbone. “You’re talking speed limits and crap like that. So, did you anyway?”

  Slow thoughts clunked through Matt’s brain, flashing up a security alert. High risk. Delete.

  “Don’t answer that.” I laughed. But it was too late.

  Matt jerked back so suddenly that his elbow slammed against the passenger door. “You don’t trap me that way, you little bitch.”

  Whoa. He was practically screaming. Kids on the sidewalk flashed a few puzzled stares. “Get the hell out of here,” Matt snarled, somehow forgetting he was in my car. Jealousy… and now raw anger—so not attractive. My pulse picked up a notch. How could I throw him out of the car? I wished it had an eject button…“You nasty, little slut,” he hissed. “To think that I would even…”

  Something cut him off in mid-sentence: namely the two burly hands of Brandon Rohr. One had thrown open the door; the other had grabbed Matt by the collar of his stupid leather jacket. He flung Matt out onto the sidewalk as if he were a side of meat and slammed the door shut.

  “You even touch her and you’re dead!” Brandon yelled and the whole world heard.

  And now Matt didn’t look strong, he didn’t look cool either.

  He was a puppet dangling in Brandon’s grasp, pressed up against a shop window, unable to say a word.

  It was way past time to ask myself some basic questions. Am I out of my depth, not waving but drowning? Have I messed up so badly that now I’ll never be able to get the answers to Jonas’s questions?

  Midnight is the hour for losing your nerve, especially after the latest fight I’d had with Laura two hours earlier.

  “What happened to us, Darina?…We were so close… When did the whole thing fall apart?” Boo-hoo, I’m dying here.

  I was still shaking from the Matt Fortune episode so I let her get to me. I was crying too and saying sorry and then Laura was saying sorry and we ended up clinging to each other and promising to try harder on both sides. She went out happy to a late night movie. I felt crappy.

  Darina, you did this all wrong, I told myself in the darkness of my room. You made an enemy out of Matt Fortune. You thought you were smarter and stronger than you are. You think you can handle communing with dead people, for God’s sake!

  I was even asking myself whether it would have worked out better if I’d never heard the barn door banging out at Foxton, and never found Phoenix again. I pulled the pillow over my face, trying but failing to block out that stupid question. When I pushed it off again, I felt someone else in the room.

  “Who is it?” I whispered.

  Shadows moved along the walls. There was no sound, only the sense of quiet breathing and eyes watching. Maybe wings beating softly—I couldn’t be sure.

  “Phoenix, is it you?”

  “Do you want me to leave?” he asked.

  I could hear him but not see him. “So now what—you’re reading my mind?”

  “Yes,” he admitted. “If you want me to, I can go and never come back.”

  “Phoenix Rohr, don’t you dare.” I jumped off the bed and switched on the light. “You materialize, or whatever it is you do, right here, right now.”

  I was looking in the wrong direction when it started to happen, so when I turned toward the door I saw a shimmery outline gradually filling in with detail—Phoenix’s lean body, his pale face and dark hair, and at last those all-seeing gray-blue eyes.

  “Do you really wish you’d never found me again?” was his first, hurt question.

  I’d never seen him like this—doubtful and holding back until I set his mind at rest.

  “Me and my lousy thoughts,” I sighed. “I was lying alone in the dark. I was like a scared kid, that’s all.”

  Phoenix shook his head and stayed by the door. “I can understand if you did.”

  “No. I was feeling crappy. I didn’t mean it.” Please believe me. If you’re reading my thoughts right now, believe them.

  “Darina, you’ve done so much already. But you still have a choice. If you wanted to step away now, no one would blame you. Hunter will come if I call him. He’s given the order that he’s the only one who can do the memory thing on you. He’d do it and you’d forget all about us.”

  Now I was really afraid—not little-kid-in-the-middle-of-the-night scared. My heart was hammering against my rib cage. “And then what? How would Jonas get where he wants to be? He only has till Tuesday.”

  “That’s not your problem.” Finally Phoenix came toward me and took both my hands. “If Hunter works on you, you won’t feel bad. And, like I told you before, you’ll still have those great memories of you and me before…” He faltered, looking so grave and gentle, his hands trembling as they held mine.

  I looked deep into his eyes. “OK, Mister Mind Reader, what do you see?”

  I want to be with you. I never want to leave you. What you say about love is true. It’s in everything we touch and see. Stay with me.

  Slowly a smile appeared on Phoenix’s face and a light came into his eyes. “I understand,” he said.

  We sat on my bed, Phoenix and I, and there was no need to talk.

  “Did you finally learn how to stop the world?” I asked at last.

  “Would you li
ke me to?”

  “Yes.”

  “One stationary world coming up.” He grinned and snapped his fingers.

  “Make that with fries, no mayo.” We fell back laughing. In his arms, under his loving protection, I finally felt safe. At least for the moment.

  “So, Brandon did his tough guy thing,” I told Phoenix, snuggled face-to-face, limbs intertwined. “I guess you saw what happened at the diner?”

  Phoenix let go of me and lay on his back, one arm behind his head. “That’s what Brandon does.”

  “Was that how come he ended up in jail?” I’d always been curious about this, but a criminal record is like an embarrassing illness—if you’re polite and well behaved you don’t ask. Now though, I wanted to know a little more.

  Phoenix gazed at my ceiling. “Yeah, something like that.”

  “For fighting?”

  “When he was still at school, he got way out of line—with Mom, with his teachers—usually just kidding around. But by the time he left, he was angry.”

  “What changed?”

  Phoenix shifted position, both hands behind his head. “Brandon grew up, or he didn’t, depending on how you look at it. He was strong physically and he had a short fuse. A couple of guys got him wound up over a girl, lying and saying he was a cradle snatcher, that she was underage. He snapped.”

  “A girl?” I wasn’t expecting this. “I only ever see Brandon hanging out with guys.”

  “That’s the reason.” Phoenix half smiled. “Currently, in his mind, girls equal trouble. Mess with them and you end up in a correctional facility for nine months.”

  “Whereas, if you mess with guys, you make sure you have bigger muscles and it all works out.” I got the picture. “Whatever. One thing’s for sure—he’s living up to his promise.”

  “To take care of you.” Phoenix rolled back toward me, leaning on one elbow and gazing at me. “I need you to promise me something.”

  “Sure.”

  “If you still want to be in on the deal, don’t trust Matt Fortune. Stay totally away from him, OK?”

  “Sure.” Nothing easier. “He’s a jerk,” I muttered through gritted teeth. “He doesn’t have much of a brain, but enough to see where I was leading, at which point his guilty conscience kicked in and he lost control.”

  Phoenix frowned. “Did you learn anything new?”

  I nodded. “He wouldn’t admit it, but I think he raced Jonas on his Harley—maybe to make himself look good in front of Zoey.”

  Phoenix waited for more, looking at me as if he could sift through my jumbled thoughts and catalog them into alphabetical order, which I guess he really could.

  “I put the race thing to him as an idea and it pushed his buttons,” I explained. “That’s why he’ll never trust me again.”

  “That and Brandon.”

  “Which leaves us nowhere,” I sighed. “Except, I got home with Matt Fortune’s paw prints all over me and I had to jump in the shower.”

  “Sorry,” Phoenix said again. And we were silent, just holding each other, until the front door clicked and Laura walked in with Jim.

  I heard their relaxed voices, plus sounds that meant they were making a hot drink in the kitchen, with Jim saying the coffee would keep them awake and Laura saying that staying awake seemed like a good idea, then laughing.

  “We have to keep our voices down,” I warned Phoenix.

  “You can hear how thin these walls are.”

  “I have something important to tell you,” he whispered, sitting up on the bed and swinging his legs over the side. I sat next to him. “Hunter has a new plan.”

  “Good. Because I don’t.” I’d been hitting my head against a wall when Phoenix appeared, after all.

  Letting his clasped hands hang between his knees, Phoenix thought long and hard. “Maybe good, maybe bad,” he warned quietly. “This new plan—he’s keeping it from us. I think it’s so we don’t discuss it until he’s ready.”

  “Yeah, Hunter’s a true democrat.”

  “He’s the overlord. He wants to see you,” Phoenix told me uneasily. “Tomorrow—early.”

  “I’ll be there,” I agreed. I was scared, but this was Phoenix. There was no hesitation.

  Laura and Jim came upstairs. It was time for Phoenix to leave. He kissed me hard on the lips then stepped back and went into himself, turning his concentration inward—it’s hard to say exactly how. Only I knew he was still visible but his mind had gone, and soon the shimmering thing happened again, and I lost the details as a haze gathered and the wings fluttered, until he dissolved and the room was empty.

  There was no chance of sleeping after that.

  I lay awake and focused on the night life outside my window—black squirrels scrabbling over the roof, redwood boughs creaking. At dawn a pair of blue jays settled on the porch rail below.

  I got dressed quietly and waited for Jim to drive Laura to the store—my only way of getting out of the house without having to answer the usual questions and run the risk of either of them picking up the fact that I was extra jumpy this morning. No way could I deal with the third degree.

  Honestly, I was so nervous I couldn’t make my fingers fasten my shirt buttons or zip up my plaid skirt. But once finished, I made my escape in the convertible. Shaky relief flowed in a sigh out of my lungs. I thought I was clear until halfway down my street, when Logan stepped out from behind the open trunk of his car.

  “Why so early?” he asked in a cheery, neighborly way. Sometimes Logan Lavelle is seventeen going on seventy.

  I had to brake hard to avoid him. “Logan, I could’ve run you down!” I yelled. Not now, Logan, please!

  “Don’t you know it’s Saturday? No school.”

  “Ha-ha. So I’m up early. So what?”

  “No, it’s good,” he said, wiping his hands on an old towel then throwing it in the trunk. “I need a ride into town to buy oil for the engine.”

  I groaned inwardly. Hunter, the overlord of the Beautiful Dead had summoned me, and here I was, involved in grease and motor oil. But it was easier to say the usual yes to Logan than a suspicion-arousing no. “Jump in,” I told him.

  “Did you do that science homework? And did you know Lucas finally agreed to date Jordan?” It was the old Logan, running on like a train, talking about nothing. It felt a whole hell of a lot better than talking about the quality of our relationship, though, and how Logan wanted more. “And guess what—Bob Jonson was here at my house until two a.m. I thought he was never going to leave.”

  “Were he and your dad drinking all that time?” I figured best to keep up the chitchat: it was a short run into town and it wasn’t taking me out of my way through Centennial.

  “Pretty much. My dad can hold his liquor but not Bob. They had to call a taxi to take him home.”

  “That’s not nice,” I muttered. I pulled into the gas station up on the right. “Here you go,” I said.

  Logan ignored my cue for him to leave. “The poor guy couldn’t stand up. They sat right under my window, drinking, talking, drinking. It was all about Jonas.”

  “Poor guy,” I echoed. I need to go, Logan. Get out of the car!

  “And stuff about Foxton,” Logan went on. Which is when I began to suspect an ulterior motive on his part. Logan studied my face closely. “It didn’t make much sense, but Bob’s convinced he can find Jonas up there on the ridge. He swears he’s seen him.”

  “How drunk was he?” I muttered, pressing the button to unlock Logan’s door. No way was he about to draw me in.

  Logan’s stubborn streak came into play. “Maybe there’s something in it. Bob Jonson would stake his life on it.”

  “My shrink says that’s what we do—we imagine seeing people we’ve just lost. They pop up and we think they’re real flesh and blood. Sometimes we even talk with them.” Amazingly, just as it had in Kim Reiss’s office, it felt good to tell the truth.

  “Shrink?” This was the first Logan had heard of it. I’d intended for him to be shocked, to
sidetrack him, and then to hustle him out of the car.

  I nodded. “It was Laura’s idea. Because of Phoenix. Who’d have thought it—that she’d pay out for therapy?”

  “Darina, I had no idea.”

  “The point is, people with PTSD imagine things, and that’s what Jonas’s dad is doing. He doesn’t need alcohol, he needs help.”

  “Suppose it’s true,” Logan insisted, leaning back in his seat and turning his head toward me. Now he was definitely testing my reactions. “Suppose Jonas isn’t really dead.”

  I shivered. “Logan, they buried him, remember? There was an autopsy—everything!”

  He took a deep breath. “So what do you think is happening up there? Do we really have to start believing in ghosts?”

  I closed my eyes. “Believe what you like, Logan. I have to go.”

  “To Foxton?” he muttered under his breath.

  I slammed my hand on the rim of the steering wheel. “What did you say?”

  “Forget it. You spend a lot of time up there, that’s all.”

  “How do you know? Are you following me?”

  “Why are you mad at me, Darina? I don’t get it.”

  “I’m not mad,” I yelled. “Logan, do you want to buy engine oil or not?”

  He made another tactical swerve. “Since Phoenix died, you act like you hate all guys. You push me away, and you’ve known me all your life. You say something to Matt that turns him crazy—yeah, I heard about that.”

  “I said something to Matt! Exactly! It had nothing to do with you!” Now I was practically screaming. “You know something? This town sucks! You only have to breathe and someone is spreading bad rumors about you. Get out of my car, Logan. Now!”

  His face looked stunned as he registered what I’d said. “I’m sorry, Darina—I didn’t mean…”

  I breathed out heavily. “So what did you mean, Logan? Let me tell you something—Matt Fortune jumped on me and Brandon Rohr saved me. End of story.”

  “Brandon Rohr.” Logan picked up a different trail. His eyes went back to being angry.