I reached up, knowing I was risking everything. With one hand, I pulled off my wig, and with the other, my glasses.
I wouldn’t let fear come between us and our last good-bye.
Logan’s gasp came through the microphone. He shifted as if to rush toward me, but the solo was ending. Time for the final chorus.
From the corner of my eye, I saw everyone looking, but I kept my gaze locked with his. He sang the last two lines strong and smooth, promising that he’d always be with me, even when I could no longer hear his voice. I whispered the lines with him, sending the promise right back.
The song ended, and I reached out my hand.
Logan gave me an amazed, grateful smile, then shouted into the microphone, “I’m about to do something that’s never been done.” As the crowd hushed, he lowered his voice. “I beg you, don’t freak out, and don’t try to understand. This might not work anyway, but if it does, please don’t let them stop me. I need to play for as long as it lasts.” He turned his gaze back to me. “Because after that, I’m gone forever.”
Siobhan tugged my sleeve. “What’s he saying?” she asked me, since Dylan was staring slack jawed at his brother and had stopped translating.
I kept my focus on the stage. “You’ll see,” I told Siobhan.
“I will? How?”
The members of Tabloid Decoys looked at one another, feigning confusion. They expected Logan to leave the stage and Mickey to walk on. Only Mickey, Megan, and I knew what was about to happen.
If it happened.
Logan stepped away from the microphone and slowly moved toward me. The auditorium silenced as he got down on one knee.
We were really doing this. It would be harder than ever to explain his transformation. But we both needed him to play.
He reached out his violet hand, palm up. “Thank you,” he whispered.
I held my breath, slipped my hand over his, and believed.
The sudden warmth shot straight into my veins. Logan’s hand closed around mine, and his eyes, now blue as sapphires, burned through me.
For a moment, we were all suspended in silence.
Then came the screams.
Dylan and Siobhan surged forward, elbowing me as they reached for Logan. Siobhan’s voice pitched high and incoherent as she started to cry.
Logan hugged them both hard, his eyes squeezed shut. Then he shot offstage to where Mickey stood, disappearing long enough for a brothers’ embrace before bouncing back onstage.
He grabbed the microphone in both hands, his face exploding into a smile at the sensation.
“Hey. Do not. I repeat. Do. Not. Panic. There’s nothing to be scared of. This is just your average everyday fucking miracle.”
Logan bounded over to his shiny black Fender, then knelt before it like an altar. He lifted the strap over his head. The instrument settled in his grasp, a part of his new, preciously temporary body.
Beside me, Siobhan was sobbing in Dylan’s arms. “He looks so beautiful,” she repeated again and again.
Logan conferred with his shell-shocked bandmates, caressing the curves of his guitar in a way that made my own skin tingle. As they reviewed the set list, he buttoned his shirt, open all these months.
Finally he patted Josh the guitarist’s shoulder, then gave high fives to Heather and Corey, who stared at their hands afterward, stunned.
Logan adjusted the strap of his guitar, then hopped on his toes twice—just as he always did before starting a new set. The other band members retreated to their spots, and Logan went to the microphone.
“This song’s for the ghosts.” He raised the head of his guitar for a split second, then crashed into the four opening chords of “Shade.” The band joined in, catching up by the second line.
Then they were off. Logan sawed away at the Fender like he’d never lost a minute of practice. All those weeks of air guitar had paid off.
The song drove forward relentlessly, fluidly, from the first movement to the second, changing tempo and key in a glorious rock opera fashion. Logan’s face glowed like it never had as a ghost’s, and I knew he had finally found, in his afterlife, one moment of perfect happiness.
When “Shade” crescendoed into the third movement, he nodded to Josh, who took over the lead guitar. Logan stripped off his own guitar and set it down, then grabbed the mic to carry with him. Punk rage spilled out of him as he pointed at the crowd and beyond, challenging the world to make sense of him and all the other lost souls.
Fury dissolved into charm as the song transitioned to the bouncy fourth movement. He moved to the other side of the stage and touched the hands of the crowd as he sang, just as he had before in his violet form.
They clutched at his arm and wrist, making him laugh and muff the lyrics. But the band caught up and caught on so he could run the verse again. Phones glowed all over the auditorium, people preserving and uploading the moment forever.
The final movement began with a cascade of noise. Logan picked up his guitar, but as he faced the front of the stage, he scanned the auditorium with alarm. I turned to see dozens of DMP agents swarming the aisles.
As a human or a ghost, he could be detained. They could trap him unless he passed on or turned shade.
His grip on the guitar’s neck tightened, and with a wild wrath, he swung the instrument over his head, then smashed it against the stage.
Dylan clutched his head. “Holy shit, Dad’s gonna freak.”
I smiled. “Logan once told me, he always wanted to do that.” And no one else would ever play that guitar.
Holding nothing but a scrap of fret board, Logan spoke to Josh, who continued the guitar solo, stretching and repeating it.
Then Logan shot across the stage, slid forward on his knees, and held out his hands to me. I shook my head, but he nodded and mouthed, Now.
I let him lift me onstage, then pull me to stand with him near the trapdoor, like we’d rehearsed. He bent low to my ear.
“I can’t let them catch me,” he shouted. “I have to pass on now.”
“I thought to pass on, you had to be a ghost.”
“I am a ghost. I may have a body, but I’ll never be alive again.” He pressed the fret board piece into my palm. “So this is it.”
Logan took the microphone from its stand, then toed the trapdoor, testing it. The door dipped an inch and sprang back on its hinge, so I knew Mickey had unlocked it from below. Anyone investigating afterward would think Logan had disappeared through there. A foot in front of the door, the flash pot lay ready to burst into light and smoke, controlled remotely by a switch at Corey’s feet.
I couldn’t let Logan leave without his knowing the whole truth.
“My father was a ghost,” I said, “when he made me. He was with my mom on the equinox, like you and I almost were.”
The music seemed to fade with Logan’s smile as he stared at me with full understanding. I wondered if knowing the truth would change his mind. If knowing the truth would change everything.
For a moment, his eyes grew inexplicably sad. Then his face relaxed back into a smile. “At least now you know.”
“I’ll always love you.”
“I’ll love you, too.” He touched my face. “Forever.”
He kissed me then, but not hard and full of longing as I’d expected. It was soft and sweet and chaste, his lips barely touching mine. Exactly like our first kiss.
Instead of a beginning, it was the end.
He took a step back and lifted the microphone to his full red lips. With our hands linked, he sang the last couplet with only a faint bass line for accompaniment.
Then Heather held the note on her bass as the crowd cheered, uncomprehending but knowing that this was one of the coolest things they’d ever seen.
Logan let go. I stepped back.
The climactic note approached. Corey raised his drumsticks, then slammed them down.
The stage erupted in sound and smoke and golden light. The glare made me shield my eyes, and as they closed, Loga
n’s outline appeared behind my lids, in a pulsing violet afterimage. The band finished the song’s last ten seconds in a giant, euphoric crescendo.
When I opened my eyes, Logan was gone.
Heather and Josh moved to center stage together and waved away the smoke, like a pair of magicians. Nothing remained. Corey came forward, and the three collapsed into an embrace.
The people in the first few rows clambered onto the stage, dodging security guards to grab pieces of Logan’s shattered guitar.
I pushed my way toward the backstage area, hoping to escape the dumpers, who must have seen me with Logan. Besides, part of me still wondered: At the instant of the golden glow, had Logan gone through the trapdoor, or had he passed on?
Someone grabbed me. I yelped and turned, raising my fist.
Dylan put up a defensive hand. “Hey, it’s just us.” Megan and Siobhan were right behind him. “What the hell happened?” he demanded. “And why didn’t anyone tell me?”
“Sorry,” I said. “No one knew who didn’t need to.”
“Is Logan really gone?” Megan asked. “I thought he had to turn back into a ghost first.”
“I thought so, too.”
“I know where the trapdoor leads,” Dylan said. “If he’s still human and he went through it, maybe we’ll catch him.”
We rushed behind the curtain. Mickey stepped out, looking just like Logan.
“I saw him.” Mickey released a beautiful smile, one I hadn’t seen in months. He looked at Siobhan. “Did you see him?”
She nodded, then threw her arms around Mickey. The twins hugged and wept.
I spoke quietly to Megan. “Mickey should get onstage so people can start to believe it was really him.” I cringed at the sound of Corey’s drum kit falling over. “Soon.”
“Yup,” she said. “Definitely man-behind-the-curtain time.”
Dylan nudged me. “Come on, before the dumpers get here and block everything off.”
The two of us pushed past the remnants of sets left over from the last play, until we found the opening for the three-foot-high tunnel leading to the trapdoor. The tunnel itself was lined with blue running lights.
And it was empty.
Dylan and I stared at the darkness.
“You think Logan’s really gone?” he said. “He did do the glowy thing. Or was that just the special effects?”
“I couldn’t tell. I was so close, the light blinded me. Doesn’t it seem like we should know?”
“You mean, feel his absence in our hearts or some shit like that?”
“Exactly.” I held out the piece of broken fret board. “Here. I’m sorry we kept Logan’s secret from you and Siobhan. It seemed safer this way.”
“Yeah.” Dylan took the shard of wood, cracked it in half, and handed me back the bigger piece. “I bet once the DMP gets ahold of us, the less we know, the better.”
Am I in major trouble?”
Gina tucked her bag tighter under her arm as she marched me down the hallway of Logan’s high school. “If I weren’t so grateful to see you alive, you’d be grounded until you collect Social Security.”
“Sorry.” We walked by the main entrance to the auditorium. Two hours after Logan’s passing on, it was as empty as the rest of the school. The DMP and local police had cleared out the crowd, including the media, who by now had spread word of the “Miracle or Magic Trick?” to the world.
“This was not what we discussed,” Gina said. “I thought the idea was for Logan to sing, and then pass on to celebrate the solstice. But then you bring Mickey onstage as a stand-in, and now people wonder if Logan really came back to life. It’s chaos. Our clients won’t want help passing on anymore—they’ll want their lives back.”
I stopped at a water fountain. “Only the crazy people will believe it actually happened.”
“It’s the crazy people I worry about.” She came closer and spoke in a low voice. “How did you pull off that trick? When did Mickey and Logan switch places?”
I wiped my mouth on the sleeve of the clean shirt she’d brought me, gathering my thoughts. “Before the last song he did as a ghost. That was actually Mickey onstage, but we used special lights to make him look violet.”
Her voice turned flat and angry. “Now it’s my job to make sure the DMP believes that line of bull.”
“It’s not bull.”
“Don’t lie to me, Aura!” She shook her finger in my face. “I’m not only your godmother, I’m your lawyer. For your own protection, you need to tell me everything.”
She was wrong. My silence would protect me much better than the truth ever could.
Even the DMP seemed to agree. The last thing they wanted was ghosts begging to be brought back to life, as Gina had suggested. So Nicola Hughes—who had spent the last two days trying to get me and Zachary released from a place we’d never arrived at—had helped us refine our story.
The debriefing after the concert had included me, Dylan, Megan, Mickey, Siobhan, and the members of Tabloid Decoys. The official story included the “magic trick” and ended with Logan passing on in the presence of close family. Family who were not yet available to speak to the media.
“All you need to know,” I said, “is that Logan’s gone for good, so he won’t need legal protection anymore.” My voice threatened to break as I thought of our last few moments, when our hands had touched for the final time. “He won’t need anything anymore.”
Gina put her arm around me as we continued down the hall, slower now. “I know it’s not easy letting them go, even when they’ve stayed too long.”
I frowned. To me, Logan had stayed just long enough. I now faced a true life-after-Logan, a life I was finally ready for. That didn’t mean his departure didn’t feel like having one of my limbs ripped off.
“Speaking of ghosts.” I fidgeted with the comfortingly frayed belt loop of my jeans. “That guy you were in love with, the one who died and haunted you. What was his name?”
Her face pinched as she checked to make sure we were alone.
“Sorry if it’s a bad time,” I added.
“No, hon. With Logan leaving, I understand why you’d ask about him.” She spoke in almost a whisper. “His name was Anthony.”
My chest thrummed. “What was he like?”
She gave a little laugh. “He was kind and sensitive and smart. A little bookish, but also sort of a jock. Very stubborn. He never laughed at his own jokes, but he laughed at everyone else’s.” She rubbed her chin, showing a slight smile. “Let’s see, what else? He ate, slept, and breathed the Eagles and Phillies. He preferred French pastries to Italian, much to your grandmother’s disapproval.”
I hesitated before asking for the answer I needed most. “You said my mom knew him.”
Her smile widened on one side, making her look wistful. “That’s when I fell in love with him. The first time she had cancer, before you were born, he drove her to all her appointments. He brought her food. He argued with the insurance companies for her. He was like her guardian angel.”
“So he was a friend of the family before you, um, were with him.”
“That’s right.” Her forehead creased, and I wondered if she was lingering on a memory, or trying to recall one just out of her mind’s grasp.
Maybe my father hadn’t been involved with my mom and aunt at the same time. Maybe when he was alive, he’d brought my mother nothing but comfort—though after his death, he’d brought her nothing but torment.
Thanks to what my mother had left behind, Zachary and I knew more truth than anyone alive, but we still didn’t have all the answers. Yet.
We reached the front lobby, where a giant glass trophy case displayed the school’s victories in everything from baseball to chess. Beside it was a smaller glass case built into the wall, of an entirely different sort.
“Oh my God.” Gina put a hand to her long silver chain necklace. “That’s beautiful.”
Behind the glass lay a memorial for the students who’d never graduated. Not
because they’d dropped out or started college a year early, but because they were dead.
Though he’d died eight months ago, Logan’s wasn’t even the most recent photo.
“I wonder how many of them are ghosts,” Gina said. “Such a shame.”
I remembered the idea I’d had by the river—that the Shine had reopened the world of the living to the suddenly dead. And that in response, the Shift had given the dead a way to find their peace. The Shift gave them us.
“It would’ve been more of a shame if Logan had never been a ghost,” I told her. “This way he got a second chance.”
“You mean a third chance.” She patted my shoulder. “Are you trying to say being a ghost is a blessing?”
I thought of what Logan and I had shared last fall, and the way his face had looked tonight onstage, as a ghost and as a human. Some of the best days of his life were after his death.
I kissed my fingertip and pressed it to the glass in front of his photo. “For him it was.”
I didn’t have to go far to find Zachary. In the bus lane outside the school’s front entrance, he stood with his parents next to a black sedan with tinted windows. Ian was off to one side, talking to one of the DMP agents who had debriefed me. Fiona spoke to Zachary as he leaned against the car, taking the weight off his hurt ankle. In the strobe of red-and-blue patrol car lights, I could see his jaw set in stubbornness.
When he caught sight of me, he set down his foot without a wince and moved in my direction.
His mother called his name, and Gina called mine. But we didn’t stop until we were in each other’s arms. For a long moment we barely breathed, much less spoke.
Finally he loosened his grasp to examine my face. “What did they do to you?”
“Asked questions. Mickey and I told them how the trick worked.” Instead of winking, I squeezed his elbow. “I have to go to DMP headquarters on Monday for more grilling. But at least Gina’ll be with me.”
“What will you tell them?” He added in a whisper, “About your mother.”
“Nothing. Hopefully, I’ll bore the crap out of them and they’ll let me go. For now.” After all the trouble they’d gone to in capturing me, no way they’d give up on finding my secrets. “What about you?”
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