Before I could begin to think of an answer, he spoke again. His voice so close, his breath covered my neck. “God, I’ve missed this.”
Try as I might, I couldn’t bite back the sobs.
“Don’t,” he whispered. “Please.”
Warm fingertips brushed the sensitive skin on my side just under my shirt, and at the same time, his warm chest pressed against my back.
Agony tore shreds of my soul.
“This isn’t the end. We will be together again.” He tucked hair over my ear and with a feather-light touch kissed my cheek.
I turned in his arms, but the warmth was gone.
Cole was gone.
* * * *
The living room had transformed from the room that we all had spent so many happy times in, to a cryptic mourning area. Comfortable chairs lined the room on all three walls. The mixture of roses, lilies, baby’s breath and various other colorful petals heavily perfumed the air.
At the closed casket, I ran my hand over the cool mahogany and the gold bars the pallbearers would use to lift it. An oval-shaped bouquet of fifty red roses draped over the lid.
Three hours of shaking hands and listening to heartfelt condolences had exhausted me.
Numbness had penetrated every nerve ending.
Maybe this was how I would feel until…until when?
And when the numbness subsided how long would my heart feel as though it had been stabbed a thousand times.
As we walked to Rollins Cemetery, it rained. The ground was so soggy my heels dug in and lifted clods of dirt with each step. A black umbrella did little to hold back the sprays of rain as I walked behind the funeral procession. Rain like teardrops dripped from leaves and plopped on the forest floor.
Crumbling weathered headstones marked Cole Kinsley with different dates of birth and death lined the path to the mouth of a red dirt hole waiting to swallow Cole’s casket.
Cole would be buried under a mound of dirt.
He’d witnessed this with me so many times before.
Now I knew his agony.
The preacher spoke soft soothing words of passage and recounted Cole’s life. He knew nothing about the man of whom he spoke so highly.
Cole was more than “a great man of honor.” He was more than anyone of the people there knew.
I may not have remembered everything, but my soul did. It knew the entity that had made up Cole Kinsley’s soul.
It had been crafted by God, with perfection beyond anyone’s wildest imaginings.
“Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.” The preacher bowed his head.
The funeral director pressed a button. The casket holding the love of my life reached the bottom of the pit.
The preacher sprinkled dirt over Cole’s casket. Each of my family members stood and dropped a red rose, the only color against the gloomy black and gray day, down onto the once shiny box.
I leapt and shoved the man of the cloth. “Ashes to ashes? Dust to dust? What kind of bullshit are you people reading? It doesn’t really happen that way! It’s all just a lie to make you feel better!”
As my family grabbed at me, I stumbled to the mouth of the hole and jumped down into the grave. I fumbled through the dirt, crushing the roses that lay over the casket. I found the latch and jerked it open. I reached down to grab the lid, but very strong arms encircled my waist and fastened my arms down.
Reduced to sobs, I collapsed as the men hoisted me to the top of the hole.
* * * *
After a change into dry clothes, I napped. When my back was so sore from lying in one spot, I finally sat up. I’d been at the funeral, the preacher had said some dumb stuff about ashes and dust, and then…what?
I couldn’t recall the time from that point to changing into my long bunny pajama pants and pink tank top. I couldn’t even remember choosing them to wear.
Cole had always loved to pick on me when I wore them.
“You look like an Easter commercial,” was only one of his jabs.
Shelby stuck her head in my room. “Do you want some hot cocoa? Tea?”
With a cold rock in the pit of my stomach I couldn’t imagine adding food or drink to it, but I nodded for her sake. She looked like she needed it.
In the kitchen I sat forlornly at the table. I couldn’t stop shaking. Losing Cole had brought so many things to the surface. Talking had felt like such a chore until that moment when it all came flooding out. “You know that I love you, don’t you? I know we have a history, and that I don’t remember it, and that all of you have to go through life feeling like you are in a one-sided relationship with me. I just never had a chance to tell Cole that and I realize now, how important you guys are. I don’t know what we would have done without the shield that all of you have put around us this time around.”
Shelby smiled knowing that emotions and speaking of them had always made me feel uncomfortable. “So, hot cocoa?” she replied. She started to turn but on second thought, she turned back. “You know, when you were a little girl, you used to climb up in my lap, and I told you stories.”
I glanced back into the past and remembered those times. “And Cole would come in and stop as if he walked in on someone betraying him.”
“Well, it wasn’t because he felt betrayed that you were sitting on his mother’s lap. Even then, the memories of your life together were no fairy tale to him. He had an old soul, and he knew it. Every other lifetime, his realization had come closer to puberty, but this time…I swear even when he was a toddler, he seemed to look at me as if he knew he was still the boss of me.” Shelby took out two cups.
The whole time we drank and recounted old times, something was off.
I couldn’t put my finger on it.
Shelby should have been more in mourning than she was.
After the funeral guests left, I retired to the upper levels of the house.
I needed time to myself. In my room, I was no longer an easy target for pitiful looks.
On the second stairwell, I got a notion that I needed to keep going. The second floor wasn’t my destination. It was the remodeled fourth floor.
Darkness enveloped me in the living area. I didn’t want light just yet. I wasn’t ready to see all the other artifacts from my partially unknown past.
Warm, work-roughened hands ran down my arms. I shivered.
“You didn’t think you’d get away from me that easy did you?” Cole’s voice tickled my neck. If he wasn’t alive and breathing, how did he project such a sensation? “I always knew this time around was going to be more difficult. Easy is never our way. But here we are again, full circle. And now you have a decision to make.”
I sank back. His ghost form was just as capable as his human build. He felt so good. How could I have turned him away?
A landslide of ache and misery crashed in my chest.
The sensation righted me and left me standing on my own.
“Hi,” Anna Marie said from behind me.
I turned, heat rushing up my cheeks. “How long have you been there?”
“I just walked in. Why are you in the dark?” Her eyes narrowed. Her long hair was pulled into a side braid and her long black dress made her look more witchy than she probably realized. On her neck was a shiny silver medallion with a stone in the middle. It was too dim to distinguish color.
“This room is too painful to see. The feelings it elicits are bad enough, but I needed to feel close to him.” The deep shadows of the room smothered the light from the hall.
“What if you could?”
I turned to face her.
“What if you could have him back?” She twirled her braid.
Chapter 8
I followed Anna Marie down to the basement where my mom, Kaitlyn, and Shelby stood behind a podium waiting for us.
“Did you fill her in?” Mama’s eyes were hopeful and shining.
Anna Marie dropped her braid and joined Mama and Shelby. “Not yet. I thought
I might need moral support.”
They all three stared at me as I took a seat on the sofa. “What is this place?”
“It’s where we hold our meetings. Cole used to call it our witchy dungeon.” Shelby grinned sadly. She met my gaze. “Cole asked to be respected and given a final end. You were never very good at respecting any wishes that pertained to you not being with Cole. We’re hoping you’ll feel the same way right now.”
I held the sides of my head. “Wait. Slow down. Are you saying there’s something you can do to get him back? Like in another body. Or what?”
“No. We can get him, the real Cole, complete with his body back. But we only have tonight. But we need your blood and a promise.” Shelby’s hands shook.
“A blood promise?”
“Essentially, yes. But the actual spell is called Everlasting.” Anna Marie put her finger on a page. “It’s right here. I can read it to you.”
“No. I trust you. I wouldn’t be here if you hadn’t been successful before.” I stood. “Can I think about it?”
“Yes, but there are a few details you need to be aware of that might sway your decision,” Anna Marie said.
I waited.
Shelby sighed. “You have to shed your own blood over his grave. That’s the easy part.”
“What’s the hard part?”
Shelby flipped a few of the book’s pages as she spoke. “We’ll have the coffin unearthed, but you’ll have to wait for him to awaken. You are the first person he must see. For twelve months after, you cannot kiss him, or become romantically involved with him in any other way, if you know what I’m getting at.”
It took a few seconds for all that to settle in, but I was willing. “I think I do.”
“Another thing. There’s a good chance he’ll be different.”
“Like different how?” This was getting hairy.
Anna Marie stepped around the podium. “Necromancy leaves a lot to the unknown. His spirit will have gone through a difficult journey. When it does find his body, settling into it may be exponentially more difficult than anything he’s ever done in his life. He may do things a little out of character for a while. You have to be wise to him.”
“I need some time.” I waved all the craziness away from me and started up the stairs.
“You don’t have time. It has to happen tonight or the window of opportunity will pass. We need your decision before nightfall so we can start the proceedings.”
In my room, I sat on my bed. For what felt like hours, I stared at the old silver and white swirls in the wallpaper.
Did I want forever with Cole even if he may be a little different?
Or did I want to die and be done?
* * * *
“How much blood do you need?” I said from the entrance of the living room.
“For Heaven’s sakes, keep it down. The people in this town already think we’re nuts. You’re doing us no favors.” Mama ushered me into the living room. “So you decided to go through with it?”
“What choice do I have?” Hope filled my chest. “I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I thought he wouldn’t get a second chance,” I paused. “Okay, a chance with me without that crazy bitch of a sister of mine.”
The women all clapped.
“Where are all the men?” I looked around.
“Out digging Cole up. At least most of the way. You just have to unearth the coffin. That means you have to take the last few shovels full off him.” Mama grinned mischievously.
“Am I that predictable?” I forgot the women in the room knew me better than I knew myself.
“Yep. The Allie we all know would never let Cole stay in a coffin very long.” Shelby smiled.
“You proved that today when you tried to jerk Cole out of the ground. But we had to bury him, and he had to be left untouched for twelve hours for the spell to work, so we couldn’t let you open the coffin.” Mama sat her tea glass on the coffee table and pulled a razor out of her pocket.
My hands trembled. “How sure are you that this will work?”
Anna Marie glanced at the other women in the room. “I’ve seen it done only once before.”
“And?”
“The person was buried within an hour of dying. Cole was—deceased for more than ten. I don’t know what toll it will take. I have to warn you we may have to take extreme measures if he doesn’t come back normal enough to pass for the old Cole.”
“By extreme measures, you mean?”
“We’ll cross that bridge if we have to come to it.” Mama looped her arm around my shoulders. “Come on. Let’s get down to the gravesite. We’ve performed the verbal part of the spell.”
“I just hope Cole doesn’t try to eat me or something.” I wrapped my arms around myself and followed the women.
* * * *
We looked like a coven as we charged through the foggy cemetery, me carrying a razor blade and the other women of my family and one dear friend carrying blankets and a tarp.
Soggy ground suctioned against my feet. Gray headstones stuck up like rotten teeth from the gums of the earth. Fresh dirt mounded into a round hump beside Cole’s grave. The rain had finally let up a few hours before, so it wouldn’t be completely miserable waiting for him to make noise inside the casket.
“Do you want us to wait with you?” Daddy asked.
Trevor stood beside him leaning on a shovel.
I stared into the deep, dark hole in the ground disbelieving what I was about to do. Were these just a bunch of whackos? Could it really work?
“No. Just tell me what to say and I’ll wait.” A thought occurred to me—one even crazier than the group I was with: “Unless you think he’ll hurt me?”
“No. I don’t think he’d ever hurt you.” Shelby spread a tarp and blanket on the ground beside Cole’s final resting place.
“You don’t think?” The dark pit looked bottomless.
“No. I’m sure he’d never hurt you. But I’m not sure what he’ll return as. The description part of the spell had fallen out of the book. It’s old.” Anna Marie shook her skirt. Dirt fell from the hem as she straightened it. She appeared sane. But insane people were never aware of their insanity.
How did I know that?
A chill broke through my jacket. “So he could be a vampire or a zombie or—”
“There’s no such thing as zombies.” Anna Marie flicked a lighter, giving life to a flame inside a lantern. Her smiling eyes were illuminated. Now she looked crazy and happy about it.
“That eases my nerves. I’m giving him blood, and he might want more.” I shivered and wrapped my arms tighter around myself.
“You’re giving his grave blood as an offering. He will only want you, but you have to remember what I said.” Anna Marie raised her brow in warning.
“I know, twelve months. If he doesn’t eat me first.” I shuddered.
No one gave my bad joke a response.
“We’re going to wait in Cole’s cottage. It’s not too far that we couldn’t hear if something went wrong. Just a quick stream of blood, then wrap your hand. Say these words loud enough for him to hear.” Mama handed me a slip of paper and left me with the lantern. “It’s sort of creepy out here, so I’ll leave this with you. We’ve got the lampposts to guide our way.”
In seconds, I was alone.
According to my crazy family members, in a few minutes that wouldn’t be the case.
“Here goes nothing,” I said to the air—or the apparition of Cole if he was somewhere close by.
I made a small incision down the center of my hand. It burned like the dickens, but I squeezed it over Cole’s casket and closed my eyes. The cold in my fingertips instantly warmed to an electric sensation.
The casket glowed so much that I had to open my eyes to make sure it wasn’t on fire.
Silver sparkling light floated in wisps from the bottom of the grave and swirled into the air.
Quickly, I wra
pped my hand, unfolded the piece of paper, and recited the words:
“In giving blood, I give new life.
Bid soul and body reunite.
Until the soul has settled in,
I lie in wait
To meet again.
And live a life everlasting.”
I didn’t quite understand them until a few seconds later. I hadn’t just given Cole a new life. From what the words on the paper read, we would live together forever. This didn’t sound like reincarnation.
After I folded up the paper and took the shovel Daddy had stabbed into the ground, I clambered down into the hole and stood on the dirt. With the tip of the shovel, I tapped the dirt and hit something solid, hollow.
Using the shovel, I scooped the rest of the dirt off the casket and found the latches. Fumbling through the dirt, I pulled them up and with a popping sound the lid was ready for Cole to lift from the inside. I climbed out.
On the blanket beside the grave, I went to my knees and wiped the dirt from my hands. My stomach churned as if I’d had three too many cups of coffee. My chest tightened. If this didn’t work, I may not ever come back from it.
I’d lost the only person who knew the real me. And loved me anyway. If he didn’t return, it would feel as if I’d lost him twice in the same week.
Scraping from inside the casket jarred me.
My breath became lead in my chest. I scrambled back and pulled my knees to my chest.
Gurgles and groans rumbled the ground.
What sounded like the lid of the casket slapped against the dirt wall of the grave.
I sat deathly still.
“Annabeth.” Broken vocals called from the hole. Cole’s hand slapped over the side and dug into the fresh red soil.
I almost fell as I slid off the tarp and blanket. My back hit another headstone as I crab-crawled backward.
Out of the hole, hair, then eyes became visible in the lantern’s orange glow. Cole’s hair was covered in red dirt and his suit was soiled on the right shoulder. On his neck, a white scar glowed.
I met his gaze, but something was different.
His normally sparkling green eyes were olive, lifeless, empty.
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