If Only Tonight

by Elsa Jade

  With precisely polite enunciation, I say again, “I just need to make a phone call.”

  Bianca tilts her head. “To whom?”

  I open my mouth to be much less polite but realize I’ve got nothing to say.

  Whom, indeed?

  Tears prickle in my eyes like the saw-toothed edges of the yuccas stabbing me, and my stomach churns at the pathetic little gasp that comes out of me.

  If mi abuelita was here, she would hug me close to her bosom and say Pica la abeja, mas dulce el favo.

  The bee stings, but the honey is sweet.

  That was always her response when I said life sucks. She believed it even though her only daughter died before she did, even though her only son disappeared back into Mexico never to be heard from again, even though all her grandchildren are fucked up in myriad ways. And I’ll never hear it from her again.

  She was the one I called when life was too hard and sharp and cruel, and now she is gone.

  Bianca flicks one finger toward me. “No matter. You can’t call out when the devil winds are blowing. And who knows how long the lights will stay out this time? Perhaps you can try again in the morning.”

  Wyatt makes a soft sound, like a protest, and Bianca pins him with a glance. “Since you are here, Wyatt, please take our guest to a room where she can rest.”

  He nods once, a jerky motion more like he’s getting his face out of the way of a blow. He starts up the stairs without looking at me.

  I don’t want to go, but I’m feeling dizzy. Maybe my head was banged worse than I thought. Maybe I just can’t take any more tonight.

  From the second floor, I’ll be able to see farther. The Santa Ana fog won’t last forever, and I’ll be able to find other lights. Then I’m out of here.

  Unless the power stays out.

  I’m not going to think about that. Not now. Just like I can’t think about how Aba’s flat headstone sank into the dirt, already half lost under the ragged grass.

  I follow Wyatt upstairs, pausing on the upper landing just long enough to glance back. Bianca is watching us, unmoving. Two young women appear through the doorway that leads to one of the front arcades. They turn their heads to look up at me, the twinned gesture eerily identical, especially since they are both wearing white sundresses similar to Bianca’s. One of the girls is as blonde as Wyatt and although the other has slightly darker hair, they might as well be matching Malibu Beach Barbies.

  “Who are they?” I ask Wyatt.

  “They stay here too.” He continues down the hall.

  Not really an answer. The dark wood and white plaster feels even more claustrophobic up here where the hall is narrow and the windows are small to keep out the heat. Wrought iron lanterns set high on the walls flicker with the same wan light as the chandelier, but the frosted and crazed glass makes it impossible to see the candles inside.

  The pulsing light is giving me a headache, and though I’m uneasy about the mood of this place, I’m still grateful when Wyatt pushes open a small, dark-stained door. The metal bands and studs that decorate the heavy wood give me pause, but the room beyond is gorgeous.

  A simple white bedspread covers the big iron poster bed, looking whiter than white under pillows of bold Zapotec patterns. The side tables flanking the bed are the same dark wood as the rest of the house but delicately shaped, and there’s a hint of perfume coming from the dried flowers arranged in matching vases in the same Zapotec hues but muted.

  There’s even a round corner fireplace decorated in cheerful bright tilework, though there are more flowers rather than flames in the hearth. A backless divan is pulled up in front of the fireplace, the cushioned arms flared open as if summoning me to sit my weary ass down.

  Instead, I go to the window. The glass pane is set deep enough that I have to lean into the window well, but it opens at my touch. A curl of mist brushes a cold touch over my fingers.

  “You should keep that closed,” Wyatt says. “The dust blows in on the wind.”

  I look across the tile roof. The rich red is corroded to the same rusty color as the angel’s bath by the gray sky. My window is above the front line of palms that marches out into the darkness like an army advancing on… nothing. There’s nothing out there, no lights, no sound of traffic, nothing. I tilt my gaze upward. The Santa Ana fog has obliterated any trace of moon or stars. Or sun. For a stubborn child of the night like me, this should be heaven, but instead the stagnant light unnerves me.

  I glance at Wyatt. “What time is it?”

  “I don’t know.” He crosses his arms over his chest, which strains his T-shirt over his wide shoulders and bunches up his biceps. No watch around his wrist, I see, and I still can’t make out the tattoo.

  “Is it…” I’m not sure why I hesitate. “I was knocked out when the car hit me. Is it late night or early morning?”

  He is so quiet he seems to bring the world to a standstill, and I finally hear a noise from outside…

  A scream. Faint, not because it was far away but because it sounded as if the screamer had simply run out of breath.

  I jump. “What was that?” That wasn’t a coyote howling or a squeaking bat. Or any other animal.

  “Doesn’t matter if it’s day or night,” Wyatt says.

  I whirl to face him, thoroughly sick of his non-answers. “I asked you a simple fucking question.” I snap out each word like I’m spitting cactuses. “Where am I?”

  His tone is as flat as the gray light outside. “Las Ombras del Sol.”

  “Yeah. Shadows of the Sun. I saw that above the door. But where—?”

  “Even the brightest sunlight casts a shadow.” His mouth twists, distorting his full lips into something grotesque. “The sun always shines in Cali, so I guess that’s why these shadows never fade.”

  I stare at him, my breath hitching in frustration. All those wretched years when I wished one of the cute boys would talk to me? Yeah, never mind if they’re going to talk like this. “Are you loco or something?”

  “I wish,” he says. “I’d take crazy over being dead.”

  I freeze, but my knees start to shake, as if the cold fog has stolen my bones.

  He advances on me slowly—on those bronzed bare feet that left no marks in the grass—and I match each step with a retreat. “This is no place,” he says. “And there is no time. Not anymore. It’s run out. Like the water in the fountain. There’s nothing left, just dust and wind and fog.”

  I back up until the hard edge of the window bites at my spine. “Okay, look, I love gloom and doom as much as any goth girl, but—”

  “Then you should feel right at home,” he drawls. “Which is a good thing, since we’re never leaving. I’m trapped here, like the others. Like you now, Alma.”

  He’s too close and I’m too confused. The kind of confused that makes me angry, that made me run from home when I was way too young to be on my own. And I came back too late to try again, to make some sort of peace. Everyone who might have helped me make sense of the path I’ve found myself on is gone.

  Including this golden boy, apparently. Or so he says.

  But I’m done running away.

  I push away from the window and meet Wyatt halfway, up in his face, though I have to go on tiptoe to glare at him.

  “I’ll leave any time I want,” I tell him. “No one can make me stay.” I say it with conviction, even though that reality has been the cruelest curse of my life.

  “You’re one of us now,” he says again. Because of the difference in our height, he’s looking down at me, but his blue eyes are terribly gentle. “You can never leave.”

  “Just watch me.” I go to flatten my palm on his wide chest to push him away.

  But my hand disappears straight into his heart.

  I gasp, half expecting a gush of blood around the studded bracelets on my wrist. He stiffens. Our gazes lock. I’m sure my stainless steel contacts are about to pop out of my shock-widened sockets, while in his blue eyes there’s a sorrow dark and fathoms deep.
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br />   “I died, Alma,” he says, his voice soft again with that lingering hint of the Old South, but he’s close enough I should feel his breath. And I don’t. “I’m a ghost. Like you.”

  I make a gurgling sound. It sounds like a laugh, and for a moment I’m sort of proud of myself. But obviously I am the crazy one to be seeing and hearing much less believing all of this. My knees finally give out and even my big black boots can’t hold me upright.

  Wyatt reaches out to catch me, but his hands go right through my chest. My heart races at the phantom caress—did that happen to him when I touched him?—then my head hits the edge of the window sill, and my own private blackness claims me again.

  Watching Me Fall

  When I wake this time, I’m in the white bed, the Zapotec blanket tucked around me. Lying here, I can see the small window. It frames the same steel-gray sky as before, like a reminder that I might somehow escape through it but there is nothing more beyond.

  Because Wyatt says I’m—

  I bolt upright in the bed. My corset is gone, my spiked jewelry too. I’m wearing only a simple white shift. I touch the back of my head where my hair is clean and tumbles in loose waves around my shoulders. Somehow, the black dye has been stripped away, leaving the natural dark brown that isn’t anywhere near tough enough.

  At my commotion, a figure rises from the divan in front of the fireplace. It’s one of the blond girls I saw the night before with Bianca. I hadn’t noticed her sitting there, she was so still. She stares at me from across the room.

  I’m freaked out, but I’m not going to let that stop me. “I have no idea what the hell is going on, but get me out of here.” The appeal whines out of me, lacking the demand I had intended. I sound desperate.

  “I can’t.” She stands with one hand on her cocked hip, her head tilted as she studies me. “The mistress told me to prepare you.”

  The breathless quality in her voice reminds me of everything I hated about girls from the valley when I was growing up. Worse, it reminds me of the scream I heard earlier. It was her, I’m sure. “You can come too,” I tell her. “We have to… We just have to leave.”

  She angles her face to the gray window. “Anywhere we go, we’d still be lost. That’s how you got here.”

  I study her perfect blondness, which reminds me too much of Golden Boy. “I’ll be lost in my own damn way, thanks anyway.”

  She looks back at me and smiles faintly. Somehow, that smile is more awful than the scream. “You are not one of us.”

  Just great. So apparently even dead girls have cliques?

  I shove back the blankets to get out of bed—my head still aches a little, but I can kick her skinny blond ass even without my boots—until there’s a hesitant knock and Wyatt peers in.

  Our gazes lock.

  I shrink back, clutching the Zapotec blanket to my breasts. I’m usually never shy. Ever. But I’ve never stuck my hand through a dead guy’s heart before either.

  Fuck. When did I start believing these psychos?

  Oh, about the time our hands went right through each other.

  Wyatt looks at the other girl. “Is everything okay in here, Jewel?”

  She glides toward him. “No, Wyatt. Everything isn’t okay.” She stops toe to toe with him. “Don’t touch her again.” She yanks the half-open door out of Wyatt’s hand and shoots one last look at me. Then she deliberately walks through him out into the hall.

  The impossible merging of their outlines makes me feel sick to my stomach. But it seems even worse for him; he shudders and sags in the doorway, pale under his tan.

  Despite my shock, I feel the urge to go to him, to soothe the anguished look from his face. The impulse makes me mad since stupid is the first thing that should be cured by being dead. So I just glare at him from under my annoyingly mascara-free lashes. I’ve been stripped of everything that made me what I was. “So your girlfriend seems really, uh, sweet.”

  “She’s not my girlfriend. We… we can’t do that sort of thing anymore.”

  “Be possessive and vicious and make vague moaning noises? That seems like exactly the sort of thing ghosts do.”

  The somber set of his lips softens. “Well, when you put it that way…” He makes his way across the room and sits in the divan facing me instead of the fireplace. He stares at me and his sun-kissed color returns. I guess golden boys never fade, and I have the awful thought I will always be haunted by the things I couldn’t have, the things I couldn’t be, from back when I was too stupid to even know what I wanted.

  I gotta stop wondering about this stuff or I really will go crazy, but I have too many questions. I’ll start with the basics. “So I’m really dead? I mean, I’m dead, really?”

  His hands tighten on the edge of the seat, making the muscles in his arms bunch. “Yes.”

  “And you’re dead.”

  He nods.

  For a second, my mind reels and I can’t breathe. But I guess ghosts don’t need to breathe. Still, the sensation of choking scares me, and as always when I’m scared, I get angry so I don’t have to be scared. I frown a challenge at him. “Why didn’t you just walk through the door instead of knocking? And how can you sit there without falling through the floor?”

  He rolls his surfer’s shoulders in a shrug. “I don’t know. Sometimes being dead isn’t all that different from being alive.”

  For some reason, that depresses me more than anything I have ever heard in my whole entire life.

  Wyatt raps his knuckles on the scrolled wooden detailing on the divan, a hollow noise. “So many things seem the same. But the candles in the lanterns never burn down, and the sun never rises.” He turns his face toward the window, but his gaze stays fixed on me. “When we try to touch one another, first it burns, then it freezes, then… nothing. It’s… awful, worse than any torture. And we can never leave.”

  I hug the blanket tighter, as if the bright colors can ward off the chill sinking into me. “Is this—” I think of all the defiantly depressing music I’ve sung along with over the years, and I’m embarrassed when my voice breaks. “Is this hell?”

  “I thought so at first, but…” He shrugs again. “I think it’s worse. We died, but we haven’t crossed over. Because of her. She keeps us trapped in this halfway house, away from the light.”

  By “she,” I know he doesn’t mean the bitchy Malibu Jewel who was in the room a few moments ago. He means Bianca, mistress of Las Ombras del Sol.

  The memory of her blank black eyes makes my skin crawl, and I clamber out of the bed.

  Wyatt rises too though he stays far enough away from me that we won’t accidentally touch. “Where are you going?”

  “Out,” I say. When he starts to object, I wave my hand. “Away from here.” The pretty flower arrangements now look more funeral than festive, their perfume tainted with the stench of ashes.

  Wyatt sigh and then nods. “Fine. Come on.”

  Considering he said those words to me before and I followed him into the house of the dead, I’m probably an idiot for listening to him again. But when he heads out into the hallway, I’m right behind him.

  My room was near one end of the hallway. In the center of the house, above the central stairway is another wrought iron staircase, this one circular and leading up into the darkness. I hang back a little to give Wyatt time to start up the circle. With the tight curve of the stairs, his ass is almost in my face. It’s a cute ass for a dead boy.

  I can’t believe my taste in men sucks every bit as much when I’m dead as it did when I was alive. Golden boys and goth girls never mix, not in my life before, and obviously not now.

  Wyatt throws back a trap door that blocks the top of the stairs and climbs up into the bell tower.

  He stands back as I clamber out, not trying to help me. He’d said that the ghostly touch is torture, but that’s not what I’d felt when he tried to catch me before. My whole body had tingled, and not in a bad way at all. Though I’m not going to mention that, obviously.

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nbsp; Instead I prowl around the periphery of the small, square tower. The adobe walls are cut into four arches opening out into the four directions. Paler curls of fog trace the eerie pearl-gray sky all around us. Wyatt tucks himself out of the way, leaning that cute ass in one of the windows, watching me, his blue eyes darker than usual under his half-closed golden lashes.

  He’s not touching me now, but my skin still shivers a little. Without my velvet and leather and spikes, I feel naked. I am naked under this stupid white shift. I cross my arms over my chest and glare at him to show him I’m not intimidated by his stare. “What are you looking at, chulo?”

  “You,” he says. “You have pretty eyes when they aren’t barricaded. And I like your hair this way.”

  Oh sure, now he answers my questions without riddles. I have boring brown eyes, and it takes all my willpower not to wrap one of my wayward ringlets around my fingers. Fuck, I might even giggle. Having ringlets often results in giggling; it’s like the corkscrew shape drills into your skull and lets the brains leak out. Which is why I much prefer the weapon-like straight edge of an asymmetrical A line. Except even my choice of hairstyles has apparently been taken away.

  So I ignore his comment and direct my attention to the sky. “I know we’re still in So Cal. I feel it, but I thought for sure I’d see something from this high. Other houses, traffic on the 405, something.”

  “There’s nothing. Except…” He shifts on the wall, making more space beside him. “Come over here.” He holds his hand out, not to touch me, but an invitation nonetheless, and it makes my heartbeat race in a way I would never have allowed if I’d been alive.

  The Empty World

  I dither for a long moment. There was a time when this was everything I could’ve wanted: a boy who walks with the sunlight in his hair, smiling at me. But I got over that pathetic desire. I don’t need the boy or the sun or the smile. Gah. This really is hell. But since I’m told I can’t escape… I join him in the arch, hitching my hip up onto the ledge so I’m sort of facing him but looking outward too.