by Lily Markova
“Kai,” Freya calls quietly. “Krystle told me and Chase how we could get out—but only because she was going to possess me and escape from your town herself.” Freya’s eyes, staring infinitely upward as though she’s not fully here, reflect the clouds sliding slowly across the sky.
“Escape, yes—but not for long,” Krystle corrects her, before returning her gaze to me. “I wanted out, Kai, that is true, but I swear I wouldn’t have left you here. I would have found a body for you too, someone alive, someone more suitable than that oaf Chase. I would have tricked them into coming here the way Freya did, and we could have left this place together. And if not, I would have come back. I would have killed myself in Levengleds, and I’d come back to Immortown, to you, in the guise of Freya. It’s not like anyone would have known the difference. . . . Either way, you would have been with me again.”
“You’re pathetic,” I say, but the way this comes out, it’s less out of spite and more out of actual pity. I can’t make myself feel angry. It’s all my fault.
“And you’re a hypocrite, Kai,” replies Krystle, peering sadly into what looks like a black hole that has devoured the ocean. “How am I any worse than you? Everything I did, I did because I needed you. You murdered—how many people?—just because you couldn’t find it in you to be brave and generous enough to let your sister go. Even when she wanted to go, you still wouldn’t let her. Well, I’m just as not okay with losing you.”
“Can’t lose something you never had,” I say.
I don’t want to wallow in guilt, but I do anyway. All my demons are here, hundreds of them, but they’re not capable of causing me a hundredth of the pain I inflicted on them.
“Oh, but I did, no matter what you choose to believe now. Well, then, she’s all yours now,” Krystle says with a nod to Freya. “Welcome to the ghost club, honey.”
“Don’t you dare,” I warn her, my tone calm. Krystle is too afraid of being erased to cross this last line, and she knows I would erase her for that. “I forgive you for India—only because she survived. But try my patience again—”
A twisted smile spreads across Krystle’s face. “You think I intend to kill Freya? Not as satisfying the second time around. Oh yes,” she says, a victorious gleam in her eyes. “I’m not a nutcase. Do you really think I would have told you all this if there had still been hope? You think I just changed my mind and decided to spare her when I was so close to getting out? I would never have deliberately let go of her, but she fought me and happened to bang her head against the pier in the process. I was thrown out of her. You know what that means. Enjoy your eternity together. There are more important items on my to-do list than giving you two my blessing.”
Krystle walks away, the hem of her long, soaking coat sweeping behind her, pebbles crunching under her feet. An ethereal substance glimmers above the abyss, gradually turning into translucent waves. The ocean is coming back, and, shivering, Freya whispers:
“It’s okay. This is such a beautiful place.”
Freya
I dial the only number I know by heart. Terry keeps heaving deep sighs and clicking her tongue as she watches me.
The beeps oozing from the receiver seem endlessly long.
“Hello?” responds a desperately hopeful voice at the other end of the line.
“Mom. . . .”
“Who is this?”
“Mom, it’s me.”
“Freya? Freya, is that you?”
“Mom, please, if you’re still in Levengleds, you need to leave as soon as you can. Please. I’m not there anymore.”
“Hello, who is this?”
“You—you can’t hear me? Why can’t you hear me?”
A careful hand pulls the receiver from mine and hangs it up.
“We can’t reach their world,” India says softly. I didn’t notice her come in. “We can only sense it. I will teach you, in time. How are you doing?”
I stare vacantly at the receiver.
“You know, you don’t have to stay in the Shelter. Come live with us. We will behave—we are your family now. But first, you should pay a visit to Krystle’s place.” When I turn to face her, India adds hurriedly, “She isn’t there now. Someone else is, though. . . .”
A hesitant knocking sound jolts me out of this numbness. I dash across the lobby and open the front door. When I see who is standing on the doorstep, for a split second I’m overflowing with hope—I can still see Levengleds. . . . But that hope flickers and fades away as the horrible realization sweeps over me.
“Aria. . . .”
Aria looks around timidly. “You know me?”
“What happened to you?” I ask mechanically, and the next moment I feel creepy all over—I’m already beginning to act like a true resident of Immortown.
“I don’t feel well,” she says, and she sways a little. I steer her inside and seat her on the red sofa.
“You do seem familiar. . . .” says Aria, as if in a trance. “I had such a funny dream last night. . . . A girl who looked like an angel told me that if I wanted to see him again, I had to do something bad. . . . I think I cut myself. . . .”
Her eyes confused, curious, Aria examines her arms as if she had never seen them before. Her wrists are covered in blood.
“She told me to find this hotel. She said, ‘let’s collect the full set of Chase’s girlfriends there.’ Is he really here?”
“No,” I say, “he. . .he just left.”
“I’ll take care of her,” says India, squeezing my hand for a second. “You go.”
“Oh, wait, Freya!” I’m already at the door when she runs up to me and hands me a garish magazine. “You might want to take a look at this.”
Maple leaves swirl around me, thick as snow, red and yellow like fire. I run my eyes over the page as I speed down the street. Mitch woke up and spoke to a reporter about that night at the lighthouse. Faulty wiring to blame. I was closer to the door, and he was quick enough to push me out to the staircase. He himself wasn’t so lucky.
I—I mean, Astra—never set that fire, which is hardly a great comfort to Mitch. If I hadn’t been so scared, if I hadn’t run when a wall of flames separated him from me. . . . How could I do that to him? I should have called for help, I should have told Mr. Nylander, I should have—should have done something, anything other than be a coward who turns on her heel and flees.
Demon Mitch places his hand on my shoulder. When I look up at his face, he falls apart into purple ashes, but before those can reach the ground, every trace of him is gone.
The drawing room of Krystle’s mansion is glowing with a soft daylight streaming in through the lace curtains, sparkling dust floating inside the rays as if in zero gravity. In front of the open French windows looking out on the raging ocean, stands a tall young man. My eyes start to burn, and I fling my arms around his neck and squeeze him in such a tight hug that he will never be able to shake me off again.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t protect you,” he says against my cheek, quiet and sad.
He will always be my older brother.
And the tears that I have been suppressing all these years break through. I’m crying, crying for the first time since that concert. It turns out crying feels nice. I must have been carrying too many tears inside me—I can feel myself become lighter.
I don’t remember what Iver’s voice used to sound like. I don’t remember what it sounded like when he last spoke to me. I guess it was high-pitched and chirpy like almost any other child’s. He has a deep, velvety voice now. The sound of it makes me shiver, reverberates through my veins. I’ve never heard a voice more thrilling. I want to ask him to read to me, read every book out there—within Tom Lezero’s reach.
“You have such a beautiful voice,” I say, straining my eyes to see him through the tears, tracing his every feature. “You should sing.”
Iver smiles at me with that special defenseless smile of his and glances at something over my shoulder. I look back but see no one.
“My dem
on,” he explains. “Just vanished.”
“Who was it?” I ask, wiping my eyes, unable to help smiling back at him.
“You. I’ve failed you, Freya.”
I shake my head and hug him again. “You couldn’t possibly ever fail me. Just please never let yourself be erased, and never fade away. Please, Iver?”
“I won’t. Not as long as you remember me. For us ghosts, it’s not Descartes’s ‘I think, therefore I am’ anymore, it’s ‘You think of me, therefore I am.’ ”
“Our mother—”
“—returned home. I asked her to, through her dreams, when she was in Levengleds. I had to.”
“I know you did. It’s not safe for her there.”
“And I also. . . Well, she won’t come back looking for you. She won’t be sad anymore.”
“That’s good.” I nod and start crying again. That is good.
“I wrote something for you. Want to listen?”
He sits down at his old piano, and I remain still by the window and close my eyes against the salty-and-bitter wind drying my eyelashes. His music floods the room, fills up the emptiness inside my chest, and my heart becomes unusually weightless, calling me upward. My mind is crumbling, no longer aware of the body’s pain signals. Tiny particles start coming off my crawling skin, and I explode, burst into myriads of atoms. Now I am everywhere: I gravitate to Iver’s fingers freezing above the piano keys, dissolve in the ocean waves, blend with the fresh paint on Kai’s canvas.
I know I will soon become whole again—nothing can be destroyed in Immortown. But as long as Iver is playing, I’m happy and alive as never before.
Cut.
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