Afterlife

by Claudia Gray

  Mrs. Bethany stood in front of me, trap in hand, in the middle of a room that shimmered in every color, floor, ceiling, walls. I realized that it had the exact same dimensions as the records room, but instead of bare stone and dust, this glittered, deep and translucent. Mother — of — pearl, I realized. And the copper roof on the south tower — the strange sensation I’d often detected from the empty room above my parents’ apartment — she’d brought the trap into the other tower, into this place. And now I knew what it was.

  “You turned this entire room into a trap,” I said. Already I knew I wouldn’t be able to get out.

  “My theory is that you can provide the power for many of us to revive,” Mrs. Bethany said. “You will be returning life to nearly a dozen individuals, Miss Olivier. Perhaps that is some small consolation.”

  I backed away from her. The mother — of — pearl felt slippery against my feet — but no, that Wasn’t it. I couldn’t be solid or insubstantial; I couldn’t float, couldn’t run. Everything was in — between, robbing me of the abilities I could use in either state. Although I had a sense of place within this trap, it was still a trap, eating away at my very sense of reality and self. It just took longer. A slower death. No wonder I’d heard the wraiths screaming.. . .

  More gently, Mrs. Bethany said, “Think of it like being an organ donor.”

  I had been able to hear the wraiths screaming, even when they were trapped….

  With everything I had, with every ounce of strength, I screamed, both aloud and within my soul, “Help me! “In the scream I put the place I stood, Mrs. Bethany in front of me, everything I thought and felt and knew. The effort alone seemed to make me less than I’d been before — as though I had screamed out part of myself.

  “The room is soundproofed,” Mrs. Bethany said. “No one can hear.”

  Not with their ears, maybe. But if Maxie or Christopher detected it, or if Lucas could hear me within his dreams — A rap on the door startled me into hope. But Mrs. Bethany didn’t seem surprised. She simply held up the trap and opened it, then set it on the floor. The grayish swimming void unfolded before me again, and I desperately tried to keep from sinking within it. As I flailed about wildly, unable to resist, I heard a murmur of voices — hardly the rescue mission I’d been hoping for. o The trap swung shut. For a couple seconds, I felt a dizzying rush of relief, and I tried to make sense of what I could see. We remained in the mother — of — pearl room, but the door had already been closed again, cutting off my chance at escape. And now Mrs. Bethany and I weren’t alone. Half a dozen vampires ringed the room, each of them staring at me as eagerly as Mrs. Bethany had. Most were students; a couple were teachers. None of them were people I knew very well, but I knew one thing — they were ancient and powerful. Mrs. Bethany had chosen her accomplices well.

  “I do not know how many of us you can resurrect, Miss Olivier.” Mrs. Bethany reached into the pocket of her long skirt and pulled out the blade I remembered from Samuel’s transformation. “But for myself, and those who follow, may I express my most profound gratitude?”

  “You can go to hell,” I said.

  “We’re vampires,” Mrs. Bethany said, and for a moment I saw an echo of the darkness and self — hatred I’d glimpsed within Lucas these past months. “We’re already there.”

  “You’re killing me.” I still couldn’t believe it, although it had begun.

  “If it helps, you are also killing me.” Mrs. Bethany smiled, like that was great news. “I do not intend to live long as a human. This extended existence has been more torment than pleasure to me. I want only to die as I ought to have done.”

  “To die? You’re doing all this just to — to die all over again?”

  “To die as I ought to have done,” she repeated. A deep sadness darkened her eyes. “To go where I should have gone, after death, and be reunited with those I knew in my one rightful life.”

  Christopher, I realized. She thinks if she dies as a human, she’11 be with Christopher again.

  She pushed up the sleeve of her lacy blouse, angled the knife. and sliced open the skin of her wrist. Her vampire’s blood began flowing down her hand, and I felt a crazed hunger unlike anything else I’d ever known. I didn’t want to drink her blood; I wanted to be one with it. The instinct to rush into her — to become a part of her and lose myself forever — was more powerful than anything I could’ve imagined.

  Don’t! Hold back! Think about Lucas, think about everyone else you Jove, hold on for them! But as I thought this and I tried to cling to it with all my strength. I could feel my resolve breaking down with the rest of me. My humanlike form began turning into cloudy vapor. Mrs. Bethany lifted her 221 head, triumphant. Soon she would be human again, and I would be . .. nothing.

  Then the door thudded, making the vampires jump. It thudded again and gave way, splintering wood and mother — of — pearl in a thousand directions as Lucas burst into the room, crossbow in hand.

  Either he instantly understood what was happening, or he was going to kill Mrs. Bethany first and ask questions later. Lucas shouldered his crossbow to fire, but Mrs. Bethany lunged for him, pushing the crossbow up so that tl1e arrow smacked the ceiling.

  “Let her go,” Lucas said as they struggled for the weapon.

  “She is no longer yours,” Mrs. Bethany said, shoving him back. “She is mine.”

  The other vampires began to go after him, too, but Lucas hadn’t come alone. Balthazar and my mother smashed through what remained of the door; Balthazar had grabbed his fencing foil, and Mom just seized the vampire nearest her and punched him hard.

  As I swirled, disoriented and unable to resist, the fight intensified around me. To me, it seemed to be happening in slow motion, dreamlike and yet more terrifying for the clarity of the violence. I caught a glimpse of my father, wielding a broken chair leg as a kind of stake. I saw Balthazar go Skye didn’t budge. She was a lot cooler than most people would be in a situation like this, but then again, she’d grown up in a haunted house. Maybe it came with the territory. “You said Bianca. That’s the girl you loved, the one who died — she’s a ghost?”

  “She’s a ghost and she’s trapped and we’re getting her out of here,” Lucas said, never taking his eyes off me. “Now you get out ofhere, too!”

  Instead, Skye took a couple of steps forward and spoke again — this time, to me. “Bianca, come into me. Like the spirits did at the ball.” She wanted me to possess her? Could I do that?

  “What are you doing?” My mother tried to push Skye back. “This is dangerous!”

  “I know what it is to lose somebody,” Skye said. “If anyone could do this for my brother. I’d want them to try. So I’ll try. Bianca, it’s okay. Come on! Do it!”

  I let go of my vapor self and let the swirling energy in the room carry me down toward Skye. Everything vanished — and then suddenly I felt hard stone against my back, and pain. I tried to inhale, but the breath had been knocked out of me — Breath. Pain. A heartbeat. I opened my eyes — her eyes — and looked up to see my parents and Lucas kneeling above me. “Bianca?” Lucas said, hesitantly.

  “It’s me,” I said. “It’s us.”

  Because Skye was there with me, totally. This wasn’t like possessing Kate; Skye had welcomed me, and because of that, her spirit and mine existed side by side. Although she was frightened — her heartbeat fluttering as fast as a bird’s — she didn’t flinch.

  Thank you, I thought to her.

  She thought back, You’re welcome. But shouldn’t we maybe run?

  “Good plan,” I said. Her voice sounded so strange as mine. Lucas and my parents stared at me, and I grabbed on to Lucas’s hand. “Let’s go. We have to save Maxie if we can.”

  “We should just get out of here,” Mom said as Lucas helped me to my feet. I was startled to be able to look him directly in the eyes; Skye was taller than me. “Sweetheart, I’m sorry about your friend, but we have to think about your safety.”

  “Maxie didn’t think about her sa
fety when she came after me,” I said. “Besides, Vic’s trying to help her. Are you going to make Vic go up against Mrs. Bethany alone?”

  Lucas guided me toward the door. “No way. Come on.”

  My mom and dad glanced at each other for a second, but they followed us. Now that I was enclosed in Skye’s body, as though it were a warm, living suit of armor, the trap room had no more power over me; leaving was as simple as taking the stairs. Of course, those were a little clumsy — I didn’t wholly know how to move in Skye’s body yet, and both of us were shaky after what had just happened.

  As we started going down the stairs, I said, “Was it Maxie who told you where I was?”

  sliding across the floor, grimacing in pain before staggering to his feet. Lucas reclaiming his crossbow and firing — Mrs. Bethany smoothly dodging the arrow that sank into another vampire, with a plume of blood and the vampire’s cry.

  Vampire’s blood, drawing me in, dragging me further down into nothingness.

  Beyond the trap, I heard Maxie’s voice. “Bianca! You have to get out of there! Come on!” I could just make out her form as she stood on the very edge of the room, risking her own existence to try and help me. A few other faces appeared behind her — female students who lived in the upper floors of the dorm, no doubt startled by the noise, and Vic, who appeared to be trying desperately to get those students to go someplace safer.

  I tried to do what Maxie said, but I was too weak. Too lost.

  At that moment in the fray, Mrs. Bethany ran for the door at vampire speed, grabbing the smaller trap as she went. She opened it — just in front of Maxie.

  No! I thought, but it was too late. There was just time to see the dawning terror on Maxie’s face before the vortex swallowed her up, enclosing her 222 within the trap.

  “Hey!” Vic yelled. For the first time ever, I heard real fury in his voice. “That’s my ghost!”

  Mrs. Bethany smashed Vic across the face with the trap, which sent him sprawling to the floor. The human students began screaming and shouting as Mrs. Bethany pushed through them.

  “She’s getting away,” Balthazar shouted.

  “I don’t give a damn!” Lucas arrow — staked another vampire; the room fell quiet, but he hardly noticed. “We have to get Bianca out of here!”

  “She’s got my ghost!” Vic started running down the stairs, and Balthazar followed him. My parents and Lucas remained.

  “Go,” I whispered. It was the only thing I had strength to say. Maxie didn’t deserve to be destroyed like this.

  “The trap — this room — olh, my God, it’s killing you,” Lucas said. “Bianca, come on. The door’s open. You can leave.” So it seemed. And yet even reaching toward the door was impossible.

  “Sweetheart, please, “Mom pleaded. Dad’s eyes filled with tears as he gripped her shoulders. “You can do it.”

  “Your brooch!” Lucas fumbled in his pocket and held out my jet brooch. For a moment I felt something like hope; if I could become substantial again, even for a second, I could get out the door and maybe recover. But the brooch just dropped through the blue smoke where my hand had been I no longer had the ability to touch it, and so I could no longer call on its power.

  The jet black flower clattered on the stone floor, dark as ink in this shimmering world, and I remembered the long — ago dreams that had led me here. They had warned me that when I reached out for love, storms would come. And in all my dreams, I hlad never made it to safety. To Lucas.

  Lucas shook his head. “This isn ‘t happening.” His voice was hoarse. “This can’t be happening. Bianca, come on. Come back to me.”

  “Bianca?” said an unfamiliar voice. A female figure, wearing a bright blue robe, standing in the doorway — “Skye, what are you doing here?” Lucas said. “It’s not safe! Go downstairs!”

  “Yeah, “Lucas said. He put his hand around my waist, the better to steady me: he touched me gingerly, which I realized was because he didn’t want to upset Skye. “We realized this morning you were missing, because there’s no way you wouldn’t have been talking to us about the night’s plans “

  “I was in that trap a whole day?” It had seemed to last forever, and to end in a split second, at the same time. Lucas nodded. “Apparently. We’ve been turning the school upside down looking for you.”

  “When we stole her traps, Mrs. Bethany must have realized we were on to her,” Dad said. “She stopped bicting her time. Went on the offensive.”

  After d1is is over,Skye thought, will one of you explain what’s going on?

  Sure, I replied. As soon as I understand myself. “What about the traps? Mrs. Bethany’s got to be going after them.”

  “Hopefully she won’t have the chance,” Mom said as we went farther down the stone stairs. The entire student body seemed to be awake rnow, and aware that something dangerous was going on; there was murmuring and shouting on every floor. “Patrice and Ranulf should be taking care of that right now….”

  Her voice trailed off as the stones of Evernight began to scream.

  That was the only word for it, though it didn’t sound like any human scream. It was like the building itself had come alive, and hated it. The sound was the grinding of the real versus the unreal, existing in dimensions that had nothing to do with sound but echoed within us regardless. We clapped our hands over our ears, except Lucas, who kept holding on to me but grimaced in pain. “What the hell?” he shouted over the din.

  I felt them, then — snaking their way up through the bones of the school, climbing toward freedom. “The wraiths,” I said. “They’re free.”

  They were free, and they were angry. Instead of flying straight to the people who anchored them, or letting go of the mortal realm, or wishing themselves back to the places they’d haunted before, they were attacking Evernight Academy and everything within it. Before, I hadn’t been able to understand why they wouldn’t be reasonable, why they acted purely on instinct. Now that I had spent a day in a trap, I understood; those things stole away your sense of yourself. It wouldn’t take long to turn into nothing but fear and rage.

  My breath had become foggy now, and frost began to lace its way along the walls, the steps, the ceilings. My father nearly slipped on the ice that was caking underfoot, so fast it stung my feet, nearly entrapping them. The murmuring upstairs turned into shrieks.

  “Hurry,” I said, feeling strength flow into me with a fresh sense of purpose.

  We ran the rest of the way, although it was difficult. The ice now was thicker than in any other wraith attack I’d witnessed — as though the school itself were made of ice. As stones creaked and cracked from the pressure of ice in the crevices, we slipped and stumbled through a stairwell that increasingly looked more like a cavern of snow.

  At last we reached the great hall, and even if I hadn’t already known this was the place the wraiths would be freed, it would have been obvious that this was the heart of the storm. The entire great hall seemed to be no more than a great maze carved from one block of ice. Shivering at the sides, white with frost, were Patrice and Ranulf. Both of them slumped near the entrance, apparently unable to move.

  “Are you guys okay?” l said, hurrying to Patrice’s side. Her hand was like ice in mine.

  “I’m fine, Skye,” Patrice said through chattering teeth. “You need to get out of here.”

  “We’re all getting out of here,” Lucas said. He let go of me to pick Patrice up in his arms; she hung stiffly in his embrace, but he was able to get her out the door. Mom and Dad put their arms on either side of Ranulf to help him out.

  I ran out of the school onto the grounds. When I looked up at Evernight, I gasped; it now looked as though it had been carved of crystal, its outline blurred and fractal like the edges of snowflakes. Other students had congregated outside, shivering in their nightclothes as they looked up at the bewildering sight. Snow must have fallen that day, because some of them were knee — deep in it.

  It could take hours for help to get here, I thought.
People could die of exposure in that time. I have to do this now.

  Do what?Skye thought, increasingly worried. Given what I’d put her through in just the last couple of minutes, I couldn’t blame her.

  In the near distance, I saw Balthazar fighting with one of Mrs. Bethany’s surviving guards. Their fangs extended as they roared and leaped toward each other.

  Skye screamed, momentarily taking her body back just by sheer force of terror. What are they?

  Vampires. Remember what Lucas told you? He’s a vampire, too. Plus my parents. Plus — you know, a Jot of people. We have to go over this later. Right now, I have something to do.

  She repeated, Do what?

  Don’t wony; I can only do this alone.

  With that, I let Skye go. We both fell to the ground, and it seemed as if the impact of her body against the ground snapped us in two. I rolled over, semisolid, but leaving no impression in the snow; Skye sat up, sputtering, icy flakes spangling her dark hair. Her expression was strange — horrified, maybe as if she didn’t remember giving me permission. But she said, “I can feel them.”

  “Feel what?”

  She clutched her hair in her fists, as if she were trying to use pain to block some other sensation. “The ghosts — all of them — it’s like they’re in my head — ”

  Had my possessing her for so long opened her up to some other realm of perception? We’d have to find out later. “I’m going to take care of them, Skye. I promise.”

  From his place a few steps away, where he was trying to revive Patrice to full consciousness, Lucas said, “Bianca, what are you doing?”

  “I’ll be back soon,” I swore. “Did you get my brooch?”

  He patted his pocket — then went still. “We’ve got trouble.”

  Like we hadn’t had trouble already? But I followed his gaze to see Mrs. Bethany’s carriage house, shutters fastened tight, with only slivers of ulue — hullighl cuming lhruugh lhe :slit:;. They luukeu like knive:s culling upen lhe night. Mt. Bethany wa:s uegimting her :spell; :suun, :she wuulu have destroyed Maxie, and resurrected herself. Maybe a few of her cronies were in there, too. I could just make out the outline of Vic, who was throwing himself against the door again and again. trying to save Maxie.