“Shay kept everything.”
I watched Steven cradle the bracelet in his large hand. He looked as though he would put it on but knew it would never fit over his hand. “What do you think would’ve happened if I had died in that fire?”
“Steven,” Jodi sighed, “don’t do this, okay? I just can’t.” She stood up and started toward the bedroom door, but he stopped her by touching her wrist.
“No, I mean, do you think you and Shay would be fading away like we are if I had died?”
“I have no idea.” She tried to push his hand away, but he clung to her arm, letting the bracelet fall back to the dresser top.
“What do you think Shay would’ve done if I had died?”
“You didn’t die, Steven, so what does it matter?”
“Shay did everything for everyone, you know?” Steven pressed. I saw his fingers curling into the fabric of Jodi’s sweater, and when I looked into his eyes, I saw a flicker of light there, like an idea blossoming to life.
“Yeah, she did, and look where it got her.” Jodi fought against Steven’s grip, but he held fast.
“No, listen to me,” he said, bending closer to her face. “Even when people were on the very edge of death, Shay fought to catch them, bring them back.”
“So?”
“So? So, don’t you think if I had died, or you, Shay would be here right now trying to find a way to bring us back?” Steven grabbed Jodi with both hands, turning her body toward him and shaking her as he spoke. His eyes were wide and his lips were wet with excitement, but Jodi just looked at him with fear. If I had a pulse, I think my heart would’ve been in my throat. Maybe I could still reach Steven; maybe he could hear my pleas.
“Steven, stop, you know we can’t do that,” Jodi said, shaking her head.
“Why not?”
“We don’t do that kind of magic,” she hissed. “We can’t bring Shay back. Whatever we brought back wouldn’t be Shay; it would be a monster.”
“No, no, no,” Steven rushed, “I’m not talking about blood magic, Jodi. I mean we need to find her, bring her back. She’s supposed to be here.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because of what’s happening to us!” He bent over her, pushing Jodi backward in his sudden frenzy. It said a lot about her trust in him that Jodi didn’t freak out and hit him.
“You think because we’re fading away, losing our powers, that means Shay wasn’t supposed to die?” Jodi asked.
“Yes.” He sounded relieved, as if he thought she believed him. I chewed on my bottom lip, wanting to say something, but I knew they wouldn’t hear me.
“Steven,” Jodi started to say, and I could see it in her eyes that she didn’t believe him. Just like that, my hopes crashed around me. I balled my fists at my sides and screamed, throwing my head back and letting the noise tear through me. My world felt as though it was slipping away again and I was ready to fall, and then the light on my desk flickered on and off and on again. Another pain shot through my head, making me cringe.
Steven and Jodi froze. Whatever Jodi was about to say died on her lips as they turned to look at the lamp. Jodi stepped closer to Steven as if she was afraid it would come to life.
“Did you see that?” Steven whispered. Jodi nodded, her wide blue eyes blinking slowly. When the lamp remained on and the light consistent, Steven turned his head this way and that, his eyes searching. “Shay?”
“Shay?” Jodi echoed, looking up at him. “You’re kidding, right?” She pushed away from his arms, stepping back until she practically stood on top of me before she stopped. Her face twisted, her brow pinching as though she was suddenly very uncomfortable standing so close to me.
“What?” Steven looked at her, his gaze passing right over me. I reached out a hand, letting my fingers slip through his arm, watching him shiver again.
“Steven, it’s enough already, okay? I can’t do this, I’m sorry.” She turned and left, leaving me and Steven alone in the room. I stepped closer to him, looking up into his open face, and wished with every fading fiber of my being that he would just glance down and see me standing there. But he never did.
Chapter 2
Shay did everything for everyone. That’s what Steven had said. I had never thought of it that way, but it did remind me that a lot of powerful beings owed me a lot of favors. But how to reach any of them, that was the problem. I couldn’t go to the angels. They were trying to rip me from this reality and pull me into the next. The water nymphs had fled our shores after the great battle, not wanting to inflict their presence on us while wounds were still fresh. Even if they were still there, I had no idea how I was supposed to get them to see me, let alone hear me. Then there was the Fae, Iris of the Shattered Light, in particular.
That terrifying queen had said flat out that she owed me. But I didn’t know where the sithein that would lead me inside the fairy mound was. Iris had just summoned me with her foreign magic, and when I opened my eyes, I was there, in her chambers. Tegan, my little fairy guide, had said humans thought faeries were fallen angels. Maybe that meant the Fae could see me. But I had paced the orchard behind my house for hours trying to make contact with them only to be answered with silence.
Liam the vampire couldn’t help me since the searching Light that was always just behind me, reaching out for me, put his immortal life in danger. When he had walked me away from the wreckage the night I died and the Light had appeared, his body began to smoke and smolder, nearly bursting into flames. I screamed at him to go, to run and get as far away from me as he could. I ran in the opposite direction, pulling the Light and the searching hands of my guardian angel behind me. I hadn’t seen Liam since. If I could find him, he could tell Jodi and Steven I was still there, trying to get back to them. Maybe that would repair whatever had fractured between them.
Hunkered down in the shadows in my room, I cursed myself for not foreseeing this possibility. I knew something would happen to the survivors if one of the three of us ever died, but I thought the remaining two would cling to each other, not slip apart. Steven wanted to keep Jodi close, but something in particular had happened to her, making her shut him out. It was as if she was only around him out of habit, not out of want or need.
But they had both seen the lamp flicker. It would be hard, but I could reach out to them. It was my only hope. I had to try.
***
Night had fallen by the time I stepped out of my house. My episode with the Light took energy from me, making me pause to gather myself. My parents had gone to bed early. My mother was tired from crying and my father looked ten years older. If I could have consoled them, I would have, but every time I reached out for them, it seemed to make their grief that much worse.
My car sat in the driveway, where my father usually parked, and his car was on the street where mine usually was. Oh, my beautiful, black Camaro. I walked over to it slowly, as if afraid of something unseen. She sat, the waxed black paint gleaming in the moonlight, waiting for me to jump in and start her up, make the engine roar to life. My fingers itched with the need to hold my keys once more.
I lifted my hand and tried to run it over the fender like I had so many times before, but like everything else, my hand slipped right through. My shoulders slumped and I pulled my hand away, gazing at my beautiful girl longingly. “I’ll drive you again, I promise. You’re not going to sit here like some creepy memorial to a dead girl.” I turned on my heel and headed for the sidewalk, not wanting to waste time dwelling on my car.
With the world awash in shadows, I felt a little more confident walking out in the open. It was weird, walking as a ghost. I kind of expected I would fly or at least float, but no, I had to walk. I moved into the leafy shadow of the tree in my front yard. The light of the moon cut through the branches, casting a dappled shadow on the grass. Pulling the dark around me, I closed my eyes and pictured the hurricane mess of Jodi’s bedroom: clothing everywhere, books scattered about, and so much stuff on the floor you were in danger
of breaking things just by walking.
When I opened my eyes, I nearly fell on my ass. Jodi’s room was clean. Her bed was made, complete with hospital corners, not one stich of clothing was on the floor, and even her makeup was uniformly lined up on her vanity.
“Whoa,” I whispered, staring at the brown carpet under my feet. I don’t think I knew what color her carpet was before. Jodi sat in the middle of her floor, between her bed and the vanity, with a blue pillar candle on the floor in front of her. The wick was lit, the flame dancing slowly, casting hypnotic shadows on the walls. The only other light in the room was her bedside lamp with a red silk scarf thrown over it. The strange mood lighting would’ve given me a headache in life. I was just grateful it hid the shadow of death looming over her so I didn’t have to look at it.
Jodi made a small noise of frustration, drawing my attention back to her. Her forehead was pinched in concentration, and I could see the muscle in her jaw working as she glared at the candle, as if the flame had offended her somehow. But the longer she stared, the angrier her face became even though nothing else happened.
“Oh,” I said quietly, realizing she was trying to put out the flame, but the air in the room remained unmoved. I squatted down in front of her, wanting to reach out and give her some comfort, but I knew if I tried to touch her, it would only bring her further into the despair she’d thrown herself into.
“You have to remember to breathe, Fae,” I whispered, wishing she could hear me. In the muted, red light, I saw Jodi’s cheeks becoming flushed as she pressed her lips tighter and tighter into a thin, angry line. In another moment, she released the breath she was holding with a cry of frustration, throwing her hands up into the air. A brutal wind gusted around the room, blowing her hair back from her face and extinguishing the candle flame.
“Screw you,” she hissed. She picked up the candle and just stopped herself from hurling it across the room. Blue wax trickled over the side of the candle, dripping onto her fingers, but she didn’t seem to feel the burn. Jodi scrubbed her eyes with the back of her other hand before falling to the side and curling up on the floor, squeezing her eyes closed as she cried.
I pushed back up to my feet. Jodi was in no fit shape to try to contact right now. I took one last, lingering look at my soul’s sister before I gathered the shadows of the room around me and disappeared into the void.
***
When I appeared in front of Steven’s house, his car was missing. The next logical place for him to be was at Anthony’s apartment, a good two miles away.
Anthony lived in an apartment building at the corner of Main and Aliso at the top of the hill just before Main Street became “Downtown.” I had only been there a couple of times to drop Steven off, and even then I hadn’t actually been inside his apartment. I was just damn lucky I remembered the apartment number. I appeared on the sidewalk cattycorner from Anthony’s building. Not exactly where I’d meant to end up, but it was close enough.
Traffic was still zipping up and down Main Street, life moving on without me. I kept close to the building, in the darker shadows, as I glanced up, down, and across the street. The last thing I needed was for my guardian angel to take me by surprise again. The sidewalk was clear, and from this distance, I couldn’t see anything by the park across the street, next to Anthony’s building. I had never really registered that he lived across the street from Cemetery Park, so named because it was an active cemetery up until the early 1940s.
Sometime in the sixties, the city decided to convert it into a park, but they never moved the bodies. The place always creeped me out, especially when I saw people playing fetch with their dogs or taking a picnic with their kids, knowing they were on top of hundreds of unmarked graves. But I wasn’t prepared for what I saw that night.
Dozens and dozens of spectral entities were all around the park, obscuring the finely manicured lawn. In the last few days, I had seen other ghosts’ fleeting forms, but none as tangible as me and none returned my gaze. Here though, when I crossed the street and stood in front of the park next to Anthony’s apartment building, no less than four spirits turned their deathly gaze upon me. For a moment, I felt as though I couldn’t move, like a mouse caught in a corner as the big angry cat hunkered down in front of it, just waiting.
Of the four staring at me, two were small girls who looked to be about nine and ten years old. They both wore plain white dresses that hung past their knees and cinched up to their necks. Their high-top black dress shoes were practically lost in the shadows. Another of the four was a war veteran. Of what war I couldn’t be sure, but he didn’t look much older than me as he glared my way. The last was an old, hunched over Chumash woman. Her bedraggled, dark hair swung down, obscuring her face from time to time as she swayed where she stood. Her face was a relief map of wrinkles, a testament to the long life she had before she died.
I wasn’t sure who to keep my eyes on; they were all glaring at me but spread out enough that I had to make an effort to look at each of them. The larger of the two girls tilted her head to the side, drawing my attention to her. Her large eyes looked black in the night. She blinked slowly, her mouth opening slightly, as she lifted one hand and crooked her pale finger, beckoning me to come. Absurdly, I felt the desire to step forward, to answer her call, just like the pull of the White Light.
I managed to keep my feet planted on the sidewalk, though my toes were dangerously close to the edge of the grass. I had the feeling that if I crossed the line of cement and desecrated ground, that tiny waif of a girl would be on me like a rabid dog on the last bone in the world. I shifted my weight and took one small step backward. I heard the howling of the lost souls milling about the grounds. The girl’s head snapped back, and her mouth opened into a terrible black maw. She screamed long and loud before she rushed for me.
Her fingers were crooked into claws and her hands stretched out as she flew across the ground in her mad rage. I flinched against the sounds she made, feeling something for the first time in days, and covered my ears. I panicked and scrambled backward, tripping over my own feet, and fell to the ground. She was nearly on top of me. I started to gather the shadows about me, ready to flee, but as she reached the edge of the grass, she slammed into an invisible wall, then bounced off and tumbled backward.
The milling mass of spirits began to shift toward us. The noise and reverberating energy drew their attention like moths to a flame. I pushed back, putting a little more distance between me and the edge of the cemetery, before I got to my feet. I dusted my hands off on my jeans out of habit and straightened my sweater. When I finally found the courage to look up again, the entire population of the cemetery was pressed close to the edge of the grass, practically looming over me. I clenched my hands into fists to keep them from shaking and lifted my chin. They couldn’t cross the line to get to me, and there was no way they would get me to do it for them. I was fine; I just had to stay on the sidewalk.
The soldier caught my attention, pulling it away from the still glaring, screaming girl in white. He stepped forward out of the crowd. A few tendrils of pale white slipped from his shoulders. He wasn’t quite at the grass line. His face was calm and sad. I watched as he inclined his head toward me in a nod, which I returned. One corner of his mouth lifted in a small half smile. I stepped forward.
He lifted his hand, his fingers splayed as if he would intertwine them with mine. I lifted my hand, opening my fingers and began to reach for him. I took another half-step forward, a few blades of grass bending over the toe of my boot.
“Shayna, no!” a voice called out like a ringing bell in the still, silent night. I blinked rapidly, breaking the soldier’s trance over me, and snatched my hand away just as my fingertips touched the invisible barrier between us. I could feel the air ripple around my fingers when I pulled them back.
The horde began to wail and scream, clambering over each other trying to get to me, but the divide between the once hallowed ground and the sidewalk kept them at bay. I turned to see who
had saved me and felt the world fall away again. My angel stood not five feet from me. Instinctively, I felt for the shadows. They answered my call and readied to wrap around me at a moment’s notice, but when he didn’t make a move for me, I hesitated.
“Why did you stop me?” I asked, unable to help myself.
“Do not go into the void, Shayna,” he said, his deep voice a melodic balm against the screeching and wailing.
“The void?” I asked lamely.
“You still have time to come back to the Light.” Still he did not reach out for me, still his wings remained folded quietly behind him. It gave me confidence to keep talking to him.
“What is the void?” I pressed.
“That,” he said simply, inclining his head toward the dispersing crowd of nameless, shapeless wraiths. The four cognizant ones stayed and stared at me, their anger a visible mar on their faces.
“That’s what happens when you turn from the Light?” I asked.
“In time,” he said with a nod, his voice distant and sad. I looked at those lost souls, wandering and angry. I was already angry: angry at myself, angry at my angel, angry at whoever or whatever had ripped my wings from my back. How much time did I have before I became like them?
On the night I died, when Liam had walked me away from my friends and the wreckage of the house, the tips of my wings had dragged along the ground. I thought maybe that, though dead, I was still an earthbound angel. I thought I would get to stay, and I just had to wait for someone, like my guardian angel, to show up and tell me what I was supposed to do.
But that’s not exactly what happened. My guardian angel did show, in a burst of blinding light, glorious in his power with his wings spread behind him as he floated. I felt warmth radiating from him and the tunnel of light, trust and some form of relief rushing through me, making me believe I hadn’t been abandoned while falling through the crumbling house. He held out a hand for me as he came close to the ground, his feet landing silently. I started to lift my hand to take his, I always took his hand when he reached for me, but the closer he came, the closer the Light came. I felt the pull of the Light somewhere in my center. I suddenly knew if I touched him, took his hand, let that Light envelope me, I would leave this world and my friends behind.
Spirit Page 2