He slides one hand up and down my back, firmly but gently. “Shh, shh. Lucy, tell me what’s wrong.”
“My . . . my aunt.” I hiccup. “She’s dead.”
“Of course she is. I thought you knew.”
I shake my head against his chest. “No! I mean, yes.” This isn’t coming out right, so I start over. “Yes— I guess I knew she was gone, or else she wouldn’t be here, right? But I saw her. Tonight. He had her cut stomach open and . . .”
At my words, Oliver’s grip on me loosens. I press my body against him harder to make up for it.
“This isn’t the way I wanted you to find out,” he sighs.
I don’t like the sound of that, and I pull back enough to look him in the eye, an impossibility in the dark. “Find out what?”
Oliver untangles himself from our embrace, even though I try to hold on. Whatever’s about to happen isn’t going to make me feel any better. Oliver confirms the bad feelings when he says, “Remember, I’m still me. Please, Lucy.”
Words fly far away from me as I watch him take the handful of steps until he’s no longer shielded by the boughs of the apple trees. I want to stop him before he commits to that last step, to convince him I’m okay not knowing. But I don’t call to him, and he only pauses for a moment before he bows his head and takes one big step back into the clearing.
The bright moonlight washes over his body, illuminating every piece death had claimed for its own.
Chapter 18
“No,” I moan, covering my mouth with my hands. “No, no. I can’t look—”
Sorrow fills his blackened eyes at my reaction. A trickle of blood, glistening in the faint light, streams from his forehead and another from the corner of his mouth. There are a host of other injuries, I’m sure, but I can’t bear to see them.
“I don’t unders—”
He holds up a hand, indicating I should quiet myself. I freeze, listening for unknown rustling off in the distance, but hear nothing. Just in case, I shrink back against the tree. If the thing doesn’t see me, my heart shaking every inch of my body will totally give me away.
Oliver glides to me and takes me in his arms again. My body tenses against his.
“Remember, I’m still me,” he breathes into my ear. “And I’ll explain later, but right now I need you to get back into the house.”
“But Aunt Perdita’s in there. It’s so awful.”
He squeezes me. “I know, but The Conductors are patrolling. I can’t risk you getting caught.”
My stomach turns at the thought of stepping back into the house alone. Before tonight, I felt safe enough there, even if my aunt had been a less-than-welcoming hostess. Now the cool halls and monochrome hues chill me to the bone.
“Please, Lucy! You’ve got to go now,” he pleads. “I’ll go with you.”
We make our way through the clearing as quickly as we can, with me leaning on him. Each step closer to the house multiplies my feeling of dread, but there really isn’t another choice. Not one where I don’t have a personal escort into the pits of Hell, at least.
Only once I’m safely inside the parlor can Oliver relax. I wish I could relax, too, but the house frightens me about as much as the reeking demonic police officers. Oliver believes I’ll be okay here, but I don’t share his rosy outlook on the situation. I’ve traded the weight of worry of being discovered outdoors for straight-up fear of absolutely everything.
I stand just inside the door, leaving it cracked a few inches so I can still have some sort of contact with the only thing in my life keeping me sane. I try to convince him not to leave me alone, to come inside and keep me company since it’s not very likely I’ll sleep. He, of course, tells me it’s against his rules, but he refuses to tell me what that means.
“Go to sleep, Luce,” he says simply, the corners of his mouth tugging upward. “I’ll be here in the morning.”
“Go to sleep? You’ve got to be kidding me,” I huff. “I’ll probably never sleep again. But, thanks. Now you go ahead and have fun on your scavenger hunt or whatever.”
He chuckles, though I’m not trying to be funny. “First thing tomorrow morning I’ll come by. Until then . . .” Oliver opens the door wide enough to pull me back to his chest. Light as a feather, he brushes his lips against the top of my head where my scarf covers my own reminders of life’s frailty, the system of pink, puffy scars. The beating of my heart jolts into a syncopated rhythm, tired from trying to keep up with all the highs and lows.
I don’t know what to say to his unexpected bit of PDA. My brain temporarily loses track of things like words and how to make them come out of my mouth, so I don’t say anything at all. I feel my face turn crimson, and I thank my lucky stars for the cover of darkness.
I wait at the doors and watch him slip back into the trees before I head back to my room. The only way to make it through the rest of the night alone is to pretend like none of this happened. While I peel off my tank top and shorts, I pretend that Aunt Perdita is tucked away in her room, sipping tea and reading a smutty romance novel. As I fill the bathtub with warm water and bubbles, I imagine Oliver and Jasper out enjoying a nice moonlit ride around the countryside. I close my eyes and sink below the surface of the water, trying to wash away reality with lavender bubble bath. None of those troubling things actually happened. It was all a bad dream. A really bad dream.
I’d almost convinced myself when something catches my eye from across the room. My scarf hangs from the bathroom doorknob. Dark stains mar the delicate fabric. His kiss. His blood.
Eventually the water cools and I force myself out of the tub. In the seclusion of the bathroom, the air thick with steam, it had been easier to shut out the nightmares. Out in my room, the barely-covered windows expose me to any horrors lurking nearby. Common sense tells me I would be harder to spot with the lights off, but common sense doesn’t offer any good advice for how to sit in a dark room alone after what I’ve seen.
I spend most of the night with the lights blazing, huddled in a ball at the head of the bed. I try and fail to keep my mind full of happy things, boring things, anything to keep the knot of fear from overtaking me. How long I sit there until I end up dozing off, I’m not sure. One moment I occupy my brain with working out a made-up algebra problem, the most mundane and useless thing I can come up with, the next I wake up bathed in sunlight, sprawled across my bed.
“Good morning, sunshine,” a deep voice greets me from the corner of the room.
The voice, the first I’ve heard since leaving Oliver in the darkness, causes me to yelp and scramble upright into a feral crouch. So stupid of me to let my guard down! I blink furiously, trying to focus my eyes and locate the intruder. My chest heaves in and out in anger and determination to survive.
“Sorry.” Oliver puts his hands up to try to calm me down. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”
Oh, Oliver.
Oliver!
Besides looking wearier than I’ve ever seen him, he is himself—no blood oozing from any orifice and no bruised eyes. Relieved, I bound off the mattress and into his arms. A grin sweeps over his face as he pulls me closer, and he returns to being the boy I know and find myself starting to care for. I close my eyes and relax against his chest while my heart rate calms to a more conservative pace. Something about being near to him, touching him, makes me feel like everything’s going to turn out okay, a tall order for my current situation. Maybe it won’t all be okay, but I breathe him in and breathe him out instead of thinking about what comes next. For now, it is okay.
“Lucy, you are so unexpected,” he whispers. “So amazingly unexpected.” His hand travels upward along my spine, igniting sparks of sensation in its path. I shiver and hold my breath as his fingers trace the back of my neck and come to rest at the back my head.
He tucks his chin to look down at me. There’s something like wonder in his earthen eyes, something I can’t understand. I’ve done nothing to deserve his wonder or even his attention. Still, his hand carefully angles
my head so our eyes can meet. It’s hard to deny his feelings when I see them reflected back to me. Overwhelmed, I shut my eyes and pull a shaky breath in through my lips to steady my shrieking nerves. Oliver leans down lower and I can feel him close to my lips. His callused fingers slip across the fragile skin lining my scalp, and I gasp.
My head! I push away from him with both hands, frantic to break our connection.
What are you doing? No! No, you don’t! Not right now. You’re not worried about the stupid scarf, are you?
Oh, you know, the scarf and that whole thing about him being dead. I mean, I’ll admit I’m not normal and I’ve quite possibly lost my mind, but, seriously. Kissing a guy who was dripping blood from his mouth like a zombie a few hours ago? What was I thinking? That can’t happen.
He stares at me, stunned, his mouth hanging open. I snatch a clean scarf from my dresser drawer and escape to the bathroom. Once I’ve wrapped the scarf around my head, fortifying my defenses once more, I take a deep breath to calm myself.
The shimmer of the sun through the bowl on my bedside table flickers in my eyes when I come back out of the bathroom. I’d forgotten all about it, as it seemed pretty insignificant in light of Aunt Perdita’s . . . situation. But it floods back to me now, every unanswered question and every sliver of hope. Oliver follows my longing gaze to the rose, and then snaps back to look at my face.
“That rose,” I point toward the bowl, “was here last night when you left me. Did you leave it?”
He doesn’t answer, but looks toward the window instead.
“I mean, you and I were together all day, so I don’t know when you would’ve had the time.”
“Maybe I left it overnight while you were sleeping at my house.”
“Did you really? Did you come into this house at night, breaking the rules, to leave this flower for me?” I place my hands on my hips and raise an eyebrow.
Oliver studies my expression for a minute, setting his jaw. “No.”
“Then who did?”
He refuses to answer me.
“Come on,” he says, motioning toward the hallway.
I want to grab him by the shoulders and shake until the answer spills from his lips, but I know Oliver won’t tell me anything until he’s good and ready. I sigh and follow him.
When we reach the front door, I pause before I open it. It had been a long, warm day yesterday and today won’t be much different. “I’m going to grab some water from the kitchen. Want some?”
Oliver shakes his head, but something more flashes in his expression. He’s probably just being polite by not asking me for food. I write it off as a pride thing, probably something connected to his generation that had been tossed to the wayside.
I round the corner into the kitchen. Oliver’s close behind, and slams into my back when I stop without warning. There, huddled over the island, is Aunt Perdita. Other than looking a little bit groggy as she eyes me over the lip of her coffee mug, she doesn’t look like someone who had just been murdered by the kindly old country doctor.
“But you’re—” I start, shocked.
Grabbing my elbow and taking charge, Oliver spins me around and rushes both of us from the kitchen.
“But she was—” I can’t form the words; all I can do is stutter and glance over my shoulder as he steers me out the front door.
“I know, I know,” he coos, placing his hands on my trembling shoulders. “Listen to me very carefully. You’re not crazy.”
I don’t believe him, do you? We feel kind of crazy.
“Are you okay?”
I pull in a deep breath and give him a quick nod. “I guess.”
He slides his hands into his pockets and looks out over the front yard. Norman glances up at us from the flowerbed he’s weeding. Oliver tilts his head in greeting to his friend, then sighs. “Well, Lucy. It’s time you knew.”
I stare at him, suddenly afraid of what he’s about to say. Very quietly, I manage, “He was killing her. She was dying. I don’t understand.”
“This is the curse, I guess you could say. We’re stuck in this place, day after day, remembering the things we wish we could have done differently in our own lives. During the day, we’re whole, but every night we must relive our death. The night breaks us all—there’s no rest from it.” His face is haunted. “’Cept for you. That’s how I knew you weren’t dead. You don’t change at night, and you sleep. Better than that, you dream.”
“How do you know I dream?”
Red blotches appear on his cheeks and he looks away. “Because I watched you when you were sleeping—at my house and then this morning. You talk in your sleep, too.”
It’s my turn to blush. “No, I don’t.” I laugh and swat at his arm. “What do I say?”
“That I’m the man of your dreams, of course.” He flashes a crooked smile my way.
“Quit changing the subject, Oliver. I need to know about Mitte.”
He presses his lips together, his smile fading. “All right. How much time you got?”
I bring my hand up to block the morning sun. The world around me stands quiet and unmoving, nothing changing, as if time has simply stopped. Even Norman’s motionless among the flowers, watching us with fearful eyes. Maybe it’s just me, but I’m beginning to sense a theme here.
I let my hand drop to my side and blow out a heavy breath. “Forever, I guess.”
Chapter 19
Against Oliver’s better judgment, I convince him to talk with me as we walk down the quiet street. He’s nervous the others will spot me and do to me what they did to Duke. Naturally, I’m afraid of that, too, but I don’t have a whole lot to lose. Being pretty much half-dead anyway has its advantages, I guess.
Oliver tells me again about Mitte acting as a dumping ground, of sorts, for spirits who have passed on. “Each one of us is here for a reason—something we never did that we wanted to. Some of us are here ’cause we failed to do something.”
I take a few slow steps, studying the pavement, before I ask, “Well, which is it?”
He blinks. “What?”
“Why are you here?”
He pulls his mouth into a thin line, his cue to me that he’s not ready to talk about it. His silence is pretty annoying after spilling all of the details of the crash, but whatever. I’ve never personally died, so maybe it’s harder to talk about than nearly dying. Or maybe he’s just being Oliver again, frustrating and . . . frustrating.
I decide to take the pressure off. “So, what about my aunt? My parents never said much about her, so I don’t know how she passed.”
“Most of us don’t ask or want to know. It’s enough having to think about your own death every day for the rest of time without having to think about other people’s, too. But I know about Miss Perdita.”
My pulse picks up in my veins. I’m not sure if I really want to know now that I’m on the brink of finding out. “Yeah?”
“She died during childbirth. I’m told they—” He shudders. “—cut her baby out. I don’t know too much about that.”
“A C-section?”
He shrugs. “Like I said, I don’t know about babies. All’s I know is she didn’t survive, and here she is.”
I let this info roll around in my head, lining it up with what I’d witnessed in my aunt’s room last night. “And Doc? He was her surgeon?”
Oliver shakes his head. “No, but Doc just happens to be Mitte’s only doctor. When he showed up, the two of them kinda paired up to kill two birds with one stone, guess you could say.” He kicks a pebble with the toe of his boot, sending it skittering down the road. “Dying’s better with someone else.”
“Doc,” I say. “His head was bleeding.”
“I know about Doc, too, but don’t tell him I told you because he’s mighty ashamed of it.”
“Who am I going to tell?”
“True.” Oliver glances down the street before he continues. “Well, Doc cheated on his wife with one of his nurses. When the missus found out, she walked
into the hospital and shot him in the back of the head,” Oliver says, and my mouth drops open. When he sees the shocked look on my face, he backpedals. “Listen, Luce. He was a good man—still is—and feels awful for what he did.”
I bury my face in my hands and groan. How much of this can I take before the sadness pulls me under?
Along the way, a fat orange cat darts out in front of us from the refuge of the underbody of a rusted-out Cadillac. My heart practically leaps into my throat, and I press my hand to my chest to make sure it’s still lub-dubbing away.
“And the cats. Why are there only cats and no other animals?”
“Because they’re cats.”
When I blink at him, unsure of his meaning, he laughs. “Don’t tell me you don’t know about cats.”
“Nope. My dad is—was—allergic. He’d break out in hives if a cat even looked at him.”
“People with cats understand that those dang felines rule the world.” He grins, looking after the cat, who now sits proudly on the sidewalk, watching us through narrowed eyes. “Guess it’s kind of true, because they’re all over the place. Maybe it’s that whole ‘nine lives’ thing. But you’re forgetting about Jasper.”
“Jasper’s practically a person, though.”
Oliver’s smile is bittersweet as he looks back at the horse. Jasper wanders behind us, snatching occasional mouthfuls of grass from the side of the road. “You’re right about that. That horse is far better than a person, most days.”
I smile at Oliver’s obvious fondness for his opinionated companion. “So, let me get this straight—Jasper’s here because he has some kind of unfinished business?”
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