Another One Bites the Dust

by Chris Marie Green

  Twyla was by Cassie’s side, fretting. “Come on, Mama Cass. Absorb everything you can. You can do it. Then you’ll get to the box and have a good dose of juice.”

  Cassie tried to mumble something, but Twyla shushed her. Above us, Randy watched, his usual grin straightened out as he continued to guard.

  I tried to make lemons into lemonade. “That thing won’t be back for at least a while.”

  Randy spoke to Wendy. “Thass some prayer, lil’ sister.”

  She was such a sensitive that she could see all of us ghosts. Her skill had taken a little time to develop, but once she’d gotten the hang of it, she’d really gotten the hang.

  “I used a prayer to St. Michael,” she said, still watching Cassie.

  “How did you know you should use it?” I asked.

  She deigned to give me a dismissive glance, then turned back to Cassie.

  Ah. Still pissed at me. Got it.

  I addressed the group. “That dark spirit reached into Cassie and took a handful of something out of her. I don’t know how that’s even possible, because when we try to touch each other, all we get is electric air.”

  Twyla didn’t take her gaze off Cassie. “Obviously, Jen’s never hardened herself when another ghost hardened itself.”

  I looked confused, so Randy came over to me, gesturing to my hand. He hardened his essence, so I did, too, and when he touched me, there was actual contact.

  But there was also nothing. No feeling. No nerve endings that made touching nice.

  He shrugged with one shoulder. “Now ya know why we don’t bother huggin’. Waste of energy, if ya ask me.”

  A random thought bolted through me as I recalled seeing the spirit reach into Cassie and steal her essence. It hadn’t done the same to me when it’d attacked at the séance. Why?

  Scott was standing by as Cassie improved to a light gray tone with all the battery help. “That dark spirit doesn’t play by our rules, anyway. That’s why the prayer fazed him and not us.”

  Randy nodded. “Our souls ain’t stained like that one’s.”

  Stained? I peered at Cassie. Interesting, because she’d died after slitting her wrists. To some people, that was a stain on the soul. I mean, I hadn’t been a big churchgoer, but it looked like suicides actually weren’t a way into hell for us. Then again, maybe you had to believe that you were going to hell for that to happen. Hard to say when none of us were really sure if there was a hell or purgatory, so what did I know? This plane might even be Cassie’s limbo. Or all of ours.

  All I was certain about was that Amanda Lee had pulled that dark spirit out of a portal from a place that none of us had ever visited, and it could obviously do things we couldn’t . . . or shouldn’t.

  Wendy’s short black skirt spread around her as she sat all the way on the ground. “I can’t wait until the neighbors call to complain about the loser teen who yells out prayers from her window. Do you think anyone noticed?”

  I was pretty sure she wasn’t chatting with me, so I let Randy answer. He hadn’t been at her old mansion on the night Twyla and Scott had helped me haunt Farah into a confession, so she had nothing against him.

  “Well,” he said, still bobbing above us all, “it seems to me that it’s ’bout as quiet as ’n ant pissin’ on cotton round here. All the windows are shut, so maybe no one noticed?”

  “Thank you, Randy,” I said. “That was very colorful.”

  Scott said, “Maybe they caught on to the shattered glass and the sudden breeze in the trees, though.”

  We’d see.

  It seemed like Wendy was working into saying something else, and she finally came out with it. “I think you guys have been keeping that spirit away until now. I have no idea what it wants from me or Gavin since it was released at the séance, but thanks for being here.” She toyed with a loose string on her long-sleeved black shirt. “It’s about time I said that.”

  Another whoa. Even Cassie smiled as her ghost tone improved. She had a way of looking at Wendy that reminded me that Cassie had had children before she’d died, and she’d lived her afterlife regretting the pain she’d put them through with her suicide. She visited them often, even though they were adults now. They were her tether to the earth, and I wondered if she would go into the glare when they were gone.

  As we all said a “You’re welcome” to Wendy, Cassie’s answer came a bit later than the rest.

  “Anytime,” she said weakly.

  “That’s a girl,” Twyla said. “You just keep soaking all that juice up.”

  Wendy was smiling down at Cassie. “I’m sorry I took so long with that prayer. I had to go through my files and find the right one. I’ve been studying. You remember Eileen Perez, the cleaner who chased Jensen Murphy out of my old house?”

  So Wendy was using my full name and talking about me like I wasn’t around? Maybe she’d start sounding like my mom whenever I would get into trouble and call me “Jensen Mary Murphy! You get over here!” from now on.

  The ghosts were all nodding that, yes, they remembered Eileen the cleaner.

  “Well,” Wendy said, “we’ve been in touch, and I’ve been very curious about what she does. She’s in a paranormal society, and I think I want to join . . . Probably after I get out of the house more.”

  Scott hooked his thumbs in the back pockets of his jeans as he said, “As soon as we get done with all this stuff on the front burner, let us know when you’re ready to get out. We can guard you from the news people or whoever else bugs you. There’re things we can do to fool with them so they won’t come around to bother you.”

  Randy interjected. “Yeah. We can pull hair, scratch, ’n’ there’re bad smells we can conj-yur . . .”

  “Conjure,” we all said.

  “Conj-yur up to chase ’em off.”

  “Thanks,” Wendy said, smiling tentatively at everyone, tucking a strand of straight hair behind her ear.

  I cleared my throat. “About the cleaner—”

  Twyla interrupted. “Yeah, Little China Girl. You aren’t, like, using just salt to try and keep that dark spirit out, are you?”

  “I’ve used salt, but—”

  “You. Need. More.” Twyla shook a finger at her. “Salt doesn’t work that great on ghosts unless they’re new and stupid, like Jensen used to be. They say salt’s, like, really good for demons, but I don’t know if that’s what our dark dill weed is. Smudging’s a good backup, and incantations work only with the ghost you’re directing them at. Just so you know.”

  “I already smudged the condo.” You could tell Wendy was taking copious mental notes.

  Cassie groaned as she tried to rise, and she made it to a sitting position. As she crawl-floated to the fuse box, Twyla and Randy went with her. I gave Scott a “please join them so I can have some privacy” glance and, with some reluctance, he did.

  “A cleaner, huh?” I asked Wendy when we were alone. “Is that your goal in life now?”

  She started gathering the battery-operated devices. “Are you talking to me?”

  When she headed inside, I went there, too, but the smudging and incantations stopped me cold at the threshold of the French windows.

  Fine, then. I levitated to the upper window, which she’d left cracked open ever so slightly in her haste to shut them. Before she could close them on me all the way, I caught the scent of sage.

  She saw me floating there expectantly and groaned. “You’re not going to let this drop for today? I’ve already had a lot of excitement.”

  I ignored the barricading smell. “We’ve got some issues to work out.”

  “Okay. Is one of them that I’m studying to be a cleaner? Call TMZ then. I think it’s kind of noble to help ghosts cross over, if you ask me. You could say I had a life-changing experience lately that makes me want to find out how to get rid of some of them.”

  “Cute. And judging from your awesomeness in chasing that dark spirit off, I’d say you found a calling.” Her savvy might even go a long way in protecting her
, so I didn’t have a problem with her paranormal interest.

  She seemed taken off balance that I wasn’t smarting off right back at her or asking what the hell a TMZ was. Thing was, I already knew about the gossip show, thanks.

  Then she returned to being coolly civil to me. “I’m going to uncover who or what that thing is and why it came here. I already know that I sense a male energy to it. You can’t stop me from finding out more.”

  I hadn’t told her that I suspected the darkness might be her horrendous father. To do that would reveal that Gavin had killed him, and that would have to be done in his own time.

  Maybe it should be soon, though.

  At an impasse with me, Wendy shifted her weight from foot to foot as the sheer curtains tickled her arm. Then she sighed, like she was somehow giving in to me, and went to a desk, unplugging one of those devices that some people use to read books now. Space-age, huh? Anyway, she brought it to me, opened the window all the way, and gestured to the reader.

  Was she telling me I could use it to charge up some?

  I took advantage, connecting with it. “Thanks,” I said.

  Shrug. But at least a shrug was better than being ignored. I was actually getting juice out of her paying attention to me, to tell the truth.

  I said, “Your friend came to see me and Amanda Lee yesterday.”

  “I got an e-mail from Heidi.”

  “What’s your impression of her?”

  “Honestly, you can believe anything she says. I’m pretty good at picking out the liars from the rest.”

  All right, here it came—the real chiding session.

  When Wendy continued, she didn’t go quite in the direction I thought she would.

  “Heidi’s grateful to you and Amanda Lee. She said you and her were looking into her friend’s boyfriend for free.”

  Awesome. Wendy wasn’t yelling at me. “Charging her would be wrong.”

  “I don’t know why you wouldn’t make her pay something. It’s a good chance to take advantage of someone. You guys are really wonderful at that, so why not extend your winning streak?”

  It was a late punch, but it still landed.

  “All right,” I said, “I deserve that. You can be as mad at me and Amanda Lee as you want.”

  Wendy went to her bed and sank to the mattress. “I’m not”—a huge sigh—“mad. Jeez, I’m so tired of it. Even now it’s wearing me out.”

  I let her go on.

  “Part of me is thankful that you caught Farah, but part of me wishes that . . . Well, not that she would’ve gotten away with killing Elizabeth, but . . .”

  “That things would’ve just stayed buried.”

  “I know that’s awful. But I keep telling myself that I didn’t mind life as it was . . . until I realize that I’m wrong. Very wrong. But life changed, and not just for me. For Gavin, too. He’s not the same as he was before. Ever since you appeared, he’s been . . . different. Not a good different, either.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “You can say that all you want, but it’s not going to do anything.”

  “No, it won’t.”

  Her lower lip trembled before she pressed her mouth into a straight line, then said, “Do you have to be so easygoing about this?”

  “I can be a huge bitch if it’d make you feel better.”

  “It wouldn’t.” She made a thwarted sound. “I don’t even blame you, no matter how much I want to. It’s just hard to know that someone who was in my family—jeez, I saw Farah almost every day—was messed up. And, yeah, Noah and I fought like beasts, but he was my adopted brother, and when Farah killed him . . .”—she gripped the silken bedspread—“I didn’t appreciate him like I should’ve. We both came into the family together, and there was some kind of adopted-kid bond there. Farah took his life as much as she took Elizabeth’s, and all I want to do is think that it was someone else’s fault. Someone I didn’t know. Someone who didn’t fool all of us for years and years.”

  “I wish it could’ve turned out differently,” I said.

  She drew in a sharp breath, on the edge of tears. “Me, too.”

  She lowered her head, shaking it. Again, I didn’t say anything. Probably I’d make things only worse, but I felt her sadness to my very center, and it weighed me down.

  Eventually, she got herself together, then peered up at me through her hair, her voice wobbly as she nodded toward the electronic device I was still sucking dry.

  “It’s like you’re a crack addict or something with all the juicing up.”

  I pulled out of the reader, trying not to think of how I’d been craving more and more stimulation these days. “What can I say? Energy is what keeps me rolling.”

  She stared at me a little too long, and I knew she was getting her first good look at me since I’d come to the doomed rescue on the night Farah had gone bonkers. She was seeing twenty-three-year-old me, the harmless-looking SoCal girl, but, inside, I was starting to feel so much older and more damaging than that.

  “I’ve been researching you,” she said quietly.

  Something inside me blipped, but I tried to seem unaffected. “I know that I’m on the Internet. Good stories about me there, huh? Except they all have unhappy endings.”

  “I can see that you didn’t just go missing, like the articles say. What I mean is that you’re obviously not alive anymore, hiding out somewhere from drug dealers or whoever might’ve made you disappear from Elfin Forest.”

  “And I have no idea who killed me. That’s kind of the bummer of my life.”

  “Truly?” She sat up. “You have no idea?”

  I think I’d just given Wendy her next homebound project.

  “Truly,” I said.

  “Because Gavin’s been looking into you, too. He could—”

  Before she could say help, she cut herself off. Then she knit her eyebrows, like she’d said something she shouldn’t have.

  “Wendy, I know he’s visited my old best friend at the bar she works at. He must’ve looked her up online. It’s not a secret that he’s doing some detective work of his own.”

  Another unsure glance, but then Wendy shrugged. “He hired someone to dig up info about you, too. When he found out about Suzanne and how you were friends, he decided he wanted to hear what she had to say about you.”

  Maybe my brain was bent, but I sizzled at the thought of his interest.

  Wendy doused it. “Gavin’s more traumatized than I am, I think. He’s the type of guy who’d never show it, but what you did to him . . .”

  “Really looped him. I know. And that’s another thing I’m sorry about.”

  She gave me a big-brown-eyed puppy look, wet and teary. “Don’t get me wrong. He’s glad to have closure about Elizabeth. He loved her so much.”

  Yup. I’d seen it in his thoughts, his dreams. Felt it through and through.

  Wendy hesitated, then added, “He does computer searches on you all the time. He even found your high school yearbook pictures, where you were Miss Popular.”

  “Not in this household.”

  She didn’t address that point. “He also draws sketches of you from those photos I took when you were haunting our house.”

  “I saw them through his window.”

  “They’ve gotten super weird lately.”

  “Why shouldn’t he see me like an angel of death who destroyed his life?”

  “It’s just his anger coming out at you.” Wendy side-smiled. “You’re prettier than that, though, and I’m sure he knows it.”

  He did? I wanted to preen, but stopped myself. Not a good preening time.

  I drifted up higher, until my sneakers came to her windowsill. I even dared to take as much of a stand as I could. She didn’t tell me to vamoose, so I took that as a good sign.

  “Look at me,” she said, laughing a little. “Pouring my stupid soul out to you.”

  “Well, me and my friends did defend you today, so maybe that earned us some goodwill. You could say we’ve been campaign
ing for your forgiveness and it finally paid off.”

  “I really am thankful.”

  “And I’m glad we got here in time to see you chase that nuisance off.”

  She smiled carefully at me, and I felt warmth coming from her in waves. Warmth like how the sun used to feel on me.

  “Maybe,” I said, lightening the mood even more, “you can even help me one day. As a cleaner, I mean.”

  “Me? How?”

  “I’ve got a spirit of my own who keeps dogging me.”

  I told her a bit about fake Dean, just to let her know she wasn’t the only one being hounded by unwanted beings. By the end, Wendy was on the edge of the mattress.

  “Scariness,” she whispered.

  “Yeah, and all I want is to keep him away. Any suggestions from your studies?”

  Even as I said it, I knew that I was exaggerating. Fake Dean maybe wasn’t so bad.

  “Wow.” She got off the bed. “You mean, I’d be a spirit hunter for you? For reals?”

  “Don’t make a thing of this. I’m only asking for your input.” But it was kind of fun to see her brighten up like this.

  We truly smiled at each other for the first time in . . . ever?

  As that was happening, I heard a car in the near distance, then the sound of the garage door opening.

  Wendy gave me a tentative glance.

  I didn’t move from my spot. My essence was flaring, just knowing Gavin was home.

  “Wendy,” I said. “This is the first thing we need to work on together. It’s time I cleared things up with your brother, too. Can you help me with that?”

  She nodded as a door shut downstairs. I burned that much higher, remembering what it used to be like to see someone I really wanted to see, knowing that he was climbing up the stairs, coming closer.

  Closer.

  But I’d felt that way with fake Dean yesterday, right?

  Below me, in the courtyard, I heard Scott shout, “You all right, Jen?”

  I gave a thumbs-up, looking down at my friends. Cassie was powered up again, although she seemed to be a shade sicker than usual. She waved to me and, as she took off with Twyla, Scott, and Randy, her ponytail swished behind her.