by Hilary Duff
“Cosmo? It was Cosmo, wasn’t it?”
“Rayna!”
“Okay, just hug me and get all the drama over with. I’ve been crying for a whole week. If I have to cry any more, I’ll get massively dehydrated and have to go on IV fluids and my mom will go apeshit, and you know none of us want that.”
She’s waving her hands over her eyes to stop the tears, and I laugh and cry and throw my arms around her. I only pull out of the hug halfway, though—I keep my hands on her shoulders and my forehead against hers.
“One more thing,” I say. “I’m not glad it was Nico who died and not Sage. That’s not a choice I would ever make.”
“I know,” she says. “I knew it even when I said it, really. But thanks.”
We sit there, head to head for another moment, then pull apart. Rayna takes a deep breath. “Keep telling me the story.”
I do what she asks. I tell her how Ben led us to where Sage was being held; how Nico had the chance to kill Sage and end the curse plaguing his family and the rest of Cursed Vengeance, the other descendants of the original Elixir of Life thieves; how he hesitated just long enough for Ben to tackle him away from Sage; and how Nico landed on the dagger that took his life. I tell her another CV member didn’t hesitate—she grabbed the dagger at the last possible second and plunged it into Sage’s heart, ripping out his soul. She drained him of Elixir and wanted to drink it herself, but didn’t get the chance before an otherworldly earthquake shook the Elixir out of her grip and sent it back into the ground. My voice chokes as I tell her how it felt to see Sage’s body, dead on the altar. How I held him in the middle of the warscape, surrounded by the dead and injured, and how I thought I might die right there with him.
“That’s horrible,” Rayna says, and I know she means it, but the truth is, this story ends better for me than for her. That’s what I tell her next: how the impossible happened. Nico rose from the ground, a dead man who lifted his shirt and healed right in front of us . . . but with a new soul inside.
“It was what Magda, the old woman we met in Shibuya, had said could happen,” I tell her. “A soul transfer. A homeless soul finding refuge in a body whose soul had just recently moved on.”
“Moved on,” Rayna intones it like a prayer. “Is that really what happened? Is he somewhere better?”
I want to say yes, but I’m not going to lie. “I wish I knew. I’d like to think so, but I’m not really good with the heaven/hell/God/afterlife thing. I’m just not sure.”
“Seriously? You’re still a skeptic? You? What do you need, a burning bush? Maybe a pair of tablets falling down from your ceiling?”
“I’m not completely dense,” I retort. “I get that there’s something. There’s a soul. It moves on, or it doesn’t move on, or it comes back. I just don’t know what’s behind it all, if anything. Maybe there isn’t. Maybe it’s all just random. Maybe moving on is like everything you ever wanted coming true. Or maybe it’s just . . . ending.”
“Thanks. That makes me feel much better about Nico.”
“I’m sorry. I swear I’m not trying to make it worse. I’m just being honest.”
“I know,” Rayna says, “and I’m not mad at you. You don’t have to believe. I do. If Nico did move on, he moved on somewhere better, where I can meet him one day and we’ll be together again.”
I don’t know that I buy that. Sounds to me like a tragic waste—a life spent looking forward to something that won’t happen until after you die. I don’t say that, though. I go on and explain that Sage is mortal now, and I tell her about his new problems: the nausea, the exhaustion, the memory loss. I can’t bring myself to tell her about him throwing me into the wall; it’s too awful. Finally I tell her about Ben’s ominous diagnosis.
“Which is what’s happening now,” she says. “Madness and violence.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know Sage that well, but I never pegged him as a crush-your-hands kind of guy. You must be terrified.”
“We’ll find a way to get him better. I’m sure of it.”
“It’s okay to be terrified,” she says. “It doesn’t make you weak or anything. And even if it did, there are worse things than weak.”
Tears spring to my eyes. I had no idea I was holding so much in until Rayna sliced right through it. “I missed you so much,” I say.
“I missed you, too.” Then she yawns, and she laughs when she can barely pry her eyes back open. “Oh my gosh, I think I’m talking in my sleep. I should go back home.”
“Don’t. Stay over. We’ll sleep on the couches.” The gray living room couches were always our favorite place for slumber parties, because they’re as wide as full-size beds but even cushier, and they offer the added bonus of letting us fall asleep to bad TV. I loan Rayna something to sleep in, and I check on Sage before I go downstairs. He’s asleep in the spare room. I make sure the house alarm is set before Rayna and I go to bed. I might not need to keep Sage a secret from Rayna anymore, but I don’t want him to slip out and wander again.
I don’t have to worry. Rayna and I wake up long before Sage. By the time he comes down, she and I are in the kitchen, and Rayna’s scrounging deep in the pantry for something to eat. With a smolderingly sexy smile, Sage covers the distance to me in a heartbeat and gives me a kiss I feel in my toes. I push him away, very gently. I give him a meaningful stare, then glance toward Rayna.
She’s frozen at the door to the pantry, and looks like she’s going to throw up.
Sage clears his throat uncomfortably and steps away from me. “Oh, um . . . Rayna. I . . .” He blows through his lips and leans heavily on the counter, completely at a loss. “Clea?”
“She knows. She saw you last night.”
“No, she didn’t.”
I glance at Rayna, who raises an eyebrow.
“She did,” I say. “She walked in on us, and—”
Sage’s laugh is dry and mirthless. “Don’t lie to me, Clea. I think I’d remember something like that.”
“It’s okay. You forgot. You forget things sometimes. It’s not a big deal.”
“You’re lying!” he yells, slapping his hands on the island and leaning into my face. “I don’t ‘forget things.’ I’m perfectly fine.”
Every muscle in his body is tensed, and his jaw pulses in and out. He’s on the edge, and I have to tread carefully.
“Of course you’re fine. I never said you weren’t.”
“You’re trying to turn her against me, aren’t you? You want to turn everyone against me.”
“What? No.”
“She’s not,” Rayna pipes up. “She hasn’t said anything bad about you.”
“Stay out of this!” he roars, wheeling on Rayna, who pales.
“Please don’t yell at her. I promise, everything’s okay.” I reach out for him, hoping the contact will center him, but he just sneers at our stacked hands like they’re a dead bug, then slides his hand away and stalks back upstairs. “You don’t know anything,” he mutters as he goes.
Rayna and I stare at the spot where he had been.
“So that was pleasant,” she says.
“It’s new. He used to understand that he had memory problems. Even if he didn’t know what happened, he understood something had.”
“So he’s getting worse?”
I don’t want to answer. I don’t have to.
“I’m going to go talk to him,” I say.
I find Sage in my room, staring at the picture of himself he drew. I taped it to the wall before Rayna and I went to bed last night. I wish I could see into his head. Is he feeling frightened? Sad for what he lost? Angry? Hopeless?
I love Sage. I know he’s the only man for me, and that I’m meant to be with him forever . . . but sometimes I also feel like I know nothing about him.
Slowly, I reach up to rest my hand on his shoulder. “Are you okay?”
“Did I really see Rayna last night?”
“You did.”
His back hunches a little. “I’m sorry
I got so angry. I can’t explain it. I was furious, like I wanted to . . .” He can’t say it, but I’m afraid I know what he means.
“We’ll get you through this,” I promise him. “You’ll be okay.”
Sage doesn’t answer, but he turns around and lets me hold him. He’s so big and strong, but I’m the one supporting him.
I hope I’m strong enough to handle it.
eight
CLEA
An hour later Sage is back to himself, hanging out with Rayna and me in the living room. Rayna sits opposite him, leaning forward as she pelts him with questions.
“Where are you from?”
“Originally? Italy. But I don’t remember anything about it.”
“How many brothers and sisters do you have?”
“I don’t have any.”
We’re a good half hour into the prosecution. While I was upstairs with Sage, Rayna had a brainstorm. She thought Sage’s real problem might be that Nico’s soul is still inside him, fighting to win back his body. She started grilling Sage with rapid-fire questions to see if any of his answers were anything Nico would say.
“The scar on your left hip: What kind of animal is it shaped like?”
Sage frowns, then pulls down his waistband and twists to look.
“Hey, look at that,” he laughs. “It’s an otter!”
“It’s not an otter,” Rayna says. “It’s a prairie dog. Otters have tails.”
“Really?” Sage says. “I think it looks like an otter.”
“I thought it was more of a cat,” I say. Then Rayna glares at me. “Sorry.”
She studies Sage with a squinty-eyed glare. “I’m not convinced. I still think you’re in a turf war with Nico.”
“It’s impossible,” I say. “The only way the soul transfer could work was if Nico’s body was empty.”
“I guess . . .”
“So we’re back to where we were.”
We sit with that for a moment, then hear the long beep as the front door opens. Ben has the alarm code, and he taps it in the keypad to stop the shrill warning wail.
“Hey, guys,” he says as he pops his head in the room. “I found something I think will help—”
That’s when he sees Rayna on the other couch. She waggles her fingers at him. Ben splutters on his coffee. “Oh. Hey. Um—You— He— It—”
“Any other pronouns you want to throw in there?” Rayna asks.
Ben plops down on the couch next to her but is still at a loss for words.
“I came over last night,” Rayna says. “I know everything.”
“Everything?” Ben croaks.
She takes his hand and squeezes it. “I don’t blame you. It’s not your fault he’s gone.”
Tears well in Ben’s eyes, and when he tries to speak, nothing comes out but a sob. He runs his hands over his face and tries again. “I didn’t mean it to happen. I just wanted to push him away from Sage, and then . . . and then . . .”
He cries outright then, and she pulls him toward her so he can sob in her arms. It’s like one of Wanda’s mother-bear hugs, but with all that oversize comfort and power squeezed into Rayna’s small body. She rubs Ben’s back and makes shushing noises until he sits up again. He’s a little sniffly, a little splotchy-faced, but better.
“You said you found something out?” I ask.
Ben takes a deep breath to collect himself. “Yeah. So I’ve been checking out ancient texts at the library, and I realized a lot of the material on soul-switching reminded me of Walk-Ins.”
“Walk-Ins?”
“Yes. It’s a phenomenon where one soul leaves a body, and another . . . walks in.”
“Like . . .” I nod to Sage, but Ben grimaces.
“Only sort of,” he says. “Usually a Walk-In is a lot less . . . violent. And it’s done more by choice. A higher-plane agreement between two souls. The living one is tired and wants to move on; the other soul wants to come back to the bodily world.”
“So they just . . . switch?” Rayna asks.
Ben nods. “It’s usually pretty seamless. The body goes to sleep, then wakes up with a brand-new soul. But sometimes it’s a little more challenging. A soul that wants to leave a body might have a hard time letting go, or one that wants to come in might get stuck along the way. When that happens, there are ceremonies and rituals that can help.”
I notice Sage getting agitated next to me. His knee jounces up and down, and his hands flex in and out of fists.
“We don’t need a soul-switching ceremony,” I say. “We’re there already.”
“Hear me out,” Ben says. “The whole Walk-In angle led me from the old books to periodicals—New Agey magazines that are ninety-eight percent garbage, but there’s still that two percent real stuff. I found an article about a commune in Sedona that’s all about Walk-Ins.”
“Ohhhh,” Rayna nods. “Sedona’s very spiritual. It’s built at the convergence point of several spiritual vortexes. Yoga in Sedona is life-changing.”
Ben tilts his head dubiously. “So they say. Anyway, wannabe Walk-Ins come to this commune when they’re ready to make the switch. Sometimes they go alone, sometimes with their friends or family members or other believers who want to help them through, and the leader of the place facilitates the swap and makes sure everything goes okay.”
“Do you think it’s legitimate?” I ask.
“Don’t know. Honestly, the fact that it’s in Sedona makes me more leery. That’s where you put a place when you want to attract wanna-believers. No offense,” he adds to Rayna. She shrugs it off.
“But if it’s real . . . if it’s even a little real . . . then this is a place that deals with soul transfers all the time. With that kind of volume, it’s likely they’d also have experience with soul rejection, and maybe know what to do about it.”
Sage’s agitation is growing. Both knees are bouncing now, and his eyes shift around the room like he’s looking to escape.
“So let’s contact them and ask,” I say.
“That’s the thing,” Ben says. “They never gave the name of the place in the article, and they didn’t say exactly where it is or how to contact them. Apparently they’ve had trouble from myth-buster types, so they like to keep everything pretty secret. I was going to go through your dad’s studio today and see if he had any information.”
“Oh!” Rayna pipes up. “Maybe Alissa Grande can help!”
I grin. Alissa Grande’s the name I use as a professional photojournalist. “It’s true,” I say. “The magazine world’s pretty small. If you show me the article, it might take a while, but I could probably track down the writer and pick his brain.”
Sage loudly pushes the coffee table out of his way as he jumps up and stalks out of the room, pounding the jamb on the way out. His footsteps echo as he stomps out the front door and slams it behind him. Ben and Rayna both look at me for advice, but I just shrug.
“I moved the car keys; he won’t go far.”
I don’t like the idea of Sage storming around in his current state, but I’ve learned that chasing him won’t help. I’ll do more for him by staying here with Ben and Rayna and trying to find out more about the Walk-In place.
“Here’s a printout of the article,” Ben says, pulling the pages out of his notebook. “I’m going to head downstairs.”
He does, and Rayna slips to her house to grab her laptop, then brings it up to my room so she can do Walk-In research while I make calls and send e-mails to try and track down the writer of the article. Every time I hang up the phone, she pipes up with something she’s reading.
“Clea . . . two souls can share a body.”
“What do you mean?”
“That’s how some of these Walk-Ins start. The second soul moves in and hangs with the first one in the same body.”
“Like a roommate?”
“Exactly like a roommate. But a temporary roommate, just until they figure out who’s staying and who’s leaving. Then the original soul moves out and the first
one takes over.”
“So more like a sublet than a roommate situation.”
“Except the subletter never gives the apartment back. I can’t find any stories where the original soul comes back once it’s left. The ones that do aren’t really Walk-Ins, they’re more like demonic possessions.
“NO WAY!” Rayna screams while I’m in the middle of another call. I walk out to finish, and when I come back in, she’s standing on top of my bed, staring at her laptop screen.
“Rayna?”
“ ‘While many Walk-Ins exhibit physical changes such as a shift in posture or tone of voice,’ ” Rayna launches in, reading without preamble, “ ‘Deirdre Kelley’s friends knew something drastic had happened to the woman because even the color of her eyes had changed’!”
She lowers the computer and gapes at me, waiting for my response. I’m nowhere near as gobsmacked as she is, but she’s obviously expecting something huge from me, and I don’t want to bring her down. “That’s . . . amazing. But we’re not looking for proof that Sage is in Nico’s body. We already know that.”
“Yes! We know the Sage/Nico thing is real, but if the Walk-Ins have the same symptoms—especially something as big as eye color changing—they’re probably real too!”
“Hopefully the ones at the place in Sedona are real,” I say as my phone rings. I check the caller ID. “Randolph Greene. It’s the guy who wrote the article!” I tell Rayna.
She bounces off the bed and runs to my side as I answer, then go ahead and put him on speakerphone. If Greene notices, he doesn’t say. And I get the feeling he would say. For a man whose credits all have titles like The Guiding Path of Serenity and Living Calmly in the Now, he’s very blunt and abrupt. His voice has a nicotine rasp, and he barks out every sentence like he’s training marines.
“The Walk-Ins?” he asks when I bring up the article. “They’re nuts!”
“Really? Because your article seemed very positive about the phenomenon. . . .”
“ ’Cause I wanted to get paid!” Then he checks himself, adding a layer of velvety smoothness to his words. “Unless of course you’re affiliated with the group. Lovely people, they are. Just lovely.”
Rayna covers her mouth as she snorts.