True: An Elixir Novel

by Hilary Duff

  I think about Sage. I think he needs me for something, but I can’t remember what.

  Oh, well. Whatever it is, it can wait. This bed is really so cozy. . . . There’s no rush to go anywhere at all.

  twelve

  RAYNA

  Okay, I’ll admit it. I’ve had the occasional bender. I’ve had nights where I’ve drunk way too much, gone to bed with the room whirling around me, and woken up in the morning so nauseous I’ve prayed for an anvil to fall on my head and knock me unconscious and out of my misery.

  This morning I feel worse.

  What did I do? Did I really tell Ben he should push Sage’s soul out of Nico’s body?

  No. That’s saying it nicely. That’s taking it easy on myself. I told Ben he should kill Sage. And I gave him what he needed to do it.

  I’m totally going to throw up.

  I have to talk to Ben and tell him I was wrong. I’ll get him to give me back Nico’s ring. We’ll go ahead with whatever Clea finds out at Transitions, and we’ll make Sage okay again.

  I’m in the bathroom connecting my room to the guys’, my hand on the doorknob, when I hear Nico wail in horrible pain. Like he just found out his soul is doomed to be lost forever. I shake and feel my breath catch in my throat. In a wild panic, I throw open the door and race into Ben and Sage’s room . . . where Sage is still howling in Nico’s voice, but it has nothing to do with anyone’s soul.

  “Double skunk!” Ben crows. The two of them sit cross-legged on one of the room’s double beds, the cribbage board and cards between them. “Oh, hey, Rayna,” he says when he notices me.

  I don’t answer. I’m still trying to catch my breath and make sense of what I’m seeing. How can Ben sit and play cards with a man he condemned to death? I can’t even look at Sage.

  “Ben, can I talk to you a minute?”

  “Sure!” he says, then he glances at the clock. “Oh, wait. After breakfast, okay? Whatever Molly made, I don’t want the other guests to eat it all before we get down there. You coming?”

  The last question he directs to Sage, since I’m still in the tank top and boxer shorts I slept in.

  “Your manners are horrible,” Sage says, then turns to me. “I’ll wait for you, Rayna.”

  He’s being polite. I wish he wouldn’t be polite. It reminds me of Nico, whose soul isn’t at peace, and might never be at peace unless . . .

  “That’s okay,” I say. “You go ahead.”

  I go back to my room and try to figure out what to do, but I can’t. I keep changing my mind. When I think about Sage dying, it’s easy—of course I don’t want that to happen. Who wants anyone to die? But then I think about Nico and that’s easy too—of course I want his soul to move on. And then I start thinking about Sage’s five hundred years compared to Nico’s twenty-one and how Nico never caught a break while Sage has had so many. . . .

  I need a psychic. I need to talk to Nico’s soul directly and let it tell me what to do.

  No. I don’t need a psychic. If Nico’s soul is trapped inside Sage, I know exactly what he’d want. He’d want to be set free. But that means destroying Sage . . . and how could I ever look at Clea again if I was partly responsible for her losing the love of her life?

  Then again, it’s not like she’s losing sleep because she’s partly responsible for me losing the love of my life.

  I can’t deal. By the time I brush my teeth and get dressed, I’m exhausted again, and I lie back onto the bed. I wake up to the smell of sweet baked dough, and open my eyes to see Nico holding a tray of French toast.

  Not Nico. Sage. Having one of his rarer and rarer normal moments, which at the moment is the last thing I want to see.

  “Hey,” he says. “Breakfast was ending, so I asked Molly if she’d make you a tray.”

  “Thanks. I . . .”

  I realize I have an opportunity. I couldn’t reach Nico’s soul when I was meditating in the pool yesterday, but if he’s really caught in this body, maybe now I have the chance. Maybe I needed to be physically closer. It’s worth a try. We are in a spiritual vortex.

  And then I’d know.

  “Can you do me a favor?” I ask Sage. “I’ve been working on this yoga partner pose. . . . It’s really amazing and I’d love to do it here. . . . Would you help me out? It won’t take long.”

  Sage is a little weirded out by the request, but he agrees, so I have him sit on the floor with his legs in front of him, spread slightly apart. I sit across from him, my legs outside his, so his feet are pushing my legs apart. I reach my arms forward and have him grab and pull them until I’m folded over. It’s a fantastic stretch, but really it’s just an excuse to have Nico’s body close to me for a while, so I can concentrate. I take deep breaths, open myself up to the energy of Sedona, of the vortexes, and focus every bit of my being on reaching out to Nico’s soul.

  An eternity passes. My limbs ache. I can’t hold this position much longer, and I’m sure Sage’s patience is running thin.

  This isn’t accomplishing anything.

  “Rayna?”

  That voice. It’s Nico’s—the way it sounded before Sage came in and made it rougher somehow. I’m so surprised I almost let go, but I don’t. I grab tighter and lift my head so I can look into his eyes.

  His blue eyes.

  Nico’s whole face lights up when I meet his gaze. He smiles . . . the same smile he had when he asked if I’d marry him one day.

  It lasts only an instant, then he squeezes his eyes shut . . . and when he opens them again they’re brown once more. Did I imagine it?

  “All stretched out?” Sage asks.

  “Yeah,” I say. “Thanks. And thanks for breakfast.”

  “My pleasure,” he says. He gets up and extends a hand to help me. I can only stare as he walks out of the room.

  I didn’t imagine it. It was real. It was a sign. It has to be. Nico’s soul—at least part of it—is inside that body. I reached it.

  Now I have to release it. But if I do, I destroy Sage.

  What should I do?

  I wrestle with it all morning, then go downstairs to find Ben and Sage stressing about Clea. Transitions has yet to call and say we can visit her. That’s a more immediate thing to worry about, so I put my focus there. The three of us keep looking at our cell phones, picking them up, checking the volume and the messages.

  By early afternoon, none of us can handle being cooped up. I’m out of the pool, the guys are out of the inn, and we’re all trying to stay sane in the yard. Sage paces like a lion, Ben bites his nails, and I attempt to calm myself with yoga, even though I keep toppling over because I can’t concentrate on any poses.

  “Screw this!” Sage finally snaps. “We should just go drag her out of there.”

  “Oh yeah,” Ben laughs. “Clea’s real big on the ‘drag her out of there’ approach.”

  “You’d rather we just sit around and wait?”

  “No,” Ben says. “We’ve waited long enough. We call. Rayna, you do it. You’re the concerned sister.”

  “I’m the concerned brother!” Sage roars.

  “And when you flip out and scream at them like that, I’m guessing they’re not going to be so excited about letting us see Clea. Rayna?”

  The Transitions number is programmed in my phone.

  “Transitions!”

  “Hi, Spirit Bitsy! It’s me . . .” I completely blank on my fake name. Ben starts humming and doing some weird charades thing. I have no idea what he’s trying to say. “Charlotte’s sister.”

  “Oh . . . Clementine . . .”

  Clementine. That explains it. He was singing the song and peeling an orange. I never would have gotten that. My way was much easier.

  “Yes. My family and I really would like to visit Charlotte. Is now a good time?”

  “Now?”

  Whoa. That’s weird. I know they like their secrecy and all, but she sounds panicky. Why would she be panicky?

  “Yeah. We’re pretty close by. So now would be great. Maybe in
five minutes?”

  Ben and Sage can see on my face that something’s off. They both lean in close, and I put the phone on speaker.

  “I’m sorry. Spirit Charlotte can’t have any visitors right now. It’s a sensitive time.”

  “Sensitive how?” Sage asks, and even I jump at the threat in his voice.

  “Oh my! Am I on speakerphone?”

  Spirit Bitsy sounds even more frightened now, and Ben smacks Sage on the arm. “Yes, you are,” Ben says, “but it’s okay. We’re all here and just . . . eager to see Charlotte and make sure everything’s okay. Not that we think it’s not okay or anything. . . .”

  He winces at his own clumsiness, and I take the call off speakerphone.

  “Sorry about that. We’d just love to see her, that’s all. Maybe we can come by for a couple minutes.”

  “No.” Her voice is brisk now. “I’m afraid that’s impossible. Spirit Burnham said we’d call when she’s ready for visitors, and that’s exactly what we’ll do. Your sister signed papers giving us full discretion, and now is simply not an appropriate time. Thank you and good-bye.”

  “Well done,” I say after she clicks off. “You totally spooked her.”

  “It’s not like she was letting us see her anyway,” Ben grumbles.

  “No, but now we can’t even show up there without the whole place freaking out.”

  “She was hiding something,” Sage says. “Clea’s in trouble. We need to get her out.”

  “How?” I ask. “There’s no knob on the door. You think they’re going to buzz us in?”

  We all think about it, then Ben starts nodding. I keep expecting him to pop out with some kind of plan, but he doesn’t.

  “Are you going to tell us, or are you nodding about something that has nothing to do with Clea?”

  “We can get in,” he says. “But we’ll need help.”

  Ten minutes later we’re in the kitchen talking to Molly, whose wide eyes and forced smile make it clear she doesn’t want us to know her true thoughts. “She’s at Transitions! How lovely. I’m sure it’s doing her a world of good.”

  “We don’t actually believe in that stuff,” Ben says. “Neither does Clea. She’s a reporter.”

  “Oh, thank goodness,” she says on a whoosh of breath. “We get a lot of those people here. They’re so kooky!”

  It’s a good sign, and when we explain that our reporter friend might be having trouble undercover and we want to help her, it’s easy to get her on board. She uses her cell phone to call Transitions, tells Spirit Bitsy a story about her struggle to come to an agreement with Audrina, a spirit who’s ready to take over her body, and asks for an appointment to talk. Spirit Bitsy tries to put her off until the next day, but Molly is surprisingly convincing in her sweet-as-pie way and manages a meeting just two hours later. They’re the longest hours in history, but eventually they pass, and we all climb into Molly’s enormous SUV. When we get close, Ben and I lie flat in the trunk area, while Sage crouches down as best he can in the foot wells of the backseat. We brought along some old blankets, and with them tossed over us, it’s unlikely any camera will notice that the car is occupied by anyone other than Molly.

  I can’t see what’s going on at all, but I know the plan. I know when the car slows to a stop that she’s pulling as close to the front door as she can without it seeming odd. I hear her open and shut the car door.

  “Get ready,” Ben whispers. He rises up just enough to see out the window, and I shift to my elbows and put a hand on the latch for the back. If all is going well, Molly’s buzzing the intercom, and any second now . . .

  “Go!” Ben says.

  I pull the latch, and Ben and I leap out the back hatch while Sage races out of the backseat. We storm the front door, where Molly has positioned herself beautifully in the threshold, so a shocked Spirit Bitsy can’t close the door on her.

  “What are you doing?” Spirit Bitsy asks us.

  “Taping,” I say, indicating my cell phone camera, which I hold up to get everything. “Smile!”

  Bitsy flies at me like a perturbed moth. She tries to grab for the phone, but she can’t accomplish it with her gnarled hands, so she just jumps up and down and waves her arms, flitting in front of my lens. “We don’t allow photography here!” she squeals. “Stop!”

  Sage moves right next to her. He dwarfs her, and I’m not positive, but I think she wets herself a little when he screams down at her, “WHERE IS SHE?”

  We hear footsteps, and Burnham Brightley walks in, flanked by two large men holding drawn guns.

  “Got the guns on camera, Rayna?” Ben asks.

  Oh. Good idea. “Yup, got it!”

  Brightley waves his hand, and the guards clip their guns back on their belts. Brightley takes a second to adjust his completely unfashionable—unforgivably so with the Birkenstocks—white suit, smooth his blatantly receding hair, and plaster a smile on his face before he strolls toward us. “I’m sorry,” he says. “Is there some kind of trouble?”

  Sage leaves Bitsy’s side to lean on Brightley. They’re actually about the same height, but Sage is far more muscular, and the way all his tendons and veins are popping out has to add another several inches of girth. He’s like a less green version of the Hulk.

  “We’ll make trouble,” Sage says. “Where’s Clea?”

  “Charlotte,” I say. “Spirit Charlotte.”

  “Are you threatening me?” Brightley asks. “Spirit Bitsy, please call the police. These trespassers are threatening me.”

  “I wouldn’t do that, Bits,” Ben says.

  Bits? I roll my eyes. Ben seems to think he’s in some kind of old black-and-white detective movie. His voice even sounds weird. Is he trying to do Humphrey Bogart?

  “We’re reporters,” he says. “Call the police and we’ll e-mail this video as the start of a huge exposé that’ll put you out of business.”

  Brightley doesn’t look particularly worried, but he does give a slight nod to Spirit Bitsy, who takes her hand off the phone. “The only thing your video ‘exposes’ is your own illegal push onto my property.”

  With the back of the lobby open to the grounds, people are starting to walk over and gawk. “What’s going on?” asks an old man. He’s more wrinkled than a shar-pei and wears a tiny hot-pink Speedo. I get him on camera immediately.

  Brightley gives him a smile. “Nothing, Spirit Angus. We were all just about to adjourn to my office.”

  “No, we weren’t,” I say. “We like it right here.”

  “This is all completely uncalled for,” Brightley says. “Spirit Charlotte signed papers entrusting us to make her decisions for her. If we don’t feel it’s in her best interest to see people, that’s our prerogative.”

  “You don’t have her signature,” Ben says. “Her name isn’t Charlotte, it’s Clea. Clea Raymond.”

  If that was supposed to be a bombshell, it’s an epic fail. There’s not the slightest flash of recognition on anyone’s face.

  “Her mom’s a senator,” I say. “Victoria Weston. She’s a big deal. The whole family is. You can Google them.”

  “And Senator Weston will be exceptionally upset if she thinks Clea’s being held against her will,” Ben says. “I’m talking check-your-tax-records, make-sure-all-your-books-get-audited . . . that kind of upset. Plus, she’d probably look into your program, your accreditation, all those kinds of things. . . .”

  The crowd of gawkers has grown, and Brightley looks severely uncomfortable. I’m uncomfortable too, but that’s mainly because 90 percent of the people wear a shade of blue that should never be seen outside a baby’s room.

  “Against her will?” Brightley laughs. “That’s absurd. Of course you can see her. Spirit Bitsy? Spirit Bitsy, can you get Miss Raymond? And her things?”

  Spirit Bitsy is bent over the computer, but leaps up when he repeats her name. “I apologize. I was just Googling the senator. It’s true, she’s quite powerful! And to think her daughter’s a transitioner!”

  I o
pen my mouth to tell her Clea’s not really a transitioner, but judging by all the excited murmurs from the baby-blue-clad gawkers, that’s what they want to run with.

  “Just recognize that you’re interrupting the transitioning process by seeing Miss Raymond right now, and you may well scare off her burgeoning new spirit forever.” He says it to us, but it’s totally for the gawkers, who murmur their deep concern.

  This place is freaking me out. I want to get Clea and get out of here.

  It takes ages, but finally Spirit Bitsy comes back. She has one of Clea’s hands pinched between her arthritic fingers and pulls her along like an oversize toddler. A lot like an oversize toddler, since Clea totters on the balls of her feet and looks around at everything with a huge smile on her face.

  I don’t know what they gave her, but Clea is blitzed.

  “Sage!” she screams, and jumps into his arms, wrapping her legs around his waist and her arms around his neck. Then she giggles. “You caught me. I knew you could catch me!”

  I’m taping her now, but not for the plan. This is torture material I’ll keep with me for the rest of our lives.

  “What did you give her?” Sage asks.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Brightley answers, cool as can be.

  Sage looks like he’s going to eat Brightley alive, but Ben steadies him with a hand on his arm.

  “Whatever it is,” Ben says, “you’d better hope it wears off without a problem, or you know who we’ll be calling.”

  We pour out of the building, and I’m thrilled when the door to Transitions slams shut behind us. It’s not a place I ever want to see again.

  thirteen

  CLEA

  My head throbs. Whatever they shot me with at Transitions left me with a migraine the size of Everest.

  I remember everything, though. Even things I don’t want to remember, like hurling myself on Sage and clinging to him like a tree frog. Embarrassing. I was a scrambled mess, but I kept it together long enough to tell Sage, Ben, and Rayna all about Magda and what she said.