“Why aren't you scared of the Reapers?” she demanded of her brother, glaring at the counter.
Scowling, Jon dumped the last of the cookies en-masse, saving aside the least-burned cookie to try. He nibbled the edge before grimacing and, without looking, chucked the cookie over his shoulder into the can. “We handled Jane easily enough.”
“You got lucky,” Wendy said flatly. “Jane and the other Reapers won't let you sneak up on them again.”
“Fine then, Wendy-Wan-Kenobi, please teach this ignorant one the ways of the afterlife so that I can act all smug, too.”
“I'm not smug!” Wendy protested, stung. “It's just that there's more to the Never, more to Reapers, than you think, Jon.”
He crossed his arms over his chest. “Okay. Educate the plebeians. Make this whole afterlife thing worth our while. Because there's a pile of not-so-living bones in the trunk that is making me a touch schizoid, you know? I'm feeling all guilty on one hand and like a super-hero on the other hand. It's not a pretty feeling.”
“Jon, shut the hell up. You're acting like several flavors of wad, man,” Chel said, clambering to her feet and disappearing into the laundry room. She reappeared a moment later, ratty old towels overflowing from the rag basket now balanced between hip and forearm.
“Flavors of wad?” Eddie asked, bemused. “That's new.”
“Yeah. Jerkwad. Dickwad. Asswad. That's just my opinion, of course. Listening to you two is giving me a headache. Let Wendy talk and stop with the pucker-face.” She glanced at the ghosts. “And don't even get me started on you guys. You're guests. I don't care if you are dead or whatever; pipe down and be polite.”
Eddie belched, long and loud, before grinning at Chel. “What, I'm a guest now? I'm not family?”
“Okay, that's it, I'm done with all of you,” Chel grumbled, dropping the rag basket on Eddie's foot. He jerked back before realizing that the basket couldn't hurt him. Elle snickered and Eddie colored.
“Chel, come on,” Wendy said, feeling bad for smirking at Eddie's reaction and embarrassment. He deserved it though, the big flirt. “What do you want out of me?”
“More training would do for a start,” her sister grumbled. “Especially if other Reapers might be on the way.”
Scowling, Chel dropped back to her knees and grunted as she swept a hand under the counter, cursing beneath her breath. Curiously Wendy crouched down at Chel's level and saw that a ketchup bottle had spun out and lodged itself beneath the counter and against the wall. Loose hanks of her bleached blonde hair swung against Chel's cheeks as she shifted her head this way and that to try and get the best angle to wedge beneath the counter. “You did promise,” she grumbled. “About training.”
Wendy glanced at Jon. He seemed unhappy with the idea. “What about you, Jon? Are you certain?”
“Might as well, right?” Jon muttered as he picked up the ketchup bottle, examined it for cracks, and wiped it down with a sani-wipe before setting it in the fridge door. “I need to know how to control the Light, too. So no one else…” he swallowed thickly, and Wendy knew he was thinking about the Walker bones piled in the trunk. “…gets hurt.”
“Okay,” Wendy said, clapping her hands brusquely. “You two want to see the big time? Fine. Great. Time's short. Let's go out back.”
Five minutes later Wendy met Jon and Chel shivering in the backyard, clothed in nothing more than their underwear and shoes. Leftover batons from Chel's cheerleading days were on the ground at their feet, silver and sparkling. Jon's was tasseled.
“Is being in our frillies really necessary?” Jon asked. Wendy pointedly ignored the way he flushed as Jon glanced at Lily and Elle sitting on the bench in the side yard. Both girls were being polite, keeping their eyes at chest level and above, but Elle's smirk told Wendy that she'd been a lot less polite when Jon'd first stripped down.
“It's no worse than the beach,” Chel said, teeth chattering as she tilted her head back and looked at the moon hovering high above. “Colder than the beach by quite a bit, but it's not like we're nude.”
“Exactly. When Emma put me through my paces, I was nude…and armed,” Wendy said, gesturing to the batons. “I learned that your clothing can come with you if you concentrate hard enough. Pick up the sticks. They aren't hoity-toity sacrificial knives passed down through generations of Reapers, but they're pointy enough for poking.”
“Batons,” Chel corrected, reaching down and hefting the one near her left foot. “Not sticks.”
“Your clothing remains when you are the Lightbringer?” Elle asked, leaning forward and waving her hands in an S shape, indicating Wendy's curves with the swaying of her fingers. “We can never tell. You're too painful to look at.”
“It does,” Wendy replied. “Ghosts can't look straight at you, but other Reapers can if they concentrate. But that's not the important part. The part that really matters is the fact that you can bring stuff from the real world into the Never and from the Never into the living lands. Also,” she paused for effect, “from the dreamscape into the real world.” She'd only done that a couple times herself, but her siblings didn't need to know that.
“No!” Chel gaped. “We can bring stuff out of our dreams? Like a horror movie?”
“No,” Wendy said. “Not out of dreams, out of a dreamscape. Your dreams and a dreamscape are not the same thing. You'll learn more on that later. For now, we're going to work on you shifting from the physical world into the Never and back again. We need to build up your speed, right now that's the most important part. You're weakest in the in-between space between the physical body and the incorporeal, and the Walkers know that and will take advantage of it. Trained Reapers are scary-fast at switching, so you must get fast as quickly as possible. Otherwise, when we come up against Jane again you will get your ass handed to you.”
“What about you? Are you fast?”
Wendy thought about how their mom had purposefully kept her from any sort of useful application of her skills and snorted. “No. I'm not. I might have been, given enough time, but I didn't have enough practice before I landed in the hospital. I was fast enough to tag Emma a few times by the time we were done training, but Jane is faster than Emma by a long shot, and I have no clue how speedy Elise is. It's safest to assume faster than Jane. Do you get where I'm going with this?”
“Go back and forth asap, got it,” Chel said, bouncing from foot to foot and shivering in the cold. “But how?”
“Face off,” Wendy ordered. “Have the batons ready?”
“Seriously? Ugh,” Jon groaned. Behind him, crouched in the lemon tree's lowest branches, Piotr snickered.
“Tassel side up, Jon,” Wendy said coolly. “The other end is the counter-weighted one. Speed is of the essence here, not strength. Chel, whichever end is weighted on yours, put it in your palm.”
“This one's balanced,” she said, flipping hers up with her toes and snatching it out of the air. In the background Elle golf-clapped, chuckling.
“Chel already knows how to call the Light, Jon, and to sort of control it. You won't need to—”
“Are you kidding me?” Chel demanded. “You think Tubby McFatso here is going to get away scott-free when you were such a complete asshole to me?”
“Hey!” Jon protested as Wendy snapped, “I beg your pardon?!”
“You heard me, Chunky,” Chel said, glaring at her twin. “You got to cower in the car like a little girl while I went outside and did the real work.”
Jon flushed, scowling. “I was keeping the car running! Wendy told me to stay put! Unlike you, I listen when the person who knows what's going on talks!”
“Right, because you can't think for yourself,” Chel sneered. “I forgot.”
“You're being a real bitch,” Jon growled. “What's the deal, Michelle? You get a little bit of power and now you're crazy with it? And besides, what do you call burning those Walkers to just bones?”
“I call it torture. They still know what's going on, they just can't do anything a
bout it,” Chel snapped. “And, I'm not power-mad, I'm just sick of having to haul your heavy ass around, Dumbo. Do you know the sheer amount of shit I have to put up with every single day at school because your pathetic, loser ass is my twin brother?”
Sneering, Chel leaned forward and poked Jon in the gut with the baton. “‘Wendy's wrong about me, Chel’; ‘I'll go on a diet, Chel,’” she mocked him in a high, sharp falsetto. “Some diet, Jon. I saw you sneak a cookie out of the trash. Gross, man. Just disgusting.”
“Chel—” Wendy began, and started to step in between them, to play the peacemaker as always, when she caught a flash of Piotr gesturing at her from the corner of her eye.
Oh, Wendy realized. Jon has no idea how I woke Chel up to her Light, she was hidden by the mists. Chel's baiting him on purpose. She knows Jon better than anyone else. Chel's betting that the reason he couldn't control the Light with the Walkers was because he just wasn't mad enough.
Wendy glanced at Eddie and the girls, and then jerked her head in the direction of the house. Piotr nodded, understanding her concern, and dropped from the tree. He snuck up on Eddie and within a minute had the other spirits out of the backyard and traveling as far away as possible. If Jon accidentally reaped one of them while learning to wield the Light, he would never forgive himself.
Come on, Jon, Wendy rooted for her younger brother. She'd been harsh to him a time or two in her life, but Chel knew her brother the way she knew the contents of her makeup bag. Chel was a master at pissing her twin off; she could work him up in seconds and, Wendy was both pleased and irritated to notice, Chel's pointed accusations already had Jon at a high, blazing pitch. Her brother was trembling in rage; for a moment Wendy worried that he'd sock Chel across the jaw before he succumbed to the blaze within. She needn't have worried.
The furious flash of Light was blinding.
When Jon finally wound down, the heat coming off him was impressive. Wendy could feel it as far back as the kitchen door, where she'd settled to let the Light and Jon's struggle to draw it back inside run its course.
“What now?” he said, staggering toward Wendy, sagging from the energy expenditure required to call the Light.
Before she could call for him, Piotr appeared at her side, Eddie just behind him. They both had armfuls of old, rustling bones.
“Now,” Wendy said, resisting the urge to tussle her little brother's hair, “you send these guys on to their rest.” She gestured and the boys laid the bones at Jon's feet in two neat piles, turning their face away from the fiery glare burning in his palms.
Wendy was about to show Jon where to put his hands when the ground shivered beneath them. This time the earthquake barely shook the leaves. Mountain View was far enough away from the spirit web forest for the shockwaves to be minimal.
“There goes another soul,” Eddie grumbled, faster on the uptake than Wendy was. She had still been wondering where the quake had come from but knew as soon as he spoke that Eddie was right on the money. “Yay, another creepy beastie brought through. Welcome to the world.”
“What now?” Chel demanded as Jon knelt down and set the bones ablaze. The heat was immense. “Now that…more earthquakes are happening?”
“It changes nothing. As soon as he's done you two work on getting faster,” Wendy said, gesturing to the baton still dangling from Chel's fingers. “Face off. Go at each other as fast as you can, tapping as hard as you can. You have half an hour. Make it count.”
Forty minutes later found them back in the kitchen, Wendy eyeing the clock. There were maybe four hours until sunrise. It seemed so much later, like she'd been awake for weeks. She wasn't the only one suffering from sleep deprivation, though. Dressed in a pair of their father's old, warm sweats, Jon was finishing the cleaning. He had large purple circles beneath his eyes. Switching back and forth between the Never and the living lands had drained him.
Chel, on the other hand, was twitching with unspent energy. Despite her annoyance with the situation, Wendy was proud. The twins had managed to hit one another in both the living lands and the Never several times. Both were sporting long, baton-shaped bruises all over their bodies. Jon's left cheek was swelling and Chel had a particularly nasty bruise spreading from her right shoulder over her collarbone and snaking down her ribs. Their mom, if she could see them, would be so proud.
“Okay,” Chel said, bouncing on her toes as she scrubbed down the kitchen counter with a bleach wipe, “since that Reaper was poking through our stuff, it's obvious that we can't stay here. Time to pack and bail.” Chel threw the bleach wipe at the trash can. “The thing is, though, where do we go? Without Nana Moses to keep the other Reapers from gutting us, anywhere we run is going to be dangerous. Especially if naturals glow so brightly that ghosts can sense them anywhere.”
Everyone fell silent, pondering Chel's point.
“There may be one place you can hide,” Piotr said slowly, long after the silence had stretched to an uncomfortable pitch. He looked to Wendy for confirmation to continue. “But I do not know if it is wise.”
“What're ya thinking, flyboy?” Elle asked, leaning comfortably against one of the high stools at the counter.
“Clyde,” Piotr said, wincing. “He may be willing to set aside his animosity toward visitors for a short time. If properly compensated, that is.”
Lily bit her lip. “Oh.”
“That's a polite way of puttin’ it,” Elle agreed, tapping her fingernails against the metal back of the stool. “But if anyone can stash a baby Reaper so no one could find them, it'd be ol’ Clyde.” She licked her lips and looked first Chel and then Jon up and down. Her expression was so searching, so dark, that Wendy wondered what she was seeing. “He'll want salvage. Special salvage, knowing him.”
“Salvage is never a concern,” Piotr replied. “A short trip to the Treehouse—”
“Will get you gutted by waiting Walkers, most like,” Elle said, cutting Piotr off with a sharp wave of her hand. “Naw, dealing with Clyde you have to be smoother than bribing him. He's old-school.”
“Not that old,” Lily murmured. “I have been dead far longer. Most of the Riders have.”
“Old enough,” Elle said, rolling her eyes. “Old enough to take affront if we try to pay their way straight up. Nah, we have to barter with the man. See what he wants first, and then pander to that.”
“I don't like the sound of this,” Eddie said in an undertone to Wendy. “This Clyde guy sounds like some kind of mobster or something.”
“Even if he is, so what?” Wendy replied, not bothering to keep her reply quiet. “What choice do we have?”
“And that,” Elle said, straightening and lifting her arms above her head so that her skirt rode high on her thighs, “is the smartest thing anyone's said all night. Come on, let's go.”
“Wait, you really want to leave?” Jon said. He was white-knuckled, holding himself up with the counter, Wendy realized. The training session really had taken it out of him. “Really? They're just Reapers, Wendy.”
Troubled, Wendy refrained from glancing at Piotr or Lily for support. She knew that tone—Jon had reached some internal breaking point.
Compared to Chel's overdramatic, exuberant nature, Jon was mellow to the point of catatonia at times. After years of treating Chel gingerly, Wendy was used to thinking of her younger brother as rough and tumble, unflappable, but every now and then Jon would prove that he was more frail emotionally than she gave him credit for.
This was one of those moments; Wendy knew that after the things Chel had said to rile him up, Jon had to be treated delicately or else he might fly off the handle. He was sensitive about his weight at the best of times; the way Chel had ripped into him must have been difficult to bear, even if he now realized that there was an ulterior motive behind her unrelenting cruelty.
Flicking a glance at the way Jon was sagging, Chel pointedly cleared her throat beside Wendy, and Wendy had to force herself not to kick her sister in the shin. It might not connect anyway, Wendy conso
led herself, just keep talking.
“We don't have a choice, Jon,” Wendy said as kindly as she could. “We have to go.”
“Yeah, I don't think so,” Jon snapped, yanking his leg back and kicking the stool Elle had been leaning against hard enough to send it clattering across the kitchen floor. It hit the stove and rebounded, crashing to the tile and making Chel jump aside.
“Screw you,” he told Piotr. He pointed to Elle. “Screw you.”
“Excuse me?” Elle said dangerously, stepping beside Wendy, her hands balling into fists.
“Shut up, Elle,” Wendy hissed softly. “Just let him talk. He'll vent and it'll be done. He needs this.”
“Screw you and you and you,” Jon continued, pointing in turn to all the others in the room. “Screw all of you. I'm not dying for this family. I'm tired. Screw that, I'm exhausted! I'm not leaving my house, my stuff. I'm not going into hiding. I'm not going to run around town because some crazy-ass relatives of Mom's—”
“Jon—”
“—I've never even heard of think I'm some kind of ‘threat.’ I've called the Light, it's not that great, so I'm not going to be using it, okay?”
“Jon—”
“I'm just not, they'll figure that one out on their own, I'm sure. So I'm done. I'm out!”
Jon pushed past Chel and pounded up the stairs, yelling over his shoulder, “And, Chel, if you're smart you'll be out, too! Stop glamorizing death! It sucks!”
His door slammed.
“Smooth,” Chel said dryly, sitting at the kitchen table and rolling the peppermill between her hands so that pepper flakes sifted down across her knees like black rain. “Real smooth, Gothette. Way to make him see the light. Or the Light, as the case may be.”
“Shut up,” Wendy snapped. The stool lay on the ground and she was desperate to pick it up and right it but knew that she could do nothing about it. And all Chel was doing was sitting at the table and bitching? Wonderful, just great! Chance of getting burned or not, Wendy was tempted to take a swing at her sister. “This isn't on me. Did you have to be so cruel earlier?”
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