by Cege Smith
“I don’t understand why he always has to be so dramatic. He can use a door just like everybody else, but no. Always the ‘poof’ act to impress the girls,” Lucy said.
Ellie sat down on the bench beside Lucy because she needed a minute to collect her jumbled thoughts. Mikel’s touch completely unnerved her. A few seconds later, Lucy’s last words finally sunk in. “Impress who?”
“Well, you, of course,” Lucy said as if she was explaining something to a five-year-old. She picked up the wine glass and took a long sip. Then she set it down and licked her lips. “You are all he’s been able to talk about lately.”
Cold tingles crawled across Ellie’s skin. A lump formed in her throat, and it was when she felt the tight wetness sear up in the corners of her eyes that she knew the dam around her emotions was about to break open. Everything she ever knew said that crying was for the weak, especially crying in front of strangers. But the last several hours had set her on edge. Her world was completely turned upside down. There was no one left to trust. The deep knowledge that she was alone yet again, and alone in a place that no one in their right mind could ever imagine, was sending her over the edge. When the tears started to fall she didn’t stop them. Ellie was ready to give up. If only that would give her peace.
Lucy, who had been looking around with great disinterest, suddenly focused on Ellie and saw the tears stream down her cheeks. “Ellie!” Lucy scooted closer but stayed just outside the circle of air that Ellie would consider her personal space. “Have I said something to upset you? I’m so sorry. Tell me how I can make it better.”
She wasn’t sure, but Ellie thought that there was a note of sincerity in Lucy’s words and that broke the barrier holding her emotions in check completely open. She hadn’t cried like this even on the day that she found out her ex-husband had died in a horrible accident that was completely her fault. She hadn’t cried like this when she found Roni dead on the floor of their bathroom apartment. Ellie didn’t even think she cried like this on the day that she finally figured out that her parents were never coming home.
Lucy didn’t hesitate now. She wrapped her arms around Ellie and said nothing else. She just let Ellie cry it out. And Ellie did. After what seemed like a long time, Ellie finally pulled away and sniffled. She felt the heat rise up in her cheeks and wiped the remaining tears from her eyes. “Thanks. That was pretty dumb, huh?”
Lucy stroked her arm and then reached over and took the other wine glass. She handed it to Ellie as she looked her up and down. “Here. You need this. I feel like a jerk. Mikel didn’t tell me that you were still so new. I wouldn’t have been so flip. Trust me, alcohol helps.” She smiled her small smile again, and this time Ellie smiled back.
“So you see this a lot, huh?” Ellie took a deep gulp of the wine. It burned against the back of her throat but as soon as it was down she immediately felt a little buzz. Lucy was right. It did make her feel a bit better.
Lucy was biting her lower lip. She started to say something, looked away, and then looked back at Ellie again. She sighed and shivered. “Look, Ellie. I know that you have no reason to trust me. You don’t even know me. But I can tell already that you aren’t cut out for a place like this. Your soul is good and deserves something better. Being bound to someone like Mikel, and he’s not even the worst, will tear you up. He will spit you out to try to get at what he wants.” Lucy leaned forward and put her hands over Ellie’s. “Let me help.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
Ellie let Lucy’s words sink in. On one hand, having someone like her, whose abilities were obviously well respected by Mikel, could make her a powerful ally. But on the other hand, if the woman was playing her to find out if she was scheming against Mikel, trusting her would surely lead to something bad. She had to walk the line carefully until she could determine which side Lucy was landing on. It didn’t help that letting people in wasn’t an easy thing for Ellie even when she was fairly certain of their intentions. She missed being able to see auras, and she realized how much she had come to rely on her ability.
She set down her wine glass and put on her best poker face. She had to put enough into it to make it believable. Then she set her other hand on top of Lucy’s. “I could definitely use a friend here. Things are so different and I feel like I’m at a big disadvantage because I don’t know what I am supposed to be doing. But people keep acting like I’m something special and it’s scary. Back home I was just a big nobody. I just went through a divorce and felt like my life was finally getting back on track. Imagine my surprise ending up here instead.”
Lucy’s eyes softened. “Been there. I married my high-school sweetheart. Man I was dumb. Divorce sucks. You were a braver woman than I was if you went through with it,” Lucy said.
Revealing that piece of her life had been completely random, but Ellie realized that she had chosen well. She felt better knowing they had something in common, and seeing Lucy’s downcast stare made her feel for the small woman. She squeezed Lucy’s hand. “I’m not brave. I was a mess for a long time, and it was my decision. I thought I was a big loser and I didn’t deserve to have anyone care about me.”
Lucy looked up. “Well, you certainly aren’t a loser now. If that’s any consolation.”
Ellie wanted to know more, but she didn’t want to appear too eager. It was time to change the subject. “So you are a witch. That must make you pretty special around here too.”
Lucy shrugged. “What I can do is a bit more commonplace. Really anyone with a spellbook and a magical inclination can pick up magic. But Riphers. Wow. People like you don’t come around very often. It’s a pretty big coup if one of the bosses manages to snag one.”
The mention of “bosses” made Ellie’s blood run cold. “So, are you saying Mikel is a boss? Are there are more...men...like him?”
Lucy snorted. “The Afterlife isn’t that much different than what you would know as a large, powerful organization on the Other Side. There are a whole lot of us that are under the thumbs of a few elite, all-powerful men. Oh, and a woman.” She waved a hand in the air. “That’s really all irrelevant because right now, you are in here, in the Bradford mansion waypoint, and Mikel brought you here. He has big plans for you.”
The more Ellie found out about this place the less that she liked it. Since Lucy seemed willing to answer her questions, she felt like it was important that she take advantage of it.
“Maybe it’s irrelevant now, but I’d like to know more about those plans,” Ellie said.
“That’s not for me to tell, even if I knew it all. Mikel doesn’t trust anyone with all his secrets. We should focus on other stuff first. Once we get that all down, then I’ll tell you more about how things work around the big A. Deal?” Lucy held out her hand.
Although she didn’t want to admit it, Ellie sensed a kindred spirit in the woman sitting next to her. It wasn’t like her at all, but she was finding out that Ellie in the waypoint wasn’t the same as Ellie in Minnesota. She shook Lucy’s hand and then picked her wine glass up. “To the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”
Lucy giggled and clinked her own glass with Ellie’s. “I am so glad that this is where I got to go. Sometimes Mikel sticks me in places with people that aren’t nearly as cool. If you put in the good word for me, I bet he’d let me stay here for a while and then we’d get to hang out all the time.”
With those words, Ellie understood that she had leverage with Mikel if she needed to use it. While she didn’t know the details of the Afterlife yet, she sensed enough from Lucy’s descriptions that her waypoint was a place that was coveted and that being around Ellie gave both Mikel and Lucy some kind of prestige. Lucy appeared to be some kind of servant to Mikel, just like Jeffrey. Ellie wondered what his story was.
“I’m pretty helpless, so it’s pretty obvious that I need all the help I can get,” Ellie said, taking another big gulp of wine. She had always been a lightweight, but she felt like she was actually being charming and outgoing. Roni probably wouldn’t even
recognize her. If she was honest, she was quickly reaching the point where she didn’t recognize herself. “Since we’re going to be such good friends, maybe you should tell me a little bit more about yourself.”
At that, Lucy squirmed a little bit in her seat and looked away. She took a long draw on her wine and then the glass was empty. Lucy took the bottle off the table and refilled her glass. Pointing at Ellie’s glass, she refilled it even after Ellie shook her head. “I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt that you haven’t gotten the scoop on how somebody ends up like me; basically a sock puppet who is bound to Mikel’s every bidding. Someone like you is lucky; you can have a choice in the matter.”
Now it was Ellie’s turn to feel uncomfortable. She sensed that Lucy was being evasive for a reason. “I didn’t think you were a sock puppet to anyone. You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to. I totally understand not wanting to talk about it. I made that my personal mission in life to never talk about myself unless I absolutely had to.”
Lucy leaned back against the pillows. “It’s okay. I mean, it’s not like it’s a secret. In the big A, if you end up here by unnatural means, then you are going to wind up like me. Pretty much you end up being at the whim of whatever boss decides to use you. You are stuck doing whatever they want you to do, forever. Someone like me, someone with ‘special talents,’ means that they come looking for me more often.”
“Unnatural means?” Ellie was pretty sure that she understood what Lucy was gearing toward, but she wanted to be sure. She hoped that she was hearing it wrong.
Lucy yanked up the sleeves on her sweater. Ellie gasped. These weren’t the made-for-TV little cuts across Lucy’s wrists. Huge angry pink scars lit up her skin from her wrist all the way to her elbow. On her left arm there were two, on her right, three. “Oh yeah, I made sure that I wasn’t coming back. Too bad I didn’t know what I was trading up for,” Lucy said.
“I’m so sorry, Lucy,” Ellie said. In her mind she arrived on a thought that made her panic. Roni had taken her own life. Did that mean that Roni was out there somewhere, a servant to some evil boss who was making her afterlife miserable? She felt a great sadness sweep her as she felt some of those emotions transfer to Lucy.
Lucy tugged the sleeves of her sweater back down and sipped on her wine. “I’m not looking for your pity. It’s just something you need to know. I couldn’t control my power in my mortal life. Throw in a crazy husband and you have the makings of a disaster. My powers controlled me, and they made my life pretty miserable. Then there was the day that I hurt someone that I loved.” Lucy’s voice had dropped to almost a whisper and she wouldn’t meet Ellie’s eyes. “So I thought I could escape it. Lesson number one: anybody who is stuck doing a boss’s dirty work is probably someone who at one point thought their life was so horrible that they offed themselves to get away from it. Joke’s on us.”
Ellie thought about Jeffrey again and wondered what he had done to earn his place as Mikel’s henchman at the waypoint. She shook that thought from her mind. “I’m so sorry, Lucy. That sounds horrible. But you seemed pretty friendly with Mikel earlier. Maybe it’s not all bad?”
A frown appeared on Lucy’s face. “It’s not smart to get on a boss’s bad side, Ellie. I get some special privileges from Mikel because of what I can do. A lot of people, including that old curmudgeon of a butler that runs the show around here, probably thinks I’m pretty lucky because I can come and go freely as long as I’m on an errand for Mikel. But it’s all an illusion. Golden handcuffs are still handcuffs, you know?”
Ellie took another sip of her wine. She understood, and it made her heart hurt a little bit to think of what it must have been like when Lucy figured out that she had traded one hell for another. “Well, I didn’t mean to bring up such bad memories for you, Lucy. I can understand why you didn’t want to talk about it. So do all Riphers have a witch assigned to them?”
“Oh no,” Lucy said, shaking her head. She refilled her glass again. “But like I said, Mikel would probably give you whatever you asked for.” She cocked her head at Ellie. “I wouldn’t go advertising that you are a Ripher. That’s not going to win you a lot of friends around the big A. Just sayin’.”
Great, another thing to worry about, Ellie thought. “I’m sorry, Lucy. I guess with the transition to the waypoint and all I’m still a bit slow. Why did Mikel bring you here then?”
“He said that the two of you made a deal. Look, I’m grateful. Really. My last assignment was a total bore, but I wasn’t going to tell him that. At least helping a Ripher sounds a lot more exciting, and as long as you don’t want to kill anybody I’ll be in a job.”
“WHAT?” Ellie stood up and took a few steps back. The hair on the back of her neck stood up and the sense that the world was getting ready to collapse in on her returned. “Kill who? What are you talking about?”
Lucy looked confused. “You’re a Ripher. That’s what you do.”
“I don’t kill people,” Ellie argued.
“Hey, I’m not judging,” Lucy said, gulping another drink of wine. She looked nervous. “Like I said, as long as you feel that way it’s job security for me.”
“What exactly are you supposed to do here for me, Lucy?” Ellie demanded.
Lucy took a deep breath. Ellie was suddenly certain that the long pause was to ensure full theatrical effect. “In order to collect someone’s gift, they will have to die, Ellie. As in, they don’t get to have the choice of reincarnation. This is their last trip to the Afterlife. But Mikel is being cool about it. You do what you do, and then I’ll take care of the rest. So there’s nothing that you have to feel guilty about.”
Wiping a hand across her forehead, Ellie felt faint.
Then Lucy dropped the bomb. “I mean, Mikel told me that’s what you did with your ex. Jake I think his name was? Once you picked up his gift, it was pretty much lights out after that. Things work pretty much the same way on this side, except when someone gets snuffed out like that over there, they are gone. No Afterlife for them. No nothing.”
Ellie’s stomach knotted and black spots appeared in her vision. Jake had tracked her down here at the house to tell her about his dreams of her death. He finally confessed to her that he possessed a special gift that had been the primary cause of the rift between them during their marriage. It was something he had never been able to come to terms with, much less control. When he had been ready to leave, they hugged and she had felt a rush of warmth run through her body. On his way home, Jake was in a car accident that killed him. Another puzzle piece snapped into place.
“It’s because I was here, wasn’t it?” Her words were feeble in the air and she wondered if Lucy could even hear them. “I connected with him inside the waypoint and I took his ability to see the dead.”
“And then he died,” Lucy finished. She dug into her pocket and pulled out a nail file. As she started filing her nails, she continued. “I don’t exactly know how the whole Ripher thing all works, but I do know that once you’ve taken someone’s talent, then it’s all over. My way is going to be much more humane. I can make sure that their last few minutes are pure bliss.”
“I damned him then,” Ellie said dully. “He never gets an afterlife because of me?”
“Look, don’t beat yourself up about it,” Lucy said, busily filing away. “You didn’t know. It’s probably better if you don’t think about that anymore. It’ll drive you buggy. Good news is that I’ll be here to take care of that for you from now on.”
A witch and her own personal assassin. My parents would be so proud, Ellie thought.
At that moment, Ellie heard the tinkling of a small bell waft up from the lower level. Moments later, voices filled the second floor as she heard the doors open and it was obvious that the skiing group from the car accident were making their way downstairs.
“Oh goody,” Lucy said, jumping up. She downed the glass of wine and slammed it down on the table. “Dinner’s ready. I’m starving and I’m sure you are t
oo. C’mon, Ellie. I’ll race you to the bottom!” With that, Lucy bounded down the stairs.
As her stomach betrayed her, Ellie realized that she had no choice but to follow.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Entering the dining room, Ellie had a sense of déjà vu. She remembered being in the dining room the very first night that she was introduced to the mansion at Lillian’s impromptu dinner party. Looking back, she knew now that there had been nothing impromptu about it. That evening was the evening where everything in her life changed, and the grand plan to lure Ellie into the waypoint was launched into high gear. But then again it was the night of her first official date with David. As with everything in life, she had to take the good into consideration with the bad.
She paused in the doorway and watched the three young people joking with each other about where they were going to sit and how hungry they were. There was no sign that they even cared that they were literally on death’s doorstep. Lucy had clearly already introduced herself to them and was chatting with Will while Katie and Martin jostled with each other. Ellie counted the number of place settings on the table and frowned.
“Something wrong?” Jeffrey appeared at her elbow and she jumped.
“Oh!” she exclaimed, putting her hand to her chest. “You scared me. There’s only five place settings,” she said. She craned her neck to look back at the stairs. “Isn’t David coming to dinner?”
“I’m sorry to have startled you, Ellie. David told me after you retired that he was feeling a bit weak from his own experiences. I assume that he didn’t want to worry you by saying anything. He was concerned that you would be too worried about him to continue your own education about the waypoint and your role here, but he assured me that he was all right.”
That sounded like something the David she knew would do, but something about it didn’t sit quite right with Ellie. She thought he would have told her himself. He was acting so strangely. “Perhaps I’ll go up and check on him really quick before we get started,” she said, turning on her heel.