He grinned. “I can tell your active mind has already got some theories about all this.”
“You’re the Grim Reaper,” I blurted. “And you caught me.”
He didn’t say anything to that, just took a couple of steps closer. I stood, totally on guard, my hackles raised. When he saw how defensive I was, he stopped and held his hands up, like he was showing me he was harmless.
“Whoa, Jenny,” he said. “Out of everything you’re thinking, I certainly didn’t bring you here to hurt you.”
Jenny. If a ghost—or whatever solid form I was right now—could melt, I would’ve been another lotus pool.
“You’re the Grim Reaper,” I repeated, getting back on track, “and you came here to get me into the light.”
“Not unless you want to go.” He tilted his head. “But I’m getting the feeling that you’re more tied to earth than most. Some ghosts are like that, though, at first. It takes some time for them to get bored with what’s down there.”
“So you’re going to let me go now?”
“Damn, Jenny. You talk too much.”
He took another easy step closer, and with the sound of my nickname still rolling through me, I actually allowed it.
And he took another step—he was so close now, I could catch the scent of the soap he’d always used. Something clean that had mixed with the sea salt on his skin.
I could almost feel his warmth, too.
But if he was something spiritual, how could he be warm? Was coldness reserved just for garden-variety ghosts like me?
My breathing was coming faster, and for a moment I could almost believe that this really was Dean, maybe because I wanted to believe it with everything I had. Everything I’d lost.
His smile grew as he saw how he was affecting me. “Looks like I sure picked the right identity to interest you.”
And—bam—just like that, I was back to being defensive.
But he clearly liked playing around with me, this guy. And he didn’t give up just because of my mood change; he only looked into my eyes, his own gaze going as soft as a tough guy’s gaze ever could.
“Come here, Jenny,” he whispered. “You know you want to. You’re curious. You’re thinking, ‘Is he really Dean? If not, just how well can he imitate everything about him?’” Another grin. “I can assure you that I don’t disappoint.”
I shook my head, recalling what’d happened when I gave in to him back at the Edgett mansion.
“Remember the last time I kissed you?” he asked.
Not fair.
“You aren’t Dean,” I said, like these were magic words that’d shoo him off. “You never kissed me.”
“Why don’t you come here and find out for sure?”
“No.” I kept shaking my head, lowering my gaze so I didn’t have to look at him.
Too tempting.
Too much.
When I felt his fingers on my cheek, I nearly jumped out of my body because of the heat of him, the sparks he created inside me.
How could this be happening, though? Whenever I made contact with anyone as a ghost, I gave them chills.
What kind of place were we in that the rules didn’t apply anymore?
Shivers cascaded down the skin that I had in this place—shivers of longing that I thought I’d never be able to feel again.
“That’s right,” he said quietly, even closer now. “You can feel this way for the rest of your existence. For a ghost, there’s only coldness, isn’t there? You’ll never be able to touch anyone like this again—especially not the real Dean. Besides, you saw him today, and he was old, not the same boy you remember. He was nearly unrecognizable.”
“So are you.”
He only laughed at that.
When his fingers trailed down my cheek to my jaw, my stomach tumbled, bringing the heat to the same rogue places that’d gotten so excited when I saw Gavin earlier tonight.
But this was . . . different. This was my Dean.
Or the closest I’d ever get to him again.
“I could make you so happy,” he said. “Just like you should’ve been. You only have to say yes to me.”
Yes, I thought, because somewhere deep inside, I still loved him.
And it was this part of me that started shooting off silent questions: So what if this version of Dean wasn’t real? Wasn’t I feeling something that felt better than anything I had now, down on the earth? Wasn’t that a far improvement from coldness and invisibility and nothingness?
He was offering me something so much better. . . .
As he stroked my skin, that yes was on the tip of my tongue.
But, out of the corner of my eye, the twinkle of one of those stars kept me from answering.
There was something . . . off . . . about those stars. Something about the shapes that I wasn’t quite understanding yet.
There was something very wrong about all of this—
I jerked away from “Dean,” wiping my jaw on my shirt, like that was going to erase him from me. It didn’t—my skin still burned where he’d touched me—but it was a good show.
“No,” I said.
He didn’t look disappointed as I took a couple of steps away from him. In fact, he seemed cockier than ever, with an expression that said, “You’ll come around.”
I almost expected him to pursue me as I increased the distance between us, but he was just standing there, as cool as shade.
And that’s when I realized that this . . . thing . . . might not be as powerful as I’d feared.
“You can’t force me to do what I don’t want to do,” I said, “can you? You can’t force me to kiss you, to give in to you . . . or to go into the light.”
He hooked his thumbs in his belt loops, his T-shirt slumped just over his hands. He grinned that arrogant “I’m still not worried” grin.
Then I found out why.
A rumbling shook the nonexistent floor, and I wobbled down to my knees, off balance. When the clear floor began to crack, fragmenting around what seemed to be the center of the quake, Dean or the angel of death or—hell, what should I call him?—merely turned around and walked away from me, one hand up in a casual farewell.
“Another day, Jenny,” he said as a hole wrenched open and I dropped through it.
I grasped onto the edge, swinging in space.
Was he trying to kill me?
If I could even be killed?
As I dangled in the sky, watching him through the clear floor, praying that I wouldn’t fall farther, I noticed that the back of his jeans was missing that pocket Dean had once given to me.
Dean.
Stupidly, automatically, I found myself reaching up my free hand in his direction, like I wanted to stay with him.
But then I focused on a star that was closer than the others, and just as I was beginning to see a certain shape to it, the hole snapped open wider, and I lost my grip, tumbling down into a travel tunnel.
And going fuck knew where the Grim Reaper was sending me this time.
4
I was spit out into the night in front of Amanda Lee’s main house, skimming the ground until I finally landed in her garden.
Right away, I knew I had a ghost body again when I shot upward, the thorns in the bed of roses parting my essence.
“Crap!” I said, even as my “body” knit back together. Without dwelling on fake Dean, I headed over to the light in Amanda Lee’s window. I was busting with all the information I’d found out during the Edgett visit and my side trip to purple-haze limbo.
Amanda Lee was gonna freak out when she heard what I’d been through, wasn’t she?
On my way to the window, I noticed that the sky was nearly black, without all that many stars in it—totally different from the sky I’d just been in.
Even though I couldn’t explain any of it, I came to her window, thinking that she, of all people, could maybe offer some insight.
But since she was the one who always approached me for a discussion, I mulled over ho
w to let her know I needed to talk.
I thought of all the ghost movies I’d ever seen, where trees scratched against windows to get the attention of someone inside a house, just like a spirit was manipulating the branches.
But how could ghosts do that?
And wouldn’t it be nice if I had a master ghost to teach me these things?
I focused on what was around the window frame—a bush, which was too low to scratch at the panes. Flowers in a window box—too soft to make sounds against the glass.
Then I saw a pair of gardening shears in the box.
You think?
I’d never done shit like this before, so I did what came naturally. I concentrated, picturing the shears rising and then tapping on the window with the handle, like I was an awesome Jedi.
And . . . I wasn’t. At all.
The shears hadn’t gone anywhere, so I tried again.
Shouldn’t this be working if I had the electromagnetic boogaloo in the air on my side? Plus, Amanda Lee had speculated that I was made of energy, too, and now that I was back on the earth from that star place, I could feel the currents in me, keeping me together. If I could manipulate the computer and TV with my electricity, why not something more physical, too?
I stared at the shears, trying to decide how to go about this, and—
Whoa! Without concentrating too hard, I totally Jedied them, making them hover in the air.
How about that?
But when I directed the shears toward the glass, only intending to tap-tap-tap it with the plastic part, I somehow screwed up.
The shears whipped around, just as if they had a mind of their own, and zing! They were out of control.
Crash, went the blades, right through the window.
Damn, went Jensen.
Screeeeammm, went Amanda Lee inside the room.
I zipped toward the glass-sharded hole as the shears dropped back into the box.
“Sorry, Amanda Lee. It’s just me. Don’t be scared.”
A few seconds later, when she pushed the curtain aside and peered out, I offered my most all-American-girl smile and shrugged.
She tried to smile as she inspected the damage, blowing it off, but I could tell she was calling on her patience.
I said, “This was my first time manipulating something physical like that. I need to refine my technique.”
“You will.” She looked me over good, from head to toe. “You’ve got a colorful glow. What happened tonight?”
Oh, was I a shade warmer than my usual gray? Fake Dean had probably gotten something started in me before his star place floor had cracked open and swallowed me up.
“I can’t explain any glow I might have,” I said. “All I can say is that tonight was . . . interesting.”
“How interesting?”
I figured I should start off with the Edgetts, so I began with Noah and Wendy’s fight in the kitchen, their older sister Farah’s appearance, then built up to big brother Gavin.
Naturally, I left out the part in which he was much more attractive in real life than in a picture. That wasn’t important.
In the end, a superficial explanation wasn’t enough for Amanda Lee.
“Were you capable of intuiting anything from him?”
“Are you asking if I could touch him and read his mind or something?”
“You don’t have that capability?”
I didn’t say much about that, because earlier in the day, I’d caught only a flash from Amanda Lee’s closed mind. And it wasn’t like I’d had contact with any other humans to know if I could infiltrate their thoughts or feelings.
“I’m finding out what I’m capable of by the hour,” I said. “But I didn’t have a chance to get real close to Gavin. Just from seeing their family dynamics, though, I can tell you he’s definitely the boss of the house. He’s also more perceptive than your average bear.”
“What do you mean by that?”
I guess Amanda Lee wanted me to be more plainspoken. “It was almost like he knew I was there, watching them.” I described when he’d walked over to me at the screen door, where I’d been standing, as if he’d vibed me. “Wendy might be sensitive, too.”
Amanda Lee didn’t say anything. The curtain was draped over the back of her so I couldn’t see into her house, and I felt like she was in one world and I was in another.
But wasn’t that the truth?
Finally, she spoke. “So that’s all you got from him. Superficial impressions.”
“Pretty much. I was about to go into the mansion when . . .” All right. How should I explain the Dean part?
Here went nothing. “I think I ran into the angel of death tonight.”
Maybe I should’ve finessed that a little more, because Amanda Lee literally reared back, her hand to her chest.
“He obviously didn’t get me,” I said, trying to chill her out.
“Why would you think it was an angel of death?”
“For one thing, he was hoping I’d go into a light.” I described the lotus pool, the purple, the stars, the nonexistent floor that’d still managed to hold me up. I even told her about how I’d felt human again, flesh and blood.
A little too much of both, really.
Still, I didn’t inform her of the effect he’d had on me. Between fake Dean and Gavin, she was going to think I was some kind of undependable horndog or something.
Even so, I was actually enjoying the possibilities of what I could do; I was feeling my supernatural power more and more as each night passed. And I was coming to realize that Amanda Lee was right—I really could make a difference.
I had the ability to settle scores now.
As a person, I hadn’t done much of anything in life. Who knew that dying would bring such opportunity?
After I told Amanda Lee about how the angel had assumed Dean’s appearance, she graduated to looking absolutely horrified.
“That’s how he was going to lure you into the light?” she asked. “By pretending he was the boy you loved?”
“See, that’s the thing.” I shook my ghost head. “This angel, or what-have-you, was honest about not being Dean. I mean, he seemed tickled that I was responding to how he looked and everything, but he kept going back and forth with actually acting like him. I think he was getting his jollies by toying with me.”
Amanda Lee frowned. I was coming to learn that her frowns were more serious than the others I’d encountered in life. She frowned only when something struck her as pretty bad.
A second later, she was back to normal, smiling at me like a cool mom. “The most important thing is that you got away from him.”
“Yeah,” I said, making like it was no biggie. “I managed. He finally got frustrated with how I wasn’t giving in to him and . . . Well, he might’ve actually just dismissed me out of sheer irritation. But whatever works to my benefit, you know?”
“And he couldn’t force you into the light.” Was there a thread of respect winding through her words?
Excellent.
“That was my impression.” I paused. “Truthfully, I can’t tell you much more about that star place. If it’s above or below us, or if it’s a plane that comes and goes in the blink of an eye.”
She fixed that clear gaze on me. “No matter what it is, I’m happy that you’re back here, safe.”
Just as I thought that maybe Amanda Lee would invite me in for the equivalent of ghost biscuits and tea, she gestured toward her front door.
“To the casita?” she asked.
All right.
She stepped away from the window, the curtain dropping back over it. A tiny breeze blew through the hole in the glass, ruffling the material.
I had to be more careful. Not spaz out so much with things like, oh, gardening shears and some such.
After I flew around the house, I saw Amanda Lee standing outside, below the glow of her porch lamp on her pink sweet pea–lined walkway.
When she caught sight of me, she began strolling toward my casita.
“While you were gone, I did more thinking.”
Was she going to tell me that she’d been overreacting earlier when she mentioned that she and her friend Jon wanted Elizabeth’s killer to pay an eye for an eye?
Nope.
“So . . . about haunting a confession out of him.” She was talking about Gavin, but just didn’t want to give a name to the guy she believed was a killer. “I think I know a good way to go about that.”
“By seeing if he’s guilty first. We already agreed on that.”
“Certainly.” She pushed open the casita door and I followed her in. “You shouldn’t doubt that this will be a genuinely righteous haunting. But before now, I wasn’t certain about the details of driving him to a confession.”
This woman was a hard-core general, by God.
She went over to the computer, turning it on, and I felt the needling buzz from it.
“Despite the hour,” she said, “I called Jon in England to talk, and he mentioned something worrisome. He wanted to know if there was any way we might end up being connected to this haunting.”
“You and Jon?”
“Yes. We can’t afford for anyone to know we would be behind a confession from the killer. In fact, we need that confession to seem as unforced by human influence as possible. The haunting has to seem natural, with no ties to Jon or me whatsoever.”
I prepared to ask “Why?” again, but Amanda Lee raised an eyebrow.
“You’re thinking like a human who doesn’t know spirits exist. If you were the killer, and you came to a point where you realized that a ghost was after you and haunting you because of a crime you committed, what would you do? And don’t allow anything to inhibit your imagination.”
She’d never really asked me to strategize in major supernatural terms before. “Since Gavin has money, he can afford just about anything, so . . .”
Amanda Lee jumped in. “What if he got ahold of someone who could send other ghosts to stop the one that’s haunting him?”
I just stared at her, and the lyrics from a Kinks song ran through my head. Paranoia, the destroyer . . .
“It’s just a theory,” she said, “but not out of the question. An open-minded individual could very well defend himself against a haunting. Another ghost—a stronger one—could even get information out of you that a human wouldn’t be able to.”
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