Only the Good Die Young

by Chris Marie Green

  Maybe it just took a séance.

  Farah went slack and Noah hugged her to him. Gavin slowly stood.

  “It’s out,” he said to Amanda Lee. “Will that be all?”

  My thoughts were fuzzy, but even I knew that Gavin was wrong. Whatever had flown through the window wasn’t me. The family was far worse off now.

  Amanda Lee clung to her Virginia accent, even as her voice quavered. “Let me fortify your house, just to be—”

  “No. We’re done here. Thank you, Ms. Dantès.”

  I thought for sure that Amanda Lee was about to tell him she’d messed up, but Gavin stepped away from the table, indicating she could leave.

  “You did what you came here to do,” he said. “We’ll be fine.”

  Amanda Lee paused, then cut her losses and gathered her crystal ball into her arms.

  Wendy just stared at the broken window.

  There was a movie I’d seen on Amanda Lee’s TV after I’d been pulled from my loop. The Silence of the Lambs. Jodie Foster, awesomely grown-up from Freaky Friday, had been an FBI trainee on the trail of a serial killer, and in one scene, she’d gone into a warehouse, where she’d found a jar with a head in it.

  She’d had the same enthralled, fearful look on her face Wendy had right now.

  As Amanda Lee left the room, she passed Constanza, who’d come to the entrance. The maid produced a small hissing sound as Amanda Lee walked by, hugging the crystal ball, ignoring her. Or maybe not hearing her because of the worry of what she’d accidentally unleashed.

  When the front door shut and Amanda Lee was gone, Constanza talked calmly to the family.

  “You don’t like her, Mr. Gavin. Me, either. So we let her go. But she was correct in one matter. Let me call someone who can make the house safe right away so the spirit never visits again.”

  “It’s finished, Constanza,” Gavin said, his gaze dark.

  “I know of a woman from my church,” she said doggedly. “I saw what went out the window, and I must call her tonight so we never have to worry about this again.”

  Even in my fear-lined state, I knew she was talking about getting a cleaner in here.

  18

  I took the quickest way out of the mansion to catch Amanda Lee—the broken window.

  I didn’t even think about what might happen if that dark spirit was waiting outside. Didn’t even stop to remember how my new friends had told me that meeting bad ghosts was rare and, good God, what was this one doing here?

  I exited just in time to see Amanda Lee’s car tear out of the driveway and onto the road. I had to haul ass, but as she squealed around a corner, I hitched onto her roof and hooked my essence into the thin crack that she’d left in her window.

  Then I leaned against the glass, shaping part of myself into a fist and banging.

  “Amanda Lee!”

  When she heard me, she jumped in her seat and swerved the steering wheel, almost veering into the next lane, where a car was coming.

  For an endless split second, it felt like this was a replay of that car accident hallucination I’d given her the other night, with the headlights coming straight at us. . . .

  Amanda Lee hit the brakes, skidding to a beach-view turnoff near a guardrail, dust rising as she cut the engine and fell against the steering wheel.

  Still against the window, I watched her weeping, her proud figure collapsed into an emotional mess. But I was weak enough to lose my posture, too. That dark spirit had scared me, and I was just now feeling it.

  Sinking over the edge of the window, then down the inside of it, I hunkered into the backseat, letting Amanda Lee cry great wrenching sobs.

  She spoke around them. “I have no idea what I let loose tonight . . . Goddamn it, how could I have been so arrogant?”

  Because you always believe that your way is the best way, I thought. And it backfired.

  I didn’t think I needed to tell her that, though.

  She shook her head, swallowing, coming up to wipe a hand over her face and push off those glasses. “What did I do, Jensen? Oh God, Liz would hate me. I wouldn’t ever have summoned something that dark, even by mistake, when she was alive. I wouldn’t have gone to these lengths, but it’s just that . . .” She glanced in the rearview mirror as I rested in back. Her eyes were red. “Sometimes I’m the one who feels dead and emotionless without her here. I don’t even recognize myself anymore.”

  She trailed a hand down her face so hard that she left long, faint red marks from her fingernails, like she was punishing herself. But she seemed to realize that she was crumbling, and she drew in a quivering breath, taking really good stock of me behind her in that mirror.

  “But just look at you,” she said. “You’ve lost all the color you had. Goddamn me, I’m so, so sorry.”

  “I’m fine.” I’d been through worse.

  “You’re barely fine. That . . . thing attacked you. It came out of nowhere.”

  I didn’t tell her that I planned to make matters better by rising to the power lines in a minute, just for a mini-fill-up. And I wouldn’t stay too long here in the car with her because the cleaner was coming to the mansion, and I had one last chance at Gavin, because I was sure this ghost chaser would spirit-proof his office and car and wherever else he was going to be, too.

  When Amanda Lee had calmed down, I injected some levelness back into our conversation. “Can you tell me what that dark thing was?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe an entity that was attached to the property, a relative who’s still clinging to the family . . . I was going to ask if you saw more of it than I did. Did it look like it might be your fake Dean?”

  “No.” Then again, how could I be sure? I had no idea what that “keeper, not a reaper” looked like under its facade.

  She began shaking her head again and wouldn’t stop. “I opened a portal. When Wendy mentioned it to me before the séance, I was so sure I could keep everything under control, but something was waiting to come through. It happened so fast, and if that something hadn’t been hanging around . . .” A sob shuddered through her. “Do you think it was Liz, and she became so angry in the afterlife that she’s a dark sprit now?”

  Oh my God. “No, Amanda Lee. It couldn’t have been Elizabeth. She loved you and would never do that to you and . . .” Should I tell her? Could I trust fake Dean’s information enough?

  Like that mattered anymore.

  “I know that Elizabeth moved on after she died,” I said. “Don’t ask me how. You just need to believe what I’m telling you.”

  She turned to me with her tearstained face, hope filling her eyes. “Do you think it’s true?”

  Without hesitation, I nodded. “With my entire heart.”

  Who was lying now?

  The news seemed to strengthen her. Maybe, later, she would come to doubt me, but sometimes we believe what we need to in order to go on.

  As the occasional car drove by on the road behind us, I expected the hard-core general to take Amanda Lee over again. But her voice was still unconfident, shaky.

  “That dark spirit truly wanted to announce itself tonight.”

  “It did the job. But what interests me is that message it left. ‘You will pay.’ Who was it talking about?”

  Amanda Lee sent a slow glance to me. “Any one of us in that room. Me. You.”

  Gavin? I thought.

  But if the dark spirit wasn’t Elizabeth, why would it be after him?

  A terrible notion nudged me. “What if Wendy was right on? What if her mom came back and . . .”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know. That family is so damned cold and messed up that there could be a million scenarios.” A million family secrets that we hadn’t uncovered yet.

  “The spirit flew out of the house, though, didn’t it?” Amanda Lee asked, still fixated on the dangerous part. “It did leave.”

  “Yeah. I think you expelled it. And the Edgetts seem to believe that I was that spirit and the house is now free of a haunting. But
their live-in maid talked to them after you left and she’s calling a cleaner to make sure the mansion is extra safe.”

  Amanda Lee nodded, giving me another mortified glance in the mirror. “I’m glad the cleaner is coming. I shouldn’t have done what I did to Wendy, and not only will a cleaning keep her safe, but it’ll put an end to any poltergeist speculation.” She sighed. “It was one thing for me to talk about collateral damage during a haunting, but actually seeing what happened tonight when that spirit crashed the séance . . . it’s not just talk anymore. It’s real.”

  “No shit. By the way, I was trying to stop you from framing Wendy.”

  “I noticed, and I almost didn’t carry through. Then . . .”

  I took an educated guess. “Then you thought of our mission.”

  She nodded, the tears teeming in her eyes again.

  “Amanda Lee,” I said. “I want to stay here with you, but the cleaner’s going to be there soon, and that limits my time with Gavin. I can still—”

  “You’re not going back there.”

  Um . . . what?

  She was shaking her head again, this time harder. “That dark spirit changes everything. It could harm you in so many ways.”

  “But what about bringing closure to Elizabeth?”

  She wiped her nose. All the makeup was getting smudged—lipstick, mascara, extra foundation and contouring. “Liz wouldn’t want you to go back there. There’s something evil in or near that house now, and there’s got to be a better way to see that Gavin gets his just deserts one day.”

  She was being emotional, not thinking things through. So was I the one who needed to solve this mystery now? Somehow it had taken the place of my own murder, showing me that, someday, I could get closure for myself, too. It gave me hope.

  “I’m not scared to go back,” I said, meaning it. I’d died a victim, but that didn’t mean I had to be one forever.

  “Jensen . . .”

  I had to get on with this. “It’s also a good idea for me to be in that house with Wendy and the other innocents, just in case that dark spirit decides to come around again before the cleaner arrives. I can protect them from what we brought over.”

  She couldn’t argue with that part.

  “Do you have salt in this car?” I asked.

  She seemed to sense that I was going to do what I was going to do, no matter what. “I always carry some in my purse.”

  “Good. Why don’t you sprinkle it around in your car to keep that dark spirit out of here in case it was writing that ‘You will pay’ note to you?”

  “You’re right. Okay.”

  I already knew that her house was protected. And that she knew how to at least temporarily shoo a spirit away. I felt good about the odds of her security. Honestly, she was the last person I was worried about with this dark spirit. My fears ran more to the Edgetts, the innocent ones in particular.

  Amanda Lee was already in motion, opening the car door, her purse in hand. She dug into it for the salt and circled it at every opening of the car while I waited.

  “You won’t be able to ride in here anytime soon,” she said.

  “I’m more of a VW Bug sort of girl anyway.”

  We looked at each other, and she still seemed ashamed. Maybe that was a good thing. Maybe she could start the rest of her life tonight.

  As for me? I was continuing what I’d started.

  “Drive safe,” I said, rising in the air.

  “I still wish you wouldn’t go back.”

  “No chance.” Not only was I without fear, but I was humming with anticipation.

  She got back into the Mercedes, and from behind her closed window, she pressed her fingers to the glass in good-bye. I lifted my hand, imitating the shape of her hand on the window.

  Then, with one last swipe to her eyes, she started the engine, pulling onto the quiet road while I flew up to the power lines. Just for a short time.

  As soon as I could—maybe even too soon—I jammed out of there, up the road again, to the mansion. The first thing I noticed was that every light was shining through the windows, and someone had already boarded up the broken sitting room pane.

  Was Constanza savvy enough to have blocked off the chimney, too, just until the house could be cleaned?

  I traveled to the roof, braced myself on top of the chimney, then rolled down into it, expecting to be barricaded at any instant. When I wasn’t, I got a little jittery, like I’d had another can of predeath Mello Yello.

  If I could get back in the house, then the dark spirit could be anywhere, too. But had it just used Amanda Lee’s portal to arrive in this dimension and it was gone now?

  I found everyone in the kitchen, their backs to the cabinets as they sat on the marble-tiled floor. Farah and Noah were huddled side by side while Wendy and Constanza stayed near each other. Gavin, the lone wolf, was the only one left standing, his arms crossed over his thick chest as he leaned against a counter and looked out the window toward the pool.

  My first instinct was to go to him, see if I could lure him away from the others so I could continue my haunting, but then I saw the salt on the floor. It was in a circle around them, on the tile, on the counter.

  Of course, I thought. Even a rich household wouldn’t have an unlimited supply of salt, and they’d made do with what they had on hand until the cleaner arrived. She had obviously advised the Edgetts about what to do to safeguard themselves, just in case.

  I also noticed that everyone but Gavin was holding either a cross or a crucifix, which was a fine idea, seeing as they might affect a dark spirit. But not me.

  Still, I kept a good distance away so I wouldn’t alert them with my temperature.

  “Do you see anything out there?” Farah asked Gavin. She was looking at her older brother like he was a commando who was there to guard them all. A protector. But he also seemed just as sleep-deprived as he had before, even worse now, actually, with red smudges under his eyes and a five o’clock shadow making him even rougher.

  “I told you,” he said. “There’s nothing to worry about. You saw the spirit fly out the window as clearly as I did.”

  “I didn’t like what it forced that psychic to write,” she whispered. “‘You will pay.’ What did that even mean?”

  “It’s gone, and hopefully we’ll never know.”

  As he spoke, Wendy was watching everyone’s faces, like she had no idea who these people were. And she probably didn’t. She was still the half-scared, half-spellbound teenage girl she’d been when the spirit had made its appearance, and she peered to the side of her, like she’d sensed that something had changed in the room.

  Something like me.

  I backed up a little while Gavin glanced at the watch on his wrist, then impatiently ran his fingers through his hair, cursing under his breath.

  “This is ridiculous, Constanza. The spirit left. We don’t need to be surrounded by salt when there’s nothing to be afraid of anymore.”

  Constanza shook her head. “Mr. Gavin, please. Make me happy by staying here. There is nothing more important for you to be doing.”

  He smiled wryly. “How about sleeping? I could use some of that. I’m dying for my bed.”

  “Just sleep on the floor here,” Wendy said.

  “Wen.” His voice softened. “That mattress is a Vividus, and it’s all I want right now.”

  When he started to step out of the salt circle, his family yelled at him.

  Farah’s voice was the loudest out of everyone’s as she stood, darting toward him, catching his shirttail and pulling him back into the circle. “You’re the one who brought that séance to us. You owe us some peace of mind, so stay here.”

  He slowly glanced down at her hand, which had landed on his waist. Farah backed off, head down.

  I saw that, nearby, a black-beaded rosary with a crucifix attached was curled on the counter by a fruit basket. Gavin took hold of it and held it up.

  “How’s this?” he asked. “I’ll take it with me, and nothi
ng will be able to get to me. Then Constanza’s friend will come, and she’ll help us all.” He said that last part facetiously.

  “She will help, Mr. Gavin,” Constanza said.

  He lowered his head, then looked back up, an eyebrow raised. “You admitted that she only dabbles in the paranormal. She’s supposedly cleaned one haunted house before, and she’s more of an enthusiast than anything.”

  “She will help.”

  How perfect was this? I’d already seen how arrogance had been Amanda Lee’s downfall tonight, and Gavin was falling into the same trap by being an unbeliever. Right into my invisible hands.

  “Mr. Gavin,” Constanza said, “your best protection is in the circle. Eileen said so.”

  Eileen, the name of the inexperienced cleaner?

  “If that thing comes back to get me,” he said, “I’ll haul myself back here in a hurry. I swear on my mattress.”

  As he stepped out of the circle, everyone else got to their feet, even Noah.

  Gavin smiled, and since he didn’t do smiles all that much, it caught me.

  “I’m not scared,” he said, walking away from his family.

  His words echoed in me.

  As his family nervously watched him leave, I followed him down the brightly lit hall, to the foyer, up the stairs, to his room. He headed straight for his bed, the “Vividus,” he’d called it. It did look thick and comfy and puffy, and as he collapsed back onto it, spilling the crucifix by his side to the stark white bedspread, I almost wanted to crash with him.

  I wouldn’t be able to feel any mattress, though. It was just memories of a good night’s sleep that seemed so appealing.

  Outside the window, the sound of waves rushed up the shore and back out. Gavin sighed with exhaustion, then closed his eyes, rubbing his temples. He was so damned sure that Amanda Lee had expelled his tormentor from the mansion that he relaxed quickly enough, his breathing evening out, the rough lines on his face smoothing out. I didn’t know if he was fully asleep yet, but he was definitely mine for the empathetic taking.