by Sarah Wynde
“Your pa would have made him marry you.” Henry tilted his head, trying to understand.
“And then I would have been married to Tommy Shaw!” Rose’s rejection of the suggestion brought her to her feet. “For the rest of my life? No, thank you!” She paced away, across the kitchen, skirt flaring around her from the strength of her movement.
Akira eyed her cautiously. There was no color change yet, just the chill in the air, and Rose still seemed in control. But emotional ghosts made her nervous. She looked at Henry. He was watching Rose, but he must have seen the movement of her head, for he looked back at her. Maybe he recognized her anxiety, because he changed the subject, saying to Rose, “I got him back for that snake.”
Rose turned, and her smile lit up her face. “I knew that was you. How did you do it?”
“I got the janitor to let me in,” Henry answered. “Old Mr. Jackson, he didn’t mind. He thought it was funny.”
“Mrs. Brown was so mad. She gave every boy in class detention. She knew it had to be one of them, but no one would own up to it.”
Henry grinned back at her, and for a moment, Akira could see the boy he must have been. “I kept it real quiet after that. Didn’t want to get beat up for getting them into hot water.” And then seeing Akira’s confused expression, he added. “Tommy Shaw put a garter snake in Rose’s lunchbox one time. We must have been about thirteen, fourteen years old.”
“Thirteen.” Rose shuddered. “It was my brand-new Hopalong Cassidy lunchbox, and I was so proud of it. When I opened it up and that snake slithered out, I cried.”
“I went down to the springs and caught some brown snakes. Nice big ones, a couple feet long. Harmless, but easy to mistake for cottonmouths. Stuck ‘em in Tommy’s desk. When he opened his desk, you could hear the screaming half a block away.” Henry chuckled at the memory.
Rose smiled, too. “I wish I’d been remembering that snake when he asked me out. I might have thought twice.”
A silence fell.
Akira gripped her glass tightly. She didn’t want to ask but she had to. Henry’s existence depended on it. “Pennyroyal tea?” she prompted cautiously.
“My parents would have sent me away. Everyone in town would have known. People always did.” Rose’s words were more sad than heated, and Akira took a deep breath, realizing for the first time that she’d been holding it. She understood now what the pennyroyal tea was for and what Rose had done, and she felt a pang of sympathy for the scared teenager Rose must have been.
“It doesn’t matter,” Henry said. “God can forgive anything.”
“Well, I didn’t ask to be forgiven,” Rose responded with a toss of the head. “I died before I could have.”
“First John 1:9 says ‘If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.’” Henry answered. “It doesn’t say anything about whether you have to be alive or dead when you confess.”
“‘The dead were judged according to what they had done,’ Revelations,” Rose snapped back. “I went to Sunday school every week, too, Henry Powell.”
As the two ghosts argued about the Bible, Akira thought. She was convinced that fading away was bad. Maybe she was wrong: maybe slowly fading was just a gradual transformation. But if Henry became like the boys in the back, repeating the same actions as if on an endless loop, she felt some essential part of him would be lost forever. No, Rose needed to convince him to go through the hole or door or whatever it was.
But burning in a pit of everlasting fire? It didn’t sound good. She could understand why Rose was reluctant to take the chance.
Still, if the Bible was literal truth, she’d be in that pit of fire, too, for the sin of communicating with ghosts. And yet what choice did she have? If there was a God and he didn’t want her to see ghosts, he shouldn’t have made so many of them. Asking her to stop meeting ghosts was like asking her to stop the tide: she just wasn’t that powerful. But, wait—if there was a God, wasn’t he all-powerful?
“No,” she interrupted the ghosts, turning to Rose. “You can’t be right, Rose. You won’t go to hell. It doesn’t make sense.”
“The Bible doesn’t have to make sense, it just is,” Rose replied, as Henry frowned.
“Not the Bible.” Akira waved that away. “Here’s the thing: if God wanted you to burn in a pit of fire, you’d be there already. You’ve got a lot of energy, but you can’t be more powerful than God, right?”
Rose looked doubtful, but Henry nodded eagerly. “That’s right,” he said. “There’s no loophole that lets souls escape damnation. If you were damned, you’d be in hell already.”
“Plus,” Akira added, “If you take Henry through the door, you’ll be saving his soul, and God would have to appreciate that. That has to outweigh anything bad you did while you were alive.”
Rose frowned, and crossed back to the table. Standing next to them, she looked down on Henry. “Can’t you go on your own, Henry?” she asked, her voice plaintive. “I like it here.”
Henry stood, reaching for her hand, and then sighed as his hand went straight through her. “Rose, I had to leave you in life. Wasn’t nothing I could do about it. But I loved you from the time I was a little boy, and I’m not leaving you behind now.”
Akira bit her lip. Poor Henry. He was so sweet, so earnest, and the thought of him loving Rose his whole life made her eyes prickle as if she wanted to cry. Rose had to see that she couldn’t just let him waste away.
“All right,” Rose sighed. She looked over her shoulder and her chin lifted. “But if I wind up burning for eternity, I’m going to be very, very angry at you.” She swallowed hard and Akira could see that she was mustering her courage. And then Rose turned, and with a sweep of her peach skirts, stepped away and was gone.
“Thank you, Akira.” Henry’s eyes sparkled and his shoulders straightened as if a huge weight had been lifted off his back. “Thank you so much. You take care now.” He dusted himself off, tugging at his clothes as if to make himself look a little neater, and then he, too, stepped forward and was gone.
Wow. Akira sat, stunned. There was a door. And spirits could go through it. And she’d just helped ghosts move on to another place. It was amazing.
And then she realized what she’d done, and her mouth dropped open, and she jumped to her feet, saying, “Wait, wait. Henry, come back! Rose!!”
Oh, shit, she thought frantically. What about Dillon?
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Dillon grieved.
Akira couldn’t blame him.
The house was quieter, lonelier without Rose and Henry. Akira missed Henry’s calm presence in the kitchen and Rose’s lively charm, and it was worse for Dillon. The boys in the backyard were no company at all, so all he had was Akira.
He took to spending more and more time in his car.
“Grace bought you ten new Kindles, Dillon. Don’t you want to come into the lab and try to fry them?” Akira asked in desperation one miserable day at the end of August. It was lunch time and she was sitting in the car, air conditioning at full blast.
Whoever had chosen this car had been an idiot, she thought wearily. A black car parked in the sun in Florida in August was an oven, and even with the air-conditioning, she felt as if she was baking. But it was even hotter outside the car, and she was worried about Dillon. She knew he could stretch to reach the lab if he wanted to, but he hadn’t been willing to make the effort for days.
What she really needed, she thought, was a ghost psychologist.
“Maybe later,” Dillon said from the backseat. “You should go in, though. It’s hot out here for you.”
“That’s for damn sure,” Akira muttered, checking the a/c settings for the third time. Maybe it was broken?
“Tell me again how it happened.”
“Oh, Dillon.” Akira partially turned to face him, leaning back and letting her head rest against the warm glass of the window. She felt sticky with sweat. “I’ve told you.”
Akira sighed. At least he didn’t want to hear about the door again. She hadn’t seen the door herself, so she couldn’t really describe it, but she felt as if she’d spent hours trying to explain it to Dillon. And then he’d spent days trying to look over his shoulder, because of how she’d described Rose’s way of looking at the door, as if it was somewhere behind her. It was almost as if he hoped he’d find it, just out of sight behind him.
“Henry was in a place that wasn’t a cloud and wasn’t foggy and wasn’t a white light or a rainbow light,” she started obediently, “but it looked something like mother-of-pearl, and he was trying to find Rose. He didn’t tell me anything about how long he looked or what it was like to be looking for her, just that he couldn’t find her. And then he was in the kitchen of the house.”
Damn it, she thought, watching his face. Maybe she was the one who needed a shrink. Was she really making herself miserable worrying about a teenage ghost? But she couldn’t help herself. She hated seeing him so unhappy. And even more, she hated not knowing how to help him.
“Do you think maybe my Gran is looking for me?” Dillon’s words were almost casual, but his blue eyes were intent on Akira’s. “Maybe that’s why she’s still here?”
What? Oh, hell. Oh, no. Is that what he was thinking? Over the course of the past few months, they’d almost stopped talking about the ghost in the Latimer house. Grace’s researcher was still working, uncovering ever more obscure ghost stories, but Grace hadn’t interviewed a new medium in weeks. Akira had been perfectly content to adopt an out of sight, out of mind philosophy when it came to that particular ghost.
“Even if she was,” Akira said, trying to pick her words carefully. “There’s nothing we could do about it.” Dillon didn’t look convinced and she sighed. “Dillon, there’s no way to get close to a ghost like that. It’d be like walking into fire. The power will rip you apart.”
“But maybe if she saw me, she’d calm down,” Dillon said stubbornly.
“It doesn’t work that way,” Akira insisted. “Ghosts that have turned red, they’re not thinking any more. They’re just energy.”
“You said it was like they were psychotic or hallucinating. You can talk to people who are hallucinating.”
“Not if they’re attacking you. The energy is destructive. You wouldn’t be able to reach her.”
“You said ‘her.’ You think it’s my gran, too.”
“What difference does it make?” Akira demanded.
“I’ve been thinking about it a lot,” Dillon answered. “I want to go to see her.”
“What? No!” Akira’s response was immediate and instinctive. There was no way, absolutely no way, that she and Dillon were going anywhere near that house.
Five minutes later, she shivered in the cold. The only good thing about arguing with a ghost was that the more upset Dillon got, the cooler it got in the car.
“Well, there’s nothing you can do about it,” she finally said, feeling put-upon but triumphant as she pulled out her trump card. “You can’t get there without the car, and I won’t drive the car there.”
“Fine, I’ll walk,” Dillon snapped at her. “I know the way.” With an indignant push, he forced himself out of the car and started walking.
Akira watched him stomping across the parking lot, feeling self-righteously annoyed at him.
And then self-righteously annoyed and a little guilty.
And then a lot guilty and only a little annoyed.
It was his grandmother, after all. And he’d lost Rose and Henry. He was lonely. And being stuck in the car couldn’t be fun. Maybe she should have found a nicer way to say no. But he was so stubborn!
With a quiet thunk, the passenger door opened, and Zane slid inside the car. “Hot day for this,” he said. “Dillon, can’t you make it into the lab? Make life a little easier on Akira?”
Akira shook her head. “He’s not in the car.”
“Oh?” Zane looked at her, the question clear.
“He’s decided he has to go visit your mom,” she said gloomily, watching Dillon’s back as he crossed the parking lot. She wondered how far he’d get. She knew he’d managed to get several blocks away from the car: before she left, he and Rose had been having fun seeing how far up Millard Street they could get. There was a little park at the end of the street that they’d been trying to reach.
“Isn’t that going to be tough?” Zane asked.
“Impossible, I think.” Akira slumped a little in the seat, closing her eyes and leaning back against the headrest. Was Dillon suicidal? Could a ghost be suicidal? Maybe, if he was trying to destroy himself. If only she’d made Rose and Henry wait. If only she’d thought about Dillon, not just Henry. How could she have been so stupid? She berated herself silently, not for the first time.
A warm hand closed around hers and she opened her eyes, startled.
“Talk to me,” Zane said. “What’s going on?”
Akira chewed her lower lip. How did she want to explain this?
“Stop that,” Zane said. He leaned forward, dropping her hand, and sliding his hand up and around the back of her neck. He tugged her to him, gently, and she went with it, leaning into him as he took her mouth with his own, his lips and tongue caressing hers.
She felt the warmth rising in her veins, the rush of pleasure flowing through her. It had been months now, she thought fuzzily, and it was still the same—his touch, his taste, his smell, they hit all her triggers, more and more all the time.
He pulled away and she let him go reluctantly. “You’re better than Xanax.”
He chuckled. “Thanks. I think.” He brushed his lips against hers again, and then prompted, “So, Dillon?”
“He has this idea that maybe your mom is like Henry, that she’s trying to find him like Henry tried to find Rose.”
Zane blinked. “Huh.” He looked out into the parking lot thoughtfully. “That makes sense, actually. And it sounds like her.”
“It sounds like her?” Akira repeated, not sure what he meant. They hadn’t talked about his mom, not since that first night. She’d been so sure when he dropped her off at her house that it was over between them that steering clear of the subject had been almost instinctive. He’d been convinced that his mom would never hurt anyone; she’d been equally convinced that there was a dangerous ghost in his house. It seemed like a subject best avoided.
“Determined,” he said. “She was Grace on steroids.”
Akira couldn’t help smiling at the image. Grace ran the company with a polite southern charm that did nothing to disguise the organized efficiency of her every movement. Grace on steroids?
“Scary?” she asked.
“Only if you were doing something she didn’t like. But then, yeah. This one time—well, it’s not important.” Zane was smiling, as if it was a good memory, but he sobered as he went on. “I could definitely see her staying to try to find Dillon.” He paused, opened his mouth as if he wanted to say something, then closed it again.
Akira bit her lip.
Damn it.
She knew what he wanted to say as surely as if she was the one who could read minds. Daniel and Rob and Henry and Rose had shown her that ghosts could or maybe should be going somewhere. She didn’t know why Dillon couldn’t find the way, but if Zane’s mom was refusing to go without Dillon, then maybe . . .
“Ow. Hell.” The voice from the backseat was disgruntled. Akira turned and Dillon glared at her. “I will get there,” he said defiantly.
“Did it just get colder?” Zane asked, sounding startled as he reached to put his hand by the air-conditioner vent.
“Dillon’s back and he’s still mad at me,” Akira reported matter-of-factly. Dillon crossed his arms over his chest and looked sulky as he leaned back in the seat and stared out the window.
Akira almost smiled. He would probably be annoyed if she told him he was cute when he was angry, but
he was. His messy dark hair and pout made him look like a much younger child.
And then her smile faded as she realized that she wasn’t scared of Dillon. Not in the least. He was angry at her, and she knew that made him dangerous, but she still wasn’t scared.
Because she loved him. Somehow she had let a fifteen-year-old boy ghost who worried about everything slip under her defenses and enter her heart.
And then her eyes slid sideways to his uncle, who was watching her intently, eyes dark, slightly frowning, and she realized that she loved him, too.
He wasn’t who she’d ever thought she’d want.
He barely cared about science. He wasn’t serious. He wasn’t intense. He didn’t want to have deep, philosophical conversations about the meaning of life and how the universe might work. He’d rather watch baseball, one of the most boring sports ever invented.
But picnic tables and pool tables. Fire ants and Kindles. He might not make it obvious, but he paid more attention, noticed more, than anybody she’d ever met.
And this ghost—she was his mom. What would it be like, to know your mother was trapped in your house, lost in a ghostly vortex of despair?
Akira sighed. She thought she might be about to do one of the stupidest things she’d ever done.
If her father was still alive, he’d kill her for this.
***
“Are you trying to kill me?” Zane’s question was half rhetorical, half laughing. She always beat him at pool, but today she wasn’t even pretending to give him a chance.
The crack of balls hitting one another, the soft whoosh of their slides along the green felt, the thumps as they dropped in the pockets had been the only sounds in Zane’s office for at least twenty minutes. Akira’s focus was complete. She was pointing out her shots with the cue, not bothering to call them, as she cleared the table, racked the balls, and cleared the table again.
It was as if he wasn’t really there.
Or she wasn’t.
“Hmm?” she answered, leaning over the table, eying the distances between the cue ball and the ten and the side pocket. And then she made another perfect shot.