by Stacey Kade
“Again?” I turned carefully in my seat to stare at him. “Did you miss the part where the guy is a fraud? Totally of no use to us?”
“Maybe he can tell us what my dad was doing, give us some direction on what to try next,” he argued.
I snorted. “Hello, straws, we are grasping at you.”
He glared at me.
“Look, I know you want to know what your dad was doing, I get it.” I tried to soften my tone. “He was a man of mystery and secrets or whatever. But this, what we’re doing? It’s supposed to be fixing this, fixing me.” I gestured down at myself, trying not to notice again how much smaller this hand was; though, actually, it was far worse when I caught myself not noticing anymore. Getting used to this was not an option. I grimaced. “And Malachi can’t have anything to do with that.”
Will’s mouth tightened, and he gave me a look like he wanted to say something, but he just shook his head instead.
“What?” I demanded.
“Nothing.” But then he kept going. “It’s just, you act like Lily is some kind of horrible punishment for you.”
I gaped at him and then yanked my hand free of his. “You don’t want me in here, either!”
“I don’t,” he said immediately. “But do you know how many people would kill to be alive again, eating doughnuts, smelling flowers, talking to people—other living people—and all you care about is what you look like in her body, which, to be honest, has always been more than fine to me.” The words poured out of him like he’d been holding them back for a while.
I sat back, stunned. Will had had a thing for Lily. I’d known that. It was a crush, over as soon as it started and nothing serious, but hearing him talk about it…that was different. “I’m not her,” I said, feeling slapped.
“I know that,” he said in an even tone. “I never said you were.”
And yet, he still somehow managed to imply that whoever or whatever I was—not Lily!—was somehow worse. “Well, which is it, then?” I asked. “Are you offended that I’m sullying your precious Lily with my horrible personality, or that I’m just not grateful enough for the opportunity to do so?”
“Forget it.” He grimaced. “I didn’t mean—”
“Oh, no, let’s talk about it,” I snapped. “Let’s talk about how great it is pretending to be someone I’ve never met so her family doesn’t get upset, let’s talk about not recognizing yourself in the mirror, let’s talk about not being sure who you are anymore because everyone who looks at you sees someone else.” I blinked back tears, refusing to let them fall.
He opened his mouth to speak, but I charged on. “And hey, before you bring it up, you’re right. I did do this to myself. It was an accident, but it’s all my fault. I love how I’m villainized for messing up, but Lily, who dumped you as a friend, fooled around with Ben Rogers, and wrapped her car around a tree, well, she’s a freaking saint.”
His jaw tightened. “I never said she was—”
“Please, you’ve done everything but turn in the paperwork. Meanwhile, nothing I do is ever good enough. Have you thought about what those other people—those spirits who would be so grateful for this chance—what they might be doing with this body? What kind of post life adventures they might be taking with your sweet, perfect, never-made-a-mistake Lily?”
He didn’t say anything, didn’t even try, but I could see, by the color rising in his pale face, I’d scored a direct hit.
“I am doing the best that I can. For you, for me, even for Lily.” I gestured down at myself. “And have you ever even considered what it’s like for me on a personal level?” I asked, weary of fighting with him about the late (sort of ), great Lily suddenly. “I live with a family that’s not mine, watching them care about me and knowing it’s not really for me at all. I can’t even talk to my family about anything—other than magazine subscriptions or candy fund-raisers or whatever excuse I can come up with to be at their doors as a stranger—without freaking them out. And then there’s you…” I shook my head bitterly. “Most girls have to hear about a guy’s former crushes. I have to wear yours.”
That shut up him up but, oddly, did little to make me feel better. We spent the last ten minutes of the twenty-minute drive in stony silence, which was fun.
This situation was, quite simply, a nightmare. I wanted to go home, my home, the one that didn’t exist anymore. My mom had put our house on the market and moved into a condo a couple of weeks ago, according to the neighbors I’d talked to when no one had answered at home. At my dad’s house, I’d turned a polite request to use the bathroom into a chance to look around and found that my old room had been turned into a nursery for my step-Mothra’s new spawn, which was a girl, no less. Not that it mattered. It wasn’t like I could show up at either place with a claim to belong there, especially looking like this.
More than any of that, though, I wanted my old life back. Even my afterlife had been better than this. At least I’d been me, and the people who could see me knew I was me. Now, at best, I might one day be free, back to spirit form and hoping for the light, but it couldn’t go back to the way it was with Will. Not with knowing his true feelings about Lily. Like maybe he’d have rather had her back from the light than me.
Fantastic.
Will passed the Turners’ street and pulled around the corner into Sacred Heart, as was our practice. The Turner house backed to an empty lot, and Sacred Heart, a huge cemetery, was across the street from that lot. It was my cemetery, in fact. Living as Lily Turner, I was now closer to my original body than I’d been since I was in it. Irony, right?
In any case, the cemetery groundskeeper’s shed was on the outer edge of the property and the perfect place to hide the Dodge from view while Will dropped me off or picked me up. This additional subterfuge was, unfortunately, necessary. Will was still persona non grata around the Turner household—Mrs. Turner still blamed him for what had happened at the hospital. And my first attempt at sneaking out through the front door a few weeks ago had ended in the neighbor tattling on me, and my being forced to come up with a story that involved taking a long walk as part of my physical therapy (lie), and how if there had been a car in the driveway it must have been after I left (BIG lie).
I pulled at the handle and shoved the door open, ready to jump—well, stumble—out as soon as possible.
“Wait,” Will said. “I…I’m sorry, Alona.”
But it was one of those apologies that didn’t sound all that apologetic. It was the “I’m sorry if you’re upset” bullshit Chris and a couple of other ex-boyfriends had tried at various times on me. Uh-huh. There was a reason why they were exes. Well, reasons beyond my dying and, in Chris’s case, his cheating. Though those were good reasons, too.
Will tapped an uneven rhythm on the steering wheel, watching his hands instead of me. “I think we should just agree that we’re doing our best to find a solution to this…situation, and we should try not to take the stress of it out on each other.”
“Fine,” I said tonelessly. He could say whatever he wanted. It didn’t change the fact that I still was—and always would be—the bad guy. For not being Lily, for not being grateful for the chance to be Lily. Whatever.
He sighed. “I’m going to try to see Malachi again tomorrow. It’s safer if you stay here—”
“That’s fine. I’m going to see Misty tomorrow.” The words were out of my mouth before I even realized I’d made the decision. But I guess some part of me had been mulling it over since seeing her in Malachi’s waiting room. I knew Misty, probably better than anyone. She was not prone to scaring easily or imagining things that weren’t there. Heck, when I’d tried to haunt her, she hadn’t even noticed. If she thought “Alona” was haunting her, she probably had good reason to, and I wanted to find out what was going on, even if Will didn’t. Someone out there was taking advantage of my absence and pretending to be me, and doing it so well that even Misty, the person who’d known me best in my old life, believed it. That was so not going to stand. I wa
nted to know who was behind it so I could kick ass accordingly.
He looked at me. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
I gave him a tight smile and felt the still-tender skin of my scar stretch painfully with the movement. “Then I guess we’re even.”
“How are you going to get there?”
Oh. That would be a small problem. Misty lived on the other side of town, closer to where I used to live. Car privileges weren’t exactly up for the asking these days in the Turner household—near-fatal car accidents tend to have that effect—and walking with a bad leg was pretty much out of the question. I shrugged, hoping it looked breezy and unconcerned. “I’ll figure it out.”
He sighed and shook his head. “I’ll take you.”
“So you can spy on me, make sure I’m taking proper care of Lily?” I demanded. “No thanks.”
“I’m trying to make sure we all stay safe, okay?”
“Fine,” I said immediately. “Then you’ll take me to Malachi’s with you, if it’s about keeping all of us safe.” He’d walked right into that one. Not that I wanted to go—can you say giant waste of time?—but, by God, I was going to hold him to those stupid standards he thought were so fair. He couldn’t argue, after today, that he would be safer without me.
He grimaced but said nothing.
That’s what I thought. “Good. Pick me up here tomorrow at noon, and we’re going to Misty’s first.” I levered myself out of the car, using the door as support.
“What are you going to tell the Turners?” He was, unfortunately, correct to ask. Mrs. Turner was the very definition of overprotective. I’d had to wait until she took Tyler out shopping this afternoon to be able to sneak out and meet Will.
“That I’ve made some new friends with motorcycles and we’re going to have an orgy in the park,” I said. It wasn’t any of his business how I managed “my” family.
He threw me a dark look.
“Don’t worry about it. I’ll handle it. Unlike some people, I actually have a spine when it comes to dealing with parents.”
He glared at me, spots of red rising in his cheeks. And okay, maybe implying he was a mama’s boy was a bit of a low blow, but it was true. I limped out of the way and started to shut the door.
“Hey,” he called.
I leaned down to see him, expecting retaliation for my slam on how he handled—or didn’t—his mom. “Yeah?” I asked warily.
“I know who you are, no matter what you look like,” he said quietly, surprising me.
Maybe. I nodded at him and slammed the door before the tears filling my eyes escaped. But I was beginning to think the real problem might be that who I was was just not good enough. Apparently, it had been one thing when I was the pretty face and the good body, but now, when there was nothing left of me but me, well, that was a different story. And there was no fix—easy or seemingly impossible—for that.
I watched to make sure Alona crossed the street safely, and then I pulled away from the cemetery and headed home, her words still rattling around in my head.
She was wrong. Yes, okay, it was a little weird to watch her as Lily. And yeah, sometimes it bothered me to see her do or say things that I knew were not like Lily.
But it wasn’t because I thought Alona wasn’t good enough to be Lily, temporary condition or not. It was just, for lack of a better word, jarring. Like hearing a cat bark.
I was doing the best that I could, too. The friend I thought I’d never talk to again was now inhabited by the spirit of the girl I’d never dreamed I’d ever talk to at all. It was complicated and confusing, to say the least.
And every time Alona tore Lily down, I felt it. I had an obligation to look out for Lily since she couldn’t look out for herself anymore. Yeah, Lily was in the light and probably could give a rat’s ass what anyone said about her. But you try remembering that when she’s sitting right next to you…or seems to be, anyway. It felt disloyal—like dishonoring her memory—not to defend her.
I wasn’t asking Alona to be happy about it or—God help me—to appreciate it, but just not to act like getting stuck inside Lily’s body was the worst thing that had ever happened to her, up to and including getting run over by a freaking bus.
Especially because I was beginning to get a little worried. It was going to be one thing to pull Alona out of there. But add to that the necessity of pulling her out without destroying her spirit and killing Lily…and things weren’t looking so good. Even the Order, with all their tech and research, hadn’t been able to work around that. They were just willing to let Lily die in order to capture Alona.
Then, even if we managed to find a way to work around all of that, there was the question of what to do with Lily. Her parents…they couldn’t go through losing their daughter again. Even though “Lily” had never woken from her coma, they didn’t know that. To them, she was back and on her way to recovery. It would destroy them to see her land in the hospital again. Even Alona knew that.
We hadn’t discussed it, but there was a distinct possibility Alona might be stuck for a while. Possibly a lot longer than either of us had hoped or imagined. Which she would hate with the fire of the sun, and which wouldn’t be so great for me, either, for a variety of reasons. My life was complicated enough as it was already.
Pulling up to my house, I saw Sam’s pickup in the driveway. Right next to my mom’s Corolla. My mom and her boyfriend/boss were here…alone. Uh-oh.
But they were old, and it was the middle of the afternoon. Surely they weren’t…
I grimaced and parked behind my mom’s car. I’d make a lot of noise on the approach so I wouldn’t catch them by surprise. I’m not an idiot; I knew what went on, but that didn’t mean I wanted to witness something that would be burned into my brain, forever flaring up at the least convenient moments.
But as soon as I reached the back door, I realized I didn’t have to worry. Through the window in the door, I could see my mom at the kitchen table, alone. Thank God. Except her shoulders were slumped and she seemed smaller than ever, hunched in her chair.
I opened the back door cautiously. “Mom?”
“Hi, sweetie,” she said, without turning around, but I could tell she’d been crying by the sound of her voice.
“What’s wrong?” I came in and closed the door behind me. “Where’s Sam?”
“Oh.” She waved a hand. “He’s in the basement, checking the air conditioner.” She frowned at me with red-rimmed eyes as I took the seat across from her. “The hallway back by your bedroom is freezing again.”
Great. Only one thing that could mean. But I couldn’t deal with that yet. “What happened?”
She smiled and picked up her mug of tea. “It’s nothing. I’m fine.”
“Mom, you’re not fine. Crying alone in the kitchen is not—”
“Shhhh.” She frowned. “Not so loud.”
Okaaay. So Sam didn’t know she was crying, which meant…what? “Can you please just tell me what happened?”
She smiled again, and this time I clearly saw sadness there as well. “Sam…” she began slowly.
“Did he break up with you?” Damn it, Sam. I liked him, thought he was good for my mom, who needed someone to make her laugh. “If this is because of what happened at the diner…” I’d had to quit the diner a couple of weeks ago, after a ghost just would not get the message that I was off duty as a ghost-talker when I was working as a busboy. Said ghost had decided to express his displeasure by sweeping a table clear of dishes…while the people were still eating, unfortunately.
Sam had been pretty cool about it, and no one had blamed me. The customers had been stunned at first and then eventually blamed it on the table legs being uneven. Yes, most people will find a way to explain the inexplicable so as not to acknowledge the existence of the supernatural. But clearly I couldn’t continue to work there without risking exposure…or someone’s injury by flying dinnerware.
“Will you let me finish?” my mom asked in exasperation.
“He wants me to move in with him,” she said carefully, her attention focused on the mug in her hands.
“Oh. Uh…” I’d not been expecting that, and, as with other moments in my life where my next words would be essential…my mind was blank. “Shouldn’t you, uh, at least be engaged first so that he…”
She looked up at me, amused. “So he’s not taking advantage?”
My face burned. “Well, uh…yeah.”
She set her mug down and patted my shoulder with a laugh. “Thank you. I love you, too.”
As always, my mom seemed to understand where I was coming from even when I couldn’t quite get the words right. I guess that’s what made her my mom.
“And if Sam had his way,” she said, “that’s exactly the way it would be.”
I tilted my head to one side, trying to follow what she was saying. “You mean he asked you to marry him?” I demanded. If so, this was the first I’d heard of it.
“Not so loud,” she reminded me with a frown. “And yes. Several times.”
I sat back in my chair, my words gone again. “And you said…”
She took a breath and let it out slowly, studying the mug in front of her. “It’s complicated. I’m not sure I’m ready for that.”
“So, he’s suggesting moving in as an alternative,” I said, finally getting it. “He’s trying to work up to the getting-married part.”
“He didn’t exactly position it that way,” she said wryly. “But I suspect that’s his goal, yes.”
It took a second to imagine Sam with a place at our table here, a chair that would be his. Unless…maybe it wouldn’t be him at our table, but us at his.
My stomach dropped a little at the thought. Moving into Sam’s place? I couldn’t picture it. I’d never even been there. It was an old fix-it-up farmhouse on the edge of town; I knew that much. Old and isolated; that could either be really good…or really bad for me.
Then a second thought struck, just as hard as the first. Maybe they weren’t planning on my tagging along.