by Stacey Kade
“I know.” I looped an arm over her shoulders and pulled her toward me. She didn’t resist. What was it about family that had such an immense hold on you, even if it wasn’t your own, even if they didn’t understand who you really were?
And suddenly, pieces of what I knew about Edmund Harris connected in a new way. I turned away from Alona and started for the hallway.
Alona followed me. “Where are you going?”
“I know where Malachi, Edmund, whatever his name is—I know where he went,” I said over my shoulder. It’s where I would have gone if I’d been in his situation, or what I knew of it, anyway. But I wasn’t sure how long he would stay.
“Where?” Alona persisted.
I picked up speed, feeling like every second that passed was vital and one we could never get back.
“Home.”
Except, as it turned out, Will meant his home, at least as a first stop.
“I can’t believe you don’t have Internet on your phone.” I flopped back in the passenger seat of the Dodge. We needed more information about Edmund—like another address—and without the ability to look it up on the go, which had been my plan, returning to his house and his computer was the fastest option.
“Do you know how much that costs every month?” he demanded.
Actually, I didn’t. When I’d been alive (the first time), I hadn’t worried about it, and I hadn’t yet regained phone privileges in my new reality, obviously. I thought about the message sitting in his voice mail from Mrs. Turner and flinched again.
“You have to promise me that no matter what happens, you’re going to try to talk to the Turners, to tell them none of it was their fault,” I said quietly. Mr. Turner was barely over feeling guilty for the first time something bad had happened to Lily, and I knew Mrs. Turner would probably blame herself—after she got done blaming Will for being a bad influence or something. And after yesterday’s blowup, Tyler would probably take on his share of responsibility, too, if something happened to his sister. Or if she simply never came home. God, we needed to find this Erin chick…and soon. “It’s important, okay? You need to promise me you’ll talk to them.”
Will frowned at me and tightened his grip on the wheel until his knuckles went white. “Stop it. Stop acting like you’re not going to be fine.”
Did he think I hadn’t noticed when I’d gone all see-through back there? I opened my mouth to point that out, but what good would it have done? He was still angry, and right now it seemed he was determined that I would be sticking around, if only so he could yell at me some more.
The car bumped up over the curb into the driveway, taking out a portion of the dried-out yard with it.
“Wait here.” Will unbuckled his seat belt and got out, leaving the car running.
“Yeah, right,” I said. I switched off the engine, snagged the keys before he got too far away, and scrambled after him.
He caught a glimpse of me following him and sighed heavily. “Do you ever listen?” he asked.
“When someone’s trying to tell me what to do? Uh, no. Besides, who died and made you the boss of me?”
He shot me an unhappy look as he rounded the corner.
“Oh, touchy, touchy,” I muttered. “Like I’m going to just sit out there while you waste time online,” I said in a louder voice. In truth, I didn’t want to be by myself at the moment. It felt like if Will wasn’t there to glare at me, I might slip away. And while I’d accepted that was a possibility, I…I didn’t particularly want to be alone if/when it happened. Besides, it wasn’t like we’d be disturbing anyone. His mom’s car wasn’t in the driveway.
“I think you’re confusing me with you, Miss I Have Nine Thousand Friends on Facebook,” he said darkly, yanking open the screen door and reaching for the doorknob. Then he stopped, flummoxed momentarily by the locked door.
“Oh, ouch, seriously wounding me there.” I dangled the keys over his shoulder, and he snapped them away without so much as a thank-you. “Between the two of us, who do you think has better research skills? I would have graduated with honors.”
“At least I graduated,” he muttered, stabbing the key in and unlocking the door.
I sucked in a breath. “I think dying was a little outside my control, thank you very much.”
“If you say so.” He shrugged, but I saw the corner of his mouth turn up in a faint smile. So maybe I wasn’t the only one taking comfort in the familiar nature of our exchange.
He shoved the door open, and I followed him into the kitchen, where he stopped short and I nearly bumped into him.
“Not now,” he said under his breath, seemingly to himself.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
He turned with a grimace and held his hands up in the classic stop position.
Ooookay. I listened for a second; it didn’t take me long to identify the sound of voices, lots of voices, coming from the back of the house. What the hell?
Before I could ask him, even in a whisper, what was going on, an unfamiliar face appeared in the doorway to the hall. “You’re here,” she exclaimed at Will. Then, when she caught sight of me, her eyes widened. “You found her!”
Uh-oh.
She disappeared from the doorway, and I heard her yell, “They’re here!”
Within seconds, the kitchen was flooded with spirits, many of whom I didn’t recognize, all jabbering at once. They flowed in, surrounding Will and me individually, cutting us off from each other.
“Why didn’t you tell me it was this bad?” I shouted at him over the clamor.
“What were you going to do? We didn’t know you were still my spirit guide,” he shouted back. “And it wasn’t this bad…until now.”
Fabulous. Well, that was helpful. I straightened my shoulders, tossed my hair back, and started to wade my way through to Will, or at least to the last place I’d seen him. The kitchen wasn’t that big.
Of course, most of the spirits were too agitated to pay attention to what I was doing. They kept pulling at me, trying to stop me so they could explain, beg, plead, whatever. Though I couldn’t see Will, I could only imagine it was worse for him.
The last straw came when someone actually grabbed hold of my arm and yanked until I stumbled back.
Not. Cool. I pulled my arm free with a vicious tug that sent my attacker—a soccer mom circa the 1980s, based on her wardrobe and her pink-and-purple-braided headband—eesh—sprawling forward.
I sidestepped her face-plant, but barely. “Enough already!” I shouted.
The room quieted immediately, faces whipping around toward me. Through a gap I could see Will’s pale face. They’d cornered him against the door to the basement.
I took a deep breath to reinstate my claim on him, to tell them they had to go through me to get to him. That would shut them up and make them go away…or at least freeze them in place.
Before I could say anything, though, I heard Will.
“You heard her. Out, now!” He stepped away from the basement door and pointed to the nearest exterior wall.
Shock rippled through me. I stared at him, but he refused to look in my direction, splotches of red rising in his pale cheeks. He focused instead on the spirits in front of him, some of whom were already starting to protest.
He shook his head and spoke over them. “Who else do you have to help you? No one. So don’t piss me off!”
I gaped at him. This was exactly what I’d been after him to do from the beginning. Take control, own his power. It’s what I would have done. If you can’t get rid of a feature in your life that is less than desirable, make it work for you. But I’d never expected he’d actually follow through on it.
It took a few moments for his words to take full effect. But then some of the ghosts started drifting out the back door. Others moved through the wall that Will had indicated.
“We will be back to help you,” he said to those who lingered. “Just not today. We’re already on task for someone else. You wouldn’t want us to stop if we wer
e working on your behalf.”
Points to him for not framing that as a question.
With a few more reassurances and warnings from Will, the rest of the crowd slowly dissipated.
“You did it,” I said, when the kitchen was empty except for the two of us. I couldn’t quite keep the note of disbelief from my voice.
He shrugged, but he looked pleased, if a little stunned by his own accomplishment. “I wasn’t sure what would happen to you if you tried to stop them. I didn’t want to risk it.” He turned and walked down the hall to his room.
I stayed put. He didn’t want to risk it, but why? Because he didn’t want me to be gone? Or because he still needed me to try to stop Erin? Both? It shouldn’t have bothered me that I wasn’t sure which his answer would have been had I been brave enough to ask. But it did.
Especially because he’d just proved, in no uncertain terms, that he no longer needed me as much as he used to, if at all.
This was a good thing, I told myself. Will needed to be able to take care of himself. That’s what I wanted for him.
Except…what about what I wanted for me?
Honestly, I wasn’t sure what I wanted. I didn’t want to disappear for forever, that was for sure. But I didn’t know if I had a choice in the matter. If I was lucky, the light might come for me before that happened. That would be okay, except I’d sort of gotten invested in what was happening here. I couldn’t imagine being happy or at peace, not knowing what happened to Will or the Turners. And returning to life as Ally Turner…was that even an option? Did I want it to be?
I rubbed my forehead, pushing at the dull ache starting there. God. Who said being dead was easy? Dying had only been the start of my troubles.
With the details about Edmund that we had now, thanks to Will’s questionable landlord performance, it didn’t take long to find the information that we needed online. We tracked down his parents’ names from his sister’s obituary and then their address from a white-pages search. Easy peasy.
Ted and Althea Harris lived on the outskirts of Peoria. A couple of hours away at most. And Will was convinced from the conversation he’d had with Edmund that that was where he was headed.
“He only left because of Erin,” he said, once we were back in the car. “If he thinks she’s gone, even temporarily, he’ll go back. At least to let them know he’s okay. Trust me.” He signaled to turn on to the highway.
I made a face. “Maybe.” I wasn’t convinced that we knew Edmund half as well as Will thought we did. But then again, not much of this situation made sense to me, so what did I know?
I flipped through the pages we’d printed, looking for the article on Erin’s death again. “How weird is it that he can only see one ghost?” I asked, more to myself than to Will, but he answered anyway.
“On a scale of one to ten? Fifteen.” He shook his head. The Dodge started to tremble as he pushed it to its maximum speed, which was still less than the legal limit on the highway. “I think it has to do with the twin thing.”
“What, some kind of psychic twin connection or something?” I asked, trying not to scoff. I was, after all, a spirit communicating with him based on a similar sort of premise.
“Maybe.” Will hesitated. “I don’t think he’s really a ghost-talker, at least not in the way we understand it. He said that Erin doesn’t have physicality around him. She can’t touch him.”
“That is so weird.” I shivered. I didn’t like her. And not only because she was hella powerful and a bully. She was operating outside the principles that I knew guided our little shared space between the living and the dead. Did. Not. Like. It made me feel unsettled. “The Order never mentioned anything like this?” Will’s near conversion was still a bit of a sore spot with me.
“No,” he said, his mouth tight.
“Really? Because I would have thought they’d be all over this, recruiting twins so they could kill one off and—”
“If you recall, I only spent about twenty-four hours in their favor. I didn’t exactly have time for the full initiation and tour.”
Huh. Perhaps I was not the only one feeling a bit sensitive about that whole ordeal. Or maybe Will was thinking how having them as an ally—which we didn’t—would have been pretty useful right about now. Up to a point, like the one in which they would probably let Lily die and box both me and Erin.
Whatever. I shrugged and returned to browsing our printouts. I finally located the page I was looking for at the bottom of the stack, behind our MapQuest directions.
It wasn’t her official obituary—that was a different page. This was the blurb that had appeared in the Peoria Journal Star’s Web site archives with details about her accident. I’d read it once over Will’s shoulder but wanted to review it again. According to the article, Erin had been at a spring break–themed Halloween party at a fraternity at ISU. She’d had too much to drink and had tumbled off the roof of a porch in the middle of—dear God—a limbo contest. Apparently, any other day she might have walked away with a few scrapes and bruises—the porch wasn’t that high up—but the frat brothers had just laid paving stones to make a walkway in the yard, right where she fell.
In reading it again, I was struck once more by how…ordinary, albeit sad, Erin Harris’s death had been. Aside from the limbo part. That was just kind of ironic, I suppose. Death by limbo and you end up in limbo?
I suppose not all of us can be so fortunate as to have a bus provide us with a dramatic exit from the living world. Ha-ha. But aside from her being a twin, nothing about Erin’s demise had been particularly surprising. That, in combination with the fact that she didn’t seem to have any specific unfinished business to address, was…odd. I grant you that most spirits with sudden access to a body will take advantage of the opportunity to live wild and free. But that she had been aiming for that even before she got hold of Lily? I wouldn’t have thought that was a strong enough reason for her to be stuck here. I mean, who doesn’t wish they had more time alive? Who wouldn’t wish to have a few more days of Krispy Kremes and shopping? But if that was the only requirement, this in-between place would be a lot more crowded.
No, we had to be missing something.
“Was there anything else Edmund said about—” I began.
Will’s phone rang, and we both jumped.
Keeping one hand on the wheel, Will leaned back to reach into his pocket for his phone, and I felt the teeniest return of lust, despite everything that was going on. He looked in control and lean and strong…Hello.
The sensation wasn’t nearly as powerful as it had been when I’d been Ally, but it was enough to make me wish Will and I were on better terms and not in such a hurry. I mean, if these were my last hours, why not make them fun, at least?
He glanced up from his phone, and some of what I was thinking must have shown on my face. He hesitated, faint color rising in his cheeks, and said, “It’s my mom.”
And there went that moment.…“Don’t answer it,” I warned. “She’s probably—”
He ignored me, clicking the speakerphone button. “Mom?”
“—talked to Mrs. Turner,” I said with a sigh.
“Will, where are you?” Will’s mom sounded like she was in full panic mode, in a way I hadn’t heard since first meeting—well, seeing—her a few months ago.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“Is Lily Turner with you?” Her voice was tight with worry.
“I told you,” I said in a singsong voice.
He glared at me.
I shrugged.
“No,” he said to his mom.
“Do you know where she is? Corine Taylor seems to think you do.” I heard her breath catch, as if she were close to tears. “William, she’s talking about trying to get the police to issue an AMBER Alert. Lily’s underage, and with her medical issues…”
Will shot me an alarmed look. “Mom, she’s not with me. I did give her a ride this morning, but she asked to be let out about a block away from Misty Evans’s house. I
have no idea where she is now.” A succinct description of our problem, if nothing else.
Will’s mom took a deep breath. “Okay, I knew there had to be an explanation. Just come home and we’ll talk to Corine.”
Oh. In spite of myself, I couldn’t help but feel a flicker of intrigue. I turned to face Will. Now, this is going to be interesting. Not just in an academic sense but also in a making-the-wrong-choice-here-could-really-screw-us kind of way. Will rarely, if ever, defied his mother. He dodged, he avoided, he fibbed—but out-and-out refused? No way. Back when I first started talking to him, a few days after I’d died, he’d almost let himself end up in a mental institution because he wanted to avoid outing himself as a ghost-talker to his mother and upsetting her.
Which, in my opinion, was crazier than talking to dead people ever could be.
So which would win out? His super-over-the-top loyalty to his mother or his responsibility as a ghost-talker?
I resisted the urge to hum the theme from Jeopardy! A) because it wasn’t really appropriate, and B) because I already knew the answer. His mom always came first. I couldn’t blame him, no matter how much it frustrated me at times. After his dad killed himself, they’d had only each other.
Will’s head sagged for a second before he straightened up and took a deep breath. “Mom, I’m sorry. I can’t.”
My mouth fell open, and I swear, I got chills. He’d actually done it. He’d told his mom no. Somewhere along the line, Will Killian had grown a mother-proof spine.
“I’m in the middle of something important right now,” he continued, “and I can’t walk away.” The determined set of his jaw spoke volumes. He wasn’t backing down on this one. Color me stunned.
On the other end of the phone, his mother seemed as flabbergasted as I was. “Will…I don’t…You need to understand. This is serious.”
“I know. And I do understand,” he said. “But I have to do this.”