by L. J. Smith
He was grinning maliciously, recovering. “No life!”
“All right, what kind of existence, then,” Gillian said coldly. “You know what I mean. It stinks, Angel. It’s putrid. It’s disgusting.”
A spasm crossed Angel’s face. He whirled away from her. And for the first time since Gillian had seen him, she saw agitation in him. He was actually pacing, moving like a caged animal. And his hair—it seemed to be ruffled by some unseen wind.
Gillian pressed her advantage. “It’s about as good as being under there.” She kicked at the dead weeds over a grave.
He whirled back, and his eyes were unnaturally bright. “But I am under there, Gillian.”
For a moment, her skin prickled so that she couldn’t speak. She had to force herself to say steadily, “Under that one?”
“No. But I’ll show you where. Would you like that?” He made a grand gesture, inviting her down the stairs. Gillian hesitated, then went, knowing he was behind her.
Her heart was pumping wildly. This was almost like a physical contest between them—a contest to see who could upset the other more.
But she had to do it. She had to make a connection with him. To reach into his anger and frustration and despair and somehow drag answers out of it.
And it was a contest. A contest of wills. Who could shout louder, who could be more merciless. Who could hold on.
The prize was Angel’s soul.
She nearly tripped at the bottom of the stairs. It was too dark to see her footing. She noticed, almost absently, that it was getting very cold.
Something like an icy wind went past her—and there was light in front of her. Angel was walking there, not leaving any footprints in the snow. Gillian staggered after him.
They were heading for the newer section of the cemetery. Past it. Into the very new section.
“Here.” Angel said. He turned. His eyes were glittering. He was standing behind a gravestone and his own light illuminated it.
Chills washed over Gillian.
This was what she had asked for, it was exactly what she had asked for. But it still made the hair on her neck stand on end.
He was under here. Right here. Beneath the ground. The body of the person she’d loved and trusted… whose voice had been the last thing she’d heard at night and the first thing each morning.
He was under here in some kind of box, unless maybe that had rotted. And he wasn’t smiling and golden-haired and handsome. And she was going to find out his name from a stone.
“I’m here, Gillian,” Angel said ghoulishly, leaning over the granite marker, resting his elbows on it. “Come up and say hello.” He was smiling, but his eyes looked as if he hated her. Wild and reckless and bitter. Capable of anything.
And somehow, the sick horror that had been sweeping through Gillian disappeared.
Her eyes were full, spilling over. The tears froze on her cheeks. She brushed at them absently and knelt beside the grave, not on it. She didn’t look at Angel.
She put her hands together for just a moment and bent her head. It was a wordless prayer to whatever Power might be out there.
Then she took off her glove and gently scraped snow away from the marker with her bare hand.
It was a simple granite headstone with a scrolled top. It read “In loving memory. Our son. Gary Fargeon.”
“Gary Fargeon,” Gillian said softly. She looked up at the figure leaning over the stone. “Gary.”
He gave a mocking laugh, but it sounded forced. “Nice to meet you. I was from Sterback; we were practically neighbors.”
Gillian looked back down. The date of birth was eighteen years ago. And the date of death was the previous year.
“You died last year. And you were only seventeen.”
“I had a little car crash,” he said. “I was extremely drunk.” He laughed again, wildly.
Gillian sat back on her heels. “Oh, really. Well, that was brilliant,” she whispered.
“What’s life?” He bared his teeth. “‘Out, out, brief candle’—or something like that.”
Gillian refused to be distracted. “Is that what you did?” she asked quietly. “Got yourself killed? Is that unfinished business somehow?”
“Wouldn’t you like to know?” he said.
Okay, retreat. He wasn’t ready yet. Maybe try some feminine wiles. “I just thought you trusted me—Angel. I thought we were supposed to be soulmates…”
“But by now you know we aren’t, don’t you? Because you found your real love—that jerk.” Gary turned up the brilliance of his smile. “But even if we’re not soulmates, we are connected, you know. We’re cousins. Distant, but the bond is there.”
Gillian’s hands fell to her sides. She stared up at him. Lights were going on in her brain, but she wasn’t quite sure what they illuminated yet.
The strangest thing was that she wasn’t entirely surprised.
“Didn’t you ever wonder why we both have the same color eyes?” He stared down at her. Although everything was dark around him, his eyes were like violet flame. “I mean, it isn’t exactly common. Your great-grandmother Elspeth had these eyes. So did her twin brother, Emmeth.”
Twins.
Of course. The lost Harman babies, Melusine had said. Elspeth and Emmeth. “And you’re…”
He smirked. “I’m Emmeth’s great-grandson.”
Now Gillian could see what her mind was trying to illuminate. Her thoughts were racing. “You’re a witch, too. That was why you knew how to do the spells and things. But how did you figure out what you were?”
“Some idiots from Circle Daybreak came,” Gary said. “They were looking for lost witches. They’d managed to track Emmeth’s descendants down. They told me enough that I understood what kind of powers I had. And then—I told them to get lost themselves.”
“Why?”
“They were jerks. All they care about is getting humans and Night People together. But I knew the Night World was the place for me. Humans deserve what they get.”
Gillian stood. Her fingers were getting red and swollen. She tried to pull her glove back on. “Gary, you are a human. At least part. Just like I am.”
“No. We’re superior to them. We’re special—”
“We are not special. We’re no better than any one else!”
Gary was grinning unpleasantly, breathing quickly. “You’re wrong there. The Night People are supposed to be hunters. There are even laws that say so.”
A chill that had nothing to do with the wind went through Gillian. “Oh, really?” Then she had another thought. “Is that why you made me go to that club? So they could hunt me?”
“No, you idiot!” Gary’s eyes flashed. “I told you—you’re one of them. I just wanted you to realize that. You could have stayed, been part of them—”
“But why?”
“So you would be like me!” The wind was gusting wildly again. Frozen tree branches creaked like creatures in pain.
“But why?”
“So you could come be with me. So we could be together. Forever. If you joined them, you wouldn’t have gone on to the Other Side—”
“When I died! You wanted me dead.”
Gary looked confused. “That was just at first—”
Gillian was angry now. Yelling. “You planned the whole thing! You lured me. Didn’t you? Didn’t you? That crying I heard in the woods—that was you, wasn’t it?”
“I—”
“Everything you did was designed to kill me! Just so you’d have company!”
“I was lonely!” The words seemed to hang and echo. Then Gary’s eyes darkened and he turned away.
“I was so lonely,” he said again, and there was something so hopeless in his voice that Gillian stepped toward him.
“Anyway, I didn’t do it,” he said over his shoulder. “I changed my mind. I thought I could come live with you here—”
“By killing David and taking his body. Yeah. Great plan.”
He didn’t move. Helplessly, Gillian reached out
a hand. It passed right through his shoulder.
She looked at the hand, then said quietly, “Gary, tell me what you did. What the unfinished business is.”
“So you can try to send me on.”
“Yes.”
“But what if I don’t want to go on?”
“You have to!” Gillian clenched her teeth. “You don’t belong here, Gary! This isn’t your place anymore! And there’s nothing you can do here, except… except evil.” She stopped, breathing hard.
He turned, and she saw the wild look again. “Maybe that’s what I like to do.”
“You don’t understand. I’m not going to let you. I’m not going to stop or give up. I’ll do whatever it takes to make you move on.”
“But maybe you won’t have the chance.”
A blast of wind. And something else. Stinging granules that struck Gillian’s face like tiny needles.
“What if there’s a blizzard tonight?”
“Gary, stop it!” The gale buffeted her.
“A freak storm. Something nobody expected.”
“Gary…” It was very dark—the moon and stars had been blotted out. But Gillian could see a driving, swirling whiteness. Her teeth were chattering and her face was numb.
“And what if Amy’s car won’t start? If something went wrong with the engine…”
“Don’t do this! Gary!” She couldn’t see him now. His light was gone, swallowed in the storm. Snow slashed her face.
“Nobody knows where you are, do they? That wasn’t very smart, dragonfly. Maybe you need somebody to look after you, after all.”
Gillian gasped, openmouthed, for breath. She tried to take a step and the wind thrust her against something hard. A tombstone.
This was what she’d been afraid of. That her angel would turn against her, try to destroy her. But now that it was happening, she found that she knew what to do.
Gary’s voice came out of the gale. “What if I just go away and leave you for a little while?”
Gillian’s eyes were watering, the tears freezing on her lashes. It was hard to get a breath. But she gathered herself, hanging on to the tombstone, and yelled.
“You won’t! You know you won’t—”
“How can I know?”
She answered with a question, shouting over the wind. “Why didn’t you kill David?”
Her only answer was the howling gale.
Gillian’s sight was dimming. The cold hurt. She tried to cling on to the tombstone, but her hands were numb. “You couldn’t do it, Gary! You couldn’t kill someone! When it came right down to it, you couldn’t! And that’s how I know.”
She waited. At first she thought that she’d been wrong. That he’d left her alone in the storm.
Then she realized the wind was dying. The curtains of snow were thinning. Stopping. A light formed in the empty air.
Angel—no, Gary—was standing there. She could see him clearly. She could even see what was in his eyes.
Bitterness. Anger. But something like a plea, too.
“But I did, Gillian. That’s exactly what I did. I killed someone.”
Gillian took a breath that started out quick and ended long. Oh. Oh… that was bad.
But there might have been some justification. A fight. Self-defense.
She said quietly, “Who?”
“Can’t you guess? Paula Belizer.”
CHAPTER 16
Gillian stood as if her snow-powdered body had been turned to ice. Because it was the worst, the absolute worst that she could possibly have imagined.
He killed a kid.
“The little girl who disappeared a year ago,” she whispered. “On Hillcrest Road.” The one she’d thought of—completely irrationally—when she’d heard the crying.
“I was doing a spell,” Gary said. “A strong one; I was a quick learner. It was a fire elemental spell—so I was out in the woods. In the snow, where nothing would burn. And then she showed up chasing her dog.”
He was staring into the distance, his face dead white. Looking not haunting, but haunted. And Gillian knew he wasn’t with her at that moment; he was far away, with Paula.
“They broke the circle. It all happened so fast. The fire was everywhere—just one white flash, like lightning. And then it was gone.” He paused. “The dog got away. But not her.”
Gillian shut her eyes, trying not to imagine it. “Oh, God.” And then, as something twisted inside her, “Oh, Gary…”
“I put her body in my car. I was going to take her to the hospital. But she was dead. And I was—confused. So finally I stopped the car. And I buried her in the snow.”
“Gary…”
“I went home. Then I went to a party. That was the kind of guy I was, you see. A partyin’ guy. Everything was about good times and me, me, me. That was even what being a witch was about.” For the first time there was emotion in his voice, and Gillian recognized it. Self-hatred.
“And at the party, I got really, really drunk.”
Oh. Suddenly Gillian understood. “You never told anybody.”
“On the way back home I wrapped my car around a tree. And that was it.” He laughed, but it wasn’t a laugh. “Suddenly I’m in Neverland. Can’t talk to anybody, can’t touch anybody, but sure can see everything. I watched the search for her, you know. They passed about a foot away from her body.”
Gillian gulped and looked away. Something had twisted and broken inside her, some idea of justice that would never be put back together. But this was no time to think about that.
It hadn’t really been his fault… but what did that matter? You played the hand you got dealt. And Gary had played his badly. He’d started out with everything—good looks, obvious brains, and witch power enough to choke a horse—and he’d blown it.
Didn’t matter. They had to go on from here.
She looked up at him. “Gary, you have to tell me where she is.”
Silence.
“Gary, don’t you see? That’s your unfinished business. Her family doesn’t know…” Gillian stopped and swallowed. When she went on, her voice wobbled. “Whether she’s alive or dead. Don’t you think they ought to know that?”
A long pause. Then he said, like a stubborn child, “I don’t want to go anywhere.”
Like a frightened child, Gillian thought. But she didn’t look away from him. “Gary, they deserve to know,” she said softly. “Once they’re at peace—”
He almost shouted, “What if there isn’t any peace for me?”
Not frightened, terrified.
“What if there isn’t anywhere for me to go? What if they won’t take me?”
Gillian shook her head. Her tears overflowed again. And she didn’t have any answers for him. “I don’t know. But it doesn’t change what we’ve got to do. I’ll stay with you, though, if you want. I’m your cousin, Gary.” Then, very quietly, she said, “Take me to her.”
He stood for a long moment—the longest of Gillian’s life. He was looking at something in the night sky that she couldn’t see, and his eyes were utterly bleak.
Then he looked at her and slowly nodded.
“Here?” David bent and touched the snow. He looked up at Gillian. His dark eyes were young—a little scared. But his jaw was set.
“Yes. Right there.”
“It’s a pretty strange place to do it.”
“I know. But we don’t have any choice.”
David got to work with the shovel. Gillian pushed and mounded snow into walls. She tried to think only of how she’d done this in childhood, about how easy and interesting it had been then. She kept at it until David said, “I found her.”
Gillian stepped back, brushing off her sleeves and mittens.
It was a clear day, and the afternoon sun was brilliant in a cold blue sky. The small clearing was peaceful, almost a haven. Untouched except for a welt in the snow where a ground mouse had tunneled.
Gillian took a couple of deep breaths, fists clenched, and then she turned to look.
David hadn’t uncovered much. A scrap of charred red wool muffler. He was kneeling beside the shallow trench he’d made.
Gillian was crying again. She ignored it. She said, “It was the last day before Christmas vacation, so we took the day off from school. We were playing hooky in the woods. We decided to make a snow fort….”
“And then we found the body.” David got up and gently put a hand on her elbow. “It’s a weird story, but it’s better than the truth.”
“And what can they suspect us of? We never even knew Paula Belizer. They’ll know she was murdered because she was buried. But they won’t know how she died. They’ll think somebody tried to burn the body to get rid of it.”
David put his arm around her waist, and she leaned into him. They stood that way for a few minutes, steadying each other.
It was strange how natural that was, now. David had agreed to help her with all this without a moment’s hesitation… and Gillian hadn’t been surprised. She’d expected it. He was her soulmate. They stood together.
At last, he said quietly, “Ready?”
“Yes.”
As they left the clearing, David added even more quietly, “Is he here?”
“No. I haven’t seen him since he showed me the place. He just—disappeared. He won’t talk to me either.”
David held her tighter.
Mr. Belizer came at dusk, after most of the police had left.
It was almost too dark to see. David had been urging Gillian away for an hour. So had Gillian’s parents. They were there, both of them, huddling close and touching her whenever they could. David’s father and stepmother were on the other side of David.
Yeah, Gillian thought. It’s been a rough last few days on everybody.
But here they all were: David, pale but calm; Gillian, shaky but standing; the parents, bewildered but trying to cope. Not comprehending how their kids could have found so much trouble in such a short time.
At least nobody seemed to suspect them of having hurt Paula Belizer.
And now, here was Paula’s dad. Alone. Come to look at the last resting place of his daughter—even though the coroner had already taken his daughter away.
The police let him go up to the clearing with a flashlight.
Gillian tugged at David’s hand.