I can still be sneaky when I need to be. I look down. “No. You’re wrong. I have a lot to live for.”
“Name one thing.” He laughs.
I turn away from him, covering my face in my hands. The door opens automatically and I walk out, hunched over, copying Jeremy’s posture. I walk up the trail to the falls and duck into the cavern. I don’t care if he’s watching. I hope he is.
In front of the pool I start to tremble. This is real, not a dream. It’s finally happening—will it kill me or not? Preston’s right in a way; I’m not as scared of death, of becoming a ghost, as I probably should be. But it’s not that I want to die. I’d rather live. Even if it’s just drinking beer and eating popcorn on the couch and playing video games, life is decent. It’s just that—like in my dream—I feel like my decent life is a very small thing. Smaller than the good I could do with my death.
If this works, and Elyse ever calls her mother from California, she’ll know Liz’s different. She’ll visit home and find out what happened.
My shirt’s so baggy, it would go over my head underwater, so I take it off. I’m wearing heavy black work boots, just like in the dream. I look at the pool’s still surface, trying to push away the image of Dan’s peaceful, spinning back float in the circle of feeding ghosts, and then I can feel it. Hear it too. The low, vibrating hum of the spirit. A lullaby to its prey?
Out of nowhere, Preston appears before me. “Mind if I watch the feeding frenzy?”
“Suit yourself. I’m not doing this for you.”
“Still, it saddens me to think of you dying all alone. Just like your mother.”
Is he trying to rattle me so I can’t concentrate, so I’ll fail to make my way through the labyrinth before the spirit tears me limb from limb? That could mean he knows I have a chance.
“Thanks for your concern.” If there’s one thing I can do, it’s pretend to be more confident than I feel. “But I’m not alone,” I add. “My mother’s spell still protects me, even after her death.”
“How sweet.” Preston laughs. “But I own your mother. Her soul works for me now. Her magic is mine.” He raises one arm, points his thumb at my heart, and twists it. My breath catches in my throat as brutal coldness seeps through my core. A string of blue light ripples in front of me like a snake, its trail growing faint and disappearing into the wind with a soft rustle.
I look down at my chest. My tattoo’s gone.
I’m unguarded.
A low howl of outrage emanates from deep below as I back slowly away from the pool and onto the main trail. As if the water spirit is grieving with me, grieving the loss of my mother’s gift to me. Is that even possible? Can the spirit sense my presence, the way I sense its presence? Did it feel my magical protection being stripped away?
While I’m contemplating this, a slow movement in the soil catches my eye. Double wheel tracks like a stroller, approaching. I start running.
When I get to Main Street I look for Elizabeth, but for once she’s not there. Has she moved on to yet another identity?
By the time I reach the town square I force myself to accept the truth: I’m never going to make it home without one of them getting me. They’ll be drawn to my bitter memories, hungry for the taste of them. Even if I run in a zigzag, crossing streets at random, I couldn’t make it as far as the front door.
I pull my drawstring bag of Chinese coins from my pocket, sit down, and start the incantation under my breath as I spread the coins around me in a circle. I try to calm myself, comfort myself. I just need time to think. There’s a solution to this somewhere, somehow. But I can’t think of any way to solve this alone. I’m not even good at brainstorming on my own. My magic never got innovative until I started talking about it with someone who liked to argue with me.
I’m no longer invisible when Sheriff Hank stops by to inquire what my business is. He tells me to move it along, his boots disturbing the ward circle. I stand and gather my coins, but the second he turns his back I hide behind the statue of Preston and set up my spell again. I feel like I’m cowering, but what else can I do? If I’m caught, there’ll be no one to remind me of what I’ve lost.
Night falls. Bill’s probably freaking out, unable to find me or her. He’s going to go out again and lose more memories. He’s going to be used up fast, because he’s alone and confused. The ground of the square gets cold and I rock back and forth and hug myself to maintain body heat.
That’s how she finds me.
Chapter 35
ELYSE
I’m cutting through the square on my way to Marshall’s house, ready to break into a run at any sudden shimmery movements, when I spot the crouched figure shivering behind the statue of W. P. Preston. I would know those broad shoulders anywhere. “Marshall?” I stand over him. “What are you doing out here?”
He looks up at me—for once. “God, I’m glad to see you!”
I realize he’s sitting in a ring of coins. Convenient. “Move over.” I step into his ward circle. “What do you need this for? Something wrong with your tattoo?”
He hangs his head. “Gone.” In that word I can hear his grief for a mother he now remembers. He tells me about his dad going outside, how he broke down and asked Joe for help, only to realize what I had, that Joe was none other than William Phillips Preston. “Not that I’m complaining, but what are you doing back in town? It’s not safe for you here. Or for me, now. I’m not protected anymore. I’m just like anyone else.”
I take that in. Marshall is no longer protected from ghosts. He’s as defenseless as I am—more, because he can’t see them. He’s as bad off as any resident of Summer Falls, except worse because he knows what’s at stake. The worry shows in his eyes. They look dull, watery. Standing just inches away from him, I have to fight the urge to reach down and take his hand, to comfort him like he used to comfort me. But he’s the one who did this to us. To himself. I force myself to stay cold. “It’s interesting. To see how you deal with being powerless.”
He exhales a growl. Then his face softens to resignation. “I don’t blame you for hating me,” he says. “After everything that’s happened to you, you deserved to have one person who wouldn’t let you down, and I failed. Miserably. I hate asking, but will you please help me get home?”
I bite my lip.
“I need to make sure my dad’s safe. He thinks my mom’s still alive; he’s probably going to start looking for her soon if he hasn’t already.”
“Of course I’ll help you get home.” Why does he have to be selfless now? It’s hard to be mad at him when he’s so different—but if I don’t stay mad, I’ll trust him again, and then I could get wiped. Erased. Killed, even. “No guarantees we’ll make it though, and you have to pay close attention to what I say. When I see a ghost, I’ll tell you right where it is and which way to run.” I look around and see a white nightgown that shimmers. “Right now, for example, the little girl who was in my room is peeking in the window of Frieda’s.” I’m starting to recognize individual ghosts.
“Poor kid probably just wants some candy,” he mutters.
“No, she wanted candy fifty years ago,” says a cranky voice. “Now she wants your memories, and if she gets them you’re cooked.” Elizabeth’s strolling over to us barefoot, in her brown patched dress. My smooth-skinned, red-haired great-great-grandmother.
“Mrs. Preston?” Marshall says.
“Not that name.” She waves him off. “A hundred years is too long to carry any man’s name, let alone that bastard’s. I’m just Elizabeth now. Or, ‘Hey, you, stop defacing public property.’”
A thought occurs to me. “When you destroy something in the town, does he lose some of his power?”
She nods. “We both do. But I don’t care about myself anymore. I just want this to end.”
“Then will you help us?” I say. “You’ve had lifetimes to come up with a plan.”
“You think I haven’t waged my share of revolutions against him? But every time I come up with an idea, he fin
ds a way to use it to make himself stronger. Like when I wrote that children’s book about the Indians who lived here before we made a mess of things.”
“You wrote the storybook?” I ask.
She nods shyly. “Forty years ago, I had it illustrated, printed up, and sent to the library without his knowing. Townspeople who read it would get ideas in their heads that maybe this place was better off before the mill and the tourists. But he got wind of it. Tore out the last few pages so it ended the way he liked it, and that’s how people know the story now. What feels right to them, what they’re used to, is him winning.”
“Still,” I say, “you could have done more. . . . I mean, you’ve had all this time, and the ghosts don’t take your memories.”
“They don’t take memories away from me,” she agrees, “they give them. Misery, pain, all the time. I think of it as purgatory, a punishment for all my sins, but Preston enjoys it. He says it keeps him human.”
“You really feel all our bad memories?” I ask. If she knows everything that’s happened to us, to me . . . “Then why don’t you help us? Or . . . wait . . . are you the one who gave me the journal?” I think I wanted it to be her, to think I had some kind of guardian or fairy godmother watching over me, even a crazy one. But her perplexed expression tells me all I need to know. Even when I was a child, the only person watching over me . . . was me. “How can you just sit back and watch it destroy us?” I ask. “Your own descendants are being sacrificed to keep you alive.”
“I’m as much against it as you, but I don’t control any of this. He did it, long ago, and without my say-so.”
It’s not like I think she’s lying or something, but it’s not good enough for me. Maybe Marshall’s right that I’m not capable of forgiveness. I turn away, but I hear him say, “Elizabeth, you can help us right now if you’re willing. We can use a second pair of eyes on the way home.”
We barely make it home, and Marshall instantly sets about creating a ward circle while I search for his father, calling his name. Instead I find a note on the kitchen counter.
Eva and Marsh, I’m worried. You’re not answering your phones. I can’t remember where you said you’d be. I’m going to look for you. Call me if you get
He never finished his sentence or signed it. He must have gotten distracted.
Marshall frantically runs to the phone and hits #3 on speed dial. “It’s just ringing,” he says. “I probably haven’t paid the bill in months.”
He looks miserable, and I can’t tell him his father will be okay. I can’t tell him it’s not his fault.
But this time I do squeeze his hand and just say, “I’m sorry.”
“Me too.” He blinks away tears. “You never told me why you came back.”
Once I’ve determined there are no ghosts in the house, we sit in the kitchen, where I make him a cup of tea he’ll never drink and one for myself. “I realized a lot of things,” I said, “when I left Summer Falls. But the main thing is, this isn’t really about the two of us. I mean we’re just two people. Whatever issues we have between us, it doesn’t mean five thousand other people deserve to live their lives as happy batteries.”
“And that’s not counting the ghosts, like my mom,” he adds, “and the people who haven’t been born here yet.”
“Exactly. So, we’re going to have to find a way to work together.”
“I’m willing to do anything that has a chance of working.” He tells me about his confrontation with Joe/Preston and how he’d been about to jump in the water when he realized he had no chance of success. “I’m not telling you this so you’ll see how selfless I am—well, maybe a little. I’m hoping you have an idea I haven’t thought of. Because no matter how I see it, we can’t do this. If either one of us goes in, ghosts kill our minds. I realize there’s no way you’re ever going to let me do the memory-seal spell on you again—”
“You got that right.” I’m pretty sure I’d choke on the potion. “But even if I did trust you, you’re not protected now and you can’t see ghosts. There’s a pretty good chance you’d be nabbed before we even got to the falls, and then Preston would know about our plan.”
Then we’re both silent.
“I’m pretty sure you’re thinking what I’m thinking,” he says.
“Seal you.”
He nods. “Make me a blank again. Then show me the plans I wrote up and guide me. Tell me what to do, where to go . . . Any strength you have as an occultist, it might not be much, but it’ll add to mine.”
“Or maybe it’s a lot, and that’s why Preston didn’t want me in town.”
“The ritual my mom wrote up, the one she was presumably in the middle of when she died, was to claim the place of power. But my mother’s plan was unethical. I mean, it was environmentally sound. But then the ghosts, including her, would still be stuck here. I have my own plan that would free the ghosts and set mortal time moving again for the Prestons and the town, but it wouldn’t restore the damage that’s already been done to people’s minds. And Preston could always find another place of power and set up his system somewhere else.”
“Still, it would be something.” It would be huge. “Are you willing though?”
“Yes,” he says quietly.
We decide to make it simple in the video we record for him. He sits on his bed and faces my phone’s screen. “I’m Special Agent Marshall King,” he says, clearly trying to hide a grin, “and I’ve voluntarily taken a drug that will seal off my memory, for my own protection, during this mission. My partner, Elyse Alton.” He turns the phone toward me and I wave. “She’ll be here just to guide me along, smooth the process for me, and give me detailed, minute-by-minute instructions.”
We crack up laughing as soon as he hits Record off.
“That sounded like bullshit,” he says. “What if I don’t believe myself when I hear it?”
“I think when you recognize your voice, you’ll have to believe it. Or at least believe it’s for your own good to believe it.”
It takes him more than an hour to mix up the potion. He shows me the thick red liquid at the bottom of the chalice. “The color’s from the wine. I remember it tastes awful.”
“I don’t even remember.” Bitterness.
He drinks it down, his face twisting in pain. “It’s fast-acting, I remember that too. I’ll start to act drunk, then I’ll fall asleep. This could be the last time I ever talk to you as me.”
“Marshall, don’t—”
“Let’s not dance around the truth. Preston could kill me before I get my memories back, and even if he doesn’t I might never be myself, this self, again. And there’s something I need to say to you.” His voice cracks.
“Nothing you say is going to make me trust you again.”
“Give me some credit, please. I get that. I know you don’t believe you’re a good person, Elyse, but you’re wrong. Here’s how I know it. I trust you. I know that, even though you hate my guts, you will take care of me tomorrow.”
“I don’t hate—”
“You’ll be a great guide. You’ll make sure this gets done right. Because, Elyse, you’re a hero. I always wanted to be one, I even got the pecs and the magic powers, but you’re the real thing.”
There’s a long pause, and I can feel my anger melting when he says, “God, I really want to kiss you.”
“What?” I spit. “You’re joking, right?”
“Sorry, just, I’m instantaneously buzzing.” Right, the potion’s stifling his inhibitions. He gives me a sly smile and settles back on the mattress. “Maybe you should tie me to the bed. You know, in case I flip out and try to kill you when I wake up with no memories.”
“This is really bringing out your perv side. Luckily I have morals.”
With a chuckle he lifts his head off the pillow. “Sometimes.”
“Are you trying to goad me?”
“Yeah, is it working?” This time when he tries to lift his head, he’s too tired and it falls back.
I can’t he
lp laughing. “Good night, Marshall.”
Less than ten minutes later he falls asleep.
I lie beside him, unable to fall asleep myself.
I keep thinking of how he said this was the last time he’d be talking to me as himself. And how he already wasn’t the self he used to be before we did the first spell. Who he is keeps changing, and the Marshall I’m mad at seems to no longer exist. But that doesn’t make me any less mad, and my anger’s firmly attached to the face and voice and body I think of as Marshall. What if he had never regained that memory? What if I’d found out some other way what he did, by finding my phone, for example? Would I still be this distrustful? In some ways more so, because at least now he’d told me what he did. Which couldn’t have been easy, or fun. Just the fact that he confessed suggests to me that the latest version of Marshall, integrated with all his old memories, would never have done what his predecessor did. I let myself kiss the top of his sleeping head, inhaling his sandalwood scent, and wonder who he’s going to be in the morning.
Chapter 36
SPECIAL AGENT MARSHALL KING
“Welcome back, Agent King.” A voice from above my head. A girl’s voice. Crisp. Confident.
I force my bleary eyes to open. The room is dark. There’s a heart-stoppingly beautiful girl standing over my bed, her face bathed in lamplight. Spiky hair, piercing green eyes focused on me. One arm’s folded across the front of her oversize khaki jean jacket; the other hand’s holding out a steaming mug.
“Here.” She passes the mug toward me, and without thinking I reach out my hands to accept it, its warmth between my palms instantly comforting. “I thought this might help you wake up faster than last time.”
The aroma of coffee perks up my senses enough that I can speak. “Thank you.” My voice creaks with grogginess. I groan and ease myself up, careful not to spill coffee on myself. I take a sip of hot coffee—it’s got milk and a little sugar in it—and let it slide down my throat. Then another. And another.
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